Women in Underwear

E arly Saturday night, Laura left her apartment to meet her lover, wearing the satin floral-print bra-and-panty set he had given her for Christmas. She had received a set in black silk for her birthday, a red camisole for Valentine's Day and numerous pairs of panties in cotton, satin and silk for no special reason, simply for his own delight in giving her lingerie. That her husband, too, would take pleasure from these gifts troubled her lover less than the possibility that other lingerie she wore might be gifts from another lover.

"And who gave you these little things?" he once had asked, his suspicion over her white-lace bra and panties momentarily greater than his arousal.

"I buy my own lingerie," she had replied, and he wondered if her husband had ever received the same answer to a similar question.

•

For 25 years, Eva had thought her breasts were too small. The fact that most women her age had breasts already sagging gave her no comfort. She wouldn't mind a little sag, but her breasts remained as perky and small as an adolescent's. She had blamed her mother for this misfortune and had spent her girlhood terribly self-conscious about what she considered a deformity, developing a mild case of round-shoulderedness in an attempt to hide what she did not have. Believing that boys desired only girls with large breasts, Eva was certain boys wanted nothing from her.

Eventually, she met and fell in love with a man who thought himself too short. She would tell him that she liked being the same height as her lover because she felt equal, and he, in turn, gave elaborate, extensive attention to her breasts, which were very responsive. Although Eva and he each knew of the other's weakness, they never used this knowledge against each other, even in their worst arguments. He eventually left her for a shorter woman with, to Eva's relief, unremarkable breasts, and Eva regretted losing him as much from love as from fear at re-entering the competitive world of wellendowed women.

And so, for her 40th birthday, in an effort to regain her confidence and attract more attention, Eva purchased a bra with underwire cups lightly padded for a more noticeable décolletage. In it she felt renewed and unintimidated. When she held her shoulders back, her blouse revealed an alluring cleavage that fascinated her even more than it did the men who glanced at her. For the first time in her life, she knew how it must feel to be a complete woman.

•

Originally from the island of Melos but residing now in Paris, Venus wears, tied low on her hips, a chiton exactly the color of her white flesh. Sculpted and sexy, she has rather small, shapely breasts, no arms and a lovely navel.

•

In her office mail, Jacki received a manila envelope with cotton bikini panties inside. A typed letter, unsigned, requested that she wear the panties before returning them in the envelope provided, postage paid and addressed only to a local post-office box. Accompanying the panties was enough money for a fine dinner. The offer seemed to her a perverse joke and she immediately discarded everything but the cash.

A month later, another manila envelope arrived with another pair of panties, also cotton bikinis but in a different color. She became mildly intrigued and wondered who this secret, if strange, admirer could be. Someone in the office? An old, unextinguished flame? Perhaps even her husband. This time, she did not discard the panties, for it seemed silly to throw out such a delicate, pretty thing, and the naughty sensation she experienced while wearing them increased thrillingly as she slipped the soiled panties into the return envelope, which she dropped discreetly into the mailbox outside her office.

The next month, another pair, and another the month after that. Cotton bikinis in various pastels, stretch-lace hipsters, satin prints, even red silk during the Christmas season. With each new pair, Jacki felt her involvement deepening with someone whose identity remained unknown, and she cherished the attention that kept her from leading a normal life. She thought of him often, particularly when wearing the gift panties, and to alleviate guilt from her unfaithfulness, she used the enclosed money to buy small gifts for her husband. The pattern continued unvaried for 36 months, then the manila envelopes ceased arriving. Jacki worried that he might lie injured somewhere, that he might have moved to another town. Worst of all, that he had fallen in love with someone else. After the second month--and still nothing--she knew it was over between them, with no explanation or word of farewell, and she endured her loss with all the heartache of a lover abandoned.

•

Patti always wears panties to bed. Occasionally, she wears a T-shirt or a camisole or even a nightgown, but always panties, usually the skimpiest variety, a sliver of silk, a tiny wedge of fabric in front, straps no thicker than dental floss around her hips, nothing in back, nothing, material disappeared in the furrow of her behind. She wears them for security, for defense, for protection, though from what or whom, she hates even to consider.

•

Bev had not made love for nearly a year, ever since the man for whom she left her husband left her. This rejection cooled her completely toward men until she met Brian, and it seemed likely they would make love. After showering, after shaving her legs and underarms, after rubbing her body with lotion and dabbing finger tips of perfume onto her throat, behind her ears and between her breasts, she poked through her underwear drawer indecisively. White might be too innocent--she was, after all, the mother of two--black too overtly seductive, and red made her look cheap. She had a bluelace bra-and-panty set, but it had been a gift from the other man, the one who had deceived her and left her life in a shambles, and she wanted no recollections of him that night, nothing that could distract or deject her.

