Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [15]
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