Timing is everything. This time Mother Nature cooperated beautifully. It was Super Bowl weekend. My wife, Bonnie, is not big on football, but I seldom miss a good game. Our compromise is that I get to stay home and watch the game with a couple of my friends while Bonnie and a couple of her friends go shopping. All in all, not a bad arrangement.
For the Super Bowl I had invited a recently separated friend of ours from Manassas - Stan - to come spend the weekend with us. And, of course our next-door neighbor, Frank. Bonnie elected to go out to meet two of her friends at the mall. Since that left their husbands, Mark and Greg, with nothing to do, I invited them to come watch the game, too.
The guys started arriving around three-thirty. Bonnie was meeting her friends at five-thirty at the mall for dinner and shopping. Well, we live in Virginia. You may remember that on that particular Sunday we were just beginning to get hit with a big ice storm. Around four o'clock we got hit with a world-class storm. The streets iced over, the malls closed, and it became obvious that the girls were not going to get to go shopping that day. Bonnie was stuck at home with us.
Then the unthinkable happened: the electricity went out. I did find a battery-run radio we could listen to the game on, but it just wasn't the same. Regardless, we were stuck; no one was going anywhere in that storm! At least we had plenty of beer and snacks, and a nice fire was burning in the fireplace with plenty of fire wood to keep us warm. We closed the doors to the family room to keep the heat in, and it made a nice haven from the storm.
While we were waiting for kickoff we were talking about what to do and where to go around Richmond. Bonnie was out in the kitchen getting munchies and beer, and I mentioned the Melting Pot, where I took Bonnie on our last outing (see "Bonnie Looses A Bet"). With her out of the room, and under the influence of the raging testosterone, the beer, and the camaraderie, I told more about that evening than I had intended. I did not go into everything that transpired, but I did give a fairly explicit description of having Bonnie show her tits to our waiter. My story met with overwhelming and nearly universal disbelief.
One of the byproducts of that evening was Bonnie's gift to me of six "anything" coupons, redeemable upon demand. This seemed like a good time to try one out. I slipped out into the kitchen and grabbed a bowl of chips to take in to the family room. As I reached for a cooler of beer with my other hand, I said to Bonnie, "Would you take this for me, please?" and handed her one of the coupons. Of course she took it, and by the time she realized what it was, I was out the door and back into the family room.
According to the rules of the arrangement, I have total control from the moment she receives the coupon. Bonnie has to do whatever I tell her to, when I tell her to do it, with no argument and no hesitation. The idea that she has no control over what she does releases her from any responsibility for her actions (at least that's the way she explained it to me). She hibernated in the kitchen for a while, until I called out for her to come back in and join us. She came into the family room and sat beside me on the couch, with Stan on her other side. Since we listening to the game instead of watching it on TV, we had arranged ourselves in a loose circle around the coffee table and the food. Bonnie didn't say anything; she just came in and sat on the couch looking nervous.
As the game went on and the beer flowed she relaxed. Near the end of the first quarter she got up to go to the bathroom. I pulled her back down and whispered in her ear that she was to take off her bra before she came back. She didn't reply, she just swallowed nervously and left. After she was out of the room, I said to those in the group who were skeptical of my account of the evening at The Melting Pot, "When Bonnie comes back, notice that she has removed her bra." When she returned with that telltale bounce under her button-down shirt I saw some grins. I guess they were beginning to wonder of I might be telling the truth. At the end of the quarter, someone - Greg, I think - said he had an anniversary coming up and wanted to go out somewhere nice. He said that someone had suggested The Melting Pot and asked innocently if any of us had ever been there. I said that Bonnie and I had been there a couple of months ago and I had really enjoyed it. "How about you, Bonnie? Did you have a good time, too?" I asked.
Blushing, she gave me a dirty look, then said to Greg, "Yes, it was an enjoyable meal."
He persisted, "Why? What was so special about it?"
She hesitated and looked at me. "Tell him the truth, Honey. Tell him what happened."
"Everything?"
"Yes, everything. There are our friends. It's OK for them to know."
"But Tom," she argued, "it's embarrassing, and they'll think I'm a terrible person!"
"Bonnie," I said, "you're arguing and hesitating. You just earned a punishment to remind you that you have to do what I say, when I say, with no argument and no hesitation. Now either you tell them or I will."
She hung her head and said, "He made me show my breasts to our waiter."
Shouts of "No Way! Outstanding! All right!" echoed around the room. When the noise died down I said "Thank you, Bonnie. I'm proud of you. Now, about your reminder/punishment: instead of just telling them what I made you do, you are going to show them what you did. Unbutton your blouse just like you did in the restaurant."
"Honey, come on. Please not in front of all these guys! I just CAN'T!"
"You're arguing again, Bonnie. That, too, will cost you. The coupon was your promise of complete and immediate cooperation with whatever I asked you to do. Now honor that promise and do what I asked you to do. Unbutton your blouse."