Men Without Pants

Today was a nice day and tomorrow promises to be better. Winter-white people will be pulling on their shorts and I’ll probably have to go up to the attic to look for my cropped pants. I bet I see at least one neighbor mowing shirtless, getting a start on that tan of his. But let’s not waste time thinking about these common exhibitionists. Let’s turn our attention to the slightly more difficult to locate species of clothing-optional man—the pantless man.

For reasons that will become clear in a few minutes, my friend MT and I have talked about men without pants for a long time. I think most people have a story or two about encounters with flashers or exhibitionists. I’d like to know more about them and our relationship with them. Why do they do it? Why is it creepy in person, but funny to talk about later? And why did I used to see them more than I do now? Is it me or is it them?


The Guy at College

I’m going to assume that many young women encounter their first man without pants in college. But I’m also going to assume that most of those men are not wearing parkas. My first man without pants wore a blue parka, brown shoes, and nothing else.

I met him at a dorm party, but I recognized him from our cafeteria. He worked there. He was tall, quiet, and kind of moved like Boris Karloff in Frankenstein. He asked me to dance. (Let me just go ahead and admit that I hate to dance. The Seinfeld episodes with Elaine dancing are very funny, but a little too familiar. Everclear punch made these parties bearable for me.) I tried to chat him up, because I’m a strong believer of verbal distraction when I’m dancing. Of course it was too loud to really talk, but we gamely persevered. I finally resorted to hand signals. (God, I hate to dance.) He’d asked me my major and I made a “T” with my hands and mouthed “telecommunications.” He was delighted and answered by making an “A” with his—accounting. Immediately I knew I’d made a critical mistake: By being charmingly unusual, I’d gotten his attention. Now I knew there’d be more dance invitations—argh—and maybe he’d want to go out or study together or walk downtown to donate plasma. In that instant I saw a whole awkward future spread before me. In a panic, I quickly disappeared after the song. But then I had to continue to hide from him, which was a little challenging because I had to eat where he worked. [You can commence your own analysis of my behavior anytime. Or maybe you just realized as I just did that cafeterias are an ongoing source of bad experiences for me.]

Winter came. He started wearing a parka that was just like the ones boys in my middle school had worn. That’s what made me notice it. I hadn’t seen one in years. I’m sure you’ve seen the style. The exterior was a navy blue heavy nylon and the lining was orange. There was a fur-trimmed hood with a buckle on top. I’m sure it was a terrific coat, but because I’d seen so many of them years ago, it seemed like an odd choice for a college student. (I’ve got all sorts of prejudices, including those that involve winter coats.) He also rode a bike to campus, even in slushy weather. One day that winter he was actually hit by a big campus bus as he rode his bike down the long hill that connected our dorm to the main campus. I’m sure he was wearing The Parka. Maybe its puffiness is what saved him from serious injury.

More time passed. Late one Saturday night my roommate and I were recapping our evening with our door open. The Guy walked by and we burst out laughing, not because of him (honest), but I’m sure it seemed like it was all about him. I remember thinking we should say something like, “We’re laughing because of this other thing, not you,” but of course we didn’t. A bit later still we were getting ready for bed and there was a knock at the door. When we opened it, there he was, wearing brown shoes and The Parka with its hood up, cinched tight so his face wasn’t visible. Or was he wearing a ski mask? Regardless, there he was, doing a strange high-knees-turned-out-while-hopping sort of motion. We screamed. We slammed the door. We went to the bathroom in pairs for awhile. And The Guy became my first Man Without Pants.


The Guy in the Park

Long before kids, I had a dog named Midge. Midge and Marj, people sometimes got our names confused: “Is that one Midge or is she Marj?” I took her everywhere. And once I met MT and her dogs, we went even more places. This particular afternoon we were at a nice wooded park along the river, across the street from a very expensive private school. The dogs were running without leashes ahead of and around us and MT and I were deep in conversation, probably talking about work or our husbands. Suddenly we saw him, my second Man Without Pants.

He was way over there, standing off the trail calf-deep in the wildflowers. Maybe he was peeing? But if that were the case, his back would be to us, wouldn’t it? And his pants wouldn’t be all the way off or even around his ankles, right? Nope, he was doing something else. Time got weird then. It seems like we stood there for a little too long, just trying to puzzle out what he might be up to. The dogs were interested, but not too enthusiastic in their greeting. Then we started screaming and running. Both of us were sure he’d do something to the dogs so we were calling them excitedly as we ran. We got to the park entrance and told people about the guy, but no one carried cell phones yet, so we couldn’t call anyone official. I think one man bravely went into the woods to look for him, but we couldn’t give him any sort of useful description, other than the no-pants part. The funny thing is that we sometimes went to a different park, one that was known for randy man behavior, but we never saw anyone sans pants there.


