BVD + BLACK SOCK

Copyright Friday the 13^th, 2009

His name was BVD.  He was made out of cotton.  He was white.  Well, he was once white.  Now, he was more beige-like. 

Let’s face it, BVD was an underwear.

He only worked once every couple weeks.  He had to support a pair of hairy balls and a curvy stick.  For an entire day, he provided these hairy balls and curvy stick with support, prevent all of them from swelling up and turning two or three times its size. 

BVD had a tough job.  But he was very good at this.  Securing these balls and stick.  Keeping them secure for the entire day.  No matter how many times these things bounced and sweated and smelled, BVD did the job.  Secured these three things.

But BVD was getting old, securing these balls and stick for a long period of time took a toll on BVD.  Parts of him were ripping apart.  His body was not handling the handling of the balls and stick as well as he once had. 

It was especially difficult on BVD when he was thrown in a giant cauldron of hot, foamy, tidal wave water, a necessity to restore BVD into a clean state for further ball handling.

This violent excursion is what wore on BVD.  It made him feel like he was being swallowed into a mouth of fire...

Regardless, this was his favorite time of the month.

Although they were stored in the same buckets, he did not see her until one of these times.

He remembered it like was yesterday.

Him.  BVD.  Crashing, smashing, collapsing into other underwears, shirts, scarves. 

Entangling into garments he never cared for. Drowning in lava-like water.  Another day of physical devastation. 

He especially hated the scarf.  The scarf didn’t like him much either.

“Will you get off me!”, he yelled at the too-long, tentacly, useless garment.

“Why don’t you detach yourself from me,” insisted the scarf.

But BVD was stuck.  Once you were against the scarf, you were stuck against him for a long period.  Unless you could latch on to an oncoming garment large enough to rip yourself away. 

But there was nothing like that spinning his direction.  He could be attached to this distasteful being for the entire boiling, body-ripping cycle.

“Alas, I am stuck on you”, announced BVD.

“I too am disgusted.  I shan’t enjoy the remainder of this cycle, dear boy,” retorted the scarf.

The scarf’s accent was an unfriendly sound that only made close proximity a more grading experience than it had to be. 

“It is you who is harassing my existence, dear boy, it is...”

And just like so, BVD was free of the scarf, watching the scarf’s sinewy body swim away like a giant, headless squid. 

BVD had no idea how he had detached himself from the scarf.  When he noticed the black spot.  Which he followed and realized was a black sock.  She did not resemble a sock at this time, more like a black ball.  She had grown heavier in this moist atmosphere, as socks typically do.

But she was very small and weighty enough to pry him away from the scarf.

“That scarf is a jerk”, she announced foppishly.

“Yes,” replied BVD, uncertain what else to say about this scarf, or in regards to the interaction they were currently exchanging.

And then, ”thank you for prying me away from this scarf”.

“I understand what it’s like, that scarf bites,” the black sock said as they spun around in twisted boiling water, hanging on to each other to prevent being attached to anything else, something perhaps worse than the scarf.

It had dawned on BVD later, after returning to the clean, whiter state, that the black sock had wanted to be attached to him.  Perhaps she liked him.  It never occurred to him that a sock could like an underwear.  Especially a black one liking a white one.

And the next month, instead of dreading the boiling typhoon waters, he looked forward it. 

The ripping, twisting, pummeling of his underwear body.  The tear jerking pain.  The spine crushing concussions.  BVD anticipated this horror with a newfound joy he never thought could possess him.

During the next wash, he crashed into a pair of jeans, the dreaded zipper of the jeans which knocked him out into complete blackness, then a monstrous hooded sweatshirt which smelled like death itself enveloping him, suffocating his being like a liquid coffin.

When he came out of this, he realized the black sock was once again attached to him.

“Those hooded sweatshirts are such a nightmare”, she said.

“Yes,” replied BVD, so physically decimated he saw three black socks even though she was just one. 

And they rode the rest of this twisting, hellish ordeal together again.

And then this became a habit for BVD and the black sock of his dreams.  BVD was overjoyed with her company.  Her smell.  Her texture.  Her every black sockness. 

“I detest that corduroy pants,” she said,” that corduroy material makes me feel gross all over”.

He agreed.  The black sock spoke his thoughts.  Uttered his opinions in purest, poetic forms.  Just like the black sock itself. 

And as years went by, they always found a way to ride the shockwave of extreme heat, volcano-eske atmosphere and neck pounding water punches.  While every other garment screamed, shrieked, cried in tortured cries, BVD was overjoyed with his togetherness with that black sock, the perfect garment, the perfect materials, colors, textures, form, shape.

