Hairy Eggs

I finished work and made it home 8 minutes before midnight, and once I had climbed up to the roof, I realized I should change out of my astronaut suit and go buy some beers. I threw on a tshirt that may or may not have been entirely clean, and my favorite pair of taike shorts. Now this particular pair of gangster shorts are white, with black and red hibiscus large print. The shoelace belt fell out long ago, and the elastic is pretty much shot, but they still stay on. Some of the stitching is starting to come apart here and there, but they're perfect for a bluewhite sandal beer run. I got to seven and lo and behold, Sapporo was on sale. Like a greedy child gather easter eggs, I bent down and started filling my basket with the best bad beer in Taiwan.

A thing about how Taiwan has changed me: I squat a lot more than normal. So in this moment, I wasn't really bent over, I was half-squatting in the way that inflexible westerners do.

A man was looking at me in sheer horror and I could feel his nasty eyes boring into my easter basket of beer in righteous judgement of the foreign sinner who drinks too much and looks like a homeless man. He slowly looked up from the basket between my feet, and I met his eyes. He hated me so much I thought he would spit on me. Contempt curled from his lip; half full of hatred and half full of jealous fear of the hairy foreigner. Then he walked away.

I looked down to check how many beers I had managed to stack in the basket, and what had prompted his bewildered disgust was immediately clear. A pair of hairy testicles were hanging through the crotch seam of the hibiscus shorts - not showing, as through a hole - actually hanging out of the hole, like a pair of hairy eggs.

Next time I wear my favorite shorts, I'll probably wear underwear. You can't be too careful.