"SWAP-MATE"

                            by

                        C. Lakewood




    Herb Tareyton stared across the table at his pretty wife, 
Mindy, and sighed.  The only reason she could possibly look so 
unruffled is that she didn't realize the depth of the financial 
swamp they were in.

    "What with you losing your job -- and not being there long 
enough to qualify for unemployment -- well, we're in deep shit."  
He began shuffling papers and ticking off items.  "Too many credit 
cards, too big a mortgage, property taxes, insurance, phone bills, 
cable, Internet, the salons, the gym, the lease on the Lexus, and 
then that tax shelter that was disallowed....  God!  It just never 
stops!  We can't get a home equity loan because we don't HAVE any 
equity in this house...which is much too big, of course.  Still, 
it was originally a duplex, so maybe if we could re-convert it and 
rent out out half...."  He trailed off and looked up at Mindy, who 
was just sitting there with a sort of Mona Lisa smile on her face.

    "I...have a way out," she said, with just a bit of hesitation.  
"See, I...um...applied for a spot on the pilot of this new reality 
show.  I didn't tell you 'cause the odds of us getting picked were 
so slim, but...."  She dropped a thick FedEx envelope in front of 
him.  "But we DID get picked!"

    Herb stared at the "From" line on the envelope.  "'Swap-Mate'?"  

    "That's the name of the show; I guess it's supposed to be a 
play on words," she burbled.  "Anyway, they're prepared to pay us 
a very large amount of money for being on the show...and even more 
if they sell the pilot." 

    "Wh-what's it all about?"

    "Two married couples switch partners...for a week or so.  They 
then live as man and wife -- except no sex."

    ("Sounds like my marriage of late," Herb thought, ruefully.)

    "I guess they deliberately picked couples that are very 
different...physically, socially, etc., etc.," she went on.  
"The couple we'll be swapping with is named 'Barca.'  It 
appears he's mostly Hawaiian and Philippino...."

    "The name sounds Carthaginian," Herb observed.  

    "Huh?" she blinked.  "No, Hawaiian and Philippino...."

    "Never mind."  (He was used to her not understanding his quips, 
either.)

    She shrugged.  "He's a construction worker.  Big guy.  His 
wife's Vietnamese...name's 'Lê.'  The husbands stay put, and the 
wives switch places.  It'll take a month to shoot the pilot."

    "I thought you said a week."

    "Well, once the show is sold and goes into production, each 
weekly episode will have a different couple, but the pilot's going 
to take longer to shoot....  Oh, they explain all that in this 
letter -- here."

    She extracted a three-page letter from the FedEx envelope and 
passed it over.  He skimmed quickly down to the mention of money, 
coughed, and sat bolt upright.  

    "Yessss....  I'd say that constitutes 'a very large amount of 
money,' indeed.  Enough, in fact, to get us more than even."

    Mindy looked very pleased with herself.

		******************************

    A couple of weeks later, the television production company 
introduced the two couples and took them out to dinner at 
a restaurant whose decor and ambiance far exceeded the quality 
of its cuisine.  (In show biz, of course, style often trumped 
substance, Herb thought.  But Mindy seemed entranced by it all, 
and he had been married long enough to know when to keep his 
opinions to himself...which was most of the time.)

    Fernando ("Nando") Barca was 6'6" and built like an NFL 
lineman.  He seemed to be the strong, silent type -- by 
choice, since he clearly was not intimidated by his tiny 
wife.       

    Cameramen followed the two swapped couples home for some 
introductory shots and then departed, arranging to return at 
breakfast time.

    Herb was astonished when Lê Barca, who had been somewhat 
self-effacing at dinner, took a quick look around the house, 
sniffed, said "Need cleaning" through gritted teeth, and 
started taking her clothes off.

    But he was too much of a gentleman to stop her.   
  
    She was a gamine, small and slender -- Herb estimated 5' and 
99 pounds (and his eye had not been utterly dimmed by marriage).  
No longer a girl, obviously, she was still what one might call 
"cute," but was in the process of achieving an agelessness not 
uncommon among Oriental women.  

    Her breasts were flat, but her nipples and areolae were large 
and so dark a brown as to seem black.  Her pubic hair was sparse, 
but what there was of it was quite long and wispy.  She was very 
slightly bow-legged.  She was exotic, and Herb thought she was the 
sexiest creature he had seen in a long time.  

    "Y-you work naked?" he managed to ask.

    "Sure.  Nando says that is...practical.  Why?  You do not like 
me naked, sir?"

    "No, no....  That's fine....  Whatever you're used to," he 
responded, graciously.  "And you don't have to call me 'sir.'"

