A Wife on Show

by Max Sebastian

  ‘Fine,’ Gabby said, grabbing my fork and without even a by your leave started tucking into the pasta I’d hardly touched. ‘They’ve all gone out for lunch at a restaurant near here. She told me she’d just go along with the whole date thing pretending to be ‘Alyssa’.’

  I felt the butterflies fluttering inside my chest, but at least the flames seemed to be out for now.

  ‘But the thing is,’ she said, ‘nothing’s going to happen—they’ll have dinner together—’

  ‘And you’ll film it all?’ I asked.

  ‘Just dinner,’ she nodded. Then clarified, ‘We just take a few clips of them eating together, and a little chat here and there to edit into the show. Then they’re free to go off and do whatever they like.’

  ‘Whatever they like,’ I nodded calmly. Picturing Gemma going off arm-in-arm with Aaron to some bar in the middle of the West End, getting drunk and then stumbling back to the guy’s hotel room.

  ‘But Gemma can just have a polite drink with him and then say she’s feeling tired or something, and then the date’s all over,’ Gabby said. ‘Nothing to worry about at all.’

  I nodded. ‘I know.’

  ‘You know?’

  I smiled, ‘I do trust my wife, you know, Gab. I know she’ll go along with it so your show is all right, but as soon as that’s done she’ll make her excuses.’

  Gabby looked relieved. I wasn’t sure what she was afraid of—that I’d run off to the Daily Mail and divulge my horror story about a TV dating show that faked its contestants’ identities, then got it so badly wrong that a married woman ended up being chosen for a date with a guy who was not her husband.

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ I reassured her. ‘When can I see Gemma?’

  Gabby nodded, and breathed out for the first time in a while. ‘They’ll all be done about 2pm, and then they’re free to go.’

  ‘And when will Gemma go out on her date with Aaron?’

  ‘Tomorrow night,’ she said. ‘They’ll get a night off to get some sleep, and then tomorrow night there’s the date... and then we’ll catch up with them in, like, six or seven weeks’ time.’

  ‘Six or seven weeks’ time?’ I prompted her.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘the viewers will want to know what happened after the date, right?’

  ‘After the date?’

  ‘You know... if they’re still a couple... if they’ve been rutting like animals ever since...’

  ‘But you said none of the dates are working out.’

  Gabby smiled. ‘The viewers don’t need to know that. Some of the couples will probably... you know...’

  ‘Lie.’

  ‘Stretch the truth.’ She laughed a little self-consciously. ‘It’s entertainment, baby. You’ve got to try and entertain.’

  It made me laugh. The big problem with reality TV was the whole ‘reality’ thing. Hence, almost none of it is actual reality.

  ‘Well, you don’t need to worry—I’m sure Gemma will say whatever you want her to say,’ I assured the posh brunette. ‘If you want her to say she’s been shacked up with Aaron for weeks unable to climb off his big cock, then that’s what she’ll say, I’m sure.’

  Gabby giggled. ‘Well, I don’t think she’d need to go that far, but that’s good to know. Well—gotta get back to it. Thanks so much, darling. You and Gemma have really been the best.’

  We stood up, and embraced in a friendly manner, and Gabby gave me a couple of air-kisses in the finest traditions of showbiz. Then I walked out of there, with no intention of staying to watch the afternoon’s filming. I headed to the Wagamama restaurant under the Royal Festival Hall and ordered some decent food while I waited for Gemma to finish her studio commitments.

  [Gemma]: Hey, honey, you okay?

  [Michael]: Completely okay. That was fun, wasn’t it?

  [Gemma]: They’ve seated me next to Aaron as though they can kick-start some kind of chemistry between us over lunch.

  [Michael]: You’re all wearing clothes now?

  [Gemma]: Of course! Actually, everyone seems kind of different when they have all their clothes on.

  As I tucked into my Chicken Katsu Curry on my own, I felt a slight warmth inside me at the fact that Gemma was currently sitting next to her date over lunch. And the fact that she’d been seated next to him as though the production crew were really under the impression that she was single, and that there was a possibility of something happening between her and Aaron.

