John Denim
He was of the belief that denim could do anything.
“Truly a miracle fabric,” John Denim intoned into the WMAX Channel 9 microphone. For 49 years, Mr. Denim has carved a life from the textile that shared his surname.
He granted the WMAX news squad access to his hillside compound. Their photographer entered first, weaving through a denim curtain strung over the entrance.
The interior sprawled before them in checkered blue-and-black squares riveted to the walls. Samples of Levi, Lee, and Wrangler repeated along the rooms and over the decades. Making things succinctly evident that Mr. Denim’s been doing this for a long time.
Seeing this jeanwear, warming the walls and upholstering the furniture, would make one think that this is why they call him “Mr. Denim.”
But that would be a slap in the hard-working faces of Mark and Melinda Denim. Two Coloradan octogenarians, Mark and Melinda conceived Mr. Denim back in March 1964, under the midnight glow of a Shakey’s Pizza Parlor.
Shakey’s pizza served as an aphrodisiac for Mark and Melinda. In fact, nothing torqued their libidos to the red quite like a large Shakey’s with ham and onions.
After two slices of pizza, four rounds of sweaty lovemaking, and nine months of gestation, Mr. John Carlos Denim was born.
The year crested into 1965 and shortly after Mr. Denim came screaming naked into the world. In one of the incredibly rare instances where he wouldn’t be swaddled by denim.
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By 1968 he’d discovered denim-on-denim, and by ’69 he would wear nothing else. Few people know what they want in life by four years old. But it turns out even fewer want their kids wearing nothing but denim.
Mark and Melinda offered John the world. Radio Flyer wagons and radio-controlled cars, if he’d just give up the denim.
But to each and every offer John would make a defiant fist, which he’d soon glove with denim. He was hooked like it was wearable heroin, and there was nothing Mark and Melinda could do to stop it.
So they lived with it. Slowly, but steadily, they choked it down. The blue lint in the dryer, the abrasive detergents John required… slowly, but steadily, Mark and Melinda acquiesced to The Denim Lifestyle.
A lifestyle that only enveloped John in more denim. His wardrobe spiraled into his surroundings, surrounding his sight-lines in denim. The life John Denim chose was now the life John Denim lived.
But secretly…
He wanted out.
He’d made a name for himself at an age when no other name would arrive. His sobriquets were cemented. John Denim was known as the “Denim-Man” and the “Jean Machine,” how could he possibly change identities now?
He had to turn to those who had been there all along. He called Mark and Melinda.
Mark curled his arthritic fingers around his iPhone and answered: “Son, so glad to hear from you.”
John Denim explained his desire to his father, and could hear his mother rejoice in the background. “You’re never too old to turn back, son.” Mark’s voice cracked proudly.
Relieved of the guilt of coming clean, John Denim diligently sought a new wardrobe. He stopped at a department store and explored men’s fashions. A pair of 32x34 corduroys caught his eye. John instantly fell in love with the fabric.
