Upstairoids: A Public Service Announcement


But for one chance occurrence, it might have been yet another routine day in the tedious life of Angelica Robinson. Wake up before her alarm. Slink out of bed quietly to avoid waking her grouch of a husband. Wake Greg anyway. Use her shower to try to rinse off the sting of his insults. Take the subway and ignore the surly glares of fellow passengers for the crime of having a butt that took up one and a quarter seats. Into the hospital in time to see Dr. Simmons making slimy come-ons to one of the conspicuously plentiful conspicuously pretty nurses. Sit behind a desk filling out forms and fielding calls from confused and angry patients. Pause for lunch. Get smirked at by aforementioned nurses. Return to afore-mentioned forms and calls. Then home to make dinner for Greg. Try not to let his complaints about her cooking hurt too much. Try not to let his disinterest in her body hurt too much more. Watch Johnny Carson, chapter of a book, bed.
This had been Angelica’s life ever since she’d moved LA with her husband four years ago. She’d been assured he was a shoe-in for a big promotion. Instead the move had been lateral, or so he claimed, and more recently the stresses of hoping his neck wouldn’t be next on the chopping block had sapped what little energy he used to have left over for his wife. Her job was more secure, but no more invigorating. At first she’d thought being a receptionist for Dr. Simmons, surgeon to the rich and vain, would be glamorous and exciting, but in her fluorescent-lit corner of the office, she seldom even saw her coworkers, let alone anyone famous. 
So when she woke up that Tuesday morning, she had no reason to think anything would be any different than any other Tuesday. 
“That an earthquake, or just you rollin’ out of bed?” grumbled Greg as she got up.
“Why Nurse Kendrick, if you get any prettier, I may have to prescribe you a less flattering uniform so the other girls don’t get jealous,” said Dr. Simmons to a woman, Somebody Kendrick, in the elevator. 
“No, I need to talk to the guy in charge,” said the delivery guy, looking around for someone with a penis.
This last one finally seemed to require a reply, so Angelica swallowed down her irritation and snatched the package from his grip. “I am in charge,” she said. Which, since she was the only person who worked in this little nook, was technically true, at least until a doctor walked in. 
The man frowned, but didn’t make any further fuss. He wasn’t even wearing a uniform, nor was he even carrying one of those clipboards delivery guys always carried. “This is important stuff, so make sure Doc Simmons gets those ASAP, all right, lady?” he said, then turned to leave. Passing a nurse in the hall, she heard his tone completely change to offer a “no, excuse me, miss.”
Forty pounds, she estimated. The difference between grudging “lady” and gracious “miss.”
What was so important about this package? she wondered. She looked it over, but with was no information on the box, she could only cut it open and look.
“Atroneurinol,” she read aloud.
Now this was something. Most people only knew the stuff as “upstairoids,” as its early marketing push had been towards beleaguered college kids with too much of their daddies’ money to fritter away. When that market had proven too small, they’d started pushing it as a dietary supplement. It was pretty new, but there was some real buzz around it. Working as she did in a hospital, Angelica had heard about how potent this stuff was from Dr. Simmons himself discussing it in the cafeteria with some colleagues.
Of course, it was also now illegal. Nancy Reagan reminded her with preposterous frequency to just say no. Something about some side effects, she’d heard, but hadn’t bothered to learn what. But why was Dr. Simmons receiving a shipment of illicit drugs?
Angelica wasn’t stupid, but it did take her most of the afternoon to realize and then accept the why of it. Her boss was pushing drugs! Here they were. On her desk. With no record of having arrived.
She shouldn’t.
She couldn’t.
Could she?
No, that was silly.
Self-medicating was dangerous, she told herself.
When she found her gaze lingering on the box of little pink pills, she insisted that if there were something illegal going on, she wanted no part of it.
Of course, Dr. Simmons will see you opened the box, so you’re already part of it. Maybe he’ll be mad. Maybe you’ll get fired. And you’ll lose the apartment, and Greg will leave you, and you’ll have to move back home and suffer the endless I-told-you-so’s of her parents.
