Editor’s note: Threadbare is a loose adaptation of Acts 9:34–42 by Will Forest. Forest is the author of numerous works of speculative and literary fiction. His latest book, Seeds of Stone, part of the Skinners trilogy, which is available here.

In the city of Joplin there lived a widow named Dory, who was always doing kind things for others, especially the poor. She was a skilled seamstress, and since the time of her husband’s death, several rooms of her home had been overtaken by bolts of cloth, and sewing machines, and a loom, and baskets of yarn, and great piles of clothes. She loved to sew and weave and knit clothes to give to her friends and family as well as to charity, though at times she felt obligated to continue her work only because of her reputation and because of her investments in so many supplies. One day, after working for weeks on an assortment of sweaters and socks, scarves and mittens, plaid shirts and plaid skirts and work pants and onesies, she donned her shawl, loaded up her gifts, and drove to the community shelter.

Dory was humble about her work, not an ostentatious giver. But to her surprise the shelter manager, who knew she was coming, made a big fuss over her that day. She draped over Dory’s shoulder a special sash that read, “The Lord loveth a cheerful giver,” and she encouraged her to walk among the people of the shelter to distribute her gifts. And so she did, and she was pleased to see joy from some, and confounded to see indifference from others, when she gave them the garments and raiments made by her own hands.

At last, in the far corner of the shelter, there was a young couple with a baby. They smiled and introduced themselves as Peter, Maggie, and baby Nicolas. Dory could not help noticing that Peter’s pants and shirt were threadbare, and Maggie had uncomfortably hoisted up her stained blouse over her breast to feed her baby. When Dory offered them a onesie, they insisted on undressing the baby to try it on him at that very moment. It was a perfect fit, and they were very grateful. When Dory offered the mother one of her specially designed sweaters with an ingenious buttoned flap over the chest for ease in breastfeeding, Maggie insisted on removing her blouse and bra to try it on at that very moment. The sweater was comfortable and the flap worked like a charm as she lifted it to continue feeding baby Nicolas.

Dory was a little surprised by the candor of this couple, but she also felt quite exhilarated by their appreciation. So without hesitation she offered Peter a pair of work pants with a plaid shirt. He insisted on trying them on at that very moment. As he began to remove his clothes, Dory looked away, feeling awkwardly prim even as she confirmed that others in the crowded shelter were watching the scene with interest. After a time in which she imagined that Peter would have finished putting on the new clothes, she turned around, and saw that he stood naked before her.

She suddenly felt very flushed, very stifled. Was it the shock of his nudity, was it the heat of the packed room, a lack of oxygen, was it the weight of the clothing she was both wearing and carrying? For some set of reasons, she fainted, and her clothes spilled all around her.

When she came to, Peter was standing over her, saying, “Get up, Dory!” And when she saw him, she sat up. He gave her his hand and helped her up, and called out to the others in the shelter, “She is recovered!” and “The Lord loveth a cheerful giver!”

The shelter manager told Peter to try on the new clothes already. But Peter did not, saying instead, “Thank you, Dory, for your gifts to clothe me and my family. There are times when we need clothes, just as there are times when we need food, when we need shelter. But our bodies are also gifts–glorious gifts from God–and when we share our gifts unwrapped, we share in the generous community of God’s likeness. We are humble and unashamed.”

Dory still felt overly warm, but much better, and her mind was suddenly clear. She pulled the sash over her head and placed it, speechlessly and fearlessly, over Peter’s shoulder. She removed her shawl and draped it over the shelter manager’s back. She hugged Peter and his family, saying, “I have been hiding myself, binding myself tightly. But I believe you, and I believe in our gifts.” Then she turned to leave, and as she walked back through the shelter to the entrance, she removed her shoes, her stockings, her sweater, her pants, her blouse, her undergarments, giving all of these items cheerfully to the astonished people of the shelter.

The news raced through the town, and there were many who believed Peter. And Peter and his family stayed a long time in Joplin, living with Dory, the seamstress, who continued to sew and weave and knit for charity, even while practicing with her houseguests and friends a more fundamental and absolutely threadbare generosity. 🪐

More Stories:

More Stories

Editor’s note: Ted Bun brings his familiar blend of humor and misadventure to this lighthearted tale of sun and circumstance. His latest book, The Girl on a Baker’s Bike, came out on Dec 1st, and can be found here: https://mybook.to/goabb.

How could I have been so foolish? Really, really foolish. Stupid, in fact. Although stupid is an understatement, my Aunt Helen doesn’t like me using ‘language’.

It seemed such a great idea. An hour on the beach on the way home from work, on such a nice, warm, sunny day like today, why not? I mean, I’d be a fool not to grab a chance to catch some rays this early in the summer. So, I went for it. I shut down my computer, shuffled the sensitive papers into the drawer and locked it, and picked up a folder of documents I needed to read.

“Hi, Boss,” I had knocked on the ‘my door is always open’ sign and walked straight in. “I’m going to take these papers home so I can read them properly. You know, without somebody or other demanding my attention.” Yes, that was what I had just done to him; it might make him more empathetic or simply want me out of his face so that he could get on with whatever he was doing.

I have no idea if it was empathy or irritation, but his response of “whatever” hinted at the latter. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, or any other orifice, I was out the door, arms full of papers.

One of those high-tech things I had come to love about my new car was the remote keyless unlocking. No more juggling with things while you try to get the keys out of the wrong pocket of your jacket, when your hands are full of shopping and it is hosing down rain out.

Okay, so I was going to use another word there, but my mother may show this story to my Aunt Helen. My rich, childless, maiden Aunt Helen, who, as I explained earlier, doesn’t approve of “language,” even if I am her favourite nephew.

I managed to wriggle a finger free and get it to touch the tailgate catch sensor. The hatch slowly opened and I dropped the pile of documents on the floor of the luggage compartment. Well, almost. The picnic blanket I planned to use at the beach was trapped underneath the papers. I needed to sort that out, otherwise, it would cause me to lose precious time in the sun.

I can only think that was when it happened.

Boot tidied, with the blanket now stashed on the passenger seat, I pressed the start button and shot off out of the office car park. It was just gone four, and I had escaped the office an hour early. I’d be at the car park above my favourite beach by a quarter to five. If I hurried, I’d get maybe an hour and a half, possibly two hours in the sun before the shadows of the cliffs reached the last sunny corner of the sand.

The heavier traffic at ‘home time’ meant that on a normal day, at this time of year, I would arrive too late to sit in the sun. However, with weather like today’s being rare in late May, even after allowing for the effects of climate change, I had to grab my chance with both hands.

The drive through town and to the coast was pretty uneventful, except for the obligatory school-run mother. You know the one, the laws don’t apply to her and her precious cargo. Right in front of me she double-parked outside a house and escorted two young children to the door, then waited with them until the door was open, then stood there chatting with the other kids’ parent for five minutes. All the while, a continual stream of traffic passed in the opposite direction. Eventually, she returned to the car, giving me the evil eye. She drove off, still fiddling with her seatbelt while juggling her mobile phone with, what I hoped was but knew wasn’t, a third hand.

In the car park, as is custom and practice with beach regulars, I undressed and put my clothes on the back seat, grabbed the blanket and a bottle of water, then with a flick of my bum; shut the car door.

I headed for the path down to the beach. I had just spread out the blanket, moved that ever-present stone that was digging into me and settled comfortably. Time to post the obligatory envy-generating picture to Twitter, “Hey suckers! Look at me on the sunny beach.” OK, I’d modify the words when I actually posted, even if that was what I had really meant.

Phone? Where was my phone? I normally keep it in my man-bag.

Man-bag? Where is my man-bag? I must have left it in the car.

My keys? They would be in my bag too, in the car. If the keys are in the car, the doors won’t be locked. Beyond my wallet and the USB with my music on it, there is nothing to steal, but that won’t stop them from searching for something, anything of value.

I snatched up the blanket and scurried up the steps from the beach far faster than usual. What a relief, my car was still there. The doors and windows were all closed. The hatchback wasn’t gaping wide. There weren’t any papers blowing in the wind. Great! I could get my bag, lock the car and get that beach picture to make my followers green with envy.

Except the darn door wouldn’t dang open. It was locked, as was the tailgate. How could that be, the keys were must be ‘present’, in my bag, inside the … I peered through all the windows. Not a sign of my bag. No evidence of it being there, not the strap poking out from under the seat. No buckle catching the sun from underneath the dash.

“SHI…” Sorry, Auntie. “Bother!” Where could it be? That bag contained all my keys, not just the car. I couldn’t get into my flat, nor the office, nor even my Mum’s house. Assuming, that is, I could get to any of them.

“Hell!” I can’t even phone a friend for a lift; my phone is in my bag. I can’t even hail a taxi, my money is in my wallet, in my bag. Even if I got a taxi, I am not travelling a hundred miles in a taxi to ask my mum to pay the fare and lend me money to get in another taxi to go searching all over town for my never to be sufficiently cursed leather satchel…

My bag. It all hinges on finding my man-bag. Where was the last place I remembered having it?

I had picked it up and hung it on my shoulder before gathering all those important papers. It had been on my shoulder, hanging awkwardly, when I spoke to the boss. It had slipped further as I dumped the papers into the car. Then…

Sorry, Aunt Helen, I have just said several rather naughty words.

I had surely put it down near the back wheel while I sorted out the jumble of documents and the blanket in the boot of my car. When I got in and started the engine, the key would have been close enough. I’d driven all the way to the beach, sat there behind the school-run mum, got out of the car and shut the doors and— because the key was no longer present—they had locked.

How do I get out of this mess? Answers on a postcard, please. I have no access to phone, text or email messages, my phone is… well you know that already.

Oh, one other complication. I’m naked, well you normally are on a nudist beach, and my clothes are locked in the car. 🪐

More Stories:

More Stories

Editor’s note: Alan R. Paine, author of A Suggestion in Space, turns from the stars to the sand in this gentle story of family, love, and body acceptance.

For more of his writing, visit his Substack Science Fiction and Such Like.

It sounded like a good idea at the time. Martin taking off like that with what’s-her-name almost young enough to be his daughter had left Maggie and Alice stunned and hurt. But now they were here, Maggie wondered if bringing an 18-year-old to a sleepy little town in Greece was really fair on her. Alice was disheartened when they arrived at the dusty place where reinforcing rods emerged from unfinished buildings, competing with overhead wires and television aerials to untidy the sky.

She’d planned to go to the flesh pots of Malia with Jasmine and Thea, but had declined their invitation to the post-high-school wild ride to be with her mother in her time of trouble.

After breakfast in the café attached to their hotel, Maggie led Alice down to the long sandy beach where she paid €10 for two sun loungers and a parasol. “You paid for all day,” moaned Alice, “what are we going to do?”

“You’ve got your book; you can swim; take a walk or just relax.”

Alice fiddled under her tee shirt to swap her bra for a bikini top and then looked back at her mother. “Mum, what the hell are you doing?”

