I get home, usually change out of work clothes and into a t-shirt and boxers then walk up to get the mail. I live in the ground level of a converted brownstone like this, so that trip involves a few steps onto the sidewalk and then up a few steps into the building’s main entrance, where the mailboxes are. Boxers are also sufficient for taking out the trash, which is behind the building in an alley, perhaps a few hundred steps from my back door.
I never gave it a second thought, and I often pass my neighbors in the foyer while getting the mail. I have never detected a raised eyebrow or double-take.
Might also be worth mentioning that I live on a busy traffic circle, so there’s often a steady flow of cars to provide some distraction from my blue & orange plaid Thursday boxers and nekkid legs (no pictures, sorry!)
Am I unusually bold? I don’t feel like it. Do any other guys wander around their property lines in boxers & t-shirt?
I don’t see anything wrong with what you’re doing, but I usually prefer to spare my neighbors that view. My mailbox is attached to the wall just outside our front door, and I won’t even walk fully outside in my boxers. If it’s dark, I’ll open the front door and reach around to the mailbox. That’s about as publicly risque as I’ll get.
I wouldn’t EVER leave the house in boxers, although I’ll go out and feed the horses or take out the trash in a bathrobe. Why? Because every pair of boxers I’ve ever owned allow Mr. Happy and/or his sidekicks to make unscheduled public appearances. The only exception is the oversized pair where my wife stitched the fly closed. A stroll in public in boxers is an invitation to being charged with lewd & lascivious behavior.
I was raised in such a small house with so many people that I think I grew up with the idea that clothing was all I had to give me a sense of privacy. Nothing was said that made any of us kids prudish but we usually tried to keep on some kind of pajama bottom/sweat pants or shorts around the house.
With that in mind, I grew up amazed when I saw TV shows or movies that depicted male family members casually walking around in their boxers in front of anybody. I couldn’t even look at Tony Soprano’s open robe/boxers when he strolled to the end of the driveway for the paper. The fact he was a fat slob had nothing to do with it (well, almost nothing).
I would probably end up being closer to Asimovian in my sense of propriety. I don’t think I’d ever be comfortable walking in my boxer’s in front anybody I wasn’t sleeping with, i.e., family members, friends. I could never go as far as you; I’m not saying you’re wrong and obviously your neighbors are okay with it.
Once, in the middle of the day, when I thought I was in my apt bldg alone (in a NYC brownstone very similar to yours), I ventured down one flight in my boxers to my mailbox in the vestibule (inside the door at the top of your outside flight of steps). Wouldn’t you know it, on my way back in, a female tenant comes down the stairs before I could make it back up. I don’t know if she raised an eyebrow or not, I was too busy hightailing back up to my apt, 3 steps at a time.
When I read the OP, I said to myself, “I bet the poster lives in DC” and then I checked the location and I was right. Our house is in DC and I do the same thing, I wear them to take the trash out and get the mail. A lot of my neighbors do the same, the dress code is especially relaxed in the alley.
I have to be careful not to wear the boxers with the front flap that won’t stay closed, or else I’d have the people from Guiness Book of World Records bothering me all the time.
I keep seeing my neighbors in their underwear. I think I’ve seen at least every guy I live next door to (hard to tell 'cause it’s like counting a herd of cats, but I think there’s at least six or seven) in their boxers. At, like, 5 PM on a Sunday. It’s getting weird.
I’ll go out onto the front porch to pick up a package or feed the cats, but that’s about it. It’s not that hard to throw on a pair of shorts if I have to go farther than that.
I’ll go out onto the back porch to smoke or call the dog. But It’s about 60 feet to the mailbox or put out the recycling, so nope–as mentioned upthread too much chance for the man and his boys to make an unwanted appearance. Also, I live in an area where the weather is not conducive to that kind of apparel for much of the year.
I live in a busy part of the greater Boston area, so I only wear boxers if I’m in my apartment. I might conceivably wear them while putting trash in the trash room or doing laundry, but it’s potentially embarassing and much too easy to just put on a pair of gym shorts.
Even if I did wear boxer shorts, they’d be my underwear, and I don’t know of a kind of world where it’s OK to walk around in view of other people (who aren’t your wife or SO), in your underwear. Especially outside!
I live in a dorm and I take a shirt with me to the shower. So, nowhere. I’m either in pants or bed.
If I may hijack the thread a bit, now that I share a room with another (for all intents and purposes) adult male, I wonder why the need to remove pants before lounging? I see it all the time. Guys come back from class and off go the pants. It’s weird. Stop it.
As far as my own bathroom. Which, living in a college dorm, is saying something but not very much of something. I wouldn’t have a problem with the above posters taking out trash or getting mail in their boxers, but it would be worth a double-take. InvisibleWombat sums it up nicely- things tend to escape from that nice little unsealed fly.
I live sorta in the the country: within the technical legal limits of a medium-sized city… but the closest neighbor is ‘down the road a spell’, if you know what I mean.
I’ve heard my cell phone ringing in my car while I was in the shower, and made the quick dash outside to nab it (my car is parked on the far side of the house from the road frontage), no problem.
So boxers? Hell, if they’ve got a button, I’ll take the dog for a walk in them.
But when I was living downtown, I wouldn’t go further than the front door without pants.
Me, I live alone, and that is exactly the only place I’m seen in my boxers. When I had a GF, I’d often walk around in her apartment in immodest garb, but for the 30 feet from my apartment to hers, I was always fully dressed.
Heh. Yesterday it was pretty warm around here so I opened the windows and the curtains to let in a little air. The SO had been walking around in boxers and he went and put some shorts on. :smack: Inside the house.
He seems so stuck up but his preferred state is naked, as long as no one else can see him.
