BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Continued from: Enhanced Husband Torture Techniques…

Part 2 of 2…

Return with us now to the thrilling days of a Christmas past – When last we left our intrepid blogger, he had asked his wife – the evilest of all evil redheads, Queen Eebil Kat – what manner of offering she demanded be left beneath the sacred scratching post tree on Eebil Katsmas Eve. Her  demand was, of course, for nothing less than “Cool Socks”. Unbeknown to our lovable curmudgeon, Queen Eebil Kat was hatching a sinister plan which would place him in serious peril – a peril she would use for her personal amusement while she laughed and filed her nails…

Okay… Everyone all caught up? Good. Let’s get on with this, because it’s painful for me to even think about.

So, I was feeling pretty good with this. “Cool Socks”. Definitely couldn’t be that hard. I’d been in the sock room before, so I knew what generally constituted cool in her eyes. I also knew her shoe size, so if the socks were for some reason classified by actual sizes, I could cross reference it somewhere.

I was all good. I’d already ordered up another gift she had made noises about throughout the year, so the socks were going to be the perfect distraction. Truth is, I was more than good. I was flat out golden.

Then, as they say, the hangin’ day came round… (Who is they? Mason Proffit, of course…)

At any rate, I cleared a bit of my schedule one day so that I could run to the store. Now, I didn’t imagine it would take long for me to obtain the sacred socks, but just to be on the safe side, since it WAS the Christmas (aka Katsmas) season after all, I scheduled myself the whole late morning and early afternoon to accomplish said task.

Now, something you need to understand about me is this: I absolutely hate shopping. Despise it. Seriously. I am one of those folks who knows exactly what he is after, goes to get it at the least busy time of day he can find, then zips in and right back out of the store, avoiding all unnecessary contact with insane shoppers that he can. The only – and I mean ONLY time I enjoy shopping is when I take E K to a nice store and do the whole “Pretty Woman” thing with her.

1. Because she is, in point of fact, pretty. EXTREMELY pretty. (Wayyyyyy prettier than Julia Roberts if you ask me.)
2. Because I get to sit in one place and watch. Not much crowd dodging involved. Life is good. E K gets new pretty clothes, I get to relax and watch a hottie trying on said clothes. The only thing that would make it better is a cooler full of beer.

Unfortunately this particular spree did not fall into the “E K / Pretty Woman” category. It did, however, fall into the “must obtain offering for the Eebil Queen” category. And, I’m all about making sure The Evil One is placated, lest I end up whimpering in the back of a closet with a variety of size 7 woman’s shoe prints all up and down my torso.

So, with my schedule cleared, off to the mall I went.

Not being a regular shopper for women’s wear, I wandered aimlessly through a couple of the stores at Northwest Plaza. Up the escalator I went. Down the escalator I went. Wander, wander, wander… Dodge, dodge, dodge… Up, down… Down, up… Wander some more.

Then I frowned really hard. Why? Because I found no cool socks. In fact, the only socks I managed to find were mens tube socks, six in a bag, your choice, black or white.

Definitely not cool.

So, with my shoulders starting to slump, I started again through the mall and decided to bite the bullet. I would go into one of the high dollar department stores. I don’t want to name it here, but let’s just say the first half of the name is a kind of pickle and the second half rhymes with “cards”.

We had played pretty woman here before, so surely they, of all stores, would have “cool socks” befitting of Queen Eebil Kat.

I did the up, down, wander around thing a bit more. Then, like the point of a shovel striking a buried chest, I rounded a corner and found, yes, you guessed it, socks. But, that wasn’t all. As I made a beeline toward this treasure trove of offerings for my Evil Queen, I met what you might call resistance. You see, just as pirates buried dead dudes with their treasure chests, apparently big, fancy stores bury dead, angry salesladies with their socks. Before I had made it two steps into the department, the departed souls of one of them popped right up in my face. With the path to my prize blocked, I immediately took evasive action and tried to sidestep her. Well, apparently the angry spirits of dead old salesladies are pretty nimble, because I didn’t make it an inch before she was right there barring my way. I tried feinting to one side and then shifting to the other, but it was like she could read my mind. I simply wasn’t getting in.

I stopped and stood there for a moment, while the sales zombie looked me over, then she opened her mouth. I started to back up, fearing that she was going to try to eat my brain, but instead she simply barked with unmistakable disdain, “Can I help you?!”

