James and Irma Trout danced and swayed beneath the flashing disco lights. The other swingers gathered around them in a circle but the lovestruck couple were too involved with each other to even notice. James reached out his left arm, dipping his young new wife nearly to the floor. He swung her around and around in the air, her dress flying up over her head. Finally, he gently lowered her to the ground, stripped off her panties, and began to ravage her right there under the shiny disco ball.
The crowd watched in bewildered amazement. What the hell kind of bars were these two used to hanging out in?
The club’s security-ape walked out onto the dance floor and stood in front of James’ face. James was too busy to even notice, so the mongoloid kicked Irma in the head. When Irma mentioned this to James he slowly ceased his pelvic thrustings and looked up, noticing first the smiling faces in the crowd, and then the frowning mug of the bouncer.
James stood up and, looking amazingly dignified for a man in his position, zipped his trousers and helped his young wife to her feet. She carefully smoothed her dress. The crowd raved as arm-in-arm James and Irma left the disco, not even bothering to gather up Irma’s red panties off the floor.
This is the story of those red panties, Irma’s red panties, left lying on the dance floor under the shiny disco ball on that torrid August evening.
The panties lay there on the floor for the next three months. They served as a remembrance to the bar’s regular patrons of the wild, unabashed frenzy which had occurred on that one single and spectacular hot and harried night. But mostly it was just because nobody wanted to touch the damn things.
The panties soon became a hot attraction and people drove from miles around to get shitbagged at Disco Bob’s and dance around Irma’s panties lying there in the middle of the ballroom. The bartender even invented a special mixed drink named after the impassioned vixen’s generous gift—the Wet Panty. The drink consisted of vodka and tomato juice with some salt and pepper and a splash of Tabasco and Worcestershire Sauce with a stalk of celery. The bartender wasn’t really all that imaginative.
And so the swank and sophisticated New Yorkers came in droves to drink Wet Panties and to dance the night away around Irma’s panties. Disco Bob was raking in cash by the wheelbarrow-load.
And then the man from the board of health came in.
“Exactly how long, Mr. Bob,” the inspector asked, “has this pair of ladies underwear graced your dance floor?”
“Oh, maybe three or four months now,” Disco Bob innocently replied.
The inspector took out his form book, scribbled something down, signed it, and handed it to Disco Bob.
“By the authority of the City of New York this establishment is hereby closed until such time as said conditions are met,” it said.
Disco Bob stood looking dumbfounded.
“Get rid of the damn panties!” the inspector said. “I don’t care how. Afterwards, sterilize the dance floor. If you do all that then next month you can open back up.”
Disco Bob started to object but the inspector interrupted him: “Consider yourself lucky, Mr. Bob. I could have ordered the panties seized and everyone who’s come into contact with them quarantined. Deadly bacteria and funguses, you know.”
Disco Bob nodded in understanding and said thank you.
“Just doing my job,” the inspector said and drove away in his BMW.
“Damn it!” Disco Bob exclaimed.
Needless to say, he was not amused. He was being forced to toss out the only allure his quaint little discotheque had ever actually possessed.
He picked up the panties with a coat hanger and angrily took them out to the dumpster, tossing them in hanger and all.
“Goddam fascists!” he murmured, clamoring off to find a mop bucket.
Abraham Simmons found the panties. He was driving his friend Larry’s route, picking up the trash in lower Manhattan, when he came across them lying provocatively in Disco Bob’s dumpster.
“What have we here?” he asked his young rookie protégé Johnny Abrams.
Johnny walked around the truck to see what old Abe had found. “Cool beans!” he exclaimed, seeing the red panties in Abe’s hands.
Abe was sniffing them.
“Let me smell! Let me smell!” Johnny begged.
Abraham took another whiff and handed him the panties. “Now there’s a rare find indeed,” he said. He abruptly snatched the panties back and stuffed them into his inner breast pocket. Johnny sighed.
Abe and Johnny finished up their route and hit the showers back at base. “Whatcha gonna do with those panties, Abe?” Johnny asked his naked partner in the stall beside him.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Abe chided, scrubbing disinfectant soap into his taint.
Eventually the two of them parted and Abraham clamored aboard the subway line headed toward his apartment in Queens. He couldn’t wait to get home and surprise Sheila with his wonderful discovery. He dozed and dreamt of ever-so-slowly inflating her and then slipping the panties on her only to rip them right back off again. His dreams were cut short as the train came to a halt with a sudden jerk.
Abraham opened his eyes to see a gunman holding a pistol on several frightened passengers, himself included. “Empty your pockets and no one gets hurt!” the thug screamed at the top of his lungs.
At once everyone began to empty their pockets. Everyone, that is, except Abe. He just sat there, looking as though he were inwardly debating a matter of life or death. And he was.
