It's a little embarrassing, but it happens. You can’t seem to find your underwear after a tryst. You call your beau and ask if he knows what happened to them, and with a grin you can see through the phone, he goes into detail on how he hi-jacked your panties into his pant pocket after removing them from you. No big deal, so you think, since you'll be seeing your man again soon. The problem arises when your guy acts like a confused a-hole out of the blue, playing dumb about the relationship. Like one of those old man moments, where they deny being at fault for getting lost on a road trip, when they're the ones sitting in the driver's seat. And you realize you won’t be seeing the dip sh*t again—ever.
This is when you start to feel a little bit of a panty withdrawal, amongst other pangs of hurt, as if they were a pet you had to leave behind in the breakup. Thoughts run wild through your brain to disguise the hurt you have from the guy’s actions: “Those were my favorite pair! It's so hard to find underwear with no seams, creates no muffin top, that can go under clothes so perfectly like that pair!” Frustration starts to build, as you begin to realize how much you actually were into the guy and had no idea he would end up behaving like a confused little boy in college. This further feeds into your panty withdrawal, making it that much worse. Thinking of your favorite underwear now just some meaningless 'souvenir' in his possession, never to be seen again, maybe just willy-nilly thrown out with the kitchen garbage, felt symbolic and burned at the core.
I must admit having such a hostage situation takes the steam out of feeling depressed by the true issue at hand of being poorly treated by an ex-lover. So, you decide to take a stand for yourself. You coolly call up your ex and request the panties back, since why have a perfectly good pair of hard-to-find panties be thrown out along with the budding relationship?
The only thing is that, you make that call without realizing the repercussions. The minute you start talking to the guy, you realize that maybe you ventured into getting your underwear as a ploy to see him again to maybe jolt some sense into him and “win him over.” Or you start feeling yourself have this anger over ever meeting him to begin with. Or both.
The live-and-learn moment to it all? It is far better to let the guy keep your underwear. What’s done is done. Trying to jump-start a dialogue with someone who is confused about his life and actions is like trying to do sign language with a blind person. Bottom line being, you can get your underwear back all you want, but it certainly won’t be the victory you thought it would be. In fact, it will be the exact opposite. You won't even want to wear the underwear anymore because it reminds you of the a-hole guy and being duped by him. You [wrongly] think you can "re-train" your association with the underwear, and "wash that man right out" of your underwear by wearing them out to new places and on new dates, but to no avail. When really, the best panty withdrawal victory is for him to come across them again, being the 'souvenir' they were meant to be.
Originally published in In the Scene Magazine. (No longer in circulation.)
