It was another beautiful late summer day. We've really lucked out this summer. Temperature around seventy five at noon, a few small clouds snailing by, threatening nothing. I took my cheese crackers, pudding cup, bottle of water and a fifteen year old suspense novel outside to the building's picnic tables by the pond, under the large trees.
This is my daily lunch ritual, though most days I don't have a pudding cup, just the crackers. I sit in the shade, read a couple of chapters then stop ten minutes early to take a brisk walk to stir the circulation a bit before returning to the cube. As I exited the building I had to step around a couple of people, but only a couple.
There are large stone steps that lead down to a gravel path toward the tables. Sitting on one of the steps was a twelve year old girl. Actually she's probably in her mid twenties or older, but not much. I wouldn't have given it another thought other then the fact that she was sitting there bent forward talking on her cell phone. It's not the cell phone that drew my notice, those things are beyond ubiquitous. Her shirt had ridden up a bit and her jeans were pulling in the other direction, not much, but certainly enough. It was as if a universal guy alarm was going off:
THONG!!!!!!!!!!! THONG!!!!!!!!!! THONG!!!!!!
I looked around and noticed that a couple of other guys had seen/heard it as well. They didn't have to tell me as much, I could just tell by looking at what they were looking at. We nodded in silent acknowledgment of each other, but said nothing. Strangers, perhaps even workplace rivals in a spontaneous shared, unifying awareness. It was kind of like that cold, miserable Christmas day at the Battle of the Bulge in WW2. From all corners of all fronts there was an impromptu upwelling of simple Christmas song, sung in German and English in unison. No shots fired, simply a shared, almost magical moment that momentarily overshadowed all else.
I'm nobody's prude, nor do I feel it is any of my business to judge what another person's underwear choice is. This is America; I served proudly for nine years in this nation’s military precisely to protect a person’s right to choose their own underpants. Well, that among other things anyhow. Bottom line (snicker) is I simply don't care what a person wears under their pants. Nor am I offended or morally outraged when I happen to get a sneak peek occasionally. Hey, I'm a nice, decent guy, but I'm not dead yet.
There is a serious double standard that I will admit to though. I don't care to see ANY dude's underwear, at any time. I especially don't want to see three quarters of a pair of boxers above an impossibly low belt line as some of the kids are inclined to wear. That's just awful. However, if the ladies were to adopt that style I surely would not complain as much . I admit it; I'm still a bit of a chauvinist that way.
Be it as it may, I did notice the thong for a few seconds, and maybe again for a few more. This is not avoidable. I cannot speak for most men on many subjects so I can't say that we're all like this, but in casual conversations with the few guys I actually have ever casually conversed with, this seems to be nearly universal. If we can steal a peek at a lady's undergarment, very discretely of course, we will. We might feel guilty, we might not, either way we're going to look.
Ladies, please just accept this knowledge and do not hate us for it. It seems to be the way we are wired, we can't help it. The same goes for cleavage, but that's another story. Just know this, hate it if you like, but seriously just know this. If a lady's undergarment is visible, we will look. We will even enjoy looking. We didn't write this genetic mutation, we just exist within its stringent, incomprehensible boundaries.
Also ladies, don't take from this that we are necessarily interested in any shape or form in the actual person wearing the scanty threads. Just because we can see a thong, or an ample perky bosom, does not mean we care a wit about the lady displaying such things. Most likely once the chance viewing is over we will soon forget them entirely. We mean no harm nor do we necessarily desire them, love them, or dream of marrying them just because we smile when we see something we like to see. We're men, we are indeed ‘pigs’, this should not be news to you.
Back to the thong episode. As with many other unimportant, trivial things, I've given this sort of thing a lot of thought, a LOT of thought, and not just the bad kind. I often ponder the sociology and psychology of this sort of thing. Was this young lady, otherwise a bit sullen and unremarkable aware that her lingerie was smiling at us behind her back? She made certain conscious choices to be sure. 1. Low cut Jeans, no belt 2. A top that barely met the jeans in the middle. 3. Bending over and staying bent over. 4, this is a workplace, not a discotheque, and 4.Did I mention THONG!!!!! ?
I've also pondered extensively the mechanical structure of the thong vs. more 'traditional' underpants. Thongs will, because of the very narrow vertical attachment to a much wider ( I almost wrote 'much, MUCH wider', but thought that might appear insensitive) horizontal support tend to cause the sides of the horizontal structure to rise up on the sides or stay put and only pull down at the middle. The narrow stress point at the junction will be supporting the entire load, the sides are simply too far away to help with the struggle. Unlike traditional briefs where the load is more evenly distributed across a broader ( once again, edited for sensitivity) support area, the rearward thong junction forms a sharp 'Y' when under strain.
More evenly stressed jeans (and traditional underpants) will slide down only a modest, virtually unnoticeable couple of inches having distributed the load more evenly, vertically and horizontally while sitting or bending, but only PART of the thong will. It will appear to all those watching, and yes we are watching, that the thong is leaping at us out of your pants.
So my somewhat rhetorical question is this ladies... Are you aware of this? Are you aware when you choose to dress this way that it will be noticed? Not just by your dream guy, but ALL guys? I'm just curious.
Also what if anything are we, the other guys, supposed to do or think? It has been my decision to notice, remain discrete, perhaps appreciate for a moment, then move on as if we never had this encounter. Is that okay? I mean, you don't really want a short, out - of - shape, middle aged guy with ZERO fashion sense (though very well endowed with more ethereal cerebral charms) coming up to you and mentioning it do you? Surely you don't. You might say that if we were proper gentlemen we would just look away.
Sorry precious princess, that's just not rational, that simply is never, ever going to happen!
You've been warned. I, and others just like me are watching.
By the way ladies, you are NOT completely off the hook. Several women saw it too, even some that stopped for a familiar chat with thong-girl. NONE of them said anything to her about it. I KNOW they noticed, and I KNOW they didn’t mention it because I could easily see and hear them. I was a mere few inches away, discretely crouched behind a shrub.
