Rainwear Fun WithSomeone?

All rainwear discussions in general or that do not fit into other categories.
Signalache
Posts: 32
Joined: May 18th, 2016, 3:45 pm

Re: Rainwear Fun WithSomeone?

Post by Signalache »

The following will be controversial but as such, as I see it as worthy of discussion.

I came upon the following statement some time ago. I have substituted ‘rubber fetish’ for ‘perversion’ (which may be seen as derogatory).

[A rubber fetish] ‘is one more masterpiece of the human intellect. Life can go on, the child can continue his development, a sense of worth and the hope for gratification is preserved, and triumph is converted in time (when erections and orgasms are possible) out of disaster, so long as ritual (eternal vigilance) is maintained and autonomous’. (Robert Stoller)

Alongside this quotation I want to place another:
‘Fetishism radically refuses lack while signifying it in the fetish object which is identified with… the magical "thing" which causes desire but also signifies the subject as lacking’. (Elizabeth Cowie: Representing The Woman)

Sounds like an exam question!!
Last edited by Signalache on May 27th, 2016, 2:59 pm, edited 6 times in total.
Signalache
Posts: 32
Joined: May 18th, 2016, 3:45 pm

Re: Rainwear Fun WithSomeone?

Post by Signalache »

These posts of mine do not, strictly speaking, add up to a story and are not intended as such. Each of them are simply a peep into my particular experience, good or bad of being a fetishist and my attempt to understand it. In that sense they add up to my story. They belong under the sub-heading of Discussion, namely Rainwear with Someone?—the question mark implying or not, since for me that is an issue of primary consideration. These glimpses and reflections are only a ‘story’ in the sense that anything worth telling another can be referred to as a story. My little glimpses fall into that category. They are based on true events and could be said to have a fictional element here and there. But there is no overall plot, only a theme. As far as a beginning, middle and end, each glimpse is written in that way, though self-contained, literally speaking—ok then—short stories. The peep back into my schooldays with which I make my debut with the intrigue of the mid-blue mackintosh is potentially a story with a developmental element woven into it—instalments—and waiting for a denouement, but I for one don’t know what that might be. Someone else has offered to finish it for me! In which case it would not be my story! Anyway it could be said such stories always end in the same way!

Implicit in what lies behind the question mark confirms for me the category I have chosen in which to put my posts is the right one. It is a call for discussion. Whether you think having a fetish is a drawback or a boon, whether it enhances our lives of detracts, or is simply an add-on, a diverse phenomenon or a perversion, problematic or a bundle of fun, it cannot be but a fact of nature which some seek to understand.

I remember in the early 1970s reading the editor’s letter in what may have been the final edition of Rainwear Review (which carried some cracking black and white photographs) in which he wrote of his terminal illness. If not verbatim, the remark I remember was to the effect that mackintoshes had been an important part of his life and that they would see him out—rather in the same vein as Edith Piaf’s Non, je ne regrette rien, although she was regarded as the queen of heartbreak.

Discovering this forum has given me the chance to be more open about myself, my thrills and their drawbacks. In some respects my path has been a lonely path and I would welcome debate.
Last edited by Signalache on May 27th, 2016, 12:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Signalache
Posts: 32
Joined: May 18th, 2016, 3:45 pm

Re: Rainwear Fun WithSomeone?

Post by Signalache »

This is a taster* for a comprehensive table of reference. This, it will be obvious is not a story, but an entrée into a thousand scenarios and many discussions.
Single-Texture:®Tabulated
or let’s call it…
an Editorial Collaboration with the writer or…
what think thee, Miss Swaderski?

I attempted to load a table format I coded some time ago which alas did not register
The headings are as follows:

Outside Inside Style Marque (or sobriquet) Evaluation References

Under the column head Marque (for the first three rows are 1. Kendal 2. .Kelvinette 3. Quelrayne

The other headings carry comments in the appropriate row.

