Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms

by Chuck Austen

  “Well,” the stately stripper said after studying me a moment. “I guess I can understand why you weren’t swayed by these.” A slight hand-wave indicated her surgically altered Waboombas.

  “Of course,” she continued, walking toward the car. “In ten years, hers’ll be floppin’ down around her knees, and mine’ll still be right up here where they are.” As she opened the door, she turned and fixed me with an intensely sexual stare. “So you’d still be able to reach mine while I’m suckin’ your dick.”

  GLOOP! Big time.

  I nearly fainted. It was an ambush, and I wasn’t prepared for it. With Mindie’s arrival, I thought Waboombas had given up. I should have known better. The Nubian stripper was a determined juggernaut of preheated lust. She probably assumed there’d be some sort of orgy in the hotel room with Mindie, Morgan, myself, and whatever other interested comic fans we might find. And what comic fan wouldn’t be interested? Images of naked Simpsons’ Comic Book guys and their female counterparts all naked, greased up, and rolling over one another’s writhing flesh while reading out loud from the latest issue of X-Men nearly made me pass out.

  And worse, based on what I think she’d just been saying to Mindie—would she be filming it all?

  “Um…Ms. Waboombas,” I said.

  “Wendy.”

  “Em…Ms. Waboombas. By ‘movies’ you meant…” I hesitated, feeling as if someone had just pulled my underwear up over my head and lit them on fire, “…you meant ‘pornography’ didn’t you?”

  She looked at me like my face was flat and had shrubbery growing out of it.

  “What’d you think—I’m working with Spielberg?”

  No, but Mindie clearly did.

  As we waited for whatever was taking its own sweet time working its way out of Mindie, gravel crunched on the driveway again and I turned to see my Aunt Helena’s Duesenberg racing in through my outer gates, heading like a rocket straight for me.

  She was actually driving—Biddleby, the chauffer, was nowhere to be seen. I leaped to one side as the car hurtled toward me and swerved in my direction. I dove again to the other side, and it swerved my way once more. I was trying to figure out what I had done to offend Aunt Helena so much that she felt the urgent need to grease her axles with my blood, when suddenly she braked late and skidded to a stop on the loose rocks, nearly pinning Ms. Waboombas and myself against the Beemer. Wendy seemed to take it all in stride. I felt my legs go weak and collapsed on the hood of Helena’s car.

  “Sweet ride,” Waboombas said admiringly.

  Aunt Helena jumped out of the driver’s side carrying a hammer and ran at me with a fierce look in her eye. I recoiled, fearing she intended to ventilate my skull. Maybe she’d come to the conclusion I was possessed and felt a ball-pien was the perfect surgical tool required to release whatever demons now controlled me. She had that look.

  My mind raced through the last twenty-four hours trying desperately to remember what I’d done wrong. Had she reconsidered her feelings toward me and decided I was a sexist, model-groping pig who needed to be taken out? Had Grandfather convinced her that I really was useless? Did she stand to inherit anything from my sudden demise? If it was Woodruff, she’d more likely be trying to elongate my life, not shorten it. Perhaps the answer was as simple as she had just been watching some documentary on Roman surgery techniques and felt an urgent need to try them out. She was a fan of the History Channel.

  “Corky! I’m so glad I caught you before you left!”

  “You are?” I said, my voice high and terrified. “Why?” “Because I want to talk to you.”

  “Just talk?”

  “Of course. What else?” She noticed Ms. Waboombas and nodded

  quickly. “Hello.”

  “Hi,” Ms. Waboombas said. “Nice car.”

  “Thank you.”

  It really was. A Duesenberg model J 1934 convertible club sedan

  with the top down. I had admired it often, and had been looking for one myself, but they were exceedingly rare—especially the threeseater. But if I was going to live a sexless existence, I had decided I deserved one, and would really look good while driving off my frustrations. Unfortunately, like the perfect woman, ‘my’ Duesy was nowhere to be found. Instead I had settled for a Beemer. And Mindie.

  “I need you to do me a favor,” Helena said, flushed and out of breath—as if she’d had to peddle the Duesenberg over. “Can you take it in and have it repaired for me, please?”

