Prologue: The Mission. “What am I doing here,” I thought as I stole across the damp lawn, just before midnight. I crouched furtively by a large elm tree in the yard in order to get my bearings. I saw the front door. No apparent lights on inside.  I saw the shrubbery next to the door where I was hoping to find the pair of underwear I tossed earlier in the evening. Why was a pair of my underwear in the shrubbery of someone else’s house you ask? Why was I sneaking across someone’s lawn at midnight to retrieve them, you wonder? What kind of weirdo leaves his underwear in someone’s shrubbery you are no doubt pondering? Well, this moment was the culmination of a date that went horribly and terribly wrong. If you’ll indulge me, allow me catch you up…

Part One: The Exposition. It was the spring of 2000. I had just gotten out of the Navy the previous December, and had returned to my mother’s New Jersey home to start college. I didn’t know anyone, I was lonely, college my only social outlet. But it was strange and disconcerting to be a 25 year old in freshmen classes populated by 18 year olds. I didn’t find I had much in common with a typical 18 year old New Jersey college student. The only people I found my age were the non-traditional students in my Tuesday night Economics class. I was particularly taken by one young woman who sat catty-corner to me. She was 26, smart, pretty, and very outspoken. My kind of girl. I was hopelessly smitten. So I played it cool for a few weeks, casually chatting her up while we smoked cigarettes during the break for the 3 hour class. Finally, sometime in April, I asked her out.

Part Two: Laundry and Preparing for the Date. The day of the date I returned home early from classes, did laundry, and made reservations at a quaint restaurant on Lake Hopatcong. Doing the laundry was the first mistake I made, as will become abundantly clear later.

An hour before picking her up I showered and shaved. Shaving was the second mistake. I remember I had the radio on. I was dancing around in my towel to the Grateful Dead’s “Scarlet Begonias” in the still steamy bathroom, shaving cream smeared haphazardly across my face. Perhaps I should have cleared the mirror off better. Perhaps I should have taken my time. Perhaps, and this cannot be stressed more forcefully, I should not have been bopping around like a hyper-spazoid to Jerry G’s noodly guitar solo while I was attempting to shave the hair off my neck.

To wit: I nicked my neck with the razor right on my Adam’s apple, and it bled, and there is really no other appropriate phrase here, like a motherfucker. In a panic I began swabbing frantically at my neck with wadded up pieces of toilet paper, fleetingly thinking I might have severed my jugular from the amount of blood pumping out of my neck. The damage, of course, was a miniscule, barely noticeable nick on my neck, no bigger than a paper cut. And yet it continued to bleed as if I’d been slashed by a machete. I stood stupidly at the mirror futilely trying to get the bleeding to stop. After a while I noted the lateness of the time, applied a hand-sized slab of TP to the wound, and ran to the dryer to retrieve my clean clothes. I quickly dressed, stuffed a wad of extra TP into my pocket, and ran out of the house toward my date, and my destiny with failure.

Part Three: Bleeding and Finding My Underwear: In the car, on the way to her house, the TP on my neck had become thoroughly blood soaked. I dabbed at the cut with the extra TP. The bleeding had appeared to cease, and I drove on.

As I pulled into her driveway, I stole a glance in the rearview mirror and noticed that the cut had not actually stopped, and had in fact bled into the top of my t-shirt. “Damnit” I growled while I debated whether I would look dumber with a bloody t-shirt or a shirt buttoned all the way to the top. I opted to go open necked and just cop to cutting myself. Perhaps we could laugh about it, I thought as I walked to her front door.

I rang the door bell. I could vaguely see movement through the thick tempered decorative glass on the door. As I stood there waiting I felt something strange on my back foot. It felt as though my pants leg was tucked into my shoe. I lifted my leg and reached back to pull the pant leg out of my shoe when I felt something odd, something foreign; sadly it wasn’t my pant leg tucked into my shoe. And so I found myself standing at my date’s door holding a pair of my old ratty underwear from the Navy with my last name and the last 4 of my SSN stenciled in large capital letters across the threadbare waistband. My mind began making connections in the most drawn out way. I understood that something had gone wrong while doing laundry, that someone was fast approaching the door, and that I should have probably used more fabric softener in the wash. Damn static cling.

