Party Animals

"Who are you and why are you wearing a gold bikini?" Matilda asked.

"I'm one of the guests, I lost a bet and now I have to cover for your coworker for half an hour." Gwen explained.

Matilda's thoughts darted from empathy with Mercedes' frustration of the wealthy holidaying in the lives of the poor, empathy with this poor girl discovering the gold bikini for the first time, and an overriding sense of frustration that she couldn't be the beneficiary of that bet.

"Has Barnaby left yet?" Matilda asked as she loaded up another tray of entrées.

...

Gwen didn't know Barnaby had not left.

Gwen didn't know that shortly after she had ditched him to play billiards, he had found himself in a fascinating conversation with a woman in red who had quickly read him and adjusted the conversation accordingly.

"Yeah, at least you don't have to squeeze yourself into a scandalous dress. I'd much rather be at home, but a while ago I learnt the trick to networking at these sorts of events." She led, hoping to divert the conversation from Barnaby's seemingly endless tract on the ills of superficial networking in professional decisions.

"I'll take any tricks I can get." Barnaby replied.

"People don't bond over conversation per se, they bond over a shared experience. Naturally both experiencing a nice conversation is one thing, but the kind of people who are rich and influential aren't looking for that, they are looking for hedonistic oblivion. Find a group of men in the most expensive suits possible, then match them drink for drink, and don't be afraid to do drugs if that's what the group is doing. A first impression as a fellow partier doesn't just endear you to them, it reassures them that they aren't broken men because their demons aren't unique, and that feeling of relief is one they will get every time they see you." She explained.

"What if I don't want to do drugs or get drunk?" He asked. "What if I do something stupid that ruins my reputation?"

"This is why you match their intake, if you're intoxicated enough to think something stupid is a good idea, they're intoxicated enough to agree with you." She replied with a smirk, picking up a glass of wine from the bar and heading to the billiards table.

"Alright..." Barnaby said to himself, psyching himself up for what lay ahead. "Do it for Matilda."

...

"I briefly chatted to a Barnaby, but I haven't seen him since I went over to the billiards table." Gwen informed, picking up the now full tray, taking a deep breath, and re-entering the party.

"Jesus Christ, where has he gone?" Matilda muttered to herself. She wondered if she should just take the risk and go out there, but in her moment's hesitation her boss Meagan re-entered the kitchen.

"Good news, your ex has gone into one of the rooms we're not allowed into. Plus the party is lively enough that even if he did emerge, he'd struggle to accidentally find you before one of the other waitresses notices him and passes on the message for you to hide.

Matilda picked up a tray and headed into the party, still nervous at the prospect of word getting back to her husband, but at least relieved she could earn the money needed to buy her a clear run at finals.

The first thing she realised was that her boss wasn't kidding when she said private gigs were more handsy. It seemed like the moment she left the safety of the kitchen, errant hands were finding their way onto her body. At first she tried to confront the owners of the offending appendages, but she couldn't tell who it was, and the party environment has normalised their wandering hands so much, she realised all she would be doing is yelling her way out of the tips she sorely needed.

So Matilda took what seemed like her millionth deep breath of the night, and decided to spend her time thinking about how her lack of economic means had robbed her even of bodily autonomy, mentally pulling citations from diffuse sociologists on the matter, trying to ignore that her nipples were harder than they had even been before.

Soon she found herself swooning with every grasp of her vulnerable body. Stripped of all class and status, she felt that although her vulnerability shouldn't have been a positive feeling, it was at least novel enough to excite her. Nobody in her circle of friends had put themselves out there like she had, nobody she knew had the strength of conviction to learn in this way or the fortitude to survive going from a respectable academic to a molested bikini server in less than 2 months. In her weakness she found strength.

She wasn't finding many tips though. She found she would have the odd $5 if she swiveled her head fast enough to catch someone with a hand on her bottom and then give him a cheeky smile, nothing to be sniffed at but still far less than what she would get at a night in the café.

