13

Part 12

Female laughter washed over Tim, and he felt his face getting hot. How could things have gone so wrong, so quickly?

"C'mon," he said, shakily, looking around the room for someone who might support him. "This is crazy! Women aren't going to go for this kind of campaign."

But all he saw were smiling, slightly predatory looks on the faces of the attractive women surrounding him. "You don't think so?" Shawna said.

"Because the data suggests," Sandy jumped in, "that they're going to love it."

"And why wouldn't they?" Joy said. "Remember Sandy's bar graph? Most women would love to have an attractive male who was vulnerable to being manipulated out of his clothes!"

Murmurs of assent burned in Tim's ears. In a teasing voice, Anna said, "And more than a third of guys would fantasize about that, too. Are you sure that you're not part of that group who might be intrigued by a little CFNM action?"

"No!" Tim said, too quickly, and in a voice a little too high. More female laughter. He looked at Danielle, who he was disappointed to see was also smiling. "This doesn't make sense! With the ads already in the can that score so high and your deadline so short...?"

Danielle admitted, "That is a concern."

Sandy said, "But we need to remember how our new audience data skews our numbers. When 75% of our audience was male, the average expected positive response rate was 85 out of 100, which is really strong. I wouldn't suggest that we take the time to have a new, female-dominated focus group look at our existing ads, because there is a simple way to confidently predict what they'd tell us."

"What's that?" Danielle asked.

"We just flip the calculations. Assume that the male and female ratings of the existing ads wouldn't change, and just reverse the male-to-female ratio. That would drop our aggregate 85% positive response rate down to 71%."

Tim looked from Sandy to Danielle, feeling like his fate was in these women's hands. "That's still pretty good, though. Right?"

"It is," Danielle said, a pensive look on her face. "But Kurt and I already passed a glowing report from the original focus group up the ladder. So while 71% isn't a bad number, it will under-perform what we'd told them to expect." She looked at Tim with a partly sympathetic expression. "And I hate to do that."

"But they won't be happy when you tell them that we've got to start again from scratch, and come up with new scripts and blocking and... and everything," Tim said, feeling a little sweat on his forehead. "That will force us to miss the deadline for sure."

"We discussed that," Shawna said, looking at Sandy. Tim saw that they both had the slightest little smirks, and he swallowed hard. "And we think we've got a solution."

"What?" Julie and Pam said, at the same time, then giggled at each other's nervous excitement.

Sandy said, "We could just use the same two scripts we've already shot, and reverse the genders."

Everyone looked at each other, and Tim's employees began to grin, and then to giggle.

"I love it!" Anne said. "Instead of trapping the seat of my slacks in the door, I can trap Mr. Johnson's pants, so he's the one with his backside hanging out."

"And I can spill my coffee on his shirt," Kaitlyn said, "and help him out by taking it off and taking it to the kitchen to wash it out. We won't mind if he has to hang out in the office shirtless until it dries!"

Julie snickered. "And I can trick him into crawling under the coffee table when I drop some papers, and then 'accidentally' hook his pants on the table."

Tim felt light-headed and flushed. "C'mon. These aren't the same thing!"

"Sure they are," Mia said.

"No they're aren't," Tim insisted. He looked at Kaitlyn. "A pretty woman with her shirt off is a lot sexier than a guy with his shirt off. That's why women can't go topless in public, but guys can."

"YEAH, they can!" Anna said, and the other girls laughed.

"Besides," Mia said, "a pretty girl in a bra isn't completely exposed, and a bare-chested guy showing off his abs is. Even though nice pecs aren't as explicit as bare breasts, they're still pretty hot!"

Tim felt everything slipping away. "Mia, what about your scenario? It was sexy when I snuck a look up your skirt, but that wouldn't work if the roles are reversed."

"I think Mr. Johnson is suggesting that we dress him up in a skirt," Kaitlyn said, to several chuckles.

"NO I'm not!" Tim said. "But a skirt gives visual opportunities for a gag that pants don't."

Danielle said, "You might be right. But if we can keep the other pranks, losing one won't kill us."

"Plus, I could just pants him!" Mia said, and everyone looked at her. "You know. Get him to climb the ladder, loosen his belt while he's distracted, and then... whoosh!" She mimicked the action of grabbing a pair of pants and yanking downward.

Laughter once again filled the room, and Tim started to feel sick. "This won't work," he insisted.

"Why not?" Becky asked.

"Well..." he thought for a moment, "in the other scenario, each girl revealed just a little bit. But if we have all of these... tricks... happen to just one person. It won't be... balanced."

"That's true," Shawna said, after thinking about it for a moment. "But what we lose in the variety of people stripped, we'll gain in the embarrassment of the single victim. And I think Sandy's data shows that most women would rather see a handsome man stripped of one piece of clothing after another, than four women stripped of one piece each."

