Chapter 84: Shopping at "Raging Rocky's Rags"

Wednesday, April 20, 2005 (Continued)

I parked on the street roughly where Julia wanted. All the girls got out and I followed very reluctantly, still in disbelief that we were going shopping rather than to bed. With Donna walking impatiently behind us, and my least favorite wives holding an arm of mine each, Julia and Carol dragged me toward wherever it was we were going. No one had bothered to tell me. Why would they?

We entered a men's clothing store that I'd never been in before. It was in a small building on the very fringe of the shopping area of town, and had a sign saying "Discreet Men's Clothing", so it wasn't the sort of place I'd normally go in. I much preferred the large, chain stores. Inside it looked even less like the normal places I shopped. Almost nothing like them, except that there were clothes on display, but they sure weren't displayed the same way as in the usual places. Rather than nice big piles or racks of each size and color, where you can easily locate what you want, this had single items "discreetly" displayed in various nooks and cubbyholes, on manikins that were in corners so you couldn't see them properly, and almost nothing was well lit. Don't ask me why a store - which is surely trying to sell its stock - displays it as discreetly as possible. Given the logic of its layout, I presumed it must be run by a woman. [I was half-right.]

I started examining the first few items I came across. I don't know what I was examining them for, but that's what you do when you get dragged into a store by someone else. Julia grabbed my arm and pulled me farther in, "We don't have time for that." We had more than an hour until the store would close, but getting back to Julia's quicker than that was very fine by me.

We were approached by the single other person in the store, presumably the owner or staff. That there were no other customers was hardly surprising, as the whole store barely had fifty pieces of clothing for sale. I wasn't impressed by the look of him either, as he was wearing clothes I wouldn't be seen dead in. "Hi. How can I help you?"

Julia answered, "My boyfriend needs two outfits that'll have girls creaming their panties when he walks past." It went downhill from there. "I want tight, soft pants that really mold his ass and package to show them off. Tight on the thighs too. A shirt that shows off his shoulders and chest, just like the one you're wearing..."

No wonder Julia had whispered in the car, it was horrifying! I would've run for the door, but there was a wife firmly holding each of my arms. Suddenly that previously enjoyed sensation had a malevolent intent.

The assistant said, "Let's see what we've got to work with."

Both girls let go and stood back. They kept looking at me.

#1: <If they look away for a second, we're outta here!>

Julia said, "Come on, Mark. We don't have much time."

"Huh?"

"Start stripping, please."

"HUH! We're in the middle of a store! Anyone could come in. I'm not stripping here."

"Just down to your shorts. I'm sure he's seen it all before."

He (and I use that word loosely) said, "Always happy to see it again though."

#3: <This keeps getting better and better.>

By now Julia was removing my jacket and Carol was unbuttoning my shirt. Donna was in charge of providing the giggles. Julia told the ASSistant, "He's very modest, sorry." Why she had to apologize to him, for that virtue of mine, completely escaped me. I was of the opinion that if anyone should be apologized to, it should definitely be me!

As my chest came into view the assistant's notice was suddenly captured, "Well look at you! Aren't you a hunk?"

#1: <"Thank you. Coming from you that means so much." Argh!>

As my shirt was forced from my body, he said, "What a bod; you're gorgeous!" He turned to Julia and said, "He's your boyfriend?"

Julia nodded.

"Damn. All the best ones are taken."

All but the only male in the room thought that was funny. Donna was particularly enjoying herself.

"Shoes and pants please, darling."

Darling thought it was time to make a stand. "No way am I taking my pants of in public! Someone could come in at any time."

Nancy - as I had decided to call 'him' - said, "I'll lock the door. We don't get many customers at this time on a Wednesday anyway." Imagine my surprise!

While Nancy was going to do that, I whispered to Julia, "He's totally gay!"

Julia explained, "I know. That's why we came here. This is his store."

Nancy returned before I could even begin to untangle Julia's thought processes. Assuming she had any beyond, "Where can we take Mark to cause the maximum possible embarrassment."

Nancy asked, "I've locked the door and flipped the sign. You should be comfortable now."

