Bikini Beach: The Shower
By Ellie Dauber © 2013
A little stream of consciousness story of one man’s visit to Bikini Beach.
Bikini Beach: The Shower
By Ellie Dauber © 2013
I don’t know why the hell I’m here.
My bitch of a wife, Meghan, insisted that I bring her here. She yapped, and she yapped, and she yapped, but I wouldn’t listen. Of course, once I got her to promise to put that mouth of hers; those big, luscious lips; and that talented, pierced — the piercing was my idea — tongue of hers to good use after we got done here, that’s when I agreed to it.
It’s not a bad place, either; lots of prime nookie on the hoof. I’ll have to come back here without her sometime, and check out some of the local talent.
Monday, next Monday, that’s when I’ll come back. Hell, with my lifetime pass, I can come back here anytime I damn well please. Meghan already told me her office was sending her to some damned training session in D.C. for the week. I can call in sick and let Charlie Proctor do the work for our team. That asshole of a boss won’t know the difference, and Charlie’s too much of a pussy to complain.
The hell with it; Meghan’s probably waiting for me already, and the doors won’t open unless I take a damned shower. Cute joke, fixing them with the door, I wonder how they did it.
Damn, that water feels good, just warm enough to soak out the aches, and the pulse feels like a massage. I wonder if I could sneak Meghan in here for a little fun sharing water.
Oaky, I got wet; that should be all I need to get the door open. Can’t keep my bitch waiting, especially in that new suit I got her, two post-it-sized pieces for the bra and a bottom that’s barely a g-string, that’s entertainment. And if she doesn’t like it — too bad; she’s my wife, and she’ll do what I tell her or else.
It’s funny; I didn’t think the shower knobs were so high up on the wall. And why the hell do I feel so dizzy? I — shit! My arms, what’s happening? Where’s all my muscle? They look like some girl’s arms. My hands, they’re smaller, too, with long, slender fingers and — nails! — there’s polish on my nails.
I-I’ve got tits! Big ones, bigger than Meghan’s, I think, and… my junk, it’s gone! I’ve got a pussy down there. Meghan, she did this to me. I’ll kill here. I’ll — oh, G-d, I feel so dizzy. I’ve got to sit down, got to catch my breath. I can’t think, can’t remember…
It’s over. Ron, that foul-mouthed, sexist, egotistical son of a… gun, is gone. No, not gone. He’s a memory, a memory of somebody else, somebody I’m not and — thanks to that glorious shower — I never was.
I can see Meghan, my best friend in the whole world, Meghan, coming into the locker room now. That girl, Anya, the one who sold me my pass, is with her. I love the way Anya’s hair looks. My hair’s about the same length. I wonder how it would look styled like hers.
As they approach me, smiles on their faces, I smile back and hurry to my feet. I was a guy — not necessarily a bad thing, but I abused the privilege. I was a lousy human being, a total waste of space, but I’m not like that anymore. Somehow, I know that all the worst of Ron is locked away inside me, and that I’m a much, much better person than he ever was or ever could be.
I was a rotten person when I sat down, but now I stand, corrected.
Comments
Now I am wondering what
Bikini Beach, Anya, and The Boss have changed for the better in the new girl? What was he gonna do later and did his wife talk to Anya or The Boss about the pass?
May Your Light Forever Shine
He Needed
Changing. that is one change I will definitely agree with.
Goddess Bless you
Love Desiree
Ah, the Bikini Beach shower!
Washes the body AND the brain! Anytime you find a male too objectionable, a lifetime pass and a mind rewrite by Anya and company will change not just the body but how someone sees themselves, as easily as it could make them forget they ever WERE an icky awful male. OR, in the case of some, an obstacle or a threat.
Easy to just go with the flow, I guess. Ron was such an obnoxious waste of space, I suppose the thought behind his creation was that we all should be happy and cheer on the home team. But since they bend minds as well as twist bodies (and reality itself), it's hard to credit his ... her wonderful acceptance of her "freedom" from being Ron at the end. They could easily have turned him into a bimbo with an IQ in the single digits and made her think it was the best of all possible worlds. Once you "hit the showers" in Bikini Beach, you become an unreliable narrator ... and thinking about that aspect for too long can send chills up your spine.
After all, I'd hate to be "rewritten" so easily if someone found me lacking in meeting their definition of what is right and good and human.
It's a good story, Ellie. Nice play on words at the end, too. But for me, part of what makes it good is that it makes me think more than it makes me cheer. *smile*
Randalynn
Always Good to Think
"Once you `hit the showers' in Bikini Beach, you become an unreliable narrator ... and thinking about that aspect for too long can send chills up your spine."
I hope that it does send chills... I did think about it way too long. It led to my story "A Bikini Beach Summer", and the protagonist was very much an unreliable narrator in certain aspects. It can actually go further. I'm in the middle of the sequel to that story, and a couple side stories to the sequel. (Side stories can help to see how someone would really react to something.) In one of the side stories, the protagonist is an unreliable narrator thanks to a BB reality-shift, even though she was nowhere near BB.
One could wonder in this story if the entire train-of-thought narration were created by BB in the change. ("Bikini Beach: What's Good for the Gander..." by Jezzi Belle Stewart featured something similar: a good man hypnotized to mentally chatter obnoxious thoughts, although not by BB this time.)
"I'd hate to be `rewritten' so easily if someone found me lacking in meeting their definition of what is right and good and human." I've discovered that Values Dissonance between BB and the person changed is quite difficult to write a story about, if I want to take a position that BB was on the wrong side. Another side story has managed to get about half-way there.
The boy made a good choice in "Bikini Beach: A Boy's Visit", right? :-)
-- Daphne Xu (a page of contents)
Personalities don't always change
About a decade ago a person in one of our university towns underwent a sex change. Personality wise he was a b terd before and she was a b h after. Even with the passing of time she did not change.
My therapist knew, though not as a therapist. He/she was an instructor at the U and was known to be self-centered and a acid-critic of others. I guess he/she got out without taking a shower, giggle.
JessieC
Jessica E. Connors
Jessica Connors
Some People Don't Change
The day of her seventy-fifth birthday, my great-aunt Lil woke up and found a single cigarette in the pack by her bed. She decided that, after smoking for more than sixty years, she should stop. She smoked that cigarette, and she went cold turkey, never smoked another for the remaining eight years of her life.
She was as bitchy as hell for those eight years, but, since she'd been as bitchy as hell for the first seventy-five years, nobody noticed the difference.
Ellie
Interesting little story here, Ellie.
Ron was a total piece of s**t, of that there is no doubt at all. His reflections before, during, and after the shower were entertaining as we watched him change. The Questions of self, identity, and Personality along with changing them are present in real life as well as fiction and come up a lot. You showed a lot of that to me in this short piece.
And the last line was funny.
Maggie