Just one. To see.
________________
By the next morning when Dr. Simmons thought to pop in her office and ask if anybody had delivered anything for him, they were already underneath her bathroom sink at home.
“Oh. Yeah, they got dropped off, but when I came back from lunch the package was gone. Somebody from the mailroom must’ve got them.” Good. Having deliveries swept into the hospital’s delivery system was a common occurrence, and the story was not so elaborate to draw attention, nor so vague as to seem evasive. Well done.
Dr. Simmons shot her an accusatory look, though it was the one she was used to, the one that was because she was overweight and he resent having to look at her, not one of suspicion of wrongdoing. She was ugly, and therefore not worth interacting with. He walked away, and that was the last she heard of it.
On went the routine, with the simple addition of a daily pill. In case it worked, she signed up for a membership at a gym near the hospital as an explanation for any gains. She doubted atroneurinol would live up to its hype, but Angelica figured the worst case scenario would be she got a little exercise and spent less time around her jerk of a husband. Still a win in her book.
By the time the following Tuesday had rolled around, she finally had the courage to step on the scales at the gym. 
“Ten pounds?! I did it! It’s working!” she shrieked to no one in particular, jumping up and down in her increasingly ill-fitting sweatsuit.
“Good for you,” said the woman waiting behind her. “How long that take ya?”
“A week.”
“One week? Holy cow, what’s your secret? Give up eating?”
“Just, um, working hard, I guess,” she mumbled.
“Well congratulations…?”
“Angelica,” she said.
“Sherri,” the woman introduced herself. “Congratulations Angelica. You’re a hell of a hard worker.” Angelica smiled so big at her literal pat on the back that she barely minded Greg’s failure to notice.
Two weeks in, and another milestone reached. 
Her husband had sex with her.
That shouldn’t have felt like an accomplishment, but it did. They’d been friskier, if never especially wild, when she’d been trying to get him to ask for her hand. Nevertheless, she had to admit (as if Greg would ever let her forget) she’d let herself go since getting married. They’d made love less and less, until this past year they’d done it exactly once apart from her birthday and their anniversary, when he’d been so drunk he probably would’ve slept with anyone who asked. Yet one night, out of the blue, he’d looked at her with that little sparkle he had, rolled over onto her side of the bed and grunted at her until he came. 
Not romantic, not pretty, but it was spontaneous, and that was new.
Angelica inspected herself in the mirror the next morning. She did look better. As her waist slimmed down, it was as if some of the fat was migrating to other areas to help it along. Her breasts had never been very big, especially for a bigger girl, but that morning they were actually… dare she think it? 
“They’re… perky,” she said to her reflection.
Meanwhile, her thighs seemed to be redirecting to her butt, which seemed a good compromise from where she was sitting. Her endurance was up, and she simply felt better. She’d run a mile for the first time since high school, and she’d even gotten herself new workout clothes to get with the times. Pink wristbands and headbands, with a matching scrunchie to prop up her permed brown hair. She couldn’t even believe it, but when she first tried on her new leotard… she actually didn’t hate the way she looked in it.
It wasn’t until week three (twenty-eight pounds down!) when she had another startling revelation. Angelica wasn’t simply looking better to herself… she was looking better.
In her teens, she knew she’d been a relatively pretty girl. Never the It girl or anything, but she’d had boys interested since she could remember. So to suddenly step onto the elevator one day and see Dr. Simmons to a double take was mind-blowing. 
“Angelica…?”
“Good morning, Dr. Simmons,” she said in her usual pleasant tone.
He turned away from the nurse he’d been chatting up, who glared over his shoulder at the receptionist. “Well look at you. You’ve been hitting the gym, haven’t you?”
She shrugged. “Yeah, some.”
“Some? Come on, look at you. I always said there was a pretty young thing hiding behind those glasses of yours, and here you are vindicating me. Your husband’s a lucky fella, Mrs. Robinson. You know that?”
