Christmas shopping can be fun – part 1 [Mff]

I love Christmas shopping! Okay, I know most of you think I'm nuts, and will bring up the traffic, the rude or inexperienced sales clerks, and the overly aggressive shoppers looking for bargains, but to me that's all part of the challenge. Of course, these days I do most of my shopping on line, but I still make time for at least one trip to the mall during the seasonal rush, not just because it makes it feel like Christmas, but also out of nostalgia for something amazing that happened to me years ago when I was a handsome, confident (and modest) young man of twenty-two.

In those days I wasn't very organized, so I often ended up spending the last few days before Christmas running around, my panic increasing by the day as I tried to finish my list. 1988 was no exception. On the last Saturday before Christmas, I found myself at the biggest mall in the area at nine a.m., list in hand, determined to make everyone of my friends and relatives happy, or at least not think of me as a total jerk (talking about you, Uncle Lenny).

I got off to a good start. By eleven, I had made one trip back out to the parking lot to drop several bags of goodies into my sleigh (okay, my rusty but trusty 1980 Toyota). I headed back into the fray, still needing something for my bratty sixteen-year-old sister. We weren't getting along all that well in those days. Kelly was not at all happy that I had moved back home after college while I looked for a job. a process that was taking much longer than I had anticipated. Still, I wanted to at least try to get her something she would like. My rapidly maturing sister had become a real clothes horse, so I headed for a shop that specialized in the kind of stuff that I hoped teenage girls liked.

As soon as I walked into 'The Fuzzy Monkey' I knew it was the right place. It was full of teeners and 'tweeners, all chattering away like hyperactive chipmunks. Now don't get me wrong, I like young girls as much as the next guy, but when they get together in packs like that, swarming around clothes racks like ants devouring the carcass of an unfortunate beetle, it can be a little intimidating, even for a guy as cool and sophisticated as me.

I soon found myself overwhelmed by all the jeans and sweaters and blouses on the racks around me, and a little rattled by the frenzied atmosphere of teenage exuberance around me. I decided I needed a break. Beating a hasty retreat, I found one of those places that sells hot pretzels and got in line. As I was waiting I looked around and saw the mall Santa not far away. There was a line of giggly kids waiting for their turn to show the old faker how selfish they could be. I didn't pay much attention to Saint Nick, fat old men not being my type, but I was intrigued by his helpers, two teenage girls who were taking pictures of the kids in his lap and trying to convince their parents to buy them. The pictures that is, not the kids. The parents weren't given an option – they had to take the kids back home with them.

Santa's helpers were wearing cute little elves costumes, red caps, while blouses with red vests, short green skirts, and red and white striped knee-high stockings that looked good enough to eat. I was a horny young man in my early-twenties with no current girlfriend, so it really wasn't the candy cane stockings I was drooling over. My sites were set a little higher, landing mainly on the tempting glimpse of girlish thigh exposed between the stockings and the hem of their short skirts.

While the temporary help at the kiosk continued coping with the intricacies of taking pretzels off the rotating rack and wrapping them up, I had plenty of time to admire the view. I knew they were too young for me to be thinking about, but my inner letch reminded me that there was no law against looking. Unfortunately I was staring so openly that I got caught. One of the girls, a short, well-rounded elf with curly blond hair, saw me checking her out. Somewhat to my surprise, she winked and smiled. Cool it, buster, my conscience scolded, but I couldn't resist returning her smile with one of my own. I saw her lean over and whisper something to her fellow elf, a tall dark-haired beauty with a pixie-like grin. They both looked at me, and damned if they didn't both wink in unison, as if they had rehearsed it.

After I got my pretzel I found an empty bench nearby and started ingesting twice my recommended daily quota of salt. I was watching the crowds surging back and forth in front of me, and momentarily forgot about the tempting teens. Halfway through my snack, I decided that I really didn't need that much hot dough. Almost as if someone were reading my mind, I heard a voice asking, “Are you gonna eat all that?”

I looked up and saw the two elves standing in front of me. They still had the short, green skirts on, but had taken off the peppermint-stick leggings. The vests and official Santa's Helpers red caps were gone also.

