Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [2]
So, part of my job at Wopplesdown is seeing how our undergarments look on actual women. Well, not actual women rather supermodels who stand in for actual women. Real, actual women look more like my secretary, Mrs. Abrososa, a rather smart-looking, grayhaired sixty-year-old, but hardly the kind of vision to hold up traffic when seen semi-naked on a very large billboard; at least, not for the reasons that sell undergarments. Not that I’ve seen her naked on a very large billboard, but I can imagine, unfortunately.
And me? My name is Corky. Corcharan Wopplesdown, to be more formal. But please don’t. Corky works just fine. It beats the hell out of having to explain the proper way to pronounce ‘Corcharan’ (Cock-ran). Or worse, ‘Wopplesdown’ (one paragraph up). With a name like mine at least once a day someone is seemingly required to point out to you: “But . . . it’s spelled Cor-CHAR-an WOP-puhlsDOWN.” Which requires me, in return, to open my eyes and mouth wide in mock surprise, shake my head politely and pretend that particular pronunciation never once occurred, nor was ever tactfully pointed out in the twenty-some years I’ve possessed the name, and had it endlessly sounded out to me by kind-hearted, amateur, English pronunciers.
So call me ‘Corky’. Not a significant improvement, but at the very least simple, and more pithy. (I like the word ‘pithy’, though it does tend to remind one of dead frogs.)
I am the third grandson, fourth grandchild, of the aforementioned oft-sued-elder Wopplesdown, and as such remarkably useless. My job for the family business became—some two years ago, and roughly coinciding with the expansion of the scope and limits of various restraining orders, now also encompassing my father, brothers, and sexually ambiguous sister—to perform any and all functions necessary within a fifty-foot radius of whatever supermodels we may employ. Initially, for a man whose main interest had been, to date, masturbation, this function was a godsend. But as I mentioned on a previous page (or in a previous lungful, depending on whether you’re reading this, or having it read to you), anything can get old. Especially when you learn, as we all should eventually, to prefer being touched over touching oneself.
So my job—specifically—with Wopplesdown Struts, is to convey information to and from management, to and from designers, and so forth, after viewing and taking notes upon countless minimal forms of garmentry. This could ordinarily be accomplished by seeing our clothing on rather surprisingly attractive plastic mannequins, which also barely resemble real women. But since mannequins rarely file lawsuits, that job can still be handled by my various and sundry— and I do mean sundry—relatives. So my job is—exclusively—to view our clothing on actual near-naked women and not get sued. There is, of course, a men’s division, but that’s handled by Mervin Wosserman. The family gave him a kind of ‘pay-off’ job after the drink-yourselfsick incident, and it’s worked out quite well actually, as I have even less inclination to see men in wispy undergarments, and Mervin seems to rather enjoy it.
The thing is (and there’s always a thing that ‘is’, isn’t there?) The thing is: I want to keep this job, and do prefer it to my previous one; that job being primarily lying around inhaling, then occasionally exhaling whenever the need might arise. Being the useless, inert, pampered grandson made it rather shockingly easy for me to live up to family expectations, largely because family expectations were so incredibly low.
So now, having exceeded minimal familial hopes