Underwear Blackouts

Don’t you just hate it when you have one of those can’t-put-my-finger-on-it-but-one-of-my-briefs-is-missing moments?  (How’s that for a public service announcement: “Do you know where your underwear are?”)

This is known as the “underwear blackout” phenomenon, common in universities, bachelor pads, and strip clubs alike.

We’ve all had underwear blackouts.  We might be bordering on T.M.I. here, but I trust you guys.  The underwear blackout which stands out most for me dates back to February, 1990.  I was living at home, attending university (read: going to every party I could go to), and not only running with my fraternity brothers, but also an off-campus crowd that was into the really raucous kind of get-togethers.  You know the kind I mean – the party that starts off with nobody knowing anybody, the police get called at least once, and then it kind of winds down with people asleep on the floor, or curled up on the couch together, or in their undershorts in a bathtub.  These parties were taking place in Pontiac, a seedy-on-the-decline suburb of Detroit.  Pontiac, like Detroit, is having major issues today with population decline and crime, but back then it was the place everyone went for Bar Night and party crawls.

I attended one such party on a Friday night.  I’d just finished a weekly lab, and I had been especially anticipating this weekend because I was meeting a guy at the party for a not-so-discreet hook-up.  (I wasn’t exactly “out” at the time.)

Next thing I know, I’m waking up on a fraternity brother’s floor in the university dorms.  “Derrick” and his roommate (another good friend, thank goodness) casually inform me that it’s Tuesday morning, that I showed up at the dorms at 3.00 a.m. blitzed out of my frickin’ skull, and that I wasn’t wearing shoes or a coat.  In February.  In Michigan.  To help me recover, they let me take a shower and lent me some clothes.  That’s when I discovered my undershorts were missing. 

I managed to get home before my parents did, and luckily intercepted a call from the Pontiac Police Department informing me my car had been towed and was sitting in impound.  (If my dad had overheard that call, or any of the vague details I had, his head probably would have exploded.)  One hasty call to yet another fraternity brother later, I swung by a bank and retrieved my car.

Never did find my underwear.  Still don’t know precisely what happened during that span, and never saw my paramour again.  What followed was one of those “complete basket case” weeks: the party’s host insisted there were no drugs at the party (I was beginning to think I had been slipped a roofie), we were having a great time and left the party together, but after that, there was nothing to report.  And I booked the earliest possible appointment to get tested – negative, thank the Maker.

I decided then and there it was time to reel it in a bit and actually go to class; my grades improved, much to my parents’ delight; and I swore “Derrick” and his roommate to complete secrecy as to what happened … which means my fraternity chapter knew all of the details within about six minutes and got hours of laughs by expounding on my impending fatherhood of eight babies somewhere in southeastern Michigan.  (Oh, if they had only known ….)

My only other underwear blackout is odd, but it was triggered by another guy I liked several years earlier.  It was one of those situations with communal showers.  We had just come back from the student union and I needed to stop by my room first.  When I got downstairs, “T.B.” was already in the shower.  I passed by the towel hooks and noticed that he’d also hung his underwear on one of the pegs – a nice, well-worn pair of black briefs.  I remember glancing around (to make sure I wouldn’t get busted as the underwear freak I am – it’s different when you’re in college), then took them off the hook and did the Bronze and Silver inspection I mentioned a few weeks ago.  Having seen “T.B.” in his undershorts as part of the Gold aspect, this was major pay dirt.  I considered stealing them, but there was no way I could have explained that, so I reluctantly put them back. 

You have to understand: I had a major crush on this guy.  MAJOR.  He was taller than me, had a six-pack, dark-blond hair, a smooth chest, green eyes … and was one of the most genuinely friendly, approachable and nicest guys I had ever met.  Unfortunately, he hung out with a group of complete and utter a**holes that I didn’t like.  I wanted SO BADLY to just slip into his room one night and blame it on alcohol, just to see what his reaction would be.  But I couldn’t do that; since this was a guy I really, really liked, it didn’t seem fair to expose him to that, especially if he was straight (which it turned out, he was).

I just remember standing there fantasizing, and next thing I know, the water shuts off and he comes out of the shower with a smile and a “Hey,” that lit a fire under my towel.  Thankfully, I’m a good actor, so he never had any idea that I was standing there fantasizing about how many kids we were gonna adopt.

So those are my underwear blackouts – a true one, and an “oh-look-something-shiny” moment.  And when I thought I had heard it all when it came to underwear blackouts, one of exchange students sheepishly admitted he’d left his wet underwear on the floor of a friend’s basement after hot-tubbing with her, and her mother found them.  I just about hit the roof and was expecting a call from the police, until he told me that it had happened at home the year before (whew), and that he’d been wearing a swimsuit over the briefs.  And the friend’s mom?  Didn’t blink, according to my foreign son, because he lives in Europe and people aren’t uptight about that.

(There are a couple of examples of underwear blackouts I’d like to have involving Rodiney Santiago, Johnny Hazzard, Caleb Strong, et al.  Tom and I did have an underwear blackout experience together – not our own, though.  We were walking our dog through the park across the street from the house a few years ago, and came upon a discarded pair of Smurf-blue Hanes Y-fronts, size XXL.  Like most normal people, Tom’s reaction was, “Who has sex in the park?  That is so totally not appropriate.”  Mine?  “Who wears Smurf-blue Jockey shorts, and is willing to advertise that fact?  That is so totally not appropriate.”)

I tell you this – if my 15-year-old daughter ever has a male friend leave his wet underwear on the floor after a hot-tubbing session, I will seriously contemplate homicide.  Or, as Tom has suggested when we start meeting her beaux: “Just remember, Billy – anything you do to our daughter … we will do to you.”  I like it because my daughter had the appropriate reaction of complete horror.

Basic rule of thumb, gentle readers: to avoid a potentially embarrassing underwear blackout, know where your underwear are if they aren’t where they’re supposed to be.