Chapter 10: Gathering Anticipation (with Bondage)

Our first show is at the world-famous Summers on the Beach, on the first Monday of Spring Break — though we have a teaser scheduled before that. It’s well-timed — to the bar’s mentality, it isn’t yet peak hours. To ours, however ... we will be getting first pick of all the eager young collegiates fresh off their planes. We will pluck the exhibitionists, decadents and kinksters out of the crowd before they have a chance to drop their tops anywhere else, and be the venue and catalyst to their first public exposure.

Summers is a major nexus of the Spring Break phenomenon. It’s been seen in several Hollywood films (Spring Break, Can It Be Love and Spring Fever USA, among others), and produces its own line of tapes featuring the sexy contests that take place there. Summers and the Trips have shared filming and distribution rights for our shows. In exchange for this somewhat generous agreement, Livia has arranged some ... latitude with Summers’ management in case the shows get a little (or a lot) more risqué than the baseline for Summers entertainment.

We are to be the hate sink, as usual, and with our secret impunity the role suits us well. Summers’ management will blame us after the fact in news interviews, but they won’t shut down the show just as things are getting interesting. And that’s important, because while bare, wet ta-tas are business as usual for Summers, some of what we have planned has the potential to jump outside their normal content levels.

Summers attracts consistent live performances from semi-famous bands, during Spring Break and at other times — Zebra, Sister Morphine, Fury, Rugged Edge, Soundgarden, Nazareth. Even some A-listers like Van Halen, Steppenwolf and Blue Oyster Cult have shown up on occasion. They have other claims to fame as well, such as “bear wrestling” with Victor the Rasslin’ Bear — an actual, muzzled, declawed grizzly bear that would wrestle any body-builders and frat jocks brave enough to try while the bar thumbs its nose at the animal rights activists parked outside shamelessly.

There’s also a belly-flop contest for the men which I understand is a substantial magnet for the women eager to hang with macho fitness types. But there’s no question that the core draw, at least during Spring Break, is the many types of exhibitionism in the sexy contests that Summers holds. Beyond the amateurs, some of the contests involve professionals — Summers’ management has a good relationship with Clubhouse, and Lascivious Livia will be far from the first Treat to grace the venerable establishment.

We visit Summers early on Saturday, getting there around 4 AM. The management lets us in, and either misses or turns a blind eye to what we do next. We set up cameras pointed at both the stage and the audience. We need footage of the audience on Saturday to run through the Sieve in advance of our Sunday show. By the time we’re done, crowds are gathering.

We stay at Summers all day Saturday, the first real day of Spring Break, as patrons rather than performers, to get a feel for the venue (and, let’s be honest, for some good clean voyeuristic thrills). They are a bar, but the main action is usually on their vast open-air patio with its own large swimming pool. Crowds of male spectators are packed shoulder to shoulder, with cordons blocking them off from the pool. A large crowd gathers around the bar, even spilling off Summers’ property. We all have VIP passes — a common courtesy for Clubhouse Treats and their guests, even if they aren’t due to be feature performers the next day. They’re running the latest, seventh iteration of their signature “Girls Games of Summer” — a few of which are deliciously lewd. We take our places in front row to watch.

There are two Clubhouse Treats in a booth acting as announcers — Lucy Langtry, a statuesque, buxom Brit and Gloria Sun, a more petite (yet strikingly beautiful) Vietnamese lady. Livia knows these two from her Clubhouse days, and we’ve had a joint show worked out with them before we even got to Lauderdale.

They are dressed in very officious formal clothes and would be quite respectable ... if they were wearing shirts. As it happens, they’re wearing only business jackets over their bare chests (much like Moira had done after being on stage during the Virgo Escalation). As such, their breasts are normally barely concealed ... until they move in a way that leads them to “accidentally” flash. Video from the booth is shown on two big, waterproofed rear-projection TVs at opposite sides of the pool.

First is a human ladder contest. Male patrons bid to get in the pool and form a line. They then pass female volunteers along the line with their hands, somewhat like crowd-surfing. Said female volunteers are quite pretty, and wear bikini bottoms with loose-fitting crop tops. Flashing is all but impossible to avoid given the attire — but that is far from the most kinky element of the game. Male hands inevitably end up touching all the parts of these shapely female forms; the game is structured for it to be impossible to avoid. It’s basically a consensual, public groping fest very thinly disguised as something more innocent — and it pushes several of Livia’s fetish buttons in a very big way.

