About My First Love

I threw away Tim’s boxers today.

Tim was my ex-boyfriend and quite possibly the love of my life. We shared many years together happily in love. After we spent the summer basically living with each other and after we watched his brother get married, there was no question as to the fact that we would live happily ever after together. Then we broke up.



What can I say? I guess Life is bigger than Love sometimes.

Regardless, I did laundry today. I felt quite proud of myself that I could successfully work the washing machine and I knew how to properly clean all my intricate clothes (Really, doing my laundry isn’t like doing other people’s laundry. Everything needs to be washed a certain way so one must do a billion loads for a very small amount.) and I could hang them all so they didn’t get bibits. I even called Albert & Joseph to ask about the water – though really I just wanted to practice French. I’m feeling quite independent.

Then I came across a familiar pair of shorts, a pair of shorts that I have had for over four years. They are a pair of Tim’s boxers that I acquired the first summer we really dated, though I had probably fallen for him the summer before when we met for the first time; I was 15 in a strange man’s house and he walked up the basement stairs with a bright orange screwdriver drink garnished with a tiny, tropical umbrella, wearing a colorful lei and Hawaiian shorts. He was so tan with the most gorgeous back (he rowed crew) and his hair bleached blond and to the little girl that I was, he was gorgeous. To the woman I am now, I still think he is. He was intelligent and ambitious and spoke French and was left handed and had green eyes – all the things I wanted when I dreamed up my husband as a very young child. And after I was through with him, he knew how to tango too.



Sometime the second summer that I knew him, the first summer I worked for him at the Mendon Town Beach, we decided it was a good idea to go swimming in the middle of the night. I remember we had eaten at the Buddah – the sketchiest Chinese restaurant in the world – and played laser tag with four of our friends. We were crazy. But all of us – Tim especially – were all about fun. So we went swimming. I didn’t have a bathing suit so Tim kindly lent me a pair of clean AE boxers that he had stashed in his locker at the beach and in we went. Some of us went canoeing, others just swam around, Tim and I had a fun game of hide and seek – a game I lost terribly seeing as he could hold his breath forever and the water was so dark you couldn’t see under at all. I remember I got a leech that night, like I did so many times, and Tim removed it carefully, like he did so many times.

I went home in his underwear. Sometime later, at work, he was about to return something that he borrowed to me – a tee shirt, perhaps. Just as he outstretched his arm to give it to me, I told him that his underwear was lying on the floor in my room… and I’d return it to him later. He thought it was hysterical. So, as my boss and the wise ass I was crazy for, he had me parade around the MTB and tell all of our friends that I took Tim’s clothes of in my room and now they were lying on my floor (all of which was technically true even though Tim had never been inside my house) before he gave me my shirt back. Sure, it was funny. I thought it was funnier when I tricked him into saying I could keep his clothes.

Thus, from that adventure I acquired my favorite pair of boxers. They’re comfortable, but really they are the embodiment of the crazy antics of youth and fun memories and falling in love. I’ve worn them countless times since that summer, through the best of times and the worst, when Tim and I were dating and when I dated other boys (all of whom knew exactly who Tim was, though I doubt they knew my favorite boxers once belonged to him), through cold winter nights and to the beach on hot summer days. I loved those shorts.

Now the elastic has disintegrated from use and too many times in the dryer. They’ve faded a little, though the memories still stay true. But I no longer know Tim and he will never see those shorts again for, sitting here by myself, feeling independent and free, I’ve decided it’s time to throw them away. It breaks my heart. I associate a tremendous amount of sentimental value to those shorts. But it’s time. Life goes on. I will find another love whose underwear I can steal someday.

Though I doubt I will ever forget these.