#1: <Yeah! I'm totally comfortable and relaxed now that we're locked in.>

The girls had my shoestrings undone by now, and wanted me to lift my feet. I did so, but couldn't take the next step. I told Julia, "I'd be MUCH more comfortable using the dressing room to try on any pants you want me to." I turned to Nancy, asking, "You do have a dressing room, don't you?"

"Naturally."

#3: <There's nothing else "natural" around here!>

Julia said, "We don't have time for all that back and forth, Mark. We have to get TWO outfits and we've only got an hour. Besides, he has to measure you properly. I know you won't know your sizes, do you?"

I WISH I could remember my size as I sure didn't want Nancy measuring me! I suggested to Julia, "You could measure me."

"Don't be such a sissy." ME! The inaccurate targeting of that epithet left me speechless.

Nancy said, "I'll get the tape." He was back in a second, far less than the hour I'd been hoping for.

I surrendered to the inevitable, and raised my hands so he could measure my waist. If his hands didn't behave themselves, I'd ... I didn't know what I'd do. Probably slap his face.

He measured my waist. His hands touched me, but no more than necessary. That was a relief. I could have done without the long, drawn out whistle though. Nancy expressed his admiration for my physique yet again, "Incredible. You must live in a gym. How come I've never seen you in any?"

Julia answered before I could, "We have a gym at home."

"I admire your dedication." Just what I needed, another thing about me for him to admire. Nancy continued, talking to Julia, "He needs custom-made clothes. That waist alone cries out for them. Stock shirts aren't going to flatter his shoulders and waist properly. We do custom-made clothes here, you know?"

Julia said, "Yes, I know. That's one of the reasons we came here. Can you measure him properly now?"

"I'll get my pad." Nancy got it, wrote down my waist measurement, then proceeded to measure my chest, shoulders, arm length, collar and even the length of my torso. When he had those all recorded he stood back, saying, "I need you to remove your pants."

"Why?"

Julia said, "So he can measure your inside leg."

"What's that?"

"Just how long your leg is. It won't take long."

That sounded harmless, so I surrendered to more of that inevitable stuff, and removed my pants. There was one thing I knew I didn't have to worry about, I was damned sure my cock was going to be the softest and most inconspicuous it had EVER been!

"Inside Leg" turned out to be an incredibly, misleadingly, innocuous phrase. Sure it SOUNDS harmless, but it is NOT! "{YELP!}," as I did my best to levitate vertically out of contact with his hand.

I was again told, "Stop being a sissy."

Fortunately that measurement was soon finished, and Nancy did behave himself; it'd just been the shock of it that caused my reaction. Maybe he'd behaved himself because he'd picked up on my subtle "I'm not comfortable" body language.

Nancy returned the pad and tape to his counter, then came back to us. He said, "We really need to change his style of underwear. Those do nothing for him."

#1: <They're underwear. They do what underwear does: be worn under. Which they do just fine. And I'd prefer it if he stopped looking at our underwear.>

Julia asked, "What do you recommend?"

Nancy checked, "You want him to impress, right?"

"Definitely."

"With what he's got on now his tackle just dangles down between his legs, which is pointless, haha. We sell a range of men's underwear which pulls forward and raises a little, so it creates a very proud outline."

Julia said, "That sounds perfect."

#2: <No it doesn't!>

Before I could comment further, even internally, about the degree of imperfection involved in my 'tackle' being proudly outlined, the situation worsened dramatically.

Julia said, "Grab a pair please, we'll try them on now."

#1: <Please tell me she DIDN'T just say what I thought she said. You realize we're not going to be allowed to try them on over top of what we're wearing now?>

#2: <NO WAY are we stripping NAKED!>

#3: <NO WAY at all! And what's with Julia's saying "WE'LL try them on"? What WE! It's all ME. ALL me!>

Nancy returned, smiling damned too much. "Here you are, handsome."

#1: <{Groan}. What do we do now?>

Donna knew what to do: giggle EVEN more.

Julia said, "Get changed in the changing room, Mark."

For a moment I thought <Thank God for Julia>, but I quickly corrected that! Nancy pointed to the changing room, and I made my escape, happy to be out of the center of attention for a while.

