The process of working to achieve the perfect fit and then basking in the glory of a good pair of jeans is what I refer to as Proper Jeans Technique (PJT), or the more clever Wearing Your Own Pants. Unfortunately, direct violations of PJT are so commonplace in today's society that they are becoming the rule.

While blue jeans are as much a staple in fashion as the T-shirt or shin guards, the number one enemy to PJT is the fashion industry itself. Stores like Abercrombie & Fitch, GAP, Urban Outfitters, and others are notorious for designing entire seasonal lines around denim pants that have been worn, faded, broken in, or aged in some way. Go into Abercrombie & Fitch and pick up any pair of jeans. Chances are, they are riddled with frayed seams around the pockets, waistband, or hemlines. Some even have holes in the ass and/or knees already. Many items have tags warning that the garment has been aged and its performance cannot be guaranteed. Translated, that means that you are buying crap that is already worn out and broken, and if it falls apart after one wash, there's nothing you can do about it. As if that weren't bewildering and insulting enough, the price tags smugly and confidently demand $60-$90 for this garbage. And that's just the mall, not high-end boutiques. I'm not even going to open the high-end boutiques can of worms—other than to tell you one quick anecdote:

An acquaintance of mine, who we'll call “Superbritches,” recently boasted that he just purchased his tenth pair of Diesel jeans. I asked, "Why are ten pairs significant? Do you get the next pair free?" To which Superbritches replied, "Free? Hardly. The cheapest I've ever seen Diesel jeans is $120, but I've paid $300 for them before." After I finished howling like a tequila-soaked werewolf, I asked, "If a pair of pants costs $300, shouldn't they be the best pants ever, never going out of style and never needing to be replaced, thereby negating the need for ten pairs of them?" Without as much as an insecurely defensive rationalization, Superbritches stomped off and dialed a friend on his tiny little cell phone to complain that the thickness of my skull was reflecting poorly on the fashionability of his pants.

I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact that there are enough people who pay enough money to keep designer jeans retailers afloat. If you think of blue jeans and what they represent, it is really quite counter-intuitive. Alas, the following dialogue occurs everyday. Repeat it aloud and try not to laugh.

Image-obsessed half-wit: "Hi, I would like to purchase this pair of jeans, which, in the almighty name of this year's look, have been run through some sort of machine that weakens the fabric and frays the seams causing them to be on the verge of falling apart at any minute. How much are they?"

Cologne-soaked gel-haired A&F clerk: "$84.99 plus tax."

Image-obsessed half-wit: "Great! I'll take two pair!"

One of the points I would like the reader to have absorbed by the end of this article is this: If you buy jeans at places like Abercrombie & Fitch, you are a fucking idiot. You deserve to be homeless. This is not meant to be an anti-Abercrombie piece. Lord knows they are single-handedly responsible for the revitalizing large-format, black and white, homo-erotic photography as a viable medium. Gross and blatant violations of PJT occur every day at virtually countless retailers all over America. I simply want to make a clear separation between a) buying a new pair of jeans and battling them for months until they fit and feel perfectly and, b) buying a pair of pre-worn jeans that have traditional wear marks stylishly bleached into them or some crap like that. PJT is both an art form and a labor of love, the resulting satisfactions of which cannot simply be purchased at the mall. If you have purchased a pair of said "pre-worn" jeans, you may redeem yourself by doing the following:

1. Climb up on a chair and tie one of the pant legs around a rafter or beam in the ceiling.

2. Tie the other leg around you neck.

3. Jump off the chair.

Relax, you're not going to kill yourself. Your pre-worn jeans will surely be ripped to shreds as soon as the slightest bit of weight is applied. The purpose of this exercise is twofold: 1. The symbolism will be riveting. Think of it as a baptism of sorts. 2. Your pants will be ruined and you will need new ones. Having cleansed yourself by destroying your old soul-less overpriced excuse for jeans with your own neck, you will be ready to step up to the plate and wear some real pants.

My jeans of choice are the classic worker's jean by Dickies (K-Mart $19.99 or G.I. Joe's $14.99) and the Levi's 501, or 517 (Sears $26.99), although Levi’s has been known to produce product that is severely pre-worn and overpriced. Nobody’s perfect, I guess. Both of these jeans are only to be bought brand new, navy blue (almost black), and so stiff that you could use them as crutches. Besides, if you buy them used, they will cost more.

Yesterday, I purchased a new pair of 517s. This piece chronicles the extremely crucial first few days of wear in which it will be decided if the jeans will become part of my personality or if they will be cast away as untamable maverick pants. I choose only to focus on the first few days because, although the Proper Jeans Technique is a passionate and dramatic journey, it is a very personal saga of epic proportions, the subtleties of which are quickly lost on the average spectator.

