by J. M. Mason
She just looked at me and smiled. I was dumbfounded at her lack of feeling for my predicament.
How helpful was that? Was a smile supposed to solve my problem?
“It’ll be OK, Stella, relax. We’ll just put in more tissues or wash cloth or two which will help with this problem. If you keep your arms down, and not do whatever else makes that happen, you’ll be fine.
“There’s to be no hugging on the first date. It isn’t what a good girl does on the first date so that the cup won’t dent that way.”
What did she think he would do when kissing me? Would he kiss me on the chest? I thought.
I must’ve looked confused because she explained the same thing again in different words. Why do parents have to repeat everything a hundred times before they stop talking?
“All you do on the first date is hold hands and a swift kiss on the lips when he brings you to the door at the end of the night. Just don’t lean into him when he kisses you. So, you shouldn’t have the problem with the popping in and out all night long.”
She was wrong. The cup frequently became concaved and refused to burst forth on its own, making it necessary for me to reach up and squeeze my well-padded breast until the rubber cup popped back into place.
My date watched with deep interest and a crooked grin on his face. I swear he was drooling as he stared at me, as I massaged my breast to relieve the tension of the concaved garment. The ordeal brought redness to my cheeks.
Things didn’t improve as Mom helped me dress for my outing. She believed I must wear nylons with my kitten heels with my turquoise dress. This required I wear a garter belt to hold up the hosiery.
Let me describe the garter belt to those of you who’ve never seen one of the first ones made. The top of the garment was to look silky. However, it was made of cotton with taffeta trim and lovely white embroidery, without a lining between the embroidery and the skin. Because the fabric was stiff, the taffeta and embroidery itched so bad it made wearing the apparel impossible to enjoy.
Remember, a lady doesn’t scratch in public. I know I told you I’m not a lady. However, I was pretending to be one, so I could make a good impression on him. So, no scratching is my premise to let you know. It wouldn’t look right to lift my dress and reach inside my panties to scratch, which I would’ve done if I wasn’t making a good impression for the benefit of the opposite sex.
Now that I think about this, the men would be delighted to see a woman reach in and scratch until the feeling of irritated skin was relieved. Forget I even said men wouldn’t like to see a woman reach into their panties and scratch the itchy skin, I’ll deny it anyway.
The garter belt was built like a pair of panties without a crotch, four elastic bands approximately a half-inch wide, and almost eight inches long hung down the thigh nearly to the knee, that held the hooking mechanism in place.
You put the rubber button on the front of the metal clasp, behind the stocking next to the skin, and then bring the metal buttonhole attachment down and pull up firmly on the metal clasp to hold the hose in place. There are four such buttonhole tabs per garter belt.
A fair warning is needed here. You don’t want to let go of the strap as you’re attempting to fasten them. The elastic bands with the metal fastener become a dangerous weapon against you. You think a BB Gun can put out an eye, the garter belt is closer to the eye and moves faster, with sharp edges.
You, who’ve shot spitballs with a rubber band, know how it can sting when the spitball hits a person on bare skin from a distance, think of a metal fastener rushing toward your face at a closer range. Too bad I didn’t use this as a weapon on my date, maybe I would’ve had a better time.
This garment was destined to create real problems for me on my date. You know what happens when plastic and rubber sticks to the skin, to tell you about one of the issues. If you’ve never stuck to a plastic or leather chair in the summer, you won’t know the pain of your skin feeling like it’s being ripped from your body in sections every time you move.
One of the things that fascinated me about this evil invention was that the silly garment rode up above my waist and turned sideways. This caused the metal stocking holder to flip over. It dug into my delicate flesh on my tender thighs and my belly when it climbed to its highest place on my body. Again, a lady couldn’t squirm or scratch in public, and the man wasn’t thrilled when the lady ran, not walked to the bathroom moaning in pain all the way.
Chapter Eight
Now that I’ve explained the equipment needed for my first date, things didn’t improve one bit. When I asked my beau where he was taking me, he said it was a surprise.
Man, oh, man, he didn’t lie about the surprise aspect of the encounter, making for a dating disaster long before he picked me up at my front door. I hope it wasn’t a conspiracy between Mom and him to embarrass me.
Mom’s reasoning for making me wear a dress was so I could make a good impression on my first date. I didn’t argue because I genuinely wanted to make a good impression. I trusted her recommendations because I didn’t have any experience with dating. I believed Mom was right in telling me a dress works everywhere.
With all due respect to Mom, she was wrong in her thinking. Not everywhere is the right place to wear a dress, for example: when doing CPR on a gurney in the ER, when shoveling manure in the barn, wading in the lake isn’t an appropriate place to wear a dress, etc., now you think of places a dress isn’t appropriate.
Now that I’ve gained much more experience, I can tell you I believe my date didn’t tell me where we were going on purpose. Let me explain. I think you’ll agree with me.
He was so excited when he told me that he was taking me to the carnival as we were walking to his car. To top things off, when I got into the front seat, voices greeted me from the back seat, I believe he really wanted to have fun with his buddies but decided to make the best of his mistake of asking a girl out for the night.
