Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on December 2010

Illustration by Phil Couzens

My wife’s friend is selling her undies over the internet. She doesn’t appear to be a deviant or anything—married, couple of kids, a garden-variety housewife—she just wanted some extra cash, and progressed from selling golf clubs on eBay to her pants on porno sites. Although I can’t confess to buying into the undies scene myself, beyond a certain interest in the Mac Jeans House catalogue, the whole supply side of the racket has fired up my imagination.

At first I felt uneasy on the friend’s behalf, but she seems untroubled that, out there, some anonymous dude is wearing her unmentionables as headgear and having an outrageous time with himself.

Who am I to sniff? It’s not like anyone’s getting hurt from the transaction. As anyone who reads Dan Savage’s excellent sex advice column in The AV Club would tell you, whiffing and wearing a lady’s delicates—any lady’s delicates—is a tame fetish to have, something the folks at the local dungeon might mock behind their latex gimp masks. The other week, a Savage Love correspondent innocently asked if it was strange to need green frogs and superglue to get it off every time he was in the mood for romance.

According to The Handbook of Psychiatry, the medical attitude toward this type of low-level paraphilia is indulgence, which is reassuring. I don’t want to be picked off from a bell tower or pushed in front of a train because some repressed salaryman with mommy issues was denied access to a cheap and abundant supply of dirty briefs. The handbook goes on to explain that the pant connoisseur is almost always a man, the only exception being a very small but enthusiastic subset of butch lesbians.

With a modest investment of capital in your choice of intimate garments, an internet connection, and security in the knowledge you are doing society a big favor, you too can launch a career in the used-pant industry and start hauling in the cash straight away.

Your working day is yours to spend however you choose. Drop the kids at school, do a bit of shopping, have lunch with your friends. Some deep knee cricks, perhaps. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, and whoever you’re doing it with, your pants are down there beavering away, bringing home the bacon. At the end of a fruitful day, into a Ziploc and through a mail slot they go, and before you can say “pathogen,” the honourable postman-san will be rushing them into the hands of a grateful and generous client.

There’s no reason why you couldn’t work your way up to three or four pairs a day, if you were given time to build a clientele and led a sufficiently active lifestyle. You can even envision complaining to your friends about how you’re exhausted from doing double shifts, and there’s nothing to stop you working while you sleep. Five pairs a day at ¥3,000 a pair? I wouldn’t turn my nose up at that.

The whole enterprise, I imagine, would be deeply satisfying. The hours, although long, wouldn’t be demanding. The job requires no qualifications beyond the biological. You may be big and fat, small and slim, beautiful or plain—the serious pant freak does not discriminate. Even the laundry itself needn’t be expensive. You can sell big, white panties or delicate European briefs. You’ll never have to deal with sagging elastic, butt creep or threadbare gussets ever again. Each dawn brings a crisp, cellophane-wrapped packet of pants—it would feel like Christmas every day. If you ever need a holiday, just go commando.

The only difficulties I can foresee are completing the “occupation” section on a tax return, and the challenges of market differentiation. My wife’s friend responded to that by offering, for an additional fee, a vial of her own urine. I don’t know if she claims it has any special properties beyond serving like a refill for a Glade plug-in. She’s even considering marketing it as a line—Star of Elendil.

Walter from The Big Lebowski could have been throwing away a fortune when he tossed a briefcase of his dirty undies out of The Dude’s car. I wonder if I’m making the same mistake every time I do a load of wash. I just can’t figure a way around the gender problem that doesn’t involve expensive surgery and hormone therapy. Maybe I’ll give it a try anyway, though: offer some free samples to my students, try to jump-start the business. If I’m not
arrested, I’ll let you know how it works out.