I purchased my jeans at Sears with the assistance of my lovely fiancé. She purchased an almost identical pair of jeans (in her size, of course) and we set out to begin our battle. This is actually where my assistant's direct role in the chronicle ends. She does not share my passion for proper-fitting pantwear, and takes a much more casual approach to what protects her from the waist down. In her words, my struggle is, "You're being really weird about your pants. Why don't you get a job?" That's fine. It's not as though she is going to help my jeans cling seductively to my buttocks any more quickly or efficiently. It would not surprise me if she had an A&F shopping experience hidden in her past somewhere—I'll probably still marry her, though. We came home from Sears, and promptly put our new jeans through the laundry cycle. It may seem silly to wash jeans before wearing them, but it is absolutely necessary. You don't take a baby from the womb and place it right in daycare do you? Hell no. You hold it up by its legs, slap it in the ass a few times, make a few snips here and there, hose it off, and proceed to take various footprints and blood samples. New jeans need the same sort of introduction into their new developmental environment.

Luckily my better half had to go to work just a few hours after we got home with our new jeans. This left me at home, alone, with the only thing between me and my new pants being ... well ... underwear—had I chosen to wear any that day.

The first step in PJT is fairly obvious: get really drunk by yourself. Once a healthy level of blurry sentimental irrationality has been attained, the psychological bonding can begin. Everyone does this differently, and there really is no one right or wrong way. For me, there is only one way: Lay the freshly-laundered jeans out flat on the floor, strip myself down completely naked, and circle menacingly around the pants, screaming at them until they give in and agree to participate in the PJT regimen. With this particular pair of Levi's 517s, the psychological bonding period only took about 3 hours. I started by addressing the fact that the waist and ass of 517s are virtually the same dimension, which is simply not congruous with the cut of my waist and ass. I have learned through years of experience, that this dimensional "miscommunication" is not an insurmountable obstacle in the practice of PJT, but it needs serious addressing to be adequately surmounted. After a little over a half hour of yelling and intimidation, I moved on to belt loop integrity and layout. Occasionally, a relatively new pair of pants will be ruined by the poor craftsmanship and design of its belt loops. The life of my last pair of Dickies was tragically cut short by a belt loop that simply gave out and tore away from the rest of the denim. I still wear these Dickies and will continue to until they are no longer able to cover my lower extremities, but they are essentially dead to me.

The belt loops on Levi's 517s are laid out in such a way that is not particularly friendly to the functional use of a Leatherman Multi-tool. You can either put the Leatherman between the two loops on the side or on one side of the singular loop in the back of the jeans. On the side, the Leatherman gets caught on virtually everything, including my swinging arms as I stroll casually through life. In the back, I constantly feel as though I've lost my Leatherman, or foolishly forgotten to put it on with the rest of my clothes. But this unfortunate belt loop layout is also not an insurmountable obstacle to PJT, but it also needs serious attention so as not to let the jeans think they are sub-par or otherwise clinging to my buttocks incorrectly.

After my belt loop dissertation, I had completely lost my voice and opted to proceed to the next logical step of PJT. I set up the tent that was given to my fiancé and me for Christmas in front of the couch in the living room and prepared for the long night ahead. At this point, I am still completely naked. This is crucial because you do not want the jeans to think there is another article of clothing that is remotely as important as the new jeans. Not even your favorite boxers. Besides, brand new jeans aren't the most forgiving in the area of Kleenex softness, and spending a night sleeping with nothing to save your lily-white ass from your new jeans but your withered little nutsack and your jaded hipster worldview might do you some good, you miserable little sissy.

Almost as quickly as I had begun the PJT, I was setting the pace for an award-winning pair of blue denim knickers. I grabbed up my newly educated jeans and put them on slowly, as though someone was filming me. For some reason, I was very sweaty at this point, but that's neither here nor there. I stood up and modeled for a second in the light of my fiancé's full-length mirror. A good start indeed. I took a step toward the bathroom and promptly tripped over the pile of clothes, which I had hastily tossed on the floor upon removing them from my body at the beginning of the night. I fell into the tent that I had prepared for the first night to be spent with my new jeans.

My trusty fiancé (who, at this point, I can only describe as patient, tolerant, understanding, and blinded by love) came home from work to find our tent, which has yet to be camped in, fully assembled in the living room. I had somehow managed to pass out with the upper half of my body in the tent (shirtless and stuck to the nylon tent floor with a combination of my own sweat and drool), and my legs (clad in my new 517s) lying limp behind me on the carpet. It may not have been visually pretty, but I am on my way to a fruitful and durable relationship with my new jeans.