There it was, staring at me, a package of Hanes underwear, six pairs for six dollars. Well, $5.95. It was on sale from about $8, but when you do the math, it really came out to about a dollar a pair. That's something, considering that at the shiny new Coral Ridge Mall in Iowa City last week I was pricing out the sleek Calvin Klein underwear at $15 a pop.
I can't stand those baggy underwear. I just don't understand them. I know that they are some kind of trademark of the Ivy League types, but how do you run in them without having your testicles send shooting signals of pain straight to your brain? No, all those years of athletics make me want reasonably supportive underwear and snug fitting shoes.
I really like those Scandinavian clogs, and sandals, but something about those things makes me feel that if I was in danger and needed to exercise either the flight (most likely) or the fight response, I wouldn't want something loose on my feet.
Same thing for underwear.
On the other hand, I don't like underwear that gives the impression that you are undressed. I know that seems odd, but here's the logic. Most of the cool underwear looks like some kind of clothing that you could almost wear to the beach. With the big baggy underwear it's almost a tragedy that you can't see it, it's so decorative -- I just wonder what the hotdog executive feels like knowing that under his conservative business suit there's some wildly colored shorts. Maybe it's a thrill, kind of like Victoria's Secrets under some severe suit and blouse.
In any case, the underwear that I like is the sleek, tight stuff that is well designed, and let's face it, expensive. I'm not talking about the hypersexualized stuff in International Male, but rather something in white like a Speedo swimsuit.
But really, who cares what kind of underwear I like? After all, it's not the sixties anymore.
As I stared at the 1 buck a pair white underwear I realized that I was not only considering leaving the world of designer underwear, I was also letting go of the idea that had obviously been present somewhere in my head ever since college that you had better wear some underwear that you don't mind being seen in, because you never know when some girl is going to get it into her head that she is going to modify your relationship today in the the direction of total nudity, and those underwear are going to be one of the stops on the way.
Yes, it's not the sixties anymore, plus, I'm not nineteen anymore either, and the likelihood that I'm going to end up in bed with someone I just met is so remote that I might as well wear aluminum foil for underwear for all the difference it is going to make.
The battle was joined between two opposing forces in my personality; the artistic side, which is an expensive, money-tossing, sentimental, whim-driven expansionist, and the convenience side, which is a lazy bachelor who finds tremendous appeal in the thought of spending 18 dollars and having eighteen pairs of identical underwear in his drawer -- which can mean not having to do laundry for as much as three weeks.
I must admit that the lazy bachelor won.
Still, it's not as if I threw away all of the sleek stuff. If some woman comes into my life, I can always trot it out again.
On the other hand, those one dollar underwear were well made, not as baggy as I worried.... and I've even taken to wearing two or three a day if I do some extreme exertion thing, which, right now, may include tennis, sprints, disco night, Kung Fu, jazz class, Lindy Hop, step aerobics, weightlifting, ballroom classes, or the ballet rehearsal.
No more wearing the four good pairs and then scrounging through my clothes for something that will make do until laundry day: some white tennis shorts, an athletic supporter, some long underwear (no support! don't run!), some baggy shorts, and even, in desperation, a dance belt for Ballet ( a tight, curious, thonglike device that redistributes the male genitalia up and forward - either to give the legs a longer look or to sterilize all male dancers in order to make them as testosterone free as their public image).
No more of that. Now I can put on a new pair of underwear at leisure. No worries. No need for laundry every week. And I suppose I could always carry some cool underwear in a bag in my glove compartment, fantasizing that I might meet someone beautiful, charismatic, deeply attracted, quietly persuasive, and instantly able to deal with two or three ex wives, fourteen dance partners, commitmentphobia, an inner child with a breast fixation, a career still in development and an ongoing need for some serious dental work.
On the other hand, maybe they still have those things on sale.
-Paul Stokstad, November, 1998
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