Hello! I Am Wearing New Underwear!

I’m wearing new underwear.

I want that on the record. I want it in the minutes of the meeting. Somebody wake the stenographer, because this is the biggest thing to happen at this farm since the septic guy stood over the open tank, looked down in there a long time, said, “Ohhh boy,” let that sit in the air for eleven full seconds, and then said, “Nah. That’s just how they look.”

The old ones didn’t wear out. They flaked away. There’s a difference. Wearing out is a process with a beginning and an end, like a warranty. Flaking away is geologic. One morning you’re a functioning waistband, and a few thousand tumble cycles later you’re lint with a vague memory of purpose.

I found a leg hole in the dryer once. Only the leg hole. The rest had gone on ahead without it.

Here’s what gets me. There’s no system.

The government will stamp an expiration date on a can of soup that could take a direct hit from a howitzer and come out of the crater still bubbling. Milk gets a date. Eggs get a date. Motor oil gets a whole schedule and a little sticker for your windshield.

Underwear gets nothing. No date, no light on the dash, no letter from anybody. You’re out there alone, ranking your own inventory, and the rankings are corrupt because you’re the one who made them.

So you keep the bad ones. You demote them. There’s the good pair, the fine pair, the ones for painting the shed, and then, way down in the sediment, the pair you’d want burned if you ever got hospitalized...

Which is how a grown man ends up in Wonder Woman Underoos on a Thursday.

I bought them ironically. That’s the excuse men use for the things they love sincerely. Fifteen years later the irony had rinsed out and left only the sincerity, plus Diana Prince, faded to the color of hospital pudding. The Lasso of Truth had lost the will to compel anyone to do anything. It just lay there across my hip. Retired. Thinking about the old days.

She deserved better. She fought a god. She did not sign up for this.

So I went to the store and bought a three-pack, $16.99, hanging off a peg like a fish somebody was proud of.

Then I fought the bag. They seal these things like they’re shipping a kidney. No perforation, no notch, no little arrow that says tear here. So eventually you use your teeth, and there you are, a full-grown adult, gnawing at a sack of his own underwear in the kitchen at eight in the morning. Karie walked in during that part. She didn’t ask. Good marriage.

(There’s also a sticker on the waistband. I found it at the feed store.)

And then I put them on. Elastic. Real elastic, with an opinion, doing a job. I’d forgotten a waistband is supposed to participate.

I felt so good I told people.

I told the mail carrier. “Hello! I’m wearing new underwear!” He said, “Nice.” Correct response. Correct dose.

I told the woman at the hardware store. She gave me the smile you give a man holding a hose clamp.

Then I told the guy at the gas station, and that’s where it went sideways, because the guy at the gas station was thrilled. Genuinely thrilled. He matched my energy and then he passed me. He wanted a brand. He wanted a cut. He wanted to know boxer, brief, or the negotiated settlement between the two. He had follow-up questions. He had a story of his own and it was starting.

That’s the risk in announcing joy in public. You don’t get to pick who joins you.

I told Karie last. She was reading and she didn’t look up.

“That’s not an accomplishment,” she said. “That’s the minimum. You’ve met the minimum.”

I told her people on the street were happy for me.

“People on the street are polite. There’s a difference, and you have never once located it.”

Trouble was no help. I leaned over the fence, made the announcement, and she regarded me the way she regards everything now, which is from a height, because she’s up to 159 pounds. I’m blaming the humidity. She’s blaming nothing. That pig has never in her life blamed anything.

Queso barked at the waistband. Remmi couldn’t see it and was therefore the only one who responded with any dignity. Professor Archibald Pickles got hold of the empty bag and now holds strong opinions about plastic.

Here’s the part I keep coming back to.

Almost nothing improves at this stage. Not the knees. Not the truck. The country’s been doing whatever it’s been doing. But underwear, for $16.99, gets provably, immediately, categorically better on a Thursday afternoon in about four minutes, and nobody asks you to fill out anything.

That’s the whole renewable resource. That’s the list.

Anyway. Hello. I’m wearing new underwear.

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I could use a coffee

Brian Gerard (Lewandowski)

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