Last night I did something I hate doing. I threw away a pair of boxers. Thankfully, this isn’t a “Patrick had an accident and had to cover his crime” story. This is a story about letting go. Now, try reading that sentence again without thinking “still sounds like he crapped his pants.” Maybe it can’t be done.
When I was twelve, I got my first pair of boxers. They were red. They were flannel and they were so long that they stuck out about three inches past my shorts – which is a hot look for a gay man in Provincetown, not a 12 year old on the monkey bars. 
I remember thinking I was cool because I was wearing something big kids wore. I even started saying things like “it lets my junk breathe” when I thought junk was a body part slightly above your knee cap.
Three years later, I once again was the pioneer in boxer wear by declaring myself an exclusive wearer of Calvin Klein brand boxers. Growing up in a small town in Vermont, this was unheard of. Calvin Klein? THE Calvin Klein? Patrick wears designer boxers? Did he have them imported? He must be a man about town, right?
My reasoning was simple; I thought that a pair of sleek, designer boxers would make girls look past the pre-pubescent face, the ever-so-often cracking voice, the jackal like giggling whenever someone said 69 and think “damn! That guy is someone I want to French kiss with my mouth!”
The problem with my Casanova below-the-pants plan was the issue of cost. My underwear used to come in packs of three and cost $6.99. When I told my mother that I would not accept anything to touch my down-unders-region unless it was $16 for a single pair of boxers she informed me she was no longer paying for my clothes.
Here I was, 15 years old and working part time to support my underwear habit. Soon my habit grew into an addiction and I noticed I would count down hours by what percentage of a pair of boxers they were. “It’s 12:30,” I’d say “that’s ½ a pair of boxers.”
One day, when I was shopping for a pair of boxers that would be for “more casual occasion,” I noticed they had Calvin Klein boxers in the little boys section. They looked the same as the adult boxers, but smaller and considerably cheaper. All I had to do was find a couple pairs of XXL and eureka, I had beaten the system. Or so I thought.
When I got home I found that there was one small difference between the boxers I had just purchased and adult boxers – the fly hole. On most boxers, there is a slit in the front to make peeing more convenient called the fly hole. The boxers I had bought had a fly hole, but it was considerably longer and wider due to the fact that most severely obese children (the people these boxers were intended for) don’t need to keep certain body parts from flopping out because they don’t have fully developed certain body parts that CAN flop out.
Still, almost 12 years later and I still wear them…until last night. Over the past dozen years, I’ve really grown – and by grown I mean “switched to boxer briefs.” The reason I’ve kept these boxers is for the same reason I keep boxers with holes and boxers with zero elastic, they keep me from doing laundry. So what if I’m walking down the hallway with a co-worker and say “whoops” for seemingly no reason. I can take a little “man overboard” action every so often if it will keep me from having to do laundry.
However, last night was the final straw. I realized that all the horrible hours at work should lead to something more than money. They should lead to respect and it’s impossible to respect yourself when you think to yourself “there’s some fat 8 year old wearing the same underwear as you right now.”
I took them off. I threw them in the trash.
Then I took them out thinking “maybe I’ll leave them in the drawer ‘just in case’” and then threw them out when I realized ‘just in case’ would have to involve random games of Patrick’s private’s peek-a-boo.
