A Wife on Show

by Max Sebastian

  ‘Seriously?’ I raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ he laughed. ‘All this naked flesh—if they get away with showing it, there’s that. You’ll get guaranteed headlines in the press... horrified outrage from the Daily Mail, amused outrage from the Daily Telegraph, liberal guilt in the Guardian... dirty pictures in the Sun... everyone’s a winner!’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I accepted he was probably right. ‘The media does go for the controversial stuff, don’t they?’

  ‘Are you kidding? They’ll lap it up.’

  Then I asked him, ‘So you think there’s any chance Natalie will find true happiness with Robbie?’

  He laughed again. ‘No bloody chance, mate.’

  ‘Oh. Ah well.’

  ‘Much more chance than any other show that they’ll fuck, of course.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Well, they’ve already seen each other... you know... naked. But there’s zero chance they’ll actually stay together beyond that first fuck.’

  ‘Zero chance?’

  He smiled. ‘That’s how these shows work. Best outcome for the exit interviews is that they’ll both come back bitching about each other. Maybe they’ll come back friendly, but they’re just not right for each other.’

  ‘I suppose it’s difficult to get it right on these shows.’

  ‘Blind date ran for 18 seasons—370-plus shows—and do you know how many successful relationships it created?’

  ‘Uh... fifty?’

  ‘Four. Three weddings and a proposal. In twenty years of broadcasting.’

  ‘Still,’ I said, ‘think about the millions of people that use online dating sites... I bet they don’t achieve a one-in-a-hundred success rate.’ I don’t think my line buddy was listening, because the lights had just gone down and things were starting to happen again down there on stage.

  And, yes, the next contestant was choosing from among seven women, one of whom might be Gemma.

  Three

  So here it was: I had just watched seven guys being judged, quite ruthlessly, based on the particular foibles of their own naked appearances. And Gemma was up for the same treatment. Maybe not in this next game—I wasn’t sure when she would be on—but at some point that afternoon.

  As we watched the introductory video on the TV screens that hung above us from the room—detailing next contestant Aaron, 22, a paralegal from South London—I considered what would be the best outcome for Gemma in her game.

  If she crashed out in the first round, at least she wouldn’t face quite as much exposure, and potential criticism, as if she lost out in the final round. But maybe she’d be made to feel like the ultimate loser, having not beaten any of the other women. And she’d have to do the full exposure and walk of shame thing whichever round saw her rejected.

  God. I thought about my wife’s new-found fantasy of exhibitionism, and how hot it was, and how it seemed to me to be based on her self-confidence. If she lost that, then her fantasy would be moot, and maybe even give her painful memories of the show—leading to a real downturn in our sex life as a married couple.

  Suddenly, it seemed preferable to me for Gemma to win through as many rounds as possible.

  Maybe this, I thought, was why I was quietly hoping she would win the actual date with Aaron or whoever it was. I just wanted Gemma to maintain her self-confidence as much as possible.

  I couldn’t quite get my head around the possibility that I might actually want Gemma to win the date because I actively liked the idea of her sleeping with someone else, and cheating on me. But I have to admit, it’s a fairly unconventional thing to desire, and so not something I understood as I was beginning to feel it.

  So.

  Aaron had big dreams of becoming a top lawyer, and he was progressing extremely well, even at this early stage of his career. In love, though, he told us in his little preliminary spiel that he was profoundly unlucky. He believed, he said, that women thought he was too posh, too upper class, too clipped and well-groomed.

  ‘I’m looking for someone who is just crazy and wild and seriously sexy,’ he told us. ‘I really hope to find her on Hot Date.’

  I didn’t know for certain that Gemma would be one of those he was picking from, but I found myself pondering whether she would ever go for a guy like Aaron if she’d actually been single. Or if she had the chance of an affair. He was younger, but clearly physically fit, smiley, and I thought charming and probably attractive, even if I wasn’t the best judge of attraction as a heterosexual male. Sitting there in the darkened studio, nervous as hell in case Gemma faced difficult criticism and early rejection, I felt a strange tingle between my legs at my hope that Gemma might win through to the final round—and even have a shot at winning the date, whatever Gabby had promised about this whole thing being fixed.

