Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms

by Chuck Austen

  “Oh!”

  “Showing us your…what is that you’re wearing?” I said, trying to sound nothing-more-than-curious while crossing my legs, leaning on the water bottle, and rubbing my chin with my best author’s-photoon-dust-jacket contemplative expression.

  A rather large bubble ‘blooped’ up around my ‘cork’.

  Ms. Nuckeby, her lovely mouth hanging open, watched the bubble in stunned amazement, and only after considerable effort managed to shake her brain and loosen its stranglehold of horrified interest on my nether regions.

  “You want me to continue posing?” she asked incredulously.

  “These designs are behind schedule, and the fashion show won’t wait I’m afraid.” I smiled, attempting to be firm. Mentally that is. “Time is short.”

  “That’s about all that is.”

  The red of my cheeks flushed even redder, and I moved the clipboard to block her view. She continued to look there as if she could still see it anyway. Perhaps she was yet another of the many sole survivors from the planet Krypton.

  “Um…sir?” she asked. “Are you sure you don’t want to…”

  “Nope.”

  “Maybe just take a minute to…”

  “No. Thank you.”

  “But there’s a bathroom right out…”

  “No time, Ms. Nuckeby.”

  And besides that, little Corky would…

  Hah! I just got that. Little ‘Corky’. Kind of a pun, if you…

  Never mind.

  Ms. Nuckeby paused and stared at me as if my head were three sizes too big, and not because it had extra brains. Mrs. Abrososa did the same.

  “Well, all right,” said Ms. Nuckeby finally. “As long as you’re comfortable.”

  “I’m good.”

  “I’m sure the water bottle thinks so too.”

  I flushed again.

  “What is it you’re modeling for us, today?” I asked, gesturing toward the fluff that dangled before her fertile crescent.

  “This?” she asked, surprised, while turning her magnificent hazel eyes downward to examine her own—in my obvious opinion— flawless womanhood. It clearly did not have the same debilitating effect on her that it had upon me. “I don’t know. This is just what they gave me.” She turned to look at it from all her many fabulous sides and another bubble blooped.

  Truly, the wisp of a nothing she had entered wearing was barely cloth. The design was little more than a red, translucent, heart-shaped panty-like thing adorned with a few feathers and a bit of a fringe. The feathers were—presumably—for creating the illusion of potential flight, while the fringe was intended to obscure the view of her…em…

  I made a note to have the fringe removed from the design immediately.

  Three thin strands of alleged fabric connected this bit of gossamer fluff to something even more insubstantial in the rear, which wasn’t even really trying to cover what I considered to be her—and I’m sure others would have agreed with me on this point—glorious backside.

  Gloop, bloop.

  “Yes. Of course,” I said, ignoring the rising bubble, then creating another when I turned my attentions to the faint indications of neatly trimmed pubic hair through the shear weave of fabric. I turned away, flushing, and scribbled more notes on my clipboard, supposedly in English, but I’m not entirely sure.

  “Of course,” I repeated, my voice cracking like a tree frog being devoured by a python, and subtly adjusted my clipboard in another pathetic attempt to cover my ten-gallon fish tank and it’s lone swimmer. I looked toward the ceiling and did my best to appear disinterested. “But isn’t there supposed to be…oh, I don’t know…a top of some kind?”

  Ms. Nuckeby, now suddenly concerned, looked down at her clearly well maintained breasts and scowled a bit. She absently reached up and cupped them as if she needed to feel that there was, indeed, truly-and-honestly, nothing between them and me. Multiple bubbles gurgled, and more water splished to the floor. Finally she turned her large, liquid, doe-like eyes to mine, smiled, and shrugged, which did delightful things to the aforementioned boobs.

  Bloop.

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. This is all they gave me,” she said.

  I turned—reluctantly I admit—away from Ms. Nuckeby and consulted my clipboard through the blue of the water bottle. “According to my notes, and the original drawing, this version of Satin-Lace-Babydoll # 43 is supposed to have a top. Corkscrew patterns with little hearts in the center to match the…uh…your…uh… ” Glurgle. “…the panties.” Creak, ribbet, gulp.

