Extraordinary stories and men of style: the denimhead (EPISODE 1)

Is it physically possible to deliberately cause your own heart attack?

It’s 7 p.m. sharp when I walk through the door. And in the air there is a scent of scandal. Something is wrong. My wife is standing in the middle of the living room, as she never does. Hands clasped behind the back like no one ever does, except the old people perhaps when they are bargain hunting.

Fred, a loyal and long-time friend, won't look at me. He sits further back on the couch than any man has ever been. Certainly seeking to be swallowed by him. Except that he has never eaten anyone that I know of.

Fred says nothing, Fred does nothing, a dead spirit in a body that does not live. Like he never does.

I notice on the wall in front of me a large banner that says “intervention”. In large capital letters. I dream. Are we in America or what? An intervention…

I pretend not to understand. John Malkovich in Of Mice and Men : the light in the eye that went out. I tilt my head slightly to the side like a perplexed dog, my eyebrows cocked James Dean style, and my expression freezes, as if I've smelled an unusual scent.

Awkward silence. They exchange a look.

I can stay like this for hours.

I don't flinch. Maybe they will end up giving up and leaving. I saw this before in a documentary. It's possible.

My beautiful, well-decorated living room is plunged into darkness. They drew the curtains so as not to let the neighbors see anything.

My wife waddles. And then, starting with a little sharp cough, said:

- Dear…

Tremolo in the voice. Panic aboard the reputedly unsinkable liner that is my wife. She keeps :

- If we are here, Fred and I, it's because... there you go... your obsession... Yes because we can call it an obsession, eh, we're not going to lie. Fred, do you agree? Good. Well, your obsession with denim... that's us... it's no longer possible to continue like that, my darling.

Blah blah blah. “Addict”. Blah blah blah. "Unrecognizable". Blah blah blah. “Fortunes for futals.” Blah blah blah. "Completely crazy".

BLA-BLA-BLA-BLA-BLA.

My wife and Fred ask me to confess. It's the forced confession of a denim madman.

Except chest pain, shortness of breath and tingling in the legs. I need some air and this is not how I had planned my evening. So I only have one idea in mind: prune the area.

In no time, the bike is rumbling between my selvedge thighs. Head to the big nowhere. I don't fear death. I'm not afraid of asphalt. I'm full denim, nothing can happen to me. Gone for good, I will later count the infinite cracks in the crypt of my soul, my soul full of bruises, raw indigo blues.

I don't lose my temper.

They do not understand anything.

The kaleidoscopic landscape parades between plane trees with camouflage trunks. The sky, at this temperature, is dripping on everything. The broken sun collapses on the horizon. Tar fog and feelings at thirty degrees. The wheat fields are blue like my rage.

There's no one, it's just me and this bend that I can't see.

Immediately, the motorcycle flies towards the sun. But falls back very quickly. Heavily. Almost like digging a crater in the ground. Debris everywhere.

Sirens. I imagine. Who are calling. Slowly, I leave for the blue paradise.

How did we get there?

It's the story of an average guy who discovers the imperfect beauty of denim fabrics and who can't look away from them: there are pure silver rivets; the canvases so thick that revolver bullets don't even pass through them; the orange and yellow stitching; the glorious border; slub! ; hate ! ; nep!

And above all there is time which produces these crazy drawings. Time which damages, nibbles and destroys the initial balance to create something new, unprecedented and more beautiful.

I want all of this.

I've always been intrigued by watching westerns where those who wear denim are serious people who have calloused hands and who throw them in their faces.

And then on the basis of this mythology, I encountered founding texts and photographs on blogs and forums, Grails which make everything else, all my old jeans, seem like untruths, like before when the Earth was flat.

Now, before my eyes, I have built miles of calm meadow where hundreds of lighthouses shine in the night.

        

Bye-bye, feet on Earth. I'm taking off.

14.5oz.

21oz.

32oz.

Don't you have something stronger? Five star comfort. Nothing ever fills the void. De-men-tiel. Crazy.

According to Google, I'm a denimhead . He is the one who is looking for the perfect canvas and it goes to his head. The one who won't stop until he can find something better. No one talked about pathology.

In the beginning, there was APC

HAS.

P.

vs.

Workshop.

Production.

Creation.

Jean Touitou, creator of the Petit Standard, the architect of my feverish blue reveries, shamanic cantor of my selvedge addiction and gravedigger of my life as a couple.

        Petit Standard , nm: Japanese canvas. Kevlar cardboard. Robot gait. Like the first time we walk. Red border. 411g, i.e. 14.5oz. Two legs, five pockets. Only one outcome: addiction.

Suddenly, back on Earth, 5000 volts in the heart. On the side of the road. There's no light, there's no tunnel. The medical term: coma.

Then back to dreamland.

Make no mistake, this is the kind of addiction that is not for the weak.

At first, the web sticks to the skin, closer than anything or anyone has ever been. My carcass, my flesh and my denim. The label that presses against my lower back. Branded with a hot iron. It is the mouthful of true love, the one that lasts, the one that becomes more beautiful with the years. The one we talk about when we talk about love in books.

The canvas, which develops a patina, is like a witness to my passage on Earth, the less I wash it, the more it expresses.

You have no idea. You've never seen anything more beautiful.

It's not true.

