This my first submission and the first of what could be a short series of stories. Please be constructive in your criticism.
All the characters engaging in sexual activities are over 60 years of age.
"This must be Thursday," the line from Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams kept echoing round in my head. "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
The reason for my bemusement was my wife standing in front of me waving a small pink piece of fabric in my face shouting, "And what do you think of these?"
Perhaps this will make more sense with a bit of context. My name is Geoffrey, but you can call me Geoff; I don't think I need to share my surname. I'm an ordinary retired bloke in my mid-sixties looking for peaceful life, as if... I'm 5'10 and average build although my waist has thickened a bit since my days in the rugby club seniors' team. I still keep fit with regular trips to the local pool and walking a few miles every day.
My wife is called Marie after her French grandmother. Marie is a couple of months younger than me, also retired and has, as I tease her with, a curvy continental figure. Buxom, would be a good word to describe her. I love her to bits, even though she can go from nought to angry in 2 seconds. Oh, those passionate French. I have to be honest, however, the passions have waned somewhat recently. It isn't that we don't have sex any more, it's just that the periods between intimacy are getting exponentially longer. By my calculation, and yes that's how fulfilling my sex life is, the next attempt is due in six years.
We have two adult kids, Pete and Linda, each with decent jobs, their own homes and steady partners. Linda also has a 13 year old son, Colin, from a previous relationship with an idiot. I like Mike, her current boyfriend, he has an actual vocabulary; I think he's a keeper.
On this particular Thursday I had dropped my wife off at Linda's house to wait for a delivery of flat pack furniture from a well known Swedish store, whilst I made a quick trip to a local builders' merchant for some bits and pieces for jobs the kids needed doing at their houses; it being well known that retired fathers have nothing better to do with their time.
It only took half an hour or so and I knew that Marie would find something to occupy her; either mowing the lawn, weeding the borders or vacuum cleaning the stair carpet. The woman can't sit still. This Thursday, though, it appeared that Linda had pre-empted her mother, the lawn was manicured, the garden pristine and the whole house shone. My wife, however, does not give up easily and had decided to look in the laundry basket to see if there was anything she could get washed, dried and ironed while we waited for the delivery and I assembled the unit in Colin's room.
I let myself into Linda's house and shouted, "It's only me! Where are you?"
"I'm in here," my wife called back. Now, like most men, I often miss subtle cues but this time I resisted pointing out that if I knew where 'here' was I wouldn't have asked where she was. Why? Because she did not sound pleased at all and I was the only one there to take the fallout.
And that's how I found myself standing in Linda's kitchen while my wife waved a scrap of pink fabric in front of me, shouting, "And what do you think of these?"
"This must be Thursday," I echoed Arthur Dent's thoughts. "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
I realised that my wife was angry but I hadn't been there to actually piss her off. I apparently do have the ability to piss her off in my absence, but I couldn't think of anything I might have done that involved pink fabric. I decided that she may provide further clues if I actually said nothing so I gazed at her blankly and shook my head.
"Don't you know what these are?" She yelled at me. Ah, a clue; but no. I still have no fucking idea. I shook my head again; it worked the first time.
"They are crotchless panties!" She hissed, "What do you think of that?" I considered the possibilities. They weren't mine, I didn't think they were Marie's, I thought they were a little large for Colin -- but if they were his, then I would encourage him to be who he needed to be -- so that left Linda as the most likely owner. I wasn't sure why Marie suddenly wanted to discuss my daughter's -- or Colin's -- underwear so I stuck to a strategy that had served me well so far, and said nothing. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end and apparently now I was required to actually comment.
"What do you want me to say?" I asked, genuinely puzzled as to why I would have an opinion on a grown woman's underwear. I mean, I knew my daughter wasn't a virgin; there was Colin as evidence for a start. I also doubted that Mike spent the weekends at Linda's house sleeping on the sofa, so what was the problem?