  It did strike me that perhaps it was only Gabby who knew that Gemma was married, and not the single 23-year-old ‘Alyssa’ she was known as on the show.

  I felt a little wicked streak deep inside, and wondered if I could get away with a little mischief.

  [Michael]: What does it feel like to know everyone there has seen you naked?

  She replied quickly:

  [Gemma]: I don’t mind.

  I think the normal me would have let the subject drop just there. The reserved me. But even though I hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol that day, I felt strangely emboldened to take things a little further. This might very well be, I figured, the last time that Gemma ever got to do this kind of thing—taking her clothes off in front of TV cameras. And even if she was really into the whole exhibitionist thing, there was a danger that as a generally-repressed English married couple, we could slip back into a routine of run-of-the-mill quickie sex that ignored her new-found kink.

  And, maybe, I would be unable ever to explore the strange feelings I had regarding Gemma going on a date with another man.

  So I texted her:

  [Michael]: Did it turn you on, having everyone looking at you naked? I bet it did.

  Perhaps she’d do the repressed thing, and deny it. Or admit it and then tell me she didn’t want to talk about it. But she texted me back:

  [Gemma]: Maybe...

  That, to me, was an invitation to try a little more.

  [Michael]: Your nipples were so hard when the camera was on you... you looked absolutely gorgeous :-P

  [Gemma]: Are you trying to get me horny right now?

  [Michael]: Of course... you know how hard it made me, watching you on stage like that? And I can’t believe you shaved... down there... just for the show.

  Okay, you can tell by my use of the phrase ‘down there’ that Gemma and I weren’t exactly up to speed with the whole sexting phenomenon. Nevertheless, somehow I was sensing I was onto something, here. She wasn’t telling me to stop, she wasn’t even telling me to cool it.

  [Gemma]: Gabby suggested it as part of my disguise. Why, do you like it? ;-)

  [Michael]: I think Aaron does. :-P

  I couldn’t resist the taunt.

  [Gemma]: You’re so mean ;-) He seems so nice, and yet at some point tomorrow night I’m going to have to really disappoint him :-(

  By now my stiff manhood was beginning to take over my thought process, and if I’m telling the truth I was probably trying a little too hard to shock Gemma out of a feeling that I wasn’t at the forefront of her mind just now since she had just been naked on a TV show and was set to go on a date with the lucky contestant the next evening. I guess my subconscious needed to remind her I was here and had a big impact on her life.

  I texted her back:

  [Michael]: You know you don’t have to disappoint him if you don’t want to :-P

  There was a long, long pause before she replied to that particular message of mine.

  [Gemma]: I’m not sure what you’re saying

  It’s always so difficult to gauge emotions through text messages—I have no idea if my wife was suddenly angry at what I was hinting, if she was excited but playing things cool and cautious—of it she simply didn’t understand what I was getting at. My belief was the latter—as far as she was concerned, my great excitement in all this was that she had had to go naked in front of a large audience. She hadn’t been party to my developing mindset from the point at which it became clearer that it was more likely she would be chosen for a date by the show’s conte
stant.

  She didn’t know that it turned me on to think of her dating someone else, and possibly even more to think of her taking that date to its full conclusion. Well, I hardly understood it myself.

  But somehow, I felt safe in the detached world of text messages, or at least safe enough to pursue my current approach, if I did it carefully.

  I replied to her:

  [Michael]: You don’t have to tell him you’re married, Cupcake.

  [Gemma]: No, but assuming he’s still attracted to me now that I have my clothes on, when we’re on our date he’s going to think he has a chance of sleeping with me at the end of the night.

  Now my heart was thumping again. It was as though I could hear jungle drums in my head—I was taking some big risks here, I could already tell. I might easily upset Gemma if she took my suggestions to mean that I cared for her so little that it didn’t matter whether she slept with Aaron or not. Yet with the date still to come, and the wildness of the TV show still fresh in our minds it felt to me as though this might be my one big chance to explore this strange new fantasy of mine.

