LOVE AMONG THE RUINS
By Jerry Gervase

Yes, I’m writing about underwear because of an article I read recently about romance among Senior Citizens or love among the ruins. (“Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,” Robert Browning.)

Now, what has underwear to do with senior citizens returning to the dating game? Nothing – if you are among those fortunate couples who still enjoy marital bliss after decades and decades of togetherness. There are many of us, though, who through either death or divorce, have had to re-cross that great divide that separates the sexes.

I am of a certain demographic whose adherence to clean underwear dates back to a mother’s warning never to leave home without perfectly intact underwear in case we were in an accident. For years I feared lying covered with blood on a hospital gurney, left untreated because of a tear in my undies. Or worse yet, imagine being in an accident after deciding on “going commando.” Not even a tribal medicine man would treat you. Very bad juju. Mother’s words still echo in the iPod
of my temporal lobes. I suppose that is why I always have a month’s supply of almost pristine undergarments on hand – well that, and the fact that doing laundry is my least favorite chore.

Fortunately, for men, underwear fashion has steadily crept up to where there are more than 50 major brands available today – quite a stretch from the Jockeys introduced in 1935. (Jockeys, because they offered the support of a jock strap.) The all white jockey briefs (tidy whities) have exploded into a myriad of colors and styles. Men, check out a brand called Ginch Gonch and you may never go back to wearing what Mikey wears.

It was also in the 1930’s that companies began selling buttonless drawers fitted with an elastic waistband. These were called boxer shorts (let the boys breathe) because they resembled the trunks prize fighters wear in the ring.

Young men go for sports cars and may prefer Ginch Gonch’s “Feathers of Fire” briefs but I go for the comfort of a full size sedan. Boxer briefs may be the greatest invention since the pop-top beer can. They combine support, comfort, breatheability, and chafe protection. (Sorry if this bores you, ladies, but don’t forget how I have to suffer through those wearisome Victoria’s Secret commercials.)

Thankfully, womens’ undergarments have come a long way from corsets over “step ins” and camisoles. My first encounter with a front-loading brassiere (snaps fore, not aft) may be more of a epiphany than Keats looking into Chapman’s Homer: “Then felt I … like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes – He stared at the Pacific – and all his men looked at each other with a wild surmise– Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”

If you think this essay on underwear is going nowhere refer back to my original premise of love among the ruins, or the tremendous increase in romance among Senior Citizens. Men and women have always dressed for success, but now older men and women are rediscovering that they should be prepared to dress for undress.