“Hi, Stella, this should be fun, we’re going to the carnival. I hope you don’t mind if we crash your date.”
Great. I not only got to walk in sawdust and metal walkways in a pair of heels, I got to share my date with his friends, making me have three guys on my first date instead of one. I had worn enough clothes to dress all of us in the car, so why would I mind sharing my first date?
The first ride he took me on was the Ferris Wheel. My dress, petticoat, and can-cans blew up to mid-thigh, exposing my garter belt straps that were twisted around to the side and digging into my thigh.
I was unable to lower my dress to my knees because my hands were occupied by my death grip on the lap bar of the Ferris Wheel. I’m afraid of heights and shouldn’t have been on that ride anyway. Give me a gentle pony ride or a ride on the carousel horses, and I’ll be a happy woman. I prefer the spinning cups above the Ferris Wheel and prefer eating sand to that carnival ride. You get the message. I hate the Ferris Wheel.
My boyfriend was a real gentleman though, he reached down and flipped my dress down to my knees, after he pulled the skirt up over my can-cans, that made the dress puffy, making it difficult to pull it down, so he said. I believe he flipped the hem of my dress on purpose, so he could get a better view of my legs and had a wish to see much more.
Things didn’t improve as the night progressed. I ended up getting the cute, kitten heels stuck in the metal walkways often. Most of the time, I was able to dislodge my shoes and walk on as if nothing happened, yet the last time my right heel was sunk into the hole up to the bottom of my shoe, and I couldn’t remove it without help.
Leaning against my handsome prince charming, pulling my foot from my shoe, arching my foot in a sexily arched pose like a ballerina, allowing my gentleman to gently hold my ankle in his warm hands to remove my shoe from the grate for me. Holding my shoe in his hands, guiding my tiny foot into the shoe, allowing me to feel like Cinderella for only a moment.
The last time both of my shoes became stuck in the holes in the walkway, my frustration was at its high
est point, and I stepped out of my shoes and put both feet down on the sharp feeling grate. My stockings immediately disintegrated from the edges of the holes.
It was a great mistake to step onto the walkway because it caused my nylons to tear, and send a runner up the back of my leg alongside the seam, then the garter belt oozed up under my highly inflated boobs when my foot tore out of the stocking and rode up over my foot to my ankles.
To make matters worse, walking on the path felt like walking on Legos, the sharp edges hurt like a son-of-a-gun. I felt like peeing down my leg, but again I was to act like a lady or at least do an academy award performance of one.
I very much wanted to go to the bathroom to remove the hose and garter belt, but my desire was prevented because I didn’t know where to find the bathroom. Because I was shy, I was afraid to ask my date to take me to the bathroom and was more determined to drown in my pee than to embarrass myself by asking a boy to take me to the bathroom.
I’ve often wondered if I wasn’t wearing Mom’s padded bra, would the garter belt travel up to my neck. There would be nothing to stop it from wandering as high as my head, except for my chin, without the bra acting like a dam, that ended the progress of the garter belt upward. The ludicrous visualization made me giggle.
Since I’ve grown up, it has been of utmost importance to know the location of the bathroom no matter where I go. I often use it for more personal things than what is usual and ordinary. This has become a habit for my present dates. OK, stop overthinking that statement.
Many bathrooms have become home for my naughty underwear, pantyhose, and bras that were giving me fits when I’ve been away from home. Bathrooms are my friend. If the offending garment is pushed under the paper, no one knows it’s there.
However, remember if any of the outer garments you chose to wear are made of see-through fabric, it may be prudent to keep the annoying clothing in place. Going without panties in a pair of white pants isn’t the most brilliant plan in my strategy file. An auburn muff isn’t the most flattering style in the world.
This fact should be a fast and firm rule to maintain one’s dignity. There’s a better way to be popular at a party, showing one’s boobies or pubic hairs is the wrong way to become popular. I guess if you are a stripper, then you would want to show those things if you wanted to be paid.
I was never so happy to go home early as I was after my first dating event. The gentleman didn’t even walk me to the door, as Mom promised and was the custom then. I’m just happy he at least stopped the car before letting me out in front of my house. Even his friends were subdued and silent during the ride home. Just because I became testy and grumpy before the evening ended, was no excuse for the guys to treat me like a complete bitch.
They would become grumpy, too, if they had to contend with a garment that kept popping and required personal manipulation to remedy the problem. It would be different if their shoes had always been stuck in holes, stockings torn and riding up the legs, and metal attachments digging into their legs. We all would be happier at the end of the night if they could feel what I felt.
Sadly, I didn’t make such a great impression on the opposite sex during my first date, making this a rule for future dating. Make a good impression on the first date. I worked this rule to the max during my dating career.
Chapter Nine
Mom greeted me with a big smile on her face when I opened the door. The excitement she showed surprised me because she always knew when things didn’t go well when I failed at something at school. My heart felt like it sank into the pit of my stomach as her expression suddenly changed. Her eyes widened when she noticed my face showed anger instead of joy.
The open eyes of surprise on her face, fanned the flames of my anger, which surprised her more. Just when I thought her eyes were as wide as they could get, white completely framed the iris as her eyes looked like they would pop out of her head. I refrained from placing my hands below her eyeballs to keep them from falling onto the floor.