  I texted her:

  [Michael]: So let him.

  [Gemma]: Let him what? Let him think he has a chance of sleeping with me at the end of the night?

  My beating heart was just about all I could hear right now. The burble of the busy restaurant around me was somehow muted. I think if I had some kind of red alert system fitted that might warn me if my marriage was in trouble, the red lights would currently be flashing all around me, the sirens blaring.

  [Michael]: You could let him sleep with you at the end of the night.

  Wow. I can’t believe I texted it. I could almost hear her gasp on reading it. It was a true bombshell of a text message.

  I didn’t regret it. I feared the repercussions, but I didn’t regret getting my true feelings out there. It was cathartic, in some way. Perhaps Gemma would demand we go to a marriage counselor—but who would be on her side if she demanded a divorce because I had suggested she be free to sleep with someone else?

  She texted me back:

  [Gemma] Are you angry with me? Are you mad that I did the show?

  Now I had some damage limitation to get through. Actually, suddenly it felt like I might have bitten off more than I could chew, it might be tricky to fully explain what I was feeling and why. I didn’t even fully know why the thought of my wife sleeping with another man was a good, rather than a bad thing.

  I could only be honest and hope that she might understand my side.

  [Michael]: Not at all. I’m glad you did the show, it was hot as hell :-P

  [Gemma]: So why would you say something like that, that I could sleep with him at the end of the date?

  The easy answer presented itself to me right then: the answer that could possibly prevent her from going ballistic, particularly if the truth of my new-found fantasy was too much for her to handle. I could tell her that it had been a bad joke that hadn’t worked the way I’d hoped.

  But I didn’t want to dismiss it all as a joke.

  Bring on the marriage counselor if this didn’t work, I thought. I’d deal with whatever comes up when it comes up.

  [Michael]: Because maybe after watching another guy picking you out for a date when you’re both standing naked together has made me realize that I kind of like the idea of you sleeping with another guy.

  Well, it was fairly blunt. It went straight to the point. It didn’t leave me anywhere to hide if it sickened her to the very soul.

  There was another longish pause before she texted me again. Of course it’s entirely possible that these pauses were caused by the fact that she was supposed to be in the middle of having lunch with various TV people, including the guy she would be going on a proper date with the following evening.

  [Gemma]: You... ‘like’ the idea of me sleeping with another guy?

  I couldn’t tell if she was angry, or what. I was afraid she was. It was too late to stop now, though.

  [Michael]: It turns me on. I don’t entirely understand why. I just know that it seems like the hottest thing ever to me right now.

  This felt like the moment where she’d tell me to pack my bags and get out of our apartment, that she would be consulting with divorce lawyers in the morning and that we were, as far as I was concerned, officially separated as of that point. Or she’d pull some passive-aggressive nightmare out of the bag and quietly let me know she couldn’t believe I’d just said such a thing, and maybe I shouldn’t talk to her for a while.

  But she wasn’t leaping into anything. She calmly responded with a reasonable question:

  [Gemma]: Do you think you might feel, consciously or unconsciously, that if I were to sleep with another guy, you would be allowed to sleep with another woman?

  Gemma had always been a sharp cookie, she’d always been able to put into words exactly what was going on in her mind, in her world. She was also, I suppose, always fairly calm and collected in a crisis—which was one reason she was such a good nurse—and so it seemed that right now she was just giving me a chance to lay out exactly how I was feeling.

  I hadn’t thought about it, but now she made the point, I could see why she might worry about such a thing. Some couples did become swingers, didn’t they? They went off and slept with other people. But husbands didn’t just fantasize about their wives going off and sleeping with someone else, without wanting to sleep with someone else themselves, did they? I did. It seemed insane, but I really hadn’t thought about sleeping with anyone else. I was completely hung up on the thought of my pretty wife being naughty and sexy by cheating on me, purely so that I could get her back and then fuck her senseless. And though our sex life had never been bad, it had been a long time since I’d ever desperately wanted to fuck her senseless before this whole adventure started.

