Forgotten...

It was bound to happen. My brother moved in with me and he moved a bunch of his stuff into my basement and that meant cleaning out my mud room which had been filled with boxes, many of which had not been opened in years and years. So I come home and my brother hands me a box. Now he is fairly knowledgeable when it comes to my...shall we say proclivities. He doesn't ask for details (Yuck!) but he has a general idea. So the box wasn't a big shock to him. It was to me though, because it is another clue into this life I had before. This box contained a pretty good size collection of literature, paraphernalia, what have you. I found three VHS tapes of spanking porn (is it porn if no one has sex?) One I don't even remember buying. One I remember was not very good and the third was, if I recall correctly, very good.
I found some full length novels (my original 9 1/2 weeks, Volumes II & III of the Anne Rice Sleeping Beauty Series along with a full length book of literary interpretations of the Sleeping Beauty Books) I found an old school, white, plastic vibrator and I do not know where it came from. I found some magazines and shorter works of spanking fiction I do remember purchasing, on my honeymoon in Portland, OR. I found some catalogs and a magazine or two I got from Shadow Lane back in the early 1990's when I was on their mailing list. I found a bottle of something called Chocolate Hot Stuff but I don't know the shelf life on it. I found some blue, fur lined handcuffs that also smell questionable. The box also contained a pretty nice pair of leather wrist restraints, a leather blindfold and what I guess would be described as a leather paddle. It's a long wooden stick and at the end is a thin piece of leather shaped like a hand.
It's this box full of things that all seem like they belong to this other person. I know for a period of time, back in probably the late 90's or very early 00's, I would occasionally peruse these items, but things get busy. You have a kid and then one day you realize that all your extra energy that isn't given to her is going towards trying to make a bad marriage work and then you wake up and it's 12 years later and it didn't work, but hey, I guess that's life. At least I've still got the box, right? And many of these items are certainly things the new me can appreciate. (Okay, I think I'm getting rid of the Chocolate Hot Stuff...)
I also find it funny that I bought a lot of these things on my honeymoon. I don't recall why we were shopping separately, but there was this little shop and it sold all this erotic literature and I just plopped down on the floor (no one else was in there) and went through what they had and bought some. In 1998, I was just becoming aware of computers and had never heard of the internet, but I remember how exciting it was to find this place with these kind of publications.
So as I am probably less than 72 hours away from the official end of the marriage, I'm being taken back to the memories of the beginning. And that's okay.
Even though I was already familiar with 95% of what was in there, it's still a little like Santa came early this year!