By the time I cut a jagged path through the swarms of Sunday shoppers just inside the H&M echo chamber, I was no longer myself. I was a monster – squirming and slinking and grunting my way through the colonies of shopping bags. Andrew trailed behind me, offering tactical advice, yelling above the dim of jabbering women – ‘cut left!’ ‘hang on!’ ‘head for the escalator!’ – all six feet and eight inches of him trying desperately to find the men’s section – parting the shopping masses like the waves off an ocean-liner. Andrew is a good man to have in a crowd: the eye in the sky, the periscope.

“I think it’s downstairs,” he said, his enormous hand falling on my shoulder, angling me toward the escalator.

“I hope you’re right,” I said, as we pushed onto the escalator, sandwiched between these clusters of crazed, sale-struck women, all beaming with those blackmarble orgasm eyes, the kind that can slice a man in half. The amusement of Sunday shopping in SoHo was long past. “I think I’m having a breakdown Andrew.”

As we descended through the glass and polished chrome displays I began to grow dizzy and flushed. We were packed so tight that I had to breath very shallow. I could feel the atoms popping like pinballs in the powdered, perfumed bodies which surrounded me – trillions and trillions of them – all cranked up to high, all ready to pounce on the nearest clearance rack. There was the sense that reason was gradually jiggling loose from its mooring on the calm shores of sanity, and I was left with only one conclusion. If provoked, these women were ready to shut the whole fucking place down, like a prison riot.

The situation might have turned into one of those awful things at any moment, those freak accidents. My mind began to drift with the current of disaster: 40 Killed In Escalator Collapse. Escalator Rage In SoHo. Irate Shopper Stabbed 37 Times With High Heels. The Great H&M Riots of ’04.

I gripped the rubber handrails for support and tried to ignore the sea of shoppers spilling out onto the bottom floor: “Can it really be so fucking hard to find a pair of men’s underwear for under twenty dollars in SoHo?”

“You know,” Andrew said. “You should really try Century 21 next time. That’s where I get all my underwear. That place rules.”

It made me want to cry. If he only knew what I’d gone through in the past hour! Andrew, I wanted to say: Save Yourself! Run Away!

But this was Andrew’s maiden voyage today and I was hesitant to crush his spirits so quickly. He’d met up with Christina and I only moments before, on the street corner. I knew I was a bastard for dragging him into what had now become a three-person underwear expedition, but Andrew is the kind of guy who can get things done: hearty, forthwith – the kind of guy you want on your side. Not like me – hapless me. Me, who gets dizzy riding on escalators. Me, who takes his girlfriend underwear shopping on a beautiful Autumn afternoon. What kind of man am I?

“The men’s section should be just downstairs,” he said, so sunny and optimistic that for moment he infected me with this beautiful, mirage-like image: a mountain of bargain undies, just below.

There was no getting around it: I needed underwear. I needed it so bad that I wasn't even wearing any. I was free-balling. It's true, I didn't have to do it. I had a few pairs – the older, rattier ones – sitting in my top drawer, but I needed something to keep me vigilant, because buying underwear is one of those things I don't really think about until it's too late. And now, little by little, my jeans were beginning to chafe the insides of my thighs; indignation was beginning to chafe the pride in my heart.

Of course, deep down I had already whiffed something of the disappointment that awaited us at the bottom of the escalator. H&M was the last resort in a long line of failed attempts to find some underwear in SoHo. By this time, I was running solely on the perverse desire to witness my own defeat.

Christina and I had already scoured five or six places along Broadway, dodging and swerving and hustling our way toward that little plastic display case where every store keeps the men’s underwear, with no luck. Frankly, it was humiliating. Not only had I dragged my lovely girlfriend out underwear shopping with me – but I had failed. And this was the only errand I had set out to accomplish all weekend.

I can only imagine her thoughts as I stood, wincing incredulously over the umpteenth box of Ralph Lauren’s or Polos, repeating the same phrase over and over: “Twenty dollars for one pair of underwear? Who charges twenty dollars for a single pair? That’s absurd! Can you believe this? Twenty dollars? Don’t they have any Hanes in this place?”

