Are Gay Men Required To Wear Diesel Underwear?
-by Jeremy Gloff
-appeared on The Daily Loaf 
-October 11th, 2011

My friends like to make fun of me. I don’t mind. I’m a laidback fella and if being the butt of the joke puts a smile on my friends’ faces, I’m game.

I love laughing. Wit and good-natured sarcasm are two of my closest associates. I probably can find a good guffaw even in my more traumatic experiences. What else can you do?

But when I met my friends for coffee a few Sundays ago, little did I expect that I’d be made fun of all night. This time I wasn’t being made fun of for another failed relationship or a saucy sexcapade. It was my underwear that became the topic of discussion the entire evening.

I love my gay friends. Most of them are interested in clothing more than I am. I remember last year having to buy a new outfit for a performance. As I entered a clothing store, I felt absolutely and completely lost. I have zero interest in fashion and I only refrain from wearing sweatpants 24/7 in hopes of attracting a suitor. And, of course, to avoid having to hear my friends make fun of said sweatpants.

When I rose from the table to pay my tab, though I wasn't attempting to be saucy, my t-shirt lifted just long enough to reveal the upper part of my underwear. What could have been a made-for-movie sexy moment instead became the punch line for the rest of the night. My gay friends could not believe the underwear that I was wearing. Fruit. Of. The. Loom.

If I am a lost puppy while browsing shirts and pants, imagine my disorientation regarding underwear. While many of my friends are fashion forward, I consider myself fashion indifferent. I wear simple clothes that best accentuate my assets. Usually that means jeans, a t-shirt, and a hat. I was rather shocked to discover via my friends that in gay culture, not only are we judged by our outer garments, but by our inner ones, too.

An underwear role call was taken around the table. Diesel. Diesel. Diesel. Diesel. And there I sat in my Fruit of the Loom boxer briefs. It never occurred to me that it mattered what underwear I wore. I wonder how many of my sexual partners secretly snickered when they had to reach through my Looms to get to my weiner. How much judgment is cast in the bedroom by gay men taking note of both penis size and underwear brand name?

With Diesel on my mind, I began to notice how in all of my friends’ underwear photos there was not even one fellow Fruit of the Loom-er. Every single gay friend of mine wears Diesel underwear. Throughout history, many subcultures have dressed similarly. Little did I realize that in modern gay male culture, the pressure to conform goes all the way down to underneath our pants.

It’s been a week since my Fruit of the Loom exposé. Fashion still bores me and after a few moments of consideration, I realize that my semi will probably never run on Diesel.