The mustache asked me what I was looking for, and I told him I had heard that Levi’s was making real jeans again. He said they’ve always made real jeans, but they had to be treated a very specific way. He told me that his jeans had never been washed.

“You never wash your pants?”

“Nope. I’m going on a year.”

I stepped back from him. I didn’t catch a wave of stink coming off him, but how could it not be there, waiting, a miasma circling his body, if he didn’t wash his pants? I held up the pair of stiff jeans and said, “Well, what do I do with these?” The mustache got very serious.

“What I usually do is I buy them a size smaller than I wear.” This is ridiculous, because they are supposed to shrink to fit, so you are supposed to buy a size bigger. He said: “You put the pants on, and you get into a bathtub with them. Then you get out of the bathtub, and you towel off, and then you wear them around, wet, for as long as it takes them to dry. That way they are contoured perfectly to your body. After that you don’t wash them, ever. If they get skanky, you throw them in the freezer.”