She giggled in spite of herself. It was all the harder to refrain from blushing at his unabashed interest when she knew full well he’d slept with at least two other married women in the hospital. He was known for it. “Oh, stop,” she protested half-heartedly.
“I’m serious! You try to hide it, but you’re a stunner. Isn’t she, Nurse, ah…”
“Dawson.”
He didn’t hear her, too wrapped up in the effect he was having on Angelica. “You stop dressing like a nun, and we might have to have security posted outside your door to keep the boys away. Or maybe we won’t,” he said, giving her a wink.
Those words stuck with her. She’d been like that lately, her brain seeming to absorb stuff better. She caught herself mumbling song lyrics under her breath to songs she didn’t consciously remember hearing. She didn’t even like Cyndi Lauper, but one day on the subway with someone playing “Money Changes Everything” and she’d memorized it. So when Dr. Simmons said “stop dressing like a nun,” she spent a not insignificant amount of time pondering what that meant.
She undid a button. Then when a custodian paused to leer during his rounds, she considered undoing another. At lunch, Dr. Simmons smiled at her in passing, and she hastily acquiesced to the impulse.
“What’s gotten into you?” asked Greg that night as her kissing moved from flirtatious to suggestive.
“Nothing,” she said coyly.
“No, I mean it, Angelica. Lately, you’ve been… I dunno. It’s crazy, but good crazy, maybe. And have you lost weight?”
She nodded, beaming. He finally noticed! “I, um, got these diet pills. Nothing serious. Just once a day.”
Greg Robinson, who was notoriously tight-fisted on anything even potentially filed under “nonessential,” simply laughed. “Well hell, maybe it’s time you do two a day. I like this side of you, sweetheart.”
________________
Angelica popped the second pill that night before she brushed her teeth.
________________
It didn’t take long for Angelica to wonder if she was over-doing it.
The most obvious differences were the physical ones. Dead and gone was the old Angelica, with the shape and complexion of an old potato. But the newer Angelica, pretty Angelica whom strangers smiled at and men hurried to hold doors open for, she was fading too. In her place was this new creature, this thing of tightness and well-placed curvatures, smooth-skinned, glossy-haired – except below the neck, where her hair had all fallen out. Greg had gone goggle-eyed when he’d seen her pussy, porcelain-smooth.
Pussy. That was a word she’d never liked. She’d been raised in a God-fearing household, and she’d been raised to be a lady. Yet when Greg had rolled his eyes and complained for the millionth time about her calling it a vagina – “you’re a woman, not some medical diagram in your hospital. You have a pussy” – the word had stuck.
Which was the other change. Her brain. It was like she was constantly having good ideas. It had started with mundane things. Changing the route she took to work, leaving home 5 minutes earlier to take the D bus to the train station, which meant she could skip the subway altogether now that the extra couple blocks of walking was no longer such a chore. She revamped her filing system, streamlined communication, chunked her time better. She was earning that $6 an hour now. 
Outside of work she was doing better, too. Her workout wasn’t just random exercises, but a routine designed by gurus like Richard Simmons. (Who knew he wrote books?) It had even helped with her cooking; Greg hadn’t given her any compliments, but he complained less, which wasn’t nothing. She found she could easily split her attention between a book and the TV without losing anything from either, and she found all sorts of self-help books on dieting, exercise, nutrition, and fashion.
Except it wasn’t just the ideas. She’d started noticing how words would get in her head, and… well, take this morning for example. Once again she’d found herself in the elevator with Dr. Simmons, and once again, he’d been slathering on the compliments. Angelica had to admit, she did look good, too. She never would have thought it would feel so good to look so good. If she had a more direct supervisor rather than simply being a secretary for a half dozen doctors, she never would have gotten away with this outfit. Red pumps to show off her toned legs, a skirt that wasn’t quite mini but was toeing the line, a sheer blouse that was tight across the shoulders, tight across the tummy, and positively clingy across her breasts.
“Mrs. Robinson,” Dr. Simmons said, his tone full of that boyish charm of his.
