I Just Want My Pants Back: A Novel - Softcover

Rosen, David

 
9780767927949: I Just Want My Pants Back: A Novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 076792794X ISBN 13: 9780767927949
Verlag: Crown, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

Now a new MTV series, from acclaimed director and executive producer Doug Liman (“Mr. and Mrs. Smith, “Swingers,” “Go,” “The Bourne Identity”)

Jason Strider is a twentysomething young man with an English degree from an Ivy League university, a very small apartment in New York, a vapid job as a receptionist at a casting agency—and no particular idea what to do with his life. On most evenings he gets stoned and goes out, sometimes with his long-time best friend and wingman Tina and sometimes alone, if not to get laid then at least to get hammered enough to really regret it the next day and be late for work.
 
Then one night Jason has athletic, appliance-assisted intercourse with a cute girl named Jane—and ends up lending her his favorite Dickies jeans. Many unanswered e-mails and text messages later, he is reduced to the plaint “I just want my pants back.” How he does, in a most unexpected way, find those pants and how he is forced to face his immaturity—and mortality—are at the heart of this smart, raunchily comic and deeply affecting novel.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David J Rosen is a writer based in Brooklyn.  He is the creator and executive producer of I Just Want My Pants Back on MTV, and also the author of What’s That Job And How The Hell Do I Get It?

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Jason Strider is a twentysomething young man with an English degree from an Ivy League university, a very small apartment in New York, a vapid job as a receptionist at a casting agency--and no particular idea what to do with his life. On most evenings he gets stoned and goes out, sometimes with his long-time best friend and wingman Tina and sometimes alone, if not to get laid then at least to get hammered enough to really regret it the next day and be late for work.

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1


I was a bored and hungry mammal. I lived in a small apartment on Perry Street that had a working fireplace, but only if you could find logs the size of cupcakes, as my hearth had the dimensions of an Easy–Bake Oven. I sat on my fire escape and watched happy couples come and go, finishing the rhyme in my head, “talking of Michelangelo.” But they were never really discussing Michelangelo. Marc Jacobs, who had opened a store on the corner, was a more likely subject. I wasn’t bitter. I didn’t want a girlfriend, not really, at least not right away. But I could have used a functional vagina. It had been a while since I’d had access to one of those, and my penis kept reminding me how accommodating they could be.

Sunday was winding down, and the streetlights flickered to life. It was early April and the day had held hope that spring had finally arrived, but as the sun set a cool breeze informed us we weren’t quite there yet. I zipped up my sweatshirt and wished once again that I smoked. It just seemed like something that might be nice to do, romantic. I stared at Hunan Pan across the street; soon I would call them as I always did, and they would bring me my supper. It was getting a little embarrassing, though.

“Hello, this Hunan Pan.”

“Hi, can I get an order for delivery?”

“You ninety–nine Perry, number Three–A?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Steamed vegetable dumplings and moo–shu chicken with extra pancake?”

“No, um, the dumplings and moo–shu beef.”

“You sure?”

Sigh. “Fine. Give me the chicken.”

“Okay. Fifteen minute, Mr. Snuka.”

They may have known my voice, but they’d never know my name. I wasn’t Mr. Snuka, aka Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, the wrestler from the eighties. I was Jason Strider, a Jewish guy with sideburns. Ever since I moved to New York three years ago, I had used pseudonyms when ordering in. Raphael’s, my second most frequent takeout, knew me as Sir Peter O’Toole.

I slipped back through the window into my apartment and began weighing options for the evening. Common sense held that I should eat my dinner, watch The Simpsons like the rest of my demographic, and get a reasonable night of sleep before work the next day.

But my penis, my damn penis. He just wouldn’t shut up. And I had to admit, his argument wasn’t without merit, or logic. His basic premise: “Any girl out tonight might be just as desperate as you.” I offered that I had been out a lot this week; the last two nights hadn’t ended until way into the morning, and even now a slight hangover hummed behind my eyes. But Lil’ Petey, as I called him, was persuasive. The problem with being a boy is the constant struggle between listening to your brain and listening to your dick. The problem with being me was that somehow my dick had acquired the argumentative skills of a debate team captain. Or perhaps I was just weak.

