Dare to be Stupid

The beach was filled with happy people enjoying the warm sun, the soft breeze, and the tranquil blue waters of the Mediterranean, but thankfully Dorothy Powers had managed to shut all that out so that she could get some serious work done. She was tapping away at her PDA with a stylus, trying to massage the third-quarter projections and wishing to hell and back that she could log onto the database at work to get up-to-the-minute numbers, when she felt someone tap her on the shoulder.

"Dorothy?" She looked up to see a somewhat familiar face--not a friend, because she was a business rival and business rivals didn't make good friends, but at the very least a business rival Dorothy respected. Sharon Devereaux, former CFO of TransGlobal United, stepped down a month ago to concentrate on 'health and personal well-being.' Now she was standing on the beach, wearing a skimpy bikini and sporting a perfect full-body tan. "Dorothy Powers?"

Dorothy lowered her PDA for a moment. Sharon might be out of work at the moment, but a business mind like hers wouldn't stay that way for long, and it never hurt to network when the opportunity came up. "Sharon," she said, favoring her with a smile. "So this is where you wound up. I have to say, you've made the most of retirement."

Sharon gave a bubbly little giggle. "I should have done it ages ago," she said. "Between you and me, I'd almost forgotten what fun felt like." She plopped herself down on the sand next to Dorothy. "So how about you? Relaxing, taking in the fun and sun?"

Dorothy rolled her eyes. "Getting bored out of my mind, more like it. I tried telling them that I didn't need a vacation, but they rolled out an armload of corporate shrinks, full of spreadsheets on 'improved productivity' and 'healthy work-life balance'. So I got a mandatory three weeks off. Oh, don't get me wrong," she said, waving her arm airily about at the other beach-goers, "I'm sure that the average person benefits from a chance to get away. But people like you and I? We thrive on the pressure. That's what makes us great."

Sharon gave her a sorrowful gaze, filled with a sort of smug pity that made Dorothy want to shove her stylus through Sharon's eye. "I used to think like that," she said. "I was just like you, Dorothy, all work all the time. I even had a cot in my office so I wouldn't have to go home! But then I found something that really changed my life. I've stepped away from my job, and I've never been happier."

Dorothy set her PDA down. "Wait--you mean to tell me that you really did voluntarily step down from TransGlobal? I mean, I know that's what the press release said, but come on. If all you ever did was read the papers, you'd think nobody ever got fired from a top job."

Sharon leaned back, letting her body soak in the sun. "Oh, no. You can believe me, I quit all on my own. The job was boring, it was hard, and I wanted to have fun. So I am."

"It was eleven million a year! You don't walk away from eleven million a year, Sharon! TransGlobal's last three CEOs served time as CFOs. That job is like being handed the company on a silver platter, and you walked away because it was 'hard'?"

Sharon sighed. "I can see you're not going to get it until I show you. Come on up to my room. It'll only take about a half-hour. I'll show you the DVD that changed my life."

*****

Dorothy sat on the bed. "This DVD had better be pretty spectacular, Sharon," she said as Sharon popped a disc into the player.

"Oh, hush," Sharon said, a little bit of a giggle in her voice. "You weren't having any fun on the beach, so why not sit in here and mope instead? Besides, you'll love it. It'll blow your mind." She hit 'play', and stepped out of the way of the TV set.

The screen flickered for a few moments, then with a splash of cheesy 80s video effects, a logo appeared. 'Dare...' it said, for a moment, then with a swooshing noise, three more words joined it. '...To Be Stupid!'

Dorothy's jaw dropped. "What." she said, flatly and with low menace.

Low-fidelity, upbeat synthesizer music played in the background as the logo faded into an office. A balding, mustached man in his mid-40s with coke-bottle glasses sat behind a desk, wearing a lab coat over a cheap suit. "Hi," he said. "I'm Doctor Myron Wernstrom, of the National Institute For Stress Reduction, and I'm here to talk to you today about my revolutionary new therapy for overstressed executives." The picture and sound quality practically made Dorothy cringe. The whole thing looked like it had been shot on video for about forty bucks, the colors kept frizzing out into distortion and back to normal, and there was an annoying hum in the background of the whole thing that sounded like someone had left the air-conditioning on while taping.

She stood up. "You have got to be kidding me," she said, heading for the door.

Sharon paused the DVD. "Just hang on a few minutes, Dorothy," she said, almost plaintively. "It gets better, I promise." Dorothy stopped, knowing she was going to regret this. "Just listen to him for a few minutes. Hear him out. Doctor Wernstrom changed my life." With an irritated sigh, Dorothy sat back down on the bed.

The DVD unpaused. "Everyone knows about the good things that success at work can buy you. A nice house, a fast car, vacations, travel...but the higher you climb up on the ladder of success, the less those rewards mean. How much money do you need to be happy? How much money can you spend in a day? How much money do you make in a day? Face it--after a while, working hard is just something you do to fill a void in your life."

