Kosher Eucharist / יוקאריסט כשר

Today, a lazy Sunday, I decided to buy some more underpants. I don’t quite have enough that they fall due to be washed with my other clothes, and I’m tired of the hat trick of no-clean underwear stopgaps (washing one pair in the sink, freeballing, or trying not to think about it). So after church, I went to the department store to buy some underwear. Doesn’t that sound easy?

Guess again, Doris. Buying underwear in New Zealand is surprisingly difficult. In the States, I would have proceed as follows:

1) Go to the store.
2) Buy a three-pack of dark solid or striped, small or medium boxer-briefs.
3) Go home and watch three hours of “Roseanne” eating Cheetos and wearing only my new underwear to break them in.

From driveway to couch in less than an hour! But no, because I’m in wacky Polynesia, things have to be different. I get to the store - “Farmers” - and go in to the men’s underwear section. This always makes me uncomfortable, because the men’s underwear packages all have Genetically Modified Cornfed Guy on them, with his preternaturally hairless, statistically desireable torso golden under a synthetic sun, and a grin of beatific, otherworldly happiness on his face - as though he’d just seen the woman he loves set down a tray of nachos in front of his so she has both hands free to make out with a Currently Lusted-After Starlet. Now, I have a pigeon chest, I burn badly if I stay in the sun for more than twenty minutes, and the closest I’ve ever gotten to the nacho/starlet situation is getting a blow job while I played “Super Mario Brothers 3.” I do not like to be reminded of these deficiencies when I buy anything, especially underwear. In addition to Underwear Guy, I’m also confronted with The Disturbing Underwear - the tight ones with a pronounced pouch in the front, that you might store your more virile parts within. I don’t really know any guy who likes to roll up his hose, tuck the huevos in with the ranchero, and place them securely in a prominent polyester nook - well, no guy who doesn’t work at a gay bar distributing Jell-O shots. . I think the idea is to make your junk more prominent: “Look upon my pepper, ye passers-by, and despair.” I always try to buy clothing that doesn’t call attention to my genitals, because… you know what? No! I shouldn’t have to explain why I don’t buy genital-attention-attracting clothing, because it should go without saying that I do. When it becomes necessary to consciously seek clothing that doesn’t say, “LOOK I’M NOT A GELDING SEE I HAVE STUFF ATTACHED TO MY CROTCH,” the world has taken a grievous misstep. Also, can you imagine how awful it would be to get an erection in those underpants? Talk about straining at one’s bonds.

So, grinning naked guys and banana-hammocks skirted, I started to look for realistic, staid underwear favored by sane people. Well, they don’t have any. What they have are miles and miles of white briefs. My oppositions to white briefs are as follows:

But white briefs are what are to be had in the NZ. So, to my annoyance, I start looking through the individual underpantses on the wall, which were between 20 and 30 dollars a pair. Now, I know these were small Kiwi dollars, not big well-fed American dollars, but still. $14 dollars for something that’s going to go on my butt, that probably one other person will see? I would not put a fine fur on my butt, (insert joke about there already being one,) because it’s my butt. I sit on it. It is an unglamorous but useful part, and should be clothed accordingly. So I picked out the three most reasonable pairs, and hid them under a pile of fat man jeans so I could go and check the ultra-discount store for nice WASPy underpants and return for these if The Warehouse failed me.

Did you know that in New Zealand, there’s an underpants brand called “Rio?” And that they sell bikini briefs in seven-packs and call it “A Week in Rio?” And did you know that I almost fucking bought them, because they were reasonably priced, and because they were actually the most reasonable underpants in the fucking store? A red g-string, covered with hearts, made out of some heat-trapping, non-breathable, super-flammable Nader-baiting fabric hung next to a display of boxer shorts with “edgy” slogans. You know the ones - little hot dogs and the phrase “How about a foot-long?” Leaving aside the arguments that a foot is unlikely and probably in excess of what is desireable, who thinks that’s funny? Has anyone ever laughed aloud at one of those forced single entendres? It’s one small, small step above ones that say “My penis is behind this thin layer of cotton!” The guys who buy these boxers will mate with the girls who have tattoos just above their “hoo-hahs” that read “Aren’t you lucky?” (yes, I’m sure the obstetrician feels himself indded among the elect), and the resulting children will be so literal that within three generations English will be reduced to a vulgar form of Newspeak, punctuated with humorless brays of “laughter” at stunning sallies of bedroom repartee like “I’m going to ejaculate!” Everything will sound like an awkwardly dubbed Korean porn video.

Reeling, I went to the hippie we-sew-our-own-underwear store. It was closed, which was a mercy because I couldn’t tell through the window which were the men’s and women’s underwear. Orange mid-size semi-briefs! IT’S SO AMBIGUOUS.

So I went back to Farmers and bought the overpriced underwear. It was too much to spend for buttcovers, but I didn’t have the strength to try any more.

*No, not really, dammit.