An excerpt from the diary of Damian Weekes
WHAT turns me on? I'll put it as briefly as I can. It's a woman having trouble with her hosiery.
You must have seen them. The colleague at the business conference, who briefly turns her back to the assembled company to assume that peculiar, undignified and (to me anyway) amazingly sexy crouch whereupon they scrabble wildly at their waste, with a loud snap of resettled elastic, before turning guiltily back towards the meeting, with flushed cheeks. The peculiar gait known as 'the stocking two-step" where a woman a woman fiddles desperately to correct her errant hosiery, all the time trying to avoid giving the public the impression that she is masturbating. The superficially elegant lady who, as soon as she thinks she is unobserved, begins smoothing her hands along her thighs to take of the slack of sagging nylons, and avoid the dreaded "elephant knees".
Stocking trouble in all its many shades and echoes, combinations and parameters, is balm to my perverted soul. From concertinas at the ankles to the shuffling waddle that tells of a sliding pantyhose crotch, all of it sends me into a paroxysm of desire. Bags at the knees or folds at the ankles. The tugging of a short skirt to hide an inadvertent flash of control-top, the burrowing up under a skirt to refasten a snapped garter, the twisted stance as a seam is straightened. You can keep your blindfolds and whips, your leather and leopardskin, your tight jeans or your peekaboo bras. Give me a recalcitrant pair or nylons and Paradise is mine.
Like anyone, I think about my sexual fetish a lot. It forms the basis not only of my sexual gratification, but also functions by way of a hobby. I have, for example, a copy of nearly every pantyhose or stocking ad that has been shown on TV in the last four years (I didn't own my own VCR before then). My favourites are the ones that show the folly of wearing the opposition's product. The scowling face of the woman too parsimonious to purchase X's pantyhose (the brand being advertised), as she tugs at her loosely-nyloned legs. The growls of frustration as she observes a fast-spreading run. The apologetic grimace as she yanks on her hose at the snobbish garden-party. These facial expressions do more for me that the pouting, come-to-bed look of any Ribald centrefold. Of course, the ad agencies always making sure that the better looking of the women in the ad is wearing the "proper" brand, but you can't have everything.
And there's magazine ads too. Not only the modern ones in Cleo, Glamour, Cosmopolitan and even good old New Idea, (I don't have to buy them myself... thank heaven my sister, Kelli, hasn't moved out of home yet) but the older ones in dog-eared copies of publications from the sixties and seventies, that can still be found (and virtually given away) in second hand book shops and charity sales.
The best period for these ads is the time when pantyhose first came out, for in those days (here's some nylon lore for you - who says fetish-lit can't be educational) hose were extremely prone to cascading downwards. Lycra hadn't been invented. (And as a digression, for the rare lady who might be reading, Lycra hasn't fixed the problem entirely either... fit and quality are still what determine whether or not you're going to get nylons that stay put) and, in those pre-feminist days, looks counted even more than they do now.
And then there's movies. "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" (with Liz Taylor in a scene that would be forever engraved upon my memory, even if I didn't have it on video), "The Graduate", "Heat and Dust" (a much neglected one, this last), and more than one sitcom features a girl giving the occasional smooth to her nylons when performing that all-important last minute preening before meeting her date. There's a very good episode of "Frasier" where Roz hauls her hose up at the waist, and the fact that it doesn't contribute to the plot in any way makes me suggest that the director of that series is a kindred spirit.
My point is, the tracking down of all these, the way that I have carefully catalogued them, edited out the superfluous bits, arranged them so that they are artfully grouped, all the waist-hitches at one end, the smoothing of legs another, has given me as many hours of pleasure as the philatelist rearranging his stamps, the numismatist with his coins or the gambler with his systems and form guides. Add to these my six scrapbooks full of hosiery ads, (all carefully mounted with old-style stamp hinges), my meticulously kept diaries recording the observations of women seen hitching up their hosiery (even, I blush to admit, Kelli's difficulties get recorded here), my computer hard-drive full of downloaded pictures and my index of great stocking scenes from literature, and you will see why rainy days hold no terror for me.
On the contrary, sometimes I think that the learned essays and discussions I hold with myself within my head during the long nights (is fit or quality more important in avoiding sag? Will stockings with garters ever return to the mainstream. Can a long-leg girdle prevent pantyhose from falling?) are as interesting to me as the actual visual stimulation.
There's nothing like a good obsession for passing the time!