Every head in the room nodded, except Tim's. Grasping at straws, he said, "I don't see how that could possibly work for our tv versions of the ads."

"We'll have to figure that out," Danielle admitted.

"But the internet versions are going to be AWESOME!" Joy said, igniting a fresh wave of giggles.

"That's it then," Danielle said, decisively. Tim said, "But—" but Danielle plowed on.

"We've got a winning concept, and we've got two ad scripts that we'll just have to reverse engineer. We're pressed for time, but we're not going to have to re-invent the wheel here. Let's get started right now. Joy, Pam and Becky, get back to the office and get all of your stuff. I want us all back here in an hour, to start re-blocking out the first ad. We can start walking through it this afternoon, and shoot it tonight."

Shawna grinned at Tim, but she talked to the waify little brunette next to him.

"Pam, you'll need to bring a bunch of wardrobe changes for Tim. I have a feeling that he's going to be going through a LOT of clothes!"

Tim held his head in his hands, as several of his employees and co-workers bounced out of the room in excitement, slapping him on the back as they went.

Part 13

A few hours later, they were all back at the office, in a frenzy of activity. The only one missing was Sandy, who was back at the office crunching numbers on another campaign. But she had made Shawna promise to call her before the shooting started tonight. She had no intention of missing Tim's unveiling!

Joy and Becky were setting up lights and checking camera angles. Shawna, Danielle and the four office workers were in the conference room, working at a white board and chattering and giggling as they worked out the details of Tim's impending, on-camera humiliation.

Meanwhile, Pam was in Tim's office with him. She had brought in a tall mirror on a stand, and a rolling rack of men's clothes, and was going through the possibilities with him.

"I can't believe this," Tim moaned. "I can't believe I have to do this!"

The petite brunette was flipping through some jeans, khakis and dress pants on the rack. "Oh come on. It's not such a big deal."

"That's easy for you so say," Tim said.

Pam smiled at him. "It was also easy for you to say, when your female employees were taping their version."

"I know," Tim said, miserably.

Pam pulled out a three identical pairs of gray dress pants, then laid two across the back of an office chair. "Don't feel so bad. You seem to be in... very good shape.

A little showing off won't kill you." She held the final pair of pants up in front of Tim, judging their length against his body. "Think of all the money you'll be making."

"Think of all the women who will be sitting around here watching me lose my clothes!"

"There is that," Pam said, and winked at him. She found the way he blushed to be so adorable. "Look, all of the girls survived taping their version of the ad, and so will you. Now," she said, looking him up and down, "are you a boxers or briefs guy?"

Tim said, "What?" and saw that her eyes were locked below his waist. "Boxers!" he said. "Remember, this ad is supposed to be sexy, not obscene."

Pam snorted at that. "All of a sudden you're prudish, aren't you? Now turn around." She put a hand on his shoulder and turned him away from her.

"What?" Tim said as he pivoted, "Why?"

Pam produced a measuring tape, then put one side of it against his left hip, and stretched it across the roundest part of his buns. "Hey!" Tim said.

Pam snickered, noting the measurement at his right hip. "Relax. I'm just getting a measurement so I'll know how much of these pants to cut out." She playfully swatted his ass as she rolled the measuring tape back up.

Tim didn't appreciate the swat, and turned back around. He watched as she laid the gray pants out on his desk, then pulled the measuring tape out across the seat, marking a spot on either side with chalk. "There," Pam said, picking up a pair of scissors and cutting a large, roughly circular hole in the pants. She held them up and looked at the pants, and then looked pointedly below Tim's waist.

With a satisfied look, she said, "That should do it. I'll just put a very few stitches to connect this patch to the pants, and you'll be ready for your big close-up!" She waggled her eyebrows at him, and he felt himself blushing again.

Pam picked up the pants and the patch and a small sewing kit, and started for the door. "Look through the boxers and briefs and pick out the ones you like most. I've got a feeling we'll be using most of them at some point."

"I'd like to stick to the boxers," Tim said.

"Okay," Pam said, turning back to him by the door. "But I think Shawna and the girls are probably going to want to see you in some of the briefs, too."

"I'll decide that," Tim snapped. "I'm the boss here."

"Sure," Pam said evenly, her eyes sparkling. As she opened the door, she said under her breath, just loud enough for Tim to hear her, "But you're a boss who's about to lose most of his clothes."

Tim moaned as she closed the door behind her. He walked over and locked it, then turned back to the small pile of underwear on his desk, and moaned again.

As Pam walked past the conference room carrying the pants, the women in there spotted her. "Hey Pam," Shawna called out. Pam stopped, and stepped back into the doorway. "How's our boy?"

Pam grinned. "He seems nervous." The women around the table giggled.

Mia said, "He's got reason to be."

