Minimum Wage, part 4.0: Race Queen

Mai knew she could do better. Puberty had gifted her short frame with a fertile figure, which she had parlayed into a successful modeling career. Unfortunately, in Japan, that only made her an expensive piece of meat as far as most men were concerned. Every guy she dealt with felt it was his prerogative to cop a boob, grab her ass, and make the most disgusting propositions. There was nothing she could do about this except deal with it on a case-by-case basis. It was simply part and parcel with her position, and she was not so naive to think that she would still have a career if she complained to the media or the authorities.

Mai longed to move to America, where sexual harrassment was taken more seriously and most men knew to look but not touch. Unfortunately, getting a work visa was harder than ever. She had briefly considered smuggling herself in, but with the ports and all flying craft larger than a weather balloon under surveillance, the only way across the border was through Mexico, and the thought of being crammed in the back of a van with a dozen strange men made her skin crawl.

She had finally discovered the glimmer of an opportunity in an auto parts company with an American division. She was employed as a "race queen" -- eye candy to attract male attention to a corporate logo. The company was thinking of exporting the concept to America, and with her credentials, Mai would be the first across.

Until then, however, Mai had to endure a job that featured all of the aggravations of modeling with none of the glamour. Where as a model she was able to tell off individual leches as long as she didn't rock the boat, in her current position that would get her fired. She just had to endure the creeping eyes, casual touches, surrepititious photographs, lousy pay, and the bubbleheaded ditzes that were her co-workers, telling herself all the while that it would end in a trip to America.

Mai was at an exhibition promoting a new system developed by the company for race cars. It used a set of powerful pumps to dynamically inflate and deflate tires according to the position of the steering wheel and the condition of the road. The system required compressed gas to operate, and since weight and safety were major concerns in racing, helium was chosen for its low density and nonflammability. The featured event was a race between two cars, one with the system and one without, but there would also be close-up demonstrations of the system and kiosks promoting other company products.

Entering the race queen tent, Mai expected to find the usual bathing suit or gymnastics leotard. Instead, there was what looked like a bodysuit bunched up on the floor. A plastic ring held the neck open wide enough for her to enter. It was collapsed vertically, so she could see where her feet went. A note from her supervisor instructed her to put her arms and legs in the suit and pull it up to her shoulders, but then ask for help before continuing.

Following the directions, Mai noted that the feet of the bodysuit were packed into vinyl slippers, an unusual touch. The stretchy suit seemed snug, but not excessively so. Pulling the ring up to her neck, she yelled for assistance. Her supervisor came in and pulled the ring up and out, allowing the rubber-lined neck to shrink down to a snug fit. The next step she found rather odd -- he snapped a plastic collar around her neck, holding the fabric in place. When she asked what was going on, he told her that it would become clear in a few moments. She felt the presence of someone behind her, and then felt something pressing into what she realized was a valve between her shoulder blades.

This didn't prepare her for what happened next. Mai gasped as with a short, sharp hiss, the fabric of the suit shrank inward to conform to every inch of her body. Feeling around, she found that the thin material had drawn into the crack of her ass, the curves of her crotch, and the bases of her breasts. Even her nipples stood out in almost perfect detail. She also noticed that the surface of the bodysuit was very, very, slippery. Casting her supervisor a stunned look, Mai heard him explain that she wasn't just promoting the corporate logo this time. The company had developed an ultra-slick and durable coating for engine parts, and she was the demonstration model. Before the horrified Mai could object, he got behind her and shoved her towards the curtain.

The next few hours were a living hell for Mai. The bodysuit covered more than any other garment she had worn in her careers as a model or race queen, while at the same time revealing almost everything. Her purpose, of course, was to be felt up while at the same time demonstrating the slickness of the new coating. She learned from another race queen that there were even words on her bodysuit instructing the reader to not be shy and grab a feel, she wouldn't complain. Needless to say, most of the men were more interested in her body than the coating. Every moment, someone was touching her somewhere she didn't want to be touched. The chemically-treated surface of the bodysuit allowed her to slip out of one grip, only to run into another set of hands in the opposite direction.

Some of the men were almost clever in their cruelty. One asked her to take the "pencil test", which needless to say she failed for the first time since she was 14. As she bent over to retrieve the pencil, she heard the snap of a camera behind her. Guys would throw their food and drinks at her and watch them slide off. It never occurred to them how it felt to have hot chili or ice-cold soda washing over her tits. And, as per company policy, she had to laugh and smile through every second of it.

Even the suit itself offered aggravations of its own. Mai was used to her thighs rubbing together as she walked, and the sudden lack of friction threw off and exaggerated her gait, which of course encouraged the men all the more. She found it impossible to rest her feet. If she leaned against a wall, she fell on her side. If she sat in a chair, she slid to the floor. Once, she had the bright idea to ask a staff member to tie a rope around her waist, and then to the back of a chair, so that she could stay on. This only made it that much more difficult to escape from the next group of gropers.

The worst part, however, was her hands. The company had obviously had the foresight to supply her with footwear so she could stand, but had not seen the need to provide her with gloves. She never did manage to pick up that pencil, and when she fell while trying to rest, she had to slide her legs to either side of her body, then "walk" her feet together, since her arms were of no use picking herself up off the ground.

Mai couldn't take another minute of this. Not one more minute. She didn't care if she got fired, she was through. Several minutes of fiddling with the bodysuit later, she concluded that there was no way of getting it off without help. After a search, she found the staff member with the pump, hooking it up to a small helium tank for a demonstration. Pulling (well, ordering) him to a secluded corner, she told him in no uncertain terms to get the suit off her. Cowed, he agreed to do so, but explained that he would have to release the vacuum before removing the collar, lest the suction pull the suit's neck down to her waist. She could then slip out of the suit and into real clothes while his back was turned.