When it becomes clear that pretty ladies in the audience can volunteer spontaneously, Livia eagerly expresses her desire to do so. Mimi points out rather archly that it’s just an excuse for drunk losers to grope the girls, and Livia gives her an absolutely withering look. “Well, duh. And I for one think it’s fucking hot and I want to play. All these impulses to protect the poor innocent girlies always assume we have brains like a chipmunk. Of course the guys grope the girls; that’s the point. It’s a little consensual hanky-panky in public, and I’m pretty sure everyone knows what they’re signing up for.”

Mimi seems more bothered than I am at the thought of Livia joining — she seems to have a protective streak — and points out that she’ll probably get stripped. “Oh, how terrible,” Livia deadpans. “I might never recover from the life-destroying trauma of fit young blokes getting access to my breasticles.”

Mimi’s frown deepens. “Uh, breasticles, Livia? Seriously?!”

“I’m sorry,” she replies. “I didn’t realize that offended you. Okay, I promise never to refer to my glorious, glutinous gajumblies as breasticles again.”

However, I can see a more rational argument — and a more serious point — in this discussion. “After the Noodle, we’re minor celebrities. People are watching. Maple-flavored wetlook, that panty stunt in Savannah and grade two underwear aside, you’ve never actually shown the audience the full goods yet. Are you sure you want it to be this ... anti-climactic? And shouldn’t the first clear look be in service of your own show, not someone else’s?”

Livia winces. “Okay. Good point. You’re right, of course. The first time I get the puppies out for real, I want people to think it’s a big deal, not that I’m the mark for a show cheaper than my own. Still, we can stick around and watch the fun, right? I can imagine I’m the girl, you can imagine you’re whichever guy gets the best feel. As long as you don’t expose anything, I’d even be up for a little ... how to say ... real-time tactile re-enactment.”

So we do exactly that. Mimi and I cooperate to feel up Livia in some fairly lurid ways as we all watch the frat guys and bodybuilders do likewise to the cute, giggly models being passed over the pool. There are some fun flashes of nipple, and one girl’s shirt falls fully off, but the focus of the event is clearly on the tactile contact.

As the game goes on, Lucy Langtry gives some wonderfully salacious commentary about how much the guys are clearly enjoying themselves. Gloria Sun, conversely, puts on an exaggerated show of being offended, and feeling sympathy for the female participants, ranting about how humiliating it must be for a woman to be exposed like that — all while gesticulating wildly with her arms, “accidentally” flashing her petite Asian boobies to the audience in the process. The glimpses are quick, but their context within her faux-offended rant also makes them very hot. Lucy and Gloria will apparently also narrate our own show tomorrow, and I have to say I’m looking forward to that.

Then the bellyflop contest, which doesn’t interest any of us, so we just go on groping Livia while feigning interest. It’s nice that it’s there, mind you — it’s a brief, fleeting moment where fat guys with beer guts get to be popular and adored by the Babes of Spring Break™, and I approve of the fantasy on principle, even if it doesn’t work for anyone in our clique.

The next event is a donut race, with teams of men and women in tire-shaped hollow pool floats facing each other and racing across the pool. The man gets in the inner tube first, legs over the side, and then the lady sits in his lap facing him, legs over the opposite side. The have to pump and paddle with their arms to move the tubes, so it’s basically a lap dance and grinding contest disguised as something more superficially silly and innocent — as long as the guys don’t stand up afterward, at least.

One of the contestants glances at Livia, then over to me — and smiles. Her gaze really lingers on me. Well, like several of the fitter guys here, I am shirtless. I wink at her. She waves back cheerfully. Lucy Langtry announces her as Beckie, and paints her as a real midwestern farmer’s daughter type. That doesn’t quite ring true.

She’s a giggly, wide-eyed blonde gym bunny with a pink Scrunchie in her hair, pink lip gloss, a pink sun visor and a skimpy hot pink string bikini. She’s tall and thin, maybe five eleven, with a slender hourglass figure that makes her natural C-cups seem all the more prominent. Her hair is platinum blonde and incredibly curly, flowing down her back like a waterfall to almost reach her firm round ass.

