When I was about five or six the idea of dressing up involved an old cardboard box stuffed with my mum and granny’s cast-offs – usually long patterned dresses, scarves and a dozen hats. My brother and I concocted various stories and characters. The only one I remember now was my brother’s ‘wedding’ to one of my dolls.
As one gets older the novelty wears off, or it does for many of us. In my teens and 20s, I went to a handful of fancy dress parties with varying degrees of costume success. But there usually reaches a point when either the fancy dress parties dry up, or the idea of them produces moans of “do we have to?!” or the use of a convenient, yet plausible excuse for declining the invitation.
As for dressing up in the boudoir – I have managed (by sheer fluke) to avoid such notions, feeling that I had neither the body, nor the confidence to carry off a ‘horny devil’, ‘French maid’ or ‘naughty nurse’ (sorry if these are obvious clichés), regardless of whether the outfit was constructed from fabric or PVC.
So having coasted through life and relationships without even a Venetian-style eye mask in my possession, I thought I was home and dry.
I also thought new man was contented enough with the odd bit of lacy lingerie – a basque here, a babydoll there.
That was until on one of his evening visits when he produced a package, something he had purchased online.
Innocently, I assumed it was going to be a piece of jewellery or little hand bag. But, as he pulled it out of the plastic packaging and unfolded the tissue paper, I saw it was black and shiny. It also seemed to have a lot of shoe lace-type bits attached to it.
When he held it up to show me, I realised that it was either a very odd-shaped handbag or something altogether unknown and unchartered for me.
I blinked in surprise, trying to keep my mouth closed and my expression neutral.
“It’s a cat suit,” he explained, as my calm exterior was clearly failing.
“Aah,” I replied, still unable to speak. (‘Hmm, middle-aged woman in a catsuit,’ I thought to myself).
“Well,” I said, trying to regain composure, “I will try to get into it.”
“It’s size eight to twelve, so I’m sure it will be fine.” He wasn’t going to give up on this.
I folded it up again, carefully, and agreed to try it on later. And I meant it. No one has ever bought me a PVC catsuit before and, I am told, the zip down the crotch nicely frames things, like a fanny display case…So who am I to argue with wearing something for his arousal?
Next, I need to decide what he can wear for me. The clichéd firefighter’s uniform, Batman, Zorro, or perhaps a blue boiler suit?