The Guy in the Car

When I worked at a downtown ad agency, I had all sorts of responsibilities, including helping with projects by doing the stuff art directors didn’t have time for. One project required me to find a photograph of the Indianapolis skyline before it had really tall buildings. I called long-time photographers and I spoke with several newspaper staffers. I looked at lots of books at the library. Finally I made my way to the city’s Historical Society. It was a sloppy winter day, but I was still wearing nice shoes at that point in my life. So when I was crossing the street I was paying close attention to where I stepped, but as I walked in front of a parked car I glanced up and saw there was a man watching me. As I passed by the side of his car I glanced at him again (it only seems polite to follow-up one glance with a final glance, right?) and discovered, yes, he had no pants on. Now this one is maybe the most puzzling Man Without Pants sighting because it was cold outside and this man either left home with no pants or he parked and wiggled out of them. And this was not a deserted part of the city. It was at a pretty well-trafficked intersection. And apparently I was the only person who noticed? Do the rest of you not glance into cars when you walk around them? (Maybe I am the odd one here, because earlier this year I kept seeing a particular pickup truck at the grocery store and each time it had a big, furry, fly-laden bison head in the back. No one else seemed to notice it. How could they not? Do you not look into truck beds either? The last time I saw the truck in the parking lot I asked store employees about it because it seemed unlikely that a particular customer and I would consistently shop at the same time. No one knew what I was talking about. Heck, they didn’t even want to come outside and look at it.) I guess three might be the Magic Number for pantless man sightings, because this time I didn’t run or scream. And I never found the photo I was looking for. Apparently no one in Indianapolis thought about taking a skyline shot until after we got some tall buildings.


So those are my three Man Without Pants stories. I was going to write about one particularly unpleasant man at a nursing home I worked at in college, but that would be unfair because he wasn’t choosing to be pantless. It’s pretty funny though—remember, pain plus distance equals comedy. And of course I’ve got sons now, so there are those stories, but again, their innocence prevents the stories from really meeting the Man Without Pants criteria, as defined by me: A Man Without Pants story requires that the man be intentionally pantless in a public place for the purposes of shocking others or pleasing himself. If you’ve got your own story that you’d like to share, reply to this blog entry. I think we’d all like to know where else these guys have been spotted.

What to Say

Years ago a friend's daughter was diagnosed with autism. Being a poet, my friend wrote this poem and it was published in a local magazine. I dutifully clipped it out because that's what friends do. Years later when my daughter was diagnosed with autism I came across the poem and had a good cry--now I could more fully appreciate what my friend was feeling. Today, more than six years after the autism label was affixed to my child's forehead, I read it again and cried some more. The thing about being the parent of an autistic child is that there are always new ways to be saddened because while you're dealing with your child's issues, you're witnessing daily how their peers are developing and you can't help but envy those kids' parents. I try to remember that typical kids' issues can also be frustrating and that I would probably feel another sort of dismay if I had to deal with them, but some days my situation just seems overwhelming and it's good to have a poem like this one to help me get the crying out of the way.

What to Say
by Elizabeth Burns

so if you want to know
what it is you should say
when someone tells you
"there's something wrong
with my little girl
i thought she was fine but she isn't"
if you want to know what to say
say this:
talk to me
follow me through the snow and talk to me
walk through a mall
next to me
and when i look in a window
talk to me some more
talk to me by the carrots and celery
and talk to me when i put away
the oatmeal
and call me on the phone
when you're awake
and it's three and four and five
in the a.m. and you think
the carpet hurts you
and the words are slogging
in your throat
so muddy you need boots
for a sentence
call me call me
let me know everything
and even call again
and change the story
to the way you thought you heard it
and then the way you really heard it
when they told you
there was something
really wrong
and tell me
how cold it felt
inside your lungs
and how shattered
your hair felt
how your feet
could never get warm
because they were always
standing some place
so cold
waiting for different news
and tell me again
the news you wanted to hear
and how that wasn't it
and swear and hate me
and throw things that seem
precious to me
break my stuff
yell
hang up on me
because I want to hear it
i am as deep as a wordless well
and i am waiting for you
all night under the moon
and you can walk right out to me
and yell or whisper
as long as you want
while the grass gets flat
beneath your angry feet
and the birds get restless
and the trees bend down
to hear you
they want to know, too
they want to reach up for you
and complain
tell me all night long
and into next week
christ into next year
tell me cause
i want to know