She somehow manages to come off as both vacuous and haughty at the same time. She’s the hottest girl in the contest, and she makes the other girls realize that in all kinds of subtle ways — yet she really seems a bit dim as well. A pampered princess, perhaps. At first glance, you’d think she was early twenties — she certainly acts young — but if you look carefully I suspect she’s in her thirties. She’s constantly looking up at me specifically, giving me faux-innocent bedroom eyes. I cock finger guns back at her and wink playfully — and then Livia grabs my arm hard.

“Nail her.”

That was an order, not a request. Livia’s scary-obsessive side seems to be showing through again. “After the show, I can —”

“No, right now. Mommy wants. Do her like you did Whina. She’s suggestible. I mean, it sure seems like she is to me. I’m sure of it.”

I did explain to Livia that Whina was a special case, back in Surfer’s Paradise ... but impressing Livia is always fun, and Beckie is really cute, and does seem to try to catch my gaze consistently. The contest is designed for intimate contact, which makes it a unique opportunity. If I can use a touch of Eyefucking to crank up the arousal factor in Beckie’s mind, well, the body-friction will already be there — so it’s at least theoretically possible to get her off.

“I’ll give it the old college try,” I whisper back to Livia with a wicked grin.

Beckie’s trading inane comments with Lucy Langtry. She’s doing a sexy baby voice, pretending not to know anything and be incredibly naïve — a real bimbo. She’s gorgeous, and I’d love to bang her — but I’ve got a feeling that, unlike Mimi, she’d get really annoying to hang around with for any more substantial length of time.

Her partner in the race is traditionally hunky — tall and muscular with a jaw that looks like someone implanted a cinderblock in it, but also a bit husky. Hey, Spring Break is for beer drinkers, you know? He’s got an incredible beard, though — long and curly like some ancient Babylonian king — and chest hair way thicker than mine. Of course, this dipstick wastes his tangible virility the same way so many similar guys do — by being more interested in competing with other guys than charming the babes.

Beckie’s getting right on top of him in the inner tube, groin to groin, and he’s making tough guy gestures at the other males in the contest, boasting that he got the barbie doll babe while barely even looking at her. That’s good, probably, because she’s constantly looking at me. The contest allows it — he’s got his back to me, while she’s directly facing me. I give her some Eyefucking. She squirms around on her partner’s groin, clearly imagining someone grabbing her ass. She doesn’t break eye contact, though. She giggles and blushes. She could look away any time she wants to. I just make sure she doesn’t want to.

I need to act quickly to really fix her attention, so I’m more forward than I usually would be. I move quickly through the subliminal gestures and poses that suggest hair-stroking, thigh-tracing and kissing before a truly evil idea occurs to me. What better use for the old finger gun than a bit of phantasmal fingering? Sure enough, I catch her gaze and make a finger gun, sliding it forward. She blushes and moans slightly, and pushes her crotch — covered only my a thin pink micro-bikini — forward slightly, clearly visualizing it going in, feeling it slide in.

The starter pistol goes off and the tube race starts. Beckie’s partner takes the contest with an asinine level of seriousness, puffing and paddling to try to get ahead. Beckie’s slender form gets jostled up and down with every thrust, and her breasts catch the eyes of every red-blooded male on my side of the audience (and a fair few girls, whether in jealousy or sapphic desire, as well). The contest was already built to be a jiggle-fest, but Beckie and her lunkhead take it to the next level.

She’s getting really flushed and breathing more deeply, grinding harder against her partner. He’s annoyed she’s not paddling effectively, but also unavoidably getting aroused himself. Lap dances tend to do that, even for a lunkhead like this. I thrust my finger forward more aggressively — I’m sure, at this point, that Beckie’s the kind of babe that loves it when her men get rough and rhythmic, as long as they take care to get her in the mood first. Her pink string bikini top is soaking wet, and showcases her rock-hard nipples spectacularly.

Thrust in, draw back, thrust in, draw back, thrust in, hold it there ... and wiggle. I’d give her the G-spot tickler, but Beckie doesn’t seem like the kind of girl that knows what a G-spot is, let alone how a man’s fingers need to be positioned to tease one. I doubt Beckie even consciously knows exactly what she’s feeling right now — she’s really not the introspective type — but she sure knows that whatever it is, she’s enjoying it and wants more of it!

