Disclaimer: I don't own Rent.
The early days of spring began, marking Joanne's favorite time of year: spring cleaning. She admits it, she is an anal retentive, organized neat-freak and she's damn proud of that fact. Maureen, not so much. She's more on the sloppy side, but she figures one day of going through old clothes and giving their apartment a good scrubbing won't kill her.
Maureen's job is to clean the bathroom, meaning scrubbing the floors, toilet, sink, tub, and shower, not to mention organize the linen closet. She hates it, but Joanne was not letting her get off easy, not this time. Joanne appoints herself to clean the bedroom. She has to go through all of their clothes, picking out what they do not wear and what does not fit so it can be put to good use at good will.
The other day, Joanne had bought new necessities such as underwear and socks, so she figures she ought to go through what they have now and discard the socks without matches and the old underwear with holes. She goes through Maureen's drawer first, but something in the back, something she has never seen before, catches her attention. Reaching to the far back, she pulls it out, wondering why Maureen has this hidden in her drawer and where it came from. It looks old, like it had been in Maureen's possession for ten years.
"Maureen, sweetie, could you come here for a minute?" Curiosity is eating at her.
"What is it, Pookie?" Maureen's footsteps ring out across the living room as she nears the bedroom. She stops short in the doorway, gasping when she sees what Joanne is holding. "Where did you get that?"
"It was here in your drawer," she replies nonchalantly.
"Why were you going through my underwear drawer?" Maureen demands.
"I was putting away your new panties." Again, her voice is calm. Then a grin sneaks onto her face. "Care to explain these?" Joanne waves what she holds in her hands. It is a leopard print male thong. It's small, like it once belonged to a teenage boy.
"Not really," Maureen prances over, snatching the thong from Joanne's grasp. "It's… a keepsake, okay?"
"You had sex with someone and then kept his underwear?" she questions.
"No!" Maureen's tone turns defensive. When Joanne starts muffling giggles, she gives in. "Okay, fine, I'll tell you. They were Mark's and…"
"Whoa, wait. Those were Mark's?"
"They were Mark's when we were sixteen. We saw them at a store…"
"Wait them? You had a matching one?"
"Yes," a deep blush creeps onto her cheeks as she admits to it, "I had one. We saw them and I thought it would be fun to get them and wear matching underwear on our next date. I talked him into it and we wore them for all our dates. Then the first time we had sex a year later, we were still wearing them so we decided to switch so we wouldn't forget our first time. It's just a stupid thing from high school. Happy?"
Joanne nods, giggling to herself. "That's cute."
"No it's not!" Her hands toy with the fabric, spinning it between her fingers. "Okay, maybe a little bit cute. It's more embarrassing than anything to think that we did that and I kept it."
"Do you think he still has yours?" Joanne wonders aloud.
"Knowing Mark, it's probably lamented in a scrapbook somewhere," she replies with a giggle. "I don't know, I guess it's a nice memory."
"Do you want to keep it still?" Joanne asks before she puts the new garments in the drawer.
"Yeah, put it in the back again," Maureen hands the thong to Joanne, who shoves it into the back of the drawer. Maureen stands in the doorway for a few minutes, lost in thought.
"Don't you have a bathroom to clean?" Joanne raises her eyebrow.
"I just thought of something," she explains. "We split up after high school, but got back together when he came back to New York when he dropped out of Brown. We haven't mentioned our first time or the underwear exchange since high school."
"Your point?"
"I just kind of wish we had," she says.
"And why is that?"
"I bet it would still fit him," she answers before hopping off to finish her bathroom shift.
Joanne looks back at the underwear, taking their size, Mark's current size, Mark's age then, and Mark's age now into account. And the only words that come to mind are poor Mark.
-Fin