“Sunbathing, what does it look like?”

“I don’t think this is a topless beach.”

“Well, it is now. I’ve heard that you can take it all off if you just go past those rocks over there.”

Parents can be so embarrassing. Alice didn’t even feel comfortable in a bikini. It seemed to her that her breasts were too small; her hips and legs were ridiculously big and her mid brown hair although neat and easy to control hung lifelessly at her shoulders.

At dinner that evening Maggie got talking with Jan, a tall suntanned Dutchman on the next table. “I’m an artist,” he said in perfect English, “I live here year round in a little house on the hill above the village.”

Maggie and Jan were so engrossed in their conversation that Alice felt more and more like a useless appendage. “I’m tired Mum,” she said, “can I have the key to our room?”

“OK,” said Maggie, “see you later.”

It didn’t come as a surprise to Alice to wake up the next morning and see that her mother’s bed was empty and she tried not to think about the reasons why. She saw a text on her phone “Sorry to abandon you. Hope all is OK. See you later. Love Mum.” She couldn’t be bothered to reply. Alice prized herself out of bed and went to breakfast. She was surprised to be joined by her mum just as she was finishing. Maggie sat down opposite her and ordered a coffee.

“How did you get on?” Alice asked with an edge of sarcasm in her voice.

“Very well, but not in the way you’re thinking. We just spent half the night talking and then I fell asleep on his sofa and woke up in the morning lying there with a sheet over me. I felt a bit stupid really. He was really nice about it.” She paused and studied Alice’s quizzical expression. “Don’t look at me like that. We didn’t have sex if that’s what you’re thinking. But you never know what might happen. It’s all rather exciting, almost like doing it for the first time,” said Maggie looking conspiratorial and touching her on the arm. “Do you have any advice for a middle aged woman who’s forgotten what to do?” she joked.

“I wouldn’t know Mum,”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m a virgin.”

“But what about you and Leo? You went away on that weekend together.”

Alice struggled to speak in the face of gut wrenching embarrassment and sadness. “We tried but I messed up so badly that I just can’t face him any more.”

“Do you really think that you were the only people ever to find it a bit difficult the first time? You didn’t split up with him over that did you?” said Maggie.

“Well, I don’t know really,” said Alice. “I just feel so embarrassed every time I meet him.”

“But he’s far too nice to give up on that easily. Don’t you think that he feels bad about what happened and thinks that he was the one who messed up?”

“Oh my God,” said Alice, “you don’t think that he blames himself, do you?”

“Probably, but no one should be blaming anyone. The first few times your Dad and I tried were a complete disaster. When it comes to things that can go wrong while having sex we wrote the book.

“Tell you what,” said Maggie. “If you send Leo a text and he replies within five minutes you have to buy me a piece of that chocolate cake over there and if it takes longer than that then I’ll buy you the cake.

“I don’t think he will,” said Alice, “and I shouldn’t be eating cake it’ll only go straight to my hips.”

“Of course you can eat cake,” said Maggie, “you’re on holiday. Anyway, you’re going to lose the bet.”

Alice tapped out a message and nervously pressed send. When the reply came, in less than half the time predicted by Maggie, Alice bubbled with excitement.

“Mum, could I fly home tomorrow.”

“It’d cost a fortune to buy a last minute ticket to fly back now, you can stay here and keep me company.”

“What about your new ‘friend?’ Aren’t you going to be spending more time with him?”

“No,” said Maggie, “he was a really interesting guy to talk to and we had a great time. It’s fun to think about what else might happen but frankly, I just didn’t feel there was any chemistry there. So, we’ll just have to remain here together in our celibate state for the rest of the holiday.”

Alice listened to the soothing sound of the sea lapping on the shore, each wave a gentle massage of sound washing away her worries. She turned over and lay on her front which made her bikini top feel uncomfortable so she pulled it off taking great care to keep in contact her towel. She was starting to feel blissfully relaxed when she suddenly heard Jan’s voice. “Good morning ladies, how are you?” he said. Alice didn’t know quite what do. Quickly putting her top back on would be very fiddly so she sat up with an arm across her front. Then she saw that Jan had a young man with him perhaps a few years older than her; tall, tanned and muscular with curly sun bleached hair

“This is my son Pieter,” said Jan, “he arrived on the ferry this morning. I didn’t even know he was coming.” Alice was amazed that her mother was casually chatting with Jan without making any attempt to cover herself up while being increasingly aware of Pieter stealing furtive glances at her. She was starting to feel that her arm was becoming transparent. But she couldn’t help stealing furtive glances back because he was one of the best looking guys she had ever seen. After a few minutes they moved on down the beach towards where Maggie had said nudity was practiced. Alice continued to sit up staring down the beach after them.

“Don’t look at him like that,” said Maggie, “you’ve got a boyfriend.”

“But Mum he’s gorgeous and Leo and I aren’t officially back together again.”

“Don’t give me that official nonsense. Leo’s your boyfriend and you know it. If you have a fling with Pieter you’ll regret it forever.”

“But you spent the night with Jan.”

“No I didn’t, I spent the night at his house which is something else. Your fucking father, sorry, your father left me and if I had slept with Jan it wouldn’t have mattered. Your situation is completely different. Oh, and by the way I can see your nipples.”

Alice wasn’t quite sure she believed that there were beaches where people just casually walked around with nothing on. Perhaps it was one of those urban myths like the alligator in the sewer or the Kentucky Fried Rat.

About half an hour later Alice started feeling a bit restless and said to her mother, “I’m just going to cool off in the sea and then walk along the beach a bit.”

“OK.”

After her dip Alice started walking along the beach at the water’s edge. She didn’t know if she’d have the nerve to go all the way to the supposed nude beach. It still didn’t seem possible to her that such a place could exist so close to the town and she suspected that the whole thing was a wind up by her mother. At the end of the beach the waves washed over a few meters of flat sand where the rocks came to just short of the sea. She stopped unsure of whether to go on or not. A young couple not much older than her carrying beach mats passed her and walked through the shallow water round into the next bay. There didn’t seem to be any harm in following them, so she did, only to stop in amazement There were nude people everywhere she turned and what amazed her even more was that there were properly organized sun beds and parasols and a man with a leather bag going around collecting money for them just like on the town beach. She saw a young family with children playfully screaming and running at the water’s edge. A couple in their seventies, slim but with bodies wrinkled by gravity and sunlight, gingerly paddled hand in hand. But what really caught her eye was a dark haired woman about her mother’s age with beautiful Mediterranean features having an animated conversation with the man sitting next to her. Her first reaction was how good looking she was but then Alice was shocked to see that she only had one breast. She glanced up the beach and noticed two men standing in the water some distance away that looked like Jan and Pieter. Without waiting to find out for sure she turned and hurried back the way she’d come.

As Alice got near to where her mother was, a man with a prosthetic leg came out of the sea and sat down on one of the loungers. Alice wondered if there was some disease going around causing people to lose bits of themselves.

“Well,” said Maggie when Alice sat down again, “is it a naturist beach?”

“A what beach?” said Alice

“A nude beach.”

“Yes,” said Alice

“You look really worried,” said Maggie, “what up? You’ve seen a naked person before, haven’t you?”

“Well, yes,” said Alice, “but not very often and not cavorting around in the open air and there was…there was…”

“There was what?”

“There was a woman with only one breast,” said Alice.

“Lots of women only have one breast.”

“But she was just sitting there with nothing on just chatting away to this guy as if everything was normal. She hadn’t even had any reconstructive surgery. There was just a scar.”

“Perhaps she didn’t want reconstructive surgery or couldn’t get it where she came from. What do you expect her to do? Put a sticker over her scar saying ‘stay away I’ve had cancer,’ wear a bikini top with a balloon in one of the cups? I really admire someone who’s got the self confidence to go out like that and just say ‘take me as I am and if you don’t like it you can get stuffed.’ Having breasts is part of what makes me a woman, and it’s part of what makes you a woman as well, but if I lost one or both of them I wouldn’t be any less a woman if that makes sense. That guy over there isn’t less of a man because he’s only got one leg is he?”

No one had ever called Alice a woman before. She thought about what her mother had said and although it was paradoxical she thought that she understood.

“I think bikini tops are just a bloody nuisance and if a man can go bare-chested on the beach then so can a woman how ever many breasts she’s got,” said Maggie. “But if you feel more comfortable wearing one then that’s your prerogative.”

The next morning it was just getting light when Alice woke up. She felt hot and sticky and realized that the air conditioning had gone off in the night. Maggie was still fast asleep sprawled naked across her bed with the covers thrown off. Aliceknew that her mother often slept nude but had never seen her like this before. She felt it was wrong to look but couldn’t help it. I grew inside her, I came out of her vagina, fed at her breasts and then she looked after me until I became a woman myself. Alice teared up at the thought. It might not be long before she was able to do the same for a baby of her own. Would that be with Leo or someone else? They were exchanging messages every day but she still wasn’t sure if she wanted to pick up where they had left off.

Alice quickly grabbed some clothes and crept out of the room The sun was only just emerging above the mountains to the East of the village. Haze on the horizon blurred the line between the sea and the sky turning the two into a continuous blue grey sheet. One of the nice things about Greece, thought Alice, is that all the beach furniture is left out overnight and never gets vandalised.

She sat down on one of sun beds and just listened to the soothing sound of the waves and the noises of the village waking up: a distant shout; a strident cockerel announcing the dawn which it would continue to do for the rest of the day; shop awnings being wound into position; an old lady with a walking stick tapping down the street exchanging a hoarse greeting with a friend. The breeze from the sea felt a little chilly so she hugged her knees up to her chest.

“Hi, Alice,” said a voice. It was Pieter.

“Oh, Pieter,” she said, “you made me jump. I was miles away.”

“Are you just taking some fresh air,” he said in clear and confident English with just a hint of a Dutch accent that made Alice tingle down to her toes.

“Yeah, the air conditioning went off in the hotel last night and the room’s still sweltering.”

Jan pulled a sketch pad from a small rucksack and said, “Do you mind if I draw you?”

“Yes, of course you can. I didn’t realise you were an artist too,” she said.

“I’m actually studying architecture,” he said “but art kind of goes with the territory.” He sat down opposite her. “Could you just look at me please and push your hair back with your hand. OK, and head a little higher please, that’s it. Right if you can hold it like that for the next two hours.”

“Two hours?”

“Only joking, about 10 minutes should be enough.” Pieter laid out several pencils beside him and then he picked one up. His hand flew over the paper occasionally darting away to pick up a different pencil. After only nine minutes he stopped. “Take a look,” he said.

Alice gasped, “That’s amazing,” she said. In only a few lines he captured the fall of her hair; and the shape of her hand against her face. Her body was perfectly proportioned and in a relaxed and natural looking pose.

He tore it off the pad and handed it to her. “Take it as a souvenir,” he said.