Absurdly, the Spider-Man cartoon song worms its way into my head at this point. Finger guns, finger guns! Beckie loves her some finger guns! With the power of my eyes, catching babes just like flies ... here comes the finger fun!

I am such a dork.

I’m not alone. Livia’s grinning like a maniac, making the devil horns with one hand and banging her head in the air in exact time with my finger-thrusts like she’s a groupie at a metal concert. If anyone caught the two of us on film right now, we’d look both incredibly creepy and unforgivably buffoonish. Fortunately, no one does.

Beckie and her partner are only halfway to the other side of the pool when her float capsizes in a spectacular splash. Red streaks — pool detector chemicals — blossom around the bearded beefcake’s groin. Our regal Babylonian monarch apparently just blew a load in his swimming trunks, and Lucy and Gloria are on hand to crack predictably puerile jokes about it.

Beckie’s surfacing thankfully draws attention away from his humiliation, though. It’s not that shocking that her bikini top has slid around, exposing her nipples to hundreds of hungry male eyes — this contest seems designed to catalyze exactly that sort of naughty accident. But she’s also wildly flushed and breathing heavily, and she tries to wring out her impossibly long (and, when wet, pretty heavy) hair before realizing she’s exposed — thus giving everyone a fantastic eyeful.

“Just so you know,” a flushed Livia whispers quietly to me in a sultry voice, “that pool stud isn’t the only one who just popped off.”

I glance across at Mimi on the other side of Livia, and find she’s licking her fingers clean with a guilty-as-fuck, “hand in the cookie jar” expression — presumably because she did in fact have her hand in Livia’s cookie jar while everyone else (myself included) had their eyes on the race.

Beckie, finally noticing that she’s airing out the girls, yelps in panic and covers her chest protectively to get her bikini back in place. The rest of the race finishes, failing to draw any of our attention compared to what I just did to the lanky blonde stunner.

“Wowsers,” a flushed and panting Beckie says to Lucy Langtry as she helps her back up on stage after the race. “My heart is pounding! That contest turned out to be way more exciting than I was expecting it to be!”

Lucy glances from Beckie’s flushed face to her rampantly erect nipples and back. “You don’t say,” she finally says dryly.

At that, Livia bursts out cackling like a maniac, unable to contain it any more. There’s something a bit mean-spirited here — but I can’t judge too much. Humiliating Beckie and her partner wasn’t especially nice, but it was hot as fuck. Her being so totally oblivious to what actually happened just makes it kinkier.

Finally, there’s the wet t-shirt contest, that old staple everyone has been waiting for. It’s just a shame the current contestants are all going to struggle to compete with Beckie from the last contest. They come out one by one in tight Summers shirts and bikini bottoms.

I’ve seen Summers contests before, on VHS rental tapes. They tend to have the girls in tightly-tied white microtops, which always faintly disappoints me. Mimi and I have talked a bit about WAM at one point, and the appeal of wetlook as a fetish. I still have no interest in seeing women in wet, everyday street clothes — a big interest to a lot of fetishists, apparently — but if it turns transparent and shows naughty bits when wet, that interests me a lot.

And the full normal polo shirt look is better, in my eyes, than the cut-up microtop, both because it emphasizes actually seeing through the shirt and because it makes it look like the woman is dressed “decently” until her shirt happens to get wet and the audience gets to see stuff that the subtextual cues of said “decency” inform them they aren’t allowed to be seeing. The forbidden is fun!

I would add to this a perspective that draws simply from the male libido rather than any specific fetishes: busty women look just fantastic braless in a thin cotton polo top. (You remember Cindy Morgan in Caddyshack, right? That lady is a born shirt-stretcher. Go on, admit it — you were praying she’d lose her top the moment she walked on screen, and that made it all the sweeter when she finally did!) It’s one of the best tease looks. The tight shirt holds the breasts firm, but lacking a bra they still shift and jiggle when she moves. If her nipples get hard, you can see it. The stretchy fabric shows off the curves spectacularly.

