"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."