“The great thing about freelance, of course, is the numerous freedoms it embraces, chief among them being the freedom to work in your underwear. This seems to be the one that everyone knows. I was talking on the phone to an uncle of mine who’s in a nursing home, and when I told him I was working freelance, he said, ‘Oh, the underwear people!'”

Essays like this are the reason I put pants on sometimes.

It’s funny too, isn’t it, how “pants” and specifically “wearing pants” is a cultural marker for maturity, autonomy and not being a total, scum-sucking parasite? The moment I’m caught without pants on I’m compromised in countless ways; it becomes open season on what remains standing of my integrity. Unless I’m not wearing pants for ribald reasons. (Which could conceivably expose me to a different kind of devastating humiliation.)

Also: I have severe freelance envy.