Lisa Finds a Way...

Lisa arrived home at her usual time, 10:45 PM; too late to catch sight of her husband before he had left for work. Over the last few months the combination of her school and work schedules and his classes and four night a week 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM retail gig had meant they rarely saw each other until the weekend. "Another night in the glamorous lives of grad students." she said to their empty apartment.

She had been looking forward to the end of the semester and finally wrapping up her MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, which would allow her to join her hubby in New York, NY where he had lined up an internship at an investment bank for the final semester of his MBA degree program. They had each been working as many hours as possible to prepare for the expense of living in New York on an entry-level counseling job she expected to find, hoping he could parlay the internship into a paying position in the bank at the end of the semester.

The schedule had been rough but it seemed like it was all going according to plan until this Friday afternoon, when a conversation with her faculty adviser had rocked Lisa; her grade so far this term in one core class required for graduation was currently below passing level. If she couldn't provide some better work in the last few weeks of the term she'd need to repeat the class next year; since it was only offered once per calendar year her graduation and employment would be put off for a full year! As much as she normally looked forward to the weekend, having to share this news with her husband felt like a shadow was looming over their time together.

The news was worrisome; he didn't panic but he did get a little bit angry, telling her she was risking all their plans but that he still believed in her and that she should do whatever was needed to eke out a passing grade in the class. If it meant quitting her job to focus on the classwork, they'd find a way to make it work.

She agreed that not having to juggle the job and school would make a big difference, and since the job wasn't exactly a prime resume builder she'd be happy to quit if he thought they could get by without her income.

"Sure, we can get by without your pay for a couple of months, do what you need to do!" he said.

In order to make the most money in the shortest time with a flexible schedule, Lisa had been waitressing at a local restaurant which basically copied the formula for drawing in business made famous by Hooters. Tight, thin tops with bare midriffs, tight, short skirts, passable food and lots of sports on big screen TVs seemed to play well in this college town, and Lisa's appearance fit the prototype well. She had learned to her dismay that the tips were better when she acted less like a brainy grad student and more like an airhead, but that had the benefit of making the job seem less like real life and more like an acting job.

Having been reassured by her husband that they would somehow get through this new challenge, Lisa enjoyed a rare day of relaxation Saturday while her hubby slept, cleaning up their apartment a bit in preparation for a small gathering of friends planned for the evening.

Around 7:00 PM their friends began arriving; Tony & Kerry carrying pizzas followed shortly by Brianna & Andy toting several bottles of wine. The one single person in the group, Darren, showed up a few minutes later with a tray of veggies and dip. Lisa and Rob brought out plates and glasses and the friends dove into the food, wine and conversation.

After sharing a few bottles of wine and assorted updates on what everyone had been up to since their last get together, Lisa asked what Brianna and Kerry did on their girls night out a few nights ago.

Kerry smirked and said "Nothing anywhere near as much fun as the guys had!" Brianna and Lisa looked puzzled, Rob and Andy looked sheepish.

Darren smiled and said, "This is one of those times I'm glad to be single!"

"What the hell?" said Brianna, as everyone else looked around the room to see who would explain what Kerry meant.

Rob spoke up first, saying, "First of all, none of us guys caused the, ah, unusual events, and none of us really know why what happened, well, happened."

Darren, having less to lose, jumped in saying, "Long story short, there was a naked woman at Rob's store Wednesday night. We were standing around talking and watching TV and suddenly she was just there...man, was she ever there!"

After a long round of questions about and explanations of what happened in the store and just as importantly what DIDN'T happen, Lisa asked to see photos, saying, "I've got to believe between the four of you guys SOMEONE thought to document this miraculous event, let's see them!"

The guys looked at each other for a minute before Tony spoke up, saying, "Sorry, guys I've already shown mine to Kerry, might as well pass our phones around and get it over with."

Other than some grumbling from Brianna about the photo where the masked naked woman was sitting on her husband's lap, the photo sharing session went over fairly well and definitely sparked a lively conversation. Everyone said they couldn't imagine how or why anyone could do what the mystery woman did; everyone but Lisa, who told her friends one of her classes this semester was related to such behavior. Lisa went on to say that though this example was more extreme than typically seen, some form of exhibitionism did occur on a regular basis, that in fact many women had similar fantasies and somewhere between 2 & 4% actually acted on their fantasies.

Brianna and Kerry seemed doubtful, but Kerry admitted that when looking at the photos the fact that the woman's face was hidden let her briefly imagine herself as the woman behind the mask!

Lisa smiled and said that they were halfway to working up a fantasy of their own; Brianna blushed bright red and Kerry just smiled. The gathering ended on a high note with some lively conversation.

By the time Lisa finished breakfast the next morning she had begun to develop an idea that came to her after the previous night's party had broken up. She could augment the research she had already done on the relationship between voyeurs and exhibitionists with an interview survey with random adults approached in public. The college had an extension site in a local mall with a conference room used by the business department for market research with all the materials she would need to carry out her study.