You could just tell by the way she said it that she had to have been a redhead before all the color drained out of her.

“Socks,” I said. “I need to by some socks.”

“Mens apparel is downstairs,” she growled.

“They aren’t for me,” I replied.

She eyed me with suspicion then demanded, “Who are they for?”

“My wife.”

“Your wife?” She didn’t sound as though she believed me.

I couldn’t help myself. I was starting to get a bit impatient so I blurted, “Did I stutter?”

“Don’t be a smartass or I’ll eat your face!” she hissed in return.

“Yes ma’am.”

Continuing with her interrogation she spat, “Why are you buying socks for your wife?”

“A Katsma… I mean Christmas present.”

“Present? Socks?” There was absolutely no mistaking the fact that she didn’t believe me at all this time.

“Yeah, she said she wanted some cool socks.”

“Cool socks? What do you mean, cool socks?”

“You know. Socks with interesting patterns. Argyle. That sort of thing.”

“Yeah, right,” she mumbled, standing there working her jaw and smacking her lips. I imagine she was trying to get an errant bit of brains from the last poor schmuck dislodged from her false teeth. She looked me over in silence twice more, then stepped aside. “These are all the socks we have.”

“Thank you,” I said, slipping past her to inspect the rows of polka dotted, striped, argyled, fuzzy, and otherwise “cool” feminine foot coverings.

Now, not having an absolute inventory of the sock room floating around in my head, it took me a bit to make a decision on a few pairs of the sacred socks. Obviously I wanted my offering to the Evil Queen to be perfect, especially with it being Katsmas and all. My task, however, was not made any easier by the fact that the Zombie Sales Lady Jackal didn’t stray from my side. She just kept following me up and down the aisles, never less than a half dozen inches away as she shuffled along, grunting and wheezing. I have to admit, not only was it psychologically disconcerting, but I almost succumbed to the Ben Gay and Polygrip fumes that were wafting around me in thick clouds.

Finally, I chose some especially cool socks for my dear and lovely. Before I could even start toward the register, Zombie lady snatched them out of my hands and demanded, “Cash or charge?”

“Visa…” I mumbled, extracting the plastic money from my wallet.

“You want these gift wrapped?” she spat, wobbling off to the register stand.

“No. I can handle that,” I replied.

“Uh-huh,” she grunted. “I thought so, you pervert.”

By the time I arrived at my truck, mall security, the local police, and a SWAT team had surrounded it. I was taken into to custody and spent several grueling hours trying to answer questions about sock fetishism.

But, that wasn’t the scary part. When they finally turned on the overhead lights in the interview room, who do you think I saw? Yeah… E K sitting in the corner, giggling to herself in a very satisfied way, all the while painting her nails.

I’m no longer allowed within 100 feet of the women’s sock aisle in any department store in the United States. I can hang out in the lingerie all I want, but if I go near the socks I end up getting tackled by security. These days I have to shop for my offerings to Queen Eebil Kat online. Even so, my guess is all those sites are tracking my IP address just to be sure I don’t do anything perverted.

More to come…

Murv

Literally.

Why would I lie about something like that?

… And yes, I do realize that right now you are all sitting there chanting, “Murv’s gonna get it… Murv’s gonna get it…”

Normally, I would agree with you, but go back to the beginning and read again what I wrote… I’m fairly certain I typed in the word, literally. As in, E K is a literal pain in my ass. Not figurative. Not metaphorical. Nope. None of that dancing about and implied torture. No husbandly lamenting about a wife’s wifeliness. We are talking about the real deal here…

I mean to say, the woman literally caused pain and physical damage to my Gluteus Maximus.

Uh-huh… I know… Now all of you are sitting there saying, “So what? You’re talking about E K. Since you say she’s so evil then she probably just tied you up and spanked you or something like that. Big deal. Just roll with it you big baby.” (On that note – The cartoon on the right is just for you “perverted types,” BTW… )

Well, though it is apparently titillating for all of you to imagine such a scenario, otherwise you probably wouldn’t be imagining it… Hey…. Hey! Yeah, you. Stop staring at the cartoon and pay attention.

