Between the planning meeting on Saturday and the first photo session Wednesday evening there was quite a lot to do. Nancy located some vintage women's clothing items including several linen petticoats, a pair of garters, and a lace cap that looked like something the female servants wore in "Upstairs, Downstairs." I asked her about the anachronistic cap and she told me it was the best she could do. I'd just have to adapt it in my drawings.
She also bought a pair of somewhat sheer white stockings. They weren't authentically eighteenth century, either, but they would do.
On Tuesday when I got home from work, Nancy modeled the complete costume for me. She looked wonderfully young and innocent. The only suggestion I made was that she find a lower cut top. And I asked her to loosen her bodice so the top of the blouse would fall open more easily. In the first session, I told her to expect quite a lot of inappropriate touching, including at least some tit-grabbing.
"Nasty man!" said Nancy. "Are you going to have the poor country girl ravished immediately?"
"Not immediately. But she gets compromised pretty early on. You know, a lot of sexual horse-play used to go on in the taverns."
Karsten called a little later. He said Gil, the Israeli student, wouldn't be able to make it for some reason. But Adrian, Glen, and he would be there. And they'd borrowed costumes, including wigs, that were more or less authentic. I asked him if Gil was dropping out of the project and Karsten said he wasn't.
I left work early on Wednesday and got home before my wife did. I gave the house a quick going over to make it appear that I lived there alone. This meant stashing a lot of Nancy's stuff until after the photo shoot. We'd be working (if that's the right word) in the living room tonight. So I moved things out of the center of the room to make a little more space. I laid Nancy's costume on the couch. I'd tell the guys that she had to store her costume at my house.
When Nancy got home at about 4:30, I showed her what I'd done. She volunteered to leave the house for a while at around 6:00 o'clock so that she wouldn't be the first project team member to arrive for the 7:00 o'clock session.
So, after a quick dinner of left-overs, I drove my wife to a neighborhood bar. I told her I'd come back for her after the guys arrived. I watched her enter the bar (looking very sexy in a long coat over her tight jeans and a semi-transparent top under her light jacket) and drove off.
Promptly at 7:00 p.m., Adrian, Glen, and Karsten arrived. They were in their street clothes. Karsten, who seemed to have fallen into the role of stage manager, carried a box containing their costumes. As soon as I let them in, I told them I had to pick up Nancy and that I'd be back in about fifteen minutes. They said they'd change into their costumes while I was gone.
I asked them to get a twelve-pack of beer out of the refrigerator. They might as well get into the spirit of tavern decadence by having a few.
Then I called Nancy to tell her I was on my way to the bar. That was good, she said, because an obnoxious guy was trying to pick her up. I asked her if she wanted me to defend her honor. She just laughed and said "What honor?" She'd be waiting for me outside.
On the way back to the house, she asked me what I expected in tonight's session. Would she just get felt up or would it go further? I asked her just to go along with whatever happened. The truth was that I wasn't completely sure what would develop. Uncertainty was part of the thrill for me.
And the usual self-doubts came upon me. What was I getting my wife into? What sort of a husband was I, anyway? Had I actually bought into the rationalization that this would be some sort of art and that it would have, therefore, some value beyond sexual gratification?
I put these moralistic thoughts out of my mind as soon as we arrived back at the house. Once inside with Nancy and the three guys, I fell immediately into the role of serious-artist- daring-to-push-the-envelope-of-eroticism. I told them that the project might be considered pornography in the service of art. But it was pornography nonetheless. None of them objected or seemed at all disturbed by my candor.
The guys looked pretty authentic in their costumes, and I congratulated Karsten on his success in finding them. We all stood around in the living room admiring the costumes and drinking beer for a while. Then I ordered Nancy to get out of her street clothes and into her costume. She said she was a little self-conscious and asked me to bring her a glass of wine to relax her.
When I got back to the living room with Nancy's wine, I was pleasantly surprised to see that she'd begun changing clothes in the living room in full view of the three guys. She was topless. In fact she'd stripped all the way down to her white cotton panties and was sitting on the couch next to her costume pulling on her stockings.
I handed her the glass of wine and said, "Wow, Nancy. I'm glad I was able to hire you. You're really gorgeous. You're not exactly a buxom barmaid, but you've got really nice tits." Then I turned to the guys and asked, "Don't you think so?"
All three agreed. But Glen corrected me: "She's got a really nice body. She's got great muscle tone and there's hardly an ounce of flab on her. She'll be really interesting to draw."
And to fuck. I knew he had to be thinking that.
With her stockings on (they went up to the middle of her thighs), Nancy stood up and put on her blouse. Then, dressed somewhat more decently and looking somewhat relieved, she sat back down and took some sips from her glass of wine.
"You won't believe what a step it was for me to get naked in front of you guys. The three glasses of wine I had before I came here helped some," she said. "But even with the wine, until now I wasn't sure I could do it."
But I wasn't congratulatory. "Well, Nancy, you're not all the way naked. For one thing, you'll need to get out of those panties. Girls of your class didn't wear them in the eighteenth century."
She smiled up at me. "You mean now? Before I get into my petticoats?"