The Man Who Burned his Britches by: Jennifer Gardner
In the southern part of Alabama, there lived a quiet, humble man named Steve. He wasn’t an unusual fellow, except that he was known as the man who had burned his britches. Now, understand one thing: he never intended to burn his britches or his long johns or any other article of clothing stuffed into his overflowing hamper. It just happened that way. But he wasn’t always known as the man who burned his britches. Once he was known as the man who always wore white pants. Everywhere he went, he wore pants as white as the fleece of a newborn sheep and those ivory britches helped defined his personality. He even became a painter because of his fondness of white pants, and he swore out loud when colored paints streaked his whites while on the job.
Steve was a single man, never married in his first thirty-two years of life. He lived alone, and called his mother once a week, only to hear her cry because he didn’t have a wife, or any little Steves trampling through his home. But Steve didn’t mind being single. He found women possessive and demanding. He’d rather have a dog than a wife. His dog didn’t wear dresses and want diamonds. His dog didn’t ask him if she looked fat in her studded collar. When she wasn’t crying to Steve about dating, his mother was telling him about her middle age traumas, about getting mammograms from doctors with cold hands, who flatten each breast like a pancake. Or about Aunt Sally’s cat that had male pattern baldness around its whiskers. As if Steve cared about these things. But he listened all the same. His mother only had him, his father having died three years prior, and Steve figured he owed her the time he spent with her on the phone. She had, after all, raised and housed him until he was almost thirty. In that time, she washed, dried, and ironed all of those silly white pants he insisted on wearing. And when he came home from work with paint stains on them, she bleached them out as best she could with Clorox and other bleaches that made her eyes water. But when Steve was offered a better painter’s job just forty miles away, he finally moved away from his mother.
Being single, Steve lacked the domestic skills necessary to live alone. He relied on restaurants to eat and Laundromats to wash and dry his clothes. After many months, Steve had established himself as a regular at Mom and Pop’s Laundry Stop, where he went weekly with his load of white pants. Because he was a regular customer, Mom and Pop treated him like a son, often inviting him over for breakfast, and even once trying to set him up with their daughter. On his only date with Kim, he wore a navy blazer and stuffed Charmin down his white pants to impress her. That had always worked in high school, but it proved to be quite embarrassing when, in the heat of passion, he undressed and uncovered his secretly small endowment, padded with tissue like a football player, scented with baby powder. He had not dated since. But that accident was not why Steve burned his britches. On the contrary, he shopped for more white britches after he stopped seeing Kim. And he bought white undies too, Fruit of the Loom with extra crotch support, even though he knew he didn’t need them.
One Saturday in May he was leaning back in a plastic chair, his feet propped up, his eyes glued to the glossy pages of that month’s fishing magazine as his entire wardrobe spun in cycles before him and behind the washer’s wet window. He wore baggy black sweats and holy socks, as he relaxed and hoped no one would see him in black pants. Suddenly he caught a glimpse of pink in the corner of his eye. There in the washer before his very eyes, his whites were mixing with his reds! Jumping out of his chair, he lunged toward the washer’s door, but it wouldn’t open. He was helpless until the spin cycle was over. And then he could only pull out his pink pants and weep. Every pair of white pants he owned were in that washer, and now all were as pink as swine. He had put all his britches in one basket, so to speak. He pulled out his undies and they too were as pink as cotton candy, crotch support and all. A Cincinnati Reds tee shirt was the culprit. When he got his hands on it, he almost tore it to shreds. Anger turned his face red as he marched towards Mom and Pop’s home, rage welled deeply in his throat, pink britches gripped tightly in his hand.
Mom and Pop, however friendly they were to Steve before the accident, blamed only him for what happened. As you can imagine, they told him what his mother had told him many times before. You can’t mix your reds with your whites. Steve said he washed them mixed all the time, and as long as he used warm water there was never a problem. Until now. When he took his pink pants out of the washer, he was convinced the water was piping hot. Surely, the wires must have shorted, he said. The washer must’ve malfunctioned. Steve threatened to sue. He wanted his entire wardrobe replaced. It was the kind of case the People’s Court would die for. But with lawyer fees as they were, it was pointless for Steve to go to court. For what he would’ve paid a lawyer, Steve could’ve bought a hundred new pairs of white pants. A painter’s salary couldn’t afford a lawyer’s bills, so Steve suffered on, enduring the loss of not only his white pants but also his inner sense of being.
In the meantime, his only pants were pink. Because he wouldn’t get his painter’s paycheck for another two weeks, he was forced to walk the streets looking like Pink Panther from the waist down. The man who always wore white pants became the man who always wore pink pants. And as you might imagine, his sexuality came under suspicion. When Stevie walked through town, he was subject to catcalls and whistles from demeaning homophobes. He became known as “Pinkie Stevie”, wearing those “fag pants.” They mocked him with limp wrists and funny walks. “I bet his undies are pink too” they said. And he blushed, the pinkness of his face matching his pants, because they were right. Unfortuately his current painting job neighbored a construction site, filled with manly men who didn’t need Charmin for their crotches. It was this humiliation on the job that pushed “Stevie” over the edge.
He didn’t want money, nor did he want fame. All Steve wanted were his white pants back. Yes, he could’ve crawled back to his mother, begging her to bleach them white again. Yes, he could’ve even bought a bottle of bleach himself, had he been willing to do so. But he wasn’t willing, and all that mattered to him was the principle of responsibility. He had convinced himself that he was a mere victim, first for losing his white pants, and second for enduring the hardships of wearing pink. Now he wanted restitution for his suffering, and he needed no lawyer to get it.
On a Saturday, three weeks after the accident, Steve again walked into Mom and Pop’s Laundry Stop, this time armed with a bag of pink britches, a can of lighter fluid, and a pack of matches. He pushed all his pink garments into the small washer, and disrobed from the pair of pink britches he was presently wearing. Once they were all in, he squirted the pile of pink with the fluid, and lit a match. His plan was simple. Once burned, he could collect for his damaged clothes, and then buy new white pants. Why he hadn’t thought of this to begin with, he didn’t know. So he threw in the match, quickly shut the washer’s door and watched gleefully as the yellow flames mixed with the pink fabrics. He found glory in the yellow and pink rainbow forming before him, and in the smell of burning clothes seeping out of the washer’s door. But while he was busy thinking himself a genius, the blaze erupted and made a crashing sound inside the washer. The glass door blew out and flames spit out like mad. Steve jumped back, as flames caught the table beside him, then the drapes on the window. Before he knew it, and before he would do anything to stop it, Steve was caught in a violently burning fire that sped through the room faster than Wile E. Coyote off a cliff. The building, Steve now knew, would never survive such an expanding fire. And whether he ever again wanted to or not, he wouldn’t ever be able to return to Mom and Pop’s Laundry Stop. In burning his britches, Steve had also, quite literally, burned his bridges.
No one knows what ever happened to Steve. Witnesses say they saw a man naked from the waist down running madly out of the burning Laundromat that morning, but Steve was never seen in that town again. Some say he went off to sell Charmin, an assistant to Mr. Whipple himself. Some say he became a dog trainer. Still others are convinced he traded in his painter whites for fireman reds. But wherever he is and whatever he’s doing, one thing is for certain. His britches are no longer pink.