Valentine’s Day Massacre aka Love, Lace and Lingerie

This happened after Valentine’s day a few years back.

If you really want to get back at a man, drag him through a lingerie department.  Any place that sells women’s undies will do, but for best results, pick one of those speciality shops where the entire store is pink.  Try to find one where the sales clerk looks like his mother.

What is it with men these days?  They may be raised on pin-ups and admit viewing the odd (VERY odd) clip on the net, but drag them through a female gauchie department and watch them turn…well…pinker than the ridiculous teddy set my man bought me recently.

Which is why were in the Lacy Love store in the first place.  Returning it.

“Darling, “ I say, holding up two pieces of flimsy fuchsia lace held together by a two inch thread. “Do these nipple holes serve a purpose, or did you get this in a fire sale?”

“It looked good on the dummy,” he mutters, looking remarkably like a twelve year old.

“Dummies don’t move.  They are made of firm molded plastic.  I am not.  If I could get away with wearing something like this, I wouldn’t need it.”

The sales clerk comes over to the desk where we’re standing.  Correction:  where I am standing and he is cowering.  It’s even better than I hoped.  She looks like his grade nine English teacher.  All six feet of her.

“May I help you,” she says, beady eyes shifting to the chiffon thingy on the counter.  “Returning this?”  She chokes back a snort, then turns and yells, “Hey Gladys!  Take a look at this.  Somebody actually bought it.  Can you believe it?”

She holds it up for everyone to see.  Florescent light shimmers through the nipple holes, casting two adjacent circles on the far wall.  Naturally, the place is packed.  Women peek out from behind change-room curtains.

Gladys, who looks a lot like Maude from Golden Girls, sticks her head out from behind the bras and hoots like a jackal.  “You’re kidding!  I thought we’d never get rid of it.  Present?”  She looks at me sympathetically.

I nod.  The woman next in line looks at my guy as if he is some sort of sex pervert escapee from Penetang.  She backs away, cautiously.

“It doesn’t fit,” I say stoically.  Meanwhile, the ‘original purchaser’ is apparently engrossed in counting ceiling tiles.

“Actually, dear, it’s all marketing,” the sales clerk confides.  “Every Valentine’s Day we get zillions of hapless males in here buying hopelessly little bitty things like this.  And every week after, we get women like you returning the flimsies for store credit.  It keeps us in business.”

The sales clerk shakes her grey head as she writes up the credit note.  Then she looks up at my man – who is quietly trying to sneak out of the store - and peers sternly over her wire-rim glasses.

“Wait a minute.  Weren’t you in my English Lit class in 1981?”