And when his body started to break down, and BVD was no longer what he once was, he still found a way to make it into the deadly cauldron.

“You can’t keep coming in here, BVD,” the black sock said.

“I want to,” BVD insisted.

“You will die if you keep coming in here.  As your underwear body can no longer handle it.”

But BVD kept returning, even when he wasn’t due for a wash, as his body could no longer sustain the ball and curvy stick duties that was once entrusted upon him.

His body was filled with holes.  Ripping apart like a piece of unpresentable deli meat.  He had faced the cauldron too many times and was a couple washes from being ripped into several, if not a dozen pieces of himself, and thus would become useless and face complete extinction.

“You can’t keep coming here, BVD,” the black sock said.  Somehow, she had faced very little damage to her being.  Her blackness hid any flaws.  Her littleness limited how much damage you could see from her age.  She aged very well and could live on much longer than he, the white, shredded, barely functioning BVD underwear.

“I can’t imagine life without you, black sock”,” BVD said.

“Don’t be silly, you can hide below the other garments and lead a simple life, avoid further washings and lead a relaxed life like other overused underwears.  I’ve seen it and I insist that is what you do”.

BVD took her advice and lived under the radar.  When it was time for a wash, BVD managed to stay below other garments, hide comfortably with the other underwears and socks.

And he was in the company of other torn underwears, socks riddled with holes, shirts that were so thin, you could see right through them.  His body had taken severe beatings over these years.  And the only good thing he could recall was being in that boiling cauldron with the black sock and listening to her speak his thoughts.

“That scarf is a jerk”, he recalled her saying.

“Corduroy garments are all assholes,” he remembered pleasingly.

“Hooded sweatshirts have such big egos because they’re always being used, but have you ever seen a hooded sweatshirt no longer in use.  That’s fucking sad”.

As a matter of fact, BVD was staring plainly at one right now.  He was old.  Shredded.  The hood barely attached to his sweatshirt body.  Pieces hanging off him, falling off him like a dark cloud raining cotton balls and other types of stuffings.  Shit, you wanted to put a bullet right through this hooded sweatshirt.

“I loved that scarf”, you could barely him say. 

“You mean, that long, sinewy, squid like creature?” Added BVD?

“Yes, that’s her, have you seen her?”

BVD didn’t want to say, but he thought that scarf had been a “he” and not a “she”.

“Yes, I have, Mr.Hooded Sweatshirt”, added BVD, coughing himself.  He was no longer a new underwear but an old one.

“She was beautiful, sinewy and always entangled herself on my hoodedness when I went in there”.

And BVD understood that his feelings also belonged to the old, beaten, rotten hooded sweatshirt’s.  And together they would commiserate about their lost loved ones for days, months...  cry, weep, recant the same stories about how the garments of their dreams entangled herself on his majestic hooded sweatshirtness or BVDness.

Until one day BVD finally announced, “I’m going back to see her.  I have to see my black sock”.

“You will die if you do”, insisted the hooded sweatshirt, his voice crackling, “and she is not your black sock”. 

“She is mine”, argued BVD, coughing, hacking.  He noticed the hooded sweatshirt looking thinner these days as less and less stuffings remained in his hooded sweatshirt being.  He no longer looked like clothes but like a layer of some exotic animal’s skin, drying up in the sun irrelevantly.

“I don’t care,” BVD claimed.

But when it came time to enter the cauldron, he was shaking, vibrating with fear, death almost certainly claiming his underwear body. 

And when the boiling lava-like water filled to the top of the cauldron, BVD coughed hysterically and when other garments leveled against him, he felt like he could no longer see, hear or think. 

He was becoming an underwear without thoughts.  Without sight.  Without sound.  Just a plain old piece of beige like substance that did not supports balls and stick anymore, and thus did nothing but await the end.

The underwear body shredding, riiiiipppping, losing limbs of its underwear self... and other garments watched in terror and shock at BVD’s declining, near-dead state.

“I told you not to come back,” she said.

He could barely see her, hanging onto him, or whatever was left.  He could not reply.  He could only barely smell the black sock.  A very distinct olfactory sensation.

“Look at you, BVD, you’re a mess.”  She said in tears.  “You look like shit.  Why did you come back?”

And just as she said that, BVD became something like a hundred pieces.  All of himself exploded like fireworks, attaching itself to every piece of garment in the cauldron.

The black sock had never seen anything like it.

“Stupid underwear.  You’re even dumber than other underwears,” she said in tears, capturing this moment to her black sock memory.

As BVD faded from life, he captured her last words for whatever fractions was left of his existence, locking the black sock form into his mind, her voice, her demeanor and that was everything he needed as he expired.