All in all, I was pretty pleased with the way that things had gone at the garden center. Despite my fantasies, I had not really expected that we would have the opportunity to have Katie just walking around topless for that long in a public place. Granted, it sort of fell into our usual "restricted access" public nudity, but I felt that we made some progress both by initially surprising the boys and then by really leaving it in their hands as to whom she was exposed. They could easily have brought back just about anybody that they wanted to have see her. Of course, Katie could just as easily have put her shirt back on and the show would have been over.
Although we both enjoyed our little adventure, our intentions had been to see if we could get away from our "restricted" exposure and see what some more "public" reactions would be. Really, a lot of this came out of Katie's "confession" of wanting to expose herself to Larry and Sharon and some of the questions that were raised when she subsequently did expose herself to Larry. The questions were not only of how far we could go, but how far we should allow ourselves to go.
All sorts of things go on behind closed doors and to think otherwise is just foolish. The question becomes a personal one of where to draw the lines? Not everyone is going to mark the same boundaries. For us, we were not looking to be swingers or anything like that. But what boundary do you make between that public life of family, friends, neighbors, and business associates and that of "play" time? Is it necessary to separate things totally? As Katie asked, do you bare yourself to a complete stranger and then a few hours later sit down to dinner with your closest friends and talk about the weather, kids, and whether you are going to go with the honey mustard or raspberry walnut vinaigrette salad dressing? Obviously, you are not going to stand up in Sunday School and announce to your fellow parishioners that you took your wife to the barber and watched while he shaved her pussy and expect them to pat you on the back and tell you that they are glad to have such people in the congregation. If they do, that must be some church! But is there a middle ground? Or are you forced to lead a dual life if you are going to even consider doing such things in your life but still maintain some semblance of decorum in your everyday life?
There was no way that either one of us would involve Larry and Sharon if we knew that it was going to harm either our friendship with them or their relationship with each other. Yet I was slowly beginning to realize my naivete when it came to certain issues. I really had not given much thought to where things would ultimately lead once I started down the path of exposing Katie to Larry. I have to admit that my initial thoughts were just that he would be safe. I knew that he would not be unkind to her and knew that with his relationship with Sharon that he would not consider cheating on her. What I wasn't seeing was that by involving Larry I was de facto involving Sharon. And in involving Larry AND Sharon I was involving another couple and that changed the dynamic considerably.
The lessons that I ended up learning were of the differences in how men and women relate to the world around them. You can work next to a guy in the office for years or see him every week at the gym and never know that he is dying of cancer or his wife is leaving him or some other such earthshaking event. Two women sit down next to each other on a bench in the mall and within ten minutes are talking about their kids, sharing recipes, and giving family histories to each other. Ok, so I exaggerate, but women definitely have a need to share more about themselves. This is what Katie began to explain to me, that she needed an outlet for what we were doing. Sure, it meant something that we were sharing all of this together and it was bringing us closer, but I slowly saw that it went further than that.
Even if we only showed her to Larry and he kept that secret from Sharon, Katie needed someone to share her story with. The womenfolk try to make us feel guilty about what is talked about in the locker room or at the bar when it is just the guys, but let me clue you in on the fact that women share everything with their friends down to the details that would make a man blush. But these were realizations that I came to much later. Perhaps I should just stick to the story in the order of events as they happened. At this point, the only issue was that I began to realize that Katie needed a female confidant and the only question was whether we had a chance of successfully including Sharon and Larry into all of this or if we were doomed to hurt feelings and misunderstandings if we even tried.
So it may not have been the most straightforward or valid way to get answers, but what happened at the garden center was more than just a enjoyable episode for us. More than just that we had pushed the envelop a bit further with a few more people than before and in a bit more public place than before, but also that the guys had been able to treat Katie as a person even though she had her top off. And that gave us some small hope. It left us with the feeling that perhaps we were not totally out of line for thinking that we could expose Katie without it being a fully separate "sexual" life of ours.
Our initial failure with trying to have Katie's "play" accepted in public had been that we had dressed Katie up "slutty" and then were surprised when people reacted to her accordingly. I admit that I was being naive about things. I was basing my reaction on knowing Katie as a person first and then seeing her dressed in "hot" clothes. Anyone else, not knowing her as a person first, was forming their entire reaction to her based solely on how she was dressed.
The small white t-shirt and jeans looked wholesome enough at first glance. Coupled with Katie's natural demeanor, it came across as though she was unaware of the effect that her clothing was having on people. Even when she ended up topless at the garden center, she acted so naturally about it that the guys came to accept it as though it was not completely out of the ordinary. Don't get me wrong, I mean they obviously got off on her being topless but they were able to still see her as a person instead of just a pair of boobs. This is really what we were looking for all along.
So to continue with our success, we took an evening to go out shopping to try to come up with some more outfits that Katie could wear that would allow her to show off while maintaining some semblance of a wholesome look. The only thing to our disadvantage was that you can never seem to buy clothing for the current season. Just as the Christmas displays start going up before Halloween anymore, it seems like they have bikinis on display while there is still snow on the ground and winter coats when you could fry an egg on the sidewalk. The benefit to us was that the summer clothing that we could find was all clearance priced. The problem was that things were pretty well picked over and we really were not finding anything that seemed to work. Most of the stuff was pretty modest and it seemed that anything that was at all revealing was downright trashy, the dregs that nobody else would buy. Trash at half price is still trash.
So Katie ended up looking at things more with an eye towards what she would actually wear and was able to find some sundresses that she liked. She picked out a few and disappeared into the dressing room with her selection to try them on, coming out to model each one for me. One of them really appealed to her but she asked me if I could try to find it a size smaller. The size she had looked good on her but did seem just a bit bulky. While she went back in to try on the next dress, I looked around and did manage to find the dress in the next smaller size. I took it up to the dressing room and stood there for a few minutes while waiting for her to come back out. The dress had looked cute on her but with its ankle length, short sleeves, and modest neckline it wasn't anything racy. At this point I had resigned myself to the fact that we were not going to find anything "revealing" that evening and was just happy that the trip would not be a total waste if Katie found something "normal" to wear.