Unfortunately the changing room didn't have a window that I could escape out of. Unfortunately again (there's a lot of "unfortunately" going on recently), the underwear made me look indecent. My cock really was pushed forward and made to stick out more. The underwear's front panel was thin and molded itself to the shape of my cock, making far too much anatomical detail obvious.

Unfortunately I got the expected response when I called out, "It's no good. I'm changing back into my other pair."

"Come out and show us."

"NO WAY!"

Julia had a different opinion.

Donna particularly enjoyed watching closely as I did a slow twirl in the middle of the store. Everyone LOVED them. (When I write "Everyone", I'm referring only to the people whose opinions were considered. I wasn't in that group.)

There was a mirror nearby so I got a look at myself. Good grief! They'd looked indecent from a top-down glance, but they looked positively obscene in a mirror. Correction: "I looked obscene." No wonder Donna was staring so intently. The three pieces of my anatomy were clearly outlined and visible. Not to mention lifted forward proudly. Groan.

Nancy said, "He's got VERY nice ass too."

Julia, Carol and Donna agreed.

Julia said, "Stop studying yourself, Mark. You can do that at home. Come over here so we can discuss how to dress you."

"'Quickly', would be very good. 'Completely' too please."

I had my faithful, decent, comfortable, much-missed, old underwear bunched up in one hand. I walked to where my clothes were to put the underwear into a pants pocket.

Nancy said, "You move very well too. Are you a dancer?"

"No." I was saying as little as possible. I certainly didn't want to encourage him to ask me personal questions.

"Have you ever thought about being a male model?"

Donna giggled. She was have a GREAT time!

Julia said, "He has a problem with modesty."

#1: <We have a problem with it all right: no one respects it!>

"Pity," said Nancy sadly. "Let me know if you change your mind. I know some people and you could earn a good living."

I said, "No thanks." And then kicked myself for thanking him for embarrassing me again.

Julia and Nancy started discussing clothes in more detail than I knew existed. How on Earth did Julia become an expert on MALE clothing? She knew even more than I did, which made no sense.

Carol came over and hugged herself close into my arm, leaned on my shoulder and whispering to me, "You'll look very good, Mark. Thank you for doing this. You're making Julia and me very happy." I felt slightly less terrible after that, but it was very much a relative thing.

Nancy noticed us, then asked Julia, "I thought he was your boyfriend?"

Julia answered, "If you looked like that, how many girlfriends would you have?"

"Haha. None, but I know what you mean. I don't know why he's modest. He's got nothing to be modest about."

Julia agreed, "The two of us think so too."

"Three," called out Donna.

Nancy chuckled, then returned to his technical discussion with Julia. I stood there, effectively worse than naked. A couple of minutes went past, and I started getting even more uncomfortable, and that's coming after a considerable level of prior discomfort. "Can I put some clothes on while you're talking please? I don't like standing around like this."

Nancy said, "I think we've got some ideas for you to start trying on."

I didn't want to "start trying on ideas", I wanted to buy the two outfits we came in for, then go home. No one asked me though. Nancy started gathering the "ideas". It turns out that he had a great deal of stock in the back. Why he didn't display it all in the store so people could see it and buy it, I'll never know.

I was passed a pair of pants and a shirt. I put them on eagerly, not only to be wearing something, but also because hopefully this would be my first outfit, and then we'd be halfway done.

Nancy suggested, "With those he really should be wearing G-string underwear."

Julia said, "Yes."

I said, "Hell NO! I'm not wearing girls' underwear for nobody."

Nancy laughed, "I was talking about MEN'S G-string underwear. We sell it here. I'll get you a pair."

He headed in that direction, but I yelled out, "No way! Whether you stock it or not, I'm not wearing it. It's absurd. Guys don't wear G-strings!"

"Sure they do. I'm wearing a pair now."

#2: <Which proves our point!>

#3: <Argh! Too much information. Why did he have to create that image in my head?>

I cannot stress too strongly, how strongly I stressed, "I DON'T!"

"Pity, you've got such a nice tush." Fortunately he cut short his trip to the rack of cut short shorts.

I quickly finished putting on my hopefully first outfit.

