Toys R Us?

The sex, love, and romance expo was not particularly romantic at all. Dozens of tables belonging to local vendors filled the gymnasium-like space, and reminded Miranda of the Christmas craft sales her elementary school used to host when she was a little girl. She half expected at any moment to turn a corner and be face to face with a display table of hand painted cherubs locked in a variety of heavenly erotic embraces, their flowered halos all fallen and askew. Miranda couldn’t help but note that after a mere few steps in to the space, her imaginings were already twisting outside their usual boxed up comfort zone. The vendors didn’t seem to be toting romance at all. No one was selling scented candles. There were no tables of sweet music to make love to. This was about getting frisky and getting laid. Rubber cocks bounced on sheer table clothes, and Miranda had to resist the urge to smash her fist on the tables top just to watch them all bounce around like bobble heads. But it also wasn’t overly intimidating. There weren’t huge screens dripping porn from the ceilings as she’d fears. Nor were the gaggle of badly lingeried ladies reclining on tables tops or getting themselves off on pool tables. Miranda had half expected them to be there, after envisioning a meeting to organize this event, and someone suggesting the ladies be placed every 5- 6 displays, just to keep people interested and moving around. There were toys, some of which she’d heard of, many of which she had not. There were displays of furniture that Miranda had never seen before, nor could she ever imagine any home accommodating. Including one particular piece that left her shocked silent – a huge blow up chair that a woman lies on, with a piece between her knees that forces them to be spread. Then a little compartment that opens and a jiggling penis that pushes itself in and out, vibrating the entire time. As if the motorized penis weren’t enough to give away the function of the chair, the vendor had decided to eradicate any confusion by placing an awkwardly balanced blow up blonde on it, so stiff she had to be pressed in to the seats cheap plastic to keep from flinging her cheaply made self in to the aisles of wandering strangers.
There was also the swing. Something Miranda had always been intrigued by. She and Henry had once tried to do it on a swing. It was shortly after they’d met.They’d raced to the nearest school park one night after dark at Miranda’s suggesting, and attempted to squish themselves on to one of the swings, butterfly style. But their pair of grown up bods had obviously not been made for the swing set, the seats offering little give against the outside of their thighs. They hadn’t even been able to start negotiating the partial removal of clothes before they agreed that the pain of the swing pushing in to their legs was unbearable and they’d wandered home. This swing was especially made for grown up use. And it was huge. Enormous even. Miranda couldn’t even imagine it fitting in to her and Henry’s bedroom once it was all assembled. And it didn’t appear to come with any kind of feature that allowed one to easily collapse the device and slip it effortlessly under a bed or behind a dresser should other guests be coming by, or should the said couple want to navigate the proportions of their room for other reasons, like dressing.
“So, each time you want to use it, you have to put it together?” Miranda’d asked Henry, beginning to count all the joints of the crafty workmanship that she could see. Henry nodded, looking phased himself. “That can’t be quick or easy.” Henry had shaken his head. That sucks.
The few times that Miranda had been in sex shops – usually with giggly girlfriends, looking to embaress each other – she’d struggled most with figuring out where to put her eyes. As if the store owners might not only be watching her, but measuring the amount of time her eyes stayed fixed to a particular item, then judged her according to what the item was. Dildo? Pervert. Strap on? Pervert. Anal beads? Pervert. The expo turned out not to be like that, for the mere fact that whenever Miranda had frequented a sex shop, there had been few other people around to have to avoid making shameful eye contact with. Whereas here, there were people everywhere, the turnout on the first day of the three day extravaganza had not been small. And everyone seemed equally invested in ignoring each other, leaving folks attention to have to be swept up in the bright array of toys, gels, and other assorted sexual fixings. You couldn’t therefore judge people for what they were scoping out, as you were too absorbed in faking non-perverted interest in whatever toy you happened to have most recently picked up, to measure the amount of time someone else was looking at something, and therefore trying to determine which items they were ACTUALLY interested in, and which ones they were just playing with to cushion the attention paid to the really intriguing items. So much effort to act aloof in a place we all chose to come to, Miranda thought. And as colorful as an aisle at Toys R Us. These are adult toys, she figured. Kids play games, adults play games – and with clearly just as many rules. And if this WERE an actual adult Toys R Us, she wished the aisles came with labels, like “For The Extremely Adventuress!”. Or “Leave All Inhibitions At the Door!”, “Fairly Tame, But Still Not Something You’d Want To Be Caught With…Unless You Would”
The table Miranda eventually found herself most comfortably circling would have been in the baby section of the adult sex store. A table of pretty, lacy, frilly lingerie. With little pink bows, and black stocking. Nothing, too extreme, this wasn’t bondage stuff, this was Nice Girl’s Sexy Underwear, there were no buckles or offending straps or weird whippy things, just lovely lingerie made to make the wearer look like a frosted piece of dessert, probably a cupcake, Miranda figured.
