over/under

No decision is completely arbitrary. Roll a die, pick a card – some unarticulated motive will affect the outcome. Nothing is pure chance.

At the start of each day, you make a choice. And you have to live with it. You’ve learned how to navigate your top drawer and the silks and cottons it holds, but getting her has been a process. In the beginning, you had no say - someone else put them on and took them off. But then underwear became perhaps the first sartorial choice in your life. Your inner child knows that the skivvies you put on are intimately connected to who you are, hence the wailing echo of “I wanna wear my Underoooos!” Outside, you were just another goofy three-year old. Inside, you were Aquaman.

The change from Justice League to snug and silky is subtle; underwear evolution comes without color commentary. But each year, your natural selections take on greater import. It’s a complicated cocktail of mood and intentions, choosing underwear is: an expression of how you forecast the day ahead, your expectations and hopes, maybe eve your dreams.

Your underwear sends a signal. But it also transmits a message inward, whether you want to receive it or not. Like on those days when you catch yourself lingering just a little too long at the top drawer as you mentally fast-forward to the shank of the evening. No! you say, that has nothing to with it, claiming mom and paramedics as you select. But as you anxiously gulp one more beer with your best friend’s recent ex and your silky blues struggle to readjust themselves, you know that something that was not supposed to be there is. It’s taunting you, flaunting you; it’s got you under its skin. At the end of the day, you can’t hide who you are. Or what you want. Your underwear does not lie.