My name is Gladys, my husband's is Tony. We have an open relationship; it helps keep us sane for the time that he is away working, which can be several months at a time. While he's away I throw parties for friends, some of which end in orgies; I know that he bangs his assistants and sometimes his groupies. We are both happy with the way things are and when we are together we are exclusive with each other.

You may be wondering why I don't travel with him. There are two reasons. First I have a highly responsible and well-paid job that I enjoy and keeps me in our home-town. Secondly, he is a magician and I don't fit the mould of magician’s assistant. I am what the tactful would refer to as a 'large lady' so do not fit in the cramped spaces magicians expect their assistants to squeeze themselves into and I am not usually the showing off sort, so the one time I did perform as an assistant, I was so scared and embarrassed, I packed it in that night.

Through no fault of his own his latest tour was shortened by a couple of weeks. He returned early, when he could have spend the time until he was due back dallying with anyone he chose; he chose me. This gave me a problem, because I had a final party organised for the weekend before he was due back. I offered to cancel the party, but he would not hear of it; he said he had heard about my parties and was looking forward to experiencing one first hand. I asked if he had a costume that was suitably indecent. After some thought he said that he did not, but suggested that we should provide a costume for each other. The glint in his eye told me that he had an idea, so I agreed.

The week before the party was greatly eased, by having Tony there to help out. Sourcing a suitably explicit costume for him was easy, but getting an idea of what he had in store for me proved impossible; the nearest I got was that it was a dress of sorts.

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About half an hour before the first guests were due to turn up, I presented him with his costume. He smiled at the spandex thong with a tube out the front, decorated to resemble an elephant. In seconds he was wearing it. I asked him about my costume.

“You're fine as you are, for now,” he said. “I'll present you with your costume once all the guests are here. And I'll help you get into it while everyone watches.”

“This isn't going to be embarrassing, is it?”

“Would I do that to you?”

I knew that he would not embarrass me for embarrassing me's sake, but he might if he thought it might excite me in the process.

Not having a costume yet, I went about the usual last-minute tasks that precede the beginning of a party in my day clothes. Soon the guests started to arrive. I spent the next half hour too busy meeting, greeting and directing guests to the room set aside to store the coats and cloaks they would be wearing to maintain some semblance of modesty in public. My guests displayed the usually range of creativity, store-bought sexy nurse and doctor, to some fantastical creations that made you wonder how much they cost and how long they took to prepare.

Once all the guests had arrived and had another quarter hour to mingle and get reacquainted, Tony announced that it was time for them to gather on the grass in front of the patio. I gathered too, wondering what he planned to do.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. First I thought I'd better introduce myself. I am Tony, Gladys' husband. Some of you will know me from outside these parties and you will also know that I'm usually away when these parties happen; in fact this is the first of these parties that I have attended.

“To add a little spice, we have selected each other's costume. This is what she selected for me.” He gyrated his hips and got an 'ooooh!' from many of the women present; some of the men around me in the group seemed a little jealous (whether because he seemed unabashed wearing nothing but a spandex sheath, or for the size of its contents, I could not tell). “You may think that I selected her costume to be 'sexy housewife', but in fact I shall be presenting her with her costume for the evening now. Darling, please come up onto the patio.”

As I made my way out of the gathered crowd and up the two steps to the level of the patio, I looked around to see if there were any clues to what he had in store for me. There were two things on the patio. The first looked like it may be a tailor's dummy on a stand; although all I could really see under the cloth that draped over it was that if it was a dummy, it was as plus-sized as me. The other thing that was not usually there was a set of steps with a smallish platform at the top. These steps had wheels and I recognised them as the set from his show for those occasions when he needed himself or an assistant onto a platform and make it clear that they were really up there, because there was nowhere to hide; not that the steps with the hiding place would do me any good, because their hiding place is too small for me.

I stood for a moment, while Tony moved the steps to the middle of the area he had cleared. “Are you ready to be helped to slip into something a bit less comfortable?”

“I guess,” I said, for the audience's benefit. To Tony I whispered, “I thought you said that this would not be embarrassing. I can't just strip off here in front of my friends.”

He reply was a little unsettling. “You won't, you'll be stripping off up there.” I followed the direction of his momentary glance and saw he was talking about the platform at the top of the steps. He evidently saw the blush I could feel rising. “The good thing is that no-one will see.” I looked back at him to see how serious he was being, that I might mount a set of steps in front of a group of people and strip off and no-one would see anything. He flicked me a smile, before stepping away for a steps and returning with a cloak that had been lying on one of the tables that had been moved aside.

“Ok, Honey, please go up the steps and stand on the platform at the top.” This was loud enough that the rest of the party could hear and it returned them to paying attention. I could tell that he was in 'presentation mode', so I had to trust that he would be as good as his word about not making this embarrassing.

Hesitantly, I mounted the steps, glad that the wheels were locked and the frame sturdy; less glad that I was being asked to do this, especially as I still had no idea what kind of dress he planned for me to wear.

“Now, Darling, you can't get into your new dress if you don't take that one off, and all your underwear, except that you can leave your panties on if you like.”

“I can't do that, I'd be embarrassed; besides our friends don't want to see me naked.” My remark drew a mixed reaction from the party-goers; some showed by way of cheers and whistles that they would like to see me undressed, and other, quickly shushed by more tactful people, jeered to agree with my assessment of their tastes in women.

I had the impression that Tony would have had a second round of trying to persuade the lady on the platform to disrobe unconcealed if that lady had not been me. He handed the cloak up to me and I gratefully put it on. It reached the platform and a little more all round. “Now that no-one can see, please remove all your clothes.”