  “This is all they gave me,” she repeated nervously, shrugging again as if that settled the matter. The shrugging made her now obviously natural and unaugmented breasts bobble yet again, and that settled the matter for me.

  She smiled apprehensively and waited. I smiled stupidly and waited. What were we waiting for?

  After an uncomfortable pause I realized my gaze had drifted down and I was staring, again, at Ms. Nuckeby where one should never stare at a woman one doesn’t know—semi-clothed or otherwise—especially when smiling, silent, and erect. Instantly embarrassed, I jerked my attention upwards back to her face and smiled even bigger and more pleasantly, as if reassuring her that this certainly could never be her fault. She wasn’t responsible for the missing bit of non-clothing. I wasn’t staring at her crotch. I was ‘working’. ‘Assessing the product’. ‘Contemplating the viability of sales’. And the conclusion I had reached was that if our customers looked half as good in this as Ms. Nuckeby did at that particular moment, we could cut our fabric costs in half and exceed every stock estimate for the next ten years.

  “Manschingloss?” I called out, suddenly enough that both Mrs. Abrososa and Ms. Nuckeby jumped a bit. I made a considered effort not to glance over to see how the abrupt movement had affected Ms. Nuckeby’s chest—but failed miserably.

  Bloop.

  After sufficient time, during which the room could preload Manschingloss’ silent irritation, the large, bear-shaped man strode into the room wearing lipstick, a floppy pink hat, a rainbow-colored scarf, and the kindly smile of an ogre whose every fiber screamed, ‘anything you might think, say, or do from this point forward can only aggravate me’.

  “Manschingloss,” I asked. “Is there some reason Ms. Nuckeby here wasn’t given the top to her…em…ensemble?”

  “Is there some reason you’re having sex with a Sparkletts bottle?” I blinked.

  I saw his point. What was I thinking? Was I thinking? I believe the answer to that is patently obvious; so patently obvious that it cannot be tautologically over-expressed.

  I stood, intending to exit, and in so doing proved my penis to be not only robust, but also filled with determination and resolve. The bottle remained suspended before me.

  “We’ll postpone the viewing until the other half shows up, shall we?” I said, ignoring the fact that no one in the room was looking at my face.

  “I have it right here,” Manschingloss said, holding out what looked more like a pair of comedy glasses than something an attractive woman might wear over her…em…

  Gloop.

  “I can put it on her now,” Manschingloss said. “If you, and your girlfriend there can just wait a moment.”

  He began draping the bits of fabric over Ms. Nuckeby’s breasts, and I walked into a door.

  “No. Necessary. Not. Later. What?” I said, and managed to get out on the third try.

  After I had been gone a moment, I heard Manschingloss sniff. “Had I known all this time he could fill a ten-gallon bottle, I might have been nicer to him.”

  And this brings us to ‘the line’.

  My job description—as written by my grandfather, personally— contains just three words, though one is a contraction. ‘Don’t get sued.’

  So you might be wondering why I didn’t simply exit the viewing room once the water bottle had made its interest in me known and put an end to the relationship quickly and cleanly with a minimum of water bottle sex. Any sane
man would have. The answer to that is quite simple really: I am not sane. And besides that, more tellingly, I wanted to continue looking at Ms. Nuckeby.

  Hence-o, Facto, Problemo.

  I’d seen many a beautiful woman in my years with the family business; a high percentage had been erection-worthy. But there was something electric about Ms. Nuckeby that clearly revved up the old lust-engine where others had left it merely idling in park.

  Even now, here in my office several minutes later as I stood shaking out the front of my trousers in an effort to—I don’t know, give the water molecules a ride—I was still fighting my way out of the ‘undergrowth’.

  “Your grandfather’s going to be furious,” said Mrs. Abrososa, watching me pace in a failed attempt to hide my obvious and continuing attraction to Ms. Nuckeby.

  What was in that water bottle, topical Viagra?

