It happened at a party soon after I moved back to France having spent years abroad with my parents and at the university. I really didn't know anyone at the party very well.
They were going to play a board game which was a complicated combination of trivia, dice and cards with the sexes competing against each other. Each side would roll the dice which would determine which pile they had to pick a card from. Then the card would have a trivia question. The piles were organized by difficulty with the themes mixed, some were designed to be hard for girls, for example questions about football, while others were designed to be hard for guys such as questions about fashion. Most cards carried one point, and a few carried two points.
Each side had one person to act as "scoreboard," who would record plus and minus points by removing or adding articles of clothing. The cards had a different effect if you won or lost. Some of the cards were puts – if you won your side put something on, but if you lost the other side did. Others were takes -if you answered right the other side removed something, but the opposite happened if you lost. A few were doubles, and there was supposed to be one triple. It was a really complicated game of strip poker with teams but only one stripper per team.
Each side got to nominate their own, but the other side had to agree. The girls suggested me – maybe because I was new in town. The guys agreed unanimously. I'm tall and dark with what I consider a nice figure and long, thick black hair which I was wearing down. There was more argument over the male scoreboard, but I thought the guy they ended up picking – Roland - was really cute.
I wasn't so sure that I wanted to do this, but gave into the pressure. The hostess said that they had played the game before and ran out of question cards before anyone lost all their clothes. (I now know that must have been a lie.) Finally they promised me that if it went too far I could back out.
When we started the guys lost several times in a row, and Roland was barefoot in his slacks and undershirt. He was joking that if we won a triple, he was finished. But we didn't win anything - the tide changed. He got all his clothes back, and I lost my shoes (a single item according to the game rules). Then I lost again and decided to sacrifice my panty hose. I managed to get them off without giving a free show. They'd have to win that.
Then I lost my blouse. I got back the blouse, but then lost it and my skirt on a double card. It went back and forth until I was standing there again in bra and panties, and he had on everything but his shoes. This is the point where I had planned on bailing out, and I considered it. I'm not sure why I didn't. I really didn't want to be the one who ended everyone's fun – even though the fun was at my expense. I was also enjoying being with Roland. It was getting to be more of a common effort for us, since we weren't directly involved in the competition. The rules didn't let us answer the trivia questions or even help out, and we'd been talking a lot while the others struggled with their answers. Roland asked me if I was OK and wanted to go on. "Sure," I said, "I'm planning on beating you." He said, "You really don't have to, you know. If you don't want to go all the way, it's easier to say now than if you lose." I played brave, "Will you go all the way Roland?" "I will." "OK, so will I."
At that point I sort of figured that I would soon be taking it all off. I only had two pieces of clothing left, and the guys were playing a lot harder than my supposed defenders. It was sort of a scary idea, but somehow it didn't bother me that much.
Roland went to the bar and got us drinks while I used the bathroom. Actually it was kind of fun strutting through the room in my underwear. He told me that the girls had set me up because I was the sexy stranger who threatened them, "but now you're getting all the attention from the guys." It was nice to look at it that way.
