Tight Jeans in a New York Apartment at Dawn

The alarm has been going for four minutes. I know because I watched the first minute happen — the red numerals ticking over, the tinny pulse of it — and then I stopped watching and haven't turned it off, and it is still going, and I am still lying here in yesterday's jeans.

The grey light coming through the window is the particular grey of a Tuesday in October, the kind that makes the ceiling look like something pressed flat. Street noise rises from six floors below: a truck reversing, someone's door, the city already in the business of being itself. I have nowhere to be for another hour. I know this. My body knows this before I do.

The denim is still stiff at the waistband but soft at the inner thigh, worn in by a full day and then a night of sleeping in them because I sat on the edge of the bed to take them off and then didn't. They hold everything close. That is the thing about wearing them to bed — there is no space between the fabric and my skin, no gap where air might cool anything down. Whatever has been happening under there has been happening quietly, contained, building its case without my permission.

I am annoyed at myself. This is important to note. I am lying here annoyed at myself, which is not the same as lying here wanting something, except that it is, except that the annoyance is specifically at the fact that I want something on a Tuesday morning with the alarm still going and the ceiling pressing down and the whole ordinary day waiting outside the door.

My right hand is resting on my stomach. I am aware of it in the way you become aware of a thing that is about to do something without you. The fabric of the jeans is slightly warm from sleeping. The waistband presses a faint line across my lower belly. Below that, the denim pulls across both thighs, a continuous even pressure, and beneath that pressure — I know. I already know. My body has been making its argument since before I woke up.

I do not move my hand. Not yet. I hold it flat against my stomach and feel my own inhale push against it, and the exhale that follows comes out longer than I put in, unfolding into the flat grey air of the room.

The alarm is still going.

I think: I should turn that off. I think: I should get up, shower, be a person who has her Tuesday together. I think these things with complete clarity and my right hand stays exactly where it is, and the seam of the jeans presses up along the inside of my left thigh in a way I am becoming very aware of, and the street below sends up the sound of someone's horn — one short, declarative note — and my hips shift, just slightly, just enough to feel the denim tighten.

The heel of my hand is two inches above where my body wants it.