She chose a bra and bikini the color of violets because the color reminded her of spring, of new life and new beginnings. After stepping into the panties and fastening the lacy bra, she looked into a full-length mirror and her heart ached at the sight of herself. All vitality in her body had disappeared, as if her self-imposed celibacy had drained the life out of her. She hated the man who had betrayed her, hated men who take what they want and leave nothing. She sat on the edge of her bed, unrestrained tears seeped from her eyes before falling down her bare thighs.

•

Although tall and lean, Anne acquired a soft belly after childbirth that no amount of dieting or sit-ups could alter. To conceal what she believed to be her only physical flaw, she wears hipsters, panties cut high on the leg, with lace trim reaching to her navel. She has a drawerful in solid pastels and floral prints, stripes and polka dots, and even a pair in a leopardskin pattern, all with the same cut. Yet no matter how elegant she looks in them, or how they make her long, shapely legs appear even longer, her depression over her waning beauty is only partly soothed by the pleasures of motherhood.

•

Late Saturday night, Laura left her lover's apartment in mismatched bra and panties. The floral-print bra was the same one in which she had arrived several hours earlier, but the panties were light pink. In his impatience and sheer erotic delight, her lover had not removed the floral-print panties while making love to her, and, so that she might have a more comfortable taxi ride home, he presented her with a fresh pair. He kept the soiled panties in his drawer among his handkerchiefs, and the feel and scent of them brought to his mind memories of love.

•

Just before bed, Danielle lowers the window shade in her darkened room as the street lamp dimly illuminates her body. Often, on summer nights, a young man, reading in a hammock strung on the fire escape of the building across the street, glances at her window, and when his glance coincides with her lowering the shade, a quiet thrill spreads from their hearts. She has appeared at the window in a T-shirt and panties, sometimes in a satin teddy that shimmers from the street lamp like moonlit water and, on randy nights, in panties only. Danielle and the young man feel an affection for each other because of these intimate moments shared just before bed.

•

Marge wears crotchless panties when making love with her husband. Aside from the garment's erotic potential, it allows her to have intercourse while still hiding the scar from her Caesarean section. At first, she is relieved that her husband finds the panties arousing, though odd, but, when he eventually wants her naked, Marge turns self-conscious and resists. Peeling the panties down her hips with tender insistence, he gently kisses the thin, hard scar shaped like a smile.

•

At a shopping mall, Billy is caught stealing a pair of women's panties. Store policy requires notification of the police, but, as Billy is still a minor, he is released into the custody of his parents. His mother is shocked and embarrassed by the drawerful of stolen underwear discovered in his bedroom, and the obligatory lecture given him by his father degenerates into curiosity about his son's sexual experiences with teenage girls.

•

Needing an image for her painting of a woman in a garter belt and stockings, Diane perused several men's magazines but could not find what she wanted. Rather than ask a woman friend to (continued on page 208)Women in Underwear(continued from page 117) pose for her, she decided to be her own model. She bought a black garter belt and black stockings at a local lingerie shop, then returned to her studio.

She arranged her easel across from a full-length mirror, then stripped to her bra and panties. After placing the garter belt around her waist, she rolled the edges of a stocking until it resembled a doughnut, stuck her toe in the middle and unrolled the stocking up her leg, high on her thigh. She fastened the stocking to the garter belt's little clasps, one in front and one in back, then rolled the other stocking up her other leg and fastened it as well. Seeing herself in the mirror and certain that only a man could invent a garter belt, she picked up a pencil and began working.

Unsure of the exact image she wanted, Diane first sketched herself simply facing the mirror, turning her head repeatedly from her reflection to her easel and back again. Initially, she had the cool eye of an observer, but the image in the mirror soon aroused her. She was surprised: not that a woman could arouse her but that the woman was herself. This did not distract her from working. If anything, she sketched more intensely, with heightened and unwavering concentration, the observer's cool eye transformed to one of increased involvement.

•

Stepping from her apartment into the cold and radiant Chicago morning, Colleen heads for the N.F.C. championship game at Soldier Field wearing thermal underwear. The wind slices off Lake Michigan sharpened by icy water and arctic blasts from Canada. Exposed skin can freeze in moments and tears instantly turn to miniature icicles.

The fabric of the thermal underwear, a mixture of cotton and synthetic, is rough on Colleen's skin, and her legs must be closely shaved else any stubble itches unmercifully. What she likes about the thermals, apart from their practicality, what she finds amusing and even a little sexy, is that the bottoms have a fly. Images of its use send warm rushes through her even on this cold play-off Sunday.

