Sam Wimple - Men’s Underwear - Aware

It was a regular morning on a regular day. Sam Wimple, a regular man with a regular job, had just stepped out of the shower and was padding naked back toward his bedroom. It was a habit he’d developed ever since his wife, the former Joanie Wimple, had left him. Why put on clothes in the bathroom when he lived alone. Might as well get dressed in the comfort of his own bedroom.

There were a few things like that, things that Joanie wouldn’t have put up with when they were still together. Walking naked from the shower was the first that Sam had begun, but soon after he was eating meals in front of the television instead of at the dinner table. Then came dropping his dirty clothes in the washing machine, conveniently in the kitchen, instead of his hamper in the bedroom.

Joanie wouldn’t have stood for any of it.

“It’s not proper,” she would have said. Sam could hear her voice in his head as if she was in the room. Twenty years of marriage will do that. You imprint on each other, and no matter how many days it had been since she left, he still felt her absence.

Not that he’d take her back.

She was a mess. Angry, controlling, mean, but most of all, unfaithful.

Three men. That was what he knew. At least three men. The nanny cam Sam had set up showed them arriving as quickly as five minutes after he’d left for work. One after the other, each taking their turn with her on different days. Sam had never felt so betrayed in his life. When he confronted her about it she’d blamed him.

“If you weren’t working all the time,” she yelled, throwing her coffee mug at him, “I wouldn’t have to get my needs met elsewhere.”

They’d yelled. They’d cried. In the end, though, the next day she had her bags packed and one of her boyfriends had taken her in. Aside from requests to forward mail, Sam hadn’t heard from her since.

And that was fine.

Sam had his job. He had his friends. The last thing he needed was a toxic wife in his life. He was in his forties. How much longer would he have had to waste his precious days with someone who did their best trying to make his life miserable.

Good riddance.

The carpet in the bedroom was soft and warm under Sam’s feet as he crossed from the doorway to his dresser. His dresser. It used to belong to the pair of them, but now was his and his alone. It had been months since the movers Joanie had hired had cleaned out the rest of her things, delivering them to her new home across town. One of the strange things of splitting up, something he’d never thought about, was the other half of the dresser. What do you do with all that space? For so long he’d only used so many drawers, but now he had options.

To be honest, most of those drawers still stood empty. It wasn’t that Sam longed for his ex-wife to return, it was just that he had gotten used to the layout of his clothes and hadn’t gotten around to changing it. Besides, it wasn’t as if he had gone and bought himself a new wardrobe when he became single. His clothes were, for the most part, unchanged.

He pulled open the drawer that held his trove of underwear and paused.

That wasn’t right.

Instead of the grey bulk-purchased boxer-briefs that normally inhabited the drawer, a collection of what looked like women’s underwear filled the cavity. He blinked. Had someone broken into the house while he was showering?

“Hello?” He called.

No answer.

“This isn’t funny!” Sam shouted.

Again, no answer.

He looked down at the drawer. Lace. Silk. Satin. Black. Pink. Red. He pulled one out and held it up in front of him. It wasn’t one of Joanie’s, that was certain. For one thing, she would never wear a g-string. For another, it was far too big. Almost as if it was sized to fit Sam himself!

From his nightstand, Sam’s mobile began to ring.

Turning, still naked, he retrieved the phone and answered it.

“Sam,” it was Sam’s boss, Peter Harris, “I need you to come in early. It’s a bit of an emergency.”

“What’s up?” Sam asked, momentarily putting the underwear out of his mind.

“I just got word that Terry Biggs is coming in first thing. It sounds like she’s angry and might move her account,” Terry Biggs represented a sizeable amount of revenue for their company, “You’re the one with the best relationship with her. I need you here when she arrives.”

“I’ll leave right away,” Sam said, “should only be twenty minutes at this time of day,” it was still early, “Ask Susan at reception to grab an oat milk latte. Terry loves those.”

They hung up and Sam scrambled. He didn’t have time to worry about underwear. He slid the first pair he grabbed, a baby blue pair with lace trim. He didn’t care. Soon enough the offending garments were hidden under a grey suit, and nobody would be the wiser.

And so, clad in his first pair of panties, Sam Wimple hopped into his car and sped off to work. He had an account to save.