I know what you’re thinking: why did you chuck them in the shrubs? Why didn’t you shove them down your pants and discreetly ditch them later? I know. I’m with you. Believe me, I relived the moment a few times in the days and weeks that followed, rethinking my course of action, rethinking the wisdom of tossing them into the shrubs a few feet from her door. I don’t know what to tell you. She was at the door. I acted without thinking. I threw them into the shrubs, smiled weakly as she opened the door, and meekly asked, “You ready?”

Part Four: Dinner, More Bleeding, and the Loss of My Manhood: The rest of the night went downhill from there. Although it was dusk as we hit the road, I had turned on my headlights on the way, and stupidly forgotten to shut them off when we got to the restaurant. So while I obsessed and fretted about my still bleeding neck, and she picked absently at her Caesar’s salad, the battery in my little Ford Ranger slowly died. Nothing more needs to be said about dinner.

In the parking lot after dinner (there were, uh, no after dinner drinks) I received a jump start from an overly muscled Italian guy with stunningly spiked hair sporting leather pants, a wife-beater, and more jewelry than my mom wears. He literally spoke no words to me, instead directed all his attention to my date who to my shock and horror flirted back with him. For some reason I began sweating as if I’d just run a thousand miles. Any offence I took to the violation of my manhood and ego quickly dissipated as I perceived the situation for what it was. “Look at yourself,” I remember thinking, “you’re a douche bag, a loser. You’re bleeding, you’ve completely ignored your date, and you can’t even get her home.” In the end, I really couldn’t blame the guy, and I sure as hell couldn’t blame her.

Part Five: Home and Rescuing My Underwear:  Later, while driving home after dropping her off, my thoughts turned to the safe womb of home. Mom. Mom was there. There would be leftover arroz asopo. Perhaps a good movie on Turner Classic Movies. A soothing dram of B&B. And sleep. Sweet sleep to blot out my evening of utter failure and embarrassment…

“The underwear!” I exclaimed out loud some time later as I languished in front of the TV where Paul Newman challenged Minnesota Fats to one more game. “It has my fucking name on it!” I ran out the door in a panic, to the scene of the crime, only dimly sure of what I would do when I got there.

…And so now we find ourselves back at the beginning. Me, crouched stealthily behind the elm tree in my date’s yard, ready to dash to her door, to retrieve the errant underwear, and finally put this wretched night behind me. But before I can make my move, before I even consider making my move a light appears in the front of my date’s house and the door opens. “I can see you out there behind the tree,” came a voice from the opened door, “your piece of shit truck makes a racket.” I turn to look at my beleaguered truck parked conspicuously in front of her house. I was having muffler issues. Perhaps I should have parked around the block. “I’ve got your underwear you sick fucker!” She was now standing on her front porch, holding a plastic grocery bag containing my offending underwear. Sheepishly I trudged up to the porch to retrieve my skivvies. My mouth twisted open to explain that I was not really a sick fucker, that this was simply a horrible mistake, that really, I was just having an off night. But the words didn’t come. Where would I start? And would it really make any difference?  With bowed head I grabbed the plastic bag and got the hell out of there. Needless to say the next 4 Tuesday nights at class were awkward, and I have never been so happy to see a semester end. Seriously. I can’t be sure, but from the vibes I got I believe she told everyone in class of our date. I can only imagine what the story morphed into through second third and fourth hand tellings. I sometimes wonder if my tale has become something of an infamous urban legend around those parts of Jersey: the helpless, bleeding, underwear perv. If so, I hope my tale will serve as a cautionary tale to all you would-be beaus out there: be careful when you shave, and watch out for static cling.

Epilogue:  the ending of this story is ultimately happy. For various reasons I moved to Pennsylvania a few months later, started university here, and a year later met the woman who would ultimately become my wife. It goes without saying that our first date fared better: I got rid of all underwear with my name on it, and I quit shaving. Lessons learned. Lessons learned indeed.