That's Hot!

(The name of the shorts has been changed to protect the innocent.)

 I am not one who easily succumbs to get thin quick schemes, but I have to admit, I was intrigued by the HOT STUFF shorts, a recent daily deal offered by Groupon. They looked like a regular pair of exercise shorts, black and fitted, but they claimed they could help you lose ten pounds in two weeks just by wearing them. I didn’t believe that, but it was still a decent price for exercise shorts, so I perused their website. The shorts, at $26, were about fifty dollars off their regular price, which means they weren’t at all like regular exercise shorts, at least not my usual fifteen dollar ones. I went ahead and bought the shorts.

 All I had to do was pay a little extra for shipping, and my HOT STUFF shorts would arrive, ready to send me on my way to slimness. I have to admit I was surprised to learn when I used my voucher that my HOT STUFF shorts were coming to me all the way from the United Kingdom. I expected to pay for shipping in dollars, not pounds. I hope those won’t be the only pounds I lose, I thought as I submitted my order.

 When they arrived, I cut open the shipping bag and my HOT STUFF shorts slipped onto the floor. The strong smell of skunk and rubber also slipped out of the shipping bag. It was coming from the HOT STUFF shorts. They weren’t made out the latest engineered fabric. They were wet suit knickers. Thick, smelly neoprene. They had a wide waist band and a bright yellow printed logo on the lower left thigh. HOT STUFF, they said. I left them on the edge of my tub, which generally acts as a shelf for things that don’t have a permanent home.

 “What’s that? A new computer case?” my daughter asked me that night.
 “No, my new exercise shorts,” I answered.
 “Why do they smell funny?” she asked.

After airing them out for a couple of days, I decided to try on my HOT STUFF shorts. I squeezed my thighs into them, then hopped the rest of the way into the legs until I could stretch the waist band reasonably close to where my waist is supposed to be. They were tight, but they approximated my size. And I was already sweating just putting them on. I could tell I had made a wise purchase. Then I walked.

You know that sound thighs make when rubbing together in corduroy? A sort of swshh-swwsshh sound? Well, the wales of the corduroy help absorb some of the volume of that friction. Neoprene, on the other hand, is not sound absorbing. It is sound amplifying. Especially when the sound it amplifies is coming from your inner thighs. There was no way I was going to wear my HOT STUFF shorts to the gym. Everyone was going to hear my thighs before I even entered a room.

 Every morning for a week, I looked at my HOT STUFF shorts sitting on the edge of the tub but decided against them. Not today, I thought before selecting normal active wear made out of spandex and cotton. And every evening, my daughter asked me if I wore my new HOT STUFF shorts yet while she put her dirty clothes in the hamper in my bathroom.

“Not today,” I answered her.
 “Then why did you buy them?” she asked me.

Last Thursday, I looked at the shorts again. They looked back at me. I thought about how loud the music is in the fitness classes. No one is going to hear me, I thought. Besides, people fart and grunt all the time at the gym; how could my swsshing be any worse? So I squeezed into them. I selected an appropriate shirt to hide the resulting muffin top and shushed my way downstairs to make breakfast.

 “What’s that noise?” my daughter asked me.
 “Me. Now eat your waffles,” I answered her.

 I had already worked up a light sweat by the time I brushed my teeth and drove my daughters to school. I walked into the gym and quickly set up my equipment in the group fitness room for the weight class.

 “Is that you? I keep hearing a squeaking sound. Are your shoes wet?” a lady on the other side of the room asked me.
 “No, it’s my inner thighs,” I answered her.

 Other people came in and set up their equipment, and the weight class began. The class moves from one muscle group to another, fatiguing one area before starting the next. We began with squats. Squats were good because my thighs were not in direct contact with each other. Next we reclined on our step benches for the chest track. As I did my chest presses, sweat began flowing up from between my breasts, puddling around my neck. Occasionally I will have a little rivulet of sweat travel this reverse path up my neck. This was no rivulet; this was a river cresting, near flash flood stage. Luckily we stood up for most of the rest of class. I wiped my forehead a few extra times with a towel, but nothing unusual. By the time we cooled down, though, my face, chest, arms, and legs were bright red.

I stayed and did a dance class, which I love, after the weight class. I feel slightly sexy and coordinated when I do that class, even though I probably look like I’m having a seizure. By this point, my HOT STUFF shorts were no longer making noise. They were so wet from my sweat that they had suctioned onto my thighs like sausage casings. But even casings can hold so much before they burst, or at the very least, leak, which is what happened to my HOT STUFF shorts. They had reached maximum sweat capacity, and sweat was now pouring out of the leg holes down the fronts and backs of my thighs. Pouring, like I had a hose in my shorts. At first I thought I might have peed myself, but it was way colder than urine.

 As we danced, I flung sweat in a circle around my body like a sprinkler. I got scared I might slip in my own puddle and scaled back my enthusiastic twitching. Not only was I sweating from my torso and legs, but sweat was now pouring out of places I didn’t know had sweat glands. Like the inner corners of my eyebrows. Who knew the inner corners of my eyebrows could sweat like that?

Remember that part about my HOT STUFF shorts compacting me like sausage casing? Well, you can only compress your lower abdominal region for so long before it stimulates another weight loss technique. About the same time the class ended, I was pretty sure I was going to crap myself. I used a gym rag to mop up my sweat circle on the floor before bidding a hasty retreat to my car. Once safely inside, I felt a little less intestinally unstable. I left the parking lot and got on the highway, mopping sweat off my forehead so I could see the road. Since I was all alone, I thought I would attempt to pass gas to alleviate the tremendous pressure building up inside my body. The problem was, with all that compression, there was nowhere for the gas to pass. I farted. The fart traveled up the front of my nether regions and channeled across the top of one thigh before finally expelling out the edge of my HOT STUFF shorts. How do I know this? Because I could see the gas as it attempted its escape like a mole tunneling under the grass.

 When I got home and out of the car, I left a puddle of sweat in my car seat that could have been measured with a rain gauge. I took off my shirt and sopped it up, then headed inside and straight to my bathroom. I removed my wet sneakers and my drenched socks before rolling down my HOT STUFF shorts; think trying to put a condom on a watermelon. I held the shorts over the tub and wrung the sweat out of them. I don’t even want to tell you what my panties were like. My entire body was clammy and red, and I really wanted a donut or some IV fluids. I can only imagine what my blood pressure was.

 I don’t know if HOT STUFF shorts will really make you lose ten pounds in two weeks. They have to be hand washed and air dried in the shade, so unless you own multiple pairs, and why would you, you can’t really test that theory unless you wear them still damp from the previous day’s workout. As for me, I haven’t worked up the nerve to squeeze back into them for a second test run. I’m just glad I didn’t have a stroke in my HOT STUFF shorts. Maybe they should come with a medic-alert bracelet or a DNR order. I wouldn’t recommend them for summertime use or in humid climates unless you are feeling suicidal. I can see the medical examiner’s report now: Cause of death: HOT STUFF short dehydration and asphyxiation. And dysentery.

 I lost a half a pound, which I promptly gained back after I drank a gallon of water.