Monday: The lengths lonely men will go to

Earlier this week, I posted on Facebook that I thought there was nothing creepier than men who hung out in the women’s underwear section at Marshall’s. There were a lot of funny comments, especially from people who assumed I meant Ken. But he defended himself staunchly and the scandal soon abated. The bigger issue, though, is how I came to be in the underwear section at Marshall’s. Not that shopping for underwear is unusual, but I normally do it once a year, buy 25 pairs of the same thing in different colours, then I’m good to go for a while (ie technically, I would only have to do laundry 15 times a year). But now that I’m dividing my time between home and Toronto, I’ve had to also divide my lady wear. I keep them in two wooden boxes in my walk-in closet—one for upper garments and one for lower. When I first moved in, I just kept them on an open shelf, but then I had some friends from work over who wanted a tour (my condo is 624 square feet so it didn’t take very long). As they passed the walk-in closet, the door of which was wide open, I realized to my horror that if anyone looked inside, my “intimates” would no longer be fit to be called by that name. So I hastily shut the closet door—nothing to see here, folks!—and got the wooden boxes for storage. The problem is, the boxes are on the top shelf and I can’t actually see into them, so I just feel around and grab what I need. Unfortunately, on Monday morning, I reached into the box, rummaged around, and discovered that the box was empty. Apparently, I had miscalculated the ratio of underwear to days in the week. I had 10 minutes to get dressed and get to work, so I was stuck and my options were severely limited, as you can well imagine. I won’t tell you the decision I ultimately made—I leave that up to you and what you would do in similar circumstances. Which leads me, literally, to the underwear section at Marshall’s, having decided that some back-up items were an absolute necessity. I went through the racks, but the trouble with places like Marshall’s and Winners is that the selection is sometimes pretty sparse. I know I’d have better luck in a big mall, but I can’t stand the Eaton Centre with its noise, and all the crazy people who stand outside trying to sell you things, get money from you, or try to convert you to their cults (yes, I’m talking to YOU, Scientologists). At any rate, as I was perusing the limited goods, I realized that there were at least two men just HANGING OUT around the racks, one on one side, and the other near the window. Now, the lingerie area at Marshall’s is in the far corner, so it’s not like these guys got lost on their way to power tools or something, and the only other woman there was very elderly, and obviously not married to either, or both, of them. And it got me thinking—is this, like, the new pick-up spot? It makes sense, I suppose—you can tell a lot about a woman based on the type of underwear she buys: thongs, for those who might be a little adventurous, or just can’t stand too many layers of fabric on their posteriors (I once had a friend who said she wore thongs because her underwear “always ended up in her butt crack anyway, so why not just minimize the bunching?”), boy briefs for the sporty sisters, regular briefs for the traditionalists, and of course, granny panties for those who prefer comfort to style, or are actually grannies. So maybe these guys were playing the smart game, looking for someone compatible in a kind of weird, psychologically astute way. Or maybe they were just lonely creeps, fantasizing that someday, a woman would hold up a pair of frilly panties and ask, “Hey there, hot stuff–what do you think of these?”, and it would be the start of a beautiful relationship. Can you imagine 10 years down the road, when the kids ask, “So how did you and Mommy meet?” Who’s to say? All I know is that it made me really uncomfortable, like every time I started to reach for something, I imagined an intake of anticipatory breath and shifty eyes following my hand to see where it went. Ick. Next time I’m going to Victoria’s Secret, where the guys who hang out there actually work there, wear eyeliner, and help you find stuff in a “not looking for a hook-up” kind of way.