Maggie was very impressed with the picture. “He’s at least as good as his father,” she said. “Look at the way he’s drawn your eyes. You can see that he knows you fancy him.”

“He’s asked me to come to a bar with him after dinner,” said Alice.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” said Maggie doubtfully “he’s already used artistic license to take off your bra. Be careful or things could get out of hand.”

Alice looked at the picture again and noticed how Pieter had subtly changed the outline of her clothing. With a couple of lines and some light shading he had achieved a remarkable effect but it was a little creepy that he was already undressing her even before they’d touched. Now Pieter with a feather light touch had seen into her mind and reached below her clothes just by drawing a few lines on a piece paper. She couldn’t wait for life to start imitating art.

Alice reached the bar and found that Pieter was already there. He was wearing casual but high quality clothes: a T shirt, long shorts and a delicate chain around his neck.

“Hi Alice, you’re looking very nice,” he said and stood up to kiss her on both cheeks before offering her a seat. He smelt clean with just a hint of sandalwood. There was a singer who accompanied himself on several different instruments performing old standards such as Wonderful Tonight and then playing the lyra, a three stringed bowed instrument held on the knee that sounded more Middle-Eastern than Greek. The drink and conversation both flowed easily so that when the singer stopped at gone midnight Alice was feeling not only happy and relaxed but also a little drunk.

“Let go for a walk to clear our heads,” Pieter suggested.

“Why not?” said Alice throwing caution to the wind.

They walked down to the beach by the light of the Moon and before she knew it they were walking round into the bay where Alice had seen nude people and the one breasted woman the day before.

“Why don’t we go for a swim,” said Pieter and he pulled off his T shirt and dropped his shorts causing Alice to gasp when she saw that he didn’t have any underwear on. He neatly put his clothes on a sun bed. “Come, on,” he said, and he ran into the sea. Alice nervously undressed until she was just wearing her panties and went down to the water’s edge with her arms across her front. As she entered the water she nearly lost her balance and she had to put out her arms to steady herself. Pieter appeared next to her and took her by the hand out to where the waves were breaking. A large wave knocked them over and as they struggled back onto their feet he took her in his arms and pressed his body close to hers. It felt amazing and she couldn’t resist as he kissed her and gently ran his hand over her breast. The salt water on their lips tasted weird and she had to brush rat tails of hair out of her eyes. Her panties were getting very wet and uncomfortable and the elastic was struggling to hold them up so she stepped out of them, screwed them up and threw them to the shore. “Oh, no,” she cried as they failed to reach their target and landed in the water. She was just about to go after them when another wave nearly caused her to lose her balance again and she grabbed hold of Pieter and giggled. She looked again and her underwear had disappeared into the darkness. Oh well, she thought they were only cheap ones.

Pieter led her out of the water and they sat down on a sun bed next to the one where they had left their clothes. “I’ll just get something from my shorts,” he said going over to his clothes and taking out of his pocket what looked like a packet of condoms. His silhouette in the half light looked amazing and she brought her feet up onto the sun bed and lay down as he came and lay down beside her.

Alice was thrilled as Pieter pressed his body against her. Then she saw his face in the moonlight glinting off the sea. He looked kind, excited and very handsome but suddenly she felt terrible dread. “No, no, no!” she screamed pushing him away and scrabbling to the other sun bed to grab her short dress, leaving her tights, bra and shoes behind.

“Alice,” said Pieter, “if you don’t want to that’s fine.”

Alice ignoring what he had said started running naked down the beach calling back to him, “Sorry, there’s someone else.”

She put her dress back on which barely covered her bottom and clung to her wet body. Without her bra and tights she felt almost as naked as she’d been before. The streets were deserted but as she slunk back to the hotel she felt as if there were a thousand pairs of eyes watching her and a thousand voices whispering “We know what you’ve been doing you teasing slut.”

When she reached the room she knocked frantically on the door, “Mum, Mum let me in.” she said as loudly as she dared.

“OK, OK,” came Maggie’s sleepy voice, “keep your hair on.”

She was shocked to see Alice come staggering in and flop down on her bed, crying her eyes out.

“Alice, what happened?”

“Please just leave me alone,” said Alice.

“But are you alright?” her mother asked fearing the worst.

“I went along with him until the last second and then ran away. What if I see him tomorrow? I’m going to die a virgin,” and she buried her head in her pillow weeping uncontrollably.

“No you’re not,” said Maggie stroking her head. “Come on. Get yourself in shower and you’ll feel better in the morning.”

Alice still looked shell shocked when they went out for breakfast. She was praying that she wouldn’t meet Pieter but just when Alice was feeling that she’d got away with it she looked up from spreading honey on her toast to see Jan and Pieter standing in front of them. “I think you lost these,” said Pieter giving her a plastic carrier bag. Inside clean and dry were her, shoes, tights, bra and even her panties that Pieter had miraculously recovered from the dark sea.

Alice cast down her head unable to look him in the eye. “Thanks,” she said.

“Alice,” said Pieter, “can we just have a little talk outside for a moment?”

Alice looked at her mother who just looked back and shrugged. She looked back at Pieter and then at the door as if planning an escape and then like a naughty school girl called to the principle’s office, she reluctantly followed Pieter outside.

“You upset me last night,” said Pieter.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“You know what upset me most?”

“No.”

“It was because you didn’t trust me. You only had to say no. You didn’t have to run away as if I’d had a knife at your throat,” he said.

“I’m so sorry.” She thought that on a scale of 1 to 10 she had just scored 11 for stupidity.

Pieter continued, “I just thought that we could have a bit of fun together. I didn’t want to hurt or upset you.”

Alice was touched. Not only was he good looking but he was now being amazingly kind and reasonable. She realized that she hadn’t checked for any messages from Leo for over 24 hours. Was he still interested her? Was she about to get a Guinness World Record for relationship cock up of the century?

“I shouldn’t really have come on to you,” said Pieter, “I’ve got a girlfriend at home and it seems you’ve got someone too.”

“I hope he still wants me,” said Alice weakly

“I’m sure he does,” said Pieter, “he’s a very lucky guy. Look I’m catching the ferry to Santorini this afternoon so I won’t see you again but let’s keep in touch. He gave her a very business-like name card with his contact details including a QR code.

After Jan and Pieter had gone Alice sat down with Maggie again. “I need to get my head straightened out,” said Alice, “I’m going to go for a walk.”

“Careful,” said Maggie, “it’s very hot.”

Alice bought a large bottle of water and some fruit and put them in a small backpack and set off along the coastal path dressed in a T shirt, shorts and a hat. She soon realised that her mother hadn’t been joking about the heat. The sunlight was so strong it felt as if it were pushing against her; the scent of wild thyme seemed to displace the oxygen in the air and the buzz of bees blurred with the sound of the sea to create confusion in her head. But she wasn’t going to be deterred. She went past the naturist beach and into the scrubland beyond where the path was faint and little used. She was aching and drenched in sweat when after a couple of hours she reached a little beach of fine shingle. She sat down on a rock feeling light headed and very thirsty. After drinking about half the water and eating a couple of nectarines she felt a little better but she needed to cool down. There was no one around so she took off all her clothes and walked into the sea naked, something she would never have imagined doing only a couple of days before. The bottom suddenly dropped off very steeply and she only just managed to grab a breath before her head disappeared under the water. She spluttered back to the surface emerging as if new born. She didn’t care any more what her friends thought of her. What was wrong with going on holiday with her mother? She didn’t have to get drunk every night to have fun. It was great to be saving herself for someone special. Who cares if she didn’t have a body like a model? She stood at the edge of the water, raised her arms in the air, shouted at the top of her voice, “I’m Alice and I love Leo,” and then let herself fall back into the sea. When she came up again, she saw a young couple coming along the path only about 50 metres away. She watched the couple as they came down onto the beach and sat down only a few metres away from her things and took off their clothes. Alice stayed up to her neck in the water wondering how she was going to get back to her stuff.

The woman came down to the shoreline naked and sat in the water letting the small waves wash over her while the man laid out a picnic.

“Hello,” she said “it’s hot today. Isn’t it.”

“Yes,” said Alice. “Er, where are you from?’

“Poland, I’m Lena and my boyfriend is Henryk. I assume you are from England. I studied in Manchester as an exchange student a few years ago.”

“Yes, I’m Alice. I’m hoping to go to Manchester Uni next year if I get good enough grades”

They chatted some more and Alice almost forgot that she was naked. Lena then swam out into deeper water and Alice decided she’s better get back to her things. Taking a deep breath, she stood up in the water and walked back up the beach resisting the temptation to cover herself with her hands and arms. Henryk looked up and nodded at her but didn’t stare.

She decided that the time had come for her to get dressed and walk back to the village. The couple gave her a friendly wave as she left. When the beach was nearly out of sight Alice stopped and looked back. The couple were standing at the edge of the sea and as she watched they gave each other a kiss.

The next day was the last full day of their holiday. After breakfast the two of them went to their usual spot on the beach. Alice was just about to put on her bikini top under her T shirt then had second thoughts just took her shirt right off. Maggie looked at her in surprise. “What are you looking at,” said Alice, “haven’t you seen a woman sunbathing before?”

Her mother smiled. “You’d better put some cream on the pale bits sunburnt nipples are really uncomfortable.”

When they arrived back in England the next afternoon Leo waiting for them at the airport. He came towards her and produced a bunch of flowers from behind his back. No one had given Alice flowers before, tears welled up in her eyes and she kissed him. “Thank you they’re beautiful,”

Maggie watched from a safe distance.

“Hello Leo,” she said when they had finally disentangled themselves, “how did you get here?”

“I came on the train,” he said. “I’ve got a return ticket.”

“You shouldn’t have bothered. You can have a lift with us if I can find my parking ticket that is.”

When they got home Alice and Leo immediately disappeared up to her room. A little while later Alice came into the kitchen where Maggie was making dinner.

“Mum, is it OK if Leo stays the night?”

“That’s fine,” said Maggie, “but don’t moan and scream too loudly.”

“Mum, you always manage to rise to the challenge of being an embarrassing parent.”

“Years of practice. Seriously though, you don’t have to go all the way tonight. Only do what you’re comfortable with.’

“I know Mum, we’ve already talked about that.”

Maggie smiled. “There, I told you he was worth sticking with.”

“Yeah, I’m glad we went on holiday together. I found out a lot about myself. We ought to do it again sometime.”

“I’d like that,” said Maggie. “Dinner’s going to be in about half an hour. I’ll give you a shout about five minutes beforehand so you’ve got a chance to get your clothes back on.”

“You just can’t help it, can you?”

Maggie came down to the kitchen in the morning to find Alice cooking a fried breakfast. Alice skipped up her mother and kissed her on the cheek, something she didn’t often do. “My, you’re in a good mood,” said Maggie, “I assume everything went OK.”

“Well,” said Alice, “the first couple of times were a bit awkward and uncomfy but the third time was amazing. I understand now why they call it making love.”

