Chapter 8

Tim had just told Philbert that they should take an aggressive approach and open a booth featuring their Bimbo Panties at a Public Radio convention.

"You're joking, right?" Philbert said. "You must be joking, because walking into a convention of liberal feminists like that would be sheer insanity. I have no desire to be castrated, my friend."

"No, it's genius," Tim said, as his secretary Consuela fondled him to see if she could get him hard again. "Nobody would expect us to be there. We could pretend to be lingerie salesmen who have developed a new product that is good for the planet. You know, something like all-natural, organic panties. 'Environmentally safe, and firm enough that they're good for your posture!' Those granola eating enviro freaks in public radio would eat it up."

"We could call them Enviro Panties," Philbert said, brightening to the idea. "A name like that would certainly get their attention."

"I like it!" Tim said. "And you're right, it's just politically correct enough to work." He was about to come up with some snappy advertising copy, but Consuela had succeeded in getting his penis hard as a rail again, and he lost his train of thought when she took the entire thing in her mouth and started sucking rhythmically on it.

The idea was a keeper, though, and two months later the boys showed up at the annual Public Radio convention in Washington DC, posing as lingerie manufacturers who were selling their new environmentally safe panties. They had reinforced the panties with lots of spandex so they could make their claim that these undies offered support that was good for the lower back.

Inside, however, each pair of panties had the Bimbo Maker formula in a gel packet sewn into the crotch. What's more, Philbert and Tim had used a special kind of synthetic fiber that molded the panties to a woman's body so tightly that as soon as she moved even slightly the gel packet would burst and the Bimbo Maker formula would come in contact with her skin. After that it was only a matter of moments before the Bimbo Maker formula was in a woman's bloodstream and transforming her into an empty-headed sex-mad bimbo.

The boys grew beards and wore crew neck sweaters and khaki pants to disguise themselves (and also to fit in with the sensitive, Pita eating, grad student look of the crowd). They set up a booth in the large exhibition hall and put up a sign touting their Enviro Panties as "Good for the environment, and great for your backside! Guaranteed to make your butt a size smaller while making your conscience feel so much better!"

The convention was filled with booths from vendors who were selling organic foods, handmade tribal products like blowguns and nose flutes, clothing made out of jungle plants, and DVDs with lectures on them about how we needed to close down all the corporations and replace them with a barter system straight out of the Stone Age. The women all had either waist length braided hair or buzz cuts, and it looked like they had taken the pledge never to eat meat, vote Republican, or wear makeup.

Despite the fact that they had skinny hips and asses that were almost concave, they all seemed interested in the Enviro Panties. They seemed to think their asses were too big, when in fact most of them had bottoms so small that both cheeks could barely fit in the palm of Philbert's hand (not that he would have tried it on them. He knew that would have set off alarms everywhere and he'd have been attacked by the lesbian security guards who were patrolling the floor wearing military fatigues and jackboots, with their sleeves rolled up to reveal huge, tattooed biceps the size of basketballs).

"You're sure these are environmentally friendly?" one woman asked, holding up a pair of white panties. Philbert and Tim had made sure they manufactured the panties in sensible colors like blue and tan and white. They knew this audience would never buy anything as racy as black lingerie.

"Oh, yes," Tim said. "They're made from a formula handed down through generations by shamans in the Amazon rain forest. It uses plant fibers and tree sap, so when the panties wear out you can simply use them as fertilizer for your garden. They biodegrade in no time."

"Are you sure?" the woman said, hooking her fingers through the panties and stretching them. "I have a radio show in Boston called 'Panties and Patriarchy', where I discuss the repressive nature of male dominated corporations that make lingerie, and how they spew chemicals into our environment and promote harmful female stereotypes. If these are really environmentally friendly, and if you can prove your liberal political credentials, I might be interested in having you sponsor my show.

"But if you're lying about these panties," she said, stretching them even further, "I'll have you thrown out of this convention. These things are suspiciously stretchy, which makes me wonder. They feel like they're made of spandex."

"Not at all," Philbert said. "That stretchiness is from the saliva of a rare green hopping toad, and we harvest it under laboratory conditions, taking only a few drops from each toad, so as not to hurt the poor creatures. It's stronger than spandex, though, and molds itself to any woman's shape. It can take inches off your bottom."

"Is that so?" the woman said. She was rail-thin, with thick glasses and frizzy red hair, and she was wearing a shapeless blue cotton dress that hung on her like a sheet. Philbert could tell her bottom was no bigger than a grapefruit, and did not need any shrinking. For the women in this room, however, a big bottom was just about the worst thing that could happen to them, besides having to eat processed food.

"Hmm," the woman said, trying to make up her mind. "Let me ask my friend what she thinks. Meredith! Come over here, please."

Meredith had been trying out a pair of headphones that played whale songs and speeches by angry 19th century feminists, and she had to take the headphones off to hear what her friend was saying.

When she finally put the headphones down and came over, Philbert realized she would be a hard sell. She had a lean body with a hawkish face and thin lips. The top of her bony chest, where normal women had cleavage, had a "Death to Patriarchy" tattoo, with a picture of a penis being skewered like a hot dog on a shish kebob stick. She was wearing black combat boots, khaki military pants that hung loose on her, and a denim jacket with the arms cut out. She had dirty blonde hair that was an inch high all over her head, and the skin on her face looked like it had been scrubbed with a wire brush.