  I hope I didn’t hesitate too much, but I needed to say the right thing. I texted her:

  [Michael]: Not at all. You’re the only person I’m interested in sleeping with. It just turns me on to think of you being naughty and filthy with someone else before I get to take you back myself. I’m not completely sure why.

  She came back with:

  [Gemma]: Are you worried our marriage is in trouble because I did this show, so you think if I just went off and slept with Aaron... it might fix things? Because you know the fact I did the show has nothing to do with how I see our marriage.

  Boy, it was getting seriously heavy. I sighed. And replied:

  [Michael]: I’m not worried about our marriage at all. I’ve never wanted you more. I just think it would be really wild if we tried this one time...

  [Gemma]: But I’d be cheating on you.

  The word ‘cheating’ somehow drilled its way down into my chest—it was a challenging, dark concept, and yet it really did set my pulse racing and it really did make me hard beyond compare. I could see how troubling it might be to Gemma, however.

  [Michael]: Would it really be ‘cheating’ if I knew about it and was happy for you to do it?

  Another pause. A much longer pause. She might have been thinking about whether she still loved me, about how we would split all our belongings up if we went our separate ways. Or she might have been ordering dessert. I felt the nerves kick in, majorly. I wondered if I’d gone too far. I typed out a message that I hoped might downplay things if she was getting upset, lighten us up if things were getting too heavy. I hit ‘send’.

  [Michael]: It’s just a strange little secret fantasy I have, I suppose. I know it’s probably ridiculous, it’s just me being a pervert...

  She could come back and agree I was being a pervert, and then force me to agree that some secret fantasies were meant to remain exactly that: secret. She could say she still loved me and maybe we should just forget all this and move on.

  But, eventually, she texted back:

  [Gemma]: Are you hard right now, thinking about me cheating on you with Aaron tomorrow night?

  Boy, oh boy. Oh boy.

  [Michael]
: God, yeah.

  Then:

  [Gemma]: Go home right now, I’ll see you there. We need to talk about this, and I think while we do I need to suck on that big, beautiful cock of yours xxx

  Six

  The way public transport works sometimes in London, I left my restaurant on the South Bank to head home first, while Gemma finished her celebratory lunch with Aaron and some of the other contestants and production people, and since the studio then put her into a taxi, she ended up getting home first, with time to spare. I suppose we did live in part of Fulham that was some way from the nearest Tube station.

  I opened the front door and found myself suddenly ambushed, a blonde wildcat pouncing on me as soon as I got in the hallway, grabbing me, kissing me, pressing her body up against me.

  ‘Oh my God...’ she said, beaming ear-to-ear.

  ‘Hey, how are you?’ I grinned.

  ‘Good,’ she said, one of her hands finding its way down to my crotch where it could ascertain how hard I was for her. ‘Kind of horny.’

  ‘I would never have guessed,’ I joked.

  She was wearing a t-shirt and underwear and nothing else, and there in the close confines of our little hallway, I could smell her arousal as though she’d started without me.

  She looked good as a blonde. It was crazy how much it suited her, and yet also how different it made it to be with her. She dragged me into the bedroom and pretty much threw me onto the bed, and when she then climbed onto me, I’d never seen such fire in her eyes.

  ‘You should get your clothes off on TV more often,’ I said.

  ‘I should,’ she grinned and fell onto me.

  I ran my fingers through her soft, golden hair and sucked on her sweet lips. I couldn’t get enough of her. After seeing her naked on those TV cameras, on that stage in front of me, after seeing another man choosing her to be his date. Checking out the fact that she’d shaven her pussy for him.

  She seemed as hungry for me as I was for her.

  ‘So you really enjoyed watching me on the show?’ she asked me.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, my hands running down her body, fondling the pleasing roundness of her behind. She wasn’t wearing normal panties, either. A thong. She didn’t normally wear thongs.