Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms

by Chuck Austen

  “Lawsuits are one thing. It’s to be expected when you’re rich, though we’d obviously prefer to avoid it. But dating? Potentially marrying away significant portions of the family fortune to a commoner just to hide your perversions? You know the rule!”

  I choked. The ‘rule’ was the only thing that thus far had managed to keep my oversexed family truly in line. We all knew the rule: ‘Date outside the accepted, social circle of the equally rich,’ and earn instant disinheritance. Immediate pauperdom’. “I know the rule. I would never…”

  “I’d also hate to lose this model. I hear she’s good. Professional. Not like the prima donnas and flakes we usually get.”

  I squinted at him, wondering. That was almost exactly what Manschingloss had said just moments ago. “Were you in the room when I called Henri…”

  “Manschingloss.”

  “…Manschingloss? Because he said something…”

  “I was trying to sort out your nonsense before it went legal!”

  He said ‘legal’ as if he were saying ‘nuclear’. Or ‘nuke-yular’ if you’re from Texas.

  “Were you in the room?”

  “Waiting outside. I met with this Nuckeby girl as she was coming out. She’s a real looker. I can understand how you’d falter—even outside your own preference.”

  “It’s not outside my preference…”

  “All right, outside your ‘genetic determination’ then. Your ‘sexual orientation’. ‘Need for speed’. Whatever the PeeVee term for it is these days.”

  “P.C. term.”

  “Shut up. You couldn’t help yourself. I saw her. I understand that. She’s damned attractive; the kind of girl who could turn a man such as yourself, if only for a while. So I had to make certain she wasn’t going to involve lawyers. Fortunately for you…”

  He stopped cold. He was no longer aware of me, as a whole, but was instead staring down with a deeply frightened expression at my…er…‘be fruitful, and multiplier’. Pale, lips quivering, eyes expanding madly like Peeps in a microwave (try it. It’s fun). I adjusted my hands to cover my ‘Ballpark Frank’ and Grandfather ratcheted his attention away from those ‘plump-when-you-cook-‘em’ loins back up to my face, and seethed, rather spectacularly, for several seconds.

  “What the hell is wrong with your head?” he asked through clenched teeth.

  “The water bottle soaked my pants so Mrs. Abrososa…“

  He closed his eyes as if in pain and held up a hand to stop me from going further. “Mrs. Abrososa? I can’t hear this. Now you’ve involved Agrapanthila? I knew her husband. We were friends. He was a pious man, offended by the very notion of sex.”

  Unlikely, I thought, with twelve kids. But I let it go.

  Older generations have an interesting gift for compartmentalizing their sexuality away from their real lives, honestly seeming to believe themselves sexless and disinterested—as if just saying so makes it true—often in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Of course, counter to this fact, Mrs. Abrososa had apparently reached a greater comfort level with her own—suddenly, images of my elderly secretary monkey-loving her wrinkled, dead husband exploded into my brain, and I had to steady myself against the desk.

  “Armando Abrososa was not the kind of man who would approve of you parading your wood around in front of his beloved wife, Corky. Hell, no one would! ESPECIALLY OUR LAWYERS!”

  “Mrs. Abrososa offered to dry my pants,” I said, still weaving a bit, but I managing to banish most thoughts of my elderly, rutting secretary. “And the water bottle was an accident. It fell on me…”

  “…and you sat there with your dick in it, then made the Nuckeby girl stand around and watch you.”

  He made it sound filthy. A lawyer would likely do the same. I wilted. Most of me anyway. I suppose it was kind of filthy. What the hell was wrong with me?

  Grandfather rubbed his temples and opened his mouth as if hoping to expel demons.

  “This ‘sexual harassment’ bullshit is going to be the death of me,” he said quietly. “No more, you understand? I need this model for the show next week a lot more than I need someone to take notes on clothing designs,” he said pointedly. “You get me?”

  I got him. And seeing that I had, he gestured toward my family tree as if it were diseased.

  “So, if you want to keep your money, your house, and your cushy ride on the Wopplesdown family gravy train, you will learn—like the rest of this oversexed family—to squelch your urges, and keep that thing where it belongs—under at least two layers of clothing!”