“Dr. Simmons.”
“You are an absolute vision today,” he said, appraising her head to toe, especially in between. “Although if I’m not mistaken, doesn’t the hospital dress code require women to wear a bra…?”
She knew the policy, and it had pained her to violate it. She wasn’t some hussy, after all, but Sears could only deliver them so fast! She’d already gone from a modest B cup to a D in only a month. What was she to do? Wear those old nun clothes?
“I’m sorry, sir. I swear, tomorrow I’ll–”
He laughed, patting her shoulder. “I’m only teasing, Angelica! I think it’s bold of you, and let me be the first to say, that policy was obviously written by a man who’s never seen this body. Right?” His hand remained on her shoulder, though it drifted downward as he spoke, slowly, yet so quickly.
“Um, I guess so,” she said, nervous. What could she do? The flirting was well and fine, but she didn’t want to be felt up by the man. Yes, he was rich and handsome, but she was a married woman, after all! With no witnesses and the word of a doctor against her own, though, there was nothing to do but grin and bear it as he patted her butt, wearing that cocky grin.
“You seem tense, sweetheart. Relax. I’m just being friendly. You want to be friendly, don’t you?”
You want to be friendly. The word echoed in her mind, repeated in her own voice. “I want to be friendly.” Was that out loud? His hand didn’t move. But she supposed that was what being friendly meant. Letting Dr. Simmons touch her. So when he gave her behind a squeeze and a few pats right before the door opened for his floor, she only smiled back. In fact, she was so friendly that he let the door slide closed, then tugged at the neck of her blouse to peer at her cleavage.
“You must make your husband very happy,” he said. The next time the door slid open, he actually exited, but she was still pondering that thought.
________________
As it turned out, Greg was only too happy to give her pointers on how to make him happy. She brought it up as a topic over dinner, and after Angelica painstakingly convinced him that she wasn’t trying to pull some kind of fast one on him, he started opening up. It was the most they’d spoken in months, she was pretty sure. Usually her conversations with her husband began with a criticism about something she’d done, or said, or worn, or her essential nature; they ended with a sulky apology, always from her. Lately he’d been nicer, though, and that night, he actually seemed happy with her. 
The more she agreed, the happier he became. Angelica wasn’t merely agreeing to be accommodating, either; the stuff he was saying actually made sense. She should straighten her perm. It was reasonable to let him make the purchasing decisions. She really ought to keep from making noise with the dishes or vacuum while he was watching Dallas.
And, she had to agree, that spontaneous blowjobs were a great idea.
This will really strengthen our marriage, she thought – or he said? whatever – as she sucked him off that night. Later, when she surprised him in the shower with another, she couldn’t help but think – literally couldn’t help – that she had the potential to be one hell of a cock-sucker. Something she never would have aspired to, but the way he said it, it sounded like such a good thing. As she applied her lipstick after waking him up with another right before she headed to work, she had to admit he was right – she would look hotter if she spent more time and energy on her makeup.
Dr. Simmons definitely seemed to think so, from how friendly he was to her when he stopped by her office the next afternoon. “I don’t know who did your work, Mrs. Robinson, but you must be incredibly proud of them,” he said, testing the weight and she supposed the balance (or something?) of each breast.
Angelica had always thought that women who were vain about their appearance were utterly useless, but then, maybe it was because she’d been raised to be humble. Her breasts looked sort of fake to her, larger by the day and impossibly buoyant, but men seemed to love them. (To be friendly, she let them admire at their leisure, smiling invitingly.) She really ought to be proud. She had something women coveted, and men lusted after. Surely that was an admirable trait, right? So she made sure they were well-displayed whenever possible. Sure, Angelica had only started taking the atroneurinol to shed a few pounds, but getting a bust to rival Jamie Lee Curtis was a nice side benefit.