As the party went on, Matilda found herself handing out far less food and fetching far more drink orders. This allowed her to stop and have conversations, try and chat up some more tips as she went. It was after a bubbly conversation with a group of men from a tech firm that the scale of her problem was made apparent.

"You are nice, if I still carried cash I would certainly be handing it over to you." An older management type elucidated.

"Wait, does nobody carry cash any more?"

"'fraid not darling. Everything's contactless these days. Maybe next time you could get some card readers, because you really are doing a sterling job." A self-proclaimed 'tech genius' suggested.

"Maybe there is a solution." Interrupted a woman in red, barging her way into the conversation. "Why don't you guys reach into your pockets, pull out your phones, and use one of those cashapps to send this poor woman a tip?"

"Good idea, what's your Cashday username?" A man asked.

"Um, I don't have one." Matilda replied. She had only recently heard of Cashday as a way to quickly source money and had not yet turned her attention to using it.

"Well that won't do." The woman in red proclaimed, taking out her phone to set up an account for Matilda, then holding it up while looking the other way so Matilda could put her details in. It only took a few minutes but soon the woman in red was announcing that she had set Matilda up and that everyone gathered could send her tips at the username "Sluttyserver".

"Thanks." Matilda genuinely said to the woman in red before she started to move on.

"Hold up, I've had another idea to save you a bit of time." The woman in red replied. Without even asking for permission, she took out an errant Sharpie and began to write across Matilda's cleavage.

'Cashday Tips: Sluttyserver'

"There we go, now turn around, I'm going to write it again above your butt."

...

"Go on man, next time a server walks by, just let your hand stroke her butt. Everyone's doing it and they get paid well enough for just that." Marcus implored. He had been shocked that Barnaby, far from fleeing the party, was trying his level best to get into it. He had joined up with Marcus and a group of his oldest and hardest partying friends (a group who knew Marcus and his parties well enough to sense the direction the night was taking) and began downing shots at the same rate. Marcus had been determined to get this guy to leave but his newfound commitment to trying to be one of the partiers had certainly put a damper in his plans. "Look, this one with the pink hair, she's wearing a thong, you got to get a handful of that ass."

Barnaby could have sworn he had talked to that woman earlier in the party, but his head was now swirling and he was second guessing his grossly incapacitated higher reasoning skills at every turn. The server walked past and Barnaby let his hand stroke and quickly cup her bottom in passing. Gwen shuddered but didn't respond, like Matilda she too had to suddenly grow used to the errant hands of the wild party.

Marcus' friends cheered as Barnaby looked a mixture of proud and ashamed.

"I hope my wife doesn't find out." He expressed with his guard down.

"Your wife isn't here." Marcus yelled. "But what is here is opportunity. What do you say guys, time to introduce Barnaby here to micro-dosing?"

His friends cheered as Marcus ushered Barnaby towards one of the rooms few people were allowed in. The ones reserved for drug use.

...

"Alright, it's been over half an hour, where's the waitress?" Gwen spat to the handful of men still at the billiards tables.

"Um... aren't you the waitress?" A man replied. With a start Gwen realised that everyone who had been involved in her bet had since dissolved into the rest of the party. Splitting up and getting into new and varied activities. There was no longer a group to appeal to.

"Shit." Gwen responded, storming away from the billiards tables. She cleared her head as best she could and thought through her next moves. She needed to either find the woman in red or the server wearing her dress.

Gwen wandered the party, each errant hand a reminder of the outfit she was still in. She growled with frustration as she couldn't find the women in red or the server anywhere.

"Where is that bitch in red and that slut in my dress?"

...

"Don't worry about it." The lady in red assured Matilda's co-worker by the front door of the house. She handed her another pile of twenties, then waved for a taxi from the taxi rank Marcus had arranged to wait outside the house. "I promise you, the girl lost another wager with me and now she has to cover for you for the rest of the night. Go home and relax while she earns you a paycheck."

"Alright, well here's her clutch. Just because she lost a bet doesn't mean she shouldn't be without her money and phone." The server pressed the clutch into the woman in red's hands, who then dropped it neatly into her larger handbag.

"Thank you, I'll make sure she gets it back."