“What happened the fourth time?” said Maggie with a glint in her eye.

“Fourth time? We did do some sleeping as well,” said Alice. “It was so nice to be cuddled up together even if it was hot.”

“So you’re trying to build up his strength again with a cooked breakfast are you?” said Maggie

“Embarrassing parent alarm quivering,” said Alice.

“While I’m in that mode,” said Maggie “I feel it’s only right for me to tell you something. You’ve been very open with me but I’ve kept back something important. You remember the day you went out for that long walk?”

“Yes,” said Alice sounding doubtful.

“Well not long after you’d left I ran into Jan and we went back to his place and… erm ...we had sex on his patio in the sunshine.”

Alice stood open mouthed. “But Mum you said there was no chemistry there.”

“There isn’t,” said Maggie, “but we did some amazing physics and biology and we agreed to meet up again when he’s in London later this month for an exhibition of his work.”

“I thought that there was something different about you when I got back that day. Are you in love with him?”

“Absolutely not,” said Maggie, “he’s just a very nice man who’s very good to have sex with.”

“Are you telling me that you’re Jan’s you-know-what buddy?”

“Yes, as you put it, I am Jan’s you-know-what buddy. Oh, watch out. You’re burning Leo’s sausage.” They both broke down in helpless laughter when they realised what Maggie had said.

At that moment the phone rang. “Oh hello Jan,” said Maggie answering it. “We were just talking about you.” 🪐

Author’s Afterword

Although this story is set in a fictional Greek town it is loosely based on Paleochora on the South West coast of the island of Crete. There are sun beds and parasols for rent on a naturist beach only a short walk from town. The beach, like a number of others in the area, is not ‘officially’ designated but has become accepted for nude bathing over the years by custom and practice. All the beach furniture is left out over night.

If you encounter an isolated beach and take all your clothes off, then its unlikely that anyone else who comes along will object.

If you want to read more of my writing then go to my substack page , or take a look at my science fiction novel ‘A Suggestion in Space.’ It’s an interstellar adventure and romance in a society where nudity is generally accepted although this is not the main focus of the story.

More Stories:

More Stories

Editor’s note: This story by author Mary Thomas originally appeared in Adventures Without Clothes, a collection of naturist fiction benefitting Doctors Without Borders. In alignment with the project’s mission, the author’s fee for this publication has also been donated to Doctors Without Borders.

You can buy Adventures Without Clothes right here.

Chapter one

She was a typical English Rose with a peaches and cream complexion. Her children had flown the nest. Her husband had died some years ago and Rose passed her time by lovingly keeping her home in order, tending her beautifully manicured garden, baking delicious cakes for the regular string of visitors who came for a cosy afternoon tea and chat. She attended church regularly and knitted blankets for various charities, visited the sick and quietly had a most agreeable routine which suited her situation.

Rose had decided it was time to sell her late husband’s classic car which had been languishing in the garage since before he had died. It was a machine that thrived constant loving attention. Rose reluctantly advertised it for sale. Enquiries came from all over the world - Spain, India, Australia and….Sweden! A message on the answerphone “Hello. My name is Sven. I am interested in the car.”

Rose melted as she listened to his deep, rich and seductive voice. Oh! Why? Oh! Why hadn’t he left a contact number? Two days later he called again. That voice! Rose could barely concentrate on his questions. Her knees were weakening at his sensuous tones. Three weeks later he arrived to collect the vehicle and she melted again at the sight of his strong frame and rugged but attractive face. How was she going to cope? In a fit of generosity she had offered him bed and board to split his journey. Now that she had seen him, it might not have been such a good idea. On the other hand, it could make for an interesting evening.

Trying to control herself, she fired a string of questions at him over the supper she had prepared for them. They talked for hours. Rose found she just couldn’t get enough of listening to him. Sven delighted in telling Rose about his love of yachts and how, after many years, he had sold his last boat in order to buy a car. The timing was perfect, he told her. However, it was clear from the conversation that sailing was his real love. The freedom, the combination of sunshine and wind on the face, the ‘getting away from it all’ peace, the oneness with nature and the sea. Yes, sailing was the real love of Sven’s life.

And so it was that the following morning, after breakfast on the patio in the morning sunshine, Sven prepared to depart. He placed his overnight bag on the passenger seat and engaged first gear. Rose leaned in through the window to gently placed a kiss upon his cheek. He smiled at her and with a wave of his hand, he pulled off the drive and disappeared into the distance.

Rose was left with a feeling she had never experienced before. She wanted to see Sven again, get to know him better, even throw her arms around him, but that was never going to happen. He had come into her life like a butterfly through a window. Now he was gone. Were they really just two ships passing in the night?

A week later Sven called to thank Rose for her kind hospitality and once again she felt her heart thump loudly at the sound of his voice. And once again, as the call ended, Rose wondered if she would even hear from him again. She pottered in the garden for the rest of the day in an effort to put Sven entirely out of her mind. Accept that she was too old to even think about a new relationship. Of course Sven was older than her. Besides, he was more interested in cars and boats and probably trains and planes too. So much for clearing her mind.

Eight months passed when, out of the blue, Sven was on the end of the phone again.
“Rose! I’ve done up the car. Would you like to come over and see it? Stay a few days and I’ll show you my part of Sweden.”

Rose couldn’t board a flight quickly enough and as she left the arrivals hall and stepped into the crisp, fresh air, she saw Sven masterfully standing next to a very shiny motor. How proud he was. As he drove to his house in a remote village, Rose looked around trying to absorb every lake, mountain, tree and snowflake that passed her eyes. Winter had come early but that didn’t deter either of them enjoying each other’s company. Sven was smiling happily as he drove and Rose was overwhelmed by the austere beauty of the landscape. Tomorrow he would take her on a mountain trail through the forest.

“I’ve heard that all the Swedish women are tall with long blonde hair and usually walk naked through the forest. Is that right?” Rose asked, nerves making her blabber.

Sven nearly swerved off the road, “I don’t know where you’ve got that idea from!”

“Well that’s what we Brits think. You mean you don’t all walk naked in the forest?” Rose asked rather abashed.

“You can. If you really want to. You can walk naked in the forest. No one will stop you. In fact I think some of my neighbours might like it, especially the men,” came the reply.

They sat silently for a while. Rose suddenly felt rather foolish. She could sense Sven smiling inside from head to toe.

“This is going to be an interesting few days,” he said as he turned onto a small country road lined with ‘picture book’ snow-dressed trees and a sprinkling of typically red Swedish wooden homes.

The house was warm and welcoming with a log fire already lit for their arrival. Sven was clearly very domesticated. Rose was impressed. Sweden had been egalitarian for many years and Sven’s home and domestic competence made that abundantly evident. They drank hot spiced wine by the fireside. The soft glow of the flames flickering over Rose’s delicate skin. She caught Sven observing her movements with his tender eyes as they talked about the plans for the next few days. Much later they left the dying embers of the fire and retired to their separate rooms. Rose sank down under the warm duvet and, despite feeling very much at home, secretly wished she was in the other bedroom.

Morning came. Despite the snow having deepened overnight, Rose insisted that Sven took her on the promised forest walk.
“Just remember, if you see a bear, don’t run! Just turn your back on it and walk slowly away.”

“WHAT!” said Rose, “Are you serious?”

“Well, yes I am. I mean I’ve never seen a bear here but that’s what they say you should do.”

Suddenly the forest walk wasn’t quite the experience Rose was expecting. She was now terrified and tried desperately to keep as close as possible to this man who was so at ease with himself and, by all accounts, relishing in acquainting himself with all the local wildlife. And he meant ALL the wildlife - bears, foxes, moose, wolves. He loved them all.
“Doesn’t he realise I’m a little English suburban lass? Doesn’t he realise this is outside my comfort zone?” she said to herself.
“Well of course he doesn’t! He’s a bloody Viking!”

Day two was much the same as day one but with a more relaxing street walk around the village and the added bonus of a visit to the weekly ladies session at the village sauna in the evening. She knew, empirically, her body wasn’t too bad for a woman over sixty and her breasts were a respectable size even if they weren’t as pert as they once were. She needn’t have worried. The Swedish women were just the same as the English women in as much as they came in all different shapes and sizes. However, Rose was amazed to discover that, despite the stereotype, none of them resembled the tall, slim beautiful blondes that she was expecting. In fact she secretly thought that her English body and fair complexion was reasonable competition for any Swedish one. Well it must be something about being exposed to the harsh winter weather conditions she thought. How right she was, for the next minute Rose was invited to join the ladies to take a plunge in the lake a few yards from the sauna house. It was minus eight degrees and Rose was expected to walk through the snow barefoot and naked with just a small towel to wrap around her delicate body but, even worse, take a naked dip. NO WAY! That was a step too far and she hurried back into the heat of the sauna as quickly as she could. These Vikings MUST be really tough to survive, she thought.

Day three involved a drive through the mountains up to a ski resort. Another new activity for the dainty English Rose. Poor Rose. She hated every minute of it and basically spent an hour sitting in the snow with her skis pointing in opposite directions. She tried to be courageous but it was never going to be. Five year olds whizzed past her screaming to each other in sheer delight. Rose wanted to weep. That is, until her Viking came to her rescue, stretched out his hand to pull her up and for the first time wrapped her tightly in his arms, put his face to her cold, rosy cheeks and whispered, “Let me take you home.”

The evening was spent enjoying a candle lit Swedish supper which once again Sven had prepared in his suave yet unpretentious manner. Rose felt quite inadequate against his Viking confidence. As they sipped the last of a bottle of wine, Sven surprised her by saying, “Well my little English Rose, you go home tomorrow but how would you like to sail with me next summer in the Stockholm Archipelago? We could hire a yacht and I could show you all my old haunts.”

“Well it can’t be as bad as skiing,” she retorted. “I guess I need to learn how to be Swedish,” she added with a smile. Their eyes met in a knowing acknowledgment of what was to come. He took her softly and admiringly by the hand and led her to his bed….

Chapter two

Over winter and spring Rose busied herself with learning all she could about how to be a good Swedish woman. She researched Swedish recipes and baked new creations which she shared with friends. She read about Swedish traditions, the political set up, the Swedish Royal Family, the Swedish church. Rose wanted, more than anything, to make Sven proud of her. After all, she was still the epitome of an English Rose and she wanted to impress him.

The plane landed on the warmest day of the year. Perfect for sailing.
“It’s wonderful to have you back after all this time, my English Rose,” the striking Viking whispered in her ear. “It feels like the sun returning after the winter darkness.” Rose’s worries melted away to the poetry in his words. “I hope you are ready for a new adventure, one I hope you will enjoy more than skiing.”

By sunset they had loaded the boat with all the rations and gear they needed, including some Swedish biscotti that Rose had baked especially for their adventure. There was still time enough for a night of renewed passion before they set sail for the first time together the following morning.

