By P. S. Ehrlich

“Whoever can this be?”  …Well of course I know it’s you.  Why else would I have dialed your number, said “I’m here—talk to me,” and hung up?  What do you mean, “Why don’t I just call collect?”  You know how I like to hear my phone ring.

Hold on a sec—

Uffff.

Ahhhh.

I wore my burnt orange bra today.  (Why “burnt” orange, I wonder?  Who burns their oranges?  Must be the same clowns who juice their toast.)  ANYhoo, it’s just a tad snug, this bra, being intended I guess for B-minus boobies instead of my B-plusses.  But it’s so pretty, I hate to demote it to laundromat status—you know, the stuff you wear only when everything else is in the hamper.  I wish I could find the same bra in neon shades—regular glow-through-your-tops, give-guys-a-thrill colors.

(Slurp.)

You’ll be very glad to hear that my nightcap tonight is a good honest soulful mug of Nestlé’s Quik.

So, um, before I forget—

About that night when I went a little overboard, had a tad too much glug-glug and then went even overboarder, yelling and such like—and you took me out of the bar, and I can’t remember exactly what happened next except I yelled some more and started taking off my, well, you know—you were there after all, which I really appreciate even if I haven’t mentioned it nearly enough, but that was the whole point of my yelling and um er “flashing” and so forth, and your being there at least kept me from doing it at the whole bar or the whole street but just in an alley, where at least no cops were hanging around, or any homeless people or dumpster rats—oog!  There weren’t any, were there?  No DON’T tell me if there were, I’d curl up and die if I thought I’d flashed my boobs at dumpster rats, oh YUGGH…

(Shudder.)

(Slurp.)

Anyway, I’ve come to terms with it—that night, I mean.  It bothered me at first that I passed out, but now I’m glad I did.  And that you were there.  And are still at the other end of my line, now.  Hold your phone up close a moment—

(Smooch.)

Okay.  Let me just climb into bed and under the covers…  I’ve still got goosebumps at the thought of ratflashing.  Ooh you should see them, they’re not just on my arms—it’s like I’ve got a pair of hairless quill-less porkypines here in my nightie…  No, Mr. Comical Joker, they do not “look like burnt oranges.”  Please!  I may be petite, but you can hardly describe these babies as oranges.

Am I getting you all steamy-bothered, talking about my casabas right out loud over the phone?  Well good.  And serves you right, too!  Beats me why men make such a constant fuss over them.  I mean when you think about it, they’re a fairly demented body part to get slobbermouthed over—once you’ve been weaned, anyway.

(Slurp.)

(Hee hee!  What a weird word—“weaned.”)

Say it was elbows instead:  A respectable Nice Girl would have to keep hers covered up except at homecoming dances and the like, where she could only put the curve of her funnybones on display.  And even then I suppose you slobbermouths would all the time be trying to peek up our sleeves and fumbling with cuffbuttons and organizing wet-elbow contests.

Mind you, I was perfectly satisfied to grow mine in the first place.  (No, not my elbows!  Pay attention!)  Not that I anticipated anything less than a B-plus, what with my mom’s hootergenes leading the way.  Just as well too that I moved back in with Mom when I turned 11—no telling otherwise when I’d’ve got to strap on my first bra.  All the time I was living with Gramma in Marble Orchard, I had to wear undershirts.  Girly ones, with tiny pink ribbons and whatnot on them; but I mean really!

Cathy Sue Hoopleman and I used to go down to Winslow’s Department Store to at least look at the bras, touch them and feel them and imagine lecherous teenage boys doing the same with us inside.  We’d wait till Intimate Apparel was pretty much deserted, but every goddam time this horde of old fat women would descend to coo at us.  “Just too darling for words,” one of them said to me—boy did I want to kick her in the old fat kneecap.  She had a bust like the Titanic, too, drooping like it’d struck an iceberg.

I was reminded of all that (well, not the iceberg) just last Saturday when RoBynne O’Ring and I went over to Liquid Skyjack.  While we were trying on legwarmers, RoBynne suddenly decided she wants to design her own line of New Wave lingerie.  That is, after she finishes writing her smutnovel and guest stars in a dozen music videos.  She asked me to think up a good brand name, and I suggested “Brazen Hussies,” but after she chased me out to the parking lot we decided that “Titular Assets” was even better.

And they’ll come in nothing BUT neon, by golly!

Hunh?  “What happened with the lecherous boys?”  What a thing to ask!

Well, the first one I ever allowed to cop a feel was Jeff Scolley—you know, Jonny-Quest-with-an-overbite.  And he was such a little gentleman, I had to take his hand and plant it smack on the front of my jumper.  I thought he was going to do some jumping of his own, and since we were up in my treehouse at the time, that might have mortified his overbite.

But looking back, I don’t think either of us was ready—to fully appreciate what we were up to, that is.  For one thing, such bosom as I possessed at that point was pretty much lost in my jumper and blouse and stupid old undershirt.  Plus, I doubt Jeff had gotten his first underbite yet, if you catch my drift.  But oh!  It felt so very adultlike and forbidden, us knowing that Gramma and Mrs. Scolley would keel over with heart attacks if they caught us in the feelcopping act.  (At least that’s what we told ourselves.  Probably they would have cooed “Just too darling” at us.)

Now, the first guy to reach second base was Lonnie Fesso.  What a wild man—I know I told you about the time he smashed the Halloween piñata, Borneo style.  Well, he could strip you to the waist just as fast and almost as savagely.  (Hey!  That sounds like a Linda Blair movie, doesn’t it?  Savage Cleavage!)  Wouldn’t even wait till he got you in the back seat—and he had this cruddy old Buick, too.  Having half your clothes yanked off in the front seat of a cruddy old Buick can make a girl feel positively undressed.

(No, I do not mean “negatively”—that would be below the waist.)

Now buns:  Those I can understand the ogling of.  I’ve been known to ogle a couple myself.  I’ve mentioned the high standard of bunnery where I work (and lots of those belong to licensed physicians).  But then again, buttocks are just as ridiculous to get worked up over.  Speaking as a former aspiring professional improv comic, you can’t go wrong when it comes to cracking jokes about rear ends, har har.  I mean people must’ve laughed at pratfalls back in prehistoric times.  Some guy like Fred Flintstone or Hammurabi (and with a name like that you know he must’ve been rump-sprung) falls splat on his tuchis, and everybody else drops dead with guffaws.

(Yawn.)

Well!  Thanks for letting me get all that off my chest.  As it were.  Or as they are.  Consider yourself kissed good night by Pinky ‘n’ Perky.  And yes, I know it’s not all about “cuppage.”  Lots of it, even most of it, depends on the twinkle in your eye and the sparkle in your teeth and “the way you wear your hat, the way you sip your tea.”  (Yeah!  Thank you!)  But let’s face it:  If you’ve got Pinkies that are Perkies, you’re equipped with regular icebreakers.  Winter and summer.

And oh before I forget—if you think you’re not gonna bankroll my going on an absolute SPREE at the Tickle Me daintywear boutique sometime very soon, you are one awfully mistaken sweetpoppa.

Just don’t ever ask me to justify sex appeal.  It’s a cross I’ve simply had to uplift.  (Cross-your-heart, that is…)