Let me see that thong Not that I could miss it BY CAITLIN SHETTERLY

The truth is, if my butt isn’t all raw from using hippie paper — can’t they find some way to make that stuff a little softer and maybe add some of that aloe and Vitamin E, I mean it’s like we have to be punished for caring about the environment — I kind of like a sleek look under pants or a skirt, and if the thong’s thin enough, I forget all about it. But if it’s not thin enough, or not made from a soft mesh, I might as well stuff a Tampon up my butt.

The right thong’s the thing.

I just figured all guys liked thongs better. This is what I’d heard. A polling of guys at a restaurant I worked at on Wharf Street for a time told me that thongs made the oyster shuckers think a girl was more likely to go to bed on the first hook-up at Amigo’s and more risky (which is better, obviously). But these days we’re assaulted by thongs. Everyone is wearing lo-rise jeans with spangly strings sticking out from the top, some even with trinkets.

I see 14-year-olds wearing thongs that look like something out of a David Rabe play and yet they’re good girls on the swim team and the honor roll.

Does it really matter to men what underwear we’re wearing? I mean the point is to get it all off right? It’s something about the element of pain, I think sometimes, that turns guys on. There’s this girl who was in a class of mine in Boston, who throughout February wore stiletto metal-heeled shoes with no socks, barefoot, in the piles of snow and sub-zero temperatures every damn day. A friend whispered in my ear: "man-pleaser." And I thought, "Is that it? Is that what those are? Do guys like pain?"

Maybe that’s why the thong is so appealing — it doesn’t look even possibly comfortable. And the element of sacrifice for sexiness is hot. But how is a chafed butt sexy?

When Cowboy and I first started going out, I just figured he liked thongs better, and I was wearing them anyway (the soft, skinny, meshy kind) because there is an element of sexiness to them that you just inherently feel — maybe it’s the odd pressure and rubbing they create, who knows. But then he told me he didn’t really like thongs. He likes simple, clean, not-up-the-butt, old-fashioned underwear. Innocent. I got all confused.

"He likes little girl underwear?" my negative side wondered. But little girls are all wearing thongs now, so that’s not really the right idea. Once, I was standing in line at Cinnabon in the Kennebunk rest stop, waiting to get a tea, with a 40-ish guy who was waiting to get some sweet sticky bun. The girl who was serving us, along with a teenage guy, must have been about 15. As she reached down to get some more coffee or something, her thong fell out, along with most of her slender backside, and it’s got all these little sparkly charms hanging off it and we all just stared — the boy turned around and stared, the 40-year-old guy stared, I stared . . . how could you not? We all had insane thoughts go through our minds — the boy’s face turned red, the older guy drooled, and I ran back to my car.

So maybe Cowboy likes old-fashioned, not young.

But only in the underwear department, I learn. In my own defense, before I tell this next bit, I have to remind people I grew up with back-to-the-land, love-your-body hippie parents. I do love my body. I’m pretty comfortable with it in many ways. But I learned stuff like bikini waxing, pedicures, manicures, eyebrow trimming, regular haircuts, and having a toner put through my hair to make it shiny and vibrant (something no one in any hair salon in Portland seems to yet understand) from girlfriends in New York. I was clueless before New York.

Back in Maine, I’ve reverted to clueless. With a Mainer for a boyfriend through a long winter, I sort of let myself go in the bikini waxing, thong-wearing, maintenance area (besides, my favorite bikini waxer, Emily, is now gone from Akari). I wouldn’t have thought anything about this until Cowboy and I were driving and out of nowhere I asked him if my downy prolific shrub bothered him . . . I have no idea why, it just came out of my mouth like asking if he wanted to go to Wal-Mart to buy toothpaste. After some weird squirming like a dog who wanted to stick his head out the window, he confessed he wouldn’t mind it being trimmed a little. I was so embarrassed. He said it totally sweet, and tentative, but I was all, "Oh my God, I’m such a hippie." My hands got all clammy on the steering wheel.

That evening I went home and pulled out the sharpest scissors I own (although he did offer me his beard trimmer), which turned out to be some kind of kitchen cleaver, and stood in the bathtub and trimmed and trimmed and trimmed and trimmed.

Then I shaved my bikini line and put on a thong. It all felt weird, sort of prickly and strange. I thought of that part in the Vagina Monologues where the husband shaves his wife’s down there and makes it bleed. I looked at my exposed little self in the mirror and thought that more covering might be a good idea.

And Cowboy does like nice, soft, grandma cotton underpants.

Bramhall Square runs every other week on Portlandphoenix.com, and Caitlin Shetterly can be reached at bramhallsquare@yahoo.com