Birthing Beautiful Ideas

The other night as Tim and I dined by candlelight on lobster tail and sauteed sea scallops…

…okay, I cannot even go on past that sentence before clarifying a few things. 

First, dinner was totally courtesy of my parents, who were also kind enough to watch the kids for two nights in a row so that we could a) enjoy a couple of quiet, romantic dinners and b) do all sorts of moving-in things that we couldn’t otherwise do with two spirited children in the house. 

Second, we don’t dine on shellfish most nights, and this night in particular marked the first time that I had ever cooked lobster tail.  And the first time that I had ever removed lobster meat from a lobster shell.  Let’s just say that as Tim and I attempted to remove the pink, succulent meat from the tail, no one would have mistaken us for New Englanders.  We really put the “ass” back in “class.” 

Third, the candles that lit our meal were ones we were using for the first time since we received them as wedding gifts…over five years ago.  In other words, romantic dinners at home or even elsewhere don’t happen all that often in this neck o’ the woods. 

And fourth (and finally), no creatures had to be boiled alive in order for us to enjoy our meal.  That would have ruined the whole romance-thing for me, ya know?

Back to that candlelight dinner.

So, as Tim and I cracked lobster shells halfway across the kitchen (seriously), I mentioned something about the erotic textures and flavors of the butter-dipped lobster tail. 

Really.  I’m serious.  I think that lobster is an erotic and tantalizing food, and it’s too damn bad that it’s so prohibitively expensive.

As Tim and I mused a bit about how and why food can have erotic qualities, our conversation turned toward one of the many strange juxtapositions lurking in my personality: that is, my general prudishness and my altogether dirtay mind.

It’s weird.  I can blush over the most benign mentions of anything sexual, but then I can turn a game of Balderdash with my mother- and father-in-law into a seemingly frenzied and obsessive wordplay on oral sex.  It’s as if my conversational prudishness sometimes wants to jump off a cliff into a heaping pile of whoa-dude-that’s-totally-inappropriate-ness.  And I’m just along for the ride.  (Or I guess I’m sort of steering the ride, right?)

In any case.

The aforementioned conversation with Tim then got me thinking about one of the most perfect intersections of my prudishness and dirtay-ness in recent memory.

You see, back when I was eighteen or nineteen, I received a riding crop as a “wedding present” from a woman I was “faux-marrying” in response to our shared love of Tori Amos.  (Don’t ask.  Just…don’t ask.)  And I’ve kept this riding crop ever since.  It’s cute, it’s fun, and even though S&M ain’t exactly my thang, the use of a little riding crop need not be confined to “scary” (for me) leather-masked, studs and chains, requiring-a-safe-word bedroom antics.

(I think I should call my mom right now and make sure that she hasn’t gone into cardiac arrest.)

Mostly, however, the riding crop just makes Tim and me laugh.  It’s a silly toy to us, but it is, after all, a sex toy.  And, not surprisingly, when we first moved in together, we decided to keep the crop under our bed.  Among other reasons, that was because we didn’t want to run the risk of having our parents find our little leathery secret on one of their many cross-country treks to our house–those cross-country treks in which they stayed at our house.

It seemed like a very safe and reasonable plan.

But then we got pregnant with our first baby, and we decided that we needed to find a different apartment or house to rent, and Tim was in his first year of law school, and I was in my first year of my PhD program, and life was just very, very chaotic.

And we forgot about the riding crop.

(Sad, I know.)

So moving day came and went.

And we cleaned out our old apartment after all of the furniture had been moved to our new place.

And there was no sign of the riding crop.

In fact, we had all but forgotten about the riding crop.

After we finished cleaning the old apartment, we returned to our new home.  And as I went to remove a box from under the bed, I spied our little friend.

There it was.  Just where we kept it when we lived in the old apartment.

And suddenly, I was frantic.

Because neither Tim nor I had helped to move our mattress and box springs out of the old apartment.

And whoever had moved the mattress and box springs had moved the riding crop along with them and had placed the crop exactly where it had been at our old apartment.

And who had done all of this, you might ask?

My father, my father-in-law, and my Mormon friend, Alex.

Funny thing is, none of them had made a peep about the riding crop.  No one had pulled us aside to say, “Uh, I found this under your bed while we were moving it.”  No one had seemed to have given us any sideways glances.  It was as if they were all too scarred and/or clueless to even acknowledge what they had seen.

I.  Was.  Mortified.

And then I was laughing.  Hysterically.

Because, reflecting upon the incident and upon the personalities of my dad, Tim’s dad, and my Mormon friend Alex a bit more (I know, I know, shameless stereotyping of Mormons going on here), I could only imagine what they were  thinking when they lifted up the box springs and found a black leather riding crop under their daughter/daughter-in-law/friend’s bed:

Dad: *thinkhappythoughtsthinkhappythoughtsthinkhappythoughtsthinkhappythoughts*

Tim’s Dad: Well, Tim, that lucky dog!!!

Mormon friend Alex: Huh!  I didn’t know that Kristen liked to ride horses!!!

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This post is part of an entry for The Feminist Shopper’s latest giveaway contest, the prize of which is a $40 gift card to EdenFantasys.com.  Wahoooo!