Mary and Daphne #176

Back when I was a working stiff, I worked so that I could afford to go on vacation. Also, food and housing, but mostly so I could go on vacation. All the best things are on vacation: total license to not give a honkin’ heck what you eat or drink, beautiful scenery, entertainment of many kinds, people to people-watch, new things to experience, old things to get reacquainted with, all your daily chores and troubles left behind. If you don’t enjoy vacations, I’m sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but you’ve been doing it wrong (and I’m not really sorry, but I do feel a little sorry about that).

Take the joy of a standard vacation and add Mary? Fuhgeddaboudit. Done. There is no better experience. You could try to have a better experience, but you will not succeed, which makes me sad for you. First off, there’s all the brilliance of a vacation. Reason B, there’s all the brilliance of Mary, and she’s soooo brilliant at all the times and in all the places already! I like Mary. I like Mary so much, I wanna keep her around. I like Mary so, so much, I wanna take her with me when I go places.

And the one reason to rule them all, Mary uses being on vacation to do all the things to me she won’t do where people know us. Hoo boy, the things she’ll do where people do know us. Just imagine the things she’ll do when we’re away and near getaway routes. Just think of all the things she’ll do to … me …dammit! And I only like those things pretty much all the times.

It helps me to enjoy them if I can anticipate them. Takes some of the anxiety out of it. Sure, at the cost of some degree of surprise, but worth it if you ask me, and I did ask me, and I agree. Mary, though, is like a cipher wrapped in an enigma and smothered in secret sauce when she wants to be. She won’t just come out and tell me. I know because I asked, and then I asked, and then I asked again, each time in a different and cleverer way than the last.

“One more time, and I’ma make you suck on your paci until bedtime. Now scoot and go find something to do,” she told me, and then she smacked my butt. Like, what the heck is with that? Who even does that? Touching other people’s butts. For shame. Shame on Mary. Shame on my for kinda liking it.

She didn’t leave me much choice. If she wouldn’t tell me, I’d just have to discover it myself by going through her things. Which was totally justified and not at all an invasion of her privacy. Really. Though I suspect privacy is just a fig leaf and the real reason Mary took exception to my rifling and rummaging is she didn’t want me to spoil the surprise. I’m willing to endure a little less surprise, but for Mary (who is mean to me in all the right and proper and bestest of ways), seeing the surprised look on my face as I turn red and try to think of what to do or say while she’s doing (mean) things to me (that are really quite nice, but the niceness isn’t fully appreciated until after), is a major part of the fun for her. She likes me discombobulated; it gives her an edge in our game of cat and mouse, makes me very suggestible, and gives her the chance to be the hero who swoops in to make it better.

She’s basically the Henry Kissinger of erotic humiliation: she does the humiliating, and then she gallops in on her white horse to comfort and reassure me like she didn’t do anything, like that feeling is all in my head and she’s sorry I feel that way and it’s a good thing I have her to help me when I go through one of my periodic silly goose episodes. If only I didn’t love it when she gaslights me like that, how much easier but boring (and insufficiently arousing) my life would be.

When we drive to our vacation destination, we each take a suitcase. A third suitcase contains toys of many kinds (decks of cards, scrabble … stuff and things), and while I contribute to this suitcase, there’s always an arbitrary point past which Miss Mary Mischief Maker declares the suitcase off limits to me. She says she’s doing it for my benefit, claiming without any evidence (except for all the evidence she has) that if I see what she’s bringing, I’ll veto things and miss out on shenanigans I’d otherwise very much enjoy.

To which I say, “Yeah, but please can I look?”

“I sent you to go find something to do not even five minutes ago.”

“But …”

“Do you need me to find you something to do?”

“Urgh! Fine.” At least, that’s what I said. What I meant was, ‘I’ma wait til your back is turned.’

I swear she spent a large chunk of her childhood feral. How else to explain her uncanny ability to be so quiet and hear so well. I didn’t so much as creak a floorboard on the way into our bedroom, but Miss Mary … Hears … Everything (they can’t all be gems) called up the stairs from the kitchen, “Don’t even think about it.”

On Attempt Number 2, I got into the room and moved the zipper exactly one tooth when I heard, “Daphne, I said no, little girl.”

Attempt Number 3 involved a coconspirator. A furry one, about six months old, answers to Suzy. “Go in there and bring back anything you can find.”

My partner in doing crimes replied, “(Panting dog breath).”

“From her side of the room. Go.”

“(Sound of a dog staring at me).”

“Go to the bedroom. Go.”

She came back with her stuffed duck (that I deliberately hid because one more honk and I’da murdered it with fire) and Mary. How is it Mary can hear me blink but she can go can from one floor of the house to another without me noticing?

“What’re you, ten years old? Plotting with the dog? Really?”

“No, I’m thirty-three and plotting with the dog.” It’s not nearly as ridiculous as it sounds. Really. … Well, shut up anyway if you don’t have anything nice to say.

She pulled me right off the couch, spun me around, and spanked my butt a dozen and a half times before I could even make my opening statement. The woman has no respect for judicial procedure.

“Every time (spank!) we go on vacation (smack!) I hafta to spank (spank!) your bottom the day before (SPANK!)”

“Ow! That one hurt.”

“Good. Maybe it will help you learn, and next time we go on vacation, you won’t have a pink butt the night before.”

“That would just be boring,” I muttered.

SPANK! “I heard that.”

“Of course you did! You hear everything! You have better hearing the Suzy!” SPANK! “Ouch.”

“Such a mouth on you. We’re gonna have a lot of fun this week.”

“I know, right?”

“But you need to stop snooping.”

“So just tell me what you packed.”

SPANK! “That’s it – I’m getting your pacifier.”

“Why!?! What’d I do?” SPANK!O yeah, all that stuff I did that she told me not to do.

Know what I think? I think she has fun trolling me by not letting me see what she packed, and I have fun trolling her by pestering her about what she packed. We really complement each other’s like and dislikes cuz we’re soulmates and stuff, which makes taking vacations together just The Best. True story.