Clothing of the Past, Lost Forever

The other day, my friend Gabe we wearing these denim painter's pants. He roasts cacao beans here at the chocolate factory, and it's a very brown, dusty job. Usually he wears all black, and he's a brown-and-black smudge by the end of the day.

"Why aren't you wearing black today?" I asked him.

"Tonight's laundy night," he said. "These are the only clean clothes I have."

I used to have a pair of Osk Kosh B'Gosh denim painter's pants. I think I got them at a clothing outlet for $8 back when I was stillliving in da Marighetto, maybe about...oh, shit...*nine* years ago. They were good pants, sturdy but comfortable, and even though they were kinda baggy, they fit pretty well. I remember wearing them to work at the donut shop in Bexley, and having them in Yellowstone and wearing them on my day off. My old boyfriend Daniel gave me a "Marietta River Race Days" patch, which I sewed onto the back pocket.

I know I had those pants when I moved out here, but at some point I got rid of them. Maybe I thought they were too baggy, or too trashy. At that point I didn't like them anymore, I guess. I didn't think I needed them.

Seeing Gabe's pants made me remember my denim painter's pants, my denim Osk Kosh B'Gosh painter's pants. I missed them. If I still had those pants, I'd probably wear them around the house on the weekends while I was cleaning and baking and crap like that. I always wear unfeminine pants on the weekends.

I'm not a pack rat. I do save things, yeah, but I also like to get rid of stuff--especially clothing. Sometimes I go a little overboard. I only have one trading shirt from my old crew team days in high school, and I easily had over a dozen at one point. I want those shirts back. That and the red thermal weave Sear's kid-size long underwear top I wore under t-shirts in high school all of the time...my Fishbone shirt, the one Brown gave me...that stretchy fitted Esprit top with the pattern of unidentifiable fruit all over it...my black and red low-top Chuck Taylor All-Stars that Mom got at Odd Lots...the red calico dress that Mom made for me when I was five...Grandpa Bir's floppy green felt hat, the one I sold to the consignment shop for $5...

All of those clothes are way cooler than the ones I wear now. I wish I had them back, the skinny-as-a-bone version of me from back then with my gross long hair and bad sense of outfit coordination. Where are those clothes now? In landfills, on the back of some South American way up in the mountains, shredded up and made into stuffing for cheap throw pillows? You have to learn to say goodbye to things. They are just clothes in real life, but in my mind they are markers where different memories begin and meld into other memories.

Last night Mr. Bir Toujour told me that Brent from Continental had died. I didn't know Brent very well--just in passing, really--but he was always chatty, the kind of guy who could talk to anyone about anything. We knew him from Continental, this band that's good pals with Mr. Bir Toujour's band. I liked Continental a lot. Brent played bass most of the time. He was a big guy--tall and big--and his bass kind of sat on the top of his belly when he played. Continental was a great band, and I always enjoyed seeing them live; I've probably seen them about ten times, in fact. Without Brent, there's no more Continental. He had heart failure. When he was 17 he'd had a heart transplant, and then he had another one when he was 23. I never knew any of this. I'm going to miss seeing Brent play bass. Now he's in that land of things lost to the tangible world, and he's floating around with Grandpa Bir's green felt hat and my five zillion crew trading shirts. I think everything's too small for him, except for the hat. He's kind of like my Grandpa Bir was; maybe he'll like the hat. I did.