Good Vibrations Magazine

“You’re not serious,” she said. I raised my eyebrows. “What’s wrong with you?” she said, turning her back. We were standing in the bargain barn of the Vermont Country Store, in Rockingham, Vt., an emporium of folksy gifts, old-timey novelties, and practical products for country living.

Hanging on the back wall of the barn was a rack of mid-calf-length denim dresses, ranging in size from roomy to expansive, paired with white crew neck blouses. The store identified them as “tent jumpers.” Some were plain blue denim, with a prim row of buttons running down the front; others were embroidered with little strawberries or bumblebees.

I had suggested that I dress her in one for sex. She could round out her wardrobe, I said, with other Vermont Country Store apparel, like a floppy straw gardening hat with a scarf tied around the chin. Upstairs, the lingerie and sleepwear section held further erotic possibilities, like the Tyrolean print flannel nightgown by Lanz of Salzburg, a floor-length garment with long sleeves and a high collar, trimmed with eyelet lace.

We had kidded each other about this kind of thing before. As our wedding day approached, we had talked about consummating our marriage through a slit in a bed sheet. That was just for laughs. But this time, as my imagination seized upon the idea and spun out one scenario after another, I was surprised to find that it really appealed to me — so much so that I had to stuff my hands in my front pockets.

I imagined hiking the jumper over her hips to reveal waist-high cotton briefs, which I’d tug down and let fall around a pair of wool ankle socks and loafers. Then I thought of the coming winter, and imagined the warmth of her skin beneath the Lanz of Salzburg flannel, and how the lace trim on its neck and yoke would brush my thighs when she was on her knees.

Playing dress-up had never been my thing. However a girl dressed herself, be it in tight thrift-store t-shirts and baggy corduroys, office chic, or J. Crew casuals, that was what turned me on. I have always liked kinky sex, but nothing in the standard repertoire of fetish wear has ever held a full erotic charge for me. French maids and naughty schoolgirls are fun, but those ideas seem too pat. Leather and vinyl outfits — studded bustiers, catsuits, thigh-high boots, and the like — are sexy, but too overtly so to qualify as kinky. They’re made for sex and nothing else. Kink is about finding eroticism where it isn’t supposed to exist. It should make you a bit uncomfortable. You should be ashamed of yourself.

At the Vermont Country Store I found a new frontier in kink. Only the frowsiest frump, who has either given up on her sexuality altogether or is intent on smothering it goes to town in a tent jumper. Buying one for a lusty young woman to wear for the express purpose of fucking her isn’t sexy at all. It’s perfectly perverted.

She wanted to know what it meant. Did I have a thing for dumpy broads? Was that how I saw her, or what I wanted her to be? I tried to stammer out an explanation, but I couldn’t say anything sensible. I felt like someone with a rape fantasy trying to rationalize it to a mortified partner. Eventually I managed to persuade her that it was about the clothes, not her.

That day, however, I left the store with only a bottle of ginger beer and a jar of pickled garlic. I just couldn’t go there, not yet.

I put up with a lot of teasing afterwards. Whenever she saw something particularly dowdy in a store, she’d bring it to my attention. “Ooh, look, Marty,” she’d say, holding up a purple sweatshirt with appliqu teddy bears. “Does this turn you on? Does it make you horny?” E-mails would show up in my inbox bearing the subject heading, “Super Sexy!,” with a link to some awful muumuu in an online catalog. I was embarrassed, and tickled.

On the hottest afternoons that summer, we went swimming down at the pond near our house. I loved her black one-piece swimsuit, which revealed so much pale Yankee skin, yet so little compared with the thong bikinis the local high school girls wore. When we swam out by the diving raft, out of sight, I couldn’t keep my hands off her. Still, I wanted to see her in something sexier, like a Victorian bathing costume.

Then, for Thanksgiving dinner, we went to the Fort at Number 4, a reconstructed colonial settlement in Charlestown, New Hampshire. We sat at a long table in a low-ceilinged blockhouse lit by candles and a roaring fire in the open hearth. The traditional New England feast was served by women in accurately reproduced 18th century costume.

We had made our reservations several weeks in advance, and all the while I had been relishing the thought of it, though I kept it quiet. It would be, for me, as titillating as a night at a strip club would be for some — all these pious goodwives sweeping about in long skirts with heaping platters of godly food, while I leered on.

When one of the costumed servers sat down to eat at our table, I asked her to tell me about her outfit. She wore her hair tucked into a ruffled white cap, which was called a mobcap. Tied around her shoulders was a modesty shawl, or fichu, meant to cover the neckline of her wool gown, over which she wore a bib apron. Under the gown were several petticoats, she said, and then stays, a support garment like a corset, and finally, a linen shift, the last undergarment. I listened politely, betraying nothing.

After dinner, my wife and I browsed the gift shop. After thumbing through some illustrated history books and colonial cookbooks, I spied what I was looking for — a wicker basket full of white cotton mobcaps, five dollars each. I picked one out and took it to her.

“What’s that?” she said.

“It’s one of those colonial bonnet things,” I said. I didn’t want to let on that I knew what it was called.

“Oh,” she said. “Neat.”

“Would you wear it?” I said.

“Why would I wear it?” she said.

I looked around, and then leaned in close and whispered.

“Yeah?” I said.

She sighed. “If you must. Whatever.”

I took it to the register and laid it on the counter. I tried to look casual. This was for … a Halloween costume. No, a play. No, I just collect hats, all kinds. A woman came out, in modern dress.

“Just this?” she said, picking up the mobcap.

I caught her eye. She knew. She totally knew. You’re going to make your wife wear it while she blows you. Isn’t that so, you dirty bastard?

“Yes,” I said, and handed over the slightly damp five I had been holding.