"I need help"

There I sat, head back, eyes closed in a gaudy sitting room outside a gaudy dressing room in a nearby upscale mall's anchor store.  I'm uncomfortable in these places because frankly I see the gaudiness to be the seedy underbelly of capitalism, but I digress.  That's not what this post is about.

With a wedding on the horizon and Mrs. BH needing a new dress,  I had volunteered to tag along largely because I was pulling duty (as a devoted husband) but more because she simply batted her eyes and asked me to.  I'm a sucker for her eye-batting.  Heck, I'm a sucker for pretty much anything to do with the woman.

Moments earlier we'd pulled a nice looking black dress off the rack (that I'd laid eyes on first) and headed toward the dressing room.  It was early Sunday, just after the store's opening at noon, and so at that particular moment, we pretty much had the run of the store. 

She goes back to try it on, and I choose to sit, and wait while occasionally closing my eyes.  Within my view is a mirror and in the reflection an escalator with a shopper now and then who seems to be eyeing me eyeing them.  I also do what men do in a front of the mirror (but rarely confess to), a little inconspicuous preening.  Not a bad looking guy for my age. But again, I digress.

So I'd been sitting in this very large waiting room for a what seemed like a long time, wondering if the black dress, the first we'd looked at, would be THE dress that would end my shopping misery spree early and send us back home when I hear a pronounced and seemingly desperate calling of my name followed by, "I need help".  Startled from a boredom induced stupor, I quickly become focused and see she of the batting eyes looking at me not with eyes a fluttering but with eyes wide open and a look of serious concern written all over her lovely face.

I rise to come to her aid and she says with humorless straightforwardness that she cannot get out of that little black dress.  I start to grin.  She states unequivocally that she's not kidding.  I tell her hey, relax, I'm here and Lord knows I'm skilled at getting her out of her clothing.

She's not smiling or laughing.  Not yet. 

She leads me to the dressing room and I close the door behind us.  Have I mentioned how gaudy this place was?  The dressing room was larger than most college dorm rooms.  On one end a small sofa nestled underneath a rack of sorts, a rack that would hold lots of hangered clothing.  On the other, a platform, a rather large pedestal platform and behind that a large mirror.   She goes directly to the platform and explains that she cannot get out of the dress.  And she's seriously stressed about it.  I try to calm her down by saying if you put the dress on, you should be able to get it off.  So I asked her how she got it on.  She tells me she slipped it, bottom first over her head and finally over her hips.  So, using my God given brains, I say aloud, well, let's try that in reverse.

She gives me the look.  You husbands know that look.  It's the one part duh mixed with four parts no sh*t sherlock look.  But hey, I'm there to help and so we proceed despite her letting me know that this is exactly what she's tried to do for the last 10 minutes. 

The dress seems to be... er... getting stuck... right at her... well... her tatas...

So, being the brilliant guy that I am, I suggest she remove her bra.  She's seemingly desperate and agrees and before I can say hubba hubba, she's got that sucker off and is handing it to me. 

Now... I'm unashamed to admit that at this point, with my lovely and most shapely bride of 27 years standing there before me in a sexy dress pulled down to her waist at one end and hiked up to her hips at the other, all while handing me a bra, gets me to thinking thoughts that... well... have just leapt well past a PG 13 rating.  And she, seeing that I've become distracted, brings me back to reality, but quick. 

Dang it. 

She demands that I get focused and help get what she's now calling "this damned dress" off of her.  So we start tugging, pulling, heaving and yanking and it occurs to me that if anyone is standing just outside the louvered door they'd think we were doing what I was thinking we ought to be doing but what in fact we weren't doing. 

At this point, we're both panting, grunting, laughing and giggling to no avail.  With some frustration, I suggest we just tear the damned thing off of her and that's when I notice that this dressing room (you know, this gaudy dressing room) actually has a phone in it.  Yea... a phone...  a dressing room as big as a small apartment and with a phone to boot.  So I ask the most exasperated Mrs. BH if she thought I should call 911.  After some serious guffawing, we begin our efforts once again and finally, without doing any damage to the dress, we're able to get it off of her.  We're now pretty exhausted frankly and so I tell her I'll go back to my seat while she gets dressed.

And so, I return to that gaudy chair in front of the large mirror reflecting the view of the escalator and I ponder the possibility we just let slip through our fingers.  After all, we're licensed to have our way with each other.  But I digress.

A few minutes later, my lovely and bodacious Mrs. BH comes out of the dressing room and she's laughing out loud.  She walks up to me with little black dress in hand and thrusts it before me saying... look what I found.

A zipper.

Comments

[Mike R.]

From one of my favorite songs.

"I live for.. little moments like that."

[Mommynator]

For some reason, my PC at work dislikes your blog. It keeps crashing.

Anyway, I laughed out loud with this one because my husband would be as suggestive to strange doings in divers places as well, and this after 30 years of marriage.

And the zipper . . . oh, the zipper.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!