As much fun as Angelica was having in her slimmer, sexier bod, she felt lucky when someone happened along to help her get her original goal back into focus. Angelica had been considering giving up on the gym, since all the workouts in the world couldn’t achieve a tenth of what her pills could. Then Sherri – that same nice woman who’d complimented her a few weeks back – once more happened to be behind her in the locker room when she was weighing herself, and once more offered her congratulations.
“Man, I couldn’t have that kind of discipline,” Sherri said. “Nicely done.”
“Thanks! My husband’s going to be so happy with me, I hope.”
The woman’s smile muted, but she got past it quickly. “Hey, you know what? I actually do a class here, and enrollment’s always a little light. You want to do some solid cardio with good music and agility training, we got it going on.”
“Hmm, maybe,” she said tentatively. “What’s the class? One of the aerobics things? My husband talked about getting me a video cassette to try it at home, but we didn’t think a VCR was worth the investment. Besides, I can be such a clutz!”
“Well then come to my class. Tuesdays and Thursdays – pole dancing.”
Her eyes widened. “Pole dancing?! I could never!”
“Sure you could! You’re built for it, doll. And you talk about making your husband happy…”
“I don’t know…”
“Come on. You gotta come. Body like yours is a plain waste if you don’t learn how to move it!”
________________
Angelica cut back to one pill a day. She wasn’t stupid, after all. She knew she was a bit too open to others’ advice of late, and it had landed her in a situation where she spent her days getting ogled by the guys at work, her evenings (and nights) (and usually mornings) fellating her husband with no reciprocity whatsoever, and now she was learning to jump and twirl on a pole in a class with what she was increasingly suspicious were actual strippers. In fact, after a few weeks, she found out that most of them worked for Sherri, who was herself a former stripper who’d done so well she now owned her own club. Angelica supposed that at least she was learning from actual professionals.
It all felt right. It felt good, that same high she’d always gotten when she’d been hit by a really great idea, or acted on impulse and watched it pay off. Still, that had to be the drug. So she went back to one pill a day, and tried not to let the boys get the wrong impression of her. Flirting was fine, even if it was pretty forward at times. Leering was OK, too. Ogling, even. Light groping was a maybe – only if they were being especially friendly. But when Dr. Sullivan tried to proposition her for a blowjob, she politely told him she was not that kind of girl.
Except for her husband, who she was now blowing so often he sometimes had to tell her he wasn’t in the mood.
So Angelica cut back. In fact, after a few more weeks, she cut back to one every other day. Partially it was a test to prove to herself she really was still in control, but it was also because she thought she might be reaching her peak.
Whoever this woman looking at her in the mirror was, she was gorgeous. Radiant. Full, luscious breasts that would put Dr. Simmons’s best work to shame – his words. The thin, flat tummy of a track star. Wide hips and a wider bottom that just screamed her readiness to squirt out a dozen children on command, or at least invited a man to help her try. Her old acne scars were gone, as were the varicose veins that had been creeping into evidence on the old Angelica’s legs. Now, her skin was a golden, glowing testament to the glory of living in the most beautiful city in the world (smog notwithstanding). Her hair hung halfway down her back in golden, glimmering cascades, its natural curl insufficient to work against the weight of these strands but still giving them waves like she was used to seeing only in Clairol commercials.
The closer she looked, the more she marveled. Her lips were fuller, plump and pouty. Her eyelashes were longer. Her neck more graceful, her eyebrows sculpted. It even straightened and whitened her teeth, she was pretty sure, though those were at least one thing the old her had always had pretty well in control.
She was a woman she’d never known she should have been dreaming of being. Greg had never been happier; once in a while he even let her have sex with him in her pussy instead of pursuing her calling as the perfect cock-sucker. She’d gotten really good, thanks to some tips from some of the girls in Sherri’s pole dancing class and a whole lot of practice. Greg was loathe to pass any opportunity to pass his cock through the pleasure portal of her lips, but once in a while he said he wanted “to watch those titties bounce while I have a go at ya.”
