Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, www.rickrosner.org
Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, www.in-sightpublishing.com
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What’s the one fashion choice you regret?
Rick Rosner: I’ve had a lot of them. In high school, I wanted to see what I might look like as a blonde, and I tried to peroxide my hair. If you don’t have it professionally done, it turns your hair orange, but it didn’t matter because hair grows back, and nobody was going to be my girlfriend in high school, regardless of my hair colour. In my senior year, I was extremely off that even though I was student body president, nobody wanted to be my girlfriend.
I got increasingly pissy about it. I asked one girl that I liked, who I had no chance with, to go to homecoming. She eventually turned me down, as she should’ve, because we didn’t know each other. To the extent we did, I knew I wasn’t what she wanted; obviously, she knew. I started cold calling people out of the yearbook because, back then, in the days before privacy, we had a student phone book with all the students’ phone numbers.
I went through the yearbook. By this time, my senior year, I was so pissed that it wasn’t working out for me girlfriend-wise that I didn’t care about what I did. I dyed my hair orange. Who cares? Fuck you.
I started calling. I’d go through the yearbook pages, and if somebody looked cute, I’d call them and say, “Hi, you don’t know me. I’m blah blah blah. I need a date. Do you wanna go to homecoming with me?” After about ten of these calls, a girl said yes. It was terrible. I heard she had a boyfriend who was a drug dealer, some older guy. She was very pretty, and it would have been easy for some girl in 1977 to have a boyfriend who drove a Camaro and was a drug dealer, an older boyfriend.
I don’t know if that was true or not, but in any case, it was awkward for her. We had nothing in common. It could have worked out if I’d been lucky enough to find another super-smart girl and thought to ask somebody in my calculus class. I wasn’t studying calculus because it was the same period as the student council and student body president. I couldn’t be in calculus. Plus, everybody in calculus knew I was a horrible nerd, and they probably weren’t hot enough for me because I had unjustified standards anyway. I took her to Walrus, a restaurant on Walnut Street close to the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder.
The Walrus was a nice restaurant, but it was casual dining. I had rented a powder blue tux, very light blue, with a ruffled tux shirt. We walked into the Walrus, which was casual dining. I looked like an asshole. Beyond everything else about that experience, that made me look like an asshole. That was one of the most regrettable fashion choices ever.
But if I think about it, some other things will come to mind, and we can revisit this tomorrow. So, another regrettable fashion choice: I’m 19 or 20. It’s the disco era. I was lifting weights a lot and had a nice little waist. A tucked-in waist, the V shape like Travolta’s, was a big deal in the disco era.
The disco pants were tight gabardine up top and flared to bells at the floor. So I bought a pair of women’s jeans, which were tighter in the waist. Back then, everybody wore high-waisted jeans because high-waisted gives you a better V shape. You can get over your iliac crest and pelvis bone and tuck in at the waist. So I bought women’s jeans, which shaped my butt nicely, tucked in at the waist, but didn’t have any room for my junk.
I didn’t care. So, I walked around with an almond cluster—all part of the disco era. I’m 19 and finally learning to do my laundry for the first time. To have everything clean, I threw all my underwear in the wash. So, for the first time, I was going commando in women’s disco jeans, and my friend Paul wanted to learn how to roller skate. So we went roller skating. I’m a good roller skater, and I’m roller skating backward, which I could do, and I bump into this girl, 13 or 14. We both go down.
Rosner: And we’re sitting facing each other, legs spread. She looks like she’s badly hurt because she has an expression of distress and extreme pain on her face. I thought she’d broken her leg. I’m like, “Are you OK? Are you OK?”
And she’s not saying anything to me. I look at where she’s staring. She’s staring at my crotch. I looked down, and since my lady disco pants didn’t have any room for my nuts, the pants had split at the crotch, and all my stuff had spilled out and was lying there on the floor between my legs, which is a terrible thing to do to a junior high girl inadvertently.
I’m hoping that she’s OK, and I’m like, “Oh, shit.” I covered myself up and walked out of there. Maybe I grabbed a jacket or something. I don’t remember if I had a jacket, but I somehow got myself to my car with my hands over my crotch. So that’s probably the most regrettable clothing choice I ever made. I wasn’t perving. The whole thing happened exactly as I said. I tore my pants open on the first day of my life that I’d gone commando—the end.
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Rick Rosner 