Play One on TV

Yes, you’ve probably noticed it. We passed in the hall, or perhaps you saw me as I left the cafeteria, and you couldn’t help but frown in puzzlement at my retreating back. Something is different, all right. I’m walking with an extra spring in my step; a twinkle in my eye; a blaze in my gaze. Crowds part as I pass. Doors are opened for me by my betters. Cats want to come to me when called, and dogs scamper away in fear. Men size me up as if a prelude to honorable combat, and women blink hard and drag their eyes away as if reluctant to end the engagement. All of my traffic lights are green, and my lawnmower starts on the first pull. My hair is standing on end and loving it.

Why? Because I’m wearing my Underwear of Love.

Go on, say it with me. Let it roll off your lips. “Underwear of Love.” Lower your voice and stretch out that last syllable, as if you were the Love Man himself, Barry White, backed by the Love Unlimited Orchestra. “Yes, honey. I’m groovin’ tonight, wearin’ my Underwear of Luuuuuuuuuuuuv, baby, and it’s ahhhhhll for you.”

The Underwear of Love is my secret weapon. It lurks beneath the jeans and chinos of my innocuous outer self; an unexpected layer of passion hidden under a veneer of civility. I make my way through an unsuspecting world, heedless of its dangers, suffuse with the knowledge that I can, at any time, call upon the magnificence and power of pink polished cotton and red elastic hearts.

This fabulous undergarment, this Lingerie du L’amour, is my triumph over ridicule and scorn. Gifted to me five years ago at Christmas from a giggling son and a smirking wife, I have taken its comedic value and questionable taste and transformed it into a garment to be reckoned with. It is a gag gift that has gagged the would-be gaggers. Sheiks and sultans would not dare to wear it for fear of discovery or reprisal, yet I have mastered its quirkiness. Camp has become Vamp.

Oh, how close I came to losing the chance to live the life of power and might. I remember that fateful Christmas morning so long ago, when I beheld its baleful crimson glow as it peeked out of the top of my Christmas stocking. I hung my head in shame, lost in the gleeful laughter of my supposed loved ones. They saw in these heart-patterned briefs a chance for jape and jest, but to me it was a matter of lost masculine honor. For I knew in my heart I was not equal to its power; I was not worthy to wear the Hearts of Hanes, this truly sweetest Fruit of the Loom.

And so it sat in my underwear drawer, mocking me every time I opened it to retrieve the ordinary BVDs meant for less capable, more mundane men like myself. It would speak to me occasionally, in a voice borrowed from James Earl Jones, taunting: “Yes, foolish mortal. You want to wear me, but you do not dare. Go ahead; wear those lesser garments. I am meant for the gods. Men greater than you could not hope to wield me. What hope for a lesser soul like you?” I would blush in my shame and wriggle away like the worm I was.

And then came the day when fate stepped up to the mound and threw me a curve. My wife, the architect of my mockery, unwittingly served as the foil for my transformation as she neglected her divinely-appointed laundry chores. I was poised for work, lacking only the clothes that shielded me from a cruel world. And I trembled as I beheld an underwear drawer bereft of all comfort and hope. For the safe and secure white shorts were nowhere to be found. The drawer’s only contents were staring at me with red anger and hearts of flame. The Underwear of Love demanded its debut.

Commending my spirit to what gods may bear it, I took hold of the garment and drew it forth. It shimmered in a light that was almost self-generated, and I could feel the pulse of visceral power as it traveled up my arms. With a resolve that came from somewhere, where I knew not, I stepped into the garment like a soldier stepping onto a battlefield, certain his next step would be the last. And then, with a convulsive jerk, I pulled them ’round my torso, and waited for the clap of thunder that would come to punish my insolence.

Power filled my being. I was comforted. I was supported. I was lifted and separated. And as I stood there, looking at an image in the mirror that was becoming more unrecognizable by the second, I realized that the passion of this garment was not within its fibers and elastic - it had flowed into the very fiber and sinew of my being. I had been Chosen. I was not just wearing the Underwear of Love - I was the Underwear of Love.

I do not wear it every day; that would be an abuse of this gift. Such power must be contained, controlled, and rationed to a world unprepared for it. With absolute dye-sublimated power comes absolute responsibility. I must not destroy my destiny in the act of embracing it.

Beware and woe unto thee, purveyors of briefs and t-shirts fit only for Walmart or TJ Maxx. I see through your flimsy weave and stretched-out elastic. When I wear the Underwear, you may not touch me. You may not even gaze upon me - I forbid you to embrace my presence. Live in the pitiful hope that I may deign to wear your fashions on a Wash Day hence. Until then, tremble that I might notice the presence of common white things in my top drawer and banish them to the Closet of Ill-Fitting slacks.

And one very special warning to those of the medical profession. Should the fates decree that I fall in a car wreck, losing the innocuous outer layers of my clothing to the scissors of a triage nurse or emergency medical technician, beware! Dearest practitioner of the art of Hippocrates, should you gaze on the Underwear when I am not awake to control it, you will be lost. Once you fall under my power, no elective procedure nor plastic surgery would be denied me; I would own you down to the last scalpel. So do not tempt the fates, dear doctor. Moreover, do not tempt me, as I am bound by honor and an elastic waistband to use this power to serve, not to be served.

Underwear of Love. I am its master; I am its slave. See me, and know that It Is Worn.