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Fetish: A rite, or cult of fetish worshipers.
I hate to admit to being weird, but shopping makes me horny.
And not just any kind of shopping, either. Going to the mall does nothing for me. But take me to a grocery store, give me one of those silly carts with the mandatory one wobbly wheel to push around, and suddenly I get very hot.
Maybe it’s because we shop together, Ricky and me. We usually have to go late at night. Invariably he gets called on to pull an extra shift at the hospital and doesn’t get home until after midnight. I could go by myself, and I did at the beginning of our relationship, but that was never any fun. I did not enjoy lugging bags to the car, then out of the car, then up the steps to our apartment all by myself. That’s what his muscles are for. So now I’m content to wait until he gets home, checking the shelves for what we need, drawing up my list, changing clothes a few times until I find just the right ensemble for our late-night foray into comestibles.
Thank God for twenty-four-hour grocery stores! No swerving to avoid some family and their screaming kids. No guys desperately trying not to look like they’re a couple shopping together, fresh pasta and imported olive oil in their carts giving them away, or women with cans of dog food and big bags of litter, buying for two, not caring who notices. No single guys cruising, frozen dinners and canned vegetables rattling like pinballs in their baskets. No long lines at the checkout, either; usually just one or two checkers mostly standing around filing their nails. The store is almost empty but for the overnight shelvers, ripping into boxes like it was Christmas, and the two of us.
When Ricky and I first walk into the store I’m fine, focused, I can control myself. But once we hit the fresh produce, walking past the rows of onions and celery, the bulging bags of oranges or grapefruit, it hits me. I’m overcome with emotion. Something about the ordinariness of it all, how dull and everyday it is to buy groceries together, drives me wild. Ricky’s receding back, pushing our cart toward the deli section, becomes suddenly the most beautiful sight in all the world.
My list is filled with innuendo: Meat. Juice. Eggs. Milk. Even the wheat creams here. One night someone had dropped a container of yogurt in Dairy, thick globs of lumpy white suspension still quivering on the floor when we turned down the aisle. I nearly fainted dead away.
“Excuse me, but what aisle are the blow jobs in?” I whisper in Ricky’s ear. “Stop it,” he says, shaking his head.
I want to drag him into the stockroom, lean against a box of thousand-gross muffin mix, and have him fuck me there. In my wildest fantasies we do it in the middle of the store, rutting on the floor in Aisle 11 between oversize bottles of store-brand soda and cheap pretzels, ejaculating into a pool of waxy buildup.
As we wander through the store, checking off items from our list, beads of sweat begin to form on my forehead. I show Ricky the store’s weekly sales flyer. “Look, dear—this is a good price for a nice piece of tail, don’t ya think?” He stifles a laugh and keeps on walking.
At the display of oils, the sight of so much lubrication makes my knees grow weak: corn, olive, vegetable. In liquid form, in tubs—sticks! Fortunately the rest of the baking equipment calms me down. Besides, to mention nuts and stuffing mix to Ricky would be too obvious. Then we’re at the spices and my excitement returns. Parsley and poppy seed, rosemary, cilantro, leaves of bay, all mix in my head like a sexual herbes de Provence.
The dreaded snack aisle looms next, cookies and chips reminding me of our couch potato nights glued to the TV. We pass the cereals and baby food. “Syrup?” I say to him, waving a bottle and licking my lips lasciviously. “And they double our coupons.” Ricky stares as if I were insane and tosses the bottle into our cart. We head to the arctic wastes of the freezer section.
He prefers looking at the chicken, steaks, and chops alone, ever since the night I went up to him, saying, “Special on hot cock in the meat section,” and squeezed his crotch. I still don’t know why he got so angry and slapped my hand from him. “Go find the toilet paper,” he told me, as I slunk away. Who cares what those stockboys think they saw anyway?
Finally we press on to bread, butter, orange juice, and milk, as if the store itself knows it’s almost morning, and wheel our cart to the lone cashier to check out.
By the time we leave the store I can barely breathe. Ricky glances at me, saying nothing. We travel the short distance to our apartment in silence and divide the bags between us for the long trip up three flights of stairs.
Once inside, the bags are strewn across the kitchen floor, and I sigh, girding myself for the next chore of putting everything away. I lean over to take a head of lettuce out of the first bag, and Ricky tips me off balance with his foot. Sprawling to the floor, I turn over quickly to look up at him.
He’s grinning broadly now, has stripped off his jacket and shirt, and looms over me in his blazing white T-shirt. He unbuckles his belt and slowly unzips his pants, pulling out a sausage longer and thicker than the kielbasa resting against my elbow in the bag beside me.
“Here, baby,” he says, straddling me, placing his hand behind my head. “I know how shopping makes you… hungry. I got a special purchase for you. Eat.”
And I do.