I took a quick shower and had just barely gotten a towel around me as the buzzer rang, announcing the arrival of my supper. I opened the door a crack and handed a small Hispanic man a few crumpled bills in exchange for his one crumpled bag. I quickly pulled on jeans and, over a long–sleeved T–shirt, a short–sleeved one that read “Henry Rollins Is No Fun.” Then I began to eat straight from the cardboard boxes. Yum, the taste of déjà vu. Once finished, I went back into the bathroom and fussed with my hair a bit; it was the same shortish, messyish style that I had sported in one iteration or another since the bad Steve Perry bi–level back in junior high. I looked at the circles under my eyes. Darker and deeper every day. They were the reason I had, about six months ago, forgone my contacts and started wearing glasses, thick black frames I might’ve stolen from Elvis Costello, if we had similar prescriptions. Plus, the first night I had gone out with my glasses on, I had made out with a ridiculously hot girl. Call me superstitious.

I fished through the papers on my coffee table and found the flyer that a random woman with a disturbing number of facial piercings had given me on the subway. THE LiZEE BAND, SUNDAY AT 8:30, AT THE UMBRELLA ROOM. The band was named for the girl herself. She had dyed black hair and wore an ill–fitting business suit; it was a look that said, “It’s because I have to, okay?” She’d approached me and every other young person on the F train, given us flyers, and invited us to see her band. The Umbrella Room was literally five blocks from my house. And eight–thirty was nice and early. It seemed worth the risk. Lil’ Petey 1, Jason 0.

It was almost eight, so I cannonballed the ass-end of a joint with the remaining third of a two–liter Diet Coke and let them race each other to see which could get to my brain first. For me, Diet Coke and marijuana went together like ice–cold milk and an Oreo cookie. Like Jacoby and Meyers. Like sha–nah–nah–nah yippity–dip–da–do. I hit the lights, locked my door, and let gravity take me down the stairs like a slightly bent Slinky. Once I was outside, the cool night air felt great against my skin. I searched my mind for an adjective better than “great.” I had been an English major, after all; I had been taught to avoid mundane adjectives. Refreshing, soothing, bracing…nope, “great” really did best describe the feeling.

I turned up Hudson and looked across the street at the people hanging out in front of the White Horse Tavern. The White Horse was where Dylan Thomas supposedly mumbled, “I’ve had eighteen straight whiskies, I think that’s the record…” before keeling over and dying a few days later. It’s an unproven story, but that didn’t stop busloads of tourists in matching sweat suits from rolling up every Thursday through Saturday. Tonight, however, it looked as if just a few folks from the neighborhood were hanging out by the door, enjoying the evening. One was Patty, the fiftysomething bohemian woman who lived across the hall from me. Gray–haired, a bit of a mutterer, she wore sandals all year round: rain, snow, locusts—sandals. I never used to see her much, but lately we’d been bumping into each other in the building more often. I imagined her to be some sort of lesbian poet who chain–smoked cigarillos and once let Allen Ginsberg sleep in her bathtub because he was “tired and also filthy, just filthy.” The one thing I did know from peeking at her rent bill (our landlord taped them to our doors like your mother might tape a note to “clean your room”) was that she paid only $210 a month for the same apartment I paid a grand for. And a thousand bucks was considered a deal. So I kept an ear open every time she left her apartment, lest she fall down the stairs and I could inherit the New York dream. I was joking, but she had once given me a card with her “lawyer’s” number on it, just in case anything should happen to her. Then she gave me an orange she wasn’t going to eat.

“Hey, Patty!” I yelled across the street.

She waved. “Hi, neighbor.”

I waved back but quickened my step. I was stoned and easily distracted and didn’t want to fly off on a tangent. High, I often went too far for too little. No, I was on a mission. I was going to see this LiZee group. They might just become my new favorite band. Maybe I would buy a T–shirt and start a blog.

Going to a bar alone is no big deal for some people, but for me it was always a...

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Verlag
Crown
Erscheinungsdatum
2007
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
076792794X
ISBN 13 
9780767927949
Einband
Taschenbuch
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
240
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