BY TEEJAY

OK, so I’m a traditionalist. I like my men in good ol’ Jockey briefs. You know: The classic Y-fronts. A size too small maybe. They ride a little low, kiss the pelvis, then travel round back to grip the ass. White ones. Yup, that about does it.

I don’t get boxers. Unless the guy’s dick flops out the hole in front. Then I get boxers in a big way. A really big way if I am lucky that night.

Boxer briefs, sure, absolutely. But it depends on the guy who’s wearing them, right? If he doesn’t have a muscled ass and rock-hard thighs, boxer briefs can look a little like a house with nobody home.

Some guys swear by the thong as the turn-on champ, though to me it’s not officially underwear; it’s a costume. It’s for the performer, the go-go boy, the stripper. Ten cents a dance and all that.

Then there’s the jockstrap. Underwear, yeah; hot, definitely. I like to think of it as underwear that’s half there, framing and lifting the ass cheeks with a triangle of cloth straps, suggesting bondage or some sort of packaging UPS should provide. Jockstraps have a mythical status that proper underwear doesn’t possess. They’re first glimpsed in those steamy, sexually fraught locker rooms of high school, cruelly coming into our consciousness just as we’re trying to conceal our un-concealable teenage boners -- or momentarily calm them down. Jockstraps, as we all know, aren’t much help in either scenario.

Of course, the Internet is loaded with sites devoted to underwear and jockstrap fetishes. These sites overflow with photos, fiction, paeans, elegies, memoirs, message boards and, um, shopping opportunities. So there are thousands of sites about that last piece of clothing we take off (usually) before we fuck. Sites like menin2briefs.com and the succinctly titled jockstraps.com rhapsodize in exquisite detail about Speedo tights and 2(x)ist contour pouch briefs. Pics of straining cotton and lycra fill the screen. It makes for some hot surfing, but it’s a little confounding to the person who doesn’t quite get the fetish. If the ultimate goal is the treasure that lies beneath, what’s the erotic appeal of underwear and jockstraps?

It is this: Underwear and jocks are the final frontier. That’s what the appeal is to me and my fellow undie adulators. The covering cloths are a time to pause and savor. To smack your lips. They’re the visual cue that coincides with the last inhale you take before your mouth meets his cock.

Underwear and jockstraps are the gateway to sex.

Think of a hot guy you want to sleep with, and then think of the moment when you finally tear off his underwear or jock. Or when you watch him do it slowly, inch-by-inch (my particular trip). Or think of when you get your hands down in there for the first time, your fingers grazing his hard cock, unlocking it to the air as you flip it out. Or think of the tip of a guy’s prick poking up out of the elastic band of his shorts, giving you the one-eye come-on.

Underwear and jockstraps are made-for-tease textiles.

Now think of his underwear at the top of the pile of clothes next to the bed when you’re spent, lying there covered in sweat and spunk. Or his jock hanging off his ankle