"Bullshit," Dorothy muttered under her breath. Her fingers clenched angrily at the bedspread.

"Let's take a look at a typical female executive," Doctor Wernstrom said. With a swoosh, a new frame of the video slid into view, revealing a dark-haired woman in severe make-up, with a sober business dress on--it didn't look too dissimilar to Dorothy herself. She strode into her office in tense, jerky strides.

"Your messages," her secretary said to her as she walked past.

She grabbed the messages and flipped through them quickly. "Crap, crap, sloppy, crap, and shit. You're fired." Without a second glance, she walked into the office and picked up the phone.

The screen froze in place. "This woman is a major executive, making millions of dollars a year," Doctor Wernstrom's voice said. "But is she happy? No. She doesn't sound happy, she doesn't look happy. And from that, we can tell that she probably doesn't feel happy."

Dorothy rolled her eyes. "And why isn't she happy?" Wernstrom continued. The executive on the screen unfroze, but went through her day's activities in angry pantomime. "She's done everything she's supposed to, used her mind to its fullest extent to succeed in life, and all it's done is make her angry and impatient and stressed out. She needs to stop, to relax and enjoy her rewards, but she keeps working hard for new rewards that don't even mean anything to her, just because she's gotten so used to over-working her brain. She can't just switch that brain off..."

Doctor Wernstrom stepped onto the screen as it flared up in distortion again. "Or can she?" he said, a cheesy grin on his face. "Our executive, here, needs to learn how to switch her brain off and just relax. She needs to learn how to unlearn. She needs to dare..." The hum grew noticeably louder in the brief pause, obnoxious in the extreme, "...to be stupid!"

Dorothy opened her mouth, but before she could even say anything, Doctor Wernstrom spoke. "I know, you're probably saying, 'Oh, come on!'" Dorothy closed her mouth abruptly. "But think about it." On screen, the executive put her finger to her temple in mock contemplation. "Really think. What has being smart gotten you? You can say, 'It's gotten me money', but you don't ever spend that money. It just sits in your bank accounts in big piles. So being smart has gotten you nothing there."

Dorothy wanted to argue the point, but she was starting to get a headache from the hum and the distortion, and it wasn't like the DVD was listening. "You can say, 'It's gotten me respect,' but respect isn't the same thing as happiness. Respect just means that people think you've done something impressive, it doesn't mean they care about you as a person, it doesn't even really mean that they like you. So being smart has gotten you nothing there."

Wait a second, thought Dorothy, it's not like that, you've got it all wrong! But Doctor Wernstrom kept talking. Her eyes burned with the effort of watching the video, but she kept forgetting to blink. "So if being smart hasn't helped you, at least it hasn't hurt you, right?" The executive nodded, but suddenly a loud buzzer went off. "Wrong! Being so smart has made you want to work hard, and working hard has kept you away from chances to have fun! Ask yourself, when was the last time you had sex?" Dorothy...didn't want to think about that right now. Besides, it wasn't like sex was that great.

"Stupid people have sex all the time. They can't stop themselves!" The executive looked over at Doctor Wernstrom, her face bearing an exaggerated expression of sudden interest. "Doesn't that sound good? Plenty of free time, no worries about work, and all the sex you could ever want? Sure, some stupid people still have to worry about money, but you have tons from all that work you've been doing! If you dare...to be stupid...you can let some smart person handle your money, and free up all your time for sex."

But, thought Dorothy. But I won't get to be a CEO (but that's just more money and more respect, and what are those things worth?) But I'll never get a top job (just more money, more respect, less time to have fun...and sex...) But I've worked so hard to get where I am today (and now it's time to enjoy the rewards of that hard work.) But, but, but...the objections all seemed so hollow in the face of Doctor Wernstrom's words. Even the executive in the video seemed to agree.

"Let's face it, after all that hard work getting rich, you're realizing that you could have gotten just as rich by marrying someone rich--and you'd have gotten sex, too." Dorothy just looked down at herself. It felt like she'd wasted her life. Everything that had seemed so important to her, now just seemed like an excuse to hide the truth--she didn't know how to be stupid, how to just switch her brain off and enjoy life. She looked over at Sharon, who sat there with a blissful grin on her face, seemingly drinking in the images on the video, and saw how Sharon's nipples were erect, and how happy she seemed...had Sharon learned how to be stupid? Could Dorothy?

"You might think that you can't switch off your brain, but I'm here to show you that anyone can." He turned to the executive. "You want to switch off your brain, don't you?" The executive nodded. Dorothy felt her own head bobbing up and down along with it. "You want to be a bimbo and have tons of sex, don't you?" The executive nodded. Dorothy suddenly thought of all her co-workers, and the smug grins of contempt they'd have for her if they saw her here like this, and she almost thought about standing up, but her head felt like it was on a string now. "You want to dare...to be stupid!" The executive nodded, her face alive with excitement, and suddenly Dorothy's doubts just...vanished. Her headache vanished. The burning in her eyes vanished. It felt easier just to watch now, and the weird hum and the strange distortion just seemed to make the video better, not worse.

