I'm a reluctant clothes shopper, and claim no acquaintance with trends in fashion. My apparel stays with me for years. Eventually, however, I have to face up to the reality of threadbare underpants whose waistbands scoff at any suggestion that they should ride above my notional hips.
For a town big enough to support most of the box stores, mine offers remarkably little in the way of haberdashery. Offhand I could think of three or four places that might offer at least a nominal assortment of men's intimate wear. At Mark's, I abandoned my purchase when the cashier — who mistook me for someone shopping for an opportunity to express the milk of human kindness — panhandled me for a local charity. Superstore had little or nothing in the way of my preferred boxers. At last I found a promising set at Winners.
Now Winners promises that "Everything in the store is up to 60 percent off." Which, when you think about it, is no promise at all. If the discount is "up to" 60 percent, clearly not everything is discounted at that rate. Maybe nothing is; the only thing we know is that 60 percent is the line beyond which the generous backroom pricers will not go. Even if the slogan could somehow be parsed as "everything is something off," the question would have to be asked: off what? The price tags say things like "$19.99 — compare at $29.99." The retailer essentially pulls that last number out of a hat. They're just inviting the shopper to find comfort in the fact that if the item were priced at $29.99, it would cost $10 more.
In the case of the shorts I chose, three for $14.99, the tag invited me to "compare at $29.99". But the original packaging went further, stating the MSRP at $42.50. This made me laugh out loud. Clearly Winners has something to learn in the art of reimagining price points.Â
So far so good. I take home my soft knitted undies, somewhere between briefs and boxers, with legs, if you could call them that, or at least upper thighs. I try on a pair. (Don't get me started on pairs. I notice trousers on the rack are now labelled "pant," singular. "It's a nice pant" makes sense if you're a fashionista. But I can't imagine the day when I'll be putting on my pant one leg at a time.)
I look in the mirror. Something is wrong.
No fly. No flap. No ready access to a frequently used utensil.
My first instinct, which I thought it best to follow, was to panic. At the store I must have wandered into the women's section by mistake. Horribile dictu! I rush to the recycling bin and check the torn cardboard package. Nowhere can I find the word "men." However, there is a picture of a buff torso and a crotch adorned by the same delicates now adorning me. The torso has nipples. Since they're shown, they must be male nipples, for surely a respectable garment manufacturer would at least meet the code of Tumblr and not display nipples "presented as female."
My second thought was that gender politics had made its pernicious way into the garment industry. A fly is a marker of masculinity, which by definition is toxic. Some think it reactionary to classify people according to the traditional sexes at all. And now I have been led, nay coerced by lack of choice, to buy omnisex underwear that will proclaim to anyone who ever gets that far with me that I scorn traditional gender roles, that I am — as I have heard someone describe themself — a transexual non-binary gender-fluid person.
Thoroughly frightened at the prospect of being at least a cross-dresser and even the poster person for the final erasure of la difference, I could turn to only one place for guidance: the internet. And guess what I learned: flapless knickers for men are actually a thing. The people who market them say that it's all about style, the smooth symmetrical look. Not a word about shaving a few pennies off the manufacturing cost, let alone about SJW conspiracies.
These same experts enlightened me on another subject. It has been found that modern men are content to go "over the fence" rather than "through the gate." I pondered this metaphor at length, as it didn't speak to my experience, before finally realizing that my technique, when I have been unable to find the gate — usually because I have put it at the wrong side of the house — has been to snake through the culvert. However, I'm now experimenting with the more elevated method, with reasonable results, except that the elastics are going to be sagging even faster.
One of the spokespeople made a point that rather comforted me. How much time do we men waste fumbling for the key to the gate? It's actually faster to jump straight over the fence or slip through the culvert. And a final benefit is that you can greet the stranger at your door in your fashionable small-clothes with no fear that the gate is ajar.