“Don’t be vulgar, Greg,” she rebuked as she climbed aboard. His crudeness didn’t come close to giving her pause at fulfilling his request; she was aroused basically all the time, and only her moral upbringing kept her from giving in to the daily advances made on her by the doctors at the hospital. (The custodians and clerks and other personnel used to flirt with her, but somewhere along the way she got the impression they no longer found themselves of a calibre to match a woman like her. She was still friendly whenever they came by, though.)
“You like it.”
“I do not!” Thankfully, with her reduced dosage, she was able to keep her vocabulary intact from suggestions like that. Her titties would remain breasts.
Then they were making love. (That’s not the term he used, but it was the one she liked.) She really liked having sex with Greg. It didn’t have that same pressure and intensity that her blowjobs did, where she was monitoring every twitch of tongue, lips and teeth to see what pleased him and filing it away for the future. Here, she could simply move her hips and enjoy herself – and the massively increased sensitivity in her pussy was a delicious bonus, to say nothing of her nipples, which Greg never failed to play with during the act.
“You know, you never told me how you…” he gestured vaguely to her body, curled up naked beside him after. Seeing herself in the mirror on her dresser, it looked like she was posing for some lewd Playboy spread or the like, but really, it was just how she looked now.
“How I what?”
“How you transformed my hog of a wife into this gorgeous woman in my bed.” 
She winced. Those words still hurt, somehow. “I go to the gym, honey. You know that.” He didn’t know what she did there, of course, but he knew she went.
“Bullshit. No workout drops you thirty pounds in three months.”
“Forty-eight pounds, actually,” she said softly. She didn’t like correcting her husband – that was another thing he’d made clear displeased him – but it felt important. Her weight was such a factor of how she’d come to see herself of late.
“So it’s deeper bullshit than I thought. Come on, tell me. Unless you seriously think I’m so damn stupid that I’d believe the gym helped your tits triple in size, or whitened your teeth.”
After a brief hesitation, she shrugged and confessed. She kept the pole dancing and her work friends to herself, wary of upsetting him, but about stealing the pills, that brief period where she’d been overdosing, and how she was back in control of it now.
“Here I was worried you were cheating on me with one of those doctor fellas,” he said when she finished. 
“Oh Greg, I would never!” She hastily crawled into position to suck his cock, but he held her back.
“Wait, so these pills, they made you into this,” he said, smacking her tush appreciatively, “and you halved the dose? Sweetie, you should have doubled it.”
She shook her head. “There’s side effects, Greg. It’s not just the body, it’s–”
“What? You look better than you ever have, you smile more than you ever used to, and unless that orgasm was faked–”
“Faked?! No!”
“–then you’re having more and better sex than you ever did. What’s not to like?”
Her lips twisted. She couldn’t tell him all of it. He’d get mad, she just knew it. “Just trust me, OK?”
Greg rolled his eyes, then flopped over on his side, facing away from her. “Fine. God, here I thought the bitch was gone.”
Angelica waited for him to turn back to her, but soon her husband began to snore. He didn’t so much as look at her again until his morning blowjob, and even then, he made it clear he was only doing her a favor. She thanked him after, but he rolled over and went back to sleep. Even the thorough shoulder/breast-rub Dr. Simmons gave her during their daily “briefing” failed to cheer her back up. (He called it a briefing because he often asked her to flash him her briefs. She hardly ever did though, unless she was feeling especially needful of a friend.)
That evening, she sat waiting all evening for her husband to come home. Dinner got cold, candles melted to their bases. She put on some of her sexiest lingerie, the bright pink crotchless panties and half-cup bra she’d bought from that specialty boutique downtown that Sherri had recommended. (She’d been two-pilling it back then; she’d spent close to a thousand dollars there before Greg took away her access to their joint checking account.) Still no sign of him. She ditched the clothes and reverted to nudity, her usual bedtime attire these days, and as Carson ended with her sitting in solitude, Angelica forlornly shuffled to the bathroom and gulped down a pair of pink pills.
“I took two again,” she mumbled to him when he stumbled into bed sometime after midnight, reeking of booze.
