Two days before the event
"You want me to do what?!" Marshall stared in disbelief at Eric across the cluttered industrial kitchen. Having the misfortune to graduate from college at the start of a global pandemic and deep recession, particularly in his area, Marshall worked for a close friend as a delivery driver. Before the lockdown, he had a paid internship scheduled over the summer that was all but guaranteed to lead to a full-time position at an expanding marketing firm. He had been quite successful off the bat, even taking the lead over a small three-person team of interns for a local grocery store chain. After a single month of working from home, the firm contracted and had to lay off all their interns and many talented young men and women. Marshall quickly went from the start of an ascent of the corporate ladder with an apartment and a live-in girlfriend to living at home in his parents' basement fast enough to give him emotional whiplash.
His girlfriend had to go back home as well; her burgeoning career washed away by the pandemic. Unfortunately for Marshall, it was five hours away. As the pandemic meandered on, intensifying his local lockdown, she found someone else to fill her spare time. His marketing degree seemed worthless as the first thing to go for most businesses was their marketing spend. Even when corporations had decided to start advertising again, the advertising firm was reluctant to spend money on staffing up. Jobless, with little to no prospects, a deep depression threatened to consume him. Working out and running helped considerably, but he couldn't help but feel like some kind of parasite, deemed non-essential by his community. He had become his family's IT specialist if nothing more than slightly more knowledgeable than anyone else in his house. Between his parents and his three-year younger sister, he found something to do with his time.
As bad as the last year had been for Marshall, Eric and his young wife Jillian had it more challenging. Eric was a close friend of Marshall's older brother, Mitchell. When Mitch left town to become a fighter pilot in the navy, Eric had become a de facto older brother—showing him the ropes when he got into college. It was how Marshall had ended up in a fraternity and how he had thrived in college. Eric graduated after Marshall's freshman year. After a year of toiling at a business he didn't have his heart in, he started to spend his weekends working in a food truck. One owned by the same restaurant he had worked at all through college. Eric was a home-taught chef, and he was good at it. That was where he met his bride, Jillian.
Jillian was the daughter of a pair of restaurant purveyors and the food truck owner and operator. She had been away at culinary school when Eric was working at the main restaurant. They had crossed paths numerous times, but working close together in the tiny kitchen, they fell in love. Her parents saw the food truck to expand their petty gastronomic kingdom; Jillian saw it as a way to experiment with new types of cuisines.
Just a year before the pandemic, Jillian and Eric were married. The same month, they sold their food truck to buy a dive and rejuvenate it with their recipes. They had found considerable success, but six weeks of a forced closure from the pandemic lockdown and a kitchen fire later, they didn't have any money to repair the location. Her parents had helped them buy into a shared industrial kitchen that served as a nexus for food delivery. Marshall had been hired on part-time as a third employee, their very own delivery driver for large catering deliveries. Most of their business relied on online orders and food delivery services. But, when they had large orders and needed to make a good impression, they sent Marshall. As the vaccine had finally found its way into most American arms, significant social events were not just on the rebound but going to the extreme. It was like a cork had been taken off a bottle of champagne.
"I know your student loans are starting to be due again. It doesn't look like forgiveness is coming for those. That shit will follow you through bankruptcy. Where else are you going to make a month's worth of money on a Friday night?" Eric looked at him thoughtfully. "Just a couple of these jobs, and we can start looking at getting a place again. A new place would need a new manager, it might not be your line of work, but I think you could handle it. If you can get into this social circle, the possibilities are really going to open up."
"You do get to wear a mask and not the type we have been wearing for so long." Jillian sat a plate in front of both. An advantage of working for a pair of very skilled chefs, even the meals made from the leftovers at the end of the night were exquisite.
"Yeah, but nothing else?!" Marshall was flabbergasted at the request, incredulous of the validity of this job actually existing. Eric and Jillian must be fucking with me.
"A pair of shoes. I would recommend something slip-resistant." Eric replied, picking up a fork. A devious-looking smile on his face.
"We already did a test run last weekend." Jillian walked back over with her own plate and three IPAs. "Eric didn't even get to wear a mask."
"They already knew who both of us were; it seemed pointless to put on the mask." Eric shrugged and took a big swig from the newly procured beer. "They had to know we were willing to meet their stringent standards."
"I got to cook, and he had to play waiter in his finest outfit." Jillian took a bite and looked at Marshall like she was expecting some kind of feedback. "I would ask my usual volunteers, but it's either a bachelorette or divorcee party. They were pretty insistent that the wait staff had cocks."
"Who comes up with a party like this? It doesn't seem real. They want male strippers to serve a five-course meal?"
"I keep telling you two, white people are weird." Eric grinned at the pair across the table. Eric was a 6'4" African American, built like a linebacker. Marshall and Jillian were both so white they were almost pale. "Adding rich to the mix just makes them stranger. Besides, there are only four courses, and saying stripper implies that you would have clothes on at some point."