Rose quickly grasped the skills of navigation and needed little tuition in that regard. However, she had much to learn about handling the vessel and Sven patiently taught her as much as he could. Within a few days they were perfectly in tune with each other but for one thing which Rose struggled to cope with. Every morning Sven would dive naked into the water for a swim. Rose, ever the blushing English Rose, just couldn’t bring herself to do the same. Eventually Sven persuaded her to swim in her delicate pink, lace-edged bikini knickers and a thin T-shirt but although Rose did, she couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable about the thought of swimming naked and she knew that’s what Sven really wanted her to do.

To ensure Rose didn’t miss out on Swedish culture, Sven moored in small marinas on many occasions. Harbours where they could use the washing facilities and eat in a local restaurant often with musical accompaniment. Rose was shocked to see so many men standing naked on the back of their boat soaping themselves followed by dumping buckets of water over their heads. Did they have no shame? Young men, old men, barrel shaped men and wrinkly old women too. Naked bodies everywhere and nobody batting an eyelid. How would Rose ever fit into this culture?

Sailing was going well though and the two became far more comfortable with each other, working together in a confined space and, as they became more intimate and more familiar with each other’s bodies, their confidence in each other grew too. One morning, after mooring in an isolated bay overnight, Rose was persuaded to throw caution to the wind and bathe topless with Sven, leaving her generously cupped soft pink top ostentatiously draped over the instrument panel. The cool water flowing over her bare breasts awakened her senses and opened her horizons. She laughed in delight and the pair swam around each other like pheasants in a mating dance, enjoying every moment of every twist and turn of their bodies. Rose knew this to be a turning point and that sailing and the intimacy of sharing a small private world with her Viking would have a profound effect on her.

The day was perfect for sailing and they found another idyllic spot to moor that evening. They were completely isolated and tied up to a rock on the edge of a small uninhabited island. They made love on the open deck, the orange light of the evening sun danced on their naked bodies. They lay in satiated contentment until the golden glow was replaced by the silver shadows of moonlight shimmering over their glistening skin. It was the perfect end to a perfect day.

At morningtide Sven finally persuaded Rose to bathe entirely naked as there were no other boats in sight. Tentatively Rose cast her clothes aside and descended the steps on the back of the boat one at a time until she was waist deep in water. Then, as if to embrace her new liberated self, she flung herself backwards into the water. Sven splashed and laughed as her rapture expanded, enveloping them both in her new found joy of freedom and emancipation.

They clambered out of the water onto the rock to explore the ragged edge of their little piece of newfound paradise. Rose, now at ease with having cast her clothes aside, pretended to be a seventeenth century explorer and mimicked herself planting a flagpole on her newly conquered land. Sven chuckled at her childlike excitement and the obvious thrill it gave her. She held an imaginary telescope to her left eye and, looking seaward, was astounded to discover that their peaceful isolation was about to be interrupted by a large yacht with an equally large crew, passing close by which had appeared from nowhere. There they were, their discarded clothes well out of reach on their boat, standing for all to see. Sven, cheekily laughing at Rose, asked, “So what are you going to do now, Rose?” She turned to him with a look of horror on her face, but observing his wide grin and laughing eyes, and appreciating that she had nowhere to hide, she simply collapsed into a fit of the giggles.

A new dawn saw a new direction of travel for the skipper and his first mate as the sun appeared well above the horizon. It was a fairly uneventful day on the whole. Sven took his regular early morning naked dive into the brackish waters (Rose refrained from doing the same) before they set sail on a new trajectory. The day was pleasant enough with just sufficient breeze to keep them under sail and they relaxed in the gentle rhythmic rolling of the boat over the rippling waves caused by passing vessels. Sven steered them through a narrow channel to a quiet hidden bay to moor for the night which he remembered from his early days of sailing. Together they prepared and ate a hearty supper accompanied by a bottle of refreshing white wine and retired early. Tomorrow they would be returning to civilisation and sailing back into Stockholm Harbour.

Following a restful night and being anchored in an idyllic spot, Rose felt emboldened to demonstrate her confidence to Sven who was sitting up on deck taking in the fresh morning air after his daily naked dip.
“Stay where you are,” she called up to him. “I’m going to bring breakfast up in a minute.” Rose had laid a tray with most of the remaining food that was still edible after their time on the waters, and a cafetiere of coffee. Perfectly disrobed she carefully carried the tray up through the hatch onto the deck.

“Oh! This is a pleasant surprise,” Sven remarked, admiring her alluring form. “What have I done to deserve this?” he enquired.

“I thought you might appreciate knowing that you have unleashed me from my prudish existence. But this is only for you. I won’t be sharing my body with anyone else.”

“I don’t know why not. You have a beautiful body, Rose. Most women half your age would love to have a body like yours. Don’t hide it, Rose. You are perfect. I could sit and look at you all day.” Sven’s eyes dreamily drifted over her pale flesh. Distracted by the view of the beautiful bare form standing in front of him, it was several minutes before he realised they were drifting into a reed bed in extremely shallow water.

“Rose, we have to move!”

“OK Captain! I’ll just go and put some clothes on and I’ll be right with you.”

“NO ROSE! I mean we have to move NOW.” Urgency filled his words. “No time for that, we need to act right now. You have no time. If we get stuck in the ground here we’ll be in big trouble. Now, grab the anchor rope and get ready to take the tiller while I sort things out. I’ll tell you what to do but just pay attention to me and act fast.”

Sven used all his strength to haul them out of trouble, calling out appropriate instructions to Rose which she carried out to the letter, confident in Sven’s leadership and experience. He was, after all, an accomplished sailor and had kept her safe throughout her adventure. Control of the yacht having been resumed, Rose was left on the tiller to navigate through the narrow winding waterway while Sven moved to the bow to prepare the ropes and sails for open water.

“Hey Rose,” came the shout from the foredeck, “Did you say you won’t be sharing your naked body with anyone else? I think you’re in for a surprise.”

Rose hadn’t bargained on having to carefully navigate in close proximity past a pleasure boat loaded with about two hundred hawk eyed passengers. She couldn’t let the rudder go. She had to keep on course. She had to be brave in her nudity. Despite her immediate thoughts of fright at her precarious position, she had begun to enjoy the sensation of being naked while in control of the tiller. There was nothing for it. She determined to simply hold her head up high and carry on with the job in hand and act as if it was perfectly natural, which of course it was. Sven later congratulated her on her courageous steps to becoming a Viking maiden.

Once out in open water, Sven raised the sails and Rose refused to give up the tiller. By now her self confidence was in overdrive. The hot sun was beating down on her bare back and the wind whipped around her like an invisible embrace. She proudly stood firm as the boat rocked in the strong waves. She was entirely fearless now. Exhilarated at the knowledge that every follicle on her body was living testament to the real beauty of nature in every sense. Rose was elated. ‘Rolling along on the crest of a wave’ was an understatement. Rose had never been happier. In celebration she requested Sven bring up her bra from the cabin below. He only understood why when Rose tossed the voluminous garment overboard. As they watched her undergarment gracefully float away and eventually disappear into its new home in the Baltic Sea, Sven placed his strong, sizeable hands on her petite shoulders, drawing her perfectly curved back into his solid Viking torso.

Still unwilling to hand over the tiller, Rose continued to steer them both into Stockholm. As they came closer to civilization, Rose was undaunted when a Tall Ship crept up on their port side or while a huge passenger ship cruised by on their starboard side. She didn’t flinch. She loved every moment and she didn’t care who in the world saw her. Sven looked on with evident pride. Rose knew that he had taught her far more than boatmanship. He had taught her to love her body as much as he now did.

Finally, now truly liberated and embracing the world of naturism, like Freydis Eriksdotter, the Viking Warrior Queen, Rose sailed courageously into Stockholm harbour proudly manning the tiller in fully exposed glory, having left all her clothes below deck. All, that is, bar her favourite delicate pink, lace-edged bikini knickers which Rose had triumphantly lashed to the ropes and ceremoniously hoisted them to the top of the rigging to fly above the mainsail. The battle against naturism lost, freedom now belonged to Rose. There was no going back. At last Rose sensed that she had reached the high echelons of a true Viking Maiden. As natural as God intended, her senses fully alive, naturism embraced, the journey from prude to nude completed, Rose was more than ready for her next adventure without clothes. 🪐

More Stories:

More Stories

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in Adventures Without Clothes, a collection of naturist fiction benefitting Doctors Without Borders. In alignment with the project’s mission, the author’s fee for this publication has also been donated to Doctors Without Borders.

You can buy Adventures Without Clothes right here.

“It got another one,” said Tomas as he looked at the online news. It was the big beast that had escaped from the laboratory. “I can’t believe how stupid they were to start that experiment.”

Brett glanced at his friend. “Remember how excited you were when you first heard about it, Tomboy?”

Tomas shrugged. “Well, the idea is cool but they… except, nobody thought it would work, right?”

The two friends, enjoying some nude time in the garden behind Tomas’ house, were talking about the T-Rex-like creature that had been revived from ancient DNA found in Argentina. The beast, with the beautiful family name Giganotosaurus carolinii, meaning Great Southern lizard, had actually come to life. None of the scientists had expected it to grow into an adolescent, four-ton beast. Nor had they expected that it would break out of its cage and wander out of the building, to find refuge in the woodlands outside the town.

“Hey, boys,” said Yvonne, Tomas’ girlfriend, as she came walking around the house. “Busy doing nothing, I see?” She immediately started undressing.

“Hey babe,” Tomas said, pulling up a chair for her. “Can I get you something?”

“Iced tea for me, please, waiter,” Yvonne grinned. As Tomas went inside to get her drink, she asked Brett what they were doing.

Brett held up his sketchpad. “Drawing. And Tomboy is looking for news about the beast.” He pointed at the fence in the back of the garden, which connected to the woodlands.

Yvonne got up and peered into the distance. “It’s not there, is it?”

“No, it’s far away,” said Tomas, who returned with the iced tea. “Here you are. Glad you could make it, the weather’s good for us again.”

Yvonne sipped some of her tea. “I asked Ginny and Joe too, but they wanted to go swimming. Which is a nice idea too, huh?”

Tomas glanced at his tablet. “How would the hunters get caught by that animal?” he wondered. “They have high-tech everything and the animal is from millions of years ago. Surely the hunters should be able to win this, right?”

“You’d think so,” Yvonne agreed, “but the lizard has ancient survival instincts. I bet it uses something we don’t know about. Something that was needed when its parents were alive.”

“Its parents.” Brett chuckled. “Imagine Mommy and Daddy, each seven or eight tons, forty feet long, going out for a walk with baby lizard which is a mere twenty-five feet long.”

“That’s insane, indeed.” Tomas flipped the tablet on and read the latest news again. Suddenly he sat up and looked at his friends. “Sweat.”

“What?” Brett asked. “Sweat?”