He halted in the middle of tugging his shoe off, falling sideways into bed. After a few curses aimed at her, he finished with his shoes and looked back to her with a soft smile. “That so?”
She nodded. “Two. Like you wanted. I don’t know if I can keep–”
“Atta girl, Angelica. Come on, I’ll let you put that mouth of yours to work.” She had to help him with his pants, but in no time she was back at what she was best at: sucking cock. He was so drunk he fell asleep almost right away, but it wasn’t the first time she’d blown him to sleep. He was just awake to mumble, “You’ve gotta keep that double dosage, sweetheart.”
She didn’t know if it was the atroneurinol in her bloodstream, or the sight of lipstick on his collar, but the next morning, she didn’t balk at chasing the splash of Greg’s semen with a second pill.
________________
Her routine changed a good deal quicker after that. It started with a suggestion from Sherri to come out after class with the girls. With Greg away on a work trip – at least, he said he was – she figured a night out would do her good. Six martinis and a thumbnail-sized tattoo of a heart on her left hip later, she was regretting it. When her husband saw it, he rolled his eyes. “Two nights on your own and you’re out getting tattooed? Tattoos are for sluts.”
Angelica might have thought nothing more of his comment, excepting that Sherri had talked her into it by claiming, “Tight little body like yours? Skin like a baby’s ass, ass like a stripper’s ass? You were made to be inked, Angelica!”
When she was showing it to Dr. Simmons later, he said he thought it was really cute, and that he wanted to check to see if she had any others. He wasted no time sliding down the side zipper on her miniskirt.
“Doctor, I, um, I’m not wearing any panties,” she protested softly.
“Good, it’ll save time,” he said, caressing her as he tugged her skirt over wide hips and a plump behind.
“I…! I’m not that kind of girl!”
“Oh. So I guess you’re just a tease.” Dr. Simmons stepped back, obviously disappointed at her denial. Part of her was surprised he didn’t keep going after her anyway; with her skirt around her knees he had to be able to see how wet she was, and with her top already wide open from his usual greeting, her nipples doubly confirmed her arousal.
“I… I mean… I guess I am a slut?” she said. That’s what Greg had said, and after all, who knew her better? Angelica took his hand and pulled him back to her, his smile – leer, really – reviving instantly as she placed it on her bottom.
She wondered if Greg would mind that Dr. Simmons fucked her in her office – and later on in a medical supply closet – and again in his office while a woman waited outside for a consult – but she figured he’d told her she was a slut. Knowing him, he’d probably be mad if she didn’t sleep with him.
Angelica made sure to thoroughly clean out her pussy before she went home, just in case. Before long, in fact, that got to be a routine part of her day, sneaking off to the lady’s room to clean herself up from whatever doctor (or custodian, or sometimes patients’ husbands while Dr. Simmons gave them breasts more like hers). If Greg ever noticed, he didn’t complain as long as he got his morning/evening/bedtime blowjobs. He’d often promise to have actual sex with her, but she’d simply gotten too good at sucking cock to make him want anything else.
Besides, tattoos weren’t his thing, and as she started coming home with a new one pretty much every week, she could hardly expect him to get hard simply from having his gorgeous, busty, curvy, drippy, slutty, needy, pleading, obedient wife spreading her legs for him. Not with all these weird, depraved tattoos. 
Sherri was always pushing her to get wilder, sexier, weirder. The letters “EZ” on her right hip; Greg’s name in place of where her pubic hair used to be; a naked woman swinging on a chain suspending a disco ball on her side; some sort of being the artist called a “succubus” across her chest, its legs sprouting in the midst of Angelica’s enormous breasts. They’d used that actress Kelly LeBrock as an inspiration for the face. Greg had said he thought she was hot, and he’d be the one looking at them. One of the ones, anyway. It came out pretty hot, but it didn’t stop her from trying to one-up it the next week. It was as if the more Angelica caved to suggestion, the more her new boss wanted to test her limits.
