Joy on Stage Part Ch. 02

"Partly for shock value," she admitted. "Because audiences will be completely disarmed to see female genitalia in such detail. Partly because, even with that shock, it conveys something of innocence. Inexperience. Seduction in its way. It's another way for her to lure him, making her seem both lurid and, in defiance of her words and attitude, virginal. I know this is all asking quite a lot of you, Chels..."

"When you thought of... all this," I asked, trying to keep my voice from cracking, "did you think I would do it? Or did you tell yourself you would try, but you knew I wasn't brave enough for this kind of thing?"

"I know you will do it," Rosemary said, and though I covered my face again, she put an arm around me and tried to cheer me up. "Oh, don't do that again. I have faith that you'll decide to do it. Because you're a real actress. This scares the hell out of you, I know, and it scared Michelle when I described how we were doing her scenes... but you've come so far on this project. I think you disappear into that character when you're completely in the scene. You can use that to your advantage. It won't be you up there—it'll be Joy who's naked."

"Does that ever work?" I asked, half-amused. "You don't really believe that's not your body up there people are staring at when you do a nude scene, do you?"

"I've never done a nude scene," she said. I looked at her in shock and she burst out with laughter. "A joke. Joke. Of course I've done nude scenes. If it makes you feel better, when I worked all of this out with Terry, I had to plan for what might happen if you quit all of a sudden on me like Lynne did. I didn't believe you would, of course... but if you did... it would be me up there playing Joy. And I don't have half the body you do."

I laughed a little. My eyes were on my own crotch. I couldn't stop my brain from picturing things. I asked her, "You do mean... completely bald down there?"

"Completely bald," she said. "I'll help you cut it and shave it."

"If I agree to do the scene?"

"That's what I meant. If."

We all returned from break and started the show from the beginning with the revised lines and blocking. If we reverted back to the old stuff, fine, Rosemary told us, just keep going with it. We had very few chances to rehearse left before we opened, tonight had to run like the real thing.

I performed all the new blocking, fake-humped Walt, kissed him, licked his face... then I spread my legs and sat down on his lap before I started rocking. If I wasn't naked, Rosemary had confided in me, I should just play it up as if I was mocking him; if I was, I would have to make it look more realistic.

I stayed at the back of the stage, still in the shadows, but not invisible to the audience. I watched when Michelle came out for her two scenes. For the second, as she and Walt had well-blocked already, their sex scene/forced sex scene played out, complete with its nudity. I didn't like being on the stage during that scene, but I was happy I didn't have to watch it from the audience again. I saw Harry pull Tracy's panties down as she shook all over, stared breathlessly at Michelle's ass as she stood there in front of everyone... her scene was so painful. I didn't know how she brought out that emotion every night without having a breakdown. I wouldn't be able to do it. At least my seduction scene was kind of fun—before baring myself anyway.

I kept telling myself I was going to say no, but already my mind was thinking about what would happen if I said yes. I closed my eyes, wondered if my legs would hold up all through the second act as I pranced here and there, tits and ass shaking, my lithe body well-lit from overhead with that tinted red gel, my absolutely hairless pussy showing everything to everyone. No way. I couldn't do it. I would never live it down. If I ever made a name for myself, that would be out there for other people to discover. What would be out there? I didn't know, didn't think pictures or video would be recorded, much less get around... but I didn't want to think about it.

Uh-oh, Harry had Tracy down and was fucking her. I had to come out of the shadows for this part and voice Harry's sexual pleasure and building orgasm. We had only worked this blocking out earlier, bringing my part to life again during the sex, the only time I moved when Tracy was on stage. I grasped Walt's naked hips with my palms and mimed fucking him, though he was stooped just below me.

I walked off stage—the only one still wearing anything at that part. I had two minutes where I wasn't seen while Harry apologized to Tracy after the sex.

If they had offered me the Tracy part, I would have taken it, I realized. Later I would have regretted it, but I was desperate enough to be part of this and to work with the right people on my way up. And these were the right people.

