Friday, March 09, 2007

Fleshbot and Edges

This week’s Sex Blog Roundup at Fleshbot eavesdrops on the true confessions and shocking secrets revealed in blogs whose names promise . . . well, confessions and secrets.

Speaking of confessions, I have a secret of my own.

I have been skirting close to a dangerous edge. I face risky consequences due to a filthy, inexcusable blind spot that I could readily diminish, and yet I fail to do so.

The edifice of my life could come tumbling down—and all because of underwear.

See, I hate to do laundry.

Mind you, I do keep up with essential items. The towels are always fresh, washcloths are always available for post-coital birdbaths, and the sex sheets are washed after every use.

I take special pride in the latter: it doesn’t matter whether the sex sheets were used for a spontaneous threesome or an all-hours splatter-fest orgy. They are always promptly washed, folded and put away, ready for next time.

When it comes to laundry, it’s the clothing that gets me down.

My own laundry isn’t much trouble. Being an apartment nudist, I don’t really wear clothes when home alone—at most, I wear pajama bottoms, maybe a t-shirt—so my clothing can survive many brief outings without much wear.

This is not true of my children. For the boys, no day is complete without tossing off clothes at least once. My daughter Lillie has more costume changes than Cher.

This distinction in my laundry came home to me about a month after school started, when Jason complained that he was out of underwear.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Did you look in the back of your drawer?”

“Dad . . . ,” he said. He opened a closet. The children’s hamper was overflowing. My son stood next to a pile of laundry nearly as tall as himself.

“Oh my gosh,” I exclaimed. “How did this happen?”

“Uh, Dad,” Jason rolled his eyes. “We wear clothes. You wash clothes. We wear clothes again. It’s called ‘laundry.’ Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

I looked at him. It was early October. I realized that I had not tackled laundry since June.

This was bad, but not as bad as it sounds.

In June, I had washed everything, putting away school clothes and packing to take the kids to visit my family Down South. Until mid-July, they lived in swimsuits that my grandmother secretly washed when she woke before dawn.

When we returned to the city, the kids went off with their mother, and I wore clothes only when demanded by the requirements of work, errands and travel. At home, I was nude, whether alone or . . . entertaining.

The summer passed. I washed the kids’ shorts when they were with me, and the towels and sheets as needed. They worked their way through a seemingly endless supply of tank tops and t-shirts, casting the dirty ones into a nearly vacant hamper.

When school resumed, the hamper began to swell. It might have grown until Thanksgiving if Jason hadn’t developed an adolescent’s interest in daily changes of underwear.

Bitch can’t go commando, I muttered, lifting armful after armful into my cart.

Collie and Lillie were excited to help me with the laundry, exhilarated by the sheer novelty of visiting the laundromat.

They loaded the washers and added soap. I dropped thirty dollars into the machines.

We finally emptied dryers into carts and began folding. I have never cared for folding clothes. I like it less now that the children help. As I fold, I have to keep them supplied in clothes that they can also fold—clothes that I must later fold again, without the children noticing that I’m undoing their work.

My children are beautiful geniuses, but they are lousy laundresses.

Collie dug for socks, as he specializes in matching pairs. He looked up. “Hey Dad, what’s this?”

I looked over. He held something bright red. It was too small to be a tank top.

Thong.

“Oh, let me have those,” I said, reaching out a hand. Collie handed over his red palm. I stuffed the thong into a pocket and returned to folding shirts.

“Uh, Dad, what was that?” Lillie asked.

“Nothing,” I said, hoping that I wasn’t blushing. “Just some . . . see, I had visitors this summer. I guess someone forget her . . . their underwear.”

“Ew, that was underwear?” Collie scowled. He wiped his hands on his pants.

“Girls’ underwear?” Lillie laughed.

“Yeah, yeah, you know, whatever,” I said.

We folded.

“Dad?” Lillie asked. “Why do you have so many girlfriends?”

“Dad doesn’t have ‘girlfriends,’” Collie corrected. “Dad has ‘friends who are girls.’”

“All of Dad’s friends are girls,” Lillie said.

“I work with a lot of women,” I said, looking for shreds of plausible deniability among the pants in the cart. “And some of them are my friends. So, yeah, ‘friends who are girls.’”

“See?” Collie said.

“I know!” Lillie replied. “Duh.”

“Okay, okay, let’s fold clothes. Collie, take those other socks. Lillie, you’re in charge of your shorts.”

“Duh, they’re mine.”

That evening, the kids’ cabinets and drawers were packed full of clothes. Jason acted like it was Christmas morning.

Later, I told this story to Mitzi. “You put the panties in your pocket?” she laughed. “That’s practically an admission of guilt!”

“I know, I wasn’t thinking.” I shrugged. “Just reacting.”

“Well, if you’re lucky, they will think the panties belong to you.”

I looked up. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

5 comments:

Bianca said...

For some reason, I can picture you in a red thong.

e jerry said...

Well, dye my hair silver and call me Sisquo.

Bridget said...

See, this is why I have my very own laundry elf.

Weren't we going to give Jason an allowance to start doing laundry? Or maybe Collie?

We *could* try giving Lillie money to keep her clothing *on.* ;)

But honestly. She is *so* your daughter, through and through....

Nite!

Josh Jasper said...

Wash and fold with pick up and delivery. I tell you, it's the only way to do laundry.

Laundry goes away dirty, comes back clean and folded. They have that in your neighborhood, right?

NC said...

Naked Laundromat would be a good name for a blog. I am surprised that in New York you couldn't find a place to wash and fold for you. We have those even in the arctic hinterland that is Canada.

I suppose I could blog about washing my sweaters, but an entry about running cashmere through the delicate cycle I suspect would appeal only to estoric fetishists.

On the other hand, I suppose washing my Special Masturbation Pants counts as laundrysexblogging.