Sherri was, after all, her boss now, and Dr. Simmons had long since made it clear she was always to do what her boss said. She only worked part time at the hospital now, and even then she didn’t have any real responsibilities except to sit at her desk and wait for someone to want to use her body. Angelica had so many friends now, she couldn’t possibly count them all. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, however, Sherri had signed her on for the day shift at The Bouncy House, the club she and the other pole dancing girls worked at, where she made five times the money even working days so as not to upset Greg’s blowjob schedule. She would’ve quit the hospital and worked there full-time, but a slut like her would never last in a job where she only got to tease the boys and not actually sleep with them. 
In fact, Sherri had had to yell at her more than a few times for trying to have sex with the men at the club, but she kept forgetting. After all, like some sweaty pig had told her during one of her first lap dances, she was a stupid slut. He’d said it like twenty times. It had sounded mean at first, but then she figured she wasn’t going to get a good tip by over-analyzing it, so she let it go. Then she stopped analyzing pretty much anything. When she and Greg watched Carson any more, she mostly just giggled whenever he laughed and went back to sucking him off. She had incredible memory retention, but gave up any desire to think or wonder or imagine.
Angelica just smiled, tried to look sexy, and did whatever felt natural. Unless Greg or one of her bosses told her to do something else, in which case she did that.
________________
By the time she ran out of pills, it was almost a year after she’d swallowed the first one. Greg never seemed to notice when her breasts finally stopped growing, somewhere beyond Dolly Parton proportions, a constant nuisance to her balance on the pole. Almost every inch of her that her work clothes covered was covered in tattoos, which more recently had devolved into simple labels for her body using the words of her clients at The Bouncy House. Most of her naughty parts had at least four or five such labels. Angelica didn’t even notice the artist skipped a T on her left breast to accidentally dub it a “tity,” eager as he was to take her up on her offer to fuck him after. 
(Not for payment for the tattoo or anything, though she probably should’ve tried that. Which only showed what a stupid slut she was.)
As her supply had dwindled, she thought about seeing if Dr. Simmons could get her more of her pink pills, but she felt like she was in a good place. The boys at work were finally appreciative of her. She had an incredibly satisfied husband. She loved her job, and her other job. She was in the best shape of her life, and it was a shape that invited leers everywhere she went.
She felt a little guilty, though, as Greg had told her to keep ODing and she was defying him. So one evening, after she swallowed down his cum and waited patiently for the monologue to finish and a commercial break to begin, she resolved to tell him that on that very morning, she had finished off her stolen supply of upstairoids. She could feel that familiar tingle in her brain, open to everything she saw and heard, and knew it could be the last time she ever felt it. Unless Greg told her to find more. 
“I guess you can’t get much hotter any more,” he said, adding, “except those damnable whore tattoos.”
“I guess not,” she agreed.
“You’ve been taking those for a long time now, and it’s done you a world of good, Angelica. You’re sure? You’re really done with them?”
She gave it one final consideration. Her husband seemed disappointed, yes, but he wasn’t telling her she had to this time. Only, right before as she opened her mouth to tell him, she heard a woman’s reedy voice on the television. 
“You’re right. I do care, and I’m greatly concerned about the epidemic use of drugs.” Angelica craned her neck back as it continued and watched as the first lady expounded upon her concerns about the harm drugs were doing to American families. Greg listened with a wry grin at the timing of it; Angelica with a vacant, slack-jawed stare. Her default expression.
“And remember. Just say no,” Nancy finished, and the jingle of the next ad began.
Angelica looked up at her husband, who was still waiting for an answer to his question. What had he asked? 
Oh, right! In those few seconds, her resolve had melted. “No,” she said, taking the first lady’s advice. What the heck, maybe in a couple more months her “tities” would swell enough to squeeze in that extra T. Tomorrow she’d ask Dr. Simmons if he could get her some more upstairoids; she could offer to give him that threesome with Nurse Kendrick he always teased her about as leverage.
After all, those pills were now a part of her simple        , routine life. And she wouldn’t trade it for anything.