The girls all said things like, "Wow", "Awesome", "That's so hot!" and a few more (they were taking turns and going around more than once). Carol spoke the most complete description, "Mark, you look wonderful. You look SO much better than you normally dress. It's almost impossible to believe you're the same guy."

Julia called out, "Rocky! Come and have a look at Mark now."

#1: <Nancy's name is "Rocky". That doesn't seem right.>

#3: <Explains the store's name though. Did you notice the small sign above the counter? "Raging Rocky's Rags".>

Nancy (I'm going to keep using "Nancy" as it suits him-ish FAR better) came in from the back, looked at me and whistled. I wished he'd stop that!

He said, "Very, very nice. Go on, give us a twirl."

I calmly, and with great dignity, deliberately turned in a slow circle.

Carol said, "His cock looks great from the right angles."

"Don't it just," agreed Nancy.

Donna giggled.

I didn't reply, trying desperately to hang on to my last, tiny shred of dignity.

Several more compliments were made. Nancy came over and stuck his hand down my pants, which came as a considerable surprise! Fortunately I recognized the movement before I punched him out, as Mom has done it to me many times. Nancy hefted the waistband in and out a couple of times, saying, "It's almost impossible to get stock pants that will fit his waist. These are fairly stretchy, but they're still not coming in enough to form to his waist. (Yes, I was wearing stretchy pants; something I was rather hoping wouldn't be mentioned. Go on, have a good laugh.)

Julia said, "Yes, I expected that. Mark and I will be shopping Saturday morning, so we'll come to discuss that with you then. You'll be here on Saturday, won't you?"

"Sure will be. It's a date."

#1: <We could be in Julia's room, making love to my two wonderful - although I'm having grave doubts about that description - girls, but instead we're here making a date with Nancy. Not what I had in mind after we got Mom's text message.>

Nancy added, "Mark really needs to wear a belt with these pants. Do you want me to find a suitable one?"

Julia said, "No need. We won't be taking them. Do you have a pair where the..." and they drifted off into technical issues again.

#2: <Didn't EVERYONE several times comment on how good we looked in this outfit? So why don't we buy it? Do any of you understand what they're thinking?>

I was prompted to strip again, and was offered another pair of pants. Nancy pointed out, "These are linen," which was really good to know.

#2: <Any of you guys know what linen is?>

#3: <You answered your own question when you called us "guys".>

#4: <I thought linen is what you put on beds.>

And so we entered the serious business of trying on outfit after outfit after outfit. I handled more pants than I have cumulatively owned in my entire life, with matching shirts, in a multitude of combinations.

Eventually, although "Eternally" would be a better description, we reached the point where we only had fifteen minutes left before the stores closed, and there'd been absolutely no indication of any progress being make at all. Not a single shirt, belt, or anything else had been chosen, except for the underwear I was wearing, which I hardly considered "progress". Instead there were piles of clothes all over the place. I even felt a little sorry for Nancy, although not as sorry as I felt for myself. Not even close. I gave it another five minutes, then tapped my watch at Julia. Julia looked at hers, and said, "Oh my, look at the time. Doesn't time fly when you're having fun."

#2: <I've got no idea. Does it?>

Nancy said, "There's no hurry. I can stay another hour or two. This is fun."

Which confirmed my opinion of Nancy's lack of masculinity. It was also EXTREMELY unwelcome!

I think Julia might have noticed the thunderous scowl on my face. She said, "I think Mark is running out of patience, so we'd better wrap it up." She'd gotten her tense wrong in the first half of her sentence, but the second half more than made up for it.

Within a couple of minutes Julia and Carol had extracted a short list of possible choices. It was a very short list, compared to the number of clothes I'd tried on. I tried the very short list on again, and wonder-of-wonders, the final two outfits were decided on.

#1: <Well that wasn't so bad, was it?>

#3: <{Groan}.>

The decision made, I started changing into my original clothes. Julia said, "Hang on, we just need to accessorize. Can you put that," indicating one of the chosen outfits, "back on please."

#1: <What is accessorize? And how long does it take?>

"What's accessorize and how long does it take?"

Julia answered, "We need to choose belts, shoes and socks. We've only got time to look at the belts here now, but we'll look at the shoes and socks on Saturday. Yours existing ones will have to do until then, unfortunately. We also have to do something about that watch. Taking it off would be a good start."