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Fine,” she gasped. “Never better. I was just afraid I’d miss you before you left, so I rushed.”

  I stepped closer to the Duesenberg, and Helena moved with me. Ms. Waboombas opened the rear door and climbed in with cooing appreciation.

  “What’s wrong with it?” I asked.

  “Ooooh,” Helena said dismissively. “I had a little accident— broke the light. See?”

  She pointed to a headlamp at the front, and I could see it was pretty badly damaged. Fortunately the surrounding area wasn’t disturbed; only the headlamp itself, and the injury seemed minimal.

  I leaned in and inspected it more closely.

  “What happened?”

  She fidgeted nervously and gestured absently with the hammer. “I’m not entirely sure. I just came out this morning, and noticed it was like that.”

  “It looks as if…” I said, speaking earnestly, as though I knew even the slightest thing about cars or how they were supposed to look, “somebody’s been hitting it. With a rock or something.”

  “Really?” Helena said, moving the hammer behind her back. “How odd. I wonder who would do something like that?”

  “Teenagers,” I said, irritated, and nodded knowingly. I knew how they operated. I had been one once. On some mental levels, I still was.

  “Well, just be glad they didn’t do any more significant damage,” I said, standing and putting my hands on my hips with confidence while looking sternly proud. I was now about to repeat something which I had heard Uncle Pjuter mumble a few times in that strange, regionless dialect of his that was actually going to prove useful and appropriate in this situation. There was something invigorating about using other people’s knowledge as if it were one’s own. “Parts are going to be difficult to find ahs eet ees. Thees wan may haf to be punded out and re-krahmed,” I said, unaware that I had done more than repeat the information, but had actually slipped into speaking ‘Pjuter-ese’.

  Aunt Helena looked at me oddly. “Re-what?”

  I shook my head to free it of any, and all, strange accents— especially ones that might be perceived as making fun of her husband.

  “Pounded out and rechromed,” I said. “Did you say you wanted me to take it in? Why me? Why not you or Pjuter?”

  “I have a…uh…thing…today with Pjuter in fact. So he has to be there and can’t do this. And neither can I. We’re doing something…that really needs to be done—today. While the car, also, really has to be repaired—today—as well. Because…” she hesitated and looked off into space, as if searching for the right words, or flying insects. “The repair place is only open…uh…once a…uh…month,” she said, not sounding at all sure.

  “Once a month?”

  “Ooooh, you know these specialty repair shops. They make so much money they only work one day a month and spend the rest of their time rolling around in Carnauba.”

  “Aruba?”

  “Or there. Anyway, it’s on the way to the chapel you’re visiting with Mindie—you’re still going with Mindie, right? You haven’t come to your sens…I mean…changed your plans or anything?”

  I had no idea. I was waiting for someone to tell me. I’d have to check with the others. Ms. Waboombas, and Mindie, in particular.

  I looked over at the lengthy stripper, who was lying on her back in the rear seat of the Duesy. I opened my mouth to ask her opinion, then closed it just as quickly when I realized she was putting her legs up, resting them on the doorframe and slowly sprea
ding them eagle. She seemed to be trying to determine whether she could comfortably—and with what number of men simultaneously—have sex in the back seat.

  As Aunt Helena and I watched her, she wrapped her arms around the empty space in front of her as if to rub the back and derriere of some imaginary—but undoubtedly physically attractive, and exceedingly well endowed—man. As we stared in awe, she began to slowly roll her hips, as if reacting to her invisible partner’s amorous, thrusting motions. Getting into it, she leaned back and pretended to moan and writhe with pleasure. After a bit of this, she stopped the fake moaning and looked to one side, reaching out to cup what I supposed were the imaginary testicles of a second individual. As she continued to be rounded seriously by her ‘not-there’ lover, she took the cupped object into her mouth, then reached over with the other hand to pull vigorously on something that belonged— presumably—to a third lucky gentleman.

