Indecent Experiment

She paused. “Is there more to this experiment than this questionnaire?”

Ada nodded. “Well…yes.”

Melissa blinked. No wonder the pay rate was so much higher this time. “You want me to have sex with someone for this test?”

Randy smiled. “We’ve set up an increasingly intimate series of encounters in which we’d like you and the additional research participant to engage. You’ll be provided the space in which to engage in these activities, as well as the time frame, along with specific instructions on how to report on your experiences.”

Melissa’s eyebrows raised. “You want me to have sex with someone!”

“What we’re trying to determine,” Ada said, eyes bright and cheeks pink, “is the effect of predetermined qualities or anticipation on sexual attraction and response.”

“In other words,” Randy said excitedly, “we’re going to pair you up with someone based on all of your information, and we’re going to see how long it takes you to want to fuck!”

Melissa started laughing. Hard. Randy and Ada looked at each other, back and forth, smiling but looking quizzical.

“Are you serious?” Melissa asked.

They were totally serious. Her laughter faded as she stared at them, expecting one or the other to announce this was it, she’d passed the first phase of the experiment, whatever it was. But as Randy and Ada merely looked at her without even taking a single note, Melissa realized they meant every word they’d said.

“You’re going to pay me a thousand bucks to introduce me to someone you want me to sleep with.” She said this carefully, making sure she got everything straight.

“The choice, ultimately, is yours,” Ada said. “We can’t obviously pay you to have sex with someone. That would be illegal. We’re just paying you to agree to…um…well, to engage in specific activities within a certain time frame, designed to encourage the sexual response.”

“And if I meet the guy and don’t want to have sex with him, what then?” Melissa wasn’t entirely put off by the notion of sex with a hot stranger, chosen to meet her every specification. Hell, she’d had more than a few dates that had been with guys who were little better than trolls, and during her longest dry spells she’d actually considering sleeping with one or two of them.

“We’ll ask you to record your feelings and emotions relating to the decision to have sex or not to have sex, and everything will be taken into consideration. On his end, too,” Randy explained. “I mean, maybe he won’t want to sleep with you.”

Melissa blinked again. Randy wasn’t exactly the most subtle shade of pink in the spectrum, so she couldn’t really take offense, even though it had been her experience that most men would sleep with just about anything. And she was far from just anything. Maybe she wouldn’t win a beauty pageant, but then she’d never be the sort to enter one, either.

“And how long is this experiment?”

“Five nights. You begin a week from Monday—that will give you enough time to fill out the paperwork and get all your health records updated. Every night from six to ten p.m., here at the lab.” Ada tapped her pen against the paper. “Once you’ve signed up, in order to get your payment you’ll have to complete the sessions for all five nights and record your impressions of the experience. You’ll drop off the reports every day before noon. Of course what, exactly, you do during the experiment is up to you. I mean, we really can’t make you, um….”

“We just want to find out how long it takes you guys to decide if you’d like to bang like a screen door in a hurricane,” Randy put in.

Melissa quickly looked over the list. Five sessions, with increasing levels of “intimacy.” She’d once slept with a man she’d known for two hours—what would she want to do with one after twenty?

“What if, at the end of it, we don’t have sex?” Melissa asked, shrewdly, she thought, because there was no way she was going to agree to all this if there was any chance at all she might be stiffed out of the cash at the end because she refused to allow a strange guy to put his penis inside her.

“As long as you complete every session through until the end and fill out all the accompanying reports, you’ll be paid.”

“And if he bails?” Melissa asked, wanting to be just that much extra sure.

“You’ll still be paid as long as you complete the requirements,” Randy assured her.

Melissa looked down at the papers in front of her. She thought of her bank account, and of the thousand bucks that would go a long way toward making her life all that much more comfortable. And for what—the possibility she might have to get hit on by some guy she could ultimately turn down if she really wanted to? She picked up her pen and started writing.

“I’ll do it.”

Hair: blond. Eyes: blue. Bra size? Matt paused at that one. Did he want to be honest and admit he was a total dick, say 34 DD? Or did he want to pretend something like that didn’t matter. Hell. He scribbled 34 D, dropping the extra D just to keep himself from being a complete douche bag. Height, weight, hobbies. This was a lot like those two geeks in Weird Science, pulling pictures from magazines and creating the perfect woman, but why not, right? If they were asking him what he wanted, he might as well ask for it all.

“How important is a sense of humor?” He thought about that one, tapping his pen against his lips. Randy and Ada had left him alone to fill out the paperwork, but he wasn’t convinced there wasn’t some sort of monitoring going on. He might not know a lot about how psych department experiments worked, but he was going to assume he was being recorded until proved otherwise. “Very important.”

The next question, though, made him laugh. “If you meet a woman with an excellent sense of humor and obvious intelligence, but her physical appearance isn’t up to your standards, would you ask her out anyway?”

No. Might as well be honest for the sake of the experiment, right? Didn’t want to skew the results.

“If you end up going out with a woman, for example on a blind date, who exhibits all the traits you’re looking for in a mate, but again her physical appearance isn’t to your standards, do you have sex with her if the opportunity arises?”

Yes. He hesitated on that one, thinking of the old “chew your arm off in the morning” jokes, but the fact was, Matt had slept with ugly chicks in the past because the desire to get laid overrode any sort of other need. Had he done it lately, even in the past few years? No. But he had, and he was going to guess he would again, if the situation were right.

It took him forty-five minutes to answer all the questions, and by the end of it, his hand had cramped. They’d explained to him already what the experiment entailed, reassuring him over and over again that he wouldn’t have to sleep with anyone if he didn’t want to. That he wasn’t being paid to have sex. That he’d have to spend five nights in a row with this random chick, chosen as his partner based on what he’d filled out. He wanted to make sure he gave them all the information necessary to hook him up with someone just right.

Less than twenty-four hours later, in the shower as he got ready for the evening out with the “bros,” Matt froze with his fingers knuckle-deep in lather on his skull. He was about to get set up on what could be the worse or best blind date, ever.

He was still thinking about it when he got to the bar where Damian had said they’d all be. And there they were, a bunch of his fraternity brothers, most of them younger and all of them horny. On their way to piss drunk, too, by the looks of them. They’d cornered a similar group of mostly pretty sorority girls in tiny tops and with lots of shiny teeth.

“Bro,” Damian greeted him solemnly. “Glad you could finally fucking make it out. All work, no play, right?”

“Yeah, right,” Matt said, and took one of the bottles of beer from the bucket on the table. “How about I buy the next bucket?”

And that’s how it started. How it ended, though, was something else. Damian had fixed his sights on this sweet little blonde with huge tits and not a lot going on between the ears. Matt had found himself a reluctant wingman, left to entertain the hottie’s plain-Jane pal.

At least she didn’t seem interested in him. They shared a couple of beers from another of the buckets and watched some lame reality show while Damian set to making out with the still-nameless chick. They were both drunk, and normally Matt wouldn’t have thought anything of it, except that it seemed pretty lame to just stick your tongue down someone else’s throat within twenty minutes of meeting them.