“Would you like some?” I held out the remaining part of the pretzel. The blond snatched it out of my hand like a starving waif. She quickly tore it in half and shared it with her partner. “Thanks,” she said just before stuffing her mouth.

“Uh, aren't you going to save some for Santa?” I teased.

“Nah, let that dirty old man find his own angel,” she mumbled.

“Oh, is that what I am, an angel?”

“Yeah,” the dark-haired, somewhat exotic looking one answered. “Just when we go on break and are starving, here you are. So you must be like a Christmas angel, right?”

“Nobody has ever called me that before, but….”

“Actually,” the blond added, having swallowed her first bite, “you do look a little more like a devil than an angel.”

“And we really like devils,” the brunette added.

“So, do you girls have names?”

“I'm Candy,” the blond answered first.

“And I'm Sandy.”

“Sure you are. You really expect me to believe that Santa's elves are named Candy and Sandy?”

“Well,” Candy drawled, “let's just say that…”

“…those are our Christmas names,” Sandy finished. “So, what's your name?”

“Just call me Rudolph,” I laughed, playing along with their anonymity game.

“Hmm,” Sandy said, “does your nose glows in the dark.”

“Maybe,” Candy teased, “he's called that because he's hung like a reindeer.”

“Ooo, I'd like to see that,” Sandy said. She smiled and looked down at my lap as if she expected me to display the evidence right there in the mall.

“Are you guys done for the day?”

“Nah, we're just on a break,” Sandy explained. “We have to be back in…”

“…two hours,” Candy said. “Usually we run home and get a bite to eat, but…”

Sandy finished the sentence, “…parking is such a hassle today that we just decided to stay here.”

Their habit of finishing each others' thoughts was beginning to freak me out a little. I wasn't sure they even realized they were doing it. “Since you have some time, maybe you could help me,” I said. “I need to get something for my sister. She's about your age, I think. You girls are about sixteen or seventeen, right?”

“We're both sixteen,” Candy replied. High school girls, like I thought, and definitely not the age group I should have been fooling around with. Of course, all we were doing was talking, and there was no harm in that, was there?

“What are you looking for?” Sandy had a habit of playing with her hair and looking off into space when she talked, so sometimes I wasn't even sure she was talking to me.

“Clothes. She spends almost all her babysitting money on clothes. But I have no idea what sixteen-year-olds wear anymore.”

“Geez, how old are you, like thirty or something?” Sandy asked.

“Nope, I'm twenty-two, but I swear my sister seems like she is from a different generation, or maybe a different planet. So, do you guys have a few minutes to help a poor Christmas angel?”

“Okay, it might be fun,” Sandy said with a smile. She had a more direct way of looking at the person she was talking to than Candy. My guess was her IQ was at least twenty points higher than her blond-inside-and-out buddy. “Come on,” she said, grabbing my hand and pulling me to my feet.

We headed through the crowds, and if I had been a few years younger I would have felt like quite the stud, with cute teenage girls on either side of me, holding my hands. They took me right back to 'The Fuzzy Monkey', so I knew I had at least been on the right track. This time, with my new escorts, I felt a lot more comfortable about plunging into that frenzied environment. After we entered, my helpers left me alone while they began searching through all the clothes on display. They meandered from one clothes rack to another, grabbing a shirt here and a skirt there, trading comments as they grazed. I followed along behind, content to stay in the background and watch them shop for me.

That went on for about ten minutes before they ran into two other girls they knew. The four of them began chatting, and I began to feel like a fifth wheel. I dropped back a little more, so the girls wouldn't feel embarrassed about their friends seeing them hanging around with an older guy, but I was still close enough to eavesdrop. I heard one of the other girls call my new friends Terri and Amanda, but I decided to stick with Candy and Sandy. It seemed more Christmassy.

