by Kevin Keck
Her drawer was a cornucopia of undergarment fashion, running from standard cotton whites to a pair of crotchless red lace. Not being terribly familiar with women's underwear on a one-to-one basis, the reason for such panties' existence completely eluded me at the time. My first thought was that this variety of underwear was designed to allow hassle-free urination in real clutch situations. After all, my mother would complain about the length of the women's restroom line whenever we went someplace public, so I could imagine instances where speed was a valued commodity.
I took off my shorts and stepped into the crotchless red panties, putting them on over my white briefs. Their purpose became immediately self-evident. I looked at myself in the mirror: a thin, thirteen-year-old boy in briefs and red lace crotchless panties. I didn't feel strange seeing myself like that, and that fact — along with the purchase of an Amy Grant album in 1990 — haunts me to this day.
The afternoon before my neighbors returned, I dumped all of Gina's underwear out on the bed and rolled around naked in it, stroking myself. I was careful to put everything back in a way that revealed as little as possible, but nonetheless, that was the only time I was ever asked to house-sit. For years, I thought nothing of it, until I realized that I had been quite liberal with their petroleum jelly and lotion, and that I always cleaned up with their towels, then disposed of them in the laundry hamper without washing them.
For years after my week in the Xanadu of my neighbors' house, I didn't have many opportunities to ravish unattended lingerie. On the few occasions when I did have unrestricted access to various apartments and houses, it was usually for the purposes of pet-sitting, and the delicates in question either belonged to grandmotherly types or women who held no allure for me.
When I was a senior in high school, I broke down and asked my girlfriend for a pair of panties. To my surprise, she readily consented. But when I was alone with my bounty at the end of the night, I found myself totally uninterested in what I had coveted for so long. A week after she gave them to me, I was at her house swimming. When I went inside to use the bathroom, I slipped into her older sister's room, shut the door behind me, found her underwear drawer, knelt before it and masturbated. (It was fortunate that the drawer's height was simpatico with my peculiar necessity to be on my knees while I flog myself).
I came in less than thirty seconds, then realized, after the fact, that I had soiled several of her panties. It would have been too risky to throw them all in the laundry, so I mixed things up in the drawer a bit. That seemed to make the scene of the crime look more or less normal, but the drawer's contents still smelled like come. I swore that if I didn't get caught, I would never violate a woman's space like that again.
I kept that promise until I was in grad school. My upstairs neighbor, Holly, was the most heavenly of all God's creatures, and although she and I became good friends, that's all it was ever going to be. I knew this because she told me, "Keck, I would never fuck you. I just couldn't take it seriously." I had heard that before, and prior experience had prepared me for spending weekends with the object of my affection while she pined away for one joker or another.
I don't know why I snapped with Holly. I suppose it had to do with her taking a shower while I was sitting in her apartment watching Under Siege 2. On the way to the bathroom, she walked past the living room and told me to make myself comfortable; she was only wearing a towel, and I could see the double crescent of her ass peeking from under the hem.
After I suspected Holly was in the shower and unlikely to know what I was doing, my first instinct was to fall to my knees and masturbate. There was a bottle of lotion on the coffee table, a roll of paper towels by the television. Every single prop I needed was in place, and for some reason I stopped. I stood up, walked to the bathroom door, listened for her movements. Then I went back down the hallway to Holly’s bedroom.
My hands were shaking as I opened and closed her drawers, searching for the right one. (Naturally, it was the last one I opened.) The first thing I saw was a pair of undies with a fruit print. I started to grab those but hesitated; clearly they were atypical. The rest of the drawer held standard black lace, cotton whites, some tasteful and understated designer numbers. I was somewhat disappointed, but that didn't change the fact that I had a tremendous, throbbing erection.
Suddenly I couldn't hear the shower running. I grabbed a pair of beige Calvin Klein’s and headed back to the TV. Just as I reached the hallway and was stuffing her panties into my pocket, the bathroom door opened. I stopped in my tracks and turned to the wall, facing a poster that was one of those 3-D puzzles that one has to solve by going cross-eyed.
"What are you doing?"
I didn't answer her right away, trying instead to get my breathing under control. I focused intensely on the eye puzzle.
"I'm trying to solve this puzzle," I said.
"Haven't you already done that?"
I had already solved it, the very first night I had ever been in her apartment. She had caught me red-handed.
"Oh, right," I blurted. "Well, actually, I heard the shower stop, and I was waiting for you to come out, because I need to take a leak."
I pushed past Holly and into her bathroom without waiting for a response.
Once I was in the bathroom, I leaned back against the door and steadied myself. My right hand was still thrust in my pocket, disguising the bulge of wadded-up underwear. They appeared to be some sort of polyester blend — definitely not silk, but still marginally sexy to the touch. Without thinking, I fell to my knees, took out my cock, wrapped the underwear around it, and made perhaps six full strokes before I came all over them.
It wasn't until that particular moment that I fully considered the consequences of my actions: I had transgressed against the cosmos by failing to abstain from defiling other people's underwear. I was going to pay, and I knew that the impending calamity would be brutal in its scope.