The server uncertainly climbed into the taxi and was driven off into the night.

The woman in red wandered back into the party and caught the eye of Matilda as she made her way into the hall. She got out her phone and checked the Cashday app with a view to report back to Matilda how well she was doing.

"Well it's better than nothing." She sighed.

"What? Loads of people have been telling me they're going to tip me. How much is in there?" Matilda asked.

"$36." The woman in red replied, dividing the actual figure by 10 to push Matilda's buttons. "Maybe there's just an internet delay or something. I'm sure as they get drunker the tips will start rolling in."

Matilda stormed off as the woman in red continued to enjoy her evening.

...

Marcus left Barnaby behind to worry himself sick about the tiny amount of acid he had ingested ten minutes ago. As he went into the house he had an empty pride of how the party was turning out. The crowd had reached an equilibrium as the stick-in-the-muds left through his preplanned taxi rank, and the party animals invited over their friends. Some guests had jumped into the pool still fully dressed in their formal outfits, others were playing drinking games and laughing at the embarrassing secrets spilling out. The dancing to his hard pumping music was becoming more unrestrained in style and location. He could have even sworn he saw two men sat on the roof of the gazebo smoking a spliff.

He also saw that flash of red again. Something about that flash of red unsettled him, he couldn't put his finger on what he had noticed about it, but it seemed important.

...

"You!" Yelled Gwen as she spotted the woman in red across the house. She ploughed through the crowd and pulled herself up to her full height. "It has been three quarters of an hour. Where is the waitress with my clothes?"

"Hmm, I've been looking but I haven't seen her." The woman in red responded.

"Well what am I supposed to do? I can't spend this party swanning about in a bikini. This is an important networking event and nobody will take me seriously." Gwen ranted.

"What are you looking to get out of networking? I'm pretty clued up around here, maybe I can help." The woman in red replied.

"The main thing you can do to help is find me my clothes." Gwen sulked. She paused as the woman in red looked at her sympathetically. "Fine, my boss paid for my ticket to this party on the condition that I make one good connection for my law firm. That's the only reason I'm still here, well that and I don't have a way to pay for the taxi home."

"What happened to your..."

"Phone and purse? They were in my clutch." Gwen finished the woman in red's thought. They sat quietly for a moment before the woman in red had an idea.

"It's risky, but I think I have a way to get you some clothes. Once dressed you can go back to schmoozing and maybe wrangle a bonus taxi ride home."

...

"Alright everyone listen up!" The woman in red shouted from next to the beer pong table. "This young lady has unfortunately lost her dress, but she is willing to gamble for some clothes. One match of beer pong, if she wins she gets everything you're wearing except your underwear."

"And if whoever challenges her wins?" Someone from the gathered crowd piped up.

Gwen was confident, beer pong was her grift of choice at college, she had practised and perfected her hand eye coordination to the point where she could clear out frat houses without breaking a sweat. She knew she could take anyone at this party, but that didn't make her any less nervous as she stated the stakes.

"If I lose, the winner gets my gold bikini." Gwen yelled to an audience that fell into a deep discussion. Everyone was sizing up their potential beer pong ability, they wanted this to happen so badly but the right champion was required. Gwen simply stood awaiting her fate while the woman in red decided to start pouring the cups of beer and laying them out on the table.

The crowd eventually chose a man whose friends claimed him as a master of darts, hoping the skill would be transferable. He won the coin toss and got the first throw, immediately sending the ball clear over the table, not even hitting the cups. Gwen breathed a sigh of relief.

She threw her first ball and her jaw dropped as it bounced off the outside edge of the cup. Missing the opening throw? It was a rookie mistake she hadn't done in years. The man took the ball and this time got his eye in and sunk it into one of Gwen's cups. He had just taken the lead.

'Fuck! calm down Gwen, it must have been nerves, take a deep breath and take this guy down.' Gwen thought to herself as she drained the first beer. She picked out the ball and tossed it, once again hitting the outside edge of the cup. 'What the fuck is going on?'