The man had attached the wand of the pump to the valve of the suit, and was about to press the "neutral" button, when a slight shift in Mai's posture caused the sun to reflect off her shiny back into his eyes. Momentarily stunned, he fumbled with the controls, and instead of releasing the vacuum, pressed the worst possible button he could have chosen.

Mai squealed as the skintight suit suddenly ballooned into a bulbous torso with sausage-like arms and legs. Startled, her inflator yanked on the wand, rocking Mai back on her heels. A moment later, excess pressure forced the valve out of the wand's grip, and a blast of gas from the tip sent Mai flying and tumbling end over end.

She wasn't carrying enough helium to float away, but her descent back to the ground was distressingly slow. Her screams attracted attention, and a staff member was waiting to try to catch her where she was going to land. As he grabbed for her, though, she slipped out of his grasp and sailed back into the air. A small crowd gathered where she was headed to next, but their combined efforts couldn't keep hold of her slippery suit. The next several landings were aborted in a similar manner. At one point, a man miraculously got on top of her, but her supervisor rushing to the scene tripped and fell on HIM, and she squirted out from beneath them, bouncing off a kiosk and back into play. Every time she neared the ground, a man tried to capture her, and her expansive new curves conspired with the super-slick coating to send her back into the sky. She screamed at everyone to stop chasing her, just let her land and settle down, but no one listened. Every male wanted the gratification of saving the damsel in distress.

One relatively bright fellow, instead of failing at grabbing her torso or limbs like everyone else, decided to go for her feet. While this was a swell idea in concept, he pulled a little too hard, and the vinyl slipper came away in his hand. Although romantically reminiscent of a fairy tale, this made things even worse for Mai, since her small body was now just barely shy of buoyant, the other shoe literally the only thing holding her to this earth. A shifting breeze had picked up, and every failed capture was now followed a long, leisurely drift around the exhibition.

Mai had not been totally passive in her distress, but her ability to control her flight was almost nil. The pressurized bodysuit held her arms and legs spread-eagled, and every hand, object, or surface she managed to touch slipped right through her fingers. Finally, she flipped upright to find that a horizontal cord festooned with triangular colored plastic flags was coming right at her face. Thinking more quickly than she ever had before, Mai caught the cord in her mouth. She had a fair bit of momentum, and she feared her head would be wrenched right off her neck as she flipped end over end, but her rotation slowed and then stopped.

Out of the corner of her eye, Mai saw the exhibition staff running over to dismantle one of the poles holding up the cord and bring her down. Unfortunately, their jostling briefly stretched the cord even tighter, and it snapped off that end. It was under a fair amount of tension, and yanked her towards the track, where the race was still in progress.

As the "enhanced" car roared by, Mai was caught in its wake. Flag after flag was ripped from the cord as she was dragged almost to its end. She knew the "control" car, lagging badly at this point, would still be only seconds behind. Mai gritted and gnashed her teeth, but was unable to stop the second wake from ripping the cord from her mouth and sending her spiraling upward with nothing in her teeth but a bunch of plastic flags.

An American cowboy performer had been brought to the convention to help promote the company's operation in the States. He had been sleeping off a bad case of jet lag in his tent, but Mai's supervisor thought that his talents could be useful right now. In his half-awake state, he blearily understood the panicked translator's heavily-accented English to mean that a balloon had become untethered and they wanted him to lasso it. Well, this would be more interesting than yelling and firing a cap gun, at least. Grabbing his rope, he stepped out into the daylight and spotted a shape rotating slowly in the sky. Effortlessly twirling a lasso, he made a leisurely throw that snagged Mai's still-shod foot on the first try. Then, assuming that he had hooked nothing more massive than a balloon, he yanked hard on the rope.

And the other shoe dropped.

And Mai finally earned her trip to America.

Martin Robards, owner of a successful modeling agency, was skeet shooting off the back porch of his San Diego beachfront home, when a missed pull resulted in a loud boom and something landing in the water not far offshore. He rushed into the surf, expecting to find a part from a supersonic aircraft, but instead finding a short but curvy Asian girl wearing what looked like the tattered remnants of a bodysuit and babbling hysterically in Japanese. When she calmed down, she turned out to speak fluent English. Her story on how she had got here was too wild to believe, but he didn't expect her to admit she had jumped off a border runner before the Coast Guard caught up to it. Learning that she wanted to be a model, Martin offered her a proposition.

Mai Robards knew she had it made. By the time NORAD had tracked the mysterious small flying craft to its landing spot, she had already been married and got her green card. Her modeling contract stipulated that she not be touched and not have to wear anything skintight. Although her husband of course expected sex as her end of the bargain, Mai was happy to oblige. Martin was so much more self-confident, stronger, and, well, "bigger" than any Japanese man she had known.

Her career wasn't proceeding as well as it had in Japan, though. After some consideration, she decided it was because of her breasts. Although she was downright stacked by Japanese standards, compared to American models of her height she was nothing special.

She pondered this as she was cleaning out their garage while he took the car for a tune-up. In a corner she came upon an electric breast pump that she deduced must have been used by his first wife. It was pretty much a block of rust after all that time in the humid garage, but what drew her attention was that it was connected to a sturdy brasserie with a Y-shaped plastic tube attached to where the nipples would go.

She look at the bra, and at the portable air compressor for the car's tires, and felt the first faint glimmerings of an idea...