The design of the survey was fairly simple. Volunteers would be recruited from mallgoers and asked to complete a short survey on a computer in the conference room. The subjects would have their heart rates tracked and have their actions recorded on video; the computer would appear to have accidentally been left with a small window open showing a video of an attractive woman undressing down to her bra and panties. The observation of choices made by the test subjects on a separate monitor hidden from their view and a short interview after their use of the computer was completed would be the true focus of her study.

Would the subjects maximize the window for a better view? Would they be offended, shocked, embarrassed? Would most take the opportunity to surreptitiously watch the woman? How would their experience affect their pulse?

By the following Thursday Lisa had arranged for use of the conference room for 5 days starting the following Sunday, put together the bogus computer questionnaire as well as the real post-video questionnaire and found a short video of a woman undressing to be loaded on the computer used by the survey subjects.

Lisa was pretty proud of how quickly she had put together this project; barely one week after coming up with the concept Lisa was ready to begin collecting data from unsuspecting shoppers. Other than a couple of minor technical glitches her first day went smoothly; she was able to get 12 completed interviews.

Day 1: Most people took advantage of the chance to see the woman undressing, but registered no more than mild surprise and no noticeable change in heart rate. Monitoring her subjects on camera from behind a curtain at one end of the conference room, Lisa was disappointed at the lack of impact watching the video had on her subjects; she decided to change video the next day to show the full original version, which showed the woman continuing to undress until she was naked.

Day 2: Lisa got another 15 interviews completed and once again most people took advantage of the chance to see the woman undressing, seeing her get fully naked did elicit a somewhat stronger response. The typical increase in response was measurable, but the change from the previous day was less than Lisa had expected. Reviewing the data collected at the end of the day, Lisa noticed an unexpected effect; all the subjects heart rates increased almost as much when she came out from behind the curtain to interview them than when seeing the naked woman in the video! Lisa theorized the subjects felt disconnected from the events in the video and were surprised by her sudden appearance.

Day 3: To test her theory about her subjects lack of connection to the woman on the screen keeping them from reacting strongly to the video, Lisa made a major change in her procedure; she substituted a video of herself getting undressed down to her bra and panties for the video of the anonymous woman! She reasoned that this wasn't much less than she'd been wearing in her restaurant job the last couple of years, justifying the choice of her laciest lingerie as giving her the best chance to test her theory about the subjects' reactions. She wore the same outfit in person as she started out wearing in the video to make it easier for the subjects to recognize her as the woman in the video.

At the end of the day, Lisa was pleased to see her theory was proving true, as the subjects had noticeably more response to "video Lisa" after first meeting "researcher Lisa", who had explained the process to them as they sat down to work at the computer. The heightened responses were welcome as proof of her theory, and she realized her ego enjoyed a bit of a boost as well - an unplanned reward for her hard work.

Day 4: Lisa intended to follow the same routine as the previous day, but realized that to be able to compare the new procedure accurately to that followed during Day 2 the woman in the video to be shown today would have to repeat what the woman in Day 2's video did - strip until completely nude! With only two more days left in her reservation of the room, she felt like she really had no choice but to imitate the video used on Day 2; before trolling the mall for her first subject of the day she set up the video camera and recorded herself slowly unbuttoning her blouse, slipping off her skirt and after bit of hesitation sliding her panties down to her ankles. Unhooking her bra and dropping it with the rest of her outfit completed her strip. Knowing herself that it had simply been a reflection of her terror at what she was doing, she couldn't help wondering if the slow, halting way she stripped would be seen by the subjects as a tease, shuddering to think ahead to today's post video interviews!

As expected, this day's subjects showed a much stronger response in every way to the naked Lisa video than either the partially clothed Lisa video from Day 3, the naked anonymous woman from Day 2 or the video of the partially clothed woman from Day 1; the subjects' heart rates and answers to the post-video interview all showed sharply increased reactions. Lisa knew she was close to proving her theory, but unfortunately she had lost time convincing herself to record the new video and revamping her setup and so was only able to get 5 full interviews completed; she would need to get several more tomorrow, her last day to have the use of the space.

Day 5 started with a devastating new technical glitch; the memory card containing her striptease video was corrupted. She ran to a store nearby in the mall and bought a replacement, but found that the camera itself seemed to be the problem, it wouldn't recognize the new card; she now had no video or any way to record a replacement, thus no way to collect enough interviews matching the Day 4 procedure to have a sufficient sample size. She felt like giving up, the whole project was starting to feel like a fiasco. Thinking about how much she and Rob had riding on her passing the class, how far she had gone already and how Rob had said she should do whatever was needed, she sat alone in the conference room trying to think of a way to salvage the project.

Her eventual inspiration was something she could only even consider in light of how desperate her situation was. Lisa could only think of one solution; she would set the subjects up as in all the previous days, but instead of a window on the computer monitor showing a prerecorded video she would have the window showing a live feed of the space behind the curtain. She would leave the subjects to work on the computer as before, but now she would have to do a live striptease just a few feet away from the interviewees, with only a portable curtain separating her from them! This meant stripping naked practically in front of random strangers at least 8 or 10 times!