“A wise guy, eh?” the hooligan said. He turned his gun on Abe. “Empty your pockets now, old man!”
Abe continued his inner debate. Finally, he sighed deeply and began to reach into his breast pocket, but it was too late.
Three shots: one, two, three—straight into the heart. Abraham would never know the carnal pleasures of coming home to his Sheila again.
The murderer reached into Abe’s bloody pocket, pulling out the stained red panties. “These?” he said incredulously, “You died for these?” It took him a moment to regain his composure. “How about the rest of you?” he said.
The other passengers began to empty their pockets with renewed vigor while the disgusted gunman threw Irma’s panties down onto the gritty subway floor.
After the robber had collected his spoils and made his escape, one passenger dared to check on poor Abe. Abe was very obviously dead. The Samaritan picked up the red panties, brushed them off, and peered through the pair of bullet holes that were now their new signature. “There’s something special about these panties,” he declared to anyone listening, holding them high in the air for everyone to see. “A man died for them. I must see to it that his death was not in vain.”
The other passengers laughed and cajoled the poor Samaritan so much that he was forced off the train at the next stop. He walked alone through the filthy streets, addressing the panties he had so recently rescued. “What’s your story?” he asked them. “If only you could talk, I’m sure you’d have so much to tell.”
He made it his business to find out.
The next day he took out an ad in the lost and founds and he stapled pictures of the panties up all around the neighborhood where Abe had first boarded the subway.
And the response was overwhelming. It seemed that everyone and their second cousin twice-removed claimed to have either seen the panties or else owned them. Everyone, that is, except James and Irma, who had long since driven their pickup truck all the way back to Indiana, stopping to screw several times along the way (the insatiable little lovebirds).
Albert Ringle (aka the Samaritan) was flabbergasted but yet exhilarated. Out of the hundreds of responses he had received, only one person had correctly identified the panties by their brand-name—some junkman from Manhattan. Albert looked forward to discussing the panties with him over a beer.
But he never got to, for that very afternoon he was involved in a fatal traffic collision with…ironically enough…Disco Bob. Both men died of massive hemorrhaging.
Now…you may have noticed that all the main characters thus far who have came into contact with Irma’s panties, with the exception of Irma (who originally wore them), James (who pulled them off of her), and Johnny (who only held them for a moment and sniffed them twice) have died horrible and painful deaths. Perhaps you may be thinking the panties are cursed or something like that. Well, take it from me (and I’m the author): they’re not. All deaths thus far were merely coincidences, and if there should prove to be any more such deceasages before this story has ended then let me offer you my soundest assurance that these too will be merely happenstance. No hocus-pocus mumbo-jumbo bullshit in this story. No, sir.
Now let us get on with the tale.
Since Albert had no family, the city sent in a crew to renovate his house. They were a burly group of men, gruff and strong and stout in stature. Duff McMac, whose gruffness out-gruffed even the most burly of the burly men, eventually found the panties. He stood blinking for a moment, not quite ready to accept the scene his eyes were conveying to him.
He reached out to the dresser and picked the panties up from amidst the holy shrine Ringle had erected in their honor. He looked around to make sure no one was watching and quickly stuffed them into his overalls, replacing them with a snotty handkerchief form his back pocket. The rest of his work day was without incident, excepting of course the hearty laugh the workers shared when the shrine was (re)discovered.
Duff went home and his wife brought him a beer, gently removing his shirt and caressing the prickly hairs on his back. As she removed the overalls she discovered the panties and grinned sheepishly. “And where did you come across these?” she asked.
“At work,” Duff replied. According to ritual they each commenced to their separate bedrooms to change into their daily sex-play costumes. Mrs. McMac emerged from her bedroom wearing a silk teddy with a see-through top and black panties with leggings and a garter.
When Duff emerged, he was wearing Irma’s panties.
As you might well imagine, it was a strange sight indeed, a grown-man, with big bulging muscles and hair over almost his entire body, standing there wearing a pair of red ladies’ panties with ground in dirt, dark red blood stains, and two perfectly-arranged holes, one on each ass-cheek.
Mrs. McMac was aroused beyond all measure. “Take me, lovely,” she purred, strutting off to Duff’s bedside.
When they were finally through Duff casually opened the bedroom window and tossed the panties out into the night. You see, the big thing with them was never to play the same game twice. The panties floated serenely down to the street below upon the gentle evening breeze, finally landing on the head of a bum who happened to be snoozing on a bench in the alley behind the McMacs’ apartment.
The bum awakened groggily, peering out at the hostile world through twin eye-holes. He pulled the panties off his face and rubbed his eyes before examining them. When he was sure that his vision was clear he looked at them again. Then he began to laugh hysterically. He put the panties on his head like a hat and set off on his nightly rounds.