I had to try and reverse my actions, make things right with the world. I quickly resolved that I would wash the underwear, and then just as stealthily as I had ganked the Calvin’s, I would return them to their rightful place. No harm, no foul.
I stuffed the sticky panties in my pocket and left the bathroom. Holly called out from her bedroom:
"Come back here and tell me how this skirt looks."
Because she had been candid about the fact that we would never copulate, Holly somehow thought that I wouldn't lie to her about how she looked. (Apparently because there was no ultimate payoff for me.)
She was standing in her walk-in closet, looking in the mirror.
"Well?" she said.
I looked her up and down. Then, I noticed them: Lying at her feet was a pair of black underwear that hadn't made it into her clothes hamper. My heart began to palpitate. I had never gotten my hands on panties that were fresh from the field. Since I had made an arrangement with my conscience to right my early wrongs, I decided that another pair wouldn't hurt.
"I don't know. It seems a bit tight. Can you move freely in it?"
"I guess so."
"There's no time for guessing, Holly. There's nothing more silly-looking than a girl who's bound too tightly in her skirt. Walk to the end of the hallway and back to be sure."
My reasoning was absurd, but Holly was just insecure enough to buy it. She left her bedroom, taking longer strides than usual. I pounced on the panties lying in the closet and plunged them into my vacant pocket. When she returned, I was standing casually by the bed, examining a copy of Self magazine.
"You're right," she said. "It is too tight."
When I was finally alone in my own apartment, I closed all the blinds and pressed Holly's worn panties to my face. They smelled musky. I examined them closely: the crotch held the unmistakable residue of dried vaginal secretions. Oh, it was too much! I was delirious, and for a second time that night I fell to my knees and masturbated. This time, however, I pressed the scented underwear to my face, while my first catch of the evening bore witness to a second c
oming. When I finished, I pledged to swear off women's underwear. I placed the profaned panties in the bottom drawer of my nightstand and forgot about them for a month.
My apathy in returning Holly's underwear was, more or less, due to my inability to figure out a way to replace them without being caught. I had read enough Agatha Christie in my youth to know that criminals are often apprehended when returning to the scene of the crime. I finally realized what I had to do: wait until she put a load of laundry in the washer (which was in the basement of our building), slip in after she had gone back to her apartment, and put her underwear in the wash. That's precisely what I did. I surmised that Holly would be none the wiser, and all would be right with the universe.
After I made the drop-off, I sat in my apartment, relieved that I had finally rid myself of the horrible albatross of Holly's underwear. I was certain that I had desecrated my last piece of ladies' apparel, and I was grateful to whatever forces of nature allowed me to escape discovery. Then came the knock on my door.
When I opened it, Holly was standing there, and she thrust the evidence of my betrayal in my face. I was mortified.
"The most fucked-up thing just happened!" she said. "I've been missing these panties for weeks. I mean, I've been looking for them everywhere, because they go with two of my favorite bras, and when I took my laundry out, there they were. What the fuck do you make of that?"
I studied her face; she didn't seem accusatory, just genuinely puzzled.
"It must be static cling," I said. "It is winter."
Holly seemed relieved by this, as if she had imagined that some creep was invading her laundry and having his way with her delicates. She started up the stairs toward her apartment, and I pretended not to notice that a thong was about to slip from her laundry basket.
Stranger that Friction
I'd quietly been denying for months that something was wrong — bad wrong — with my wiener. The problem was that it was beginning to look just like an actual wiener — not the smooth, fresh, glistening Ball Park frank that causes one to salivate even before you've slipped it from the package and onto the grill, but that off-brand hot dog of dubious origins that becomes wrinkled and leathery if microwaved for too long.
Most men would have carted themselves down to the emergency room at the first sign of an affliction like mine, but my penis had endured plagues far worse than this. As an adolescent, I once made the mistake of masturbating with Pert shampoo and then watched with horror as my wang shed its skin for three days. Fortunately, my terror turned to delight when my member ultimately emerged as immaculate as it was in my infancy — only bigger. Once you've seen that — and admittedly, it happened more than once; I'm not very quick when it comes to cause/effect relationships — it takes something more than a weird little dermatological problem to spur you toward the assistance of a medical professional.
But then came the spots, itchy and inflamed. What's worse, it felt goddamned great to scratch them. Soon, no woman would come within twenty yards of my raw, exposed member. I couldn't blame them — I wanted to distance myself from the diseased dick as well.
At the onset of my condition, I was still dating a woman named Marissa. I managed to conceal things from her pretty easily. Because I'm not overly fond of blow jobs, most of our sexual activity took place in areas that were lit "romantically." One evening, though, I stepped out of the shower while Marissa was in the bathroom. She grabbed my dick and squatted before me, then looked up with alarm. "What the fuck? Is this normal?"
"Yes. I think the stubble from your bikini line irritated me somehow."
Marissa held my penis in her hand for a moment, staring at it like a ceramics project gone awry. Then she said, "No. Nope," stood up, and walked back into the bedroom. Her phone calls dwindled after that. I spent many lonely hours trying to convince myself it was coincidence.
Simply put, my fear of doctors prevailed over my fear of my penis turning black and falling off. I believed that things would simply clear up within a few weeks. Of course, "things" didn't clear up, but only varied in intensity and type.