When I am more savvy with the site I shall try again

Incidentally, you could see the following splendid image as an exemplar of my motivation behind this piece of work. vid. http://rainflair.co.uk/rainwear%20towns ... dal_13.htm)
Last edited by Signalache on May 27th, 2016, 9:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Signalache
Posts: 32
Joined: May 18th, 2016, 3:45 pm

Re: Rainwear Fun WithSomeone?

Post by Signalache »

Waiting for inspiration....here it comes:

It's an advert for Swallow from 1951.
The illustration is very fetching'

The blurb reads: 'Made to give you special service in drizzles and downpours, a Swallow raincoat will also serve...'

I leave it at that...well, because it might not be rubberised. They specialised in gabardine.
http://www.rainflair.co.uk/secondfolder/swallow.htm
Last edited by Signalache on June 1st, 2016, 1:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Signalache
Posts: 32
Joined: May 18th, 2016, 3:45 pm

Re: Rainwear Fun WithSomeone?

Post by Signalache »

WHAT IS TO FEAR?

I was by now regretting how impulsive I had been in revealing myself in the note I had written to R and secreted in her raincoat pocket (identifying with it and how snug it would be there). My old persecutory tendency, known in the family as ‘sensitive’ (a term of mild disapproval) was back with a vengeance. Why (oh why!) had I set a trap for myself and run headlong into it! While kicking myself, a little mocking bird told me it served me right. My intention had been to trap R and going ahead with it I had thrown caution to the wind. Now the cat was out of the bag. Why had I not just contented myself with a precious secret of the cloakroom one-night stand?

I was now terrified of running into her again, and by the impossibility of avoiding that. I would not be able to read her expressions accurately, seeing her smile as a sign of a sense of her power over me. And this would spread to her friends and eventually to my own classmates who up to now accepted me as being like them able to boast about their wishful prowess, parading in-words like plating or gamarouche as a badge of belonging to the experienced. I dared to imagine, not without some secret hilarity, how it would have been had I thrown mackintosh into the mix with the gusto its symbolism was capable of creating in me.

Now I was stuck with inventing R’s nature for her. She was, wasn’t she just, out for a bit of fun getting back at the boys and, sucking up to them, at my expense—using me as the sacrificial lamb and making my life a misery? My fear of her (and my need to lie low) was now affecting my concentration. I seemed to others more than ever half asleep, and had people snapping their fingers in my face and telling me to ‘wake up’. Once again I could not totally deny that inkling I had of a hidden intention in me to shoot myself in the foot. Was it that what I feared was myself?

A year or two back (age around fifteen), I was shocked to discover my proclivities were not unique when I came across in an old encyclopaedia of sexual knowledge an example of a person who fled from shop windows where rubber goods were on display fearing intense arousal and even spontaneous orgasm. Once I got used to ‘my definition’ I was at times aware of being somewhat envious of such a capacity, considering myself thus to be lacking in manhood, forgetting the obvious drawbacks of premature ejaculation. That envy may have been a form of emulation, the wish to be out in the open and unashamed. But there and then I could not bear the thought of being the focus of prying eyes ridding themselves of their own misgivings into me. How could I allow such a thing to happen! I was instead on the run.
Last edited by Signalache on June 1st, 2016, 4:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Domino
Posts: 485
Joined: September 27th, 2011, 1:51 pm
Location: SE England

Re: Rainwear Fun WithSomeone?

Post by Domino »

Signalache, it was me who posted that Swallow ad from 1951 on what was the Lakeland Elements (now Rainfair) site. I can confirm that the raincoat was definitely gabardine rather than rubberised. It is very nicely cut, though.
Signalache
Posts: 32
Joined: May 18th, 2016, 3:45 pm

Re: Rainwear Fun WithSomeone?