“I bet that’s how the lizard knows people are near,” Tomas said, suddenly excited. “They’re sweating, that gets into their clothes, and the lizard smells it.”

Yvonne sniffed loudly. “If I was that lizard, I’d run away from that stink. Eeuw.”

Brett looked at his friend. “Actually, that’s not a stupid idea, Tomboy. Why don’t you hop over the fence and go look for the lizard? If it doesn’t smell you, you’ve proved that you’re right.”

Tomas looked at the barrier that separated the garden and woods.

“Don’t you even think about that, Tomas,” Yvonne said. “I won’t have it.”

“Not even when I take you with me?” Tomas knew she was much more of a daredevil than he was, which explained her initial reaction.

Yvonne frowned. “Perhaps we should go with more people then. And some nets. And ropes. And whatever you need to catch a giant dinosaur lizard.”

Brett laughed. “You sound like an expert. But it would make sense to go with more people.”

“Are you applying?” Yvonne asked.

“Not really,” Brett admitted.

It was evening. Brett, Yvonne and Tomas were near the gate in the fence that led into the woodlands.

“We’re nuts, you know that, right?” Brett whispered.

“Yes, and we learned it from the best,” Tomas said, “so you, our shining example, are coming with us.”

“Urgh. Come on, let’s go before I shit my pants,” Brett said.

Yvonne glanced at his bare butt. “I want to see how you are going to do that.”

Tomas checked his flashlight, which had a nylon stocking over it to keep the brightness down. “I agree with Brett. Let’s go.”

It was Yvonne who was out of the garden first. They often went into the woods in the nude; it was the best way. She had her phone with her, with a map app that showed the latest spots where the lizard had been seen.

The friends had agreed to look for the animal for two hours at most. After that, it would be too dark and too dangerous. Four tons of lizard could do a lot of damage, even by accident.

After fifteen minutes they reached one of the sighting spots. Tomas’ light showed that the animal had been there. Deep prints showed that something huge had trampled over the vegetation, and several trees hung over in a very unnatural tilt.

“I’m having second thoughts,” Brett whispered.

“Forget those. You’re here, let’s go on,” Yvonne whispered back, and carefully walked further, following the tracks.

Almost an hour into their search, the three heard a rustling noise that startled them. It was not just a ‘noise’, it was a big noise, and the ground beneath their feet trembled.

None of them dared to speak. Hand gestures were becoming difficult because it had gotten rather dark by now, and Tomas kept his stocking-covered light directed at the ground. He pointed at a bush and knelt down behind it. Brett and Yvonne followed him there, and then they waited, with the light extinguished.

Thuds came closer and mere minutes later they saw the lizard. The massive beast slowly passed them on its two legs, its big head moving left and right. For a moment it stopped, as if sampling the air, then it moved on. It looked and walked like a T-Rex, and was almost as big as one, as far as the three could remember from the Jurassic Park films.

Tomas and Yvonne held a hand over their mouths, while Brett trembled. They waited for the thuds and shuffles to be far away, then they got up and hurried away from the creature, to the safety of the garden and the house.

Brett asked for a stiff drink before he dared to go home. “Look at my hands,” he said, holding them up. “I’m shaking down to my knees.”

After Tomas had gotten them all something to calm down their nerves, he claimed that all of them being naked had meant that the lizard couldn’t smell them. “Laugh at me, but I’m sure.”

“We weren’t hunting it either,” his girlfriend reminded him. “It didn’t feel threatened.”

“True, but I am confident that naked hunters will stand a better chance, and I’m going to talk to someone about that tomorrow.” Tomas wasn’t giving up just like that.

After Brett had left, Yvonne sat down next to Tomas, who had his tablet in his hands again. He was looking at ways to contact the researchers who’d ‘created’ the animal. He was sure that they would have ways to get in touch with the hunters.

“There. Phone number,” he said, stabbing at the screen. He copied the number into a notes file and saved it for the next day.

Tomas called the number from work the next day. Working from home made that easy, though, since there were no co-workers listening in. He enjoyed working from home. It meant that the dress code was over-easy, with just a shirt nearby for online meetings. Too bad Yvonne worked in a store; she had to leave home in clothes and keep them on all day.

“Hello?” he said when someone answered his call. He told the lady who he was and why he was calling.

“Do you mean you were out there and you saw the big lizard?” Her voice sounded shocked and impressed. “How did you manage that?”

“That’s what I’m calling about,” Tomas said. “Can you put me through to one of the researchers?” That was where he ran into red tape, so he explained to the lady how he and his friends had gone into the woods naked, to test his hypothesis. “And it worked.”

The lady on the other end was very silent for some time. “Naked? You mean to tell me you weren’t wearing clothes?”

“Yes. It’s not that difficult to understand, I hope. Lots of people do it.”

“Not people that I know,” she said, to which Tomas replied that she probably didn’t know that some of her friends and acquaintances, and perhaps even family members, were naturists.

He was almost afraid she’d hang up on him, but she asked him to hold while she put him through to another department.

“Finch here.” The man who answered sounded in a hurry.

“Hello, my name is Tomas Murdoch. My friends and I saw the big lizard last night.” He knew he had to throw that in as quickly as possible.

“You what?” Mr Finch sounded a lot less in a hurry. “Where?”

Tomas explained how they’d gone into the woods, with minimal gear, and how they’d accidentally run into the lizard. “And we know how hunters can get closer to it to catch it.”

“That’s a bold statement, sir,” Mr Finch said. “The people who went out looking for it were very experienced people.”

“I bet they were,” Tomas said, “but they had clothes on. That was what got some of them killed.”

Mr Finch was silent for several seconds. “Of course, they had clothes on.”

“We didn’t,” Tomas continued, “and that’s why the lizard didn’t smell us.”

“Sir, I’m sure you’re aware we have better things to do than to listen to weird people,” Mr Finch said. “Did you really see it? If so, I would like to know where, so we can go and check the area. I’m not in the mood for perverted things.”

Tomas quickly explained how he’d gotten to his conclusion and how the three of them had gone into the woods to test his theory.

“That’s irresponsible,” Mr Finch said. “What if your theory had not worked? You’d be dead.”

“But we aren’t,” Tomas said, “which proves my point.”

“It was also dark,” the scientist countered, “perhaps it didn’t see you.”

“Okay, if you think that’s the whole thing, I’m going out to test this right now. It’s daylight. I’m going to look for it and let you know.”

“Wait!” The man suddenly sounded worried and also interested when he said he’d like to come over with a few people to see what Tomas was going to do.

“Okay, sure, but you’ll have to leave your clothes here. This is to make my point, remember?” Tomas gave the man his address. Mr Finch promised to be there, with a few others, in about an hour.

Tomas let his online co-workers know he’d be out for a few hours in a little while and continued his work until the doorbell rang. Despite himself, he glanced at the shirt. No, he thought, no shirt. That wouldn’t cover the ‘danger zone’ anyway, so he signed off and went to open the door.

Three people stared at his nude appearance.

“Oh. I hadn’t expected you to take this so far,” a man said. “Joel Finch. Mr Murdoch?”

“Yes, but most people call me Tomas.” He stepped aside and let them come in.

“Great, I’m Joel. They are Marvin Welsh and Cindy Marcus.”

“I’m Cindy,” the woman said, and winked.

Tomas led them into the living room and showed them the tablet with the map of the forest, and where they’d seen the Cretaceous curiosity.

“It seems to have chosen that area as its territory,” said Marvin. “Interesting. And you went out there… like that?” He suppressed a gesture towards Tomas.

“Yes, we did. And call me nuts, but I’m convinced that’s why the beast didn’t smell us.”

“Or saw you. We know their eyes are quite good,” Cindy said.

Tomas explained they’d been hiding, so smell would have been the only thing that could have given their position away. “That or it has infrared detection.”

The scientists didn’t believe that was the case. Tomas then asked how they planned to capture the animal.

“We have a stun gun with us, sedative arrows we can shoot at it - which unfortunately failed to do the job so far, and nets and chains. Those two are the last resort, and the most dangerous options.”

“Because you need to get close,” Tomas understood.

“Indeed.”

At that very moment, the floor trembled.

Tomas was surprised. That never happened here, there was no reason for a big truck to come this way. Then he understood what was going on. “The animal is close.”

As if Marvin and Cindy had already figured that out, they ran out the door and dived into their van, dragging out bags and a big box. Joel rushed out to help them, and only a few minutes later, the living room floor was turned into a small weaponry hall.

“We need to go out and find it,” said Cindy. “But…” She looked at Tomas. “Are you sure it’s the smell of our clothes?”

“Hundred per cent,” Tomas replied.

“Fuck it,” she said and started to undress.

Marvin stared at her and told her this was irresponsible behavior, but she didn’t care. To make things worse for him, Joel started to take his clothes off as well.

“Marvin, do it.”

“You can’t make me,” the man said, grabbing a big gun and stuffing equally big charges into his belt. “I’ve increased the dose in these things and that’s going to do it.”

“I would strongly advise you to—” Tomas said, but Marvin interrupted him.

“Stop that. Get me out there.”

“Marvin, at least wait for us,” Joel said, who was almost nude now. Cindy grabbed another gun, the stun gun, and Joel hoisted the net over his shoulder. Each of the three grabbed a metal chain. There were two more. Tomas took them. He was surprised at how light they were. “Titanium,” Joel explained. “Now let’s go.”

Tomas led the way to the garden and the fence. The ground shook occasionally, and he knew it was the big lizard. He opened the gate and looked outside. The coast was clear.

The three people pushed past him, Marvin in the lead, so he hurried after them.

It wasn’t hard to locate the Giganotosaurus. Trees cracked, and grunts from the animal functioned as a big arrow pointing to its location.

The creature was much closer to Tomas’ house than he’d expected, and fear gripped his heart. What if that thing would run into, or even through his house? It had looked massive enough to do that the night before.

Marvin pointed and held a finger over his lips. He’d located the dinosaur, and the others saw it too now. Marvin pointed at the big gun, in which he’d already loaded a sedative charge. He circled around the spot where the Giganotosaurus was tearing at a tree.

Tomas lay down and peered under a bush to see what was going to happen. Joel and Cindy remained upright and watched where Marvin was going as well.

The ‘saurus’s head moved.

Tomas knew it picked up Marvin’s scent; he’d smelled it himself as the man had been in the house. Joel and Cindy had smelled too, but they had left that inside. He got up and whispered, “We have to do something. It already noticed Marvin.”

“No, Marvin’s not there,” Joel whispered back, but Tomas didn’t trust the man’s observation.

They stood and waited.

The Giganotosaurus turned and jumped into a bush, its strong hind legs giving it an incredible turn of speed. The three heard a shot, then a roar, then a scream.

Tomas knew that Marvin was being attacked and that wouldn’t last long. Tomas didn’t think, he simply acted. “Come with me,” he whispered to Cindy, and ran after the giant lizard, holding his chains at the ready.

