Purple Daze, or...

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?"

"Lube is water based, silly! I think they're going for the oil-based stuff like Vaseline to keep the dye from getting to your skin. The lube's not gonna do that. Are you telling me you don't have any?"

Bethany stomped over to her bedside table and opened a drawer, defiantly pulling out a red plastic bottle. She marched back silently, squeezing out a daub and rubbing it across her forehead. She thrust the bottle into her friend's hand and stared quietly for a moment. "Look, it's the closest thing I've got, all right? I know it's a little weird but at least it's something. Just rub a little bit on my neck and my ears, okay?"

"Caaaalm down. It's okay. Who knows? I guess it might help. "He squirted the clear, fruity smelling gel into his palm and sniffed.

"Stop that, you pervert!" she groused, bopping him on the shoulder.

"Sorry! It smells good, y'know?"

"Just put it on before my hair dries." She stood before the mirror and pulled up the back of her hair. Stan spread the sticky gel around the edges, lingering perhaps a bit longer than necessary as he kneaded her neck. His hands slid down to the area just under her collar and he began rubbing his now slippery fingers back and forth across the tense muscles of her upper back.

"Mmmmmmm. A neck massage, too. Don't get too carried away, mister, or my hair may never get dyed."

"Sorry. I, uh...I've been told I give good neck massages."

"Oh, don't apologize! It felt...surprisingly incredible actually but maybe some other time. Let's stick to the business at hand, hotshot." She said it but part of her was willing to ditch the whole hair dye project if he would just promise to give her a full body massage that felt like that.

"Sorry. It's just...well...," he sighed trying hard to distance himself from the unexpected stirring in his underwear. "Sorry. What's next on the list?"

"Well, it says to bleach the hair first for best results but I don't have any bleach. Don't you dare say a word! It says with unbleached dark hair you can expect more of a purple sheen instead of completely purple hair. That works for me. At this point, we break out the gloves."

"Here you go. A pair for you and a pair for me. I got the reusable kind, too."

She snapped one of the tight black latex gloves onto her hand and held it up. "Hehehe! This could be fun!" she laughed wickedly.

"Promises, promises. Look, I'll get the back and you get the front."

"Duh! Hey, it doesn't say so but I guess I should shake up the bottle first." She squirted a goodly squirt of the thick, creamy color dye out of the phallic container into her gloved hand and then squirted more onto the back of her head for Stan.

"Now that's more than a little suggestive."

"Perv" she responded calmly, sticking her tongue out at him again in the mirror.

"Sigh. Sometimes, I think you forget that I'm only human, you temptress!"

"Really? Well, humans have two hands. Put yours on my head and rub. We have to cover the whole head in no more than three minutes, then wait fifteen minutes to rinse." Between the two of them, they covered every inch of her hair quickly. Bethany secretly enjoyed the feeling of Stan rubbing her head. "Okay, check and see if you got it all."

"I got it all."

"Check and see. I want to have black hair with purple highlights, not purple hair with streaks."

Stan ran his gloved hands through her wet hair again, not even realizing that he was causing her to get just a little wet down below, too. He could see, though, that the purple dye had gotten on her skin under and around her hair. It ran down her forehead nearly an inch. As expected, the lube had been no help at all. Her ears were a deep purple and her neck looked like someone had smashed grapes on it.

"Guess what, girl. I think maybe we need to try and get some of this stuff off your skin before it dries."

"You're probably right. It should come off pretty easily. I mean, after all, this is semi-permanent dye, not permanent dye."

"Ah! I see. Now, how lucky is that?"

"Here's a couple of old wash cloths," she said as she pulled them out of a cabinet beneath the sink, "and there should be some rubbing alcohol in the medicine cabinet over there."

"Rubbing alcohol?" he asked as he took it down from the shelf.

"Yeah. Just pour a little on one of the wash cloths and wipe the back of my neck if you would."

"Anytime. You realize, of course, that I'm feeling you up more than I've felt up any woman in ages?"

"Quit it! You are not feeling me up, just rubbing me off...err...hehe...let me rephrase that."

"Whatever gets the job done for ya."