Miranda had always harbored a secret conflict about lingerie. One the one hand, she hated that it might objectify women. Like most gals she knew, Miranda distained most things that she thought could objectify a girl, and in some of her university classes she’d heard some pretty fair arguments against lingerie – that it was meant to hoist up a girls breasts to make her look like she was already hot and bothered, the same way lipstick tainted lips (and Miranda stuck to gloss), and high heels perked up calves (and Miranda stuck to flats). She hated the idea that sex was something just for men, and that all of these girly things were meant not to empower a female, the way they were so often foolishly defended, but just another aid in male arousal. These thoughts swept through Miranda’s stomach like a storm and made her want to punch things and scream about an injustice that she couldn’t put in to words. But at the same time, she’d always kind of wondered about the prettier pieces of lingerie. The ones with material she imagined might feel really silky and slinky over her skin. Or the ones that might make her cleavage look killer – she kind of liked the idea of her own gals gaurdering some worthy attention. Or the pink ones. As much as she tried to reject the uber-feminine color, Miranda had never seemed to be able to shed her childhood love of all things pink.
The lady in charge of the table smiled sweetly. She looked in her mid-60’s. Really short dyed blonde hair, and wearing the kind of valor track suit that Miranda hadn’t seen sported in years. She told Miranda to ask if she had any questions, then returned to her magazine, where Miranda figured she was probably collecting peanut butter cookie recipes for her grandkids.
Miranda was first caught by a package of black fishnets, displaying a picture of a lengthy pair of legs covered in the stockings. She’d never worn fishnets before. She picked the package up to look at the price tag. $12. More than reasonable. She felt the lady spying her carefully, as if first looking for a sign of permission to speak further to Miranda. She’d obviously navigated a sea of nervous shoppers before.
“Those are really comfortable” she said, leaning towards Miranda. “You can’t tell by the picture, but they’re actually attached to a lovely pair of black lace panties too.”
“I don’t think I’d know what to do with fishnets”
“There’s not much to think about dear,” she lady continued. “As long as you’re not wrapping them around your neck as a scarf, you’re probably using them properly.”
Miranda turned the package back over and studied the stockings some more, glancing down the aisle to make sure Henry wasn’t mozying too quickly in this direction. This felt like one of the many times Miranda’d poured over the chocolate bars at a cash register – impulse items. She didn’t like the idea of the mere placement of something in a grocery store somehow managing to trick her psyche in to buying it. Each time she rejected the cheap treat, she’d always rewarded herself with the thought that she had just strengthened her subconscious. Denying an impulsive chocolate splurge for Miranda, was like the inaccessible part of her brain lifting a barbell.
“I don’t think I have anything to wear them with.” Miranda stated matter-of-factly, about to return the stockings to their resting place, when the lady slid herself off her perch and lay he fingers on a blue denium corset on the table. “It goes well with this,” she said, “The pink bows on the underwear match the pick ribbon that ties up the corset.” The matching corset was only another $12. Freakishly reasonable. And when all packaged up, the little bag fit snuggly inside her parka, perfectly concealed when she left the kiosk to find Henry.
Miranda had just bought her first impulse item.