Sometimes Ben's mom Lanie, is in the kitchen while this is going on: As Jerry is a social sloth, Lanie's a social bee. She buzzes around her house talking to anyone who will listen. Maybe that's why she's so open to us coming in all the time. In her moments of solitude she still doesn't really have solitude – she keeps a small transistor radio on in the kitchen while she works. During the summer the radio's voice is Joe Castiglione narrating Red Sox games, other times its oldies pop. She's small and thin and is in great shape for a woman in her forties – she's an avid runner in her spare time. I don't hear her around the house but her car is in the driveway, so that must be what she's out doing now.
I chill in Ben's room for a while listening to music and watching TV. We never really do much over here but it's just a nice place to relax. There is one fun thing about his house though, one thing that gives me a little bit of a thrill. I'll show you.
First I think you have to know a little more about how the house is set up. When you walk in the front door the stairs up are right in front of you. To your left there's a little hallway that leads into the TV room where Jerry sits watching stocks. To your right there's a living room that nobody ever really lives in: it's the room that gets the most sun though because the outer wall is a window. So the cats sit there during the day. This room opens into the kitchen, which is then connected to the TV room in the back. And that's the main floor.
But you can go upstairs, up the steep stairs. Upstairs is a tiny hallway that has doors to four rooms: the bathroom, straight ahead; Jerry and Lanie's room, to the left; Ben's room, immediately to the right, and Ben's younger sister Kelly's room, to the left, in between Ben's room and the bathroom.
Kelly: a few years younger than us, and weird. The verdict's still out on her looks. She's freckled and looks younger than she is, but who knows what she could develop into, maybe her mother. Like her mother she talks a lot but she says weird, immature things that remind you how young she is.
Anyway, I leave Ben's room and close the door mostly behind me. To his knowledge I'm just going to the bathroom. But actually, I take a few steps more and sneak into his parents' bedroom. The room appears clean and fairly boring – the bed is on the right and there is a TV next to it. On the left are closets, painted white. In between the first and second closet, concealed from the outside, is a column with four shelves, stacked vertically. I open the first closet door slightly ajar and reach my hand in on top of the highest shelf, on top of the column. This is where Mrs. V keeps her panties.
There's nothing particularly special about Mrs. V's panties. They aren't red satin thongs or crotchless and leopard printed. Those aren't fit for her anyway, they wouldn't match her. The thing I know about Mrs. V that appeals to me is that I don't know much about her. I know her exteriors, I know her friendly social housewife persona. But that's a classification she molded herself into and will preserve, right down to the underwear she chooses for herself. I hold them in my hand – white Jockeys, the occasional black or gray. Classic, rounded, reserved shape. Faintly stained. These things aren't the truth. Why should we always want to know the truth when we can enduringly indulge ourselves in our far more expansive imagination? These cotton delicacies mask the truth, they are the last mask for the truth. That's why I find them so erotic. They are the last thing that must mold to her, that she must mold to. They are the last persistent blue flame of the imagination. They are the last thing she uses to hide and the last thing I seek to remove – but who doesn't want games of hide and seek to last longer? Isn't that the best part?
I select an off white pair, distinguishable because of its florally-patterned band. Zip them up inside my jacket pocket and then creep into the bathroom to flush the toilet and turn on the sink for a few seconds before I return to Ben's room.
