Just got back from seeing Inside Man, or The Inside Man, or whatever it is. It doesn’t matter. I wanted to see it because Clive Owen is amazing, and if the entire movie was him doing that first monologue straight to the camera I would have been much more entertained.

Consequently, about half an hour into the movie I started thinking about writing this entry.

There’s a scene that’s in the trailer, so I’m not spoiling anything, where the bad guys make everybody in the bank strip to their underwear. This taps into something I’ve never talked about here, mostly because it hasn’t come up. I recently confessed my this confession to a co-worker, and while he did give me the, “Every day I learn something weirder about you” look, he didn’t suggest I keep this neurotic fun fact to myself, so I’ll blame all of this on him.

The scene confirmed my fear, and let me know that it was a perfectly normal, rational thought to have each morning.

When I get dressed, I always think, “Is this what I want to be seen in when the bad guys bust into the building and force us to strip down to our underwear?”

I’m not kidding. I’ve thought this for as long as I can remember. I had these thoughts back in school, when I was always fantasizing about getting trapped in the high school for days on end. My favorite days were tornado days when we’d be stuck in the halls, heads to the wall, talking to everybody for hours. Power outages were better — we’d be stuck in the classroom, in our assigned seats, in the dark for the entire day.

But back to my fear. I look at my underwear drawer and try to find something that relatively matches. I don’t usually buy things that match. I don’t have sets or all kinds of pretty panties to match my bras. I always feel like that’s a luxury, and any man I’ve ever been with seems rather unconcerned about the frilly things covering the good stuff. So much so that I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve received lingerie as a gift. I don’t even need the whole hand, actually.

So I’m trying to piece together unmatching items that might look good together if I have to stand in my skivvies in front of the bad guys. It’s not them I’m worried about. I always imagine this will happen with co-workers. Back when I was doing a lot of rehearsals in sketchy areas, the fear/fantasy would take place in theatres or bars, so I was concerned what my fellow actors would think when they saw me stripped down. “Damn, Pam had better be wearing her period panties, or she has no excuse for that.”

But that scene in the movie, when the women all take off their clothes, I totally called bullshit, because every woman is in a matching, pretty ensemble. Even the women who are supposed to have been caught in their not-so-very-best are still wearing matching numbers. No way. I refuse to believe I’m the only woman who has to paw through cotton and spandex to find a pink cotton boy-short from American Apparel that kind of matches a powder blue Victoria’s Secret Body By Victoria bra.

This is also because Victoria’s Secret makes terrible underwear (I originally wrote “crap panties,” but it made me laugh, and “shitty underwear” was even worse). And Target can’t make a bra that won’t pop an underwire into my breasts. Buying underwear on the Internet, which I’ve tried a couple of times because apparently outside of Victoria’s Secret I’m a 32E, which you cannot find IN ANY DEPARTMENT STORE EVER, is not only a little skeevy, it resulted in me looking like some kind of whore in cheap fabric. I have to wear the bra before I buy it or I find I’m wearing a bra you can totally see under any shirt I’m wearing.

This is also why I get nervous when I’m wearing a thong. I understand the need for it in certain dresses and skirts, but if I end up a hostage wearing a push-up bra and a thong, I will end up getting killed because I won’t listen to a word the bad guys are saying. I’ll just be thinking, “Is everyone staring at my ass, and — Dear God — why did they make us kneel?!

I really should go through my underwear drawer and get rid of some things, anyway. I have a pair of panties I’ve had since high school. That’s not right. I don’t wear them. I don’t wear a lot of them now that my ass got smaller, so they don’t even fit right. I tried wearing a pair from a couple of years ago this week because they were low and wouldn’t peek over my jeans. But the problem was the jeans were also from when I weighed more, so at one point I had to run from the stage to the office, and by the time I got to my desk not only had my jeans fallen dangerously low, somehow my underwear had shifted inside my jeans to fall even lower. There is no sexy way to dig your hand down the back of your pants to pull your panties back up over your ass. The saddest thing about that is that I’m sure that’s not the worst my co-workers have seen me do.

I should fight my fear with pretty panties. I should indulge in a few bras that don’t have cat hair on them. Just before he got sick, Taylor’s favorite place to nap was in my underwear drawer. I didn’t realize it until it was too late, and now I’ve got it covered with something, but the damage has been done. There’s cat hair on just about everything I strap to my chest, and the super-science fabrics my bras seem to be constructed of refuse to relinquish a single strand of grey fur. Thanks again, Victoria’s Secret.

The bad guys in my dream/fantasy/nightmare/neurosis always end up lining us up for some reason, and make fun of me for the way I look. This is a problem. I want to be girl-power and think I’d seduce them in some way, find a way into their lair and then kick their asses until the cops/boyfriend/love interest comes in to save me, and I’m the hero looking like Angelina Jolie at the end of a movie, but (heh, I accidentally typed “butt”), that’s not what my brain does. My brain constantly plays Piper Laurie screaming, “They’re all gonna laugh at you!” Looking at my dirty pillows. When I watch Carrie, and you can see her underwear under her dress when she’s covered in blood, I always think, “Should have worn something a little prettier.” Maybe that’s where this fear started, when my aunt had me watch that movie at way too young an age.

I just tried to find a name for this phobia, of being caught in public in my underwear, and I found a children’s book that might help me with this problem. That only makes me feel sillier.

I just checked, because I couldn’t remember what I was wearing, but I did it again. I wonder if it happens more often now when I dress because fashion dictates that your underwear might be on display at times when you least expect it. I’ve seen the tops of just about everyone’s asses that I work with, because we’re often bending over to pick up a computer, squatting to take notes, leaning down to write something quickly, yanking off a sweater because it’s suddenly a million degrees, or adding layers because Morty likes his stage ice cold. It makes me more aware of all the clothes I’m wearing, because I’ve been bringing half a closet to work lately. I even brought a little bag of toiletries, because yesterday I worked from ten a.m. until two a.m., and I must brush my teeth and wash my face every once in while, or I feel like my skin is made of itchy cheese.

Did I just write an entire entry to give myself the excuse to go out and buy fancy underwear so that I think I’m doing something healthy for my mind? Yes, I did. I thought that’s what blogs were for.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a small party to plan. It seems everybody’s going to meet the new couple.