Miranda. One cool lady. She was the kind of co-worker you lucked into. Highly competent. Took care of business. Represented the firm with aplomb. She exuded professionalism.
At twenty plus years younger than I, she carried herself with a pert self-confidence. She could be flirtatious and sexy when she chose to turn it on. Her persona was an amalgam of an impressive, broad-based liberal arts education, a native intelligence and curiosity about the world. A bona fide, exemplary model of a secular humanist in my estimation. She was conversant in literature, philosophy, politics, the arts in general, had a reasonable grasp of science, an informed awareness of culture and stayed abreast of the daily news and the world of entertainment. What's not to like?
Interestingly, she had an irrepressible attraction to the perverse, the demented, the off-kilter, the dark side of human nature and the troubling ways it could manifest itself. Mass murderers, rapists, con-men and con-women, cheats and perverts, she found them all fascinating. And the more sex that was involved, the better.
She'd reveal these twisted tastes at office luncheons (when the "right" people were present...or absent). And she'd let loose in our confidential "we need to take a break from work" conversations. She'd ramble on excitedly about movies, sex, the latest TV series, sex, political movements, sex, entertainment and sex with a raunchy candor that would make you wince...and laugh. Iconoclastic and bawdy, no one could hold a candle to her ribald merrymaking when she got going. No holds barred. Nothing was sacred. She spoke with abandon and freedom. Her banter was reliably entertaining, erotic and endearing.
It was she whom I invited to join me on my deck for evening cocktails. Marcy, my wife of thirty-four years, had passed away fairly recently. This bachelor sought companionship and a good time in new and different ways. This particular get-together with Miranda was to engage in a book discussion, Stephen Hawking's last work,
A Brief Discussion of the Big Questions.
I recommended it to Miranda and was genuinely interested to hear what she had to say about the existence (or not) of god, bioengineering, AI, space/time travel and all the other topics on which Hawking passed final judgment and about which she and I would bull shit all the time.
We sat down to Manhattans, up. (She was quite the epicurean as well.) On and on we went, flitting from philosophical topic to topic, without resolution, but with easy engagement. We sipped our cocktails, felt the encroaching buzz, got louder and a little loose-lipped. Then, all at once, she shifted gears.
"Weren't you going to give me a riding crop that belonged to Marcy? And did you give all those steamy tee shirts away?"
Truth be told, I was thrilled that she asked. I had intentionally sown these seeds of interest some time back. I HAD promised to bequeath to her Marcy's riding crop. And I HAD shared with Miranda some highly suggestive tee-shirt photos. These stories deserve a brief explanation.
In cleaning out closets following Marcy's passing, I ran across a collection of a dozen or so tee shirts with sexually provocative sayings on them - all with a general theme of female domination and male subservience. She'd collected an impressive stash of these over the years and would wear them just for me (on select occasions in public).
Typical titles included, "On Your Knees, Boy," "She Who Must Be Obeyed," "Don't Torture Yourself - That's My Job!" "How Do You Know You've Met the Perfect Woman? She'll Tell You!" "A Well-Spanked Husband Doesn't Disobey." You get the idea. And there were the ones that she purchased for me to wear: "WHACK! Please, Mistress, I Deserve Another!" "She Wears the Pants - I'm Her Bitch," "Sissy Slut," and "Cream Pie Cleanup Crew." Again, you get the idea.
It seemed at the time a shame to just toss them all in the donation bags without any acknowledgement. I thought of all the racy times Marcy and I had together, of the kinky shit we did. The tee shirts were revealing mementos. To discard them silently, to send them quietly into oblivion just didn't seem right. Some kind of celebration seemed appropriate.
Besides, I felt an odd compulsion to spill my guts to someone. To share with someone what had been largely private and confidential - but also hot. Call me a perv, but I took pride in how we amused each other, kinky as it may have been, and after her passing craved the opportunity to reveal to someone something of our decades-long festivities.
But with whom could I possibly share such relics? With whom could I share stories of our kinky escapades? Most everyone I thought of would likely feel uncomfortable talking about the edgy stuff suggested by the tee-shirts. Was there anyone, I wondered, who might appreciate the kink, the fetish, the deliciously naughty adventures embodied in those tees? When I finally thought of Miranda I convinced myself that she was indeed someone with whom I could celebrate. She would "get it." I could confide in her and, I was confident, she would appreciate and jot judge. My desire to share the kinky stories with her grew. I realized that I was becoming almost compulsive about it.
I took photos of a handful of the tee shirts and texted them to Miranda. She seemed appreciative, or at least was a good sport about it. At a happy hour, I asked her to identify her favorites, prodding her to delve deeper. It was in the context of rank ordering her favorites that I mentioned a riding crop that Marcy owned. I was definitely guilty of throwing more bait out there. I mentioned that I'd hate to throw the riding crop away. Miranda immediately declared that she'd love to have it. I promised I'd give it to her.
I never delivered the riding crop to her and I did indeed donate all the tee-shirts. As it turned out, my remaining professional time with Miranda ended when I moved on from that job. She was busy as could be and our paths crossed less often. My scheme - to entice her to press me for lurid details about Marcy and me - was, at best, dormant. That is, until we were sitting on the deck, when the tee shirts and riding crop suddenly became the new topic of conversation. We were sitting, imbibing and conducting a most proper "book review" of Hawking's work when she asked what I'd yearned to hear from her.
"Weren't you going to give me a riding crop that belonged to Marcy? And did you give all those steamy tee shirts away?"
"I did promise I'd give you that riding crop, didn't I," I stated more than asked. "You're out of luck with the tee-shirts, I gave them all away."