Author's Note:
My stories are about sex and drugs in the late 1970's and early 1980's; long before AIDS, which put a halt to our lifestyle. I certainly wouldn't condone doing anything like what we did in the past now. These days unprotected sex, drugs, or throwing vibrator batteries in with the trash is dangerous and should be discouraged. If this upsets you, or you're one of the gutless Anon's that snivel about sex and drugs please feel free to stop now and don't read this or any other of my stories!
NOMUFFTOOTOUGH
*****
My wife has always saved mementos from special dates and occasions for as long as I have known her. Way before 'Scrap-Booking' became popular she was saving matchbooks from weddings, menus from fine restaurants, and other little tokens of times long gone. When scrap booking became popular it was a hobby made with my wife in mind. She still has the program from her high school prom, so it shouldn't have been a surprise when I came across her 'special' stash of mementos.
It was the day after my wife left for an extended visit to her sister. She had been complaining forever about the state of her closet, wanting one of those fancy modular systems that are all the rage on the many Do-It-Yourself cable programs. I am a retired engineer, so I decided to surprise her by installing one of the nicer systems while she was gone.
The first thing I had to do in order to install the new system was to remove everything from her closet; going so far as to move all of the hanging clothes into mover's boxes, made with hanger bars installed, so as not to wrinkle or soil anything. My plan was to work methodically; clearing my way to the back, boxing shoes and accessories separately so as to not mix anything up; remove the existing shelves and clothes poles; locate the studs, then patch and sand any holes in the wall, prime and paint and then begin the new installation.
I was clearing the top shelf that ran around the perimeter of the eight foot by eight foot walk-in closet just above the clothes poles, filled with shopping bags, rectangular wicker storage baskets and shoe boxes, some full to overflowing and few very nearly empty, when I came across her special stash of mementos, quite by accident. I had grabbed the loops of a shopping bag with one hand and the handle on a rectangular wicker basket next to it with the other, and pulled. The bag was lighter than expected and trying to compensate I gave the basket a quick tug and stepped back.
The basket tumbled down onto the carpeted floor, spilling a large portion of its contents out like a cornucopia of what turned out to be memories of an era long past. My first reaction was 'Oh shit' what broke; followed closely by 'She is gonna be so pissed at me!' However, upon closer inspection it didn't seem as though anything had broken. There were several items strewn about the floor along with her favorite raffia sun bonnet. The first thing that caught my eye when I knelt down to gather up the contents of the basket was a large safety pin; and by large I mean six inches long and an inch wide. Then, as I looked around at some of the other items, I realized what I was looking at and the flood gates opened, and memories of that time in our lives came rushing back!
The closet is finished, but now that I discovered my wife's mementos I have a new project, to write about what each item meant to me. The following is a list of the items I could remember having any significance to me, along with a paragraph or two about what I recall about some of them. My ultimate goal is to write a story about each item I recognized and why it was there, as best I can recall, in some semblance of chronological order. I will fill in the details of each item later on in separate stories, along with a little more background; hopefully not so much as to distract from the stories, just enough to help the context of the stories flow.
I wrote 'The Gift' in 2000 and submitted it to another adult site and to Penthouse Letters, who printed their edited version in their annul Wife Watchers edition in November of that year, in the Sloppy Seconds section.
Once upon a time, a long, long, time ago, (The mid-seventies to the mid-eighties; the decade before AIDS and the worst that could happen was a dose of the clap, which I will always remember fondly as 'the good old days'!) my wife had used that safety pin to secure several very short little wrap-around skirts and dresses. Then, under a wide variety of circumstances, and usually after my wife and I had been out at some nightclub or bar, or hotel lounge, she would let some guy pick her up and remove the pin.
The first time that comes to mind was when my wife let some businessman pick her up in a hotel lounge over by the Ontario airport while I was sitting across the bar. An hour later they were in his room where the guy accidentally stabbed her in the thigh with it in his haste to get her skirt off. From that night on my asking if she had been 'pinned' became our little joke. We weren't talking about some fraternity pin; it was a way of asking whether or not she'd gotten laid.
Speaking of fraternity pins, one of our favorite pastime was picking up hitchhikers on and around the many campuses in the LA area! That was one of the first few fantasies we'd read about and then later adapted, but with our own little twist. Back then it seemed like you saw someone hitchhiking almost any time you were out driving. We would cruise the main drags around the local university's; Cal-Poly Pomona and UC Riverside, and a few others, depending on where we were going. She had all these little pleated plaid skirts in several of the school colors that she would wear, along with a plain white blouse that was tied just below her breasts and a pair of white gym shoes or Mary Jane's with two-inch heels.