“I thought you said I could keep my panties on,” I whispered down to my husband.

“You can if you want to and you don't mind them being seen,” he whispered back. Louder, so that the party could hear, he said, “Just hand your current clothes down and I'll put them aside for you to collect later.”

The next couple of minutes, saw me passing my clothes to Tony; house-dress, full slip, petticoat, shoes, bra and girdle, all given to him and placed on the table that the cloak had been on. I was now naked apart from the panties under the cloak.

“Ok, Love, you know I love you just the way you are, but for tonight I shall give you an hour-glass figure.” He dragged the covered thing that I had assumed was a dummy and pulled the cover off. It looked liked a giant hour glass,except that it was missing the top of its top and the bottom of its bottom. From my viewpoint it looked like a wide glass bowl the curved down to a small hole in the middle; that hole being about the width of my little finger.

“Please step into the top part and raise the hem of you cloak so that everyone can see that the narrow section is much narrower than one of your legs.”

I stepped cautiously from the down the eighteen inches to the bottom of the upper bowl. I did not want the added indignity of having this thing shatter under my weight. The glass held and I stood as still as I possibly could to avoid adding any extra strains to the apparatus, even though it felt surprisingly solid under my bare feet. Carefully I raised the edge of my cloak until it was about knee-high and the audience could see that I was standing there over a tapered hole that I could not even get a toe into.

“Good, now step back onto the platform so that I can do a last bit of preparation.” I lowered the cloak and with the same care stepped back up onto the platform.

Tony pulled a small spray bottle from his pocket, reached over the edge of the glass to spray the liquid onto the bowl. After a few squirts, he put the bottle away and lifted up a pole from the ground.

“Step back into the top part, but be careful and hold onto this pole, because it'll be slippy now.”

He planted the bottom end of the pole on the floor and held it upright. I took a hold of the pole and put a foot down into the bowl. It was slippery, but with the help of the pole I stayed upright as my foot slid to the centre of the top part.

I felt brave for stepping my other foot into the slick glass bowl. I gripped the pole for dear life.

“Are you ok, if I leave you the pole, but move the steps away? If you can try to be as in the middle of the bowl as you can, that would be good.”

I nodded. He let go of the pole and shifted the steps away. When he returned, he adjusted the edge of the cloak so that all of it was hanging outside the rim of the bowl. By this time I felt as if my hand was rising up the pole, until I realised that I was sinking instead.

“What's happening?” I asked as I slid my hand down the pole to find a more comfortable position.

“You are literally slipping into the costume I have made for you.”

By this time I must have been nearly two feet lower than I started and I felt the rim of the bowl touch my buttocks. The rate at which I was sliding downward slowed, but did not stop. From the buzz in the crowd of spectators, they had noticed I was lowering into the hour-glass I had been standing in. I could not tell if I was shrinking to get through the hole on the bottom of the upper bowl or maybe I was turning into a thick liquid to flow slowly through.

When I was another foot lower, Tony raised the front edge of the cloak to show my feet dangling inside the lower part of the glass prop. He went to get my shoes and placed them on the platform that supported the hour-glass I was flowing through and the frame that held it up.

Soon, I my feet touched my shoes and seconds later had slipped into them. I was relieved to have my feet on something firm again.

“How are you feeling?” Tony asked.

“Glad to have my feet back on solid ground.”

“And the dress isn't too tight?”

“It feels more rigid than tight and I think I'll need to adjust my boobs, but really it feels no tighter than any of my girdles.”

“Good, because it's now time for the big reveal. You adjust yourself while I announce it.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time anywhere in the world, ever, I present to you Gladys, the  woman with an hour-glass figure.”

While he had been talking, I had reached into the cloak cupped my boobs into a pair of cup-shape areas in the front of top bowl.

He stepped behind me and lifted the cloak from my shoulders, which he tossed onto the table with the rest of my clothes. Then he began undoing clips on the structure that supported the glass dress I was now inside.

“Are you sure that's a good idea?” I asked. “If I can slip down inside this thing, surely it can slip down me?”

“I've already thought of that, so it won't be a issue, until I come to get you out of there, after the party. Have some faith that I know what I'm doing.”

With the support removed I could feel some of the weight of the dress dragging down, but going nowhere; to my relief. Our friends applauded as I stepped from the low platform that had held the dress in place.

The rest of the party was the usual mixed of fun and hard work that hosting a party entails. I was surprised to find that the dress was comfortable, even though it prevented me from bending or sitting. It also had the added side effect of displaying my best features while hiding what most people would think is my worst.

After the party guests had gone home and some of the immediately necessary tidying had been done, Tony took me out onto the patio, where he had laid out a tarpaulin.

“How did you like having an hour-glass figure, Gladys?”

“It was fun, but not being able to bend or sit was a bit of a downside.”

“So, you don't want to stay like that?”

“Heavens, No!”

“Good, because I want to be able to cuddle you. Step into the middle of the sheet on the ground.”

“Do I need to take off my shoes?” I offered a foot to Tony, because there was no way I could remove my own shoes while wearing the rigid dress.

“No, you'll need them in a minute.”

I walked to the middle of the tarp. Tony followed me. “Stand still and raise your arms away from your body.” I followed his instructions and then heard a metal on glass tap, followed by noise of thousands of glass fragments falling from my body. I felt suddenly unconstrained. “Now, carefully step out of that pile of shattered glass. And perhaps take off your panties in case any glass got inside. Then we can go to the bedroom and we can do what I've want to do with you all evening."