Project Run Away... or How Not To Dye Pants

Yes, I'm aware I split an infinitive in this post's title. Good catch. Now hush [very much] up.

As I have mentioned before herein, my propensity for purchasing pants online has burned on me on several occasions, once literally (unaware as I was that slacks manufactured in Turkey are unsafe in temperatures exceeding 65°F... though, to be fair, nothing is safe in Turkey). Most commonly, I miscalculate the conversion between U.S. and European sizes, or forget that some manufacturers have a rather liberal interpretation of "low-rise boot cut". These are total losses, and will be placed in a box labeled "ATTN: Impoverished Locals", hastily dumped on the street under cover of night, and written off on my taxes as "donated automobiles."

From time to time a pair of $6 pants will arrive in my mailbox that suits my needs but, perhaps due to the seller photographing them in flattering light, are not quite the color I had anticipated. Such was the case with a recent pair of jeans that were in dire need of a darkening. Given my innate knowledge of textiles and my ability to deftly disguise any life-prolonging mending magic I cast upon my favorite jeans, one would think that a simple dye job would be well within my capacity.

One would be wrong.

CHAPTER I: Instructions Are For The Timid

Have you ever made Tang? Yes? In my book, you're qualified to dye something. There's a box with powder in it; so long as your plan doesn't involve wearing the garment you wish to dye and just swallowing the powder, you should be fine.

Pay no attention to that nagging "DO NOT" list on the side of the box, as it can only weaken your resolve, rattle your confidence, and likely convince you to buy something you don't really need -- probably in the name of "safety", from the Latin for "without the aid of balls."

After all, this is a simple procedure.

CHAPTER II: This Is An Increasingly Difficult Procedure

In my case, only one item really needed dyeing (the jeans: black), but since I wasn't about to purchase a costly bucket, I was using the kitchen trash can for the dye bath, leaving me with plenty of room to throw several other items in need of an updated look. The only thing keeping me from some fresh fly threads was a lack of the most abundant compound on earth, water.

To the bathroom.

Using what could loosely be referred to as logic, I decided to pre-soak the clothes, assuming [correctly] that wet fabric would absorb the dye more evenly than dry. Using what could loosely be referred to as profound retardation, I decided to turn on the shower full blast and just hold the clothes in front of the stream until they were properly saturated.

As I held up the jeans, the shower soon flowed down my forearms and cascaded majestically from my elbows onto the bathroom floor, briefly awarding me the title of America's Hairiest Water Sculpture. Not wanting to alarm Briana, who was preparing to leave for work in the adjoining living room, I muted my panicked cries and calmly removed my newly water-logged wardrobe.

The trash can was placed in the tub, and the jeans et al. placed (and the stream of scalding water directed) therein. If a soak was good, I figured, a bubbling hot tub of black dye would surely cut the required time in half, and I could reward my forward thinking with a soda.

With the clothes percolating underneath, I tore open the dye packet and began to pour its contents into the trash can.

CHAPTER III: Oh Fuck Oh Fuck Oh Fuck

Whatever happened, happened quickly.

Were there a Zapruder film of the incident, the bulk of the action would span three frames. In frame one, I would be crouched over the tub, holding a small brown packet of an unknown substance upside-down over a large blue trash bin. In the second frame, the entire back half of the tub and much of my face would be a deep, midnight black, my eyes already registering a vague sense of frenzy. By the third frame, I would be violently pitching myself backwards trying in vain to escape a toxic cloud of jet black dye that is by now coating everything in the southern third of my apartment, including several vital organs.

Now in survival mode, I dumped the remaining dye in the tub, began spitting what appeared to be Pepsi with wild abandon across the walls, and, apparently channeling my fire emergency training, dropped to the floor (see: pond). While I assumed that the airborne dye would take more than a few minutes (hours?) to fully settle, time was of the essence... Operation Hide This From Briana was about to commence.


CHAPTER IV: Pay No Attention To That Giant Ebony Nebula Behind Me (And Here's A Fun Idea: Why Not Wait To Pee Until You Get To Work?)

With Briana mere minutes away from walking past the bathroom en route to her day job, I took a quick survey of the devastation. Not too bad, actually. A cursory glance at the bathroom, however, would belie the truly sinister nature of the damage. Microscopic particles of inky dye clung to every exposed surface of the bathroom, invisible until a large bald male made the slightest of contact with them, at which point they would explode into a black streak of semi-permanent coloration. Every item in the bathroom was the opposite of a scratch-off lotto ticket.

My previously discarded shirt was quickly enlisted as the primary hand mop and just as quickly became the only successfully-dyed article of clothing of the afternoon. Kleenexes were employed sparingly. The shower head was aimed at previously-unheard of angles. That the bath mat had been purchased in charcoal gray was a godsend, as puddles of black disappeared into its shag. I worked furiously, black beads of sweat steadily forming only to drip upon the linoleum and set back my progress. I flailed wildly. I looked not unlike Ving Rhames fighting a ghost.

Against all odds and the laws of physics, the bathroom was made presentable in a matter of minutes, although I spent an hour and a half un-detailing various nooks and crannies -- both the bathroom's and my own -- following Briana's departure ("How's it going in here?", "Love you too.")

In an unrelated story, my new Diesel Boot-Cuts arrive tomorrow.