For Some of Us, Shorts Are Scary

Fuck. Spring's here. And after spring, comes summer. That's a whole half of the year in which skin must be bared and brazen, golden brown and taut. Well, that's just not us. Whether we be tubby or scrawny, rosacea-prone or pale, shorts are not appealing. The mere thought of pants being stolen from their length, of fabric hitting you right at that pale mid region of the calf, is not only awkward and ugly, but downright terrifying. Nothing's worse than accidentally brushing against someone's sweaty bare thigh as you clamor to get on the bus because you spend all on your money on backwards-silkscreened t-shirts and then awkwardly saying sorry, sorry because that fat lady did not want her leg touched and holy shit did not want to touch it. Or perhaps that hasn't happened to you. But surely, you feel my pain when sitting on a seat, your thighs spill wide out of the constricted hem of your shorts, like two water balloons full of Jello pudding and lifting them kind of, straining your ankles because EW! your thighs are spilling all over your seat! Or that inevitable short tan you get, less obvious until you put on a more flattering dress and those congruent tan lines scream hello to passerbys and uniformly tan critics. And then there are the men in short shorts, gross. Men in short shorts don't even need to be explained. The sheer thought is disturbing and dreaful. I had a boyfriend once who bought these bright canary-colored pants from a store which had inadvertently forgotten to remove the ink-leaking security device. Naturally, he didn't return the pants. Instead, he cut them with scissors so they hung just past his penis. Awkward AND disturbing. Especially when we'd go tooling around in the Castro. Men: do. not. wear. short. shorts. Or long shorts, for that matter because you just look like you're wearing short pants and remember middle school and how UNCOOL it was to wear highwaters. I haven't gotten over that. Men, avoid shorts. And girls too; if girls can pull of shorts they can't be digesting their food. I say we ban shorts of all sorts. Keep your skin pale and to yourself. Like sardines, thighs are better transported in tight containers. And like sardines, I don't want to have to eat them when you're crowd-surfing in your shorts at Tilly and the Wall.