As he came closer to the animal, he started swinging one of the chains like a lasso. The sound of the chains made the Giganotosaurus turn. Tomas was frightened as the huge head with the open beak came closer. At the last moment, he let go of the chain, which whizzed away and hit the lizard in the mouth. The chain ends flew around and slammed it in the back of its head.

The creature uttered a terrifying sound and bit down on the chain – it didn’t break.
Tomas threw himself to the side as the animal charged at him.

“Tomas!” It was Cindy, running towards the animal now. She held up the net for him to grab one end. How he did it, he’d never know, but he managed to get hold of the net. It felt like only one heartbeat later that the lizard ran into it, and Cindy jumped to get the net over its head. “Let go!” she yelled just in time. Had Tomas let go a moment later, the dinosaur would have ripped his fingers off.

The animal was confused by the net and slowed down, even coming to a full stop.

Joel ran up to the animal, holding another chain. He ducked and threw the chain around one of the big legs. Tomas saw an opportunity and ran over to chain up the other leg, then handing the ends to Joel, who managed to connect them together.

That didn’t prevent the Giganotosaurus from walking but it hindered it a lot. The creature roared and screamed, turning to its attackers, but its very short arms couldn’t do too much, and the net, and the chain between its teeth, made the danger a bit less.

Then Cindy came running, with the last chain. Horrified, Tomas watched how she dived between the two stomping feet, threw her chain around the two and somehow tightened them so the lizard could barely walk anymore. It staggered a bit and, as Cindy scrambled away from the beast, it keeled over. The earth shook as four tons of dinosaur hit the ground.

“Aaaarghhh…” Cindy cried when the massive tail of the animal hit her, sending her flying. She landed hard and rolled a few times, but she didn’t stay down. A little blood ran down her chest but she appeared to be okay. “Marvin,” she said, and hurried to where they had last heard the man with the gun screaming.

Tomas and Joel ran after her.

Marvin’s face had been severely mauled by the animal, and one of his arms looked in a terrible state.

“I’m going to dash home and call an ambulance,” Tomas said. He didn’t wait for any response, and ran through the woodlands faster than he’d ever run before.

The medics were very surprised to be guided into the woods by a naked man, and more so when they found two more nude people and a silent dinosaur. However, their professional training took over when they saw Marvin. As quickly as they could, they took care of him, stabilized him and then rushed him off to the hospital.

“How did you silence the lizard?” Tomas asked the two after the ambulance had left. Joel had used that time to collect his cell phone and make some phone calls.

“We used Marvin’s gun and shot it with six doses of tranquilizer. That did the trick. Two helicopters are on their way to pick up the big one,” Joel said. “Ah, they’re almost here.”

The sound of the helicopters was unmistakable. Joel asked Tomas to go to his garden and point the pilots in the right direction. He ran again, a lot slower this time, and did his best to do as Joel had asked. As soon as the aircraft were in position and huge cables were lowered, Tomas hurried back to the lizard. He wanted to see how they were going to lift the huge beast. A few men had abseiled to the ground and secured the lizard properly.

Of course, the men stared at the nude people, mostly at Cindy, but they got the job done.

“Hey, you need some patching up too,” Tomas said, pointing at the cut on her chest. She had refused to go with the ambulance, but she nodded now.

Joel said he’d stay in the forest until the Giganotosaurus was on its way.

By the time Joel had returned to the house, Cindy’s wound had been taken care of by the medics. “All done. The animal caught and taken off to safety.” He started putting on his clothes. “You’re still naked,” he said to Cindy.

“Yeah. It’s comfortable.” She looked at Tomas. “The best outfit to hunt dinosaurs, right?” Then she looked for her clothes and put them on. “Thank you for calling, Tomas.”

Joel thanked him too. “I hope the neighbors won’t hassle you too much about the helicopters and the noise,” he said.

“We’ll see. If you ever want to come back for some quiet nude time, you’re welcome to come over,” Tomas said.

“Thank you. And if you ever need to talk about what happened, give us a call,” Joel said, pulling a card from a wallet. “This is my direct number.”

“Thanks.” Tomas sighed. “I still can’t believe that this actually happened.”

“Maybe it’s best to forget it,” Cindy said.

They all knew that was never going to happen. 🪐

More Stories:

More Stories

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in Romance in the Nudist Colony, a collection of naturist fiction benefitting Doctors Without Borders. In alignment with the project’s mission, the author’s fee for this publication has also been donated to Doctors Without Borders.

You can buy Romance in a Nudist Colony right here.

Catherine shielded her eyes with her hand against the bright early morning sun as she relaxed on a sun lounger and surveyed the pool and its inhabitants. The waves, created by people splashing and batting a small beach ball around, caught the sunlight and made them sparkle and dance like liquid diamonds. “There is karaoke, a dance tonight, and lots of fun sports to do. Maybe I can even get you to join the water aerobics in the morning,” suggested Diana brightly, as she perched on the lounger next to her and crossed her legs. Catherine groaned. Of course, Diana didn’t mind joining in on the exercise because she was still fit from her brief career as a ballet dancer. But what she loved most about Diana was the fact that as a naturist, she accepted all body types and never looked askance at Catherine’s curvy body. “You know,” Diana continued, “no one judges you here. You can enjoy the water aerobics and anything else, and everybody will be friendly and encouraging.”

Catherine thought back to her days in college when they met as roommates. Diana would shuck off her clothes after the day’s classes and relax in their dorm room nude while studying. She had often encouraged her roomie to do the same. Catherine, however, could never imagine working on a paper in the all-together.” Fast-forward to about ten-plus years, when Diana encouraged her to join her for a “girl’s retreat” at Roadrunner Ranch, a nudist resort in the desert.

“I’m going to see what other events are on the schedule while we are here for the weekend,” Diana proclaimed as she slid her feet into her sandals and plopped a hat on her head. “Relax by the pool while I go to the office and pick up a schedule of events.” With her rounded dark sunglasses, she looked like she stepped out of the pages of a magazine. She grabbed her towel and stuffed it into her tote. Catherine watched her as she walked out of view toward the office. She adjusted the lounger down a few notches so she could rest a bit, put on her sunglasses, and closed her eyes.

“Pardon, but is this lounger reserved?” a male voice asked. Catherine’s eyes flew open. She sat up with a start, blinking rapidly, trying to distinguish the face of the man asking the question. She couldn’t see his features because he was standing between her and the sun. All she could see was a halo around his head. She hesitated with confusion as the man repeated the question. “I saw a water bottle on it and didn’t know if someone was saving it.” Catherine had dozed off; her thoughts were just now solidifying.

“No, no one is sitting there. My friend must have forgotten it by accident when she left,” she stammered.

“Great!” the man exclaimed and grabbed a towel out of his bag and unfolded it out on the lounger. Catherine reached over and removed Diana’s forgotten water bottle that the stranger had set down between the two loungers. “Fantastic view of the pool and all the fun,” he announced. Once settled, he put out a hand and revealed, “My name is Ryan, a pleasure to meet you.”

Embarrassed, she self-consciously pulled her knees up on the lounger before shaking his hand and telling him her name. While gripping his hand, Catherine got a good look at him. “He has a kind face,” she reflected; handsome with smile crinkles at the corners of his eyes, which she loved. Ryan appeared to be about her age, in the late thirties. She wondered if he was alone in life like her or if he was one of the lucky ones to have someone to walk with on life’s journey.

He turned his head to face her after he put on his sunglasses and asked, “This is my first time here. Would you have any recommendations for the activities or the food at the Café?”

Catherine turned to answer him. “This is my first time too, so I am just discovering all of the amenities as well. I am here with my former college roommate. She lives not far from here and likes to come here often and relax.”

“Well, she is a lucky lady then because this looks like a very nice place. I think I am going to enjoy my visit here,” he remarked as he smiled broadly at her.

Catherine smiled and blushed and hoped Ryan would chalk up her red cheeks to time in the sun. They were just settling in on their loungers when Diana walked up. “Well, there goes Ryan once he gets a look at Diana,” Catherine mused. Diana eyed the handsome stranger and then smiled at Catherine.

“Hi, my name is Diana,” she revealed as she stuck out her hand and walked between the two loungers. “Have you met my friend Catherine?” she asked as she shook his hand and looked over at Catherine.

“Yes, I have. We were just talking about it being our first visit here at Roadrunner Ranch.” Ryan answered.

“Well, I think it would be a great idea if you both perused the schedule of activities I picked up from the office and maybe join in on a couple of them together.” Diana hinted. Turning to Catherine, she announced with a frown, “I’ve got to run home and grab my laptop. My editor just sent me a text; as luck would have it, I need to get my article in sooner than expected. “Ryan, would you mind keeping an eye on Catherine while I am gone? I would truly appreciate it since I feel bad enough for having to ditch her at the beginning of our girl’s weekend.”

Catherine started to protest, but Ryan smiled and responded, “It would be my pleasure!”

Diana threw out her hand and wagged her pointer finger at him. “Take good care of her, or you will answer to me!”

Ryan gave her the Boy Scout salute and declared, “On my honor, I will make sure she has a good time while you are absent.”

Diana adjusted her hat, turned, winked at Catherine, and sauntered off, her sandals making a slapping noise that faded as she rounded the Recreation room.

Embarrassed, Catherine mumbled, “Honestly, you don’t have to look after me. Diana has always been my “big sister” even though we are the same age. She always looked after me in college and apparently, still feels she has to do it way into adulthood.”

Ryan studied her face and divulged, “I am glad for this opportunity to spend some time with someone who’s open to the idea of naturism and feels comfortable embracing the nudist philosophy.”

Diana thought about the statement before answering. “Well, I wouldn’t say I am 100% comfortable yet, but I think I am almost there. Diana is the naturist. She kept trying to get me to go to a nude beach close to the college, but I always felt uncomfortable. I agreed to this weekend because Diana is such a good friend; I feel I owe her the courtesy of seeing why she embraces the philosophy like a mother with a newborn.”

Ryan found the statement humorous and laughed. That prompted Catherine to chuckle.

The conversation came easy as the two talked half the afternoon away. After feeling the increasing temperature of the desert, they took a dip in the pool and continued the conversation in a corner. Other bathers rotated around them talking, playing with the beach ball, and lounging on various flotation devices. They both laughed at one that looked like a slice of pizza.

“Hey, are you hungry? The water always makes me ravenous for some reason,” Ryan asked.

Catherine confessed she always felt the combination of sun and water did the same thing.

They dried off and stretched out their towels so they would dry while they were dining. Ryan grabbed a smaller “butt towel” that is de rigueur at nudist venues. Catherine tied the colorful pareo around her waist that Diana had insisted on purchasing that morning as they perused the resort’s store.

“I always thought it was amusing that a nudist resort would have a clothing store,” she opined.

