The French Underpants Incident
The Autumn issue of The Hot Air Quarterly comes out this week. It’s posted on the Shasta County Arts Council website, or if anyone wants to e-mail me at keswickhouse@earthlink.net, I can send you a pdf. Hard copies are being distributed at the Shasta County Arts Council, the Redding Library, and Sue’s Java Cafe.
The above photo graces the cover of this issue; it was taken by the incredibly talented Julia Coburn, who is Photo Editor for the national online news magazine Salon.com. She is also the winner of several international awards in underwater photography (a first, second, and third place in the 2002 Northern California Underwater Photography Society’s International Photo Competition). If you would like to check out more of her scrumptious work, please visit http://www.sockeyestudios.com/coburn/.
Here’s a teaser of the contents; additional info about the quarterly can be found in my post of August 22, 2008:
The French Underpants
by Halbert White
No sooner had I turned through the door to the breakfast room that morning than my father, sitting at the table, barked at me: “Hal!” in his sternest voice. Although my conscience was clear, I began to think I must be guilty of something. And then I saw them: fancy, frilly, sexy black underwear sitting incongruously on the breakfast table.
My mind began to race. Where did those come from? What was going on? Clearly, my dad was in a high puritan dudgeon about them. But what did this have to do with me? Marshalling my well-honed fifteen-year-old intellect, it was but the work of an instant for me to come back with the disarming reply, “Huh?”
“Your mother found these this morning, young man, under the front seat of the station wagon, which you took to the drive-in movies last night. What I want to know is how these” —here he tried but could not bring himself to brandish them at me, instead converting the move into merely a gesture of scathing indictment— “got there!”
At this, I breathed an inward sigh of relief. I was off the direct hook, although the indirect hook still loomed pointedly. My parents had indeed loaned me the station wagon to go to the drive-in the night before. It was a double date, and my good friend Regal had driven, since Regal was sixteen and had his driver’s license and I didn’t. And that meant that Regal and his date Brittany were in the front seat. I and my date were in the back seat. So whatever was in the front seat was looking more like Regal’s problem and less like mine—although, judging from the color of my dad’s face, even a small part of this problem was clearly not good.
“Well, Dad, Dorothy and I were in the back seat, so I don’t really have any idea about the front seat,” I mumbled. Pretty feeble, but a move in the right direction, nevertheless. Meanwhile, my brain was still moving at lightning speed, thinking, Could those really be Brittany’s? Regal, you dog! But how could those panties have come off? I knew Brittany was wearing panty hose, and just like my date and all the girls did then, she was probably also wearing one of those girdles capable of cutting off the blood supply of a teen-age boy’s hand in three seconds. To get to the panties, there would have had to have been some major movement in the front seat, and there wasn’t. Plus, wouldn’t Brittany have noticed something amiss when it was time go home? Wisely, I did not share these thoughts with the old man.
“So, Regal and Brittany were in the front seat?” The purplish tinges were disappearing from Dad’s face, but there was still plenty of good strong crimson. “I want you to call Regal right now and find out what he has to say for himself!”
I knew that if it wasn’t good, Dad would be speaking to Regal’s folks and I would not be double-dating with Regal again for quite a while.
But I called. That was an interesting conversation. “Hi Regal? This is Hal.” … “Did Brittany maybe leave some panties under the front seat of the car last night?” … “No, this isn’t a joke. My dad has these panties sitting right here on the breakfast table, and he’s pretty upset.” … “Yeah, I thought the same thing.” … “Hold on a sec.” I cupped my hand over the receiver.
“Dad, Regal swears that there is no way that those panties could possibly be Brittany’s.” Dad motioned for me to hand the phone to him. “Regal, my dad would like to talk to you,” I said, then handed the phone to my dad. He spoke to Regal gruffly, but was ultimately satisfied that Regal and Brittany were innocent. Which swung his attention back to me.
