Design Flaws

Jason Preu, , , 
In April 1997, 
I was five hundred
and twenty-four years old,
writing for an international 
men’s underwear magazine, 
while learning 
how to weave 
underwear like those 
I was writing about. 

I wove filamentic underwear
of spider silk dyed 
a glow-in-the-dark neon pink.
There were no other
underwear journalists like me. 

When I met the man 
with the big, black hat 
he said, “I saw 
that you were trying to sell 
underwear made 
of vanilla ice cream. 
I do not think this 
is such a smart design." 

He told me that he was
a major underwear investor 
and worked with designers
from all over the world, 
and that he and I 
had to go out and talk. 

In the meantime, 
underwear ideas
kept coming to me:
underwear made from whale songs,
underwear made from unicorn spittle,
underwear expressed in seven dimensions…
I was trying to bring close to our bodies that which we often miss about the nature of reality…

Then, in a flash, 
it all came crashing down.
I had no more ideas 
about how to make underwear.
I stopped 
being able to write about underwear.
I got a job in a call center, helping people troubleshoot
their malfunctioning, robotic lovers.
I tracked down the man in the big, black hat. 
I found him running a logistics company out of Boise, Idaho and called him.
I asked if he ever thought about his underwearing days.
He sighed and said of course. 
He was an underwear man for life. 
He said he probably thought I was, too.
Design Flaws

13 thoughts on “Design Flaws”

Sock it to me

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