  “Furious? Why?” I asked, stunned, and somewhat frightened. Being at Wopplesdown Struts and hearing the words ‘Grandfather’, and ‘furious’ conjoined was a lot like being lost in the jungle while wearing barbecue sauce and hearing ‘lion’, and ‘ravenous’ in the same sentence. It instilled the kind of reaction the makers of incontinence briefs live for. “Why furious?”

  “You just did a pole dance with a water bottle in front of a naked girl. A naked girl employee.”

  “It was an accident! I didn’t do it on purpose!” I studied her for a moment. “You were there. You don’t think I planned that, do you?”

  “No, I don‘t think you planned that,” she said, irritated, as if she were a motherly sixty-year-old woman, and I was headstrong child, young enough to be her…

  Suddenly our relationship made much more sense.

  “But don’t you think,” she continued, “you should have called off the meeting—maybe unstuck little Corky there and not made her stand around and watch you do…whatever it was you were doing?”

  I gasped. I steadied myself against the desk. I looked around the room for a clearly marked exit.

  “Make her stand there?” I said. “I didn’t make her…” I paused. I studied my secretary-slash-mother-figure and slowly felt sadness and fear overwhelm me as I realized she was right.

  “Well, I didn’t mean to.”

  “What did you mean to do?”

  “Nothing. I just…” I paused, unsure if I should admit it, then suddenly realized that in retrospect maybe it wasn’t all my fault. “She could have walked out.”

  “Don’t be such a Wopplesdown!”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you’re being a sexist pig! She couldn’t have walked out! You’re her boss! Her employment hinges on staying and doing what you tell her to do—even if it makes her uncomfortable! Do you understand that this is why they call it harassment?”

  Well, I did now.

  “Oh, God. Really?”

  Her expression said: ‘Yes, dumbass. Really.’ She could be brilliantly nonverbal, Mrs. Abrososa.

  “Oh, God,” I repeated. “What have I done? This isn’t what I wanted, I just… ” I looked at her sheepishly and decided to just get it out there—as if it wasn’t already. “I’ve just never seen anyone so beautiful in my life. I didn’t want either of us to leave. I just wanted to stay there, and…be near her.”

  Mrs. Abrososa’s sarcastic demeanor faded, and she studied me with deepening sympathy. After a tender moment, she moved closer and put a gentle hand on my shoulder, looking me in the eye with genuine affection.

  “What are you, an idiot?”

  I flinched, physically.

  “That’s how it always starts!” she said and smacked the side of my head. “Men never mean to. But they still do! They like it, and they don’t think about the woman! This is why we need laws—and more lady judges appointed by Democrats!” She put her hands on her hips and glared at me. “That girl was naked! Vulnerable! And you made her stand there and watch you with your dick in a bottle! You think she found that attractive? I sure didn’t. If she doesn’t sue you, I should!”

  Blood left my brain. My knees wobbled. My breathing shortened. I could already feel Grandfather approaching with my severance package in his right hand and a one-way ticket to shantytown in his left. I had no job skills. No interests. I would be homeless, and probably still erect. I wondered how much money one could make as a male prostitute. Maybe Mervin Wosserman could point me in the right direction.

  Mrs. Abrososa was right. Unfortunately for me, and our family coffers, staying to enjoy Ms. Nuckeby’s immense beauty while performing ‘Live Sex Show with Plastic Container’ could also be interpreted as ‘intent to further inflict suffering, and harm’ by the sort of masterful legal minds who spend their days handing out business cards at funerals. At its simplest level, my staying in the Garment Viewing Room might have seemed innocently lecherous. But there’s another, very fine line between innocent and stupid, and I think it’s becoming rather obvious that I am on the other side of that particular line.

  The…er…stupid side.

  Quite plainly, I am not in a position to judge the ‘reality’ of the situation. I am too close to it. And I am a man.

  If you’re not a man—and I’ll assume some of you may not be, or are unsure—you may not have experienced precisely how incoherent a male can become when confronted with an object of immense desire, and/or female, so I’ll try to make this as visual as I can. Are you familiar with how cattle are slaughtered for their meat? Do you have access to the Internet? What happens to a heterosexual man in the presence of a deeply attractive woman is really quite similar to what happens when meat producers fire those bolt-gun things into the unsuspecting brains of a cow: instantaneous brain death followed by several minutes of wide-eyed tongue lolling, and mindless squirming. It’s enough to make one a vegetarian. Or celibate.

