ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Right before his goddamn eyes, James Carmichael could only watch on as his life partner cut the cuffs off his favourite $9 Rivers jeans with a pair of blade shears.
Last winter, he wasn’t even allowed to wear them outside the house because they were ‘Dad Jeans’.
This winter, they’re the latest fashion trend sweeping the Simpson Desert – albeit with a few choice alterations.
“Hey, what’s going on in here?” asked the 28-year-old as he walked into his bedroom.
Standing over the bed, Sofie Rokmellen was going to town on his old jeans.
“I’m sorry, Rudie. But this is in fashion now so these jeans belong to me now.”
James was given the nickname ‘Rudolph’ in high school because of his perennial red nose and the fact that his eyes are so far apart, they might as well be on the side of his head.
He wanted to say something, not about the jeans, but about the love of his life using the nickname his bullies used to crush him in an almost deaf-mute existence.
But he didn’t.
He spoke to our reporter a short time ago as he took the bins out to the roadside. Though he’s been living opposite our reporter for close to a year, this is the first conversation they’ve had.
He detailed what happened next.
“Hey babe, you could’ve at least asked me!” he said – in a tone with just enough jest to prevent an argument about how wrong he is.
“Yeah, I know! Sorry! But you never wear these and I thought it’d be cheaper if I just started wearing them! Hope you don’t mind!”
“We can go shopping for new jeans for you on the weekend!”
He thought about that for a second.
As he was now starting to fill out quite grotesquely as most sedentary young men do approaching 30, he thought of the horror that was about to befall him.
“Am I supposed to pour my fat legs and barge arse into a pair of skinny jeans like they’re a pair of piping bags? Huh?! Then am I supposed to give some over-friendly-$19-an-hour cunt three hundred Australian pesos for them?” he said, looking down at the recycling bin.
“Fuck, man. Life is hard. At least she’s happy, I guess.”
The polite but comically meek reindeer then smiled at our reporter from across the street, threw a melancholy shaka then went back inside.
More to come.