I couldn't really argue about the watch. Even I knew it was pretty bad, which probably means it was a great deal worse than that. There was no need to worry about the other things though. I told Julia, "I've got a belt. It's in my pants over there. And I've got plenty of socks at home."

That hope was crushed. You'd have thought that the function of a belt - holding up pants - would've been perfectly well performed by the belt I already had. I'd never had any of my pants fall down accidentally, so I knew it worked fine. But apparently I was wrong. I had to try on each outfit again, and everyone else collectively chose the right belt for each. Yes, you read that right, TWO belts were required. Now I had THREE, which was clearly ridiculous. Fortunately the decisions didn't take long.

I should describe the final outfits. The first outfit was embarrassingly tight and revealing, molding itself to the shape of my muscles and other parts. The second outfit was VERY embarrassingly tight, molding and revealing.

The first pair of pants were "charcoal" and made of a material similar to - or perhaps the same as, for all I knew - the "linen" ones I mentioned earlier. It CLUNG everywhere that Julia wanted it to. Apparently my ass looked "irresistible" in it, which was good to know. I'm not being sarcastic because it truly was good to know: now I knew to stand with my back to walls as much as possible. The shirt was some sort of dark blue. They didn't call it that, of course, as that would've been understandable. It was thin, tight and "heavily tailored". I'd always thought tailors were the people who made clothes. Which, I guess, meant my shirt was either made by a fat tailor, which I doubted was the meaning, or was "heavily made", which was especially confusing as it was made of a very light material. On the other hand, it made as much sense as everything else here. The shirt didn't even have buttons all the way up; only about two-thirds of the way. It tightly hugged my waist, torso and chest, until it opened at the top to display a lot more of my chest than I'd ever unbutton a normal shirt to. It had very short, and tight sleeves, only about two inches long. It barely had a collar at all, even more abbreviated than the sleeves. I would have been embarrassed about displaying so much chest, but I knew most people wouldn't noticed, being too busy laughing at my clearly visible tackle.

And that was the LEAST embarrassing of the two outfits. The second outfit was a pair of tight, dark pants. TIGHT! Stretchy material that had very little stretch left. And a tight, white, muscle T-shirt. Not really a T-shirt, as there were large parts of it missing. It wasn't even close to being long enough to reach the top of my pants, let alone tuck in, and instead of sleeves there were just huge armholes. The girls - including Nancy - thought I looked like a "real hunk". I thought I looked like a narcissistic, homosexual thug.

I'd undressed YET again, and was making another desperate attempt to put on my original clothes, when Julia said, "Put this outfit on please," indicating the first, least overly embarrassing one, "I want to show Mom and Dad when we get home."

I reached to comply as by now I was operating in 'obey automatically' mode, my spirit having been totally crushed. I suddenly realized something. "Julia, you said these outfits are to last me to the weekend. You want me to wear them to school, don't you? One tomorrow and the other on Friday."

Nancy's ears picked up at that, "School?" I ignored him.

Julia answered me, "Yes, that's right."

I said, "I trust your judgment on these clothes. I WILL wear them to school even though I normally wouldn't be seen dead in these types of clothes. I'm doing this entirely on TRUST. You've got NO IDEA how much trust is required! But I have lunch with the OSU faculty tomorrow. Your dad's co-workers. How's he going to feel about taking me around with my tackle 'lifted and proudly outlined'? And the rest of the outfit is hardly conservative either."

Julia said, "I'm sorry, Mark. This has been tough on you, hasn't it?"

"We were well past 'tough' five minutes after we arrived. It's been going steadily and steeply downhill ever since."

"At least you've still got your sense of humor. I DO have a fair idea of how much trust in me you'll need to wear those outfits to school. I know they're completely unlike the normal you, and you must feel uncomfortable in them. Carol, Donna, Rocky; what sort of impact will Mark make walking around school the next couple of days?"

Everyone raved over the impact I was going to make. Nancy even said, "Where were the boys like you when I was at school?"

#3: <Hiding.>

Everyone reassured me some more, "You'll be a huge hit, Mark" and similar attempts to make me feel good. I didn't "feel good". I MIGHT'VE felt SLIGHTLY less bad, but it was hard to tell.