Okay… so where was I? Oh yeah… As I was saying, such graphic details might be a little too much info for a relatively PG rated blog like Brainpan Leakage… And, for the record, I am now firmly convinced that y’all have dirtier minds than I do… Especially you… Yeah, you in the back row. The one that keeps staring and drooling at the cartoon… It’s a friggin’  PG rated cartoon for Gods sake… Sheesh… For shame… For shame…

So, anyway, let’s set the record straight right here and now… E K did not spank me. Well… Not in this particular case anyway. (There, did that little bit of innuendo satisfy your prurient curiosity, or just pique it? Yeah… I thought as much, ya’ bunch of sickos… When you’re all done drooling over the silly cartoon, we can continue…)

(Jeopardy thinking music)

Okay, are we all done? Finally… Good…

So now that we’ve dispensed with the mental foreplay, we’ll move on already…

We’ve established that no spankings were had. The simple fact is that this is an entirely different kind of literal pain in the ass. And, it is also one that reaches far back into history. So, since the whole nostalgia approach of the “marriage blog” mini-series seemed to go over so well, I figured y’all might like to hear this story too. So, let’s all jump into the wayback machine and have a look at this particular, and annoyingly painful, slice of my past… (Yeah, you too… Yeah you… I don’t care… You can page back up and look at the cartoon again when we’ve finished the story… Sheesh… You don’t get out much, do you?)

Okay… On with the sordid tale…

The year was nineteen and eighty six…  E K and I had met by this point, and were more or less in the midst of doing that coy, flirty thing that accompanies the first three months of dating. You know what I mean…

For men it’s crap like: Getting a haircut. Making sure your shirt isn’t wrinkled. Actually tying your necktie in a Full Windsor instead of a Half, but only after making doubly sure it actually matches your shirt and slacks. Using aftershave and maybe even a bit of cologne… Holding your farts in until you are in the next county and downwind so that the object of your affection will never know…

For women it’s crap like: Shaving your legs regularly. Wearing a shorter skirt and higher heels than you normally would on your average workday.  A push up bra. Fancy jewelry… Holding your farts in until you are in the next county and downwind so that the object of your affection will never know…

Y’all know the drill… Typical, flirty – datey stuff.

On the particular day in question, E K arrived at our place of employment, all decked out in a nice blouse, blazer, shape hugging slacks, and the high heels that were a bit too high for your average work day… The pumps were a dead giveaway that she was being flirty, because:

1. She had service calls to take and was going to be on her feet, digging around behind printers, kneeling, bending over, and all of the other gyrations that come along with taking a service call. (For the record, it’s actually pretty good exercise.)
2. She had VERY RECENTLY uncovered my particular affinity for shapely female legs and high heels. (It bears mentioning that being the absolutely brilliant femme fatale she is, The Evil Redhead has used this information to her benefit on countless occasions, ever since making the discovery.)

The only thing missing from the overall package was the shorter than normal skirt, but see #1. She had to compromise somewhere along the line, and like I said, the slacks were definitely figure flattering…

Okay… I need some alone time now…

Just kidding. Well, not really, but I have too much to do and I need to finish this story…

In keeping with the flirty stuff, E K had some tasteful jewelry on to accentuate here and there. Of course, being incredibly practical as well, one of the jewelry items was a fancy little diskette lapel pin. I mean, after all, she’s a technician, so she needed to have herself some technician jewelry, right? And, yes, the picture here is of the actual pin in question. As amazing as it may seem, she still has it after all these years. Granted, it may look a bit odd to you youngsters who have never seen a 5 1/4 inch floppy diskette in real life, but that is exactly what it was patterned after. BTW, Sorcim / IUS was a software company. They were the “publisher” of a widely used, DOS Based program called SuperCalc. If I remember correctly, the lapel pin itself was a gimme type perk she received for attending a Sorcim seminar.

So, anyway, enough rambling on about ancient technology being transformed into jewelry. Let’s get back to this particular day in history…

E Kay’s truck… Yes, my dear and lovely used to drive a truck…  Anyway, her truck was going to be in the shop for some routine maintenance, which effectively left her without wheels, but she still needed to take service calls. Unfortunately, the outfit we were working for at the time, TC Service, didn’t have company vehicles for us to use. So, in order that my lovely be able to take her scheduled service calls, I loaned her my car. As it happened, said vehicle was the Mustang LX I was desperately trying to pay off… Yeah, that’s one of those, “another stories,” but if you read the “Mahwage” series of entries, you know what I mean.