It occurs to me that I have spent a disproportionate amount of time on these meandering thoughts, but there is a reason, apart from the enjoyment it has given me. You see, my... What should I call it? My ability? Power? Talent? Well, the thing I do... is a direct result of over a decade steeped in all facets of brooding over, cogitating upon and celebrating the phenomena of unruly nylons. It is not only my main use of the ability, but also its source, a neatness not usually found in life.
It is an ability I had for many years before I dared use it, and which even after I dared, I never did much, because I deemed it unreliable. It wasn't until I realised just what conditions had to be met before its efficaciousness could be guaranteed that I felt secure enough to practise it in anger. And the way in which I first discovered this is as good a subject as any for this, the first excerpt from my memoirs.
*****
It was my last day ever as a store clerk. I did not know at the time that it was my last day (or, no doubt, I would have been far happier), nor did I know that it was, in that much overworked phrase, the beginning of the rest of my life. All I did know was that it had not been a good day.
My morning trip on the bus, for example, had been barren. Normally, the long periods spent standing, with one had firmly gripping shopping bags or briefcases and the other hanging on for dear life to a roof-strap means that women have no means whatsoever to control their rebellious hosiery, (and the vibrations of a bus also mean that thigh-highs have to be particularly tenacious in their grip to stay in place), and I was often treated to an incident that would eventually find its way into my diary. A flash of control top, a set of saggy knees (sitting on bus seats also tends to encourage this), a discreet hitch that only a particularly observant or obsessive watcher (me, for example) would notice... Public transport is a wonderful thing.
But this morning, not so much as a single brief running of a hand along a thigh, a single crease on an ankle, or a tiny hole or run. In order to break the drought, which had lasted for over a week (this was a Friday, and the last significant disarrangement I had seen had been the Thursday of the week before, a plump middle aged woman yanking at her waist band) I had deliberately lingered on my way to work.
A woman that I had seen hastily duck into a shop doorway had raised my hopes (amongst other things) but discreet and careful observation had shown that she had only required a wind-shield, in order to light a cigarette. I had then followed a woman for five blocks, having seen her skirt lifted by the wind to reveal what I thought was a control-top only a few millimetres from her hem, hoping that time, skirt-ride and hose-sag would bring it into more than fleeting view, but the skirt had stayed stubbornly in place, and by the time she disappeared into an office building her modesty was as intact as when I had first seen her.
When arriving at work, I had deliberately spent time discussing trivia with Sarah, the office switch girl, who was known as a frequent battler with her hosiery (It's a fact. There are some girls that never have stocking problems, some that experience the phenomenon only briefly, and a sadly too rare group that seem to be unlucky all the time, and Sarah was one of the last named. Bet you can't guess which sort I'd like as a regular girlfriend!)
But today, even Sarah's pantyhose were determined to deny me my simple and harmless pleasure, and my quick glances down showed not a trace of disarrangement.
And then, all day, the customers' hose had proved similarly unco-operative. Or rather, too cooperative. I had deliberately lingered around women looking at displays, hoping that when they stood up after bending, their knees would betray the poor fit of their hose, but had had no luck at all. Even Zita, the manager of my section (who was at the more frequent end of the middle group of hose-trouble frequency) was wearing slacks.
So when I was summoned, just after lunch (which I had spent wandering town, desperately and fruitlessly seeking Nylonic imperfections) to the store's personnel office, I was already not in the best of moods.
It is not my intention to go through, in detail, the conversation that took place. That times were hard, that they were very sorry, that it was nothing personal.
If this were a movie, of course, the conversation, the sympathetic cliches, would be in the background, while a voice over in my own dulcet tones would be continuing the narrative. So indulge me, reader, and imagine the knell of the doom of my retail career sounding in the background, while I prepare the ground of what is about to come. And while Amanda, the personnel manager raves, I'll bring you up to date with the other thing you need to know. My talent.
*****
At the tender age of ten I had been taken to see a stage hypnotist billed as Simon DeVille. It was shortly before what Kelli and I refer to still as "the big D", and relations between my parents were strained. In fact it was probably because my mother disapproved of such entertainment that my father had insisted we go along.
I had, of course, no way of knowing that the ridiculous antics of De Ville's "victims" were carefully scripted and staged (at that time I even thought that professional wrestlers were performing actual sport, and used to wonder at Kelli's ability to predict the winner, even if it were a competitor that, at that time, was being beaten to a pulp), and, to be blunt, the whole thing fascinated me. The other acts shown that evening (apart from a group of chorus-girls, all dressed in hose, for I had sneaked the occasional peek at Kelli dressing, and my obsession was in the early stages of development) have long faded from my memory. But De Ville is as fresh as ever.
