Your most memorable formative experience?
Posted: October 11th, 2018, 6:26 pm
Along the path that brought us to where we are and to wear what we like, most of us had a moment when our deep desires, which would stay with us for a lifetime, were irretrievably cemented.
I invite anyone to describe theirs, be it rubber, latex, PVC, nylon, PU or even spandex.
Mine? There was a woman who lived in our village who had inexplicably married the village spiv. Daphne. Why couldn’t she have waited? I was 13 and coming on strong. If her spiv had been wealthy enough, she would have used taxis. But he wasn’t so she had to use the bus, a double decker into town. It was wet that day and nobody wanted to go upstairs. I did. Front row. She wailed at the bottom because there were no seats and everyone turned deaf when she cried out for someone to give up their luxury. I was behind her, gazing at the ripples of the yellow rubberised taffeta raincoat, one size too big, swirled around her. I could smell it. I wanted to touch it but darent. Mrs Cowgill would have spotted me, she spotted everything and she would have told my mother. Attempted rape. On that day, I need not have worried. Daphne started her reluctant path up the stairs and as the driver deliberately let the clutch snatch and start the bus with a jerk, Daphne rocked back and forth on the stairs as a gust of wind blew the whole of her yellow rubber higher and higher. I was rushing upstairs faster than Daphne and inevitably, when her rubber raincoat fluttered down to resume its normal drape, my head was at most an inch behind Daphne’s posterior and I was enveloped, nay encased in wet clasping yellow rubberised taffeta. I inhaled. Daphne recovered her composure and proceeded to the upper deck, her rubber sliding over my skin as she did so. My friend Granville was in the steps behind me and when we sat down, his eyes wide open he asked me
“Did you see . . Erm . . . See it. while you were under there?
“Oh Granville, it was wet, slippery, yellow, glowing from the reflection of street lamps, smooth, exotic with an intoxicating aroma. I want one.
Granville didn’t believe me. His older brother had tried to have it off with Daphne’s younger sister and he’d told him it was dry, hairy and uninviting and not yellow.
My uncle Jack had a similar experience. The runt of my father’s family, he never married and sought jobs where he could stroke fabric. Mon- Fri he worked in t’mill as weave quality controller, marking with his strict chalk when a pimple flawed the otherwise perfect worsted. On weekends, he worked freelance on clothes shops. One Sat, answering an emergency, he reluctantly accepted a shift in the shoe shop. Shoes didn’t do it for him. As he bent down to squeeze a woman’s foot into a shoe one size too small and she, looking down and seeing Uncle Jack’s bald head, thought it was her knee and hurriedly pulled her skirt over it and smoothed it down tight. Apparently, I wasn’t there, but the result I could imagine having once clapped my hands in the hen hut on my other uncle’s farm.
I invite anyone to describe theirs, be it rubber, latex, PVC, nylon, PU or even spandex.
Mine? There was a woman who lived in our village who had inexplicably married the village spiv. Daphne. Why couldn’t she have waited? I was 13 and coming on strong. If her spiv had been wealthy enough, she would have used taxis. But he wasn’t so she had to use the bus, a double decker into town. It was wet that day and nobody wanted to go upstairs. I did. Front row. She wailed at the bottom because there were no seats and everyone turned deaf when she cried out for someone to give up their luxury. I was behind her, gazing at the ripples of the yellow rubberised taffeta raincoat, one size too big, swirled around her. I could smell it. I wanted to touch it but darent. Mrs Cowgill would have spotted me, she spotted everything and she would have told my mother. Attempted rape. On that day, I need not have worried. Daphne started her reluctant path up the stairs and as the driver deliberately let the clutch snatch and start the bus with a jerk, Daphne rocked back and forth on the stairs as a gust of wind blew the whole of her yellow rubber higher and higher. I was rushing upstairs faster than Daphne and inevitably, when her rubber raincoat fluttered down to resume its normal drape, my head was at most an inch behind Daphne’s posterior and I was enveloped, nay encased in wet clasping yellow rubberised taffeta. I inhaled. Daphne recovered her composure and proceeded to the upper deck, her rubber sliding over my skin as she did so. My friend Granville was in the steps behind me and when we sat down, his eyes wide open he asked me
“Did you see . . Erm . . . See it. while you were under there?
“Oh Granville, it was wet, slippery, yellow, glowing from the reflection of street lamps, smooth, exotic with an intoxicating aroma. I want one.
Granville didn’t believe me. His older brother had tried to have it off with Daphne’s younger sister and he’d told him it was dry, hairy and uninviting and not yellow.
My uncle Jack had a similar experience. The runt of my father’s family, he never married and sought jobs where he could stroke fabric. Mon- Fri he worked in t’mill as weave quality controller, marking with his strict chalk when a pimple flawed the otherwise perfect worsted. On weekends, he worked freelance on clothes shops. One Sat, answering an emergency, he reluctantly accepted a shift in the shoe shop. Shoes didn’t do it for him. As he bent down to squeeze a woman’s foot into a shoe one size too small and she, looking down and seeing Uncle Jack’s bald head, thought it was her knee and hurriedly pulled her skirt over it and smoothed it down tight. Apparently, I wasn’t there, but the result I could imagine having once clapped my hands in the hen hut on my other uncle’s farm.