•

Rachel poses in lingerie ads for the most fashionable catalogs. The pay is excellent, her unclothed body must remain superb, yet other models consider such work the lowest in the business. To add style to her poses, to appear as something other than cheesecake, she insists on arranging flowers while wearing a cotton camisole and a thong bikini, lies upon a vanity table in a point d'esprit stretch-lace bra and panties, lies upon a fluffy bedspread in a midnight-blue-and-black body suit, reading. Not a favorite with photographers and art directors, Rachel wants to wear eyeglasses as well. Women in eyeglasses also wear lingerie, she insists. After a 15-minute argument, the glasses are placed upon the open book.

•

After completing the first sketch, Diane faced the easel so that the image in the mirror was of herself from the side. She shifted her weight so that her hip would round more fully, and for a moment, she admired her own beauty. When she placed her free hand on the curve of her bottom, the image looked a little vampy but accentuated her breasts. While sketching, she felt a mild tingling in her breasts, almost like an enjoyable itch. With pencil still in hand, she rubbed her thumb several times along her nipple. This both eased and intensified the tingling.

With the completion of the next sketch, she rearranged her pose slightly, the hand previously on her hip now on the front of her thigh. The lightest pressure of her thumb lay along the edge of her panties, and while sketching, she pressed her thumb gently and rhythmically, pulselike, until the tingling in her breast appeared between her legs. The tingling and the silky feel of the nylon stocking were so pleasurable that her thumb slipped beneath the elastic of her panties and scratched lightly in her public hair. Never did she stop sketching; the hand with the pencil maintained its pace even while the thumb in her panties moved to a different, more rapid rhythm. She sketched and scratched, her thumb now wet with her own excitement, and at the drawing's completion, she dipped her index finger into herself, then gazed with thrilled fascination at her image in the mirror.

•

In her home town in Colorado, Cheryl enjoyed the attention of the local boys in part because of her large breasts. Had she not also been a pretty, blue-eyed blonde, the attention, she knew, would not have been so lavish. Although most other girls in town were jealous of her pink and pendulous treasures, Cheryl considered herself blessed until moving to New York, where she studied acting. After numerous wolf whistles from construction workers, lewd comments from teenage boys and countless fondlings by men in crowded subway cars, she knew she must dress down in order to diminish what had previously been a proud asset. She purchased a Minimizer bra by Lilyette, guaranteed to take an inch and a half off her bustline, but even this did not deter one middle-aged businessman from reaching out while passing her in the opposite direction at an intersection and grabbing what he wanted.

•

Tired of waiting, Terri has decided to end her affair with Michael. She has waited for his phone calls, his spontaneous and infrequent visits, his impending separation from his wife, and she refuses to wait any longer. She wants something more from a relationship and has known for a while now that she will not get it from him. Her decision has not been easy, for she loves him and discovered with him those places no man had ever touched quite right, believing until then that no man ever would. But her persisting loneliness and need have become too great an emotional payment, no matter what pleasure she found in his embrace. Although she bears some resentment, some anger, she wants one last delicious night with him. To increase his subsequent feeling of loss, she wears his favorite lingerie, hoping that his recollection of her form moving gracefully through the room or stretched beneath him in a white-silk bra and matching panties will haunt and arouse him long after she has sent him away forever.

•

For the past two weeks, John has been employed as a security guard at a lingerie shop. He is there not so much to prevent shoplifting as to ensure that undesirable characters do not enter and create a disturbance. The salary is not good and he is on his feet most of the day, but, when a pretty brunette holds a merry widow up to her body and gazes at herself in the mirror, John slowly shakes his head, smiles faintly and says to himself, You got to love this job.

•

Kim has a small bottom, not uncommon for Asians. Although she cannot easily correct this inheritance, as she could if it were her nose or her breasts, she orders a pair of panties with a padded seat from a Frederick's of Hollywood catalog. The garment, when it arrives, is the most ridiculous item she has ever seen. But when she wears it under slacks or a dress, her bottom rounds out like that of a pony. What troubles her now is that when she takes a lover, the illusion will disappear along with the panties.

•

Karen sits on a sofa in her boyfriend's underpants, reading Ulysses. The underwear, resembling an Olympic diver's swimsuit, fits her curiously: too tight across her bottom, too large in front where his penis was bound, the fabric nearly forming his shape there though empty now. She wears his underwear for the same reason she reads Ulysses, to feel closer to him. She wanted him to wear her underwear, too, but he refused. He could not explain why it was all right for a woman to wear a man's underwear but not conversely, and although she accused him of having double standards, he said no argument would get him into women's underwear.