We finished the play, took our bows, then sat on the stage for notes while Rosemary corrected us, mostly letting us know the revisions we had missed, and praised us for getting the play so closed to finished. If not for the dramatic changes, we probably would have done a perfect show that night.

Rehearsal ended, hugs and compliments were passed around. I went up to Rosemary feeling like I had concrete in my belly.

"I'll do the scene," I whispered to her. I didn't want everyone to hear—they would know sooner rather than later, I would have to rehearse it the next night with them, but I wanted to preserve the illusion for a while longer. The girl who walked in tomorrow night and had to do all this in front of everyone would be very pissed then at the girl who had agreed to it. Rosemary hugged me, then asked if I was sure. Would I have my pubic hair groomed as she recommended? I blushed as red as the hair I was expected to shear, then said, "You're the director. You get what you want."

"Come home with me tonight then," she said. I almost thought it a joke, but she didn't laugh, and then I assumed she was hitting on me, but she wasn't any more excited or giving me any more attention than usual. She explained to my evident fear, "I'll help you. I'll do it for you."

I went home with Rosemary, the two of us going through a drive-thru where she treated me to semi-authentic Mexican food. Probably not the best meal choice for people who were planning such intimate contact, but I'll save you that fetish and just say nothing came of it. We ate in her living room, she served me a glass of wine and poured one for herself, and we smiled at each other without saying anything for a time.

"Can I shave you now?"

I swallowed hard. "Right here? Tonight?" Rosemary didn't wait for an answer before getting up to get her scissors. She ushered me toward the bathroom with a few words and I took my wine with me. Oh fuck, I thought, if I can get through this, I just might be alright with the rest of it.

I took off my shirt in the bathroom—damn, did it have to be so well lit? I took another drink as I stood there in my pink bra—no reason I couldn't be lit, too, I thought. Just as I unbuttoned my jeans, Rosemary came in and closed the bathroom door behind her. She expected me to strip right in front of her. There was no reason not to, I was going to show her everything in a second, modesty was quickly seeming out of place. I shimmied out of my skintight jeans, stepped on the cuff of one foot, and slid my foot out of the shoe and jeans at once. Then I repeated myself on the other side.

Rosemary and I looked each other in the eye, my mouth twitched a little, then I tugged my pink panties down. I had never been naked in a room with a woman who wasn't naked, I wasn't even that quick to display my body for sex partners, whether I knew it was gorgeous or not. I didn't want her staring at the thick red-black curls between my legs, but she made no pretense of it. She was deciding how to get rid of it all, I reminded myself.

Three nights from now, some stupid part of me noted, I would be standing in front of a packed house of paying customers—and I wouldn't even have this much to hide behind. My stomach was queasy thinking about it. I was never going to survive this.

Rosemary sat on the large sink counter on one side of the sink, patted the marble where I should sit, and I climbed up on the other side. She put a hand on my knee with presumed familiarity and spread that leg further toward the large mirror. This was even worse than before. My lips were puffy, getting thicker by the second and parting all the more as she looked me over, and I could only pray she wouldn't make a joke or say something to make it obvious she noticed.

"Okay," Rosemary said with a nod. She put a hand on my sex, I started and then smiled at my sensitivity, and then she carefully started snipping at the hairs. She told me my bush wasn't actually that overgrown and I said I should think not, I did some maintenance on it once every couple of weeks... more when I expected I would get laid. She snipped again. Again. More hairs fell over my skin until she brushed them off, most of them resting where my buttocks met the counter. I suddenly had to pee and tried to put it out of my mind.

We were done with that, apparently. I brushed a thumb over the stubble that was left as Rosemary took some soap from the shower and squirted into her hand, lathered it up, and then ran the white fluid all over my pussy. She didn't limit herself to the hair that was most obviously left, she put it on top of my labia and along the sides as well, and I realized this was going to be a more elaborate thing than I expected. Rosemary brought out a safety razor and began her work. She slid it along my cream-covered mons, telling me to hold still as I tried not to squirm like I did, bringing the razor down and then up again. When that was clear, she pinched my lower lips in a very obscene way and had me open my legs wider until I was bare between those rivulets. She washed me with warm water—using her bare hands as I pretended to feel nothing was out of the ordinary. She finished her work by plucking the last stray hairs with her tweezers, then brushing all that she had cut away into her hand and depositing it in the toilet.