I’m guessing Mimi may have talked to the Summers staff in the week before the contest, because the girls are dressed a lot more to our shared tastes — full short-sleeved polo shirts, thin, stretchy, a size too small to make them tight, tucked into tight short shorts. Of course, all this was emblazoned with the Summers logo directly below the breasts — one of the advantages of disallowing the cut-up crop tops is that it leaves a lot more room for branding, which I can only imagine Summers must be benefiting from.

The first girl to come out is a veritable amazon — six foot three with a trim figure, a deep rich tan, long curly black hair and a set of very firm D-cups that have to be store-bought. She wears mirrored black designer sunglasses with a neon purple frame, concealing her eyes from the audience. She’s gorgeous but also aloof, and struts about the stage with a macho swagger. It’s exciting, seeing the nebblish stagehand pour a jug of water on her shirt and reveal her assets. The shirts turn not just slightly see-through but very transparent when wet, and they also seem to have a slight suction effect, adhering to the curves almost like plastic wrap. The amazon is fantastic to look at, but her Aura is weak — she’s probably a professional model, and isn’t getting exceptionally turned on by her job.

“Now, that’s Amanda, and she’s a tall drink of water to cool you down on a hot Summers day,” Gloria Sun says from the announcer’s booth.

“Yeah,” Lucy Langtry agrees. “That’s a mountain I’d love to climb.”

That’s the well-rehearsed pattern of their commentary — Gloria tries to be respectable and respectful, and then mock-scandalized when the events stop being respectable. Lucy, conversely, makes all the salacious and suggestive comments.

Next, there’s a cute and very petite Japanese girl. She’s bubbly and enthusiastic (and honestly a bit spastic and awkward in her movements), but she’s also flat as a board. She gets a big cheer from the crowd by just being adorable, but I know she isn’t going to be among the final competitors. Lucy makes a rather tasteless joke about sushi — given that the Japanese girl is clearly an amateur, probably knows she isn’t really in the running and just wants to have fun, I find that a bit over the line.

Then we get Jeanne, a redhead with a bowl-cut, C-cups and stripper moves. She projects sultry quite well, and her Aura says she’s having some less-than-innocent fun with her work while not being overly wound-up.

After Jeanne comes Wendy — a tall, tanned surfer chick. She lacks the model-level good looks of the others, but is really stacked and proud, and has a kind of raw energy to her. She also has waist-length, dirty blonde curly hair that is pretty incredible, if a bit tangled and unkempt. She’s very everyday about this — not nervous about the exhibitionism because she doesn’t seem to have the taboos to transgress. Wendy, I’ll learn later, is a very uninhibited, no-boundaries kind of girl to the point of being weird. I will admit to holding my breath and staring as the water splashes over her taut shirt and advertises her ample goodies to the world. She seems pleased to be showing them off, and that makes it all the more erotic to watch her. Lucy makes some fairly suggestive comments, and she actually turns to the commentators and winks, blushing — she seems to like the attention.

The contestants are an even mix of professional models and fresh-faced amateurs. There isn’t a clear line between the two, either; some amateur models might be doing topless for the first time in the hopes of attention, and some professionals do the wet t-shirt circuit for fun as well as fame and profit. The next three contestants are fun to watch, but I don’t remember a lot about them. I do remember how Livia would whisper some rather lewd and explicit suggestions to both me and Mimi about what she’d like to do to each contestant with her fingers or her tongue or her large collection of exotic sex toys. Livia going full lech is always sexy, and her shameless crassness definitely makes the contest more arousing to watch for me.

And then... her. The announcer names her as Mary, though we will later be told her name is Jeri so for simplicity I’ll just call her that for now. She’s a slim black girl, about five-four, with pert C-cups, a diamond face, smooth mahogany skin and short but very neatly styled glossy black hair in a spiky pixie cut. She looks so glamorous, with full lips, elegantly-curved hips and deep-set hazel eyes framed by long eyelashes and dark, expressive eyebrows. She’s strikingly beautiful — she could be a model — but I don’t think she’s a professional. My fascination is immediate, and hard to put into words.

She has a charming, wide smile and eyes that flash with enthusiasm and traces of mischief. She moves like a dancer, and knows how to swivel her hips when she walks. But she’s clearly pretty nervous rather than jaded to this whole business; she has a vulnerability that enhances her appeal. Of course, the most memorable element of her strut is that under the tight white top, her nipples are rock hard and everyone can clearly see it. She has by far the best “dry pokies” of any girl on stage so far. That’s all most watchers in the crowd likely see, but it’s enough to get a big rowdy cheer.

