WHY I MAY BE BANNED FROM MACY'S AND OTHER UNCOMFORTABLE FACTS

Last Thursday, as my friend and I were finalizing the details of the mountain biking expedition we went on yesterday, he mentioned that I should wear boxer briefs. Being a strict boxer guy, I asked why the boxer briefs were necessary. He said that the seams on boxers would rub up against the bike seat and "rip my ass apart." "Rip" is not a word I like to hear used in reference to my ass, so I made my way over to Macy's on Friday to get the boxer briefs. I know wearing old school boxers puts me in the minority, at least among the under-eighty crowd, but the few times I've worn boxer briefs, I've felt like I should be standing on top of a bar in Chelsea, singing about how fun it is to stay at the YMCA. I've also never felt comfortable with the deceit involved in wearing boxer briefs. Someone should lobby Congress to make the underwear people put a warning label across the front that says, "Objects in these boxer briefs are nowhere nearly as big as they appear!"

I browsed through Macy's men's underwear section, looking for the perfect pair of ass protectors, while staring at the boxer brief enhanced bulges of the male models that appeared on each of the boxes of underwear. I've never bought a shirt or pair of pants that came in a box with a picture of a guy wearing the shirt or the pants, but I guess the unspoken slogan of the boxer brief industry is "Buy this and your dick will look big." While I can respect their no bullshit approach to marketing, it made my search all that more uncomfortable. I was trying to convince myself that I didn't need to buy the boxer briefs by comparing the seams on them to the alleged ass rippers on my boxers. I couldn't find an open box and I was afraid that the sixty-something year old woman with the name tag would perform an underwear lady's arrest, if she caught me trying to open one. I was forced to mentally trace the seams that surrounded the Calvin Klein model's package, while I ran my hands over my jeans, trying to feel the seams on my boxers. I pretended I was scratching an itch, and prayed there wasn't a security camera recording something that would wind up in inboxes and on Facebook pages throughout the world. I wasn't convinced that the boxer seams were any different, but given what it looked like I had just done, the next logical step was to buy the underwear and take the model and his bulge home with me.

I didn't wind up wearing the boxer briefs I bought during our bike ride. Instead, I wore a pair of my friend's "special mountain biker ass and ball protecting underwear" after I was barely able to sit on my bike wearing the Calvin Kleins. If my weekend didn't begin confusingly enough, it certainly ended that way. Not only did I wear another man's underwear, but my ass is killing me.