Hanger

The clothes hangers in my apartment are like the Duggars of TLC: There’s a lot of them and they don’t really work.

(Seriously: Do any of those people have jobs? Like, I get that their actual occupation is being on that horrible show, but do the parents or any of their multitudes of grown-ass offspring have ostensible professions? ‘Cause it seems like they’re always sitting around in their denim maxi dresses and submitting to their arranged marriages in the middle of the damn day. Among the 19 kids and counting with the names that all begin with the letter J, does anybody have a J-O-B? Maybe quit courtin’, weddin’, and bangin’ for five minutes and take a look at the want ads, ya deadbeats.)

The vast majority of hangers I own are, with apologies to Joan Crawford, of the wire variety. They take up a substantial portion of the closet rod, yet many hold no clothes. When I pick up my shirts and sweaters and slacks and such from the dry cleaners, those items come back on these hangers, which I always mean to return on my next visit. But I often forget and in the meantime the hangers seem to reproduce at an alarming rate. Again, exactly like the Duggars. 

I tried using some of the wire hangers for coats in the hall closet, but the weight of my outerwear warped the flimsy wire and then the coats would slide off at the shoulders. I’d open the closet door and find my jackets on the floor and, hanging from the rod, these misshapen metal sculptures that looked like an inept tribute to Alexander Calder.

So I ordered some proper wooden hangers from Amazon (you’re welcome, Joan). The only trouble with those is that the hook on each is just a hair less wide than it needs to be to fit onto the closet rod without a struggle. I just jam the hanger down on the pole as far as it will go, sort of like when I get impatient with a jigsaw puzzle and think I can get the piece in my hand to fit into a blank space by sheer force of will. 

Then, of course, if I want to retrieve a hanger, it’s crammed so tightly onto the rod that I can’t separate the two without another struggle.

I understand that hangers can be a source of frustration is what I’m saying. I’m not going to beat up a little blonde child over the matter as in Mommie Dearest, but I get it. 

That’s not my favorite scene in that movie, though. I like the part where Christina (Diana Scarwid) is a little older, and she finally stands up to Faye Dunaway’s Joan Crawford, who snarl-screams, “I don’t ask much from you, girl. Why can’t you give me the RESPECT THAT I’M ENTITLED TO? [gasping breath] Why can’t you treat me [gasp, beginning of tears] the way I would be treated by any STRANGER ON THE STREET??”

“Because I am NOT,” replies Christina, “one of your FAAANS!!!” with the veins in her neck bulging. 

And then Joan responds by fastening her hands around her daughter’s throat and the two women fall to the ground for a knockdown drag-out, filling the homosexual viewer with an indescribable glee otherwise felt only in the presence of a Broadway musical or an unexpectedly large penis.

Joan and Christina—now there’s a family dynamic that could make the Duggars interesting.