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| Tuesday, 01 April 2008 12:00 |
 There once was this guy who pretty much just sat around in his underwear all the time. As far as he was concerned, it was a lifestyle decision. Of course, now as far as his job was concerned, he was fired. But that had been a risk he was willing to accept. He just felt better in his underwear. It had been that way ever since he was a little boy. Like you. Or little girl. Whatever.Way back then, the way it had started, it was just on weekends. In the early mornings.when neither one of his parents were up. He would get up super early when everything was quiet and still in the house. All he had on was the underwear he had worn to bed the night before. He had stopped wearing pajamas a long time ago, back when he was almost four, because his mother had kept buying him pajamas with yellow ducks on them instead of the ones he wanted, which had pictures of famous wrestlers. So he just wore underwear to bed now. Anyway, way back then, he would get up and decide to have cold cereal for breakfast. The cold cereal was kept in a shelf in the pantry that was too high to reach unless you stood on a chair or climbed on the kitchen counter, so he climbed up on that. He wasn’t exactly supposed to, but nobody had ever told him not to, not since he got in trouble for it one time back when he was still wearing pajamas. That was a long time ago, and he was a lot older now. Okay. So by climbing on the counter, and then leaning over extremely carefully, extremely cautiously, extremely skillfully, he could just barely, barely, barely reach and reach and reach until until until he finally had the box of cereal. There! He had already gotten the prize out of the bottom of the box when they first brought it home and, for that matter, his dog had already chewed it up. So instead of dumping it all out again, he just climbed over to another cabinet and got a bowl. All of this climbing around so skillfully and so quietly — he didn’t want to wake his parents up, because he was really a very considerate boy, really, and because his Dad would murder him if he caught him climbing around on the kitchen counter again — all of this climbing around made him feel like a burglar or a spy or even Tarzan. If only he had a jungle knife or a machete to stick into his underwear so that he could protect himself from savage foes! He considered borrowing a big kitchen knife, but then he considered some more and decided against it. He didn’t want to slice up his underwear. He thought if he held a towel around his neck, he could fly around in his underwear like Superman, but even without a towel, his underwear gave him special powers. There was no question that he could run faster in them, a lot faster. He didn’t necessarily want to go outside in them into, say, the front yard, because sometimes some of the other kids got up super early too. But he knew if he stayed in the house, he could do all kinds of amazing things in his underwear. Well, that’s what got him started. For a long time, after he got grown up, he just wore underwear the regular way, under his regular clothes. He wore a suit, and a tie, and a vest, and under that a shirt, and under that he wore an undershirt, and below that he wore underwear. Everybody did it that way. Oh, sometimes when they got home after a long hot day at work, they sat around in front of the fan with a cold drink wearing just their underwear for a couple of minutes, but pretty soon they got up and changed into something they thought was more comfortable. But this guy we’re talking about could never think of anything more comfortable than his underwear. He didn’t want to go around completely naked -- that just wouldn’t be right. But the older he got, the more he began to think about it. What was wrong with walking around alone at home in just his underwear?  He started to think about it a lot. He was lucky to have the kind of job where he could bring a lot of work home with him, and while he worked on it, he wore his underwear. There was no question that he did better work in his underwear — it made it easier for him, somehow, and it was as though it gave him special powers of concentration.In fact, it got so it was hard for him to concentrate properly when he was at work wearing his suit and tie and vest and everything. If he had held a towel around his neck wearing an outfit like that, he would have just looked ridiculous. And as for being Tarzan, even just wearing a tie made that impossible. The best he could hope for was looking like an undercover spy, but he found that was a lot more boring than being Tarzan or something good like that. Well, you know how these things go. He got so he was doing more and more of his work at home, and when he was at work, his boss thought he was doing too much daydreaming. He offered to do all of his work at home, where his underwear would give him tremendous secret powers of concentration but then his boss offered him the opportunity to just stay home entirely and not do any work at all. Which was fine with him. Because he could concentrate better there. He concentrated until he figured out a way to make some money staying at home in his underwear concentrating, and that all worked out pretty good. The only real trouble was when he needed to go outside. He didn’t necessarily want to go outside in his underwear, it was just that he didn’t necessarily want to get all dressed up either, not just to go outside. He could order food and have it delivered and it didn’t really matter if he answered the door in his underwear, since it was his house, after all, and if the delivery guy said anything, well, there went his tip. And it wasn’t even that he got lonely, because the truth was that wearing his underwear all the time not only gave him great powers of concentration, it also helped him lead a rich and fulfilling fantasy life, one that was richer and more fulfilling than the fantasy life of any of the friends and acquaintances and girlfriends he used to have. It was just that he sometimes was starting to feel like he was trapped. Like he was a prisoner of his underwear. Like his underwear had taken on a life of their own. Like maybe he was just a servant, and his underwear was the master. Like maybe he was living out his underwear’s fantasy life, and not his own. Like maybe it was his underwear’s tremendous power of concentration that was in charge. Well, it was one thing to start to feel like that, and another thing to do something about it. First of all, he had gotten pretty not used to wearing clothes. And when he tried getting back into his old suits and ties and shirts and undershirts and stuff, he felt like he was wearing a big clumsy outfit designed for outer space travel or for dangerous deep-sea diving. It just didn’t feel like the effort was worth it — or was that the underwear talking? Suddenly, he couldn’t seem to concentrate. At last, one day, when a pizza delivery guy he had long ago stopped tipping didn’t show up and he was nearly starving, he and his underwear both agreed that it was necessary to go outside. He could tell from just looking out the window that it was cold out there, and he was going to have to bundle up. As he went out the door, he felt like an Arctic explorer whose faithful comrades had all disappeared into the blinding white. Even his underwear seemed to shrink back in fear as he bravely stepped forward into the unknown. ‘Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate,’ he said to himself, but he couldn’t seem to concentrate at all. All he could think about was how hungry he was. And then he realized something very important. Being hungry, just hungry, nothing but hungry, was a way of concentrating, in a way. It made him want to walk out into the polar whiteness and buy food of all kinds. Greek food, Thai food, Indian food, fast food, slow food, raw food, and frozen microwave burritos. It had been a long, long time since he’d had a frozen microwave burrito cooked in a convenience store, the way they’re supposed to be.. Suddenly, urgently, swiftly, he spun sideways and stepped into a famous fried chicken place, went into the men’s room, and locked the door behind him. Before he could stop himself, before he could reconsider, he unzipped his pants and grabbed hold of his underwear. Summoning up every bit of his strength, like Tarzan, like Superman, he seized his underwear right below the elastic waistband and began to rip them right off himself. It hurt a little bit, actually, but he was determined. Gathering up strength from somewhere inside of himself that wasn’t centered in his underwear, he tore them free and in doing so, he freed himself. He was going to flush them down the toilet but he thought they might get stuck and make a mess, so he dangled them from the hot air hand-dryer and left them behind him for good. Striding bravely off to go have a big Szechuan feast and then go grocery shopping — he had never really like fried chicken all that much — he began to consider the new life that lay ahead of him. He was free at last, and ready to do anything he wanted, anything at all. Maybe he could even start doing his work at home entirely naked. What could be wrong with that? |