  I told myself it might be amusing if Gemma won the date. If she was forced to have dinner with this guy, who would have seen her naked and perhaps be under the impression it would mean guaranteed sex with her.

  That’s right, I thought, it would just be an amusing outcome.

  But I was getting hard thinking about that amusing outcome, and I couldn’t figure out why just then.

  Anyway.

  ‘So why do you want to choose a date naked, Aaron?’ Claire-the-Presenter got the ball rolling, so to speak.

  ‘I just think if you’re in front of someone naked, they can’t hide anything from you,’ he said. ‘You’re going to find someone where... you know what you’ve got.’

  ‘Okay. You have seven boxes in front of you—and in each one of them is a single, naked woman. Now, every one of them has an attribute that you’ve told us you prefer on a partner.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘We’re going to reveal them to you inch by inch—and then you just have to cut them down from seven to one.

  ‘Probably not as easy as it sounds, but hey...’

  Then Claire-the-Presenter declared, ‘Okay, girls, so let’s see the bottom halves of your bodies, please.’

  In front of us, the frosted glass panels in the front of the seven colored boxes started to rise, revealing the feet and then the ankles and then the calves and then the knees, the thighs, the pussies and the hips of the naked women inside.

  I really had to stifle a gasp at just how naked they were, right in front of us. If you looked up, you could see exactly what the cameras were seeing on the television screens hanging from the ceiling. You could see the cameras provide close-up views of the crotches of each naked woman in turn.

  And I have to say that on the first quick glance, I was fairly certain that Gemma wasn’t among them.

  I felt some disappointment, since it would mean waiting potentially until the last game for Gemma to be on, and therefore facing these interminable nerves for much of the afternoon. I also felt a hint of relief, as I would have a little more time to get to grips with the possibility that my wife would be judged and found wanting somehow when her game came along.

  I tried to relax. I tried to enjoy this game in the knowledge that Gemma wasn’t on yet.

  All seven of the women displayed before us had completely shaven crotches. There wasn’t even a landing strip among them, not even a stray hair anywhere on their exposed bodies. Despite my exposure to porn, I hadn’t actually seen a completely shaven pussy in real life—all the women I’d dated before had some kind of pubic hair, and most entirely untrimmed. So it was kind of startling to me. I presumed that our Aaron preferred women to be bare down there.

  ‘Goodness,’ Aaron declared as the shaven pussies were revealed. ‘Completely bare—all of them.’

  ‘Which one do you want to start with?’ asked Claire-the-Presenter.

  ‘Red, I think.’

  They stepped up to the red booth. Aaron told us all how ‘neat and tucked up and tidy’ Ms Red was down there.

  Claire-the-Presenter asked him: ‘You want someone where you can’t see any of the labia?’

  And I was just doubly shocked at how th
e judgement was going here. I mean, maybe men watching this show at home would have been encouraged to think about circumcision as something to make them more desirable in female eyes, based on the last game in which Natalie had pronounced her tastes—but probably not. Here, women watching might be given some suggestion, wrongly, that they might be more attractive if they were (a) completely shaven down there and (b) happened to be born with small or hidden labia.

  ‘It’s just quite nice to look at,’ Aaron said, as though all the vaginas on show weren’t also nice to look at.

  ‘Okay, pretty vagina,’ agreed Claire-the-Presenter.

  Well, I was just hoping that the adult nature of this show would mean an audience that wouldn’t take that kind of body judgement to heart. Like porn, though, it all added to the overall public perception of how naked women—and men to some degree—should look.

  Aaron and Claire-the-Presenter then went over to look at Ms Pink. Aaron liked her confident stance. Ms Blue apparently had very nice thighs—quite powerful-looking if you ask me. Ms Orange had a scar on her knee that Aaron found disconcerting. Ms White had a big dragon tattoo all over her stomach and one thigh, but that didn’t seem to attract a comment from Aaron.

  They all had very nice ‘tucked up’ vaginas, apparently.