Nancy said, "I'm positive you'll be a hit at school, but if you're still uncomfortable in them on Saturday, bring them back and I'll let you swap them for more conservative clothes." That was pretty good of him. He did have some clothes here which were about halfway between these and decent clothes, and given how extreme these were, that was taking me a LONG way back toward comfort. That'd just leave the task of convincing Julia to allow a swap, something I realized that Nancy might've been aware of when he'd made his offer.

Donna said, "I REALLY hope you don't take them back. I want you to come have lunch with my Ducklings dressed in one of those. They'll freak."

#2: <I hope Donna doesn't get into the habit of saying "Ducklings" as easily as that. She's going to let slip one day if she does.>

I just said, "We'll see how the next two days go."

Julia added, "We'll be buying some more clothes on Saturday, Donna, so there'll be lots of choices. Maybe Mark will let you pick what he wears to your lunch."

"That'd be SO choice!"

Wearing things to lunch reminded me about my original question, "Julia, what about OSU tomorrow?"

Julia suggested, "Why not ask Dad tonight? He'll give you a straight answer."

#1: <Some "straight" would be a nice change.>

Nancy started packing up our purchases. He asked me if I wanted my old clothes put in the bag to carry, and I said, "Sure. Let me get my stuff out of my pockets first." I recovered my wallet, keys and hanky, leaving the old, comfortable underwear behind. I put my reclaimed items in my jacket pockets.

Nancy had collected up the tags as he bagged each item, and he removed the tags from what I was wearing. He asked Julia, "How many pairs of underwear do you want?"

"I'll probably get one or two dozen on Saturday, but let's just get three for now, the pair he's wearing and two more." Nancy and Julia went to get them, conferring about color, as if that mattered.

I was concerned. I mentioned, "Julia, 'one or two DOZEN' is excessive. I've got plenty of pairs of underwear at home that are perfectly fine. I don't need another TWENTY pairs!"

Julia answered me loudly and completely without shame, "I'll sort through them next time I'm at your place and we'll see then."

#1: <What is this thing females have got for sorting through our underwear?>

#3: <I'm almost tempted to go through her underwear drawer, just to see what she'd do.>

#2: <It wouldn't work. Turning things back on them never works. They don't think normally. Going through someone's underwear is OBVIOUSLY personal, but somehow they completely miss that.>

They returned with the additional two packets of underwear and added them to the bill. All the time we'd been here, I'd deliberately not looked at any prices because I knew it'd only hurt. Julia was paying anyway, which was a bad thing as it gave her too much control over the process. It left me just having to follow orders, all of which were highly embarrassing. I suddenly had a horrible thought and dashed back to the counter to examine the boxes of underwear. I looked at them very carefully, but couldn't see any writing that said: "G-string", "Thong" or "For Full-On Flaming Faggots Only", so I relaxed. I did see the prices though, and I cringed from those. The price of these three pairs would keep me in Kmart underwear for years. Decades probably.

Julia, seeing my interest in the underwear, asked, "What are you looking for?"

"Just making sure you're not trying to sneak a G-string pair in."

"Relax. Even when I'm getting carried away, I know there are certain limits that you won't go over yet."

#3: <WARNING: she said "yet"! Why didn't she say, "forever and ever, until your dying day AND Hell freezes over"?>

#2: <It doesn't matter what she says, or even what she thinks. It only matters what we do - and we are NEVER, EVER going to walk around with our ass hanging out of the back of our underwear!>

#3: <Not to mention having that string up our butt crack. Can you imagine what that must feel like? God knows why anybody wears them!>

#1: <I bet God DOESN'T know! You think He prances around in G-string underwear? Has he got a Mrs. God like Julia forcing him into stores like this? I don't think so! Plus I'm pretty sure they don't have stores like this in Heaven. In Hell certainly, but not in Heaven.>

#2: <Wouldn't God have to wear them if Mrs. God bought him two pairs?>

#1: <I can tell by the tone of your voicelessness that you want someone to ask, so I'll bite: Why would he have to wear them?>

#2: <Doesn't "Two thongs make a right"?>