Charley is 25, reasonably good looking, has an interesting job and does all right with the girls.
OK. To be honest, he liked girls and has been known to date them if he could. He'd even managed to get laid a few times. Well, if you insist on knowing, three times but he didn't have to pay for it. All right, I'll admit he had to pay the second time, but he didn't know she was a hooker until afterwards. He still says she wasn't a real hooker but just trying to get compensation for the way he made love. None of the girls he'd talked into bed had ever stuck around for a second night, and Charley was just a little despondent over this.
Now one of Charley's little hobbies was beach combing, so any night that he didn't have a date Charley would wander down to the beach and check to see what the tide had washed up. Now that I think of it, he spent a lot of evenings at the beach. But on this particular day Charley was to have a change of luck. He found the bottle, one of those old wine bottles in a wicker basket, quite pretty even if it was a bit grotty, so Charley did the old polish the bottle to see what it was like clean.
Now I'm sure you're all expecting the big puff of smoke, the genie emerging, Charlie shitting his pants in fright and the three wishes, but it just doesn't happen that way. There was this little popping sound when Charlie did the polish bit, and the Genie was sitting on Charley's shoulder. A good three inches tall, light blue in colour and a really natty suit. (Made by Gieves & Hawkes in London. Prices start at $5,000.)
Now Charley looks at this little genie and the little genie looks at Charley.
"You're a genie?" queried Charley.
"Your perspicacity does you credit, o noble master. I am indeed a genie. Your genie. You may call me Abdul."
"You're a very small genie, aren't you? Is Abdul your real name."
"If you have to live in a bottle that size, you'd better be bloody small and no, my name is not Abdul. If you ever learn to speak basic genie I will be delighted to tell you my proper name, but because you currently don't, let's go with Abdul."
"If I'm your master, does that mean you have to give me three wishes?" Charley asked, suddenly getting with the plot.
"Not exactly," said Abdul. "There's been some changes since the fairy tales were written. One of those changes is that the genie council has decided that, because of human overpopulation, the lucky bottle finders are reduced to one wish. And you have to ask for it today. We're busy people you know."
"So I get one wish, but it can be anything I want," said Charley with a very large smirk on his face.
"One wish, and we mean one, and we don't allow wriggle room. You think it over and remember, one means one. By the way, the council has gone politically correct and reserves the right to veto any wishes they feel don't match their criteria. They've also gone green so any wishes have to be energy neutral. And they're pro-life, so don't even think of trying to smite any enemies you may have."
"That last bit doesn't matter. I don't have any enemies. Can I wish for eternal life? That's pro-life."
"No enemies? I can think of three women who can't stand you. Especially that fake hooker who made you pay up after your sex session. No. You can't wish for eternal life. To give you extra life we'd have to deduct it from other people. Books have to be kept in balance, you know."
"Can I wish for a fortune?"
"That's one of the easier ones to grant. No worries from my end but are you thinking this through?"
"What do you mean?" asked Charley suspiciously.
"It's like this," said the genie. "I dump a hundred million into your bank account and you're rich. Then the IRS want to know where you got the money. Think they believe in genies? The Home Security guys, they'll think terrorist money and they'll be all over you, and even if they do believe in genies they'll point out I'm from Arabia and probably a terrorist. You really want the hassles?"
"How about charisma? Could you make me so charismatic that women will flock to me and I'll get laid every night."
"That's another easy one for me. I just take a smidgeon of charisma from a few million men and dump it on you. Women will be falling out of trees trying to get to you and screw you. They'll also want to get pregnant by you. Can you afford hundreds of cases of child support?"
Charley was starting to get really narked now. What was the use of a wish if it wouldn't even get him laid? A thought. "True love?" he queried.
"Rules say we can't coerce another person, and to be your true love we'd need a lot of coercion."
Charley was getting more than narked now. He considered carefully, what did he really want? Well, that was easy enough. He wanted to get laid, repeatedly. Now, how could he achieve this with a wish. The problem seemed to lie in his abilities as a lover. He'd heard what a couple of those girls had claimed about him, and while he didn't believe it maybe he could learn how to better treat a woman. How to be a bit more like his boss, Randy, who always seemed to be successful with women. How could he learn how Randy treated them?
"Abdul, is it possible to change me into a woman for a day?" he asked.
Abdul considered this and then nodded. "I can do this. To balance the equation I'd have to change a female into a male for the same period of time, but if I do this to a baby still in the womb then no-one will notice and the baby would revert to female when you revert to male. Yes, I can do this."
"OK, Abdul. My boss Randy is currently between girlfriends. My wish is this: when I go out tonight I want to be a female who Randy will find incredibly attractive, and I want it to be mutual. I want to be in a position to experience love making from the female side, so that when I revert to being a man I'll remember exactly how to please a woman in bed."
Abdul considered this. Charley seemed to have all bases covered except one. "I assume that you won't want to get pregnant if you intend to have sex, right?"
