Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms (49 page)

His mother would never have allowed such memories to exist. She would never have permitted him to feel anything but shame about his nakedness. She didn’t even like the possibility of accidentally seeing him—or rather parts of him—in the tub. To avoid it, she had sat on a stool near the bathroom door, averting her eyes and scrubbing him with a sponge on the end of a long stick. Beyond that, she made the infant Winterly cover himself with a washcloth whenever she had to bathe him, which was once a day, every day, until he was old enough to be trusted in the tub alone.

And even then, isolated and unobserved, knowing his mother’s distaste for what existed between his legs, he still carefully covered it.

Winterly watched the woman unloading her groceries for a moment and only looked away when he realized he was making her nervous with his stares. Why should
she
be nervous? He was obviously a chaste man of the cloth.
She
was the one parading herself in an unacceptable manner, wasn’t she?

As if in answer to his unspoken question a small, wind-up airplane smacked Winterly in the side of the head and snapped him back into the moment. A bit shocked, he looked over as one of the children—a small girl—ran toward him to retrieve the errant, balsawood projectile.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really sorry.” Then she paused, waiting for the minister’s reaction. When Winterly said nothing, she quickly pointed to her friend standing near a tree. “He did it.”

The pastor smiled warmly at the child and kneeled down to pick up the now slightly skewed toy as the girl continued to apologize. Winterly unbent the wing of the little, rubber-band-powered Cessna and shushed her gently.

“It’s all right,” he said. “It just surprised me. Didn’t hurt at all, really. Here.” He fished in his pocket for the candy he usually kept there for the children of his parishioners and found one still there from last week’s sermon buried under some change.

“Here,” he repeated, offering her the sweet. “See? I’m not mad, in fact…”

Suddenly a woman began screaming.

“NOOOOOOO! LEAVE MY GIRL ALONE!”

Winterly looked over and saw a terrified woman, nude save for an apron and some slippers, racing toward him as fast as her fluffy, baby-blue feet could carry her. He furrowed his brow and wondered what could possibly have upset the woman so severely, then abruptly realized.

He
was the outsider. A ‘
clothist’
.

Offering
candy
.

To a naked little girl
.

“No,” he said, more to himself than anyone else, and then turned to the distraught mother. “No! You don’t understand!”

Then he saw the man who’d been gardening moving quickly toward him with an open pair of shears.

“
No
,
I’m not…”
Winterly began, then thought better of it, leaped to his feet, and ran.

“Stop him!” Yelled the gardening man.
“STOP THAT CLOTHED PERVERT!”

Morgan and I fought our way through shrubs, weeds, and undergrowth, over hills, and fences, and yards, to eventually stumble—exhausted—back to our hotel. Quietly slipping around the building and in through a side door, we finally allowed ourselves to relax for a few minutes and catch our breath.

Morgan used his valuable breathing time to whine about being half-naked. All along the way he was so afraid someone would see him pantsless, he just wouldn’t shut up about it, and I couldn’t muster the breath, or energy, to make him understand that this was the one place where nobody would ever care.

I guess I really couldn’t blame him. Plainly, I hadn’t entirely grasped the concept myself.

With things now obviously, and distressingly, ended between Ms. Nuckeby and me—whether I understood the reasons or not—I was eager to get out of this town and back to
my
world, as Wisper was always referring to it, as if it were—literally—some alternate dimension. I suppose in many ways it was.

Something deep inside me ached, savagely, for Wisper, and I figured distance was the first step toward killing the sensation before it killed me.

As Morgan and I were sneaking through a hallway, undetected, heading for the stairs, I remembered Mindie’s chocolates and cursed to myself. It didn’t really matter to me if I made her happy or not, but I figured I should at least do everything in my power to prevent conflict. Lord knows I’d have enough of that for several lifetimes. And now, of course, she was the only other woman in the world who had ever even shown visible interest in me. Minimal interest, asexual interest, but interest nonetheless. I mean, there must be
some
reason she wanted to marry me. Best to keep things comfortable between us. Or at least less agonizing.

“Morgan. I need to go to that little store they have in the hotel lobby. I have to get chocolates for Mindie.”

“Why?”

“Because she asked me to.”

