"How my brother-in-law's underwear saved my sex life."

Dear Rohan,

Two years ago after Reservoir Mum, the boys and I returned from a weekend staying with you and my sister Cally, I discovered a pair of your undies in the dirty clothes bag inside my suitcase.

Initially, I wasn’t very taken by them. They were a pair of black boxer briefs, by Maxx, and not what I typically wore, and I was annoyed thinking of how I had to wash them and return them, but that was only because I wasn’t able to look into the future to see what your underwear would do for me.

It’s funny how retrospect helps you to see the role fate played in your good fortune. I only put them on that first time because I was under extreme time pressure. It had been a terrible manic morning, after an almost sleepless night thanks to Tyson and Maki’s bed-hopping, and after dishing out breakfast and dressing all four boys it was finally my time to get out of my PJ’s and when I flung the dryer door open your undies were one of the first things to fall out and I was just like ‘Hey, no one’s looking’ you know?

When I stepped into them I could smell the warm 95% cotton fabric fresh from the dryer and it was suggestive of a comfort I’d missed all night and so, despite the helter and skelter of the school morning, I pulled them slowly up my unbent legs, like an erotic dancer in reverse; on slow-mo. It felt so good and the so good feeling repeated itself over and over as it covered each new inch of flesh. As I languished in the laundry I understood what it must be like to be a hot air balloon – so heavy and floppy and useless until the flame is switched on – because by the time your undies had reached their final destination I was floating; the panic of my immediate surroundings faded away to a much broader breathtaking landscape.

At the time, in terms of variety, I was very inexperienced with underwear, only ever wearing the typical oversized Bonds underwear Reservoir Mother In Law bought me for Christmas, and even though I’ve experimented a bit since – wearing boxer shorts some weekends; wearing G-strings in the gym; wearing RM’s lacy lingerie for date night that one time* – I can honestly say that I have never felt more perfectly packaged, more presentable, more anatomically augmented, than I did the first time I wore your medium sized boxer briefs.

They were so snug I wanted to hug teddies! I wanted to chest the floor and do The Worm! I wanted to spin around and around on a grassy hillside! I had no idea that underwear could make me feel so alive! Exclamation mark! And that goes part way to thanking you but it’s nowhere near the full story.

When I regained myself and rushed to the kitchen to pack and align the school bags, RM stopped in her tracks, put a hand on her hip and said, ‘Well… hello!’ and started circling me, studying me, and the whole time she was doing this, dear Rohan, as I stood as ridged and obedient as a show dog under the gaze of a hard-nosed judge, her eyes remained fixed on your magnificent undies.

‘Where did you get those?’ she whispered, gritting her teeth and sucking in some air.

‘Your Mother bought them for me,’ I lied. ‘Last Christmas.’

‘You look really, really good,’ she said, stopping in front of me, her lips only millimetres from mine, her hand running down my back to my bum for a firm squeeze.

I muttered something like what the hell… and when she lifted her hand and brought it down hard the crack of it echoed through the house so that even Lewis looked away from the TV to say, ‘Haha. Mum smacked Dad’s bum’ and RM whispered, ‘Are you doing anything tonight?’ getting on tiptoes to bite my earlobe. I was so thrilled but had to break free from her grasp to prevent myself from poking out of your underwear’s easy-access-fly-front.

That night, while RM was doing her teeth in the ensuite, I stripped down to only your underwear again and after a minute of just looking at myself in the mirror, shaking my head in disbelief, aware that I was not only feeling good about myself but also projecting confidence, I started shaking out the doona – because it was bunching up too much down one end – and as I was bent over, realigning it over the bed, I felt RM’s fingers tracing down my back again, right down the crack of my arse, reaching between my legs, sliding inside the easy-access-fly-front – like she’d been thinking about doing that very thing all day – and, after some skilled manoeuvring, she freed me up and left me hanging there like a uni-teeted cow with it’s head stuck in a fence, and I was just thinking wow, Rohan. I mean, really seriously just… wow, until she climbed under the freshly flung doona, tapped my side of the bed and said, ‘You can keep those on.’

In the ensuing weeks I wore your underwear as often as hygienically possible, even hand-washing them and microwaving them just to wear them several days in a row, but there’s sadness in my heart right now because they have become so thin and tired and the dye is even fading in certain places and they’re failing to lift me up and present me in the way they used to. It’s with a heavy heart and much gratitude that I tell you I’m being forced to replace them. But it’s not just your undies that I feel I’m losing.

I don’t know how your underwear ended up in my suitcase. I don’t know if I picked them up by accident or if – more likely – you planted them there because you were just too shy to hand them to me yourself, to say, ‘I want you to have these. Ever since I’ve been wearing them I’ve been having such great sex with your sister.’ What I do know is that we owe you and your underwear so much.

There’s a certain amount of struggle required to maintain a vibrant and passionate long term relationship and if you were able to peek in on RM and I over these past few years when we sneaking quickies in the laundry, or sweating and screaming our way through several hours of a date night fantasy session, or watching Channing Tatum slideshows you’d discover, more often than not, that your undies were there as well.

They have appeared in – even instigated – so many of our erotic moments over the past few years that, in a strange way it’s felt like you’ve been there as well. You’ve been brother-in-law Rohan the experienced onlooker, brother-in-law Rohan the sex therapist, brother-in-law Rohan the guiding hand of a loving threesome.

And that’s why I won’t throw your undies away sweet brother-in-law. No way. For the second time in a week I will be trudging out to the reserve with a shovel in hand. I’ll be burying your underwear respectfully, right next to the dead possum that isn’t a cat, so that I can think about what you’ve both done for RM and I whenever I go out to walk the dog or kick the footy with the kids.

I just want to say, for both myself and RM, thank you and to let you know that I will never forget that first time in the laundry when your tight, warm boxer briefs rode the thighs of an inexperienced man, and wrapped itself around his average looking under-carriage, to make him so much more.

*Okay, maybe more than one time.

How do you keep your sex life alive?

This post originally appeared on Reservoir Dad.

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