Purple Daze
or
"I'd Dye For You!"
Bethany Coburn wasn't exactly crazy; just exceedingly eccentric for a twenty-one year old law student. The perky brunette had just put in her last night of Hell at a marketing research job she had hated intensely for 4 out of the 5 months she'd worked there. To celebrate her newfound freedom, she decided to do the only logical thing. She was going to dye her hair purple.
As soon as she grumped in to her apartment, Bethany was on the phone with her best friend. "Stan, what are you doing?" she yelled almost breathlessly into the receiver.
"Well, let's see..." came a yawning reply. "It seems to be nearly Midnight if I'm reading the clock correctly and I worked until about ten. Oh, I don't know....sleeping, maybe? Yeah, that's it. That's right. Sleeping." His voice was calm but dripping with sarcasm. This wasn't the first time that Bethany had called him at odd hours with odd questions.
"Shut the fuck up, dumbass!" she barked but with a distinct giggle in her voice. "I need you to come over and help me dye my hair purple." She expected him to ask if she'd lost her mind but he knew her well enough to know that it was already long gone.
"Fine. Sure. Great. Sounds like fun. When?"
"What do you mean 'when?' Now! I finally finished with that fucking, suck-ass job tonight and I have a great need to do something stupid to balance my karma before I have to go back to school next weekend, okay?"
"Balance your...? Awww, c'mon you lunatic. I had a really rough night and I've gotta be back in first thing in the morning. Can't we do it tom...?"
"Fine! Whatever. I can do it myself. I just wanted a little company, okay, so I thought I'd call my best friend but if you consider your need for sleep to be..."
"Hey! ...Hey...Gimme an hour, okay. One hour." He sighed audibly." I'll meet you at your apartment."
"Yay!" You could hear the little girl excitement rise in Bethany's voice when she got her way...which she usually did with Stan.
The two of them had worked together at a used bookstore last year but they'd had too much fun not to stay in touch when they had both moved on. Stan was a little older but was enamored with Bethany's goofy, free spirit. Sometimes they'd talk on the phone in silly accents until the middle of the night but if you asked either one what they talked about, they couldn't tell you. They bickered and argued but they had fun being with and talking with each other. What they didn't have with each other was sex.
Bethany was between boyfriends, though, and spent quite a bit of her time wishing she wasn't. Oddly, about the only time she didn't think of sex was when she was with Stan. She always thought of Stan as more of a "partner-in-crime", a Tonto to her Lone Ranger, an Ethel to her Lucy. And dying her hair purple was definitely a sitcom moment.
Arriving at Bethany's apartment complex a little before 1 AM, Stan tiptoed to the familiar white door with its sign "Warning! Mutant Cat!" and knocked lightly. In response, the door swung open suddenly and Bethany dragged him in by his left arm and slammed it shut. "Where the hell have you been? It doesn't take an hour to get here. I was worried sick!"
"Calm thy cute little ass down, girl. I did say an hour, remember? Besides, I had to stop for gas so I picked up a couple pairs of those reusable latex gloves, too. See?"
"What? Look, I HAVE done this before, you know? Don't you think I would've thought of that already? Jeez!"
"You'd think but...uh, did you?"
"C'mon. I'm tired and I'm getting cranky. Let's get this over with." With that she started down the hallway toward the bathroom.
"Umm, excuse me?" he asked holding his ground in the entranceway. " DID you think to get the gloves?"
"NO!! Dammit!! We're past that, alright?" she yelled from out of sight. "Get your ass in here."
Stan smiled to himself and sauntered along the hallway.
The bathroom was brightly lit but tiny, barely big enough for a toilet and a bathtub shower. The sink was actually in the corner of Bethany's bedroom, just outside the bathroom door. As Stan arrived, Bethany had just pulled on an old gray tee shirt and a pair of flowered shorts that she didn't mind getting stained as they dyed her hair. She was chattering a mile a minute about her last night on the job but he was barely listening, his attention instead drawn by the rather phallic bottle of hair dye on the edge of the sink. "'Pumpin' Purple?' What the heck does that mean?"
"Hell if I know," she said as she grabbed it out of his hand and held it up to the light to read the instructions. "Okay. First of all it says 'Wet hair thoroughly.' I love simple instructions. Wait here." She scrunched up her nose playfully, handed the bottle back to Stan and slipped back into the bathroom. He couldn't help staring at her sexy rear and smiling as she bent over the tub and began saturating her dark, bouncy hairdo under the shower. Her tight shorts rode up nicely and he could nearly catch a glimpse of her shapely cheeks if he tilted his head just right. They may not have had that type of relationship but that doesn't mean he didn't fantasize about it occasionally. Besides, there's always time to admire beauty.
"Hmmm. It says here..." he started, returning to the instructions.
"Hey, stupid!" she yelled out over the roar of the water, "I can't hear you! In case you haven't noticed, I've got my head under the shower!"
"Oh, believe me, I've noticed!" he responded loudly at the exact moment she turned the water off.
"Jeez, you don't have to yell," she commented calmly as she dripped back into the bedroom lightly toweling her hair and sticking her tongue out at Stan.
"Sorry. Here. Just let me bang my head on this wall a sec."
"Stop that! Now, what was it you were saying?"
"I was about to say that it says here on the bottle to apply petroleum jelly to the surrounding skin to keep from getting it stained."
"Hmmmm..." she paused in thought.
"What 'Hmmmm?'"
"Weeeeell, I... don't have any petroleum jelly but...well...I guess this might be TMI but I do have some strawberry flavored lube."
"Hah! Hahahahahahahhahaha!"
"WHAT?"