Lisa set up a camera in position to view the setting for her stripteases, then went straight to the mall food court to recruit her first subject; she didn't want to give herself time to think too hard about what she was about to do. She found a middle aged man who had nothing better to do for a while and agreed to be her first subject of the day. She set him up at the computer, glancing at the monitor just long enough to be sure the live feed camera was still working, then headed behind the curtain.

The man started diligently reading the survey questions and managed to complete a few before Lisa appeared in the small window in the upper left corner of the monitor. She just stood there for a minute, seeming to be looking for something; after a short pause he went back to answering questions. After answering several more he glanced at the video feed again and forgot all about answering survey questions, having noticed that the pretty woman who was conducting the survey had slipped out of her shoes and skirt since he had last looked!

Meanwhile, behind the curtain Lisa was starting to unbutton her blouse, hoping her subject couldn't see her hands shaking. Stripping for her subjects live felt entirely different, way more intense than recording it for playback. Once her blouse had been abandoned she unhooked her bra and slowly slipped the straps off her arms, letting gravity take the lacy garment to the floor, joining the skirt and blouse...

The man, just a dozen feet away from the now nearly naked Lisa, maximized the video window to get the best possible view just in time to watch her hook both thumbs into the waist of her panties and slowly work them down, revealing her ass seconds before dropping them to the floor and stepping out of them.

A few seconds later he saw Lisa look down at a laptop on a small table in her curtained enclosure, then straight up at the camera with a shocked expression. As she faced the camera he briefly enjoyed a full frontal view of her totally naked body, then saw her dive for the keyboard as the live feed went blank. He thought he'd better get back to the survey, acting as if he hadn't just seen Lisa's performance. Filling in answers without actually reading the questions, he was finished a minute before the fully dressed Lisa reappeared from behind the curtain, blushing from head to toe.

Lisa asked her real survey questions and thanked the man for his time.

He replied, "No problem, this is probably going to be the high point of my week!"

Lisa recorded her first subject's data and survey answers, then with barely any break headed out to find her next subject.

The next few interviews went along in much the same way, though Lisa was gradually becoming more relaxed. She found that unlike during her first terrifying striptease, with each subsequent performance she could focus more on making sure her viewer had a good show and began to take a strange sort of pride in the extra touches she was now adding.

She made small changes in her routine such as running her fingers through her hair, delaying the release of her bra by lightly squeezing the cups after unhooking it and dropping the straps and giving her ass a brief squeeze beneath her panties just before removing them. She thought her volunteer voyeurs were reacting well to these additions and had to admit to herself that they improved her enjoyment, marveling at the fact she was actually starting to enjoy her task.

There was one complication caused by Lisa's more relaxed strip routine; she was beginning to take so much longer to get naked and dressed again several of her interview subjects, who had apparently kept answering questions on their computer during her act, actually finished the bogus survey well before she had time to get dressed and rejoin them. One subject, apparently embarrassed by the idea of talking with Lisa after seeing her stripping, almost made it out the door before she caught him!

In order to avoid losing any volunteers this way, Lisa saved some time by not putting her shoes back on before rejoining her next subject. As she kept expanding her routine she saved more time by not putting back on her bra, then eventually did the same with her panties. The last time saving adjustment she made was slightly more obvious and a bit daring; she left 4 of her blouse's 6 buttons undone. The effect her braless and mostly unbuttoned look had on the first volunteer to be treated to it was easy to see without checking his pulse, the look on his face said it all! Since all the clothes needed to be back in place before starting with the next volunteer she actually used a little more time overall but getting out quickly to finish each interview was essential, and she was enjoying having this little secret as she completed the interviews.

Though pleased with the data she had gathered on this final day and enjoying the effect she was having on each subject, by the time Lisa welcomed her twelfth volunteer she was getting pretty tired and was happy to almost be done for the day.

Knowing this would be her last performance Lisa went all out, enjoying the thought of the effect she was doubtless having on the man on the other side of the curtain. Other than a little resistance on the part of her skirt's zipper, which briefly got stuck halfway down, Lisa was pretty pleased with the performance, thinking to herself that she'd saved her best for last.

Lisa hurried to get dressed, or at least as dressed as she was now getting after each striptease. The zipper gave her even more trouble, barely budging at all; she'd have to hold the waistband together with one hand, at least while walking. To make up for the time lost trying in vain to get the zipper working Lisa only buttoned a single button on her blouse, thinking she could get by without it being too obvious if she stood very straight.

Lisa headed out of the curtained enclosure, greeting her final volunteer with a big smile as she emerged; somewhere along the way she had stopped blushing. She had just cleared the edge of the opening when she felt her right foot not move forward as expected. A careless toss of her bra had hooked it on to the base of the metal frame the curtain was mounted on and an unlucky placement of her foot in one of the bra's cups now threw her off balance, causing her to go into a sort of stumbling one-legged hop on her left leg.

She hopped in place once, twice, three times with both hands waving in the air as she fought to regain her balance before the trapped foot broke free, swinging wildly to a spot close to where the left one was hopping. The close placement of her legs combined with the waving around of her hands freed her unzipped skirt, which quickly dropped to her knees.