Justifying a Leather Jacket

Coming to grips with a lack of guilt

Here we are again writing newsletters. Three deep. We’re seasoned veterans of the newsletter game now, aren’t we?

I’d say having written three full-length newsletters places me in the record books among the all time greatest newsletter writers. It feels good, knowing 99.999% of you will never write a newsletter. I’m part of that elite 0.001% of humankind.

I’ve also eaten worms.

They were nightcrawlers. It was a different time, then, when I thought establishing myself in that 0.001% of humankind that would eat worms could be worth something. In truth, I’ve always prided myself for being the sort of person that saves worms from all manners of deadly sunlight, carnivorous ants, and lazy birds on rainy days, when they don’t need to be early to get the worm.

That’s right, I affect my environment. I do not sit idly by watching the worms die, as the “do-gooder” documentarian did in My Octopus Teacher—when his intellectually capable octopus-friend was attacked/eaten by sharks. In his shoes (flippers, actually), I would have spear-gunned that shark and affixed its severed head on the spike, posting it in the ground near my octupus-friend’s lair like crucified bandits outside a castle, a warning to all other sharks.

For see, it is only when I myself am consuming them, that I could ever cast aside my empathy for fellow living beings.

Why am I thinking about this?

See, I’m in the market for a leather jacket. I’ve always wanted one.

Genuine leather.

To last.

This one belonged to my stepfather. It doesn’t fit me right.

My wallet is shark leather which is extremely cool and badass to say, but when you look at the damn thing, it kind of looks like a shriveled turd. It’s less cool without the pronouncement: “BEHOLD, My Shark-leather Wallet! Gaze upon its glorious furrows!”

(Also, as much as I’d love to say, “Fuck sharks!” and fix their heads on pikes, I do hear there is something going on with the over-harvesting of sharks. I don’t want to support that, and believe this leather was sustainably harvested.)

My custom shark-leather wallet, made by Danny Collins.

My jackets, are, however, not made of leather. Frankly, they are pieces of trash, and they don’t last long. None made in the USA or even Italy.

These jackets made of fossil fuels tear easily, they flake and tatter, and their zippers rip in inconvenient places whereby the zipper repairman (whom miraculously still exists, usually in the form of your local shoe repair shop cobbler, despite all the efforts by China to replace him with child slave labor that is so cheap, you can just constantly buy brand new shoes) cannot fix them.

I believe genuine leather lasts much longer, and is more valuable not merely because it is more precious – though it certainly is that. After all, a being lost its life before that pelt was converted from hide into fashionable attire. Surely though, a jacket is a truly useful item, and if purchasing it to last for many years and to endure the elements—and not simply for a single night on the town—it would make sense to own such a product, yea?

You’ve heard it said: the Sioux Indians, who have a hundred or so other names I could refer to them by that Social Justice Warriors and native tribesman alike cannot agree upon, “used every part of the buffalo.” Their hides formed their clothing and indeed the walls of their teepee dwellings. Are we now to say, “We do not need your hides dear bison, for we have invented all manners of plastic with which to keep us insulated from the harshness of our environment”?

I don’t know.

I feel like a good leather jacket is a good investment. And I’d like to think that all the laws governing the hunt are responsibly legislated, and that unlike the beef/chicken/pork market, the rules for sustaining animals like goats, sheep, and bison are a bit kinder.

Then, a Neil Young lyric rings out in my mind: “a kinder, gentler, machine-gun hand.”

Perhaps that’s all it is for our less harvested friends, the bison (who at one point in history were infamously overharvested).

That word, “harvest.” Sounds like we’re plucking a weed. How interesting that the living carrot plant gets none of our affection for giving its life for us, completely uprooted. Yes, the way animals react to pain and death is obviously much closer to our own reactions, and demands our empathy.

My life suffocates
Planting seeds of hate
I've loved, turned to hate
Trapped far beyond my fate
I give, you take
This life that I forsake
Been cheated of my youth
You turned this lie to truth

Anger
Misery
You'll suffer unto me

Harvester of sorrow

Thank you, Metallica. Now I’m dealing that word “harvest” with proper gravity.

Do you think we’ll ever quit eating meat? As a species? Will one day we look back on our harvesting of animals with gritted teeth and an ‘oopsy’ face? Will we figure out some super-nylon and perfect insulation without using goose feathers?

Maybe.

And maybe they’ll say of me, when they see photos of me in my brand new, beautiful buffalo-leather jacket, “He was a product of his times.”

Best,

Dane Curley

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