A Reason I Don't Wear Women's Clothes

There are some things that only women are emotionally equipped to deal with. At the top of the list is the care of clothing. This is resoundingly evident on the rare occasion when I run an article of Bonnie’s clothing through the laundry. I take it out, mutter “oh shit” and start to think of how I am going to explain myself. I would put it away and hope it goes undetected, but she maintains an arsenal of drawers and closets all over our room, and I don’t know where ANYTHING goes. She walks a mile in the morning to collect her outfit.


But this isn’t a result of Bonnie being overly finicky; it’s the result of women’s clothes requiring the care and maintenance of a live donor heart. Men’s clothes (at least my clothes) are pretty simple; they get washed and subsequently dried.

As an example of what makes women’s clothes so complicated to wash, let’s examine tank tops. (And let’s assume that I am even using the correct terminology here – in female nomenclature they may not at all be called tank tops – but that’s what they look like.) Some tank tops (which all look exactly the same to me) can be washed and dried; some can be washed but not dried; and some require Bonnie to use settings on the washing machine like “delicate, fabric softener, half spin, triple rinse, twice removed.” This has her turning dials and punching buttons like she is engaging the Caterpillar Drive on the Red October.

The complexity of the washing parameters extend backward to the purchasing of clothes. Tags have to be examined. What? I barely consider whether clothes fit let alone how to wash them. (Of course, my accumulated time shopping for clothes over my forty-two years is about seven minutes.) On the other hand, men’s clothes are pretty straightforward. They basically consist of pants, shorts, shirts and – nope, I think that’s about it.

The end result of all of this is that I try not to wash any of Bonnie’s clothes unless she is hovering nearby to monitor me for potential mistakes, like the seasoned transplant surgeon studying the shaky hands of the intern while the heart comes out of the Coleman cooler. But when she is not around, and one of those tank tops rear its cotton, silk, flannel, spandex poly-cashmere blend selves, well, I look over my shoulder and toss it right back in the dirty laundry.