Double Dutch

Perhaps this piece deserves a disclaimer or even a warning:
Adult readers only. The writer refuses any responsibility for lost innocence.
When ever I tell people this story they want more, but I cannot invent more than what happened, much as I try. They say it’s incomplete, unfinished. One reader said, “Hey, it’s not fair! Where’s the rest of the story? Where’s this shop and what’s the name of the saleswoman? Don’t leave ME hanging!”
Some, notably only Americans, have been offended. I think that proves my point so I consider the vignette successful. I was dressed down by an American school teacher who thought I must have better things to write about and just what did my husband think about this? (He, having completely forgotten the incident, laughed.) But then there are those who would burn books before even reading them. So it goes...

I enjoy buying clothes with my husband, his clothes that is. Because he belongs to the tallest race in Europe, he shops in his homeland, the Netherlands. There, pant legs are usually cut long and generously enough to accommodate the sturdy Dutchman’s leg (all cyclists, born with a steel bicycle pedal in their mouths). Virtually everything he tries on fits, and if it doesn’t he takes on the attitude taken by most men, i.e. the fault lies in the cut of the cloth not his body build. For example, take the last time we bought him a suit together. It fit rather well, except in one place.
“It’s too tight in the crotch,” he announced, coming out of the dressing room grimacing.
“That’s the style right now,” the saleslady explained.
“Could be, but they’re too tight for me.”
“Pants are cut differently this year.” Elaborating, she added, “One has to dress in the centre.”
“But 1 happen to dress to the left.” my husband replied matter-of-factly.
“It’s the jeans cut. To wear it, you must dress to the centre,” she insisted.
“That may well be,” he ventured, “but I still dress to the left.”
“You’re probably used to wearing pants with three folds. But this year there’s only one fold. You have to dress to the centre.”
“Could be, but I still dress to the left,” now my spouse insisted.
Did I hear correctly? Were my husband and a
saleswoman amiably, unashamedly and openly discussing the tilt of his genitalia? Trying not to let my North American sensibilities and all too Puritan upbringing show, I said nothing.
“There was a time when everyone wore boxer shorts and could let everything hang nice and loose,” she said, turning to me with a confiding look as if to say, just between us girls, we know what it is to hang nice and loose.
I gave her my best virgin spinster look.
Unfazed she returned her attention to my husband and dropped to her knees in front of him. What was she planning to do I wondered?
“Well,” hubby began, “I’ve never worn boxer shorts and these pants are still too…”
Now I doubted my eyes? The saleslady was reaching up with both hands towards my partner’s crotch.
“Oh no!” I thought. “She’s not going to?”
Then she did. With both hands she rearranged, pulled, patted and straightened his pleats.
“So what do you think, Maddy?” my mate appealed to me.
“I think,” I hesitated, still recovering from what I had just witnessed, “if you’re willing to walk around in a suit you have to pull on the crotch every few seconds to wear comfortably, then go ahead.”
“Can the pants be let out?” my husband asked.
“Of course,” the saleswoman answered brightly, but I thought I detected a certain reluctance in her tone.