I turned to look at myself in mirror, standing back in the shower to get as close to a full-length reflection as possible.

Fucking hell.

"You've got very prominent labia," Rosemary said quietly, as if it was not the most obvious thing we both noticed. They were full and engorged, bright red like overfull arteries, but even when they started to recede a bit I could tell they were going to be noticed by anybody in a good seat. Fuck, fuck, fuck, I thought. I couldn't do this. There was no way I could stand on a stage like this.

My tits were beautiful, perfectly round, and hard scarlet nipples only made them look better. I had a very tight belly, not too marked by moles or blemishes, and I had one of the most enviable waists of any girl I knew, at least any girl who wasn't a model. My ass? I would love for people to see my ass, frankly, I might have given them that show for free, it was curved like an entrancing cursive "W." Then there was my pussy—I loved all the feelings it gave me, but was it normal? How did it compare? I suppose it didn't matter since nobody was going to be this exposed out there. Fuck, I started to think, my clitoris might poke its head out when the show got exciting. I wondered if anyone would be able to see that.

"You look beautiful," Rosemary told me, then stroked her fingers across my belly. I stiffened, moved away from her, and then bowed to collect my clothes. I slipped into my underwear again and tried not to cry or pass out.

I had agreed to this, I reminded myself. I did it without being forced to do it. Be a part of the play, I told myself, a team player. Oh, this was going to end my career before it began, if I lived to tell about it.

"Don't forget to pick up your comp tickets for your friends tomorrow night," she reminded me. "The show's sold out, so they won't get it in if you don't comp them."

My friends. My friends. Miller. Chuck. Dad. Serena.

Vaughn.

Oh shit. That would be a shame if nobody got them tickets, I thought to myself. I didn't have time to work out a better plan or even an excuse on why they would have to miss it, but at least it would keep them from seeing me like this. Seeing all of me.

* * *

Somehow, I survived the unthinkable.

Rosemary put all the more pressure on me the next night, unintentionally, when she said I would be doing the show in the nude and, of course, everyone in the crew and cast was expected to be respectful that it was difficult for me. They gave me applause, which did nothing to help me feel inconspicuous. In our costumes and make-up already before that pre-show pep talk, she told us to get to our places and we would do everything as if there was an audience. There was, even if it was only Terry and Rosemary. He was apparently excited to see how his new take on everything went.

I didn't even like my "costume," such as it was, now that I was hairless down there. I had to keep my hands away because it was such a strange sensation, the cotton fabric of my black "costume" panties rubbing up against my bare skin. Not unpleasant, just very weird, impossible to forget.

As much as I wanted to bring my "A" game, I had trouble concentrating, and usually it resulted in bumbling or missing the new lines or some subtle changes in the blocking we had done. My worst offense, I noticed halfway through the first act, was that I let my energy drag. It didn't seem to hurt Walt, who supplied his usual level with surprising skill, but I knew it would make for a really lackluster performance of the play if we were doing it in front of an audience. I had time to recognize it while I waited in the shadows during Michelle's second scene with Walt, thank goodness for that. When I returned to the forefront, I think I got much better.

Yeah, this was going to happen, I told myself. I already committed myself to doing it. I could whine about it and get obsessed over it, like I had when they first suggested I would be walking around in my underwear, and the play would suffer for it—what would be worse than being in a play naked? Being in a play naked and being awful, I told myself. I had to do better than that if I didn't want to humiliate myself.

We read all our lines for the scene right before Papa called as Harry's boss. I stepped back into the shadows, only contributing my line, "That's more than I would," which got a laugh from Terry as I read it. I had a few terrible seconds to think about the seduction scene coming up.

Our scene picked up again, and I walked around the couch, pushing Harry back onto it.

"What's the matter? Are you a girl? You're a girl, Harry! You let your boss walk all over you—your father walks all over you... even your woman walks right over you! You want it! Why don't you take it?"

"Shut-up! I love her! I respect her!" Harry called out at me. "You don't understand anything about love."

