How the heck did men close their pants in the 1700s?

If you follow me on social media, you’ve probably seen some of the updates on my work-in-progress novel, Envious.

Did you know that one of the main characters in that book is an ancient demon? You see, he’s been trapped by the power of a magical bargain for a very long time. As I wrote his first appearance in the book, I started to wonder: what the heck would this guy have been wearing?

This lead me on a strange journey through men’s fashion dating back to the early 1700s. I spent nearly an hour researching pants and more specifically, how men’s trousers were closed before the invention of the zipper. Traditionally, men’s trousers were closed using buttons, but sometimes these were wealthy men who could afford tailored pants with nice buttons. But what need would a demon have for human money? None, of course! He was only visiting the mortal plane, after all.

So I dug a little deeper into the pants of non-wealthy men. These were typically closed using buttons, buckles, or ties. Given that I’m a writer and not a historian, I thought it would be okay for me to just go with ties. So, now that I knew how his pants closed the hard part is over…right?

Unfortunately not because now, I actually had to write the scene. This is where I spent a lot of time fumbling through different sentences to try to bring some sensuality to the scene (yes, I mean the scene where the demon’s pants get taken off).

“Her fingers fumbled at the strings that close my trousers.” Okay, but it’s not great.

How about “she reached out, her fingers wrapping around the cord that held my trousers closed”? Yeah, not that one either.

Maybe “she pulled the cord on my pants, causing them to fall open”? Umm….no.

None of these sounded quite right. None of them made me say, “oh, that’s hot!”

It took me a while to realize that most likely, no reader is thinking about his pants as much as I am.

So what did we end up with?

“Her fingers tremble as she reaches toward me, clumsily pulling my c*ck from the confines of my pants.”

And just like that, the pants (and their various methods of closure) become irrelevant.