please these leather pants

Lot 328: a pair of embarrassing trousers

Wednesday, November 2, 2005

The Guardian Unlimited

A recent auction on eBay ended with a pair of leather trousers being sold for $102.50 (£58) after 22 bids. Buyers may have been attracted by the following short essay written by the owner:

You are bidding on a mistake. We all make mistakes. We date the wrong people for too long. We chew gum with our mouths open. We say inappropriate things in front of grandma.

And we buy leather pants.

I can explain these pants and why they are in my possession. I bought them many, many years ago under the spell of a woman whom I believed to have taste. She suggested I try them on. I did. She said they looked good. I wanted to have a relationship of sorts with her. I'm stupid and prone to impulsive decisions. I bought the pants.

The relationship, probably for better, never materialised. The girl, whose name I can't even recall, is a distant memory. I think she was short.

Ultimately, the pants were placed in the closet where they have remained, unworn, for nearly a decade. I would like to emphasise that aside from trying these pants on, they have never, ever been worn. In public or private.

I have not worn these leather pants for the following reasons:

I am not a member of Queen.

I do not like motorcycles.

I am not Rod Stewart.

I am not French.

I do not cruise for transvestites in an expensive sports car.

These were not cheap leather pants. They are Donna Karan leather pants. They're for men. Brave men, I would think. Perhaps tattooed, pierced men. In fact, I'll go so far as to say you either have to be very tough, very gay, or very famous to wear these pants and get away with it.

Again, they're men's pants, but they'd probably look great on the right lady. Ladies can get away with leather pants much more often than men can. It's a sad fact that men who own leather pants will have to come to terms with.

They are size 34x34. I am no longer size 34x34, so even were I to suddenly decide I was a famous gay biker I would not be able to wear these pants. These pants are destined for someone else. For reasons unknown - perhaps to keep my options open, in case I wanted to become a pirate - I have shuffled these unworn pants from house to house, closet to closet. Alas, it is now time to part ways so that I may use the extra room for any rhinestone-studded jeans I may purchase in the future.

These pants are in excellent condition. They were never taken on pirate expeditions. They weren't worn onstage. They didn't straddle a Harley, or a guy named Harley. They just hung there, sad and ignored, for a few presidencies.

Someone, somewhere, will look great in these pants. I'm hoping that someone is you, or that you can be suckered into buying them by a girl you're trying to bed. Please buy these leather pants.

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Pirates are back - and we're not talking DVDs

Tuesday November 8, 2005

The Guardian

Tim Dowling

A pirate attack on a luxury cruise liner at the weekend raised the tantalising possibility that buccaneering is making a comeback. For most of today's lazy, telly-numbed children, the word pirate describes a type of DVD in which the coughing of a cinema audience is clearly audible. While many young people still want to be pirates when they grow up, we are in danger of leading them to believe that piracy involves nothing more than strapping on an eye patch and settling down to watch an unlicensed copy of Madagascar.

This isn't their fault. It's like those children who were berated in yesterday's papers for not knowing that chips were made from potatoes. We tell our children that chips are full of oil and salt, and when we ask them what they're made of, they naturally answer oil and salt. And apples, for some reason. I don't have an excuse for apples.

So it should come as no surprise if our children believe that, these days, pirates are chiefly engaged in downloading Madonna's album before it hits the shops. Before Saturday they had no other pirate role models.

International maritime authorities would have you believe that piratical incidents are on the rise, but in fact they've been fairly steady of late. There were 325 pirate attacks in 2004, which isn't so many when you consider how much of the Earth's surface is covered by water.

Despite the romance of it all, being a modern pirate must be pretty thankless. International freight companies have increased ship security and introduced measures such as high-voltage fencing. It's one thing to loot some gold from a Spanish galleon in the name of queen and country, and quite another to board a gigantic container vessel from a speedboat in order to gain possession of 100,000 sets of unsafe Christmas lights and six tonnes of inferior lawn furniture. On a good day it might be flat-screen TVs, on a bad day three-quarters of a million Happy Meal toys.

This is not to say, however, that our children must give up their dreams of becoming pirates. The idea of targeting cruise ships - essentially giant, floating shopping malls - is inspired, and may give piracy the shot in the arm it needs. It's not just ironic but tremendously fitting that people who seek to holiday in the exclusive sequestration of an ocean-going hotel should be subject to such an elemental threat. One hesitates to suggest they deserve it, but maybe the excitement is good for them. I don't know about you, but if I had to spend six weeks on a cruise ship, the pirate attack would constitute a bit of a highlight. Perhaps in future a spot of pre-arranged privateering could be incorporated into the itinerary.

The young people of today could do worse than consider a career in piracy.

In a world run by fanatical ideologues, freebooting is a refreshingly self-serving pursuit, but it's still not an easy life. As I tell my kids: real pirates don't sit inside watching fuzzy copies of The Incredibles left here by the plasterer. They're out in the fresh sea air all day, harassing shipping.

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