    "Okay.  I can do some work tonight an' the rest tomorrow."

    "Wouldn't you rather...I don't know...watch TV or something?"

    "Do not watch TV much.  Mostly work an' please my man.  Listen 
to music while I work."

    "Rock?"

    She made a face.  "Ooh, noooo.  Rock is noise.  Classical, that 
is true and beautiful, 'specially Russian composer...Tchaikovsky, 
Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin....  Ver' sympathique...."

    Herb took a deep breath.  All Mindy ever listened to was crap.  
"I-I'll show you where the CDs are and how to work the player."

		******************************

    Later, as he was lying in the dark, wondering, the bedroom 
door opened slightly, and a small, naked figure slipped into 
the room and came to stand by the bed.  

    "Finished work for tonight," she said.  "You want me to wash?  
I am tol' I smell more sexy this way."

    Herb's brain started to wobble, even as his prick went to full 
alert.  "Whatever you like," he gasped.  Her grin gleamed in the 
moonlight as she slipped into bed beside him.

    "It is time now to please my man," she murmured. 

    Apparently the no-sex clause was not exactly insurmountable.

		******************************
     
    Herb woke up gradually, becoming aware of things in stages.  
First, he realized that it must be very early in the morning 
(judging by the angle of the sun's rays)...next, that he was 
still bone-weary from last night's exertions...and, finally, 
that Lê was casually playing with his flaccid cock.  When she 
noticed his eyes were open, she smiled, kissed his cock-head 
sweetly, and said, "This is nice...much smaller than I am 
used to...."

    For an instant, he groped through his fuzzy mind for a retort, 
but then it dawned on him that she had actually been complimenting 
him.

    "Nando's is bigger?"  The question had to be asked, sooner or 
later.  "Unh...how much?"

    She shrugged.  They spent a few giggly minutes doing estimates, 
and eventually he concluded that Nando's prick was 8" long (or 
perhaps slightly more) and 2" in diameter (or perhaps slightly 
less).  Oddly, Herb (who had, at most, 5½ x 1) wasn't really 
dismayed by this news.  Indeed, he got a chuckle when he imagined 
Mindy's reaction...both to Nando's size and to the flexibility of 
the no-sex rule.

		******************************

    In fact, Mindy had already been introduced to both -- and to 
a great deal more.  She had learned that Nando's "woman" (whoever 
she happened to be) did most of her work naked, that she was 
expected to give satisfaction (however, whenever, and wherever 
Nando wished), and that the immediate penalty for non-compliance 
was a prolonged bare-bottom spanking.

    She was spanked the first time because she simply objected 
doing anything that could possibly be labelled "chores" (which 
were clearly beneath her).  After her trip across Nando's knees, 
she had to kneel between those knees and perform a lengthy and 
noisy blow-job (while being informed that a significant majority 
of Americans didn't consider that to truly be "sex").

    Her next spanking followed her reaction to a detailed 
description of her "chores."  (She actually sneered at the 
news that the water heater was broken and that she would 
have to heat water on the stove and lug buckets of it 
upstairs for Nando's bath.  She was impressed in spite 
of herself when he required another blow-job after this 
spanking, too.  Nando passed the time by delivering a 
monologue on the many significant loop-holes in the 
no-sex clause.  He may have looked like an ape-man, but 
either he (or some advisor) could certainly decipher 
contracts.

    While she was engaged on her second, deliberately sloppy 
blow-job, Mindy did some weighing of options.  Obviously, even 
if she had been better at debate, that would get her nowhere.  
Resistance, either active or passive, was futile....  Nor could 
she afford just to quit the project.  She (who never read the 
small print on anything) was informed that breaching the 
contract carried stiff and inescapable penalties.  (The 
famous no-sex clause might have been a sieve, but the rest 
of the contract was water-tight.)

    "Tonight, alone with Nando, I'll be accommodating," she told 
herself.  "Tomorrow, though, when the cameramen show up, it'll be 
different.  Things'll obviously have to improve for me -- become 
more PG, for example.  After all, TV people have STANDARDS, for 
god's sake....  Don't they?  And they'll put Mr. Olympia here on 
a leash....

    "Meanwhile, things could be worse," she was thinking.  "True, 
my ass is sore, but the tingle's not entirely unpleasant.  And this 
cock!  So big, so virile...so unlike Herb's.  With a cock like this 
one, oral sex isn't so bad, really, even though I have to swallow.  
It IS sex, though; I don't care how many people say different....  
It's demeaning, but sort of empowering, too.  I mean, when you're 
being fucked, you're being done to...but here, the woman is in 
control.  I hope Herb never finds out about this, because he'd 
want it, too, and that would just be too much....  What ELSE would 
he want?

