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DIRTY PINK PANTHER UNDERWEAR:
A BRIEF STORY
by Hilda Winthrop

He: standing in front of his closet, looking . . . furtive. Nothing unusual there. It was just that same furtive look he seemed to think was symptomatic of a deeper feeling of persecution and paranoia but she thought for certain was just another of so many habits he seemed to have picked up from his dog. She: on the bed, mentally cataloguing his dog-habits, now that it had occurred to her. Was she just making it up, or did he tend to sniff-others, himself, his very dog-in an avid, unseemly way? And then she pictured him turning frantic circles on the futon before falling asleep. He hadn't actually done that-at least not in front of her-not yet-but she thought it was just a matter of time. The motherfucking dog.

And yet this was a different and more directed furtiveness. Yes, he was trying to hide something. It looked like a pair of boxer shorts; he was putting them on. Innocuous enough. Why would he be hiding a pair of boxer shorts when he had never bothered to put away that particular German porn video, evidently equal parts kitsch and (what is German for "kink"? Maybe kink is a German word) kink, that was stashed alongside several others (no identifying labels) in that piece of furniture his television sat on, the kind of piece of furniture that doesn't even have a name but is just something your television sits on. She said, "Those are sexy. Where'd you get them? Don't hide them! I told you they were sexy." Maybe he'd fall for it. She was curious and it was worth a try. He looked at her, uncertain whether she meant it or was just mocking him (the latter, and that she did mean-but she was just mocking, not mean, or, when she was mean she didn't mean it), and burrowed a little deeper into the closet. ("Ah, the old closet ploy, I do enjoy a good closet ploy.") Looking like the flat-chested girls in 6th grade gym class (there were lots of them; she was one, but every one of them thought she was the only one), hiding their not-there tits behind locker doors or facing into the dark, smelly corner of the locker room to pull their t-shirts (regulation: heather blue, white trim) over their heads. Wimpy-ass motherfucker. She wanted him to just be a man and turn the fuck around. "No, really, I want to see them. I am sure that, whatever they are, you'll look sexy in them 'cause you are so sexy." C'mon and just show her the goddamned underwear motherfucker 'cause she's getting bored with this.

Finally, just as she was about to go back to her dog-human-dog game, he turned around. And they were boxer shorts, yes indeed. But they were not just any boxer shorts, oh no. They were something akin to what we used to call "Underoos." (She remembered having the Wonder Woman ones as a kid. But now playing kick-ass New York Amazon required appallingly expensive foreign-bought underthings (never domestic: she was vain, but only as a hobby). A work colleague had recently told her that there was lots of B&D/S&M in Wonder Woman-hell, kink is all around us-and in particular that in early comic books Wonder Woman was rendered powerless if a man held her bullet-deflecting wonderbracelets together. All very, "tie me up, baby, with my golden lasso of truth and then fuck me so hard I forget all about Amazonia.")

So there it was: he was wearing Pink Panther Underoos. And muttering something about having to do laundry, not wanting to "waste" his proper, adult underwear on laundry day. She wasn't following his logic, such as it was, because she was focused on the Pink Panther, and what he held in his inspector-panther paw and where it was pointing. Unmistakably it was a magnifying glass, and unmistakably it was pointed right at his cock. Not very flattering, that. "Nice. Sexy. Where'd you get them?" He said guess. "Your ex-wife." No, for once that was not the answer, although she'd learned it was a good one, just like how on Jeopardy if they ask you a question about British politics your chances would be pretty good if you named this one British prime minister whose name she . . . could not . . . quite remember. ("What is, the ex-wife, Alex?") She was out of guesses after that. Anyway she was pretty sure he had bought them himself. Maybe they sold Underoos right up by the counter at the German porn video store, like candy at the supermarket, beckoning to impulse purchasers: Let the pink pussy investigate you with his magnifying glass. Inspector Clouseau is on official police business. "My fucking mother." Ah-ha. And now the little magnifying glass reflected a vast Oedipal nightmarescape visible, without magnification, to her naked eye. She didn't feel like thinking about it. What now then? The old take-off-all-the-clothes ploy? Or would that too be wasted right now? Well. She thought for a moment.

There is a time and a place for everything, Kato. This is it.