"Yeah, well right now your job is to get that purple off of my neck. Here. Scrub." She pulled up a wooden chair and sat down in front of the mirror, rolling her head from side to side to see the extent of her new color scheme.

"Hold still, Curly. Say, maybe you should consider dying the rest of your body purple. Might be better in the long run 'cause this stuff is not coming off easily."

"Shit! Has it been fifteen minutes yet?"

"Only about ten, sweetie"

"Aggghhh!!!" She jumped out of the chair, threw her arms up in the air and tossed herself down on her bed.

"Careful!" Stan reminded her. "You don't want to get the color on the sheets!"

"Fuck you!"

"Well," he said glancing at his watch, "You do have about five minutes open right now so..."

Bethany started laughing and tossed a pillow back at him. "Hey, I am JUST trying to help here!""You dumbass! I'm gonna go ahead and jump in the shower and try to scrub the purple off while I'm rinsing the hair. You see if you can get those stains off the sink with the rubbing alcohol, got it?"

"Yes, Mistress!"

"Shut the fuck up! You drive me crazy!"

"Yeah, well look who's talkin'!"

Bethany slammed the door for effect and turned on the hot water. Stan added elbow grease to the rubbing alcohol to successfully clean the stains off the sink fairly quickly. He closed the lid on the bottle of lube and put it back in its place in her drawer. As he walked back, he noticed a crumpled pair of red and gray striped panties on the carpet. He looked around, listening to make sure the water was still running, then carefully lifted the panties with his foot into his hand. He knew he shouldn't but he couldn't resist. All of this massaging of Bethany's body was getting to him. He held the crotch to his face and sniffed. He had always relished the smell of pussy and this was the first chance he'd had to smell it, even second-hand, in a long time. The aroma was as deeply intriguing and enticing as he had imagined it might be. Inside his pants, things were moving again. He had just reached inside to reposition himself when the water shut off suddenly. Frantically, he threw down the panties and returned to the sink. "You okay in there?" he inquired.

"Wellllll...I am wet...and I am PURPLE, dammit!!" Fully dressed again, Bethany jerked the bathroom door open. "I...am...PURPLE!!"

Stan raised his hand to his mouth to stifle a laugh. As expected, Bethany's hair was only slightly noticeable as purple but her forehead, neck and ears were deeply discolored. "So you actually got IN the shower? I thought you were just gonna duck your head under the water to rinse it." As he spoke, he pulled at the back of her shirt collar and looked down to see violet spots and streaks as far as he could see.

"I was trying to scrub the skin, too, you know? I said I would! Apparently the color washed down from the top of my head onto...well...everything else!" Her voice was quavering and near tears but Stan couldn't keep from cracking up. "Stop laughing, motherfucker! It's not funny!" By the time she had said it, though, she was chuckling herself. He held his arms open to her and she ran hard into them, knocking the two of them over onto the bed still cackling.

"The bed! We don't want to get the bed purple, remember?" he called out, ever the voice of reason.

"Oh, shut up about the bed!" she giggled. " Everything else is purple!" Surprising even herself, she rolled on top of Stan and kissed him. For a brief moment, time seemed to stop as the couple stared into each other's eyes, breathing roughly after all the laughter. Bethany wasn't sure why she had done it and certainly wasn't ready to deal with the feelings it was giving her. Stan was sure that she couldn't help noticing the erection her act had inspired in him.

Time began again only when Bethany's big fluffy cat Twinky leapt up onto the bed beside them. The cat's entire left side was now purple! "Meow!"

"Oh, shit!" Bethany laughed incredulously. "The tub! She likes to roll around in the bathtub after I shower! The pair stumbled off the bed and returned to the bathroom to find the tub, indeed, purple. "Damn! Damn! Damn! My fuckin' landlord's gonna kill me!" she yelled out as she banged her fists against the wall.