  I lowered my head and spoke softly. “I’m sorry.”

  “And until you can, you are to come nowhere near this office—or that model! In fact, I never want you to see that model again! Ever! Even in your imagination!”

  He paused a moment to let the hot lava in his veins distribute itself evenly.

  “Now, take the week off,” he said. “Take two! And before you leave today, Human Resources has a video. I want you to get a copy and watch it—repeatedly—and don’t come back to Wopplesdown Struts or its affiliates until you can quote it back to me, verbatim. You don’t have to believe it—lord knows I don’t—but know it! And if you ever come back to a job, here—any job…”

  I winced.

  “…I never again want to hear that you’ve been sticking any body parts, in any water bottles, anywhere…”

  “I wasn’t..”

  “…EVER AGAIN!”

  He paused, glaring, and let the moment settle. Then he glanced down again and immediately regretted it.

  “And if I catch you doing—whatever it is you’re doing with your pants off, and that goddam stiffy sticking out between your shirt tails—in this office, or anywhere else, in my lifetime—if I so much as hear you had a little extra blood flow in that thing because of another employee, some contractor, or just a random stranger walking by on the street—you will be disowned and tossed into the GUTTER! YOU HEAR ME?”

  I quivered a moment, then wilted more completely and slumped down into my high-backed office chair. I could feel the skin of my butt sticking fast to the pleather, my erection now dying rapidly on the vine. There were times, with Grandfather in particular, when you just had to roll up the carpets, put up the chairs and turn out the lights.

  “I hear you.”

  He stared at me with contempt and loathing.

  “I am deadly serious, Corcharan. If I hear you went anywhere near that model,” he said with more calm, but greater threat, “I will end you. You understand?”

  I nodded like a bobble-head doll in the back of a 4x4 racing insanely over ski moguls.

  “You are not to see her for business,” he continued, “you are not to see her for pleasure. In this building, or out of it. Wearing clothes, or wearing air. Flaccid, erect, or…” he took one last look at my wriggling, shrinking erection and shuddered, “…or otherwise.”

  “You don’t have to worry.”

  “I’d better not.”

  Finally, he took a deep breath, working hard not to glance down at ‘it’ again.

  “You didn’t get that from my side of the family,” he spat.

  Then the old man turned and headed for the door, opened it without another word and slammed the thing behind him. A picture fell. My coat dropped off its hanger. Someone in the outer office screamed.

  Eventually the room settled into silence as the vibrations died down.

  I slumped and stared for a moment at the wood-paneled exit, then slowly rotated my chair until it looked out the floor-to-ceiling picture window behind my desk, staring through it into the city beyond. A man in a building adjacent waved, then dropped his own pants and enthusiastically showed me his penis; clearly thinking he was returning some kind of favor. He then proceeded to get up on his desk and do a kind of perverse happy dance when a woman entered through the office door behind him and screamed. He promptly slipped on some papers and fell into a trashcan. I wondered absently if he could sue me for that, then turned
my attention lethargically away from him and down toward the teeming streets below.

  There, far beneath me (as my grandfather would prefer it), was Ms. Nuckeby stepping into a cab. After a moment of giving directions, telling the driver about her perverted boss and his water bottle lover, the cab slowly pulled away and drove her to that nude horseback riding lesson.

  I could see her so clearly: naked, smiling, and galloping toward me in extreme slow motion.

  Gloop.

  I stared down sadly at my mindless renewing erection, and all other energy drained slowly from me as whatever ridiculous fantasy I might have harbored about Ms. Nuckeby bearing me twelve children after years of meaningful sex on horseback gradually faded away.

  Lost in my own sad little world, I found myself saying her name out loud, and with longing.

  “Wisper.”

  What a delightful name.

  The Nuckeby part I could do without.

  It was an hour or so later when I finally left the building—pants dried and in their proper place, erectionless and anti-harassment tape in hand.

  I felt defeated and lost. I didn’t want to spend a week, or more away from my job. That meant someone else would have to do it. Someone who might actually be qualified.

