Mood Underwear

If you can't tell from the title of this post that you're going to be subjected to too much information -- more than you probably ever needed, wanted, or begged never to hear -- about my choice of underwear, then let me warn you now: you will.

The age-old question about men's underwear -- "boxers or briefs?" -- doesn't strike anywhere close to the heart of the matter, because the important question isn't about preferred cut, of which there are surprisingly many.

For instance, there are boxers, briefs, boxer-briefs for those men incapable of choosing between the two, sports briefs, bikini briefs, Latin briefs, long johns, trunks, Army trunks, lace-up trunks, front-enhancing padded pouch trunks for men with extra-small winkies, thongs, classic thongs, show me thongs for men who are extra proud of their winkies, g-strings, jock straps, cotton jock straps for men who want to feel like they're suited up for sports without actually having any real protection for their winkies, and swimmer jock straps.

Swimmer jock straps? Seriously, aren't most pools cold enough that you don't have to worry about that thing sticking out like a rudder and steering you off course?

Regardless of the preferred style, whether it be a low-rise trunk or no-show briefs, once a style is chosen the truly difficult decision is which brand to buy. It might surprise you to learn that more than one company caters to men who wear hot pink, see-through, crotchless, edible man panties, but I'm fairly certain I spotted three during my research for this post. (Anyone care to guess how much gay porn spam I'll be receiving in the next few weeks?) I guarantee any man who does wear hot pink, see-through, crotchless, edible man panties knows which brand makes the best and buys only from that brand.

Think of me what you will, I prefer a simple brief -- the classic tighty whitie, as it is known. Apart from a few crazy daring times in my life when I experimented with boxers, the brief has been my mainstay as far back as I can recall. Without them, I might as well crawl back under the covers certain in the knowledge it will be a bad day.

When it come to briefs, there really are only two brands that have provided consistency through the decades. They are Fruit of the Loom and Hanes. Now, Hanes are okay, but, much like Lee jeans, they feel like they were designed for a species of creature with a significantly different body type from mine. The rear is too baggy; the hips ride too high. It's like wearing borrowed underwear, which is every bit as unnerving and creepy as it sounds.

Fruit of the Loom, on the other hand, seems to understand me in the same way Levi jeans do. It's as if they stitched their fabrics together on a mannequin shaped like a short-torsoed, slightly overweight man with long legs and said: "These would fit Feggeler perfectly!" And the best part is my size, style and color (or lack thereof) have always been available.

Until recently.

I have struggled in vain since Christmas to locate my tighty whities in the stores. (Okay, maybe just one store, but I have an $8 credit to Walmart and that's what I planned to spend it on.) At the risk of going commando, and for the first time in nearly forty-seven years, I veered from tighty whities and bought a different kind of underwear. Sure, they're still the same cut and size of Fruit of the Looms briefs. The big difference is the color. Yes, I am now the proud owner of a multi-color pack of briefs.

Need I explain how uncomfortable the thought of wearing colored underwear made me feel? And it had nothing to do with issues of masculinity. I gave up pretending to be masculine somewhere back in high school when most guys were heavy into sports and I was honing my God-given shopping skills. My issue was more of an OCD-related one brought on by this sudden change in a rock solid, lifelong, unbending pattern in my life. After a slight hesitation that first morning, I decided it was best to leap in with both feet and embrace the change, so I grabbed the red briefs.

About one month deep into the underwear experiment, I've realized there's a perverse joy in breaking from the old routine. In the past, the first important task of the day was digging through a sea of tighty whities to find a pair new enough that the elastic band hadn't lost its snap. Some were so worn out they made me wonder if I have a diagnosble attachment disorder. These days, it's more like a game of match the underwear to my mood.

Is it a red day? Light blue, or maybe dark blue day? Perhaps today feels more like a gray day. What about green, you ask? Honestly, I've yet to figure out what kind of day green is good for.



© 2015 Mark Feggeler

The Butter Battle

There is a long-standing disagreement between me and My Lovely Wife that predates the births of our children and even our marriage.

Way back when -- almost exactly 20 years ago when our hearts first went all twitterpated over each other -- there were many distracting idiosyncracies we each carried into our relationship. Most of those quirks stemmed from our base personalities.

Me: forgetful; disorganized.

Her: memory like a steel trap; a demand for structure that could take the holler out of the toughest drill sergeant.

Some disparities came from our differing upbringings. For instance, we didn't wash bath towels every day. How dirty can they possibly get from one use? After all, you should be at your cleanest when you use them, right? But not so in her house. Bath towels were washed daily, regardless of their dormant potential for additional absorption and their relative lack of contaminants. As most couples do, we found ways to address these kinds of issues by adopting one partner's preference or creating new protocols we could call our own.

One pesky issue, however, has lingered for two decades. In my mind, it is a matter of common sense. For My Lovely Wife, it is a matter of order. No matter how you look at it, buttering corn on the cob is a loaded issue in our home.

An unacceptable result of
barbaric behavior.

I grew up employing a simple method for enveloping my corn in buttery goodness. A dish holding a stick of margarine would be placed on the table and my family would take it in turn to roll their cobs on it. Sure, by the time everyone's corn was adequately buttered the stick looked like an animal had attacked it, but the process exemplified efficiency. It never occurred to me, nor had it ever to any rational person, this method might strike some as disturbingly barbaric.

Try as I might, I could never make My Lovely Wife acknowledge the benefits of the rolling technique. It went against every fiber of her nature. It resulted in corn-tainted margarine that no longer could serve any other purpose. It simply was not the kind of thing a person teetering on the brink of OCD (on a good day) could tolerate.

For years we have tried to come up with a suitable solution. Many times I've fought with little pats of margarine, watching helplessly as they slip from between my knife and the cob only to land on some unsuspecting meal item that has no business mixing with margarine. Then there were the experiments with squeeze margarine. That oozing, chemical-flavored, I-can't-believe-it's-not-giving-me-cancer grease in a bottle is no substitute for the real thing.

Then, maybe a week ago, an amazing thing happened. Our Daughter and I managed to weaken My Lovely Wife's resolve and place a stick of margarine on the table for rolling. She didn't like it, but she went along with it. Then last night we tried it again. We all rolled our corn and mangled the margarine, perhaps a little too gleefully in my case.

As we sat there digesting, My Lovely Wife looked innocently at me and said: "That really does make it a lot easier to butter your corn..."



© 2012 Mark Feggeler