June 21, 2003

My apartment is a mess.

This wouldn’t be a problem—after all, I’ve gotten along fine as a slob for 30 years—except for the fact that I can’t find my combination lock. (Those of you who follow Upside-down Hippopotamus may remember a post I made as a guest blogger about my difficulties with combination locks.)

In any case, my inability to find my combination lock means that, when I go to the gym, I can’t risk putting my street clothes in a locker while I work out or do step class, because someone might steal them; I have to take my gym bag with me, therefore, while I work out or go to step class. This in turn means that I have to take as little as possible with me to the gym, so that the step instructor and the other students don’t hate me when my bag takes up too much room.

This has led me to make certain economies in my gym-going routine. I now take only one towel, for example, instead of my usual two. Sometimes I don’t bring my Discman with me. On Wednesday, I came up with another good idea. “I’ll just go to step class in my regular shorts,” I thought, “and wear them afterwards on my date too.” Since any sweat generated in the region of my pelvis would be absorbed by my underwear, the shorts would remain unsullied and pristine.

I was half right.

The problem, of course, was that I was wearing a long t-shirt, the bottom of which overlapped the top of my shorts. It was an intense step class, and the air conditioning wasn’t working in the room, so I ended up sweating a lot. And although no pelvic sweat found its way to my shorts—which were, remember, the only pair I had with me—a lot of sweat from my t-shirt did.

So I had to go on my date looking exactly like I had peed in my pants.

Luckily, through a combination of distraction and legerdemain, I was able to keep my date from becoming aware of this before the sweat had dried.

Of course, it’s also possible that the thought of me peeing in my pants could have turned him on.

In which case it’s probably just as well that he didn’t notice.