  Worse still—I didn’t like the idea that I would never again see Ms. Nuckeby.

  There had to be a way I could solve both problems by simply learning to remain unaroused in her presence. Was that so hard?

  Ha! ‘Hard’. I’m pathetic.

  But really, dogs could be taught to overcome their natural urge to drink from toilets. Was mind over member just too much to ask?

  Apparently so.

  Even now, as I exited the elevator muttering to myself, still trying to control the various lewd thoughts of Ms. Nuckeby swimming naked through my brain—doing primarily a form of the breaststroke—there was an increase in blood flow which I doubt Grandfather would consider safely within the legal limit. I covered my crotch with the anti-harassment tape and hoped my fellow Wopplesdown Struts employees would have the decency to pretend they hadn’t noticed.

  As I walked awkwardly, turned slightly to the wall, I focused intently on last year’s World Series. Not getting the desired result, I moved on to the previous year’s games.

  Then the year before.

  Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be enough baseball statistics in the history of the game to tag out Ms. Nuckeby as she rounded third and headed for home wearing only cleats, socks, batting gloves, and a cap.

  What I really needed was a hormone-removal kit. Not being an avid reader of Scientific American (they don’t have cartoons), I was unsure if such a thing even existed. Perhaps a home penis-removal kit? I bet you could make one of those for yourself.

  I shuddered as I realized what I had just, genuinely, considered.

  Grandfather was right. How could I come to work tomorrow—or ever again—as long as Ms. Nuckeby roamed free, and sometimes naked? My life as I knew it would be over the minute I saw her in anything even remotely sexy. Hell, let’s be honest; my life was over as soon as I saw her, period, even if she was smeared in mud with leaves and twigs protruding from her hair while wearing wet, pungent animal skin.

  Mmmm. Revealing, easily removed, wet, pungent animal skin.

  Gloop.

  AAH! HAD I NO SELF CONTROL AT ALL?

  Clearly, any thoughts of her—clothed, or otherwise—would doom me. I needed a complete distraction of some kind. But short of installing an ice machine in my trousers, what could possibly…?

  Aaaaaah. That was it. I would stop someplace and buy one of those liquid-filled bag things. I believe they were called ‘icepacks’. I’d heard about them from people who were physically active. Supposedly you could find them in something called a ‘drug store’. From what I’d been told, all you had to do was purchase one, take it home, and put it in the freezer. It was that easy. Then, once frozen, you simply applied it to the afflicted area.

  My area was quite afflicted. I bet I could slip one in my underwear before any potential Ms. Nuckeby sighting and—voilà! I would freeze my nuts into submission.

  Genius. Pure genius.

  Feeling renewed vigor, and confidence that I could squelch my penis’ vigor, and its confidence, I headed for the door leading out to the street and passed another of the Wopplesdown Struts employees, my childhood friend, and once-fellow comic-book collector, Morgan Wiggen.

  Yes, I was—until very recently—a superhero comic book collector. I’m sometimes ashamed to admit it, but no one died or anything so I’m learning to let go. Still, people often think there’s a disease of some kind involved when a grown man is interested in adventure stories about unrealistically well-endowed people who run around in brightly colored, skin-tight clothing. But you have to keep in mind that my parents wouldn’t let me buy porn. If you haven’t looked at a superhero comic in a while, keep in mind that the art is very detailed and those costumes are really tight.

  Sometime back in my late teens I left the superhero fantasy world behind due to a waning interest in the bad stories, repetitive situations, and the newfound freedom to buy actual porn. Of course, when you consider the colorful, tight-fitting costumes on unrealistically endowed women I get to view on a daily basis—live, and in person—you might see the pointlessness of paying money for the relatively inferior, hand-drawn versions of same.

  Hmm. Unrealistically endowed women in scanty, tight-fitting costumes appear to be a common theme here. I wonder if there’s some deeper significance I’m not seeing?

  Probably not.