So, after a bit of flirting and lustful stirrings brought about by E K in high heels purposely reaching for things behind her desk while standing in front of it, if you know what I’m saying, I sent her on the road with parts, tools, and my car. After that, the day continued in a relatively uneventful fashion. I configured a few Leading Edge PC’s, fixed a printer or two, answered some tech support calls… The usual crap… The Evil One completed her service calls and returned, both she and my car completely unscathed. Life was good.

As it happened, that evening was filled with “other obligations,” so E K and I were not going to be able to spend it together. Not exactly the best situation, given the fact that she had purposely lit my fuse, so to speak, but hey, stuff happens. Of course, we did the flirty-flirty thing through the afternoon, and retrieved her truck from the shop, then when quitting time rolled around, stole a few kisses before going our separate directions for the evening.

I hopped into my car, and at a point somewhere around halfway home, I felt a very sudden, very sharp, very intense pain in my right butt cheek. If I remember correctly, I even let out a yelp.  It was reminiscent of being nailed by a bee. Since it happened to be late summer, I assumed this was a real possibility.  Something else I considered was a cherry from a cigarette. At the time I was a smoker, so I had to wonder if I had inadvertently knocked the fire from the end of a smoke while shifting gears or some such.

Well, of course, I reached down and felt about in the seat while hiking myself up onto my left hip and dancing around in a circle, all while trying to keep the car in between the dashed lines dividing the lanes on I-170. However, no matter how much feeling about in the seat, or on my own ass I did, I found nothing.

Still, the pain continued.

Well… I have to admit, I have a fairly high pain tolerance. I’m not at all sure from whence it originates, but I can actually take a lot of abuse… Just ask E K… But, let’s not go there again… Seriously, though, I really do have a fairly high tolerance for pain, so since I couldn’t find the source I decided my best bet was to just ignore it. Besides, at this point, the initial shock of the pain was fading and it had settled down to a dull ache. The ache was making its way into the background as well, so I figured I’d be all good. Eventually, it would just go away.

And it did. For the most part, anyway. I mean, there remained a minor ache and soreness throughout the rest of the evening, but nothing anywhere near as intense as the initial stab of pain.

Life rocked on, I met my various obligations, and even had a quick chat or two with E K on the phone, just because I couldn’t stand to be away from her for more than an hour at a stretch unless I was unconscious. The evening grew late and eventually it was time to hit the sack. Following my regular routine, I emptied my pockets, then started getting undressed so I could go to bed. About the time I undid my pants and went to pull them off, I discovered that they seemed to be hung up somewhere around the right side of my ass. As in, they wouldn’t come off. At about the exact instant I started to tug on them a bit, the pain that had earlier ravaged my butt cheek exploded forth once more.

Now I was hopping about on one leg, cussing, and about to trip over my half-removed britches. Fearing that I was going to perform a flawless face plant on the floor, I twisted around and perched myself on the corner of my waterbed side rails, and rolled up onto my left hip. Reaching back and feeling around, through the fabric of the pants, my fingers now came into contact with a small lump on my rear, right about where my wallet had been residing earlier. Perplexed, I slipped my hand into my hip pocket and felt around some more. Within seconds I had hold of the offending object and pulled, much like the whole mouse yanking the thorn out of the lion’s paw scenario. Except, it was just me doing the yanking, and the paw in this case was my ass.

When I brought my hand up into the light, besides a bit of blood, I also found a gold, diskette shaped, lapel pin pinched between my fingers.

The next morning, when E K strolled into work, I waited for her to park herself at her desk, which was nearby and facing mine. After exchanging some flirty good mornings, I raised an eyebrow and asked, “So, were you trying to make sure I didn’t forget you last night?”

She furrowed her brow and cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean?”

I pushed back from my desk, stood, took the few steps in her direction, and then dropped the lapel pin on the desk blotter in front of her.

“Oh, I was wondering where I lost that!” she exclaimed. “Where did you find it?”

I shook my head. “You probably don’t want to know.”

I did eventually tell her, of course. A few minutes later, in fact. However, looking back on it now, that was probably a mistake in and of itself. You see,  it was at that point in our relationship that she became aware of my higher than normal tolerance for pain, and she has been trying to find my breaking point ever since…

But seriously… All joking and silliness aside, I think you can now see why I can truthfully say that, “E K is a real pain in my ass…”

More to come…

Murv