No one has ever seen anything more beautiful.

The more I walk, the more I write my legend. I take the stairs, I don't take transport.

Confession of a denim madman.

You understand now ?

I heard that in Arizona, an old American in Levi's 501 Big E could read the future in jeans. In my opinion, it's folkloric. Because denim is the testimony of what has happened and not of what will happen.

Tabula rasa : the faded lines are the road map of all the paths we have taken. Our intimate empirical masterpiece. It's writing your history in Japanese ink. And it’s €160 payable by card or cash.

Listen to me now: denim doesn't need anything or anyone. To guarantee the sublime maze of whites and blues, it's simple, you don't have to do anything.

Do not wash denim.

Hold.

Have faith.

It's understood ? Are you even capable of that?

Even when you hear right against your legs, like an unheard murmur, a persistent rumor, like the call of sirens? It is the bacterial microcosm that will have developed after waiting so long. You created life. It’s your microcosm. From you, for you, by you.

Thus, you will be the merciful God of a world that is your own. The alpha and the omega. What other piece of clothing gives you that demiurgic feeling? I help you. The answer is: absolutely none.

Confession of a denim madman.

Right after creating life, you must destroy it to maintain control. But not so much in a flood way: by the flames of polar cold.

In my freezer, between the vegetables, ice cream and meat, we find a pair of jeans folded into four in a plastic bag. "Boy ! Blue jeans please!”

Easy.

After six hours in Siberia, the murmur is no longer there. Gone, until next time.

Raving mad.

I'm not the only one doing this.

An intervention ? Who do they think they are, honestly? Are not worthy of such beauty.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Hold.

Do not wash.

And then one day, we treat ourselves to a swim in the sea. Just yourself and your blue jeans .

Bathing in the sea serves to seal the unbreakable bond and fix the shades of the jeans for eternity. I'm not making this up, it's on the Internet.

So many people can't all be wrong at the same time!

When I come out of the salt water bath, and the tears of joy mingle with the drops of sea water, I am in harmony. There, you must vigorously rub the canvas with as much sand as possible and then rinse it with clean water and let it dry in high winds.

And then, on the tourist beach, seem like a crazy person to just about everyone. Don't care. Live happily with your jeans.

What's the point ? To create shades of mental illness. To win competitions on Heddels.com. To build your own legend.

My wife's disapproving pout on her napkin, her hands clenched around a caipirinha. It's not late. My kids who laugh, who want to do the same. The look of her that tells them “not even in a dream”.

Confession of a denim madman.

From sanforized to unsanforized. 10% shrinkage on first wash. Everything is under control. I know what I'm doing.

Everything is under control.

Samurai.

Pure Blue Japan.

3Sixteen.

This is my favorite haiku.

Hello real world? Beep, beep, beep. Morphine cocktail directly intravenously. It's happy hour in the operating room.

Back to dreamland.

My therapist told me to stop, that it wasn't worth it. I gave him a pair of Samurai Straight Selvedge jeans, sent directly to his private villa by UPS.

Atomic bomb.

This guy found the light.

He left everything to set up a denim museum in Zurich. I'm not saying it's good or bad, I'm just saying that's how it happened. You can't make things up like this.

Recently, he was seen bursting into tears over a chain stitch.

The brotherhood of denim weirdos. Really crazy.

I have so many mustaches in my crotch, it's mind-boggling. Nothing sexual, I swear. I also have the ultimate tear just below the pocket (the happiest day of my life when it happened). My hands are forever blue, as if I had touched Diva Plavalaguna to the point of alien ecstasy. This is now their natural color.

It's over for me. I won't go back again. All these things that I have seen I can no longer unsee. Wear chinos? What next ? Become vegan?

Beep, beep, beep. I open one eye . Beep, beep, beep. The banner has disappeared. There's my wife but no longer Fred. Did anyone pick up the kids from school? Beep beep . It is sunday. Beep . I am reconnecting with reality.

My wife tells me I had a motorcycle accident. Coma of several days then half-living, half-dead delirium. And now. She tells me that the doctors tried to take off my jeans and that no one could. Excalibur.

She is convinced that this experience of almost death will have changed me for good, for her it is the divine "intervention" that she was waiting for, so she is all sugar and honey when she says:

- You see where this leads you, my darling. How about you slow down a little. These denim stories hurt you, you see…

Except that there is no such thing as a repentant denimhead . Being a denimhead isn't about taking the wrong path, it's about taking one better than the others.

I look at my legs where the indigo is still bleeding and I know it's worth it. Wanting the roughness of the colors of the canvas so badly, wanting wabi-sabi so badly. Become denim. Those who don't have denim don't have a secret epic. I have to keep singing my blue and white song. My Iliad, my Odyssey. And we'll see. “MOMOTARO”, I write your name.

Then , slowly, I shake my head and say that it won't happen and finally:

- Could someone put me back in a coma, please?

She leaves crying. It makes me sad. No, really. The “Best Husband in the World” diploma is still not for this year.

It's the sad song of a lunatic of the indigo canvas.

The nurse enters the hospital room full of pale sunlight, B-movie resurrection style. Her eyes are beautiful and blue.

I say :

- Do you know Japan?

- No why ?

- Like that…

- Has your wife left?

- Yeah… We were no longer on the same page.