An Open Letter To Whoever Is Abandoning Their Used Underwear On The Shower Towel Hook At The Gym

Dear Abandoner,

 

There’s nothing quite like a nice shower after a workout. It’s an opportunity to cleanse and unwind. I find it relaxing and therapeutic. Except when I go to place my towel on the hook outside of the shower and I’m greeted by your dirty, abandoned underwear.

 

Towel hooks should only be used for towels, not underwear. Think I’m being too vigilant? Consider that you’ve been sweating into your skivvies for long enough that your sweat has overwhelmingly stained the fabric, transforming them into a disgusting Rorshack test. I’m not even sure if, in their current state, we can still refer to them as underwear. No, they’re more like a sweat rag with an elastic waist. And this isn’t just any perspiration. It’s a sickening, septic mix of your nether regions. Front and back. Congratulations, you’ve cross-contaminated the towel of anyone who uses that hook.

 

Now, it would be one thing if you were still in the shower and had chosen to place your underwear on the towel hook until you were done, though I am not condoning this inconsiderate behavior. Your offense is much more egregious. You have willingly deserted your nasty knickers, abandoning them like a baby on the doorstep of an orphanage.

 

Why?

 

I have wracked my brain trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, “Perhaps they accidentally forgot their underwear and didn’t mean to leave them in the lurch?” No, the hook is right there when you exit the shower and there’s no way you wouldn’t have seen your saggy, soaked underwear waiting to be removed.

 

Try as I might, I have not been able to come up with a satisfactory answer as to why you would force someone else to deal with your jilted jockeys.

 

Inanimate though they may be, even your underwear must be wondering how you could do them so dirty, “How could you callously cast me away like this? After everything we’ve been through, all the time I’ve supported you. This is how you thank me, this abrupt breakup?”

 

I figure if you have a gym membership and have gotten yourself to the gym, you must be a somewhat capable adult who has managed to navigate more complex situations than what to do with your unwanted underwear. And yet, they remain forsaken in the worst possible place.

 

Here are some suggestions if you’re experiencing uncertainty about where you should put your befouled briefs:

• Put them in your gym bag and then take them home to be washed. Yes, that’s right, underwear are meant to be worn multiple times provided they’re washed in between uses.
• If you don’t do laundry, and you’re only using underwear on a one-and-done basis like some sort of OCD Jack Nicholson character from As Good As It Gets, you can place them in the garbage.
• If neither of those options seem appealing, you can pretty much give them the old heave-ho anywhere other than the towel hook and it will be an improvement (the floor, a bench, on top of your head, etc.)

 

Seeing as how you shower after exercising, you obviously have some grasp of the basic tenets of hygiene. All I’m asking is that you don’t ditch your drawers where others are supposed to put their towels.

 

Left on the hook,

Jason Garramone