One Page #2

I found her in just her boxer shorts. She wore them to bed, but later, when we were sleeping together, I found out that she wore them all the time. I had never slept with a girl who wore boxer shorts. Her favorites were green with yellow alligators. She did laundry often just so she could wear this pair more often. They were wearing thin along the waist and now, when we go shopping together, I always look to see if I can find a replacement pair. But I never have. I feel like I am disappointing her. I wonder how she would feel if I wore boxer shorts. I had a butch friend who refused to date a girl if she, too, wore boxers. I wondered if this butch was the same way. I looked into her eyes to see if she had the same hardness that my butch friend had, but she didn’t. She was all soft, all around her edges. I didn’t think she would mind. I had never worn boxers, and the next time she went out, I tried them on. Not the green ones with alligators, but a pair of blue ones with orange pinstripes. Those were my favorites. I liked the contrast between blue and orange, it reminded me of the color wheels I had to paint in art class back in high school since blue and orange are opposites on the color wheel. I took off all of my clothes, stripping myself of my white cotton panties, and I pulled on the boxers. The elastic waist snapped against my skin. The clung tighter to my waist and then fell lose around my thighs. They covered the birth mark on my upper right thigh that looked like a brown squiggle, like chocolate sauce that had been dropped on my leg. It had repulsed my first girlfriend. That is how I knew I didn’t love her. When she broke up with me, I told her that I hated her for hating my birth mark. She said it was the ugliest thing she had ever seen and walked out the door. I never saw her again, until geometry class the next day. She changed seats and sat on the other side of the room. We never spoke again. I wished we hadn’t been in high school, then I never would have seen her again. At prom she didn’t have a date, and I did, and I laughed at her and while dancing I thought about scraping the thorn of the rose I wore in my lapel all the way down her arm, leaving a mark that would last forever. I thought of all the blood and how it would stain her white tuxedo shirt that the boys made fun of her for. I back to the mirror where I could see my hairy white legs covered only by the lose cotton boxers. I liked them. I put my hands on my hips and held in the extra weight that I carried there, and I held in my stomach, and I almost felt like a boy. But not quite.