"Love is physical, you moron. Everything else is pathological attachment. If you love her, show her..." Walt turned his head away from me, seething as he fought his lust for Tracy and tried to let his civilized side dominate it. "Don't you want to show her what she does to you? Pull it out. Now. It's just the two of us. Let her see the effect—"

"Enough!"

"No, no, Harry! It's never enough—never! You want her to see you. You want to see her. Everything she's got that she's held back. Don't you want to see her titties...?"

I reached behind my back, as sturdy as cracked glass beneath my professional exterior, and I unfastened my bra. I was already in motion around the other side of the couch. Down my shoulders and off my arms it came, and I flung it over the couch. I couldn't think about whether or not Walt could see me as he stared forward, I was too preoccupied with the thought that the full audience stage right would be seeing my tits—how many men, how many women, all of whom I had no connection with?

"Beautiful titties," I cooed, handling my own, and Terry and Rosemary both laughed pretty loudly. That line would get a laugh, no doubt, and I tried to accept it was how absurd the situation was, not my body that would provoke laughter. Oh, this whole thing was nauseating, I thought, but then I thought, keep your energy up! Don't blow it!

I started my line about Harry "planting his seed" upstage a little, just by the arm of the couch as I rubbed Walt's shoulders, but when I took my hands away and played with the waistband of my panties, Rosemary ushered me downstage. I took a step. Further down. It was difficult to read my lines and portray sensuality and viciousness while being waved further down, but I did my best. I was standing close to the edge of the stage and Rosemary approved.

God, not this close, I thought. But there I was.

"It isn't just to keep the human race going... if it was just for propagation, why would it be so pleasurable? Men would mate like elephants or whales if it was all about reproduction... they wouldn't be able to cum several times a day... and women can orgasm more than that! Why do they orgasm at all if the puritans had it so right?"

I slid my panties down over my bare skin, exposing myself to the almost-empty theater. They slowed on my thighs, but I stretched them out until they fell lower, letting them drop, then I lifted them behind me on my foot and shot them away like a rubber band, something I had come up with thinking about it on the way there. I used to do it to impress a boyfriend. I planted a hand against my bare mound and smiled lustfully at the audience.

"If a woman isn't meant to cum, why give her a clitoris at all?"

Rosemary found that line hilarious, it seemed, but Terry was dumbstruck; I would have assumed he didn't think it worked, considered that was his reason for a moment, but as I had a chance to think about it during the break, I thought it more likely he was a little distracted by something on stage.

I gave the audience my ass as I walked back to Harry on the couch, who was in the middle of his long "sex without romance is hollow" speech, good stuff, kind of mock Shakespeare, all there for me to tear down.

I dropped to my knees between his. "Fuck me, Harry... let me snap your cock off..."

All this I had to deliver over my shoulder, trying to make it look natural to talk to the man in front of me that way, but theater is what theater is, and even a naked girl has to project to the audience.

"You're not good. Oh, you're not good," he said, beginning to weep. It was pretty convincing, for a scene that played as much for laughs as sensuality.

"This is good," I said, unzipping his jeans. I wasn't supposed to reveal him at that part, but I was "allowed" to lower my head and bite as his zipper as if maybe there was something they couldn't see.

I stood up, my bald pussy practically in Walt's face, and then I sat down to straddle his legs. He looked right down at me, still in character, but of course I knew the actor behind that character was getting an incredible eyeful. I wished he was Vaughn, just for a moment, as if that would somehow make it less awkward for us.

"Take what you want, Harry," I said in breathy voice. I guided his hands to my legs, then my ass, then up my back. Using my thighs for most of the force, I lifted myself up on his crotch and brought myself back down harder, not fucking him, but certainly simulating it. "Take it. Take it from her. Take it from all of them."

I forgot the last bit of blocking I had learned yesterday until it happened, Walt's hand sliding down my back, pressing against the crevice of my ass, and his fingers cupping me intimately. I exhaled slowly into his face, trying not to smile at him in my embarrassment, and Walt looked very sympathetic with me. The lights were fading all around us.