  Ms Yellow had visible labia, but wasn’t really commented upon. She was just as stunning, just as smooth and hair-free. Ms Green had quite large labia, but again there wasn’t time to step up and judge her this round.

  Now came Aaron’s choice. After a bit of suspenseful electronica music, he decided to get rid of Ms Pink. A surprise, because we’d been led to believe he liked her confident stance. But also, he said now, he didn’t like women to be that skinny.

  Bravo, I thought wryly. Although skinny women might feel bad about themselves now if they were watching this.

  Ms Pink turned out to be a 25-year-old model called Geri, complete with long, Swedish-style blonde hair and the kind of face that made Aaron instantly regret his first choice. Wow. She walked off stage like it was a catwalk, all eyes on her perfect behind.

  ‘So, it’s time to reveal their middles,’ Claire-the-Presenter said next, and we heard the familiar musical snippet as the frosted glass panels lifted another couple of feet to reveal the stomachs and the breasts of the remaining six naked women.

  There was a little more variation in the breasts of the women. Large ones, small ones, perky ones and some with large nipples, some with small.

  ‘They’ve all got gorgeous figures,’ Aaron said, and made me feel a little warmer toward him than when he’d hinted that vaginas ought to look a certain way.

  Now Aaron commented on the tattoo that spread over Ms Blue’s left breast, and then about Ms Orange’s curvy figure, which he said he found attractive. Claire-the-Presenter offered him a look at Ms Green’s butt, and Ms Green then duly obliged by spinning slowly around to allow Aaron and the audience to check out her cute tush.

  Then the pair of them stepped up to Ms Yellow, and Aaron was fawning over her small but perky breasts. They were nice.

  ‘Do you know,’ Claire-the-Presenter let us all know, ‘our researchers have found that these days, men seem to much prefer smaller and perkier breasts—where they used to believe that bigger was always better.’

  ‘I’ve always liked them like that,’ Aaron was saying.

  I was looking at this long close-up on Ms Yellow on the television screen hanging down from the ceiling directly above me, and thinking how stiff her nipples were—and it wasn’t even remotely cold in this studio. Wondering if she was like Gemma, enjoying the whole exhibitionism of her part in the show.

  Then I recognized a cluster of three very small moles in between her breasts—and my heart seemed to skip a few beats.

  It was Gemma.

  I felt as though a miniature nuclear submarine inside my chest had just fired a torpedo in an attempt to break out through my rib cage. But I managed to look again as the TV screen above me flipped through the various women’s chest areas while Aaron made his mind up over who would be rejected next—and I was sure it had to be Gemma. Not only was she in this game, but she had already won through the first round.

  Thankfully, nothing bad had been said about her. Perhaps Aaron would do me a favor and find a way to reject her without raising any negative issues with her body. She’s just too gorgeous for me, he might say. I like my women to have mustaches if possible.

  Then my eyes went from the TV screen above me to the row of boxes at the rear of the stage, and I was looking at Gemma standing there in real life, completely naked. And dear Lord, if she hadn’t completely shaved her pussy.

  Wow. I was hard as a rock sitting there in the audience. At some point that morning, my wife had taken every hint of hair from between her legs. She’d never done anything like it in her life, or at least while I’d been with her. Had the show producers told her to shave her pussy? Had Gabby? Had she somehow seen all the women she was up against backstage and decided to follow suit?

  My leading conclusion was that it was part of her ‘disguise’. In this case she might be trying to change her appearance down there in case any of her ex-boyfriends were watching. And yet it struck me that she might have done it because the show producers had suggested that this was the way Aaron liked it, and he was picking.

  Whatever. It looked sensational. As Aaron chose to send away curvy Ms Orange, despite his apparent fondness for her hourglass figure, my eyes were riveted to the naked form of my wife in that yellow-colored box. I could not wait to get her home, rip off all her clothes and go down on her for hours and hours on end.

  Wow.

