Take Your Pants Off!: (And Stay a While)

By Koelen

Dancing in My Underwear
Little Writer in the Big House
Stand Up, Sit Down, Kneel, Repent
A Pyramid Scheme
Surely Shirley
The Hoe Must Go On!
Singing for Obama
1-800-Rent-A-Puppy
That's So Not Cute
Legends of the Jennifer Lawrence Fall
Cheating on the German Test
GUNS
Let's Go to the Movies!
It's a Small, Small, Small, Small World
The Ernesto Manifesto
Adventures of a Panamániac
The One Kylie
I Still Call Australia Hoime
Hearts & Flowers, All My Luv
Big Where It Counts

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 1, 1900
• ISBN: 9781098343927

Book preview

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Take Your Pants Off! (And Stay a While)

Copyright © 2020 Koelen Andrews www.koelen.net #TYPO

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Dancing in My Underwear Copyright © 2014 Koelen Andrews, Volume, Too Copyright © 2017 Koelen Andrews

This is a work of fiction. So I won’t be sued: Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. *Wink wink*

Cover design concept: Koelen

Cover Art: Michael Volkar www.michael-volkar.com

Back cover photo by Koelen, with styling by Koelen and Rachel Thibodeaux

Back cover graphics: Narek Martirosyan

Edited by: Justin Wicker

Proofread by Meg Wren, Yigal Komisarchik, Kathryn Dench, and Syeda Erum Fatima Naqvi with additional edits by Deborah P. Bruns

Print ISBN: 978-1-09834-391-0

eBook ISBN: 978-1-09834-392-7

Thank you to my mother for shitting me out into this cruel world and for giving me this extraordinary life. Thank you to Marianne Hunter, who inspired me to write and let my own, unique creativity shine in middle school. Muchas gracias to Justin Wicker, for taking my stories and editing them to a new level of Sally Menke/ Quentin Tarantino magic. Thank you to Kylie Minogue for always keeping me dancing in my underpants. Grazie to Elisabeth Turski Bersonetti, spasiba Yigal Komisarchik, danke schön David Hill and Derek Steigelmeyer, muchisimas gracias Alejandra Pérez, Frederique Borera, James Roman, Charles Fabian Martinez, Ky Anderson, Jeffrey Scott Rivera, Jyl Ray, Hérica Rodrigues, Michael Carmona Bolanos, Alexia Davison, Margaret Medina, Carol Lyles, Jan Blackburn, Cynthia Marshall, Erik Wilson, Gustavo Bueno, Jennifer Saunders, David Sedaris, Oscar Wilde, and others who have inspired me, pushed me to be better, and stood by my writing for years.

For my mother, Debbie

MEMORIES

Dancing in My Underwear

Little Writer in the Big House

Stand Up, Sit Down, Kneel, Repent

A Pyramid Scheme

Surely Shirley

The Hoe Must Go On!

Singing for Obama

1-800-Rent-A-Puppy

That’s So Not Cute

Legends of the Jennifer Lawrence Fall

Cheating on the German Test

GUNS

Let’s Go to the Movies!

It’s a Small, Small, Small, Small World

The Ernesto Manifesto

Adventures of a Panamániac

The One Kylie

I Still Call Australia Hoime

Hearts & Flowers, All My Luv

Big Where it Counts

Dancing in My Underwear

Do yourself a favor, right now: Go home. Lock the door and lower the blinds.

Un-button your fly. Unzip your pants. Drop your slacks; let your trousers, dress, skirt, or kilt drop to the floor, honey. Take your pants off…and stay a while!

Pour yourself a little something-something over ice. Put on some disco. Or perhaps EDM gets you frisky? Is it rock that makes you want to drop your socks? Is it pop that really makes you pop? Old-school gangsta rap, death metal, or whatever tunes that turn you on and make you wanna move to the beat. Now crank it up, child. Don’t skimp on that bass, baby. Pump up the volume until your personal panty party is LIT AF and you’re shaking your ass like there’s no tomorrow. Because, in these times, we don’t know if there is gonna be a tomorrow. Breathe. Clear your mind. Let go. And dance.

In the immortal words of our Lady of the Gaga, "Just dance!" Even if you feel ridiculous. Dance! Keep wiggling that body-ody-ody until you’re out of oxygen or you’re too tired to continue. Spin it and shake it like a polaroid picture. Stick or twist. Just dance. In your underpants. You’re the star of your show, and in this moment, you can feel free and alive. No judgements, no expectations—only joy. Dancing in your underwear.

