Chapter Five #2
"They're just underwear," he says. "Before you make it a thing.
They're seamless, they hold everything close, nothing prints.
Guys wear them under suits all the time when they need to look clean in a fitted trouser.
It's practical." He looks up then, mild.
"And there's the other part. You're trying to go on dates, right?
You're trying to sit across from a woman and not spend the whole time panicking about what's going on under your clothes.
This helps with that. You put these on, the cage stays flat and hidden, and you stop thinking about it.
You get to actually be present instead of worrying the whole time that something's going to show or shift or give you away. "
I take them into the bathroom and put them on.
They slide up my legs smooth and cool, nothing like the cotton I'm used to.
The fabric is thin and soft in a way that feels almost slippery against my skin.
When they reach my thighs and settle over the cage, they hug everything close and flat.
There's no bunching, no extra fabric, just a steady, even pressure holding the little pink shell tight against my body.
I can feel the smooth material stretched snug over the plastic, and underneath it, the cage pressing back against me in a way my regular underwear never did.
I pull my jeans up over them and look in the mirror. I look like a guy in jeans. Exactly like a guy in jeans. Nobody would be able to tell.
And then there's the flicker.
Standing there with the thin fabric held tight against the cage, something moves low in me.
The smooth pressure of the panties against the plastic, the way they keep everything compressed and held in place, it sends a small, sharp pulse through me.
Not quite arousal. Not quite anything I can name.
Just a low, warm thrum that starts where the fabric meets the cage and spreads.
For half a second I like it. Not the practicality.
The feeling itself. The soft, hidden, constant closeness of it.
I shut it down fast. It's the cage. It's the pressure.
My body's just confused after two weeks of being locked away from any kind of touch.
It's not the underwear. It's just that anything this snug is going to feel like something now.
I have a whole reasonable explanation ready before the feeling even fades, and I hold onto it tight enough to walk back out.
"Better?" Graham says, not looking up.
"Yeah," I say. "Actually. Yeah."
"Told you," he says. "Quiet works."
* * *
Dev texts me Sunday. He texts me most Sundays now, because he's decided my whole situation is a project he's project-managing, and I let him, because telling him to stop would mean telling him why.
ok new plan, he writes. deleted your excuses. made you a profile on the good app. i wrote your bio, thank me later. also come to the gym tues we're doing back.
A month ago that text would have been the most help anyone was offering me.
Dev with his profiles and his openers and his theory that I'm a settings problem.
He means it. He's a good friend. He genuinely thinks that if he just gets me enough reps, enough swipes, enough time under the bar, the thing in me that breaks will stop breaking.
The thing is I don't need Dev's plan anymore, and Dev doesn't know that.
thanks man, I write back. tues works.
it's incredible. i said you're "quietly confident." women love a still-waters thing.
Quietly confident. I look at that for a second. He has no idea how close he got, or how he got it exactly backwards.
I put the phone down. I'll go to the gym Tuesday. I'll let Dev think it's working. It is working, just not his.
* * *
The next few days pass strangely quiet.
I wear the new cage during the day now without being told to.
Graham doesn't comment on it. He just unlocks it at night like it's become routine, and I don't ask him to stop.
The little pink one sits snug and close under my clothes, and after the first day or two I stop reaching down to check if it's still there. It just is.
At work I'm more focused than I've been in months. At the gym on Tuesday I let Dev talk while I lift, and for once I don't feel like I'm performing some version of myself. I just lift. When he asks how the app is going I tell him it's fine, and I don't feel the usual twist of guilt about lying.
Graham notices. He doesn't say much, but on Wednesday night while we're cleaning up after dinner he says, almost offhand, "You seem steadier lately."
I don't know what to say to that, so I just nod.
He dries his hands on a towel and adds, "That's good. You should be able to think on Thursday."
I look at him. He's not smiling. He's just stating it like a fact.
"Yeah," I say. "I think so."
He drops the towel over the oven handle and doesn't bring it up again.
* * *
The date is Thursday. A woman from Dev's app.
Her name is Lauren. She likes hiking and true crime podcasts and she said my job sounded oddly soothing.
That's about all I know about her, because if I'm honest she's not quite a real person to me yet.
She's the test. The room I have to walk into without falling apart.
Thursday afternoon I get dressed for it.
I put on the smooth pale underwear. I settle the little pink cage up close and flat where nobody will see it. Over that, jeans and a decent shirt. I look in the mirror and I'm a guy going to get coffee with a woman. Clean. Ordinary.
And under the clothes I'm locked in a cage the size of a bottlecap that a man I live with holds the key to, wearing women's underwear he handed me, on my way to try to sleep with a woman I can't sleep with because the one part of me that would have to work for that is padlocked in a dish across town.
I stand in front of the mirror and wait for the alarm. The one that should be going off.
It doesn't come.
What comes instead, when I check the cage one last time through the denim and feel it sitting there small and snug, is the quiet.
The good quiet. The thing that means I can walk into that coffee place and actually look at her and hear what she says, because the part of me that used to stand over every second of it with a clipboard is put away, handled, not invited.
Graham's in the kitchen when I come out. He looks up, takes in the shirt, the shoes, the whole effort of me getting ready.
"Heading out?" he says.
"Yeah. Coffee with that woman from the app. Lauren."
He nods, like that's all the information he needs.
Then he says, easy, "You'll be fine. You're not carrying the thing into the room this time.
It's staying home with me." He tips his head toward the dish on the side table, where the key sits with his others.
"Go be a person. That's all it ever was. "
I get my jacket. At the door I stop, patting my pockets out of habit, and I feel it.
The flat press of the cage through my jeans, the smooth fabric of the underwear underneath, and the thin square of the condom still sitting in my wallet from before, from the version of me that thought Thursday nights were for crossing lines instead of protecting ones I can't cross.
Graham's voice comes from the kitchen.
"Text me how it goes."
"Yeah," I say. "I will."
I go out into the cold, dressed and locked and carrying nobody's noise but my own quiet, out to chase a woman with the two things on me I could never explain to her, and I feel good. That's the part I can't say to anyone. I feel good. Lighter than I've felt walking into one of these in ten years.
I pull my jacket tight and walk toward the test I already know I'll fail, and for the first time it doesn't feel like the thing that's going to end me.
It feels like a life I could get used to.