Post by Signalache »

Here I sit in the studio ruminating and doodling in an absent minded way. I notice I have drawn the outline of a garment with one or two telling folds roughed in to indicate hands in pockets.
‘Still something in the woodshed!’ I can just hear the handsome young woman say. ‘Get it out of your system’.
‘Give it another couple of days’, I whisper to myself, hearing a mentor’s cadence. ‘Thick layers of titanium white take a long while to dry to the right consistency, you know, before you can get started’. I go off at a tangent: I remember blushing.

I haven’t blushed in a long time. It’s not blushing I do these days. I used to! Maybe I have since perfected the belief that I am invisible! As a boy, I couldn’t see a particular girl approaching without beginning to blush; if it were just her and me approaching from opposite directions of the school corridor, it could be very painful indeed.
‘Why?’ I wondered.
‘Shame, of course!’
‘Of what?’
‘Of being noticed noticing!’
And, my blushing was infectious. By the time the girl and I had drawn level both our faces were a mess.
I might call my painting Window Dressing. I want to do something along the lines of August Macke’s Milliner’s Shop (Hutladen).
‘Get it out of your system? eh!’

I blushed that time at the Direct Rainwear Company shop in Scunthorpe. I was eighteen—on National Service. On our way to the swimming baths, a group of us, I spotted the place. One of the party was Van der Knaap, a man of few words blessed with unfailing success with the women. We less lucky ones attributed his sexual prestige to a subliminal smell he gave off since we couldn't comprehend how an undemonstrative man like him managed it. The only thing I recall him saying was: ‘There's a thing!’ Van der Knaap didn’t blush.

The first chance I could, I returned to the shop I had discovered for closer inspection (closure would be more explicit). Closed! In a corner of the window, on a dummy was the mid blue single-breasted ladies' mackintosh I’d caught a glimpse of when I was with the others. I couldn't take my eyes off it and stood for some considerable time in the doorway, eyeing it up and trying not to draw attention to myself. In the end I sloped off and had a swim before returning to the base.

As soon as I could, I made my way back to the Direct Raincoat Company at a time when it was likely to be open for business and, sure enough, there was my blue mackintosh in the window just as before. I entered the shop. I told the girl—I said there was one in the window I wanted. I pointed it out to her.
‘You'd like to see the blue’, the girl said, all smug and hoity-toity, and was about to lead the way to a rail of coats of various colours at the side of the shop where, she said, I would find what I was looking for. It was the one in the window I wanted (the one I had already formed an attachment with).
‘Exactly the same!’ she insisted pointing to the rail.
I declined to explain. I insisted. I said to the girl, would she please do what I asked.
She stepped up then without a word, undid the belt of the blue waterproof, unbuttoned it and stripped it off the dummy. But no (!) she didn't hand it to me for my further approval, but simply carried the item to the counter and began folding it up with an offended air. The rubber proofing was almost an exact match with the blue of the cotton, perhaps a shade lighter, just the right balance and just to my taste. I stood waiting at the counter with my pound notes ready. Then, from under the counter up popped none other than Van der Knaap.
‘There's a thing!’ he said. His swarthy face wore a dreamy inward expression while he scrutinised mine for my reaction.
There was no way to hide my blushes.
‘Thirty-nine and eleven, then,’ said the girl.
Van der Knaap disappeared again down behind the counter, leaving me trying to hide how startled I was. The shop girl, whose authority had been overridden, giggled. She took my two pounds as if it were the joke, head cocked to one side, rung up the transaction, handed me the penny change, wrapped my Stone-Dri ladies mackintosh in thin brown paper, and, all trace of a smile wiped from her face, handed it over.
Last edited by Signalache on June 21st, 2016, 4:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Signalache
Posts: 32
Joined: May 18th, 2016, 3:45 pm

Re: Rainwear Fun WithSomeone?

Post by Signalache »

Here I sit in the studio ruminating and doodling in an absent minded way. I notice I have drawn the outline of a garment with one or two telling folds roughed in to indicate hands in pockets.
‘Still something in the woodshed!’ I can just hear the handsome young woman say. ‘Get it out of your system’.
‘Give it another couple of days’, I whisper to myself, hearing a mentor’s cadence. ‘Thick layers of titanium white take a long while to dry to the right consistency, you know, before you can get started’. I go off at a tangent: I remember blushing.