“Emily,” he called, bringing my mom into the proceedings, “how far under the front seat were these?” I saw in a flash where he was going with that. There was a good three-inch gap under the front seat, so something from the back seat could easily have ended up under the front seat. This was not looking good. Not good at all.
Just then, my thirteen-year-old sister walked through the door to the breakfast room. Taking in the tableau, she cried happily, “Oh, there they are—my French underpants!”
The French Underpants, Part Deux
by Celeste White
I used to think that memories existed intact, ready to be replayed in unchanging fidelity whenever I wanted to retrieve them. But I’ve since learned that this is not the way memory works. When our brain summons a remembrance, it snatches bits and pieces from hither and yon and reworks them into a brand new memory—one that looks, smells and feels just like the previous one. So I suppose it’s not surprising that memories from different people don’t match up over time. You’ve read my brother Hal’s tale of the errant French underpants. This is mine:
When I was thirteen, like all adolescent girls I knew in Kansas City, I took acrobatics lessons so that I could compete to be a cheerleader when I got to high school. In addition, I was on the swim team for the club my family belonged to. They didn’t call it ADHD back then, but I can only imagine that’s what I must have had, because if I wasn’t in constant motion sixteen hours a day, I went berserk, like a balloon with all the air escaping.
On this fateful day, I had a swim meet right after one of my acrobatics classes. The timing was very close, so I had to change in the car from my tights and leotard into my swimsuit. I stashed my clothes into my bag but missed my underpants in my haste. When I discovered them, my bag was all zipped up and we had arrived at the swim club where I was to compete, so I slipped the panties under the front seat, meaning to fetch them when my mom picked me up from the meet.
But after the meet, I was all charged up from the competition. Plus, I was thirteen. So I completely forgot about the panties. Now, if these underpants had been my usual cotton BWs, there wouldn’t have been a problem. But these were very special underpants. These were one of a set of three that my maiden aunts, Connie and Marion, had inexplicably sent me from Paris. These panties were sophisticated and sexy and elegant and grownup. I was thrilled, of course, a young girl teetering on the precipice of womanhood, to receive something so rich in feminine mystique. One pair was white, one was ivory, and one was black.
Well, a few days went by during which time I completely forgot about the underpants. But my father happened to reach under the seat at one point, felt something unexpectedly silky, grabbed them, and pulled them out. One thing you should know: My father was not simply conservative and strict. My father undoubtedly formed the template for which the Taliban decided their code of sexual conduct.
Another unfortunate coincidence: My older brother had used the car only two days before on a double date with friends from school. My dad was no dummy. He could put two and two together. Double date + sexy black panties under the front seat = heinously unacceptable behavior.
Given the fact that this whole misadventure apparently involved some kind of sexual misconduct, no one said a word to me about the whole episode at first, in order to preserve my innocence. I did notice that Hal seemed to be in the doghouse for some reason, which was unusual, and that the atmosphere at home was tense. But I’m guessing that perhaps Mom and Dad decided one day that I needed to get the “good girl” vs. “bad girl” lecture. And the sexy French panties incident must have seemed like an excellent springboard.
So one day my mom was driving me to my French horn lessons. A lull fell in our conversation, and she cleared her throat in the way she had of signaling that the ensuing topic was a serious one.
“I think you should know,” she said, her face grim and her lips pursed tight, “that after Hal had his double date with Regal, your father found a pair of black underwear underneath the seat of the car.” She paused to choose her next words for this delicate topic with care. But she—and I—got a reprieve.
“Oh!” I exclaimed. “Those are mine! I was wondering where they were!”
Her jaw dropped. “They’re yours?”
“Yeah, when I changed in the car for my swim meet—I forgot to put them in my bag.”
Her expression changed to one of vast relief. She was no doubt remembering the day I received the underpants from her sisters, not exactly approving but deferent to her older and more cosmopolitan sibs. Now she not only approved, she was thrilled that these were my panties.
And so was Hal!
Wednesday, November 12, 2008