    "Oh, god!  Here comes the second load!"

		******************************

    In the morning, Mindy was unceremoniously nudged out of bed 
and told to fix breakfast...orange juice, pancakes, sausage, and 
coffee...while naked, of course.

    When the TV camera crew arrived soon after, it was clear that 
they had neglected to bring along those standards for which TV 
was famous.  Mindy, cowering in a sweat under the table, was 
beside herself, imagining that everyone in televisionland was 
going to get quite a show, at her expense.

    "Omigod!  Naked!  On TV!  And...what will they show me DOING?"
    
    The director did manage to calm her down, more or less, by 
reminding her that a) basic or broadcast channels couldn't show 
much and assuring her that b) they'd be shooting her mainly from 
the shoulders up and the knees down (and digitally masking the 
parts in between).

    Of course, while the director's first argument was true, it 
was largely irrelevant, ignoring the fact that this show was 
going to be pitched primarily to premium, uncensored channels 
and to pay-per-view.  

    The second argument was, by contrast, just a lie.

    But Mindy found these assurances comforting -- even liberating 
-- and gradually lost much of her self-consciousness at being naked 
among half a dozen men, none of whom bothered to act the least bit 
stoic.  Her natural narcissism slid easily into exhibitionism, now 
that she was convinced she would escape most of the consequences.  
Besides, picking up on the director's innuendos, she realized that 
they were paying her a lot of money to be "naughty."  

    Meanwhile, it was time for Nando's bath, and she had to heat 
the water, haul it upstairs, and then wash her temporary husband 
for the cameras (which dwelt much of the time on parts other than 
those above the shoulders up and below the knees).  

    During the rest of the day -- and for some days to come -- 
Mindy found herself playing a part that was far different than 
the one she had envisioned.  But she turned out to be surprisingly 
adaptable.     

		******************************
 
    For each of the four principals, the month passed quickly.

    Lê Barca loved the well-maintained Tareyton house, full 
of labor-saving devices, almost as much as she loved Herb's 
courteous ways and small dick.  Herb, for his part, continued 
to be fascinated by her elfin looks, industriousness, excellent 
taste in music, and uninhibited sex drive.

    Nando was pleased to have a woman big and strong enough to 
do all the household chores and still accommodate the size and 
frequency of his erections without much problem...wherever he 
wanted to stick them.  (And to think, she'd had a virgin asshole.  
Tsk, tsk.)  Moreover, he was aware that his buddies envied him 
the pretty blonde, a yuppie with big gazongas....  In his world, 
Mindy was virtually a "trophy wife."

    And she knew it.

    Both her ego and her libido were being stoked (and satisfied) 
to a degree she'd never experienced before.  It's true that she 
was also working harder than she ever had in her life -- the Barca 
residence was dump -- but there were ample compensations (and not 
just the money from the TV people).  She lost her inhibitions with 
only a few, brief backward glances and really began to get off on 
prancing around naked in front of the cameras...and in front of 
Nando's various friends.  She even came to enjoy the bare-bottom 
spankings she continued to receive (often in front of spectators), 
actually revelling in the pain and humiliation.  Nando's dominant 
personality kept her cunt a-drool, no matter who else was there.  
She was a sex object, and she was proud of it.

    Once in a great while, she even paused to wonder how Herb 
was making out.  But, since this was not prompted by jealousy, 
but merely by curiosity, she didn't expend much time or energy 
thinking about it.  
  
		******************************

    The morning she was reunited with Herb, Mindy felt nervous, 
uneasy, to be sitting, clothed, in a chair across from her husband 
-- rather than naked and on her knees.  

    They both repeatedly began sentences, but stumbled after a few 
words and lapsed into an awkward silence.  Finally, after mentally 
editing the question through several versions, Mindy finally just 
blurted out, "So how was your month?"  She tried to keep her voice 
perfectly bland.

    Herb squirmed a bit (but not as much as he perhaps should 
have, all things considered).  "It was...unh...enlightening....  
You know, how the 'other half' lives, as it were...and, of 
course, there were the...er...racial and cultural differences, 
as well as the socio-economic ones....  Ahem."

    "Oh, my reaction exactly," Mindy gushed.  (She always could 
read him like a book...or, in fact, better.)

    She paused and smiled.  "Incidentally, Herb, if you still 
have that duplex idea, I think there's a couple who would be 
interested in...sharing...with us."