I haven’t blushed in a long time. It’s not blushing I do these days. I used to! Maybe I have since perfected the belief that I am invisible! As a boy, I couldn’t see a particular girl approaching without beginning to blush; if it were just her and me approaching from opposite ends of the school corridor, it could be very painful indeed.
‘Why?’ I wondered.
‘Shame, of course!’
‘Of what?’
‘Of being noticed noticing!’
And, my blushing was infectious. By the time the girl and I had drawn level both our faces were a mess.
I might call my painting Window Dressing. I want to do something along the lines of August Macke’s Milliner’s Shop (Hutladen).
‘Get it out of your system? eh!’

I blushed that time at the Direct Rainwear Company shop in Scunthorpe. I was eighteen—on National Service. On our way to the swimming baths, a group of us, I spotted the place. One of the party was Van der Knaap, a man of few words blessed with unfailing success with the women. We less lucky ones attributed his sexual prestige to a subliminal smell he gave off since we couldn't comprehend how an undemonstrative man like him managed it. The only thing I recall him saying was: ‘There's a thing!’. Van der Knaap didn’t blush.

The first chance I could, I returned to the shop I had discovered for closer inspection (closure) would be more explicit). Closed! In a corner of the window, on a dummy was the mid blue single-breasted ladies mackintosh I’d caught a glimpse of when I was with the others. I couldn't take my eyes off it and stood for some considerable time in the doorway, eyeing it up and trying not to draw attention to myself. In the end I sloped off and had a swim before returning to the base.

As soon as I could, I made my way back to the Direct Raincoat Company at a time when it was likely to be open for business and, sure enough, there was my blue mackintosh in the window just as before. I entered the shop. I told the girl—I said there was one in the window I wanted. I pointed it out to her.
‘You'd like to see the blue’, the girl said, all smug and hoity-toity, and was about to lead the way to a rail of coats of various colours at the side of the shop where, she said, I would find what I was looking for. It was the one in the window I wanted (the one I had already formed an attachment with).
‘Exactly the same!’ she insisted pointing to the rail.
I declined to explain. I insisted. I said to the girl, would she please do what I asked.
She stepped up then without a word, undid the belt of the blue waterproof, unbuttoned it and stripped it off the dummy. But no (!) she didn't hand it to me for my further approval, but simply carried the item to the counter and began folding it up with an offended air. The rubber proofing was almost an exact match with the blue of the cotton, perhaps a shade lighter, just the right balance and just to my taste. I stood waiting at the counter in a state of excitement with my pound notes ready. Then, from under the counter up popped none other than Van der Knaap.
There's a thing!’ he said. His swarthy face wore a dreamy inward expression while he scrutinised mine for my reaction.
There was no way to hide my blushes.
‘Thirty-nine and eleven, then,’ said the girl.
Van der Knaap disappeared again down behind the counter, leaving me trying to hide how startled I was. The shop girl, whose authority had been overridden, giggled. She took my two pounds as if it were the joke, head cocked to one side, rung up the transaction, handed me the penny change, wrapped up my Stone-Dri ladies single-texture mackintosh in thin brown paper, and, all trace of a smile wiped from her face, handed it over.
Last edited by Signalache on June 4th, 2016, 11:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
Signalache
Posts: 32
Joined: May 18th, 2016, 3:45 pm

Re: Rainwear Fun WithSomeone?

