Three Five Four: Sundress

There's a phrase I've been hearing this summer: "getting railed in a sundress". It's something girls on social media say-- a small summertime fantasy of sex in a stylish little sundress. 

Here in this particular summer, that may not be something to aspire to. This is one of those heat-dome summers that makes you realize that Wm. Gibson is right about the Jackpot arriving. In half the country it's too hot to go outside, let alone have sex outdoors. 

Still, I like the idea of railing a girl in a sundress. There are some interesting markers encoded in the phrase. Sundresses go with a kind of J. Peterman World or an L.L. Bean catalog world-- picnic hampers, bottles of wine, pastel skies, a kind of idyllic summer afternoon. Sundresses themselves, now? They're designed to call up dreamy summer days, to make a lovely girl look like she's floating along, light as air. 

That perfect sundress is light, airy, evocative of leisure and a kind of innocence that's so deeply erotic. If the fabric is gauzy, it calls up lots of David Hamilton photographs from the late 1970s. There are often straw hats and strappy sandals involved. And of course any lovely girl knows that sundresses are worn next to the skin. As well they should be.

My friend in New Zealand wrote me once about being in the perfect sundress at some sort of cricket championship in Wellington. She wrote about walking barefoot back to her Older Admirer's Range Rover, sandals in her hand, a bit tipsy on Martinborough sauvignon blanc, feeling the summer air under her dress on waxed, bare skin, and knowing that she'd be having sex very soon on a picnic blanket somewhere in the hills above Wellington. Blue and white, the dress was, and just below her knees. And Jill never, never wore anything under a dress like that. A perfect look for being a posh Kiwi girl getting railed after a cricket match. I did sigh over her letter. I did want to be the one sliding that sundress up over her hips and feeling her legs-- long, slender, dark-tanned --over my shoulders. 

The woman I met at Peychaud's, the phone sex woman, told me that she shared fantasies like that. "Getting railed in a sundress" meant not only the idea of summertime sex and posh picnic hampers, it meant getting to buy and wear dreamy dresses as well. I do like that-- sex and romance in a J. Peterman kind of world.

I have to email the woman from Peychaud's. She did give me her email address and her personal cell phone number. She was lovely, fun, and able to be a very good interlocutrix. I have no objection to arranging telephone appointments with her. She'd be worth the fee. And she likes dreams of J. Peterman World and Breton beaches as much as I do.

Getting railed in a sundress... That's an image I do fancy. It calls up all the sorts of settings I like with beautiful young companions, and it involves fashion that I like to see on lovely girls. J. Peterman World is always about a certain class image, too: let's not forget that. 

Wm. Gibson's Jackpot may spoil summers, but we do still have the dream of cool breezes, pastel blue skies, and a view of the ocean just off the bluffs. And we have the dream of lovely girls naked under feather-light fabric, smiling at the thought of the afternoon.