At the doctor's office, a young receptionist with red hair and excellent dental coverage smiled at me while updating my insurance information. I shamelessly gawked at her cleavage as I accepted the paperwork.
"You look very healthy," she said. When I assured her that I was quite healthy, she smiled some more.
When my doctor came into the examination room, he looked as though he was in a tremendous hurry. Most of our previous meetings had been brief, with an exam and a prescription delivered in less than five minutes. Before I could even begin to tell him my troubles, he said, "I've been on call all week, and I can't even tell if I'm still awake. These assholes at the nursing home are killing me." He pursed his lips and produced a lukewarm smile. "So what's up with you?"
I took a moment to collect myself, exhaled deeply, then stood up and walked across the room toward the door. When I reached it, I turned around and went back to the examination table.
The doctor raised his eyebrows.
"Did you hear that?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. "Is that coming from where I think it is?"
"Yes."
"How long?"
"For a while now."
He pursed his lips again and made a small praying motion with his hands. "Well, you're getting older. Your knees and ankles will begin to pop like that, especially if you're sedentary. Get some more exercise. How's everything else? You look a little pale." He began to feel my glands and take my pulse.
"Everything else is good," I said. "Real good. Well, there was one thing I was wondering about. I've got this. . . I don't know . . . rash."
He frowned and began to wash his hands without saying a word. While the doctor turned his back to retrieve a pair of latex gloves, I unbuckled my belt and dropped my pants. I was nervous, and the room was cold: there were few combinations more ill-suited for baring one's penis. I imagined my doctor going home to his wife that night and saying, "You should have seen it today, honey! That older Keck boy has a penis like a peanut!" He was only my doctor, but I didn't want to go down in his personal lore as the man with the curiously shrunken dick. In the place where I live, things like this have a way of making themselves public: notes on charts fall under the eyes of chatty medical assistants, and suddenly every one in town knows that Skip Edwards has only one testicle. I'd also heard horror stories from friends who had gone for ambiguous tests: cotton swabs attached to long metal rods plunged into the urethra, tissue samples snipped from the foreskin. There was no way this could have a happy ending.
When my physician turned around, he stared at my groin and said:
"Good lord."
Normally, I'm delighted with this type of reaction. I have a tall and thin build, and people seem to expect my penis to reflect my delicate stature. However, the doctor's face didn't relay admiration. In fact, it didn't even register as being the face of a calm, indifferent medical professional. It bore a look of genuine horror.
After he snapped on his gloves, the doctor kneeled and grabbed my dick as if it were a fraternity brother he hadn't seen in twenty years. He squeezed and pinched my testicles and shaft for several seconds, then took a bit of foreskin between his index finger and thumb and held my rod as though it were a dead mouse his cat had left on the doorstep. With his free hand, the doctor poked a few areas, then let my damaged dick drop back into its preferred left-leaning hang.
He shook his head. "What the hell did you do to this thing?"
It was the first time I had heard a physician refer to a portion of my anatomy in the same manner someone might address a mangled used car. "Nothing out of the ordinary," I said, though his look indicated that I had done something quite extraordinary.
"What do you masturbate with?" He had a notepad out and was poised for my answer.
"My hand." I thought this was fairly obvious, but recalling several experiences with child-safety flotation devices in my teenage years, I understood
the necessity of his question.
The doctor shook his head again. "No, what sort of lubrication do you use? Anything unnatural?"
And here I pulled my pants back on, cleared my throat and looked shamefully at the floor as I recounted nearly eighteen years' worth of the various products applied to my penis. Vaseline, lotions of all sorts, K-Y Jelly, baby oil — these items didn't even cause the good doctor to raise an eyebrow. It was when I rattled off the litany of shampoos and soaps, cooking oil, motor oil, 3-in-1 oil, toothpaste, Neosporin, Smuckers Apple Jelly, Vicks VapoRub, Papa John's garlic-butter sauce, Chapstick, sunblock, Hawaiian Tropic Tanning Oil, Old Spice, butter, and margarine (for what it's worth, margarine most definitely holds up better than butter). Many of these items I used more than once, but the ice cream resulted in such a catastrophic mess that I must strongly discourage its use.
When I was finished, the doctor merely looked at me and blinked. I looked away and tried to imagine what med-school course could have prepared him for this.
Seconds passed in silence. "Don't touch yourself for three weeks," he said. "Never use anything but Vaseline or K-Y when you do masturbate, and consider yourself lucky."
"Lucky?" My voice rose to a falsetto.
The doctor rubbed the bridge of his nose in a manner I found painfully familiar. I often did the same thing when I was forced to explain something quite simple to one of my particularly dense students. "Do you remember what you just told me? You've put chemicals that were meant for automobiles and cooking on the most sensitive part of your body. When you die, you should have it cut off and sent to a research lab."
It was what I always wanted to hear: my penis was a marvel fit for serious scholarly research. But it was a bittersweet revelation. My little man would end up in the mason jar reserved for freakish wonders, not the decanter marked "Huge Discovery." It was more likely to find its way into the gawkish halls of a Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum than the Smithsonian.
