I led her inside and wandered towards the pharmacy counter in the back. In those days, rubbers weren’t something placed on the rack, right next to the KY and sex aids. Condoms were behind the counter and you needed to get them from a pharmacist, even though they weren’t prescriptions. It was all very hush-hush and sinful, and when I was younger more than a few places wouldn’t sell them to me since I was a minor. Some states, in fact, refused to allow them to be sold unless you were married, since having sex outside of marriage was illegal. That took a Supreme Court case to get thrown out. We walked towards the back, and once we got to the counter, I turned to Marilyn and asked, “What kind do you want?”
“What kind of what?”
I pointed at a rack behind the counter. “What kind of condoms would you prefer?”
Marilyn’s eyes opened wide and she stared at the small display. “OH MY GOD!” She took off out of there like a scalded cat.
I laughed loud and long at that. The lady pharmacist who had witnessed this simply grinned at me. “You are so bad!”
I agreed with her and bought two boxes and paid for them. Outside the store I found Marilyn sitting in her car, beet red. I handed her the bag and she tossed it in the back like it carried the plague. I smiled at her. She was trying to look angry at me, but not really succeeding. “I can’t believe you did that!”
“You want to go back with me and return them?”
“NO!” I smiled and shrugged, and then started the car and put it into gear. After a few seconds she asked, “How can there be so many different types? Aren’t they all the same?” She glanced at my lap and then quickly looked out the windshield. “You know…”
“No, they aren’t.” I started laughing. Marilyn made such an amusing target on things like this. “For one thing, there are a number of different manufacturers. Some are thinner or more expensive and so forth. You can get them in colors…”
“COLORS!”
“Sure, red, blue, black… that can be very popular among the brothers.”
“The brothers? At Kegs?”
That made me smile. “No, baby, not those brothers. Assume that you and I were of the African persuasion. Would you want to be making it with a white cock or a black cock?”
“I can’t believe you said that! You’re such a racist!”
That was a subject that we would never agree on. Marilyn, who I don’t think had ever even met a black person until she went to college, considered that because she was a Yankee, she was automatically non-prejudiced, and that because I was born somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line, was automatically a bigot. This never was resolved. I sighed, “No, I’m not, but these things are actually made for the purpose.”
She simply sniffed at that. It was the only part of her being a Yankee I found an issue. I continued on. “There are even glow-in-the-dark rubbers.”
She turned and stared at me. “You’re kidding me, right!?”
I grinned back. “Think of it as your own little portable flashlight, for when the lights are out.”
“Gross!”
I laughed long at that. We pulled into the parking lot for the Chinese place. As we went inside I said, “During the Vietnam War they were even used for psychological warfare.” Marilyn gave me a confused look and I went on. “We had one of the manufacturers make these extra large models, but then had them label them as ‘Small’ and packaged in Army green, like they were government issue, and then they would accidentally allow a shipment to be captured every now and then. The idea was to make them feel small.”
“Did it work?”
I shook my head ruefully. “No idea. We lost the damn war, so it couldn’t have been that important.”
“So they come in different sizes?” she asked after a second.
“Looking to trade me in already?”
Marilyn blushed, and then I laughed when I caught her looking at my lap, which only made her blush more and stare at the far wall. I never did answer her question, since I kept laughing about it.
After dinner we went back to the hotel, walked briefly on the beach, and then went up to our room and finished off the box of condoms. The next morning we would need to crack another box.
Actually, we didn’t. I got up and ran a few miles and then used the Nautilus machines in the Hilton’s workout room. By the time I got back to the suite, Marilyn was already up and bathed and dressed. I offered to let her scrub my back, but she just laughed and told me to hurry up and join her downstairs. Then she grabbed the key from the dresser and scampered out of my reach and out the door. I just shook my head and took a quick shave and shower, and then went down to the lobby. As I suspected, she was in the main restaurant working on her buffet breakfast. She smiled and waved at me, so I wandered in and sat down next to her. I got a big kiss from her, along with, “I was hungry!”
“You burned up a lot of calories late last night,” I replied.
That got me a big grin. “That’s some diet plan you came up with!”
“You have no idea!” I got up and grabbed some fruit salad and juice, and came back to the table. “So what’s the plan for today? Back upstairs and work on your diet some more?”
“Stop it! No, we’re going to take a walk down the boardwalk and window-shop, and then this afternoon we’re going to go swimming again.”
“You’ve got this all planned out, don’t you.”
“To the minute! Hurry up, we’re running 30 seconds late.”
I had to laugh at that. Marilyn couldn’t tell time to save her life. Despite her protestations of being on time, she was chronically late for everything. The only clocks in the house that were ever correct were my wristwatch and the clock over the television, which I controlled. Everything else was set from five to fifteen minutes early, and she still managed to be late. The rule was that if Marilyn had to be somewhere at a specific time, you lied to her and told her half an hour early. Even the kids knew this, and knew I would protect them if they got caught lying to their mother about schedules. We even had a name for it — ‘Mommy Time!’
“Right. I think I’ll finish my breakfast first. Why don’t you spend the time thinking about what parts of the diet plan you’d like me to emphasize with you. Be specific.” That turned her face beet red, and I had to laugh some more.
She sputtered a moment, and said, “See if we work off any more calories!” I just kept laughing. Eventually I was banished back to the room to grab our straw hats, and Marilyn stayed down below so she wouldn’t be tempted into losing any calories.
The weather was beautiful again, so we strolled leisurely down to the Boardwalk and started doing some window shopping. Again I pointed out several swimsuits and outfits I would be happy to purchase for her, all of which would assist us in the quest for fewer calories. Marilyn wasn’t too terribly shocked by my suggestions and tended to giggle when I told her how it easy it would be to burn off calories while she wore them. She also told me she had several more sundresses in our room that she had bought and hadn’t gotten around to showing me yet, so maybe I should wait until I saw them. That sounded very promising, so I simply tabled the notion.
After about a mile of walking, I spotted a place that I had missed while running. It was small and had a very psychedelic sort of front. I tugged Marilyn’s hand and said, “Let’s look in here.”
“Okay.”
Marilyn followed me inside. It was a small shop, narrow and deep, and had all sorts of odd stuff inside. I had immediately recognized it as a head shop, but Marilyn was very much a goody-two-shoes in that regard. As we slowly wandered through, I explained some of what was there — bongs, brass or blown glass pipes, rolling papers, a variety of drug and rock music related posters. This was all a new experience for her. Towards the back of the store I found a section that in future days would be known as ‘adult oriented.’ In 1974 you just didn’t have stores like this; they were always in the back of head shops or Spencer’s Gifts or other counterculture sorts of places.