After the fourth round of this, Christina’s face had permanently hardened into a solemn gaze. But I couldn’t blame her. I could see my life force weakening, see my resolve turning to putty. I set the box down and pinched the bridge of my nose. How did it all get so complicated? I wondered.

“Maybe on the way home we should just go to Marshall’s on 125th ,” she said. “They’ll probably have Hanes there.”

“I really don’t know. Fuck it, maybe I should just get some here, what the hell right?” I said, throwing caution to the wind.

“Well, you could.”

“But then again, I don’t know. What would you do? I mean, how much does women’s underwear usually cost? Is it normal to pay twenty dollars for a single pair?”

“I’ll be outside,” she said.

Woe is the man who cannot buy his own underwear, for he is truly unfit for modern life. I began to think on this as I Pac-manned aimlessly around the store. Was it really so surprising that a guy like me was unfit for life’s minor travails? I’d purchased underwear twice, maybe three times, in my entire life. Like Santa Clause’s gifts and the Easter Bunny’s candy and the Tooth Fairy’s dollar bill – new underwear was just another mysterious package that appeared out of nowhere for boys like me.

I’d never even thought about it before, but my whole underwear evolution was silently guided by my mother. It was always the last gift under the tree, an afterthought, slipped in at the last moment. I suddenly saw my whole life in underwear fan out before me, from Underoos (2-5 yrs.) to briefs (5-12) to boxers (12-23) and finally to boxer briefs (23- present) – my mother was always there, just off to the side, stuffing my bureau with the underpants of her choice, and I’d never so much as lifted a finger to stop her. But should I have? Was buying my own drawers so important in my emotional development that I needed to take a stand earlier?

And then, as I approached the street, it all came crashing down. I realized why I’d brought my girlfriend with me underwear shopping in the first place – why I had the nerve, not only to subject her to this Sunday shopping madness in SoHo, but to whine and brood about it. Because, despite having worn a pair nearly every day of my entire life, I was still an underwear novice, and underwear idiot – I was underwear impaired. Any accomplishment I may have boasted; any length I may I have traveled, it all seemed so paltry now, because even from 2,000 miles away, my mother still knew what kind of underwear I was wearing, and that was the true humiliation. I was not a man, I was a Momma’s Boy, and this was the Momma’s Boy Lament.



Back on the escalator with Andrew, things were much the same as we continued our descent. We’d lost Christina to a window display of shoes on the way in, and now it was just the two of us, squashed onto the escalator of indignity – the only men as far as the eye could see.

“Are you sure there even is a men’s section at H&M?” I asked. The bottom floor spread crept into view as we neared the bottom.

“Of course there’s a men’s section!” Andrew scoffed. “I mean, there has to be a men’s section at H&M. It’s not the Dress Barn for God’s sake.”

We stole across the floor, dodging between racks of cardigans and sweaters, hoping against hope. But apparently there was no men’s section. For a few bewildering moments we just stood among the women’s panties, staring blankly at our reflections in the funhouse hall of mirrors.

“That’s so weird,” Andrew said. “I swear there was a men’s section last time I was here.”

Crushed, we loped toward the up escalator, and eventually found our way to the street. Christina was leaning against the building, flipping through a magazine.

“Find anything?” she asked.

“There’s no men’s section,” I said. “What kind of place doesn’t have a men’s section? Shouldn’t they at least post a sign or something?”

“I didn’t think so,” she said. “The H&M on 125th is all women’s too.”

I caught a glance of the window displays as we started back down Broadway. They were packed full of female mannequins, all dressed and posed in the latest women’s Fall fashions, with piles of fake Autumn leaves tossed around.

“Next time you should really try Century 21,” Andrew said. “That’s where I get all my underwear.”

“Or Marshall’s,” Christina said. “Marshall’s would have them.”