"But they're not any woman's," she said, distressed. "They're mine."

"I'll carry them in my pocket," he offered. "Isn't that close enough?"

She was disappointed, even mildly hurt.

"Don't you want me wearing your underwear?" she asked.

He did not know how to reply, for the question was unlike any ever asked of him before.

"It's not that I want you to," he finally said. "It's nice that you do. It's cute. But it's not that I want you to."

Her face twisted with annoyance.

"Wearing your underwear is cute?"

He smiled, then nodded faintly.

"Is that the word you mean?" she persisted.

"Karen, what do you want me to say? In your underwear, you're sexy. In mine, you're cute. Sexy, but cute."

She sulked for a while. She had hoped he would think that wearing each other's underwear was romantic, like exchanging rings, only more intimate.

She took his refusal as an indication that they were drifting apart, that he was losing interest in her, that there might be another woman, someone better read than she was.

Hurt and haughty, Karen now sits on the sofa reading, but his underwear has worked its way uncomfortably into the furrow of her bottom, and she has trouble concentrating on Ulysses.

•

Feeling terrific and looking sharp, Tom stepped from his apartment into a bright, cold December afternoon to go Christmas shopping for the two women in his life. Recently, he had reconciled with Ingrid, despite some doubts about returning to a woman after she had slept with another man. He had not planned to fall in love with Laura during Ingrid's absence, but, like a cartoon character who walks off a cliff without immediately falling, he had been oblivious to the peril till far over the edge.

He entered the lingerie department, his boot heels softened by a blue carpet. All the other customers were women, and he wondered if his presence embarrassed them. The sales girls were lovely. Robes and nightgowns were draped on padded hangers, with racks of lingerie in many colors, styles and fabrics. He concentrated first on gifts for Ingrid. He thought of her long legs, and the sight of her making coffee in the morning dressed in a T-shirt and panties, standing on one foot, the other foot on her knee like an alluring long-legged water bird. Perhaps he would buy fine nylon stockings for her, and a silk tank top in red or green for Christmas.

He noticed a short white-silk robe and pictured Laura wearing it. For a moment, he considered buying it for Ingrid but knew he would think of Laura each time he saw it. A dull, oppressive gloom seized him unexpectedly.

His pleasure in the pretty, feminine atmosphere vanished. He turned and left the shop, his own festive spirit, impermanent as holiday displays, overtaken by the unhappiness that lay persistently in wait for him.

He knew he should be grateful at the prospect of Christmas and New Year's with Ingrid, and a part of him truly was. But his love for Laura had awakened an old yearning for the ideal. He knew he would never have that with Laura, who would not leave her husband and child for Tom. That commitment, which he also loved in her, would forever keep him from waking one morning to find Laura making coffee in her white-silk robe.

•

Deciding that a frontal pose was nearer the image she sought, Diane faced the mirror again, her legs slightly spread, the black nylon stockings and garter belt framing her private parts. She resumed sketching, as her other hand nestled deep in the front of her panties, her fingers steadily stroking her surfaces. The pencil moved more slowly across the paper as her caresses quickened, bringing her closer to the release that she observed in the mirror. She ceased her work entirely when floods of sensation spread through her body and she came in trembling, leg-weakening waves.

Later, satisfied, evaluating the sketches, Diane knew that she had captured that special love between artist and subject.

•

Knowing she would miss him like crazy, Cindy worried that he might not miss her at all. They had been lovers only a short time, and now he was leaving for several weeks. After their last night together, she rode with him in a taxi to the airport. As he stood on the curb after kissing her goodbye through the open window, she reached under her skirt and slipped off her panties, which she pressed into his hand an instant before the taxi rolled away.

For the entire flight, black silk rolled like syrup through his fingers.

•

Barbara and Jane are best friends who share a similar, though opposite, problem. Jane has small breasts, while Barbara's are rather large, and Jane's behind is substantial, though Barbara has almost none. Each woman can purchase a bra in one size, panties in another: The problem arises when they want a matching set. Because the best shops are politely reluctant to split sets, the two friends have decided to shop together for sets they both like. Visiting several shops, their gaiety increasing at each, they buy cotton intimates in white with ruffled edges, sheer black floral chiffon of imported silk, satin string Charmeuse bra-and-panty sets in blue, in pink, in emerald.

"Let's get these," Barbara says, or Jane is sure, "This color would be smashing for you," or they both know, "This is absolutely us." They have wine at lunch and arrive laden with packages at Jane's apartment, where they open a bottle of rosé and sip as they sit on the floor exchanging tops and bottoms while laughing at what the saleswomen must have thought of them.