  I felt little Corky spring back to life, then turned away toward Aunt Helena and began to run feverishly through 1974 baseball stats. Aunt Helena had no such luck dragging her attention away from the lively motions of Ms. Waboombas, but didn’t seem at all disturbed— only fascinated—by what the leggy stripper was acting out in the back of her elegant, rare, and very expensive automobile.

  “What is she doing?” Helena asked me quietly.

  “Joe Rudi led the league in total bases with 287, and doubles with 39, Billy North with 54 steals…”

  Suddenly Helena looked at me with concerned surprise. “Good Lord, Corky!” she shout-whispered. “You’re muttering baseball stats! You only do that when—does this mean that woman is doing something sexual?”

  She looked at her more intently. “My word, she is, isn’t she? She’s pretending to…”

  “So, you…uh,” I asked Helena, darting artlessly away from the subject and narrowly avoiding an aneurysm, “you want me to take the Duesy, and…”

  “Get it repaired,” said Helena absently, looking over my shoulder at the imaginary sex show. “He said he can do it while you wait. The repairman. Fix the car, I mean. Goodness. She seems rather optimistic, doesn’t she?”

  “I think I’d give her the benefit of the doubt—Gene Tenace led the league with a hundred, and ten bases on balls—I don’t think getting the Duesy repaired would be a problem. You want to take my car, then?”

  “Oh, no. That’s all right. Pjuter will be here in a minute to pick me up. He’s probably obeying the speed limits, so he fell a little behind. Heavens, those men appear to be rather lengthy. Do you suppose she actually knows men like that, or is it all just her imagination?”

  I flashed on Woodruff mounted atop Ms. Waboombas and immediately regretted it. “Joe Rudi, 65 extra base hits…”

  “After our…uh…thing…is finished,” Helena continued, not taking her eyes from Ms. Waboombas, “we can meet you at the chapel later this evening.”

  “What chapel?” Ms. Waboombas asked, still pretending to be madly humped and bumped.

  “This place my, eh…Reggie Jackson, 20 intentional walks—my, eh, fiancée wants to see,” I said, not looking straight at her. “Just a quick side trip. Would you mind?”

  “Sure,” she said, apparently missing the proper grammatical response and momentarily confusing me. “I’m okay with it.” She hadn’t missed a beat in her pretend hand-jobs to the imaginary friends of her enthusiastic, nonexistent lover.

  “If we go in this car,” she said, “you can take all night as far as I’m concerned.” She glanced up at me meaningfully. “All night.” She winked. Apparently one of the penises she was servicing might have been mine.

  “In 1974 Catfish Hunter led the League with a 2.49 E.R.A.”

  By the time Mindie returned, Ms. Waboombas had finished, complete with mock orgasm (I supposed it was ‘mock’ anyway), and was recovering in the back seat of the Duesenberg, apparently quite satisfied with the car’s performance. Mindie trotted up happily toward me with one shoe still missing, carrying an armload of framed and sealed comics, and comic art, all of which had once been decorating my various walls.

  “Here,” she said cheerily, handing me the priceless collection. “You can sell these at your comics convention.” Then she turned to the others and called out in shrill excitement. “I sit next to Wendy!”

  “I can what?” I asked, trying not to drop my near mint copy of Superman number one, lost in the fog that seemed to have perpetually surrounded me since yesterday afternoon.

  She stopped and looked at me as if I was something a cat had coughed up on her Manolo Blahniks.

  “You can sell those,” she said, her cheeriness almost completely dissipated. “And the others I piled on the floor in there. I don’t want them around after I move in, so you may as well take the opportunity.”

  “Why don’t you want them around?”

  She looked down momentarily at them as if they were something I had coughed up. “That can’t be a serious question.”

  “These are valuable… ”

  “To retards.”

  “This one alone,” I tried again, ignoring her.

  “And perverts.”

  “This one alo…what? Perverts?”

  “Yes, perverts. All the people in those things are running around naked.”

  “Naked?” I asked, barely able to hear her last word.

  “Naked,” she repeated, clearly not wanting to even say the thing out loud.

  “They’re not naked. They’re wearing super suits.”

  “Please. You can see every detail. Even spandex doesn’t show off that much.”

