had significant lif e conversations. The cold-weather sex was better than our warm-weather sex back home. We acted like wild horndogs on the loose in our historic hotel. The trip was starting to seal our fate as a committed married couple. I caught a glimmer of hope that maybe our love thing had a slight forever-after shot in the dark. At dinner we found ourselves falling back into artificial infatuation all over again. We were all over each other like a couple of love-sick doves. It was dripping in pathetic cupid-goo for any outsiders who witnessed our frenzy of flesh. Trent and I always had to have some part of our bodies touching at all times.
On the way back to the hot el, Trent took me to this super-creepy old house on the side of the road. It was a little shop of sex. That was the only name I could muster up for that place. The theme was an old-school sex store with a twist. The building was wooden, decrepit and a dirty white color. When we first walked in, it appeared to be only a porn and toy store, so it was nothing too scary. Then we walked down a narrow, dark hall and it became a real-life human sex store. The atmosphere reminded me of an old-fashioned county fair, except this fun house had a triple-x theme. When I was a kid and entered a carnival fun house for the first time it felt sort of enjoyable. That was, until I walked down an unlit hall and the not-so fun-house turned into scary-as-hell house. The sensation throttled me that I could not turn around, but going forward may have been certain death. So, I held onto the person in front of me as if they could save me. Twenty years later, there I was, frozen stiff and clenching onto to Trent's arm for dear life. I must have looked like a lifeless mannequin in the window of a nickel-and-dime store—just waiting to be brought back to life. The only thing I wanted was to get out of there with my lady biscuit still intact.
Bad things happen in that building when the sun goes down and the local people never even whisper of it. I just knew it to my core. In the back of the building there were live nude girls. It smelled like old house and it was musty and dark. That was the kind of experience that nightmares are made of. Of course, Trent with a twisted sense of male pride, wanted to show me his old stomping ground. Like, as if the experience would help us bond on a deeper level. What the heck kind of run-down, honky-tonk place was this anyway, was all I could think of! The teenager inside of me was screaming, I am on a roller coaster, and it's going too fast—please get me off now! The reality was that I was freaked out that he even took me there in the first place—what was he thinking? I kept saying to myself, I pray tomorrow night we can just go to Atlantic City like normal, degenerate people and devour the all-you-can-eat snow crab with a heaping pound of melted butter.
The over-the- top sex stuff was starting to send chills up and down my spine—like an evil porcupine was sitting on my back. Being scared of a sex shop was a tall feat for a tough South Florida girl like me. If I was from a small town in the Midwest, I would have probably called the police on Trent and reported the sex store to the FBI. No joke, that hardcore place was not for the faint of heart! I had been to some “whiskey-tango” strip clubs in Ft. Lauderdale back in the day—trashy would be considered a compliment inside those establishments. However, that eerie sex house in New Jersey made the Florida strip clubs look like friendly ice cream parlors. Knowing that I was in over my head and way out of my freak league by the end of the trip was a strange sensation for sure.
The arcane weekend was starting to spook me right out of my wicked black boots! Why I did not run out of the scary place screaming and cryin g—I will never know to this day. There was a voice in my head that kept repeating, “ Not okay, not okay” over and over again. I never acted on my feelings of flight, I
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