  Jokes seem funnier, especially your own, the sun shines brighter, and what happens for the woman really doesn’t enter into it.

  Given all this, surprising as it may be to you, in my line of work until today I had never felt the need to impregnate a Sparkletts bottle. Even with the seemingly endless parade of stunning young nubiles that have wandered up, and down the halls of Wopplesdown Struts, I have managed to avoid—aside from the occasional brief stiffy—any more significant attraction, and the resultant gibbering, thrashing, and lawsuits that proceed therefrom. Because for some reason, in order to overcome my intense, mind-numbing shyness, and fear of failure in order to actually approach a woman, I—until today—needed to be stimulated by a woman’s mind, as well as her body. My grandfather believes this is because I am a homosexual.

  So in my case, the fact that I have found some woman attractive—debilitatingly so, even without so much as knowing her political affiliation—and have managed to overcome my innate insecurity and forced her to remain in my presence while I kept throttling my bottle, so to speak, puts me way, way, way over that damned line I mentioned earlier, and into a part of the world where English is, at best, a second language. Worse still, even now—as lawyers’ numbers are likely being speed-dialed throughout the building—I am continuing to feel a junkie’s desire to rub up against poor Ms. Nuckeby while removing Satin-Lace-Babydoll # 43 with my tongue, entirely convinced that she might find it appealing.

  Brain-bolted indeed.

  ‘But…’ you ask, being the romantic that you are, ‘…isn’t it possible, by some miracle not yet known to modern science, that she might actually want you too?’ HA! You obviously know nothing about me.

  Beyond that, there is a reason the number of company lawsuits far, far exceeds the number of successful model/boss relationships at Wopplesdown Struts (the actual number of the latter being zero.) Take a moment to refer back to my job description. I’ll wait.

  Back? Good.

  While you were gone, Mrs. Abrososa went, at my request, to check on whatever trauma I may or may not have induced in Ms. Nuckeby, while I attempted to dry my pants with the iron I keep around the office for just such occasions. It might
have been more effective, and less painful, had I removed the pants beforehand. But I was trying to hurry the process and avoid being caught—literally— with my trousers down. Fortunately for my future generations, Mrs. Abrososa returned and saved me before I singed off something important.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded, snatching away the iron. Then, gesturing disgustedly toward my Natazzi’s. “Give me those.”

  “What? You mean take them off?”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Here?” I said, horrified. “Now?”

  “What? You think I’m going to see something I didn’t see back there with Ms. Nuckeby?”

  I grimaced at the thought.

  “Did you find her?” I asked. “Was she upset?”

  “From what I hear,” she said. “I don’t know. I didn’t see her.”

  “She’d already left?”

  “If she did, she wasn’t wearin’ nothing but the company undies. Her clothes were still in the dressing room.”

  The thought of Ms. Nuckeby running through the city wearing the bottoms of Satin-Lace-Babydoll # 43—in slow motion—once again caused the little soldier to pop up out of his foxhole.

  “My God, boy,” Mrs. Abrososa said, apparently quite amazed. “You’re like a party balloon how you inflate. Lord, have mercy.” She held out a hand. “Now, gimme those pants.”

  I withdrew from her. “Mrs. Abrososa, really…”

  “I got twelve kids…”

  “Twelve?”

  “…most of ‘em boys—and twenty-seven grandchildren. You ain’t got nothin’ I never seen before.”

  “But . . . we aren’t even on a first name basis.”

  “Agrapanthila. Hand ‘em over.”

  “Agrapanthila?”

  She raised the iron and gave me a menacing look. “You want kids of your own?”

  I still hesitated. “Wouldn’t this constitute harassment?”

  “I got an iron!”

  I stripped off the slacks without further hesitation.

  Once I’d handed them to her, she stood there folding them over her arm and continuing to stare at my crotch. I moved my hands to block the view, and she looked up at me with disgust.