Something I Would Never Go To: An Underwear Party

The only thing worse than being crammed into a room full of sweaty strangers is being crammed into a room full of sweaty strangers who don’t have any clothes on.

This sort of event—one of promoter Daniel Nardicio’s regularly occurring “underwear parties”—is supposed to appeal to me because it’s a fun and sexy and uninhibited thing for gay men to do. Look at all this skin. Look at all this fun. Look at all these gay men gaying it up and having so much fun! How sexy. How horrifying.

When I see pictures from underwear parties and people reacting positively to them and sharing them and looking forward to the next underwear party, I question whether or not I am gay. I question what kind of underwear I would wear if I were to go to an underwear party, because all I have are like white briefs, I think? If I went to an underwear party, I would question whether or not someone was wearing the same underwear they wore to work all day. I would question whether or not there were pee dribbles in the front of someone’s underwear or skid marks in the back of someone’s underwear because, let’s be honest, it’s underwear.

I also question my sanity. I worry about what germs or diseases I might catch in the random beads of sweat and skin and body hair I might come into contact with while brushing up against someone; germs and diseases that of course could never be transmitted through sweat or skin or body hair, but still. This is my nightmare.

Social anxieties and irrational phobias aside, I am still gay and I am still attracted to naked men. Just not 500 at once. So, not wanting to attend an underwear party and rolling my eyes at the sight of all these men must mean I’m a prude. Or, just an asshole. That’s probably true. But it’s also true that assembling hundreds of men together under a predetermined set of conditions allowing for everyone to be naked is too contrived to be sexy and too premeditated to be arousing. Everyone looks the same. Just show up in your underwear like everybody else. No one has to try (even though, ironically, they are all trying so hard).

If everyone showed up fully dressed and just spontaneously started taking off their clothes without warning and, most importantly, without permission, now that would be hot. I might go to that party (no I wouldn’t), but only as an observer, standing way in the back of the room, by the exit, fully clothed and ready to leave at any moment because of my own body dysmorphic disorder, my claustrophobia, my agoraphobia, and the fact that I really just don’t like parties. I’m no fun at parties. Underwear parties, foam parties, circuit parties, sex parties, and even birthday parties. I hate parties. If there’s a party and I find out I wasn’t invited to it, I take that as a blessing, not a slight. Please, don’t invite me to your parties. Not that you’d want someone like me there anyway, because have you read the last five paragraphs?

Anyway, here are the rest of the photos from Daniel Nardicio’s underwear party (via Time Out). A party that I would never go to.