"Remember, if a person is speaking to you, look them in the eye whenever possible. And, unless you're holding a plate or glass, keep your hands at your sides." Mr. Nimoy directed as you sat nude on the bed in his beach house. He was standing in front of the mirror buttoning his shirt.
One wall of the bedroom was floor to ceiling glass. At one time, quite recently and yet seeming like it was in a different life, you would have been freaked out about being naked in that room. You would have wondered who was out there in the darkness looking into the well-lit room. The high lighting fixtures, in conjunction with the dark paneled walls, actually made for a pale amber lighting, but it was bright enough that one would be able to see inside from the outdoors. But all that could be seen out in the darkness beyond the balcony was the shimmering of an almost full moon reflected on the wave caps and breakers. So, unless the voyeur was on a boat and had binoculars, there probably wasn't much risk of being seen. It was not this rational thought process that led to your indifference, however. It was because you had been nude almost all the time for the past several days, and you were rapidly becoming accustomed to it.
In fact, you almost never had to be corrected for eye contact or covering violations around Leonard or his blond-haired assistant, Marlon, anymore. However, Leonard had good reason to think you would revert tonight, and you knew he was probably right. He was, after all, having a room full of friends and close acquaintances over for an exhibition. The photographs on display, which he had been secretive about, would not be the only thing being exhibited. While the guests were all well known to Leonard, they would all be complete strangers to you. Not that it mattered that they were strangers as far as the level of mortification you were experiencing was concerned. If they were known to you, it would probably have been worse.
Marlon ducked his head into the room. "Hey, cutie." He said in greeting to you, and then to Leonard: "Mr. Nimoy, the guests have all arrived and are assembled in the gallery."
"Thank you, Marlon. We'll be right down."
Your stomach churned as you took the hand Leonard had offered palm up in a gentlemanly manner. This was the truest test yet of your devotion to being Leonard's girl. Relinquishing your virginity was a distant second. You were ripe and ready for that, and there was no man you would have rather had deflower you than he. This, however, was the nightmare of all but a few rare exhibitionists. Naked in a room full of clothed people, that had to rank with inexorably falling or with taking a high school test for which one is totally unprepared as one of the most common bad dreams experienced in modern society. And there could be no doubt that among girls of generous proportions, such as yourself, the dream of public nudity had to be number one by a long-shot. And here you were about to live the nightmare in the real world.
Leonard kissed you as he kneaded the back of your neck to help you relax. "Take a deep breath. You'll do fine. Are you ready?" Leonard asked.
How did one answer that question? You weren't ready. You couldn't be ready, but you were willing to do it for him. And so you said, simply: "Yes." Then you took the deep slow breath he had recommended.
You willed every step to last an eternity so that you could delay this experience. But it was a short walk down the stairs, down a hallway, and into the gallery. Being arm-in-arm with Leonard was the only thing that allowed you to summon the requisite courage. With every step you took, the sounds of clinked crystal and the jumbled din of concurrent conversations seemed to get noticeably louder.
All too quickly, you were being walked through the door by Leonard. The first thing you noticed, which served to ease your nerves just a little, was that you were not the only nude in the room. Out of about twenty people assembled -not including the catering staff and Marlon- four were nude and standing obediently and quietly next to fully-clothed presumed masters. Three of the nudes were female and the other one was male. Two of them, one of the females and the male, were on leashes attached to dog collars, and the other two women were, like you, untethered. One of the other females was plump, like you, but a few years older, blond, and darkly tanned all over. Another of the females, the one in the collar, had milky smooth skin like yours and was buxom and just a little broad in the hips. The final girl was dark, exotic, had a petite, almost boyish, figure. She looked deceptively young from a distance because of her slight frame and delicate features, but was, in reality, middle-aged. The girls were all with different men. The boy was about your age, and looked like a clean-cut frat boy being hazed. He had a plump erection with some kind of band around the base of his penis presumably to maintain that state. He was chained to a woman who was probably fifty, had hair that was a mix of blond and gray in tight school marm-esque bun, and wore a red dress with a plunging neckline that revealed her substantial cleavage. You noticed that the two collared submissives and the petite exotic girl all kept their eyes averted in strict contradiction of the command you had been given. The plump blond did look at those who were speaking.