When you’re ready to collapse onto that living room sofa—or the floor, for that matter—you can pretend this is your glamorous dressing room lounge, laughing with and at yourself. There’s something so grand and silly and sexy about stripping down to your skivvies and living in your moment, enraptured by the music, dancing, laughing, and enjoying the ability to simply BE. Few occasions are better than those brief moments where you get to be yourself, all to yourself, all by yourself. In your briefs. It can be a very Risky Business, stripping down to the raw YOU. But such a rewarding one.

Dancing in my underwear as a metaphor for life has allowed me to continue living it to the fullest and pushing through. When a friend from chorus invited me to Art Walk in Downtown Los Angeles in 2009, I was elated and looking forward to it all week long. It had been a tough week. I’d already Ubered to our agreed meeting place when I got the text that he was bailing on me. Bitch stood me up. There is nothing more cowardly than a bail by text after you’re already late for meeting up. Putting it mildly, I felt defeated and let down. Abandoned, even. I was a little crushed.

But instead of going home and letting it ruin my night, I followed an impulse to resist my misery and disappointment. I made myself stay and enjoy DTLA’s monthly Thursday-night art gallery bar crawl. And I actually had fun, all by myself. I experienced new artists and, getting lost in the sights and sounds, I stumbled upon a little pop-up book shop. My best find? Scoring my very first, with many to come, David Sedaris book.

I took my new treasure home that evening and nearly read the entire thing in one sitting. Sedaris’ book—fittingly titled Naked—and his other writings, would inspire me to write my own short story anthology. Thus, the idea for Dancing in My Underwear, my first book, and now series, was born right then and there that night. Had I thrown in the towel and gone home when my friend flaked on me, I don’t know if I’d be typing these words right now. But it was the decision to stay and make my own way that night that changed my life forever.

This is my outlook on life: Just keep dancing. Dancing in my underwear. And I do it all the time, sometimes in the most inappropriate places. Somehow, it’s gotten me through this mad, mad world.

People ask me all the time: What is dancing in my underwear? In truth for me, it’s a personal philosophy, while some might think it’s just a naughty little habit. But I don’t just dance in my underwear because it’s fun or cute. I dance around in my underwear to survive. I get a fabulous rush of endorphins, and my waistline thanks me, too. DIMU keeps me happy. It costs nothing. It’s low investment with a high reward. I might be committed or dead right now if I didn’t have pop music to dance to around my living room in my tighty-whities.

Call it therapy. Call it a coping mechanism. Really doesn’t matter. When your world is just all over the place, the best place for your feet is on the ground, one foot in front of the other. But in this case, add a little twerk to your step. That’s what DIMU is all about. The crazy situations that life presents to us and how we deal with them. I embrace living and dance in my underwear. Living is dancing in my underwear. Some might think it’s weird—sure—but I don’t care. Don’t give them your energy. When you don’t care, that’s when you are truly free.

So, if you’re ever in a rut, dear reader, in a bind, feeling blind, or feeling low—think about dancing in your underpants. Whenever you’re feeling down and out, take a big dose of DIMU. Dancing in my underwear might not solve any of my or the planet’s problems, but it always makes me feel good. And isn’t that what life is all about?

Strip down and dance on! #DIMU

Little Writer in the Big House

Charli was the baddest bitch in the whole damn cell block, and everyone knew it. No one fucked with Charli. At 6’3", Charli was bigger, stronger, and scarier than anyone else in the Orange County Jail’s LGBT lockdown wing.

Victor had lied through his teeth to us about how and why he ended up in the clink for a month with no contact orders. He claimed it was because he ran away from the cops after driving drunk and crashing his car. Those of us near and dear to him believed none of it, having sat through a few too many Judge Judy episodes to conclude that the law just can’t seize you for a month, on the spot, without rights, trial, or due process. Unless you’d been in trouble for something else, before. It was always my assumption the kid must have swung at a cop, had drugs on him, or that this offense wasn’t his first. Or third.

Victor’s story wasn’t the one that interested me. Victor was shady AF and we all knew it. Cross a jackal with a carnie and you get the vibe. The shady was all