“She won’t even have sex with you.”

“I’m not really sure I want her to.”

“Then why are you buying her chocolates?”

“Are you coming with me or not?”

“I haven’t got any pants!”

“Morgan. We’re in a nudist village, in a nudist hotel, surrounded by nudists who
don’t fucking care!”

He hesitated, wounded by the anger in my voice, looking at me like a deer who’d suddenly realized that those bright things coming toward him are attached to a hood, a metal grill, a heavy engine, and eighteen deer-grinding wheels.

“I have a small dick,” he whined.

I stared at him, stunned, and, as tears moistened his eyes, sympathy gradually welled within me.

“People will see,” he whispered sadly.

“Oh, Morgan. It’s not that bad,” I lied.

“A girl laughed at it once. We were about to have sex. She asked if it belonged to Ant Man.”

Suddenly, the true story of the lost night with Nightcrawler-girl began to take shape.

“She called it a flea trying to escape the hair on a barbershop floor,” he said, almost breaking down.

“Wow. That’s really…um…even when it was…you know…erect?”

“
It’s just small,”
he said, a sob escaping his quivering lips.

“Oh,” I said. “Man. Well—you go ahead and go on up to the room then.”

“Wendy’s there.”

“I’m sure Ms. Waboombas will…”

“…laugh at it, too. Guaranteed.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. So what do you want to do?” “I don’t know. Buy me some pants.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.” He bit a lip. “Let me have
your
pants.”

I looked down at them. I wouldn’t for Ms. Nuckeby; I sure as hell wouldn’t for Morgan.

Yet I
had
when ordered to by Mindie. Apparently fear and pride beat out love and lust as the overriding human emotions. How truly sad.

“We’re in a town full of nudists,” he prodded.

“Come with me to the shop,” I said, ignoring him. “Maybe they’ll have something there.”

With his hands and shirt remnants blocking all possible views of his crotch, we walked down the corridor, through the lobby, and into the little gifts/sundries shop near the entrance to the hotel. Morgan kept turning away from anyone who passed—girls in particular— spinning madly as he walked, as if his penis were magnetized, and everyone else had been charged with opposing polarity.

“Are you gonna tell me what you were doing with that waitress on the beach?” Morgan asked, rotating, top-like.

“What did you think I was doing?” I snarled.

“Wow,” he said, clearly amazed. “Yeah,
that
, actually. Man, right there on the beach too. Cool. Sorry I screwed the pooch, so to speak. But, dude, you can’t blame me for not knowing. You got your game on fast.”

“Not really. She was also the model in my closet last night.”

“Holy,
SHIT
, are you fucking
kidding
me?”

“No, I’m not.”

“How did I not notice
that
?”

“Maybe because you never looked at her face.”

“Yeah. Maybe that’s it.” He thought about things for a minute. “Dude. What are you doing with that bitch Mindie if a hot piece like that waitress—model—whatever—wants to have actual sex with you?”

I stopped short in the hallway and turned to look at him.

“Morgan,” I said. “She’s from
here
. She’s a
nudist
.”

Morgan snorted, shocked at my apparent stupidity. “So?”

“My grandfather would disown me, I’d have no money, and her parents would never accept me because I could never live here naked all the time as they do.”

“Why not?”

“Are you kidding me? Live
this
lifestyle? And on top of that, I’d be broke. With no idea how to support myself, or her, and no family to help us.”

“Welcome to the club.”

I stared at him for a long minute as the shock slowly sunk in. I’d been whining endlessly about my fears, about the life I’d lose, the things I’d miss, the money I would no longer have, not realizing it was a life Morgan—and most people really—never even had to begin with. Everyone else had to find a way to survive in the world. So what if I had to as well? Welcome to the club indeed.

“At least you’d have her,” Morgan said, driving it home. “Someone who
wants
you. That’s more than I’ve ever had.”

He stepped past me, and through the doors into the hotel store.

Lost in my own fears, I hadn’t given any thought to what I’d
gain
, as Morgan just had. Something potentially so meaningful, so much deeper, and far more lasting than mere ‘things’.

I stood there a very long moment before entering, frozen with horror at the thoughtless choice I’d made.