Miscellaneous, etc.

This is a strange thing for someone to say, but you have to know where I’m coming from.

Incredibly, when you drink a lot more alcohol than usual, and then combine that with a major upswing in your regular diet (to include items that are composed almost — but not entirely — of fat), you start to gain weight. Pair this with a more-or-less total elimination of exercise from your daily habits, and you start to gain a hell of a lot of weight very quickly. Say, ten pounds or so, in about a two-week period.

When you notice a transformation like that happening, you start to do a few things: You examine your clothing to see if all of it has shrunk, or just the stuff you’re wearing today; you check your body for bee stings, spider bites, or other fang-punctures that might account for the enormous swelling you’ve experienced; and finally, you suck it up and put on your now-entirely-too-tight gym clothing to go work it off.

My gym is at my local shopping mall, which affords me with countless opportunities to:

• Skulk past delicious fast food vendors, fuelling both my appetite and my guilt at the same time
• Subject myself to the scrutiny of women in the categories of High-Fashion Teenager, Judgemental Young Mother, Condescending Middle-Aged Habitual Shopper, and Genuinely Attractive Woman My Age To Whom I Wish I Were Invisible Right At That Moment
• Distract myself from my impending (or just-earned) pain by staring blankly into stores as I pass them by

It’s on this last point that I’d like to settle, because talking about my food guilt is kind of weird, and dissecting my lack of appeal to the female sex actually exceeds the legal comedy limit for any single weblog entry. Shopping for underwear, on the other hand, is entirely safe territory, and deserves deep consideration.

Before I had a long-term girlfriend, I always thought that shopping for lingerie was one of those delightful pleasures that couples indulged in, sort of like shopping for curtains except for it’s for genitals. In my imagination it was something of an ideal activity: It allowed women to poke around the a store, choose particular styles or items, select colors and muse over comfort; on the other hand, it allowed men to watch their significant others to fondle underwear, and afford them the opportunity to engage in quite active dialogue on the subject.

Win-win, clearly.

The aesthetics of a lingerie store only serve to reinforce this notion. There are pictures of stunningly beautiful (if heavily photo-processed) women up on the walls, wearing the products stored only feet away. There are wonderfully-proportioned mannequins that give you a good, three-dimensional representation of the idea styles, shapes, textures and colors to store in your imagination for whatever dark purpose you choose. The light is warm, the music is soft, the smells are perfumed and alluring, the sales staff are sleek and well-dressed. Everything about the ladies’ underwear store is saying to men that they are in a fancy, feminine, exciting place full of stuff that they’re going to get to touch later.

Now, for a moment, let us consider the men’s underwear section in your average department store: Almost without exception, it looks as though someone has set explosives at the base of some boxes full of Hanes, Joe Boxers, Fruit of the Looms, Tommy Hilfigers and Calvin Kleins, set the fuse, and then run like hell. Walking through it, you know that at some point it must have been organized — look, there are a couple of the same brand on the same shelf, and here you can see someone vainly tried to organize by size — but really, you’re on your own. What you need is there somewhere, it all costs pretty much the same, so just find your style and your size and get the hell out.

There is no magic, there is no mystery, there is no atmosphere. If you’re in a Wal-Mart, you’re lucky if there’s a medium size, for God’s sake. Underwear shopping for men carries absolutely no mystique, only a joyless trek to find what you need and then a cashier, as quickly as humanly possible.

So yesterday, as I awkwardly staggered through the mall and back to my car after way, way, way too much running, wasn’t I interested to observe that same lack of wonder in every woman trying to buy something from the lingerie store. What I didn’t see were women luxuriating in the lush, comfortable, feminine atmosphere as they considered their choice in undergarments; what I did see were half a dozen ladies (of all the categories I mentioned above, and then some), digging unenthusiastically through a bin promising so many bras at a volume discount, and another offering a similar deal on panties.

Some held a clutch of bras in their hands, rooting through the others in an effort to capitalize on the bargain; another hopelessly held a single pair of underwear, hoping to find a matching bra among the heap; still more just poked and prodded to see if there was anything worth serious investigation. Nobody was rubbing fabric or luxuriating in the sensual feel of satin, nobody was exploring the new comforts available through sexy new styles.

One girl put a bra on over her shirt, to check the size. That was about as hot as it got.

By this point you have probably realized that this analysis comes from more than a passing glance as I breezed by the local La Senza, and I admit that to be true. I had settled in on a bench, mostly because one of my calves really hurt, but also to take in the spectacle of the bra and panties sale. I wasn’t the only one: A small troupe of dazed, agonizingly bored husbands and boyfriends milled around the area, all similarly disillusioned. They spun their keys on their fingers, jingled their change in their pockets and stared off into space patiently, possibly enjoying a fond memory of a time when garments like thongs represented the absolute height of sex.

They seem to know what I suppose I should have all along: It doesn’t matter which supermodel is printed on what kind of sign, rummaging is rummaging. Rummaging is not sexy, it’s rummaging.

So much for relationship fantasies.