  “It’s not spandex. Superheroes don’t wear spandex, they wear a thin layer of unstable molecules… ”

  “They’re not wearing anything! They’re naked! Naked, and colored blue, and red, and the girls all have enormous boobs, and bodies that are TOTALLY unrealistic, and I don’t want you looking at them—or any other kinds of porn—after we’re married!”

  “Porn?”

  “NAKED! HUGE BOOBS! CARTOON PORN! END OF DISCUSSION!”

  Everyone turned to look our way, and I stood, red, silent, and embarrassed.

  “They’re not… ” I began, then glanced at the pile, and saw an Adam Hughes Wonder Woman cover on top, which depicted the heroine colored red and blue, with enormous, squishing-out breasts. I quickly slipped it to the bottom of the pile.

  “Mindie,” I tried again, not wanting to lose this battle, “these are extremely valuable.”

  As an example, without looking closely enough, I mistakenly held up the next book in my stack, a copy of Nuderman number one, a parody of Superman number 1. The cover was nearly identical to that of its satirical source material, only the hero was—well—nude. Hence my error.

  Unfortunately, as should be obvious by now, it was exactly the wrong thing to use for driving home my point because of—not only the nude thing—but because the comic in question was essentially worthless to anyone but me. I had laughed myself silly reading it, and so, had paid handsomely to have it graded by the Certified Guaranty Company, professional comic book inspectors, as 10.0, perfect mint, and sealed forever in a plastic box so that I could never read it again.

  Don’t ask. It’s a collector’s thing.

  “This one alone, is…” I repeated.

  “Naked,” she said, covering herself with her hands as if Nuderman, a.k.a. Dork Bent, might leap off the cover and ravage her.

  I looked at the comic and rolled my eyes.

  “Oh,” I said, and quickly shuffled through the others until I found an actual, valuable comic with a male character on the cover who was mostly clothed, Captain America Comics number one. “This one alone,” I tried again, “is worth two hundred thousand dollars.”

  She scrunched up her face in a magnificent combination of disgust and disbelief. “Why?”

  “Because it is extremely rare—especially in this grade—and coveted by collectors… ”

  “…who apparently have too much money and too little brains,” she said, fini
shing my sentence in a way nature had not intended. “Wonderful,” she continued. “So when you sell it, you can afford a nice down payment on a decent engagement ring.”

  Done with me, she turned and sprinted giddily off toward Ms. Waboombas.

  “Oh, Wendyyyyy…” she said.

  I watched her go, horrified at the changes I now saw coming in my life, then was startled a bit as Morgan suddenly appeared beside me, licking another lollipop, and ogling my collection.

  “Can I have those?” he asked.

  The four of us, Mindie, Wendy, Morgan, and myself, discussed all the particulars with Aunt Helena, and given Mindie’s giddy belief that she was soon to be a major motion-picture star working beside Steven Spielberg, she was more cooperative than I ever could have hoped.

  We would all drive down in the Duesy, make the quick trip to have it repaired, then head to the chapel for the inspection. Aunt Helena would meet us there with her husband, Pjuter, later that evening after their ‘thing’. We planned to have a nice dinner at the restaurant (on me) where the reception might be held (dependent upon food quality, atmosphere, and cleanliness of toilets—or lack thereof). ‘Nice dinner’ being a somewhat optimistic hope in my view. Mindie did not yet know Ms. Waboombas well enough to be in any way concerned about Tourette’s-like outbreaks of sexual gesticulation in public places, and once she found out there would likely be hell to pay—a payment Mindie would undoubtedly be charging to my account.

  After dining, Helena and Pjuter would return home in the Duesenberg with Mindie, and the pastor, and Mindie would allow me to spend four nights away at the comics convention with Morgan and Ms. Waboombas, clearly still unaware that Ms. Waboombas planned to spend the entire trip fucking me raw. Mindie could be profoundly generous when distracted by good news that was all about her.

  As Morgan, Wendy, Mindie, and the pastor positioned themselves in Helena’s classic automobile, my quirky aunt pulled me to one side and handed me an envelope.

  “There’s some cash in there,” she said, “and a credit card to pay for the car.”