"Then here, let me show you how." Doctor Wernstrom walked around behind the executive, and started massaging her temples. Eerily, Dorothy felt phantom sensations in her own temples. "Now, you just need to imagine something warm and pleasant, a pleasant feeling in your body. Just go ahead and listen to your body for a moment. It's been trying to talk to you for years, but you've been listening to your mind instead. Does that seem fair?" The executive shook her head. Dorothy couldn't help it now, her own head moved from side to side. Something in the back of Dorothy's head tried to speak up, tried to point out that Dorothy seemed fixated on the woman in the video, and that she seemed to be agreeing awfully quickly to all this, but Dorothy knew now that the first step was to listen to the feelings in her body, let those good feelings distract her from thinking.

Doctor Wernstrom's hands moved down to the executive's breasts. "You're probably going to start to get horny at this stage. That's good, that's very good. It's normal to be horny, and being horny helps you not think. When you're horny, you can't think about anything except how horny you are, and thinking about how horny you are just gets you even hotter. Doesn't it?" Dorothy whimpered, her voice almost perfectly in synch with the woman on the video. The yammering voice in the back of her mind that told her to just pause the video and think about all this was all but drowned out now by lust.

"And there's a part of your mind right now that's saying you should stop and think about all this, but well..." Doctor Wernstrom helped the executive get undressed, and Dorothy followed right along. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sharon undress as well, and crawl onto the bed behind her, but she seemed to be having trouble looking away from the video right now. "Your brain would say that, wouldn't it? It's been in charge, and it wants to stay in charge. It doesn't want you to listen to your body, doesn't want you to have fun, doesn't want you to have sex." Dorothy and the woman both moaned at that. "But you know better than to listen to your brain. You know better than to be smart. You're too smart to be smart now. Say that with me. You're too smart to be smart."

Dorothy said, "I'm too smart to be smart," and heard Sharon chime in behind her and the woman chime in on the video. They all understood. Doctor Wernstrom rubbed the woman's nipples, and for a moment, Dorothy was amazed at how vividly she imagined the sensations. Then she realized that Sharon was rubbing her nipples just like Doctor Wernstrom rubbed the executive's nipples. They pinched, tweaked, rubbed, and twisted in perfect unison. Dorothy felt her brain's voice recede into the distance.

"Now," Doctor Wernstrom said, reaching down to his subject's pussy, "we're going to go ahead and lock in this sexy, horny feeling." Sharon's hands were on Dorothy's pussy now, sliding in, feeling the warm slickness, rubbing and fingering. "Feel how good it feels, feel how hot you are, feel how hard it is to think. Doesn't it feel nice to have so much trouble thinking?" Everyone nodded, everyone moaned. "Good." The screen flared into warm colors, and Dorothy gasped in pleasure. "Good." The screen flared again, and it felt like she couldn't stop feeling the pleasure, like it was sticking to the sides of her brain, like she could feel more pleasure, get hornier, but she'd never stop feeling horny. It made it so hard to think, and as the screen flared again and again and again, Dorothy understood just how good that was. She leaned back into Sharon, feeling stiff nipples rubbing into her back, and just let her brain...switch off...

"Very very good!" Doctor Wernstrom said, and she just barely heard him. She had to use all the mind she had left just to figure out what he was saying, now. Thinking about it seemed way too hard...and it felt good to have trouble thinking. "You're a bimbo now, and it's so easy to be horny instead of thinking, and so easy to think about how horny you are." Dorothy nodded, so glad that Sharon's fingers were still working her pussy. She needed to cum again, and soon. "Of course, you still need to find someone who's still smart to take care of all your money and keep you happy, but you know someone very smart to take care of all that, someone who's talking right now!" Dorothy breathed a sigh of relief when she realized Doctor Wernstrom could take care of her money. She'd never have thought of that on her own.

"There'll be a phone number at the end of this video that you can use to talk to me, and I'll explain to you how I'll take care of your worries. But for now, relax, sit back, and dare...to be stupid!"

The screen flared again, and Dorothy felt her pussy clench around Sharon's hand. She lay back, her eyes still focused on the screen, and let her hands wrap around Sharon's body. Even when she looked away to lick Sharon out, the hum still kept her nice and horny, made it hard to think, and as she came again, this time with Shannon's head buried between her thighs, she understood how good that was.

She felt the stress just run out between her thighs onto Sharon's face. This vacation was wonderful, she thought, making plans to quit her job. Why ever go back to work?

THE END