Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms (6 page)

“Sordid? Nooooo… ”

“
Trying to impress some young hottie who’s modeling for us?
”

“Trying to
impress
? If I were endeavoring to impress some ‘young hottie’ as you so eloquently put it…”

“’Endeavoring?’ ‘Eloquently?’ Speak English, you damned
re
- tard! This is what I get for sending you to Oxland.”

“Ox
ford.”

“Shut up! I gave you this job because you were the one person I thought I could trust not to cross the line! You know:
The
line
!”

“I am aware of the line,” I said, staring at him and seething a bit myself. The only reason he thought he could trust me with the models was because he—and everyone else in the company, apparently—still thought I was a homosexual. Or at least bisexual with a leaning toward men. Damned Miller Lite. “And I haven’t crossed any…”

“Oh, you’re a lawyer now, are you?”

I didn’t answer. He knew I wasn’t. Or was fairly certain. He was never really clear on exactly what I’d achieved at ‘Oxland’.

“We can’t afford another lawsuit, Corcharan. I made that clear when I gave you the job, and I thought that you—of all the family members available, including that damned, bush-diver you call a sister—
could control yourself!
”

“I have it on good authority she isn’t planning to sue. And until now, I think I’ve controlled myself
quite
admirably considering the circumstances, thank you very…”

“So you’ve been good up till now, and you figured it was the perfect time to start sticking your dick into water bottles…”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!”

“…in some sordid, attempt at foreplay?”

“Foreplay?
”

“You’re not intending to
date
her, are you?”

“What?
Date
her? I’d be lucky if she could think of my name without
laughing,
let alone…”

“As a beard, or something?”

“I am
not
a homosex…”

“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,
any
where…”

“
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
—y
ou 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.