Post by Signalache »

A wild goose chase

A Presbyterian city having not yet emerged from the fifties—to be in love with a mackintosh—do you mind! I lay and thought of my secret life and the people who thought they knew me, little me trailing behind my mother down the sloping street curving round under the tall moss-pocked stone municipal buildings and the old shop in their shadow half way down on the other side. How could they have conceived of their wares as possessing a function so far removed from what was customary? I thought of my desperate attempts to cover up my shame. I felt the presence of a stern face somewhere in the room, behind the arras, perhaps. Well—it was all over in a second or two—what else I could have done, lagging behind a brisk parent! There in the window of the Scottish Waterproof Company were two gleaming ladies waterproofs, one a blatant red the other a glinting light blue. Two shop girls coming down behind us stopped in their tracks, oo-ed and ah-ed. I don’t remember having seen anything quite like this; I wanted them to whisk me away. I wanted to run away with them but in the same moment my mother looked round and called out for me to ‘hurry up!’

I didn’t say boo to a goose.

In my Rubric the definition of rainwear alludes to the dissimulation of a disproportionate interest. Thus the term may be used as a proper or circumspect way of dissimulating an improper interest in mackintoshes. Thus ladies rainwear may become an individual's pet name for what are more precisely rubberised mackintoshes, an esoteric synonym for the latter. Elsewhere in the Rubric this disproportionate value is expanded on, and the acquisitive urge which goes hand in hand with it.

A flock of wild geese

I think I’ll call my show Veils, or Skein perhaps. Besides web and tangle, suggestive of lies, my dictionary defines skein as wild geese flying in formation and thus reminds me of the instinctive quest involved in all this. There is a sort of web or veil that obscures my apperception so that I remain a relative stranger to myself, except in this one regard. There is also, it occurs to me, an uncanny similarity between skein and skin? But I don’t want to be pessimistic; I’ll call it Veils for that preserves the sense of allure.

No laughing matter! (Any humour that can be derived from this is perhaps all to the good.) ☻

mackery-pokery n. cf. jiggery-pokery, a facetious implication of skulduggery applied to the obsessive focus on and ritualistic use of mackintoshes, a pejorative reference to clandestine practices with mackintoshes by an exponent of their enigmatic properties, adding a dark spice to proceedings.
Signalache
Posts: 32
Joined: May 18th, 2016, 3:45 pm

Re: Rainwear Fun WithSomeone?

Post by Signalache »

By The Horns
So I came to the top of the stone stairs facing the senior boys’ cloakroom and turned right to make my way to the Library. The corridor which stretched the length of the building was deserted as most of the classes would be in progress. I was, of course, thinking of the girls’ cloakroom at the far end. I had gone only a few yards when a girl emerged from the girls’ cloakroom and started in my direction. It was R. We bore down on each other and would come alongside before I reached the library door. I for one felt cornered but quite incapable of retreating. I was also helpless to stop myself from blushing. I tried to look straight ahead but out of the corner of my eye I saw that she too was blushing and cast a furtive glance at me as we passed one another without a word. Once inside the library I wondered if she had her waterproof with her and thought of going to take a look when the coast was clear. I left the library trying to look purposeful and scholarly, turned right. The cloakrooms were open areas with racks, no doors. I paused outside the senior girls’ cloakroom. Sure enough there was her raincoat. It occurred to me it was that was responsible for her blushes and with that I sensed a stirring of the blood.

At 4 o’clock I hung about outside in the street to catch a glimpse of her. She was alone when she emerged and made towards the buses. My heart fluttered. I went up behind her. There was no hesitation about it. I blurted out—would she come to Pedro’s with me. She turned and looked quite blank. She almost appeared semi-conscious, not a hint of embarrassment. Perhaps she was epileptic. For some reason that thought aroused me. In those days it was not customary to ‘go for a coffee’; Pedro’s was an ice cream parlour with a back premises where a few of us gathered to ‘compare notes’. She quickly came out of her apparent fit of absence, looked me straight in the face and nodded assent. Standing there on her right side knowing she knew I knew the make and inner nature of her raincoat I couldn’t imagine what it was about me that struck her; it had seemed so serious a matter to her. ‘I take this bus’, she said, and stepped aboard without looking round. I watched the bus leave, my sex a paint brush. Later on she told me she knew I was ‘trouble’.
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