  I almost missed the fact that Gemma had won through to the next round. Goodness. Actually, it was great news. My nerves settled a little after my big discovery—Gemma had beaten two other women already, and received some nice compliments about her breasts. She couldn’t feel bad about herself. Next up she would have to reveal her face. I was hoping the camera didn’t dwell on her too much, which would increase the odds of her being recognized.

  There was another little break, this time actually allowing us all to leave the studio and wander down the steps and outside for a breath of fresh air and a free doughnut and coffee, to allow us to stretch our legs ahead of another couple of hours’ filming. After Game Three, there would be some free lunch laid on for us, we were told.

  I was trying to relax, and trying in vain to make my erection disappear. I didn’t think anyone could see it since I was in a pair of sturdy black denim jeans, but it was still potentially embarrassing. And yet I couldn’t for a moment stop thinking about Gemma standing there in the nude, her nipples all stiff and delicious, her pussy freshly shaven despite never having done it before.

  We filed back in and I was wondering what kind of judgements Claire-the-Presenter and Aaron could possibly make about the faces of the women in the boxes.

  ‘Let’s show the faces, please,’ ordered Claire once we were all back in our seats and the house lights were back down.

  And there, sure enough, was Gemma. Ms Yellow.

  They’d given her blonde hair—oh my goodness. It was now shoulder-length rather than down to her lower back, and had been straightened into a bell-shape. She did look completely different, I had to hand it to them. You wouldn’t say it was her unless someone told you one of those girls was Gemma.

  ‘I have no idea how I’m going to send one of these home,’ Aaron told Claire-the-Presenter, who made sympathetic noises beside him.

  ‘Who should we have a look at?’

  ‘White. Really nice cheek-bones, nice smile.’

  ‘She’s got nice straight teeth, hasn’t she? What about Blue? She’s got her tongue pierced...’

  Aaron noticed that Ms Green had a nice twinkle in her eyes, and that Ms Red had nice, full lips. Then he stepped in front of Gemma, and said: ‘Yellow. Really pretty.’

  That had Gemma smiling broadly and blushing deeply, and I could see a twinkle in my wife’s eyes, n
ever mind Ms Green. Aaron had won her over with that comment—I knew that look. My jealousy flared up, strongly, and yet not in the way I fully expected. It wasn’t like the jealousy I’d experienced before, in school and university, or during the very early days of dating Gemma. There was no anger in my jealousy. There was envy, that it wasn’t me making her look all delighted like that, that maybe another man was pleasing her. There was even some fear and insecurity—that she really would win the date and go off with him for an evening that might involve alcohol and some kind of indiscretion later on. But there was also powerful excitement and arousal, and it seemed to me that the fear and insecurity in my jealousy only made the excitement—and the associated erection—that much stronger.

  For the first time ever, watching Gemma with this other guy, I was certain that it wasn’t her newly-discovered exhibitionism that was the main turn-on for me, nor her beauty or her nudity. My wife was completely naked just a few feet away from a young guy who clearly wanted her, and for the first time I recognized that I was turned on like crazy by the idea that he would get to have her. That she would be forced to go out on a date with him, and in order to keep up the pretense of being a single girl, she might have to sleep with him at the end of the date.

  I wanted her to cheat on me.

  It was something of a Eureka moment for me. I’d never really had a kinky fantasy before. Never really had a sex fantasy at all—the usual stuff about trying a threesome, or wanting that actress who played Starbuck in the rebooted Battlestar Galactica TV show was hardly a sex fantasy, it was just aesthetic appreciation of female beauty.

  ‘Do you think you’d be interested in kissing any of these girls, Aaron?’ Claire-the-Presenter said, breaking me out of my daze, making me strangely hopeful that he was about to start making out with Gemma right in front of everyone.

  ‘Yeah, all of them,’ Aaron said to be diplomatic.

  ‘Okay. Who’s going?’

  Ms Blue was out next. He might have liked her powerful thighs, and her hidden pussy lips, but he told Claire-the-Presenter that Ms Blue also intimidated him a little. Not into the dominant type, then. Aaron said he wouldn’t have been up to the challenge with her. After narrowing the field to four women, Aaron was allowed to hear each of them speak.