Sandy and the Corset

By Katherine Cox


Sandy wasn’t sure exactly what made her finally buy the corset, but she did. She walked into the Seventh Goddess lingerie store at Central and Richmond on her lunch break. With a 36-oz Diet Coke sweating in its paper cup in one hand and her cheap knock-off purse in the other, she took the white satin corset with the 38D cups and the little blue flowers off the rack and put it on the counter.

The checkout girl didn’t even flinch.

“Here,” she said, reaching behind Sandy’s head to a basket full of tightly rolled lacy panties. “The blue here. Matches perfect.” She’d picked out the right size – “Plus Size” – without saying a word. “And try these.” She produced a package of white thigh-highs, with lace tops, or at least that was what the model on the front was wearing. “I’ll give you 30% off the whole deal. Recession special.”

Sandy just nodded and handed over her credit card.

Dizzy, Sandy put her purchase in the trunk and went back to work.

When she got home, she almost forgot she’d bought the lingerie, but it was under the bag of groceries in the trunk, smashed now, and still warm from the heat caught in the car from the late October sun. She shook her head and tried to hide the Seventh Goddess bag – black and sultry with red wording, and a logo that included laces between the S and the G, like a corset itself – so that her nosy neighbors wouldn’t see it. She could just hear Mrs. Nelson now saying something about a girl her size wearing lingerie…

Sandy shivered and closed the trunk. She went inside and put everything on the kitchen table. She sat down and stared at her two bags – the black Seventh Goddess gift bag with the red tissue paper, and the brown paper bag from Whole Foods. Who was she today? Shopping at Whole Foods and buying lingerie?

She put the vegetables in the fridge. Arugula, celery, apples, tomatoes, carrots, pineapple. She put away the yogurt, the salmon, the frozen peas. There was one leftover box of Chinese takeout, a greasy white box in its third week sitting on the second shelf. She took that out and threw it away.

Then she sat down at the table again and looked at the Seventh Goddess bag.

She realized she had no idea how she would lace up a corset by herself.

Sandy took the bag into her bedroom and made sure the blinds were closed. She turned on the light and emptied the bag’s contents onto the bed. The corset kept its shape, feminine and secure, lying on the bed. The panties were rolled into a tight ball and held together with a sticky label. The white thigh-highs were still in their package, a skinny sexy model pouting on the front, her legs halfway crossed in front of her.

Sandy took a deep breath. She turned over the package of thigh-highs once, and looked for the sizing. Queen size. The girl at Seventh Goddess knew what she was doing, again.

Sandy took another deep breath and unwrapped the panties. She held them up. They looked sexy, lacy, blue and stretchy in a comfortable way. She put them down and took the thigh highs out of the package, too. They were sheer and soft. Sandy felt her fingernails snag a bit on the nylon. She stopped herself immediately and laid everything out gently on the bed. Then she undressed and went to the bathroom.

She wrapped herself up in her fluffy robe and put on her fuzzy slippers. Then she turned the heater up in the bathroom and sat on the toilet while she filed her nails and her toenails, ridding herself of anything that could snag on her new lingerie. She took a long hot shower, and washed her hair, scrubbed her feet and her elbows and her face. When she got out she felt steamy and pink. She wrapped herself in a towel and patted herself dry. Then she moisturized everything, with lilac lotion. She blow dried her long dyed blonde hair, slowly with a round brush.

Finally she had to escape the hot steaming bathroom. She opened the door to her bedroom. It was dark outside now and her bedroom felt chilly. She stood over her bed and looked at the corset. She held it up to her chest and looked down. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t tried it on. She had been to the store the week before, and someone named Kate had measured her and fussed over her and told her she was beautiful.

“You have gorgeous skin,” she’d said. “You’re like a doll. And oh my god, your proportions. You’re a dress-maker’s dream.”

Kate had told Sandy she could make her a corset easily. But Sandy had blushed hard and said no, thank you. She’d felt embarrassed enough being measured.

But now she had a corset.

It wasn’t a lace-up corset, she realized now. It had hook-and-eye closures. This would probably be easier, she decided. She unhooked the top five hooks.

She shed her bathrobe and, almost shivering, stepped into the corset. She turned in backwards so that the closure was in front of her, and hooked the remaining five hooks to their eyes, her breasts hanging over the corset. She slid the whole thing around so that the hooks were in back, then pulled it up so that her breasts fell into the cups.

It fit. There was enough stretch in it that she could breathe, and enough boning that she felt held in. For the first time in ten years, she felt like she had a waist.

She smiled in spite of herself and put on her “plus size” panties. These also fit with enough stretch that no rolls hung out from above or below. She was wearing a thong. She had never worn a thong before.

Sandy sat on the edge of the bed and took one of the stockings in her hand. It was fragile, but she was confident she was smooth enough now to put it on without a snag. Slowly, she slid her thumbs in under the elastic thigh band and rolled the nylon up, then slid it over her toes, up her calves, and onto her thighs. It took her a moment to figure out how to hook the garters that hung from the corset onto the front and back of the thigh band. Finally, she had it.

She repeated the process with her left leg now. Then she stood up. She felt held in and tight, in a firm, young way. She felt renewed. She felt restrained, but not in a bad way at all; she felt as though if someone unhooked her various straps and hooks, something passionate would flow forth, rather than something flabby.

She held her breath as she opened the door to her closet and revealed herself in the mirror on the other side.

She gasped a little.

She did look like a doll, with pink cheeks and perfect blonde curls, and porcelain skin. The corset was smooth and delicate-looking. She turned around and gazed at her own ass in the thong. The lines from the garter made her legs look amazingly sexy. The white stockings were provocative. She giggled.

Sandy glanced at her alarm clock on the side table next to the bed now.

It was 6:35. He was late. Lucky for me, Sandy thought.

Quickly she threw all the detritus and packaging away and tidied up the room. She dabbed her face with a bit of powder and put on mascara.

When the doorbell rang, she was just lighting a few candles in the hallway to match the ones she had lit in her bedroom.

She answered the door in her corset and stockings, wearing white high-heeled pumps.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m so glad you could make it tonight.”

She pulled him inside and could see his jaw drop. In the ten years she’d known him, he’d never given her a look that made her feel like she mattered more than a coworker or acquaintance. And now he was looking at her like he’d look at a pin up in a calendar on a wall. There was longing in his eyes. This was exactly what she’d wanted.

“Sandy?” he said. “Wow.”

She smiled. “It’s the new me, Tom,” she said. “It’s the new me.”




back to The Invisible Corset