“I’m never going on a date with him again! While I’m at it, I never ever, ever want to date again!”
That turned out to be a big lie.
Mom’s eyes lost the wide-eyed wonder look, which she exchanged for laughter, as she ushered me into the house. Then she saw the condition of my stockings and the scuff marks on the heels of my shoes, and she laughed more. I failed to see a single thing that was funny enough to warrant the mirth.
“I guess the date didn’t go so well. You look like you were run over by one of the bulls. Tell me about it.”
She was the queen of understatements. Every time something terrible affected me, she made a silly statement to make me feel better. It never worked; however, she persisted in seeing a sunny side of any issue.
Didn’t she listen to me? I told her I never, ever wanted to go out on a date again. That should’ve given her the first clue the events of the evening weren’t the best of times; they were more the worst of times, in my opinion.
Sighing deeply, shrugging my shoulders, plopping down on a kitchen chair, and slumping back in the seat was the most un-lady-like way to show her that I was hurting from the humiliation. I needed her to help me feel better. I wanted her to do her job of Mom.
I let out a bucket of air noisily through my mouth, making as much noise as I could to gain the attention, I believed I deserved. It didn’t do any good. She still had a smile plastered all over her face.
When Mom didn’t comment, I slumped down in the chair, spread my legs wider, and crossed my arms across my chest to reinforce my mood wasn’t ideal for a lecture, which often happened when I had an attitude that she didn’t like. I looked up at her through my ruined mascara encrusted lashes to see how she was reacting to my nosedive about the time I had for my very first time out with a guy.
To strengthen my argument, I pushed out my lower lip in a pout. Mom said she thought I was so cute when I was three years old when I sulked. It didn’t seem to make the smirk leave her face now as she stood, waiting for me to tell her all the gory details of my date. Really? She won’t be getting a nomination from me for the Mother-of-the-Year Award this year.
“Tell me what happened, dear. Don’t leave anything out,” she said.
“He took me to the carnival for crying out loud,” I said with disbelief, tinting my voice. “Can you believe it, Mom, he took me to a fair the way I was dressed? I went to a stupid county festival in a dress and high heel. My dress kept blowing up, showing my slip and that stupid garter belt you made me wear. That thing cut holes in my legs. I know I’m bleeding to death from all the cuts I feel.”
I lifted my dress, can-can, and slip to show her what torture I’d endured. She laughed again. Now I know at times things are funny to parents concerning things their child does to tickle their funny bone, but give me a break, injury to one’s baby isn’t at all funny.
“I got your message about his taking you to a carnival in a dress the first time you said it. I’m just sorry you found your time out with that cute boy was so miserable. Now let me see your injuries,” she said with a hint of sympathy that best suits a mother. “Tsk, tsk! That looks rather raw. Why don’t you get into your PJ’s and get ready for bed? Are you hungry, honey? I can make you some hot chocolate and your favorite sandwich to help you sleep. You can finish telling me what happened.”
I nodded my head, still holding onto the pouty face, at least she was sounding like she was feeling sorry for me as was my due. She didn’t pull me onto her lap and snuggle me like she did when I was three, but this was better than nothing.
I headed down the hallway to the bathroom to change into my PJs, staunch the blood from draining out of my body, and clean the nasty cuts on my legs that I knew were there that would cause all sorts of pain and suffering lasting a week or more. I was glad the date was over. Sighing loudly, I examined my legs.
“Oh, shoot, I guess there aren’t any cuts on my legs. There were only dents and some chafing from the pressure of the clasp,” I was di
sappointed things weren’t worse. “Darn! Now I can’t get more attention for my injuries. The red areas wouldn’t even need a bandage. Mom will make me do chores tomorrow, and I won’t get to stay home from school Monday.”
After putting on my PJ’s, I went to the kitchen and plopped down, with my legs spread widely, at the table. Mom sat a plate with a tuna fish sandwich, with lettuce and tomato, just like I like it in front of me, along with a steaming cup of hot chocolate, with two plump, white marshmallows floating, like ghost ships on a muddy sea, on the top of the steaming chocolate. She filled a glass with milk for herself and sat down in a chair across from me.
“Now tell me about your date. Don’t leave anything out, so I can better help you.”
She sat gazing at me with a silly grin on her face and nodded her head as if to encourage a great report about my first date. I made her wait until I slowly chewed and swallowed a bite of my sandwich.
I told her everything about the date between bites of the sandwich and sips of hot chocolate, giving every reason why I didn’t want to go with him or anyone again. She kept a grin on her face while she listened to me tell her all the gruesome details of the night.
Her eyebrows danced up and down on her face, and she frequently placed her hand over her mouth as I was speaking. I swear I heard her snort at one point. However, she completely denied it when I confronted her about it.
She passed it off as clearing her throat as if I don’t know the difference between a snort and her clearing her throat. I’ve known her for fourteen years, and I’m not easily confused. I chose to ignore the fib. What was I going to do, wash her mouth out with soap or stand her in the corner?
“What’s the reason you don’t want to see him again? I don’t understand the problem.”