I could feel him fumbling near my thighs. I was wearing a peasant skirt over the bodysuit, so there were many folds and crinkles for his hands to get lost in. Still, he seemed determined to push the skirt up or down, whichever way it took.

"You know?" I said, sitting up. "I think you're right. Long-distance relationships. They're a disaster. What movie did you rent?"

"I was just thinking," he said with total sincerity, "how wrong I was. I think we can make this work." He smiled and threw me back on the couch. Poor man. I knew he was just enthusiastic about the idea of getting laid, but he needed to pretend this was a relationship.

"Whoops!" I said. "Need to pee." I hauled myself off him. Once safely locked in the bathroom, I removed the hideous underpants and re-snapped the bodysuit, which I figured could pass for both shirt and undergarment. The sensation of metal snaps nestled against my labial folds was hideous, but I would tough it out. My plan was to hide the panties somewhere in the bathroom. At some point later I would retrieve them, stuff them into my purse, throw them into a trashcan, set the trashcan on fire, then flatten the trashcan with a stolen municipal truck.

But the bathroom was tiny, and there wasn't a single place I could hide the underwear. I couldn't believe this tall man's bathroom could be so compact. If he sat on the toilet, his knees would go through the ceiling. He had a pedestal sink, so there was no cabinet into which I could shove the underpants. I wheeled around, which was not easy to do in the tiny bathroom. He had no wastebasket. His medicine cabinet was too shallow. His shower curtain was a single, transparent liner sheet. I began to think this was a coordinated plot to keep me from hiding my panties. Who uses a liner alone as a shower curtain?

From the other side of the door, Bill asked how I was doing. "Fine!" I called out. "I'm just trying to hide some underwear!" I didn't say this, but it was implied. Could I stuff the panties into the toilet cistern and just never see him again?

Just as I was lifting the tank lid, a superior alternative came to me: I would toss them out the window.

After a minute or two of desperate lifting, the window still didn't want to open. Clearly the landlord had commanded that each new tenant apply a fresh new coat of white paint in return for their security deposit. Thirty coats later, the window had been sealed shut. Like a parent lifting a telephone pole off her pinned child, I grabbed the window and harnessed a reserve of strength I never knew I had.

"What's going on in there?" Bill called as I budged the window open a crack.

"Just need some air!" I cried, trying to shove my panties through the knife-thin gap. The underwear did not budge. Was there a screen blocking it? If there was, the underwear was stuck forever; I was too drunk to figure out how to pull it back inside. I would die of shame. Bill would come upon my corpse hanging by one hand from the window frame. I poked frantically at the underwear. More and more of it disappeared from view, until finally it escaped the window frame's clutches, floating gracefully downward toward the apartment building's courtyard.

It was over. My shame was out there and not in here with me. Two old men sitting on a bench in the courtyard watched my underwear gently alight on the concrete next to them. For a few paranoid moments, I imagined them looking up, identifying the apartment the underwear had come from and trotting up to the door with my panties in hand.

"What in hell?" said one. The underwear sat solemnly in the center of a courtyard, illuminated by a lone streetlamp. After a moment the other one said, "Someone threw they panties down."

I left the bathroom and joined a sobering-up Bill on the couch. He took my hand. Uh-oh, I thought. "I've been thinking," he said.

"That's never a good idea," I advised. He smiled.

"You were right," he said. "We probably — you know. We shouldn't. I'm just not ready."

I couldn't believe it. I gave him a non-aggressive kiss, a window of opportunity for him to change his mind. But he pulled away after a minute or two. "Let's get you a cab," he said.

As we walked through the courtyard, there were my underpants, waiting for me. I considered leaning over and picking them up, stuffing them into my purse and giving Bill a broad smile. But instead, I just stepped around them. They had saved my ass, but they'd never touch it again.  n°