My Mid-Life Underwear Crisis

Does everyone go through a mid-life crisis?  I was going to start this article with a statement that everyone does.  Then, I thought about it.  Maybe not everyone does. Perhaps some have multiple, possibly concurrent, mid-life crisis. While others have none.

I’ve had a few myself, so I think it’s a universal thing but, this one is very personal.

I’m having a very difficult time finding underwear to fit my mid-life body properly.

For many years, I wore briefs.  I always liked the colors and patterns, so I never wore the plain white ones, but I preferred the way they fit.  Then, I got fatter, and I started having waist-band roll-over issues.  Throughout my 40’s it seems I packed on a few more pounds every year and, pretty soon, every time I bent over, the waistband would roll over on me.  I needed a sturdier alternative (I guess I could have worked harder at losing weight, but that didn’t occur to me at the time). 

I switched to boxers.  I found three-pack at Costco made of a very soft fabric called modal, and I loved it.  There was no tag.  It rode up high enough on my waist that the band stayed in place and they were comfortable and roomy.  As it turns out, they were perhaps a little too roomy.

I’m 50 years old at the time of this writing, and six months ago, I had a vasectomy. I’m not sure if this is a universal experience (among men) but, it seems that my balls hang lower than they used to.  I don’t know if this is just a normal aging thing, if the vasectomy had any effect on them or if the Gods of gravity somehow beckoned my testicles closer to the Earth, but something changed.

This fact is relevant because boxer shorts are very roomy at the expense of support.   They do nothing to support the boys when I’m out for a walk.  My doctor has told me that I need to be walking regularly and, when I do this, I usually take my balls along with me.

I was walking in Las Vegas over Thanksgiving weekend.  It was lovely out.  The temperature was in the 60s, so it was a little brisk but not cold. I had my family with me, we had just seen a fantastic show, and we were walking down the strip. One step I was fine — the next step I was not.  I had somehow managed to squish my left testicle just by walking.  I wasn’t jumping or playing around.  I had not been drinking. I didn’t stumble.  It was even a little bit cold out!  The boys should have been high and tight! But no, I managed to squish a testicle just by walking.  This has to be an old-man thing.  I can’t imagine this happening to me in my 20’s.

I spent the next few days limping around Vegas, telling everyone that I pulled a muscle. When I got back home, I scheduled a doctor visit and an ultrasound.  I hadn’t done any damage, but I also had to find a more supportive type of underwear — Goodbye soft, comfy boxers that Costco had at such a great price.

I decided to try boxer-briefs.  Boxer-briefs seem to be the trend these days.  Both my boys wear them. They are at the top of the search results for “Men’s Underwear,” so they must be popular (more on search results in a moment).

I went back to Costco, hoping for Zeus to throw a second bold of lightning which would strike the underwear aisle at my local store and deliver the underwear nirvana I sought.  No such luck.

In addition to being fat, I’m also short.  I’m 5’4″. To get a waist that fit me, I bought a size XL. The waist fit fine, but the underwear was expecting someone much taller than me.  When I pulled up the first pair, they came to my belly button; they were a good two inches above the waistband of my pants.  Not only that, they reached to just above my knees.  This was not proper underwear! This was a fucking pair of bloomers!  It did support my balls nicely, however.

Back to the internet, and another search for “Men’s underwear”.

I tried ordering a pair of low-rise trunks.  These were a better fit but, they had a tag.  I forgot to double-check the description to make sure make sure it was tagless.

After another search, I bought an additional sample pair to add to my collection of research-underwear. I’m still waiting, hopefully, for those.

I don’t have a conclusion to this story.  I’m still on my quest. I have learned, however, that if you do enough google searches for “Men’s underwear” that sooner or later, you start showing up on someone’s underwear-selling algorithm, and they try to sell you a leather, jock-strap.