To my eyes, there’s so much more. Her Aura is insane. She has a strong emotional investment in this contest — I suspect she waited a long time to do this. She probably came to Spring Break just to enter a contest like this. She has to be careful when she walks not to get herself too worked up. Her shorts feel tight in a rather ... stimulating way. Her heart is hammering in her chest. She’s an exhibitionist — not in a trivial, neat-thing-to-try way, but as a deep-seated, raw need. She’s getting off on the contest wildly. She’s both terrified and aroused.

“Well, our next contestant is certainly ... standing at attention,” Gloria says. It’s the most directly suggestive thing the “good girl” announcer has said so far. I wonder if some genuine prurient interest slipped into her patter there.

“Mary’s a fine drink of hot chocolate, and I’d love to feel her running down my lips,” Lucy agrees.

Jeri stops walking on stage. Her eyes are wide; she’s frozen. A few seconds pass.

“Hey, sweet chocolate treat,” the stagehand calls out, more irate and bossy than complementary. “Get your tiny little titties up here so we can get on with the contest.”

I am generally very aware of the importance of people’s livelihood. I don’t wish poverty or hardship on anyone — normally — and I know what a deep and serious thing it is to mess with anyone’s career. So you’ll know how exceptional it is for me, how cold my anger is in that moment, when I decide that I’m going to pull performer clout and get that stagehand fired from Summers — and, if possible, banned from the establishment forever.

Guys, let me explain wet t-shirt contests to you. For us, they’re a source of great fun — awesome, pervy entertainment. For the girls, well, each of them has one body. They don’t get to select a new body off a rack each morning and try it out. They trot out the body they were born with, and flaunt it, for our entertainment and their own thrills, but (excluding the professionals, obviously) it’s clearly not casual to them. The only body they will ever own is being displayed and judged, after all.

The stagehand should be able to read the contestants. He should know which ones are a bit shy. Making lewd comments at a wet t-shirt contest is appropriate and expected, but they ought to be lewd compliments. It’s an organizer’s prerogative to allow or not allow fat or ugly girls in any given contest (and, at the risk of sounding like a douchebag, I don’t mind a bit of quality control) but if they do get invited up on stage and make themselves vulnerable, every last one of them needs to feel like a sex symbol while she’s up there — not a punchline.

If the average cup size for a given venue is D (and for Summers, it clearly is), you don’t refer to a C-cup girl as “tiny” unless you’re clearly talking about how awesome and natural her tiny tits are. And, as if it needs to be said, do not drop crude ethnic nicknames on a clearly shy girl, or any girl for that matter, unless you know for sure she likes that!

The damage is done, though. Jeri never gets her shirt wet. She turns heel and bolts off the stage, her smoothly-rounded ass cheeks jiggling in her tight short shorts as she runs. The crowd boos and jeers.

After a second, Livia says, “You know, I’m not really feeling the racy comments any more. I think I’m just going to watch.”

But I have a far more urgent thought gradually bubbling it’s way up into my consciousness. “That girl, Mary, she’s a hardcore exhibitionist. She really wanted to do this, but broke. She was really nervous to begin with, at war with herself. She just needed some genuine encouragement and warmth, instead of that lout with the water jugs. She would have been absolutely wild, radiant.”

Mimi nods sympathetically. “It sucks, for her and for us. I wanted to see her show it off too.”

“No,” I say urgently. “You don’t understand. We have to find that girl. She’s got the potential!”

“Er,” Livia says. “What happened to her sucks, but I don’t see how it’s our responsibility to —”

“Don’t you get it? Have you forgotten you wanted a girl-appeal show by swimming in this ocean of flesh? She’s our next Cathy!”

We don’t find Jeri. We don’t even know her name yet, thinking it’s Mary — that doesn’t help. Finding her will turn out to be a bit of a quest, one we will not complete for another two days. We can’t devote too much time to that right now, however — we have a teaser tonight and a show tomorrow, and it’s a strong candidate to be an Escalation. (Livia doesn’t decide firmly that a show is one of her Twelve Escalations until the very end — if things don’t go right or the heat just isn’t there, something we hoped would be an Escalation becomes retroactively just another show.)