“How’s it goin’, Bill?” his friend Herb asked him as they met strolling down 54th Street.
“Oh, just peachy,” Bill replied. “Peachy.”
“Glad to hear it, glad to hear it,” Herb said, trying not to stare at the underwear on Bill’s head and failing miserably.
“Found them this morning,” Bill said, noting Herb’s interest. “Actually…they found me.”
“Some guys have all the luck,” complained Herb, turning east down Lexington Avenue to beg for money on his own turf.
“I’ll see you later,” Bill called after him.
Bill headed straight downtown to the diamond district. Bill had one of the best turfs in town. He set up shop in front of an Old English style pub. For Bill, “shop” consisted of a cracked wooden mug with a few dull pencils in it, a tattered hat into which donations could be thrown, and an old harmonica he couldn't play.
And as you might well imagine, the sight of a dirty old bum blowing stale notes through a broken harmonica and wearing a pair of soiled ladies underwear on his head did not exactly elicit in passers-by the spirit of generosity. In fact, most people just ignored him, and the ones that didn’t inevitably seemed either menacing or disgusted.
Finally a young man approached Bill. The young man was wearing white cotton long-johns and a codpiece. “Hi hi hi there, old man,” the hooligan said, snatching Irma’s panties off Bill’s head. “What have we here?”
“Gimme those back, you ruffian!” Bill helplessly exclaimed.
The young droogie began violently kicking Bill in the head, accidentally dropping the panties in his frenzy. While Bill was busy getting his face ground into a pulp by the young sadist’s boot heel, a small dog ran by, snatching up the forgotten panties in its jowls. Bill and his tormenter (whose name incidentally was Little Richard) didn’t even notice.
Rascal (the mutt’s latest given name) gingerly pranced about the city, proudly displaying his find to anyone who would take the time to look at him. But whenever anyone tried to approach him, even if it was only to pet him, he would scurry away and disappear off into the streets.
Rascal carried the panties around in his mouth for the rest of the night. Early in the morning he came upon a meat truck parked in an alley with the rear door standing wide open and no people in sight. Rascal knew from experience that if he were quick enough there was a easy meal to be had here. Without a moment’s hesitation he leapt into the truck and began scavenging through its contents. A moment later he heard a loud iron clang and everything suddenly went dark.
The frozen-meats truck set out that morning from Lange’s Meat Processing plant in the Bronx, and was bound for—can you guess it? —Indiana.
Now why Indiana should be in need of meat from New York City I haven’t a clue. Maybe it was seafood. Or maybe it was some expensive delicacy meat that Hoosiers only rarely get to enjoy…something like ostrich buttsteak, or peppered mountain-goat fillet. In any event it doesn’t matter anyway so just try to forget it.
The truck journeyed through the day and the night before it eventually reached its eventual destination of Rockport, Indiana, a town known for being home to the world’s largest sow (a quite wretched and pitiful creature which if they only had the mercy to slaughter could have provided enough ham and pork fritters to feed an entire starving village and would certainly have provided the residents of Rockport with enough meat that they definitely wouldn’t need to be importing it from New York City for quite awhile).
When the Hoosier Delicacy Meat and Seafood Company plant workers opened the truck they found Rascal standing frozen solid amidst scattered shreds of torn packaging still holding the red panties in his mouth.
“Well Ah’ll be!” exclaimed Fred Mercury, the receiving manager. They dragged Rascal’s stiff corpse from the truck. More workers began to gather around to see what the excitement was all about. The foreman walked up with the delivery driver.
“What’s the Hub bub, bub?” asked Chuck Jones, the delivery driver, who when he wasn’t making deliveries liked to watch old bugs bunny cartoons in sleazy motel rooms and play with himself. The workers stepped aside so that the two of them could see. “I must’ve carried ‘im with me all the way from New York City!” said Chuck.
The workers mumbled amonst themselves in amazement.
“Let me see those panties!” the foreman interrupted. Mercury carefully removed them from the dog’s teeth and handed them to his boss.
James the foreman, who was also quite ironically the same James from the beginning of the story, recognized them immediately. “These are Irma’s panties!” he exclaimed. Everyone was astonished.
James gently thawed the panties in the break-room microwave and sent everyone home for the day. He took the panties home to Irma, who had been missing them very much, and when he gave them to her she wept openly. It was a very touching reunion indeed. She meticulously washed and mended them, and hung them out in the fresh summer Indiana breeze to dry.
James and Irma sat on the sofa in front of the picture window which framed their backyard. There they quietly watched the faded red panties blowing softly in the breeze. James turned slowly to his wife. “What’s for supper, dear?”
“Peppered mountain-goat fillet,” she replied. And then they did it right there on the end table just for good measure.
© 1992Randy Bone