On Pockets

"Untitled" by Hannah Link.

I wish only to explore that orgasmic moment when you plunge your hand down into its depths and discover it doesn’t stop short of being able to handle the load of your phone, but that it can also clutch your wallet close, and provide shelter for your restless hand.

The satin-coated interior of a cuddly coat’s pocket. I’m thinking of mine that’s pink and knotty on the outside.

A shirt with pockets is nice, but it’s sad when they’re perfectly functional and go to waste, untouched. When the pockets become a show. 
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Sweatshirt pockets are favorable. As are those in sweatpants. They’re comfy-cozy and good for the soul. They feel like summers at the beach, by the bonfire, singing the Campfire Song. They feel like sleep away camp, and middle school, and that brand called Butter that was “in” for a hot minute because physically it felt like the Uggs of clothing. 

I relish in perpetually rediscovering my long-since melted chapstick, my crumpled up movie ticket receipts, the tickets themselves having already found a place in my journal, a stray Ricola or two or three, crumbs and thread and whatever else manages to maneuver its way into my pocket’s grasp.

That’s why I have no sympathy for jean pockets. 

The tight, practically nonexistent space allotted for the pockets of femme-gendered jeans leaves me squeezing two fingers inside a front pocket to hide the interior that always creeps out and shows face. 

The most I’ve held in a jean-pant-ed front pocket is a lucky penny. And I hate how I’m left to feel fortunate when they’ve done so much as that, and left the pocket semi-functional. 

​When I feel lucky they haven’t sewn it up altogether and closed it off to me forever.  When they haven’t made pockets that don’t exist at all; when they’ve not made the pockets not pockets, not pocketless pockets. When they’re not there just for show.

Maybe I’m not the first to whine about these half-pockets; I appreciate their existence, at least they are trying. Maybe their relative uselessness is what led to the creation of the impostors that look the part, but have no hole.

When pants make pockets feel pointless, however, I thank the goddesses and look toward designers of dresses who just understand. Discovering the beautiful surprise of air between fabric, with more fabric, and space left for your hand. 

Dresses with pockets have become not uncommon, yet, whenever I see a dress with this unhidden secret, my heart quickens to a first hand-hold pace. Spring 2017: Carolina Herrera’s structured, white linen dress with pockets that stole the show comes to mind as an all-time favorite of mine.

But I’ve also owned dresses for some time before discovering their secret nooks. The revelatory moment that occurs when a dress-bearing person finds the hidden treasure that is a dress pocket— well, let’s just say, when that happens to me, you will hear about it. Any day I encounter such a delectable, previously undetectable chamber, well, I do not shut up about it.  They’re unexpected, it’s unprecedented. They've been crafted just for me, and you, or whoever has the pleasure of inhabiting the space allotted by the dress’ design. 

The history of pockets, I find personally vindicating. Pockets have been used to control. 

Women’s pockets have always been mostly nonfunctional, if even present. Their nonexistence is how the industry of purses arose. 

It’s a means to control. When women cannot hold their belongings on their lonesome, on their person, they must rely on additional hands. Or else, they must purchase additional means with which to hold what they must. It makes us dependent, and responsible for obtaining other means to carry.

I hate to gender clothing further, but the history of pockets has discriminated largely against us femmes. This issue now, thankfully and unfortunately, effects all people who choose to wear for-the-femme-designed creations. Every time I see the luxurious pockets to which, unfortunately, male-gendered clothing are privy, I envy their design and capacity, and it reignites my disdain for gendered clothing. That disdain arises not for noble reason, though I stand by that, also, but, in the case of pockets, my green-vision surfaces for the cunt-like qualities of their pockets’ fleshlightic depths.

The lack of spacious, devouring pockets for non-masculinely-bodied folk is a burden. It forces capitalism, consumerism. It forces those in “women’s” clothes to pay more for the same space, when we already systemically make less. 

Figures like Diane Keaton and Marlene Dietrich reveled in their trousers and pants. Bottoms that posses the room we’re told we shan’t take up. It’s sad to think, after their claiming of that hallowed space, we’ve found ourself grateful when our iPhones fit in the slip of jean-lined space beside our butts. 

Perhaps I’ve fetishized the pocket: 

The way hands slip in and out. 

The way I stick my fingers up my front, tight jean pockets.

Perhaps I’ve used and abused my pockets by placing things in however I wish, without caring much about its capacity or desire for lonesomeness or for company.
But I know my pockets. I know that they are there for me. They’ll gobble whatever I feed them, my hungry monsters of a friend. 

​My pockets will consume what I need not; hold on to what I’ve long forgotten. My pockets devour what I’m fine to forget, and through their consumption, I’m later gifted reminders.

Written by Emily Robinson.