In addition to their real names, I picked up one other interesting tidbit. Candy and Sandy weren't just high school girls, they were cheerleaders! In those days that was a a magic word that worked on me like a command given by a stage hypnotist. When I heard it, the Jiminy Cricket part of my common sense was put away in the trunk, and Mr. Libido settled into the driver's seat. A little side trip into history may help explain my reaction.

The handsome, sexy, suave young man standing behind Candy and Sandy that day was totally unlike the person who had graduated from high school four years earlier. In high school I was a lovable, slovenly, lonely loser, without the lovable part. For four years I had suffered through one acne attack after another. Combine that with the fact that I was more that a little overweight, had Coke-bottle lens glasses, and let my mother pick my clothes … I think you get the picture. I was as horny as any teenage boy, but the only sex I had in high school was when I hooked up with a girl who was just as desperate as I was for a prom date. We were two pathetic creatures determined not to graduate as virgins. The first time we had sex, it was a messy, bloody act of physical coupling performed more out of need than true desire. I think we both kept our eyes tightly shut during the act. I know I did. We did it two more times before graduation, but only to satisfy our own personal needs, there was never any romantic boy-girl connection between us.

When I went off to college I wanted a real sex life along with a higher education. I knew I had to get my act together to make that happen. Toward the end of my senior year, my acne finally began to clear up. That helped push me into remaking my image. For a graduation present, I asked my parents for contact lenses, which they readily agreed to. I let my hair grow out from the fifth-grade brush cut my mom had always insisted on, and began buying my own clothes. I also ran my ass off during the summer, and lost twenty-five pounds between high school graduation and leaving for college.

All of those physical changes led to a personality makeover too. Knowing that I looked a lot better made me feel a lot better about myself, and helped me overcome my fear of talking to women. I went off to college determined to make up for my lack of sexual experience by scoring as much fresh meat as I could. Yeah, I was one of those jerks. I even joined a fraternity, even though I despised frat boys, just because I thought it would help me get laid. By my sophomore year I had dropped out of the Greek life and began meeting a better class of women than the slutty, desperate skanks who showed up when the beer was free and the condoms were on the coffee tables.

But as good as my college sex life had been, there was still a bit of regret inside me. I had waited so late to blossom that there were certain normal parts of high school life that I had totally missed out on. One of those was having a chance to score with a cheerleader. Like any red-blooded American male, cheerleaders had always been a sex symbol for me, but they had remained an unreachable goal, mainly because I had never reached for it. Now, I was hanging out with not just one, but a pair of short-skirted, dimple-cheeked, sexually adventurous examples of the breed. And that is why my inhibitions and good judgment seemed to disappear when I heard that mesmerizing word: cheerleaders.

I zoned out for a few moments, my mind filled with naughty fantasies from my high school days featuring me and the girls in the blue-and-gold uniforms who had been such an unachievable goal for me. When I recovered from my brief reverie, Sandy and Candy and their friends were still talking, but now I had somehow become part of the conversation. Every few seconds, one of them would look over at me, and whisper something to the other girls which made them all giggle. I felt all of my high school insecurities returning, which was silly, since I was a college graduate and several years older than they were. When the other two girls finally left, my shopping guides put their heads together and whispered something that made both of them laugh openly.

“What's so funny?”

“Nothing,” Candy declared, trying to keep a straight face.

“We have a bet,” Sandy blurted out. Candy glared at her as if she were about to disclose a state secret.

“A bet? About what?” I asked.

“About you,”Sandy said with another giggle.

“Okay,” I said, “let me settle it quick. Yes, I am wearing underwear, briefs to be exact.”

That caused Sandy to blush, which was my first hint that their bet was a little more daring than a simple matter of my underclothes. 'That's not the bet,” she said, now finding it hard to look me in the eye.

“Well, should I ask what it is? I really would like to finish shopping before Christmas.”

“Come on,” Candy said, grabbing my hand again.

“Where?”

“We're gonna try on some of these clothes so you can decide if you think they would look good on your sister,” she explained.

“Hey guys,” I protested, “I really don't care that much if she likes what I buy. She can always return them. And what about this bet?”

Part two >

Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/2pw4h8/christmas_shopping_can_be_fun_part_1_mff