"Okay, they want nude waiters. How big is this soiree?" Marshall couldn't believe that he was even considering this.
"A little over 100 women?"
"I hate to say it, but I don't think I can handle ten tables of ten by myself." Marshall shoveled the tasty food on his plate into his mouth.
"You won't be working alone, I got three ex-frat brothers to help, and Jillian's brother, Lincoln, is helping. I need someone I can trust to oversee it while we cook."
"Linc is helping? That's got to be a little weird for you." Marshall looked to Jillian.
"Eh, I have seen it; he likes to skinny dip when my parents aren't home."
"Look, MJ, I will give you 20% more, that's my best offer, but you will be managing over the other five. I figure it's worth it." Marshall never cared for people initializing his first and middle name, mainly because it had also been one of Mitch's nicknames as a kid. Eric and Jillian were the only ones he allowed to use that moniker without protest. It helped that he had never heard Eric use the name on Mitch.
"Wait, five? Lincoln and three frat buds are only four." Marshall looked confused at Eric, a certified accountant, before the career change.
"Yeah, I didn't tell you, Kendra is tending bar." Kendra was a close friend of Jillian's; she was Marshall's age and had been an up-and-coming mixologist in the before times, as they often referred to the time before the virus changed their world. Marshall also had a flirtatious relationship with the fetching young woman. Though since he was living in his parents' basement, he had yet to summon the courage to ask her out. The fact that she would be seeing him naked like this had not been how he wanted all that to go.
"She's gotta be naked too." Jillian looked at Marshall and winked, likely knowing full well about the closeness of the pair. "We all do, at least when we are outside of the kitchen. Eric is right, rich white people are weird, but the pay is so good. If we can get our foot in the door with wealthy socialites, we'll have it made."
The room fell silent for several bites. Marshall internally debated the offer. He did really need an influx of cash if he ever wanted to get back out on his own. His family was excellent and supportive, but Marshall couldn't help feeling like a leech every day. A burst of cash would mean he could pay off a few months of student loans and not have to ask for more help from his parents. "I can't believe I am saying this, but I need the money. Count me in."
"Fantastic, but there are a couple of stipulations to the position." Eric smiled.
"And what those stipulations be."
"Well, how do I put this...."
"We need to see you naked." Jillian interrupted as frankly as she could.
"Why?!"
"We need to see how good of shape you're in; this is apparently a visual thing for them. Also, The client has said we can't have anyone with a tiny pickle." Jillian giggled a little as she picked up a carrot from the edge of her plate and held it out on display.
Marshall was confident in his own endowment. He knew he had nothing to be worried about, but he was still a bit of a grower. "When."
"Now, or as soon as you get done eating." Eric looked up from his beer. He must have seen his friend's eyes bugging out. "Look, man, I am not real excited about this either. I have seen more penis this week than I had since the locker room when I played football, but the money is too good to pass up."
"Here? In the kitchen?"
"Why not, everyone else is gone, and it's our night to clean. You'll have to be naked in a kitchen on Friday anyways." Eric took another large gulp of beer.
"It seems a little wrong."
"Maybe he doesn't want to be the center of attention." Jillian looked at Eric and then turned her gaze on Marshall. "I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours." Another giggle sealed the statement.
"Wha?!"
"I would rather not have Friday be the first time you saw me naked. Get the awkwardness out of the way here instead of at the party. We also planned on doing our cleaning nude to get used to working sans clothes." Jillian finished her plate and took a swig of beer.
"Oh... Okay." Marshall still felt flustered but decided to go ahead and be the first to strip. "No time like the present." He stood up and removed his t-shirt. Growing up, he had been a little overweight and a bit of a couch potato. Then came an interest in girls. He decided the summer before going to college that he was going to get into shape. Eric had been the one to introduce a strength training program that he used. After many years of work, he had an upper-body he was proud of; a year of having nothing to do but workouts had honed it into something he thought was spectacular.
"He's not hard on the eyes," Jillian added commentary. "Needs to spend more time outside without the t-shirt, though. No chest hair either."
Marshall was a little taller than average with a muscular form that was just a little padded with a fat layer. Try as he may, he couldn't entirely burn the last of that padding. Marshall wasn't going to be entering any body-building contests anytime soon, but he was proud of his body. Undoing his belt, he paused; it was not an embarrassment of being on display but a couple of less popular personal decisions. First, he was wearing a pair of tight briefs, boxer-briefs being the default choice for his generation. Though at least they were not the derided tighty-whities, instead, a colorful pair of striped purple briefs. He liked the secure feeling of his boys being cradled if he had to anything mildly strenuous. Marshall could have just pulled down both his shorts and undies in one go, but he wanted to leave his shoes on and didn't feel like clumsily trying to pull both over his feet at the same time.
