Have you ever had an article of clothing that has magical powers, like the phone booth that turns Clark Kent into Superman? Some little something that turns your day from drab to fab, dangerous to safe, lonely to lucky? I’ve got a couple costume changes that work actual miracles. My Copenhagen tobacco hat made me impossibly cool in 5th grade. My 9/11 socks (mint-green cotton with little embroidered flowers) kept me safe when I was on the subway under Wall Street on that awful day in ‘01. My Zoo Dress (ridiculously short and featuring pop-art depictions of lions, tigers and bears) always gets me to the zoo. But my most miraculous article of clothing is my miracle jeans. Of course the miracle jeans have a story. It’s the one I wrote about in May 2002, when Hunter S. Thompson (not his real name) drove me all around L.A. in his Porsche. In between musings on life and crack, Hunter ponied up a million dollars for Miss Sixty jeans at a tony Melrose boutique. They caught my eye right away. They were total rock star jeans: cut low at the waist and narrow through the leg. Strung leisurely from hip to hip was an inch-wide inset V in gray denim which hugged the ass in the back and pointed suggestively to the crotch in the front. My breathing grew shallow as I flipped through the half-dozen pairs of jeans on the rack. They had to have my size! There was one 28—the largest size available in the store. I grabbed it and flew to the dressing room. I had the jeans up to my knees when they started to fight back. They were obviously too tight. Still I persevered, carefully pulling them over my hips, sucking in hard to get the zipper up. Then I looked in the mirror. BANG! I was hotter than L.A.’s sun-baked pavement. Sometimes, I realized, too-tight is just right. Since then my miracle jeans have saved the day on numerous occasions. Most recently last week. I had a *hot* date with four of Portland’s finest and a writer from W magazine at the fabulous Gotham Tavern. As usual I had ten minutes to get ready. I wanted to look sexy yet casual, hot but cool. It’s a perpetual Portland dilemma: not to look too put-together, to ace that elusive understated elegance, to be casually cool, tragically hip. I pulled fifty things out of my closet—little black dresses, fancy see-through t-shirts, my Marlene Dietrich lurex-and-fur jacket... The clock was ticking inexorably towards 8pm. What the fuck was I gonna wear? In desperation I grabbed my miracle jeans. I carefully pulled ‘em on and zipped ‘em up, catching only a little bit of hip flesh in the zipper. BANG! Suddenly I was taller, richer, thinner, smarter. Suddenly my limp Portland night promised to be a celestial safari. Of course I was still half-naked—I still needed a shirt and shoes—but the thing about the miracle jeans is you can wear them with anything and still look like a million bucks. You could go barefoot with a wife-beater that says “ASK ME ABOUT MY CAT” and the miracle jeans would squire you down whatever red carpet was available. For my W date, I chose a Forever 21 black-and-pink Asian-influenced plunge-neck top and black glitter stiletto mules (with black glitter bows) from MLK Fashion Plaza. Bingo! I was bitchin’. And with not one moment to spare. I grabbed my purse, keys and Lip Venom and hopped in the Volvo. The miracle jeans had saved the day again. At the Gotham Tavern, the cooks stopped cookin’ when I walked in the door. I was halfway through my strawberry bellini when head chef Naomi Hebberoy sidled up to me and said the Gotham would like to have my jeans bronzed and mounted on the wall. An honor, to be sure—the Gotham kids are the toast of the international cuisine scene—but what would I do without my miracle jeans? And really, what would they do without me? It is, after all, MY ASS that makes them look so goddamn good.