On my walk to the bank I found a pair of dirty panties laying on the street by the elementary school in the crosswalk.

They weren't dirty in a way that indicated a struggle took place while someone was wearing them, just dirty in a way that any discarded fabric would be if it spent time laying in the road. They were pink Hanes Her Way, definitely grown-up panties. A twig was ensnared in them and they were bunched up.

I walked past them quickly in a kind of shock, knowing I wouldn't want anyone to catch me looking at them, but wanting to just the same. I left them behind, wishing I'd had my camera. I left them behind, but couldn't stop considering picking them up and putting them in my backpack. I could use the twig to pick them up without touching them, or at least I could say that's what I did so people wouldn't know that it doesn't really freak me out to pick up dead panties out of the street with my bare hands. I could bring them home and justify my strange behavior because I'm a pornographer and some people would like to see these panties I found. Because some of the people who read me online are exactly the people who WOULD have found a way to snatch those panties off the street, or would be jealous of my wild and crazy ability to defy convention and do so.

I'm always fascinated by the private things that are abandoned in public places. Grocery lists, for example. But it's especially strange and fascinatingly intimate when underwear is discarded. Socks in parking lots. Panties used as toilet paper and dropped in conspicuous store locations. Shoes thrown over telephone wires. Panties on the street. I'm drawn to these things and wonder how they got there, just like I wonder why half the bad boys and girls on COPS are driving and wandering around the streets barefoot (not wearing shoes on the street is a much more significant sign to me that these people's lives are totally fucked up than the drugs in their cars or their desire to run from the police). Are they leaving their clothes behind to mark their territory? Is it like movable pheromone-filled graffiti? Are they trying to fuck with me/people like me? Or are they just getting rid of things they don't want anymore?

*****

On the way back home I thought about the place where I left the panties behind and whether or not they'd still be there. They were, and this time I actually stopped and peered down at them. There was blood on them. Not crime scene blood, but natural period-type spots. Did she buy new clean panties? Did she just decide to go without? Did she wonder what people would think when they saw them right there in the crosswalk? Was she laughing when she threw them? Was she alone? Did she get rid of them because she was proud to show them off rather than wash them after they'd already served their purpose? Or did she get rid of them because they disgusted her and she just wanted to leave them behind?

Or maybe someone's son or younger brother stole them out of the laundry and brought them to the playground to show to all of his friends and they all laughed and threw them around after passing them to each other with grubby fingers wondering what it all meant. Or maybe someone sat in his car by the school late at night and jacked off into them, then threw them out. If he would have been caught he could have to register as a sex offender for committing that act within so many feet of a school. Even though it's summer and school's not in session. What was he thinking, throwing them out right there? What is anybody thinking?

Maybe they were just on the top of someone's laundry basket in the car with the windows down and just flew out on accident.

*****

The panties will be gone the next time I go by there, and I'll wonder who took them. A concerned mother picking them up with a plastic bag between her hand and the cotton like she's picking up dog poop? The guy I've seen at the playground with a metal detector, scavenging for treasure? The same person who put them there? A lonely teenager in a trench coat taking a midnight stroll? I wish I could watch them do it without anyone seeing me.

*****

There's a mystery just north of us of severed feet washing up on shore (see story: Retracing the Steps of the Severed Feet). I don't know why, but I just happened to think of it.

One of them turned out to be a hoax.

*****

Here are a few more blog entries I posted recently:

What Failure Looks Like: Exhibit A

What Failure Looks Like: Exhibit B (in lieu of pics of the street panties)

Two alternative ways of purchasing membership to my site:
microphone = six month membership
laptop = lifetime membership

Labels: confessions, fetishes, panties, scavengers, stains, voyeurism

posted by Trixie at 7/24/2008 06:49:00 PM -