The next thing you noticed was that even if you had been allowed to wear clothes you would still have been on display. Centered along each wall was one of the photos Leonard had taken of you the day you first met, and the fifth was on an easel in the middle of the room. They were poster-sized prints. Most of the assembled guests had congealed into one of the three cocktail party klatchs that were circled around the three most popular photos. A few other two party dialogues were going on throughout the room, including a couple in front of the photos that had not drawn crowds.
The room was white and bright. It had a white ceiling, a white tile floor, and two adjacent walls were white. Unlike the dim ambiance of the bedroom, the gallery was flooded with white light. This contributed to an impression that there was no place to hide. There were no dark recesses in which imperfections would be concealed. The other two walls, the exterior walls, were floor to ceiling windows just like the one in the bedroom upstairs. Out the longer wall one could see the same view of moonlight playing off the water that you had seen from the bedroom, and out the other side one could see the faint lights from a neighboring house in the distance. A small team of three or four waiters and waitresses circulated in black slacks, white tux shirts, and black bowties carrying silver trays of exotic appetizers and flutes of sparkling wine.
"Leonard, you finally found the girl you've been after, and a lovely one at that." Said a short, pudgy, gray mustachioed man of about sixty. He took your hand and kissed the back of it.
"This is Rubin Katz of Paramount." Leonard introduced the two of you. It was only then that it occurred to you that some of the faces in the room seemed familiar. While Rubin was not even vaguely familiar to you, ostensibly owing to his behind the camera industry position, a few others looked like actors you recognized from television and movies. There were no huge stars among the guests, but several faces that were frequently seen in supporting roles. Including, you recognized as a Star Trek fan, one poor Ensign who had lasted a mere three onscreen minutes and whose only line was a death throe grunt delivered as he was being vaporized. Leonard and Rubin were engaged in business talk that you were oblivious to because you were too busy alternating between being anxious and trying to place the faces of minor celebrities. By now everybody had noticed that Leonard had arrived, but they returned to their conversations to give the two men some space. No one was staring at you, but you did catch the occasional onlooker in a peep. In reality, you reasoned, they were probably looking at Leonard, star of television and movies, but it didn't feel like it. Many of the attendees wanted to talk to Leonard semi-privately for their own purposes.
A waiter came by with the Champagne and Leonard grabbed two glasses, handing one to you without disrupting his discussion. You occasionally sampled from the circulating food trays, but, under the circumstances, were not that hungry. Some of the food you recognized, but little of it had you eaten before. For example, a small pile of tiny black shiny orbs on a crisp browned cracker with some sort of green sprig on it, that had to be caviar. There were various kinds of ornate sushi with bright orange salmon and deep red tuna drawing the eye. There was almost raw tenderloin thinly sliced on a piece of crusty baguette. It was not exactly a pigs-in-a-blanket kind of party.
When Leonard and Rubin were done, there were a few other industry-related conversations before Leonard got the obligatory business talk out of the way, and could get around to the more relaxing and pleasurable portion of the evening. Most of those assembled were not in the movie business, but were individuals who the Star Trek renaissance man knew from his other interests such poetry, prose writing, photography, and even through shared sexual proclivities. It was not always clear what Leonard's connection was to such party-goers. One might, for example, think that the other four people with "pets" were all people Leonard knew through sexual exploits. However, this would not be correct. Some of those dominants knew him primarily in other contexts, but, once they knew he kept a girl, they felt free to show, what they thought was, their affinity. On the other hand, a couple of those who did not seem in any way unusual or exotic did, in fact, travel in common sexual circles.
When Leonard was finally momentarily freed up, I broke off of the periphery of a tired but angry discussion of the Vietnam War, and interrupted Leonard in his attempt to circulate. "Lenny, how have you been? Good catch." I said. First shaking Leonard's hand vigorously, then taking your more dainty hand while simultaneously planting a greeting kiss on your cheek.