"Will you chill? Look, the rubbing alcohol got that stuff off the sink. Let's just use that in the tub. Here." He knelt next to the tub and grabbed one of the washcloths she had gotten earlier. "Just get me the alcohol off the sink." Still clearly agitated, she complied. "Oh, come here, you silly!" She knelt next to him on the floor and he put his arms around her. "Hey, I know this attempt at a celebration is not exactly turning out like you thought but, well,... it'll be okay. We can do this." She looked like she was about to start sobbing. "See!" He started wiping the edge of the tub. "Here. Let me just crawl in here for better access."

"No! You can't crawl in my bathtub with your shoes on, dumbass," she sniffed.

"Fine." He kicked them off and pulled off his socks, too. "Now turn on the faucet so I can get just a little water here."

"Okay." She turned on the spigot at the other end of the tub only to have a torrent of water come pouring out of the shower head unexpectedly drenching Stan before she could turn it off. "OHMIGOD! I am Sorry! I am SOOOO sorry!!" The situation had her laughing again. She felt like she was on an emotional roller coaster. "I can't believe this!" she giggled.

Stan sat in the tub staring off into space, his arms outstretched and dripping. "You know, someday we will look back on this night and laugh," he said dryly.

"I'm laughing now!" she laughed again. "Come on. Take off those wet things and I'll find you a nightshirt or something while I toss 'em in the dryer."

"The hell with that. You and I have become very close tonight. I think you can stand me in my underwear for a few minutes." He pulled his shirt off, revealing a hairier chest than she would've expected. She had always liked hairy chested men. In spite of the bizarre circumstances, she felt her heart skip a beat as he unzipped and slid out of his pants only to reveal a tight pair of briefs that, by purest coincidence, happened to be purple. Bethany fell against the wall and began laughing uncontrollably. "You realize, of course, that it's not polite to point and laugh?"

"I'm not pointing," she said between hard won breaths, " but, uh...you are!"

She was right. The increasingly unlikely series of events that had left him nearly naked in his best friend's bathtub in the middle of the night had thickened up his manhood considerably and this time she couldn't help but notice it.

"Sorry. Just a reflex, okay? Doesn't mean a thing. Here. Would you take these wet things?"

He tossed his soaked shirt and pants at Bethany but her eyes were still on his crotch.

"Hey! You loser! Now look! You got me all wet, too!" she yelled at him as the dripping clothes splashed off of her tee shirt.

"Okay. Let's review: I'm hard, you're wet and I'm sitting in your bathtub running low on alcohol. What's wrong with this picture?"

Bethany thought for a long moment before making her next remark. "What's wrong with this picture, dumbass, is that I'm still dressed." With that, she surprised even herself by slipping off her top, revealing two perky, apple-sized breasts to Stan for the first time outside of his most private fantasies.

"Bethany, honey...what...are...you...?"

"Shhhh!" She dropped the flowered shorts and stood before him wearing nothing but a tiny pink thong with a golden heart emblazoned right on the front. "I guess sometimes the signs are all there but people are too dense to pay any attention to them. I mean, what's wrong with this? Why didn't we ever look at each other this way before?" She lowered herself to her knees and leaned in to kiss her special friend again. Stan kissed back this time, nervous and uncertain but having secretly wanted this for months. Bethany's eyes fluttered open after the slow, sensuous rubbing of their lips came to an end.

Stan spoke first. "We really should, uh, finish this cleaning or..."

"Fuck you," she whispered as she ran her tongue around the inside of his ear. "Or better yet, fuck me," she giggled. "Come on. Fuck me." With that invitation, she turned the water on just a bit, kicked off her underwear and climbed over the edge of the tub. It happened so fast that Stan barely caught a glimpse of her vagina. She settled in tightly, half next to him and half on top of him. "Okay, hotshot. Your turn."

"Huh?"

"I'm naked, sweetie. You're not. I don't think that's fair," she pouted.

"Oh." It wasn't easy to get his briefs off with her squeezed in beside him but he succeeded and Bethany rewarded his efforts by rubbing the literally throbbing cock his efforts revealed.

"It's so big!" she said in a sweet voice.

"Well, no. Actually, statistically mine's just a bit...Owww!"

"Shut up, dickhead," she said as she squeezed his actual dickhead hard. "Why are you so nervous?"

"It's just...Are you sure this is right? I mean. I want you. I guess I always have, really, but..?"