Fiction
Excerpts:
Kate led the way to a coffeehouse, and soon they were sitting in a little booth together, talking about their lives. Other coffee drinkers came and went unnoticed outside the timeless bubble that enveloped their booth.
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In the morning, after Kate left for work, Betsy lay in bed, fretting about what to do. It was all her fault, she knew. After all, she had indeed told Kate (several times) that she wished she could be naked in front of everyone. But that had been during sex! Kate had goaded her to say it, and Betsy thought it was just a sexy game. None of Betsy's previous girlfriends had been into talking or role-playing during sex, so she was new at this. Was there some kind of rule book?
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Betsy knew, of course, that she was not in any actual physical danger. Like all modern-day women, she grew up with the security of knowing that the ancient crime of rape had long ago been eradicated. Intellectually, she understood that the only thing she really had to fear was her own embarrassment -- but that was plenty all by itself. She had never even been comfortable with locker room nudity, and now look at what she was about to do!
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Betsy began pushing her cart through the store, holding her breath each time another shopper noticed her, and exhaling with relief when the person did not react with disgust. Quite the opposite, most people smiled at her with delight or, at worst, stood mouths agape in shock. Although no one reacted in a negative way, she could tell by their expressions that while it may be legal to do so, grocery shopping nude was not as common in this province as Kate had characterized it to be. She wondered where all the other "official registered nudists" were. Didn't they need to shop?
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Unlike all of the other superheroes, Molly did not have a secret identity. The others had all planned their public debuts and had clever names and cool costumes. They wore masks covering just enough of their faces to preserve the private lives into which they could disappear until duty called again. She had none of that -- no mask, no costume, no fancy name and definitely no secret identity. Everyone knew she was Dr. Molly McQueen, professor of physics at Ionia University.
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They had a lot in common -- both having graduated from college before they were 15. Molly was now 22, but had finished her Ph.D. in theoretical physics at 19 and was now a full professor. Annie, at 17, was well along on her master's degree. Though advanced intellectually, Annie was still very much a teenager and had a crush on her professor that she was unable to hide.
Annie's feelings for Molly were not entirely unrequited. Had Annie been at least one year older and not her grad student, Molly would have hit on her the day they met. She was exactly the kind of girlfriend Molly always wanted -- a brilliant, bubbly blonde who apparently did not own any bras.
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As a college student, Johnny was like the other popular boys. He dressed in skimpy clothing, flirted shamelessly, and went to a lot of parties. His typical outfit consisted of a tight shirt that showed off his muscles and left his arms, shoulders and midriff exposed, over a short cotton skirt that billowed in the breeze. And like other boys, he usually wore a thong under his skirt, so a gust of wind would occasionally expose their butt cheeks to the delight of their more fully dressed female classmates. When he went to parties, Johnny didn't even wear a thong -- a fact which inevitably became apparent.
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Jamie Taylor was a hermaphrodite -- but she didn't know it. Had her birth taken place in a hospital in the Outside World, the doctors would have explained to Jamie's 15-year-old mother that although her baby had a penis, she also had a vagina and two X chromosomes. They would have explained that hermaphroditism was a very rare but well-documented genetic variation that occurred only once in every five million female births.
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In one such commune, Jamie Taylor grew up -- as a boy. During the years she was in diapers, the only person who saw Jamie's unusual combination of genitalia was her mother. But having herself grown up "Gated In," Stacy had only the sparsest of sex education. She had barely glimpsed the penis that impregnated her, and had no clue what other body parts might be found between a boy's legs. When Jamie was four years old, her mother was suddenly gone -- dead of a burst appendix that did not respond well to prayer. Since Stacey had no other family, Jamie was sent to the community's Home for Orphaned Boys.
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The naked woman cowers as the hulking tattooed man in a spiked helmet shouts, "You belong to me now, slave!"
"Cut!" someone yells, and the director walks into the scene. "That was great, Barry. Thanks for coming in to add this segment. It's a crucial nuance to the film."
The hulking, tattooed man in the spiked helmet smiles and hands the director the fake knife as the naked actress removes her fake chains. "Glad to do it," he says, "but gosh, I'd better be going. I have to get Caitlin to dance class."
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She was quite certain that the bar's air conditioning was set much too cold, but since she was the only customer who was naked and dripping wet, Betsy did not want to complain. Also, she realized she didn't really mind it. Her skin felt tight, cold, and hard as if she had turned into a porcelain statue, her nipples frozen forever at attention. She glanced down past her breasts to the vertical line of her vagina, now snugly closed against the cold. She knew that behind that little doorway it was so very warm inside her body, and she imagined a tiny wisp of steam might emerge if she were to widen her legs just a little.
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Betsy did not understand how something that made her so embarrassed could also make her so very, very aroused as well, but after being naked in front of so many people downtown, it had taken all of her willpower not to masturbate in the car. She hadn't entirely succeeded, allowing herself a few touches at red lights. Fortunately, Betsy's car was a stick shift, so her hands had been kept occupied most of the time.
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Betsy was pretty sure Dean went commando because she could often see the shape of his slumbering-but-easily-woken penis down one tight pant leg or the other. Yet he seemed to be magician-deft at adjusting himself when the need, ahem, arose. She would look down, and suddenly, now it would be standing at attention behind his zipper. She didn't have much experience with penises, but could not imagine how it might have executed that maneuver on its own.
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One of the only pieces of furniture in Michelle's studio space was a cloth hammock, which she invited Betsy to try out. As Betsy climbed in on one side, Michelle climbed in on the other, and when their feet left the ground, the hammock swallowed them up, smooshing their bare bodies together like breasts in a pushup bra. They were nose to nose, and as the hammock swung gently back and forth, Michelle shifted her head slightly, and their lips came together.
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Feeling happier than she had in days, Betsy smiled back at her reflection and put her toothbrush back into its little box. "Can we put my name on this," she asked sweetly, "in case I ever need it again?"
The prospect that the Avery College nudist might have an ongoing need to brush her teeth in their bathroom animated Zach and Evan, who nearly spilled their beers and sent their pizza plates flying as both leaped up to assist her.
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"Thank you," Betsy said to the burly biker sitting next to her at the bar. "But I hope you don't expect anything from a lady in exchange for buying her a drink."
"Nothing improper," he replied in his gravely voice, "but I reckon you could tell us how you ended up here this morning. If I were still a betting man, my money would be on the fragile nature of romance."
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Betsy wept as she told this part of the story, and all around her in the bar, men wiped their eyes with calloused hands and honked their noses into sweat-stained Harley Davidson bandanas.
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Betsy held the image of Ariel next to Molly's face. "She looks just like you."
"Except SHE has no freckles," Molly pointed out, slipping off her coat, "which I've always found rather suspicious."
"Are you suggesting the Little Mermaid colors her hair?" Betsy asked with mock alarm.
"Well ... I don't like to start rumors."
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Some of the swing dance moves Betsy was learning required her to spread her legs wide, and all around them, cameras were recording the action. By the end of the evening, dozens of new photos and videos would be added to the digital corpus that tracked the very public life of the Avery College Nudist. As always, some photos would be zoomed and cropped to highlight body parts that certain segments of Betsy's fan base never tired of highlighting.
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