"That we're lovers," Jane says tenderly to her friend lying on the rug, her full breasts cupped in white scalloped lace, her nipples showing through the pattern like pink flowers, which, with the tip of her finger, Jane lightly touches.

•

Thirty-five years after she first climbed higher than he did on the monkey bars, years after adolescence and high school, marriages, children, divorces, Susie and Arnold are lovers at last. The fact amazes and delights both of them, the strange road that brought them together again only proving that, just as both of their mothers had said, they were meant for each other. Happily complying with Arnold's request, Susie wears baby-blue cotton panties beneath her skirt. As he reaches for her, Arnold feels once more, with a kind of wonderment, a kind of awe, the vision he had cherished ever since that distant afternoon on the playground where he could see all the way to London, all the way to France.

•

Carol and Roger are in trouble. From her point of view, it seems a minor problem. Surely, nothing that should end their relationship, their engagement, their plans for the future. Roger sees it differently. How his woman looks in underwear means a great deal to him, but how Carol looks in underwear leaves something to be desired.

It's not that he wants her wearing anything lewd or vulgar, or anything that glowed in the dark or was edible. Just something other than waist-high white cotton panties with a white, practical bra. Something more feminine. Something, admittedly, sexier. He loves her body, her blue eyes, what she bakes and how she imitates Piaf. He wants to change nothing about her. Only her underwear. For unless that visual delight of a woman in lingerie is satisfied by Carol, he knows he'll seek it elsewhere, that quite possibly his faithfulness can be insured by nothing more than a lace bra and a string bikini in satin or silk, even in white.

•

Hating herself for it, Terri cannot stop thinking about Michael. She is hooked, addicted, powerless. What frustrates her most is that they never meet when she wants to, that she can never call him or leave messages.

After days without a word from him, her anger rising with each phone call not from him, Terri strips, then dresses in the peacock-blue bra and bikini with matching garter belt that he last bought for her. She rolls one nylon along her leg, fastens it to the little clasps but leaves the other leg bare. She finds her Polaroid camera, stands before the full-length mirror and strikes a sultry pose, then another, each one tasteful, designed to show off her trim figure and the missing nylon. She finishes the roll, chooses the most attractive photograph and seals it in an envelope she addresses to Michael's wife.

Covering herself only with a light topcoat, she leaves her loft and heads defiantly for the mailbox. She feels in control, no longer subject to Michael's whim. At the corner, impatient for the light to change, she waits beside two old women, tottering and shrunken but with lively eyes shimmering from their wrinkled, powdered faces. Compassion rises in Terri's heart for these women, for all women. Her resentment toward Michael's wife disperses like a vapor. She crosses the street, propelled more by momentum than by real feeling. It is Michael she wants to hurt, Michael who should remain the target of her fury. With a resigned, hopeless sigh, Terri drops the envelope not in the blue mailbox but in the trash basket beside it.

•

Sharon has a large bush, all the more apparent because it's so dark. She waxed last summer, but the process left an angry rash high on her thighs and, by autumn, the rich, dark hair had grown in thicker than before. Resigned to letting nature take its course, Sharon wears panties edged with embroidery, silk boxers in pastels, or satin tap pants and camisoles, and she is comforted by thinking that birds do not nest in bare trees.

•

Overcoming some embarrassment, Tom purchases a lingerie video.

"Gift for a bachelor party," he assures the clerk, who raises a skeptical eyebrow.

Although Tom has seen hard-core videos, he has found them tasteless and unfeminine, rarely with beautiful girls. That night, he feeds the tape into the machine, turns out the lights and lies down on his bed. Two women in the desert, a lean blonde and a curvaceous brunette, walk toward the camera wearing bra-and-panty sets, then only panties; then they walk away from the camera, turning back. A woman in bed, wearing black lingerie, caresses herself, then undresses completely before a whirling electric fan. Male hands remove a stocking from a woman's leg. All the women are beautiful, and the camera moves closely and slowly along their bodies while jazz is played softly in the back ground. Tom's heartbeat quickens and his breath labors as three lovely girls in tank tops, camisoles and panties have a slow-motion pillow fight, feathers floating. Each visual is teasingly, agonizingly brief. As his blood surges, Tom knows he must really be in love, for, as a stunning creature in a sheer pink, soaking-wet T-shirt and nothing else rolls on her side in three inches of water, it's of Laura that he's dreaming.

"What troubles her now is that when she takes a lover, the illusion will disappear along with the panties."