  Anyway, my friend Morgan still seemed to enjoy said superhero experience quite thoroughly, and more power to him. Based on what I know of him, he’d probably feel the same even if he had my job. His interest in women wearing scanty, painted-on clothing never seems to flag, even to the point of his occasionally asking attractive women to dress up as one ‘superheroine’ or another so that he and she might reenact certain classic, comic book sequences as a kind of foreplay. The Wedding Night of Yellowjacket and Wasp. The Wedding Night of Cyclops and Marvel Girl. The Wedding Night of Hawkeye and Mockingbird. Date Night With She-Hulk and just about everybody.

  He was likely doing that now while chewing happily on something brown; chatting up some bleary-eyed young woman I recognized vaguely from the shipping department in hopes of getting her into tight-fitting clothing while she was clearly searching for any opening in his monologue that would allow her to escape him.

  “Archangel is my favorite X-Man,” he said, apparently going for the ‘Date with Psylocke’ angle, unaware of the fact that this woman could not possibly care less if he were lying on the floor bleeding from the ears. She was leaning, turned away from him and primed to run at the slightest visible crack in their one-sided conversation. “Or he was until they hired this hack writer who changed his skin from blue to normal flesh-colored. White people flesh-colored. They’re always changing writers, and each one is worse than the last. But this guy— woo! Ruined Archangel. Archangel, not ‘Angel’.”

  He said ‘Angel’ in the kind of whiny, sarcastic, singsong voice that homophobes with little or no acting talent believe sounds exactly like an unattractive homosexual. “He claimed he quit. The writer. But Marvel fired him. I know someone who was there. He cried. And he should have after what he did to Archangel. You see the movie?”

  “Which mo…”

  “The third one. It sucked. ‘Angel’ was that faggy, feather guy. Archangel, from the comics, was tough and scary. He could fling them at you, you know—his wings—and these razor-feathers would disengage, and they could shoot at you, and cut you! So COOL! Now he’s just back to being like the guy in the movie. Gay white guy with ‘downy’ feathers who ‘heeeeeals’ people. He’s a ‘heeeealer’. So faggy.”

  “My brother is gay…”

  “Either of you see the third movie?”

  “No. I…”

  “It soooo sucked. Especially…” unattractive, gender-chall
enged, singsong “…‘Angel’. Even gay guys wouldn’t like him. We should see it sometime. Wanna rent it and see it with me?”

  “No, I…”

  “I don’t blame you. It was the worst of the three. First and second ones are great. But the comics are still better. Especially Archangel, and Psylocke.”

  Cha-ching. Moving in for the ‘kill’.

  “Psylocke, as any true fan knows,” Morgan said sagely, “is Archangel’s one, true love. Not that dippy little Paige Guthrie.”

  Morgan winked at her as if she were one of the chosen few who understood. She stared back blankly, clearly one of the teeming masses that did not.

  “And you,” he concluded, “would look great dressed as Psylocke.”

  “Dressed as…“ she shook her head, lost. “As what?”

  “Psylocke. Yeah. And I could be Archangel. I have a couple cases of blue face paint. We’d look great together. Like an Adam Hughes cover! He draws women like you! SMOKIN’ hot! WOO! All feminist and strong in their tight-fitting little outfits. And he draws them really realistic so their boobs actually squeeze out in places where the costumes are too tight. Like they would on a real woman with naturally big ones who couldn’t find anything in her size.”

  He glanced down at her, ‘naturally big ones’, and she reflexively covered them, goggling at him, open-mouthed and horrified, then began backing quickly away.

  “So it’s more true,” he continued. “The way he draws them. Like actual art. You’d look like that. Squeezing out all over.”

  “Squeezing out…what?”

  “All over.”

  She was moving away from him very quickly now, and Morgan stepped a few paces to stay with her.

  “Or, now that I think about it, maybe Nekra. Ooooh, yeeeeeah. The original black costume where the bottoms of her boobs hang out from under the top. So sexy.”

  He indicated on his own chest where his boobs would hang out if he had them and were so dressed, and she flinched.

  “With a body like yours, you’d look amazing as Nekra,” he promised her. “And if I had to, I’d be willing to dress like Mandrill. It’s not out of the question.”