The woman in red smiled. While she was racking up the cups and all attention was elsewhere, she had taken all of Gwen's targets and added a small interceptable fold in the paper cup's base. Although it didn't look like much, it meant that all of the man's cups were leaning away from Gwen, so from her angle, the cup opening was a much smaller target than her opponents.

It took four throws before Gwen got her eye in and sunk her first ball. At which point her opponent had hit the target twice, then went on to sink a third ball while Gwen shook with the ramifications of her losing.

As Gwen's cups left the table, the man began to suffer with fewer targets on offer. His head-start meant that Gwen drew level with him when they were down to two cups a piece, but the very next throw she lost the lead again as the crowd cheered at the thought of her humiliation. She did every technique she could think of to calm herself down but it didn't work, as a mixture of her shaking hands and the rigged cups once again sent the ball bouncing away.

Her opponent had men massaging his shoulders, conjuring up every word of encouragement they could think of, the weight of the audience willing him on to make the shot. Gwen simply closed her eyes and hoped.

*Plop*

The nearest house was over half a mile away and could still hear the almighty cheer that rose up from the party as the final ball dropped. Hell, the nearest space station could probably have heard the commotion. Gwen simply shuddered in her defeat, then felt an almighty wave of shame as all eyes in the audience turned to her.

She gritted her teeth, reached behind her back and unclasped the bra, swiftly moving the bra away from her breasts in the same movement as cupping them with her arms to keep people from seeing her nipples. Then, awkwardly and with one hand, she shuffled her bikini bottoms down her legs, covering her pussy with her other free hand before straightening up and stepping out of the last vestiges of her covering.

She looked around at all the people staring, looking for any support or even a suggestion of what to do next. The woman in red had vanished and all that was left was a sea of hungry eyes. Gwen turned around and tried to barge through the crowd, their trademark wandering hands turned up to 11 as her naked body pushed between them.

...

The sides of Matilda's mouth was practically aching from the wide false smile she had kept plastered across her face, trying to convince rich men to part with an amount she knew was pocket change for them but would be a life changing amount for her. She had been serving a group of men when the woman in red joined the conversation.

"How am I doing for tips?" Matilda immediately asked. The woman in red took out her phone and calculated carefully, looking at Matilda's recent tips she was able to guess how much she had gotten from the men present to add to her total.

"You've nipped over the $100 mark." She replied, Matilda was not able to hide her disappointment. "Jesus Christ, now there's how you ask for tips."

The woman in red steered the whole group's attention to Gwen running naked through the party before locking herself in the toilet.

"There's a thought." One of the gathered men announced. "Think how many tips you would get if you lost the gold bikini."

"I've had lots of assurances I would be tipped well and none of them have come true, I'm not getting naked on the off chance this time you aren't lying to me." Matilda indignantly stated.

"So it's not the nudity that you object to, it's the uncertainty of payment." The man deduced. "In which case let's settle that now. This lady says you have made $100ish in tips so far. If everyone here matches that, that would be a $500 boost to your tip pot right off the bat. Once you have confirmation that you are $500 richer, would you be willing to dispense with the bikini for the rest of the night."

Matilda wanted to say 'no.' Actually she wanted to say 'fuck no!' Actually she wanted to say 'fuck no!' before spitting in this man's face and storming out. Did this guy really think he could get women to degrade themselves just by offering them money?

Yes, because he can.

Sure there were sexual connotations muddying the waters, but this was no different to other capitalist exploitation that Matilda had been learning about. She had forced gardners to come in on their weekend or builders to come fix her house in the middle of the night, each time offering money so that her workers would trade their comfort for her pleasure. How was that different to this?

Every time she called upon her courage to say no, she remembered the disapproval that dripped from Mercedes. The only reason she had to say no, would be that she was in a privileged enough position to turn down $500. If she baulked at this she would be acknowledging that she was still just vacationing in the working class lifestyle, bailing the moment it got hard, like leaving a holiday early because the weather turned sour.

"$500 up front." She stated to a sudden rush of excited men. They all fumbled their phones out of their pockets like excitable teenagers and began pounding the screen as fast as their fingers could move.