I couldn’t breathe. My underwear was too tight.
It was July, 2004, and I was smack dab in the middle of my first trip to New York City. Staying for a few days with my friend, Val, in Brooklyn, I’d already hit some of the highlights with her – Katz Deli, Broadway, the United Nations. But on this day, she had patients to see as a therapist, so I’d be on my own. I’d make my way to the closest subway stop, a few blocks from her house, head into Manhattan, and spend the day wandering the city.
When traveling, one should pick and choose their underwear carefully. Of course, I didn’t do this. Preparing for the trip a week earlier, I ignored my better instincts, instead going the bargain route and spotting the 3-pack-for-$5 special at Kmart. They were plain and white – quite different from my usual brightly coloured name-brand bikinis. But look at me, I thought, saving money for my trip! I felt sure an “L” translated into my size, so after tossing aside this bag-o-panties and that, I found a pack and threw them in my shopping cart.
Now, the day had come for the premier of the new panties! They felt snug when I put a pair on, but I didn’t think much of it, instead focusing on the excitement of tackling Manhattan on my own. It didn’t take long in the quarter-mile walk to the subway station for me to realize something was amiss. The tighty whities quickly graduated from all-green-go status to red-alert-wedgie. My idea of the New York City subway system had come from countless movies; I couldn’t wait to experience it. Yet aside from the overpowering smell of urine that nearly bowled me over at the station entrance, I found myself too focused on the loss of blood supply to my nether regions to really notice much on the ride.
As I stood on the crowded train, I stealthily tried my best to readjust without blatantly looking like I was picking underwear out of my crotch. I feel I failed miserably. The elastic was simply stretched too thin to budge. It had begun cutting into my flesh by the time I waddled onto the ferry to my first tourist stop of the day: Ellis Island.
As my sea legs quickly lost oxygen, my buttocks went numb. I tried to imagine what it must have been like to approach the island a century earlier as a hope-filled immigrant from a faraway land, but I couldn’t. Circulation had effectively been cut off by this pair of pestering panties. Barrelling down their ship’s gangplanks, past generations may have been anxious to embrace the freedom from oppression they had fled. I, on the other hand, duckwalked off my 20th century ferry in the quest for a different kind of liberty. I spotted a restroom sign first thing.
“Thank you, Jesus!” I muttered, lifting my eyes towards heaven, then made a beeline for the door.
Once safely in a stall, it took next to no time to extricate myself from the offensive underwear, but now what to do? I’d have to go commando under my cotton shorts all day. Distasteful, yes, but the alternative would most certainly put me in need of emergency medical care. I could stuff the wadded-up torture device into the pocket of my shorts and walk around with it all day, but with my luck, it would somehow work its way out only to plop down on the ground right smack dab in the middle of Times Square. Some poor innocent would notice I’d dropped something and run after me.
“Excuse me, miss! Yoohoo! You dropped your underwear!”
Perhaps I’d even get arrested for littering. I could see the judge, scowling at me in his courtroom, as he pronounced sentence.
“We don’t take kindly to strangers coming into our boroughs and just throwing their panties around willy nilly. That’s a $500 fine and 30 days in jail just for being rude!”
No, I’d have to leave it behind, here in the trash can of the women’s bathroom at the entrance of the Ellis Island reception center. I admit I felt terrible guilt for about 20 seconds. How did I know that my own ancestors hadn’t come through this island, a pitstop on the way to their American dreams, and here I was, desecrating the site with discarded underclothes.
I tossed the wad of misery into the bin and hurried out the door to rejoin my tour group. Suddenly, I felt sure dozens of eyes were on me, and they all knew my secret.
“Martin? Wasn’t that woman on the boat with us? Why, look, she took her underwear off!”
If you ask me anything about what I learned or saw that day on Ellis Island, I’ll answer honestly: Absolutely nothing. I spent the tour avoiding the gazes of others while trying to adjust to the newfound sensation of air blowing up my shorts. The rest of the day went marginally better, until the chafing started somewhere between paying respects at the crater of the destroyed World Trade Center, and avoiding men on sidewalks near the waterfront who pushed knock-off watches from the inner lining of their overcoats in 85-degree heat. A torrential rainstorm midafternoon became the absolute topping on the cake of my day, leaving me drenched and resembling a raccoon from smeared eye liner. My hair could have stood in for an industrial mop, and my shorts, sans panty line, clung to me like a second skin. All I needed was a shopping cart filled with booty from a dumpster dive to make me look like I really fit into the urban life around me.
It was nearly 7pm when, juggling bags of souvenirs, I crawled to my final stop of the day, the Silk Building, on West 4th Street. Val would be finishing up seeing patients in her office on the 8th floor; I’d meet her there for a ride home. The security guard scanned me up and down suspiciously until I handed him Val’s card. Apparently, my disheveled appearance now made sense to him, and he seemed a bit too eager pushing for the elevator to send me up to her office.
I felt the lift swoosh me upwards, and I stumbled back a bit, dropping one of the many packages as I grabbed at a side bar for balance. Bending over to pick up the bag, I could see from the corner of my eye the button for the sixth-floor light up. The elevator shook as it stopped.
The door opened. I blinked. I blinked again.
There stood Richard Gere, Mr. Officer and a Gentleman himself. His hair was salt and pepper now, not dark, and he seemed shorter in person, but it was him. And here was me, in all my glory, complete with an “I Love NY” T-shirt stained with vendor mustard from my 3pm hot dog stop, and a paper napkin stuck to my shoe. He seemed to take me in with a polite glance, but honestly, no American Gigolo would want this.
“Going down?” he asked.
Oh my dear God, I thought. No one will ever believe that Richard Gere of all people just asked me that. All I could do was shake my head and fumble with the bags my hands could no longer control.
“Up,” I managed in a near whisper.
“I’ll wait for the next one,” he replied, grinning at me like Zack Mayo.
I dropped another bag.
Blocking the door from closing, he stepped into the elevator, bent down, and swooped the bag up, handing it to me.
“Looks like you’ve been enjoying the city.”
Well, duh. I thought. Who are we kidding? I’m wearing the city!
“Oh, I have,” I uttered a bit more confidently as he stepped back outside the elevator. And then, just as the doors began closing, some ungodly being took over my brain and I blurted out, “I had to leave my underwear on Ellis Island!”
The look that was on that man’s face. This screen idol of my teendom. This heartthrob for millions of now middle-aged women around the globe. He just stared at me, those liquid brown eyes that drilled with intensity through so many conquests on the big screen now glazed over, his lips moving, trying to find words, but no sound coming out.
The doors closed.
The elevator zoomed up.
And all I could think was, I just broke Richard Gere.
When I got to Val’s office, I dropped my bags and collapsed on her couch, retelling the events of my day, and ending with my concern that I’d somehow caused traumatic psychological injury to Sir Lancelot minutes earlier. Val calmly sat back in her chair, closing a notebook on her lap, and offered me her $100-an-hour advice.
“Richard Gere will be just fine,” she assured. “Don’t get your panties in a twist!”