"Are those his pants?" Anna asked.

Pam held them up, showing the hole, and the patch. "Yep. I'm going to put a few stitches in to hold the patch in place."

"But not for long," Julie said, snickering.

In his office, Tim held up and rejected several pairs of boxers, finally settling on the largest-looking pair. They were light gray, and made of cotton. Tim made one more pass around his office windows, making sure that all of his blinds were completely down, and that no one could see in. Then he retreated to behind his tall office chair, and unbuttoned and dropped the jeans he was wearing. Before he could stop, he also pushed the briefs he was wearing down and off, and then quickly grabbed the gray boxers.

As he pulled them up his legs, he saw that he was partially hard. "What is wrong with me?" he thought. He remembered Sandy smiling at him as she mentioned CFNM, and Anna piping up with its definition. "How did she know about that anyway?" Tim thought.

And how could he be partially hard? He was about to be completely humiliated in front of his co-workers and employees, yet somehow he was fighting off an erection that would make his humiliation exponentially worse.

He pulled up the boxers, then looked into the mirror. His legs looked pretty good, lean more than super muscular, but he had a noticeable bulge. He turned and looked back over his shoulder to see the rear view, and groaned.

He had always been self-conscious about his bubble butt; it was not grotesquely over-sized, like some women he'd seen on the internet, but it was definitely larger than average for his frame, and for a male. Girlfriends had always complimented the roundness of his cheeks, but he felt that they were too prominent. And even in these, not-overly-snug boxers, they definitely stood out.

Resigned, he pulled on the closest pair of gray dress pants and buttoned and zipped them. They fit his trim frame pretty well, and he wouldn't ordinarily feel self-conscious about their snugness. But today was anything but ordinary!

He walked to his office door, and unlocked it. "You can do this," he said to himself. "You just need to get through it."

He walked out into the open area just as the women were coming out of the conference room. All of them lit up when they saw him.

"There he is," Danielle said. "Looking good!"

Anna said, "Don't you think he's over-dressed, though?"

"Not for long," Julie said, and giggled.

"Okay," Tim said. "I know you all think this is pretty funny."

"It's not funny," Mia said, "it's hilarious!" The others nodded their heads.

Shawna stepped up to Tim, and took him by the wrist. "There's nothing to worry about. We're going to make this as easy for you as we can." She led him off in the direction of where the ladder stood beneath the light fixture, where Mia had climbed up in her short skirt.

The other females formed an entourage, following closely along as Shawna lead their nervous male victim to his fate. "Yes," Anna said, "and we'll show you the same respect that you showed us, when we were taping our first version of these ads."

Tim looked sideways over his shoulder at the sneaky brunette, who gave him a sweet smile. "I- I wasn't disrespectful to you girls. I mean, I appreciated how attractive you are, but I wasn't gross about it or anything."

"No," Mia said, in a sing-song voice. "And we won't be gross about your ads, either."

"Nope," Julie agreed. "We're going to appreciate how attractive you are, just like you said."

Tim swallowed as the raucous band of excited young women half-pulled and half-pushed him into position behind the ladder.

Joy said, "This is the only part of the original video that we have to change very much at all, just because Mia was in a skirt on the ladder."

Shawna said, "We went around and around, trying to come up with some believable reason why you might end up going up this ladder in a skirt."

"Maybe you were robbed on the way to work, and the robbers took your clothes, and we took pity on you when you arrived and let you wear one of my skirts," Mia said, chuckling.

"Or maybe you are a secret crossdresser," Kaitlyn said, "and we caught you in your office, putting on panties and nylons and—"

"All right," Tim said, exasperated by the women who surrounded and tormented him. "Come on! Can we just tone this down, please?"

"The only thing that's coming down," Anna said, "is your pants! Because after all of our brainstorming, Mia's original idea was still the best.

Mia beamed with satisfaction. "I get you up onto the ladder, wait until you are occupied with the light, and then whammo -- pants around your ankles!" Julie high-fived Mia and Tim could feel his face flushing.

For the next 15 minutes, the women walked their way through the office, showing Tim what was in store. Joy talked about blocking and lighting and the flow of camera shots in each sequence, and the rest of the women chattered in excitement, as Tim's dread continued to grow.

Halfway through their walk-through, Shawna peeled off from the group and walked into Tim's office, pulling out Tim's cell phone to make a pre-arranged phone call.

At the headquarters office, Sandy looked up from her computer to take the call. She listened for a minute, absent-mindedly tucking some stray locks of her strawberry blonde hair behind one ear. Then a devious grin formed on her pretty face, as her green eyes sparkled.

"Don't you dare start without me," she said. "I want that handsome young man fully dressed when I get there!"

She hung up, grabbed her purse and car keys, slammed her laptop shut and trotted out of her office, too eager to take time to turn off the office lights.