There was something different about Lori. When I got home from school she was in the foyer of our apartment building. She was not with her sister which is unusual but that wasn’t it. Her hair looked the same and I had seen that dress before so that wasn’t it either. She said ‘hi’ and came towards me which was something that she had never done before but there was more to it than that.
She said ‘I need to ask you something. I played the “princess game” with you and my sister last week and I didn’t like it. It was boring. My sister played it with you the next day and she says that she had lots of fun. What did you and her do different?’
Lori still hadn’t caught on that she had been tricked. There was no such thing as the “princess game”. Her sister, Barbie, and I made up the game so that Barbie could get away from her for a while. We had tied Lori up in the garage and left her there while we went off and had some fun. The next day Barbie repaid the favor by letting me tie her up but instead of running off on her I stayed and we told jokes and had a great time.
I couldn’t tell Lori the truth. She wasn’t really a friend so it’s not that I was concerned about hurting her feelings. I was only worried that if she found out what we had done it would make things worse between her and her sister. They fought with each other enough as it was.
Since she hadn’t figured it out yet I thought I might be able to trick her into letting me tie her up again. I told her that the only way to see what went wrong would be to try it again. She didn’t fall for it. She said ‘No way, I’m never doing that again!’
She turned and started up the stairs to go home. It was then that I realized what was different. Lori’s mother always made sure that her daughters looked like “proper girls”. This meant dresses or skirts; no jeans or slacks. Along with the dresses they always had knee socks or tights. As Lori went up the stairs and her legs came up to eye-level I noticed that she was wearing nylons.
I was only nine years old but I already had a fascination for women in nylons. Now here was a girl my own age wearing a pair. They were white and sheer and shiny. They were so smooth; no wrinkles around the knees like tights.
I called after her ‘I think I know what Barbie and I did different. If you come with me right now I can show you.’ She paused for a moment and then turned and came back down the stairs. I told her to go ahead out to the garage and I would meet her there.
I was so poorly prepared for my last encounter with her that I had put together a bag of supplies immediately afterwards. Hidden in a dresser drawer behind my t-shirts was a paper bag. In it were several lengths of twine and a few pieces of scrap material to use for a gag. I raced into my apartment, grabbed the bag and dashed out.
The garage was a very big building with a loft. She was waiting for me upstairs. As I dumped the contents of the bag on the floor she remembered that she had to lie down the last time and without being told got face down on the floor. I tied her hands behind her back and then tied her elbows together.
When I went to tie her ankles I stopped dead. I hadn’t noticed until then that she had kicked off her sandals before lying down. The difference wearing nylons had made on her legs had already been a big distraction since I had noticed them on the stairs. Now seeing what they did for her feet was a revelation. The roundness of her heels, the gentle curve of her arches, the little impression her toes made in the fabric. It all looked so much better clad in the smooth shiny nylon.
I finished tying her up and then gagged her the way her sister had taught me to. Then I sat her up. Barbie and I had managed to spend at least half an hour telling each other jokes and funny stories. After a few jokes it just wasn’t the same without Lori being able to laugh out loud or tell a joke of her own. I removed the gag and from there things took off. She told five or six jokes in a row before giving me another chance.
The whole time she talked I was obsessed with her legs and feet. Nylons on girls my age were a real rarity. I was in heaven. When we began to run out of jokes I untied her and as I had done with her sister we went and raided a neighbor’s carrot patch for a snack.
I felt bad that as we were creeping up to the garden she got a big grass stain on the knee of her stockings. She said ‘Don’t worry about it. My mom bought me and my sister a whole bunch of them. And they’re all different colors.’ That was something that I was looking forward to seeing.