It all began with Sophia's ridiculous dare.
We'd been sitting at Mason's Coffee Shop late one spring afternoon, sipping mochas (low-fat milk with whipped cream!) and taking a well-deserved breather from life as graduate students. As usual, Melinda was tapping away on her iPhone, texting as if she'd forgotten how to talk like the rest of us, somehow managing to hold down three conversations with her thumbs while simultaneously reapplying lipgloss. Svetlana had her feet up on the table, attracting the appreciative stares of some frat guys outside the bookstore across the street and completely ignoring the whistles. She had to be the only girl in the world who could pull off wearing running shorts and an athletic halter with her leather law briefcase. On the other side of the table, Sophia lounged in manicured preppiness, all buttoned down Victoria's Secret blouse and skinny jeans, deliberately sticking her fingers in the whipped cream 'by accident' in order to torment the same frat guys staring at Svetlana by licking it off one finger at a time. Rolling my eyes at the whole scene, I nudged Sveta's feet off the table to make room for my laptop and began to wonder if Sophia was simply making things up.
"It's so simple," she'd begun, fanning herself with a cardboard cupholder, "Jason and I play this game every week. You see - " and here she broke off to give Melinda a pointed look before continuing a little louder, "we both start off the week with the boring underwear and as the week goes on, change into sexier things. Then we start being naughty in public, take pictures with our camera phones, and send them along. The first person who admits to masturbating before the weekend loses." Jason was her med school boyfriend who only came up to see Sophia on the weekends. The thought of her (I'd assumed) uptight and rather boring boyfriend taking part in such a game was so absurd I couldn't resist laughter.
"You are SO putting us on, Soph," I giggled over the mocha. "No way Mr. Prim and Proper photographs his dick for you."
Melinda actually put down her iPhone for a minute to comment. "Yeah, you're such a wild child the only way your relationship works is if Dr. Dork is a puritan in the bedroom."
"I'm not kidding. Want to see the pics?" Sophia unzipped the Gucci bag sitting on her management books and started rummaging for her phone. Sveta reacted to my shocked exclamation by grabbing it before Soph could show us anything explicit.
"No thanks Soph," she said firmly, "we believe you."
Instead of looking affronted, Sophia simply stood and brushed off the back of her jeans, held out her hand for the phone, and collected her books. "I've got a PowerPoint to do for tomorrow girls, so I'll be off now. But I'm willing to bet none of you would upset your prissy little boytoys by going outside the lines. In fact," this she threw over her shoulder as she turned and headed towards the door, "I dare you to push the limits."
"Well Sveta," Melinda muttered between keystrokes, "you've certainly done it now. Nothing like one of Soph's little dares."
"Pssssh. Tommy and I do just fine in the bedroom, thank you very much. No need to risk charges of public indecency. Actually," she checked the time, "I better be going or I'll be late for my aerobics class. And you, Liss," I looked up from my mocha as she stood to leave, "don't seem to be unhappy either."
I kept my mouth shut as Sveta jogged off, trying very hard to keep from laughing as the frat boys' heads just about bobbed in time with Sveta's bouncing bosom. "Those poor kids," Melinda never looked up from her iPhone, "would have a heart attack if Tommy so much as looked at them." Thinking of Sveta's musclebound boyfriend, I couldn't help but agree.
****
Sveta was usually right, but the thought nagged at me later when I was at the library digging up some obscure references about Gustavus III of Sweden. I might not be unhappy in my relationship with Andy, but we had a pretty boring sex life nowadays. Four years into a stable relationship, me busy with school and him at his job, his already low sex drive had almost fallen off the map. I'd given up the lacy lingerie and subtle hints for direct demands, but like as not I was masturbating more often than I ever got to see the trouser snake.
Sophia would never believe me if she knew how much erotic fiction and porn I accessed. She and Jason (reportedly) had tons of kinky sex, which I usually wrote off as exaggeration from a woman determined to present herself as perfect in everything. Thinking about a particularly erotic story I'd read last night made me cross my legs and squirm a little at the table I'd staked out in the corner of the History section.
Trying to distract myself from the rather steamy thoughts I was having, I checked my e-mail and found a personal message from one of the forums.
--- Sent at 10:20 PM 2/15/2009 by user LetMeComeInside6969 ---
Hey there hot stuff,
I couldn't help but get get hard reading your latest story post. Your man must be neglecting you baby if you're writing something that hot. I'd love to see you in those red panties from Chapter Seven.
---End of message---
I bit my lip and considered the message. Normally I deleted such things and never bothered to respond to similar requests. Being a History grad student by day and an erotic fiction author by night was something Andy didn't know about, and I'd die of embarrassment if he ever knew. Plus, requests like LetMeComeInside6969's always made me wonder where the line was between a little harmless fun and too much.
Given Sophia's dare for the day though, I wondered if I could bend the line. After all, the forums were pretty anonymous, I had a username of PrettyPolynesianBaby, and nobody there would be able to track me down as long as I didn't post my face. Over the years I've been paranoid enough not to post details that were too personal. In this case though, some things could be extremely personal without getting me in trouble with anyone.
I set my laptop aside and looked over the stack of dusty books on my table. Only three other people in the History section tonight. Two had headphones on and were studiously typing away, and a third looked to be asleep about fifty feet away. Well, I thought, only one way to find out if Soph's little idea even works.
Nervously, I slid my phone out of my bag and slid down a little more in the wooden chair. It was laundry time, and I'd put it off longer than normal so that all I had left were my 'sexy little things' in the back of the underwear drawer. A wicked smile bloomed as I considered possible angles, spreading my legs more under my skirt. I was in fact wearing a red silk butterfly thong - not quite the crotchless red panties from my story, but close enough. Checking around one more time, I held the phone under my hem and snapped a picture.
The click it made seemed loud enough that someone should have heard it. But looking around again, none of the three people around me seemed to have noticed. I scrolled back through the images in my phone, and the wicked smile got bigger. A little dark, but nothing PhotoShop couldn't fix.
Before I continued, I switched chairs so that I was actually in the corner, my back to the bookshelves so that nobody walking by could see my laptop screen. I uploaded the image to my laptop and some rapid fiddling with PhotoShop to lighten the tones produced an amateur but undoubtedly 'dirty' picture.
