Bad Underwear Days

Two days ago I remembered I had green eyes. That's a weird thing to remember. I was in the restroom in the library washing my hands, and I looked in the mirror and it was like I had been wearing sunglasses for a long time, and was used to seeing myself that way, and I just took them off. Whenever anyone asks the, "What's your favorite body part" question, I always say my eyes, even though it sounds sappy, because it's true, and I'm proud of them, and my mom had green eyes and everyone who knew my mom always says that I have her eyes. I've noticed that whenever I'm conscious of my eye color that my eyes always feel very kind, and I like looking at people with kind eyes. What's it like for Dad whenever he looks at my eyes and sees Mom?

The urinals in the creative writing building stick out too far. They look like malformed toilets stuck to the wall. They look like they want to be sat on. See the problem with a Very Large Urinal is that you have to stand very far back from it, which leads to Exposure, which is a problem when you take a piss next to Tobias Wolff. This happened. I didn't look down at his junk, and he didn't look down at mine, but you can't help but see a flash of skin when you're both standing two feet from a wall aiming into what might as well be a toilet stationed a million miles away. This is the problem with Very Large Urinals.

Speaking of Tobias Wolff's penis, I've actually seen it before. Swimming. I had just swam at the Avery Aquatics Center and I was getting dressed when Tobias Wolff came in and changed in that unselfconscious way that older men do. I can do that now, change unselfconsciously. It's something I learned in College. Because it's just skin anyway, and everyone's naked under their clothes, and who cares. The point is, I didn't look or anything but there it was, and it reminded me that writers are Human Beings too and they just happen to be good at writing, and that was what I like to call a Nice Realization.

I like Good Underwear Days. These exist. They are days when you decide you will wear one of your sexiest, best-fitting, most arresting pairs of underwear. On Good Underwear Days you feel sexy all day and you know that no matter what situation you get into—namely, situations with little clothing—you'll be able to drop your pants and put your hands on your hips and thrust out your pelvis and say, "Look at me, don't I look nice?"

Similar to Good Underwear Days are what I like to call Bad Underwear Days or, if you'd rather, a B.U.D. for short. On a B.U.D. (usually the last day before laundry, or on a day you feel under the weather, or on a day you just want to feel unsexy for whatever reason), you wear that one pair of underwear that doesn't fit well and maybe has holes and is most likely threadbare and Depressing. The problem with B.U.D.s is that, for one, you go around feeling unsexy all day. No one can see your underwear and you know that but you can tell that, somehow, they sense it, they sense your threadbare underwear and now there's no way in hell they'll give you the time of day. The other problem with B.U.D.s is that sometimes on this day you run into a situation where you really, really wish you had decided to make it a Good Underwear Day. Have you ever avoided a sexual situation because you were having a Bad Underwear Day? I hope I never do. I think I probably have.

I want to have so many good pairs of underwear that every day is a Good Underwear Day.