300(ish) Words on Nike Tempo Running Shorts
All the athleisure might be a symbol of something crumbling, yet I can’t stop wearing my Nike Dry Tempo shorts for sex and sport. Up until two months ago, I might have let you know that I am not a runner. Since then, I have…started doing some lite, ’70s-style jogging, but my Nike Dry Tempos aren’t about that! With a thin layer of swishy polyester, they’ve separated my ass from red-vinyl bar booths, subway seats, and people’s couches, and they’ve wicked away the sweat of encounters with strangers. (“I’m 26, so I wore Nike Tempo shorts for my whole high school career in sports so I feel dumb continuing to wear them as an adult, but somehow I feel more incognito in the all-black,” one reviewer wrote under the product description.)
Seeing sorority girls at the University of Texas wearing the shorts with boyfriend-y Columbia fishing shirts, I didn’t understand the useless functionality of all-day running shorts. Then, I moved to New York City and realized I needed my own form of sidewalk armor. I went back to the Texan collegiate roots that, as a cutoffs-wearing college radio kid, weren’t mine to begin with.
One day at a Buffalo Exchange, I found a pair of black Nike Dry Tempo shorts that covered my butt AND were high-waisted. Their fit is, as Zappos describes, “eased, but not sloppy.” Another melon-colored pair came my way, and slowly, runner’s shorts became my summer uniform for errands and mild debauchery. They make me feel, I’ll say it, powerful. They comfortably fit (and sort of stand out) in almost any daytime scenario—posing in front of the Columbia Studios sign in Culver City, walking around a dead mall in Corpus Christi, allowing the range to prop your left foot up on the seat while you drive—and a good few after dark.
The only downside is that they don’t adhere to curves, instead bunching over them like a diaper, which takes some of the steam out of wearing clothes. You have to work to make them feel sexual, and even then. They are not glamorous, and at the beginning, I felt like an imposter wearing them. Then, two gals at a bar in the East Village commented on them with “Yes, girl!” bemusement. Vodka-cran running shorts on the dance floor! And I realized they were mine.