“Well, check out the shirt I got this morning on the way in,” he muttered sheepishly. The shirt showed a silhouette figure jumping for joy with the slogan: “This shirt will self-destruct upon entering a nudist resort.” Catherine thought that was so funny her hands flew to her mouth to

cover her giggling when he pulled it out of his beach tote to show her. They both took another look at the shirt and burst out laughing.

Grabbing an empty table at the Sunny Buns Café, they ordered lunch. The room felt cool and refreshing and was a nice change from the warmth of the afternoon. Ryan ordered a cheeseburger with fries, while Catherine ordered the fried chicken salad with ranch dressing. The conversation flowed as they sat at the table long after the plates had been cleared and most of the lunch patrons had left the building.

“Hey, would you like to check out the karaoke and then the dance tonight?” Ryan inquired. Catherine hesitated. She stole a glance at the clock on the Café wall.

“I thought Diana would be back by now. We were supposed to have lunch and then decide what to do after that.”

Ryan exclaimed, “Oh, that’s right, I forgot,” as he smacked his hand to his forehead. “Diana!” As if saying her name conjured her up, Diana walked up to the table and stood there, her hand on her hip.

“There you two are! I have been combing the resort for you. I thought you might have taken a walk on one of the trails.”

“We were so busy talking, we didn’t even get a chance to explore the resort yet,” exclaimed Ryan.

“Well, I was searching for you because I accidentally left my cell at home and now have to return to get it. I am sure my editor is thinking I am ignoring him although I finished my article, sent it off and then, sailed right out of the house without picking it up.” Catherine’s eyebrow rose at this declaration. Before Catherine could open her mouth to say what was on her mind, Diana asked, “Would you two mind if I drove back to the house and picked up my phone?”

Ryan commented, “We were thinking of checking out the karaoke and then the dance tonight. If you would like to join us in the Clubhouse, that’s where we will be.”

Diana grinned and then strode out of the Café.

“Diana gave me an idea that we can check out before we go to dinner and the rest of the evening if you are game,” Ryan stated.

“What might that be?” Catherine asked cautiously.

“Why don’t we explore one of the resort’s trails like she mentioned?” he queried.

Catherine thought about it before accepting. “Sure. Let me put on some sturdy shoes, get my water bottle, hat, sunglasses, and I will meet you at the Kokopelli sculpture at the beginning of the trail. Do you know where that is?”

“I don’t,” confessed Ryan.

“Here it is on the map on the back of the events for the resort,” remarked Catherine. They put their heads together in reviewing the map. Catherine felt a jolt while her pulse quickened. She pulled away and stuttered, “There it is,” pointing to the Kokopelli sculpture that stood watch at the beginning of one of the trails and had for decades.

“Okay, how about 3:00 p.m. sharp at the sculpture?” Ryan queried.

“Meet you there in a few,” Catherine stated.

Catherine took off to her condo to freshen up and gather supplies. She thought to herself, “What am I doing with a man I scarcely know?”

She reflected on her previous marriage that ended with the death of her first husband. Catherine had known that death was a possibility when you married a law enforcement man. One day she received the dreaded knock on the door. She thought about Carl and silently prayed for him. They had discussed this very possibility with him begging her to remarry if anything ever happened. At the time, it seemed morose to raise the subject, but Carl professed it would give him great comfort knowing she would go on in the hoped-against chance it would happen to them.

Catherine took a deep breath and gathered up the items on her mental list. As she opened the door of her condo, she saw a rainbow wind chime. She involuntarily smiled as she loved rainbows and knew Carl was thinking of her.

She met Ryan at the Kokopelli sculpture. There was a small plaque that explained that the Kokopelli figure was a fertility deity and presided over childbirth and agriculture. Catherine adjusted her backpack and started up the rocky trail with Ryan in tow. The path inclined to an area that overlooked the resort to the left and the vast desert to the right. Saguaro cactus stood like silent sentries above the shrubs and desert flora. They took a moment to take a drink of water as they appreciated the view.

“Isn’t this breathtaking?” Catherine exclaimed, realizing Ryan was smiling and watching her enjoying the view. She felt that little jolt again. She didn’t fight it and smiled back at him. They capped their water bottles and placed them back into their packs, continuing forward.

After 45 minutes of walking the desert landscape, the trail wound down and ended by the Café. Dusty but triumphant, they separated to wash up and meet again at 6:00 p.m. at the Clubhouse for dinner. Catherine stopped to talk to some of the year-round residents who wanted to know

how the trail was. She found the people at the resort so friendly and forthcoming. Catherine wondered if in shedding their clothes, they shed the baggage that sometimes comes with it. As she stepped into the shower, she remembered how freeing it was to be in the pool without a bathing suit and how that felt as she slipped through the water. The feeling of getting out of the pool and drying off with a towel or letting the sun and air take care of that instead of sitting in a cold, dripping suit was amazing. Diana always mentioned how free she felt without the “textile shackles” as she called them.

Catherine dried her hair using one of the fluffy Egyptian cotton towels. She snugged herself into a robe made of the same material and sat on the edge of the bed as she slathered lotion on her skin. The chlorine, sun, and wind had quickly left her skin parched, so she availed herself of the spa amenities left in the room for their use. The lotion called “Desert Breeze” had a light, pleasant scent which Catherine used all over, that perfumed and rehydrated her skin. She selected a festive pareo to wrap around her to make a dress, just like the resort shop had shown her. She was pleased she could remember how to tie it.

Just before 6:00 p.m., Catherine realized Diana had not returned. She gave her a call on her cell; Diana picked up right away.

“I know, I know, and I am sorry. What a friend I am to invite you to enjoy some time and then leave you in the hands of a handsome man. Tsk Tsk.”

Catherine chided her and told her she knew nothing about this man and that she was only going to the night’s events with him because Diana had not returned, yet she felt safe at the resort.

“I promise I am on my way, but it appears I am going to miss dinner, so go ahead and dine without me,” she directed and rang off.

Catherine walked down toward the Clubhouse that turned into an entertainment venue after dinner. She passed the water volleyball and aerobics pool, the pool/billiards room, horseshoe pit, and some other outdoor sports she could not pronounce. Waiting by the door was Ryan with a pareo of his own that had a subdued print and complimented the butt towel he had used previously.

“Ready?” Ryan held open the glass door for her as they entered the room, selecting a table for four. They both decided on the meat lasagna which included a small green salad with Italian dressing and a buttered roll. After the plates were cleared, the tables were rearranged to ring the dance floor as they prepared for the entertainment.

As the lights went down for the first karaoke singer, Diana rushed in breathlessly. “Did I miss any of the singers?” she queried.

“No,” Ryan acknowledged, “you got here just in time.”

The three of them spent the next hour cheering on the good and not-so-good, the ones that could carry the tune and the ones that couldn’t carry one in a bucket. They clapped and cheered raucously at the end of each song for the bravery of the individuals who stood up behind the mic and sang their hearts out. After the karaoke, the dance started and was a mixture of slow and fast dances to every conceivable music genre. The DJ was fantastic and kept the crowd going until people slowly trickled out to go back to their condos for the night. Ryan walked Diana and Catherine to theirs and pointed that out he was across the courtyard from them.

“Join us for water aerobics tomorrow at 9:00 a.m.?” Diana teased.

“Ah, how about I save us some loungers by the pool for after you ladies finish?” Ryan demurred. They agreed and Diana closed the door.

“Ryan seems to be a nice catch, Catherine. What do you think?”

Catherine plopped on the bed and tried to hide her growing smile. “I like him. He is fun to talk to. He looks into my eyes as he is talking instead of making the up-and-down motion with his eyes like many guys do or talking straight to my boobs.”

Diana giggled, “If only you would have believed me when I told you that being nude is the best feeling of all and the most authentic way to live.” They stayed up talking until the wee hours about their college days, men, and Diana’s writing career.

In the morning, they took advantage of the fruit juices in the room refrigerator and then headed out to the pool for aerobics. Maxine, a spry, spunky senior, put them through their paces for an hour. Diana knew the routine from her previous visits. Catherine followed as best she could; no one scolded her for being slow on the uptake. Everyone was so eager to help and all had great fun exercising to the music. True to his word, Ryan had reserved three loungers in the spot they had previously held court the day before. Diana grabbed the outside one and nudged Catherine into the middle one, next to Ryan. After exchanging greetings, Diana plopped her large hat over her face and within minutes, appeared to be asleep. Catherine, flush from the exhilaration of her exercise, suggested they go into the pool to enjoy the refreshing water against the rapidly rising temperature of the morning. They fell back into the easy banter of the day before.

Diana snuck a peek at the two from under her hat, smiled, and then returned her hat over her face.

At one point, after drying off from the pool, Ryan suggested they take a walk around the property. Diana appeared to still be asleep, so Catherine grabbed her hat and sunglasses and headed off with Ryan. As they gazed at all the earth-colored stucco condos, and desert flora and fauna, Ryan posed questions to her about naturism. “Do you think you could fully embrace naturism?” he asked, watching a bird fly over the condos.

Catherine was caught off-guard by the question. “I don’t know that I am completely comfortable with the idea quite yet,” she confessed.

“How did you get to be here, spending a weekend with your admittedly-naturist former roommate at a nudist resort?” he asked.

Catherine paused, giving it some thought. “Diana introduced it to me while we were in college however, I always felt awkward going nude even in our private dorm room. I always envied Diana because she was always so self-confident and still is.” As Catherine continued their walk, she asked Ryan the same question.

“I have always felt comfortable in my own skin, without the judgment that clothes and coverings seem to cause, making us behave differently to each other.”

Catherine asked what that meant.

Ryan explained, “Don’t you wear make-up, buy the latest fashions and look to see what other women are wearing?”

“Yes, but what does that have to do with naturism?” Catherine queried.

“Have you ever judged someone just by their clothes, how they dress, basically the outer shell they present to the world? Made a judgment decision without the person ever opening up their mouth and having a conversation with you?” Ryan questioned. He steered them to a shady bench, spread out his towel, and continued their conversation as they watched the roadrunners, rabbits, and quail scurry across the sun-baked sand, in search of a shady oasis.

“Think about it – you are here having a conversation with me, a male, completely nude. We don’t know that much about each other, yet we are getting on famously. Had I been in shorts and a t-shirt outside of this resort, would you have readily accepted my invitation to karaoke and the dance afterward, plus our time together on this walk?” Ryan studied her face for her reaction, wondering if he had perhaps belabored the point.

Catherine faced him on the bench and stated, “You have a point. I don’t usually spend time with strange men without knowing more about them.”

“So, I rate as a strange man, eh?” Ryan declared, chuckling.

Catherine smiled and then broke out in a huge laugh too. After catching their breath, they rose from the bench and walked back to the pool to join Diana. They talked the whole way back about how embracing the naturist philosophy can also help with body positivity and the health benefits as well as social ones.

Diana was not on her lounger, so they made plans to meet up in the evening. Ryan was going take a nap and Catherine planned to locate Diana and spend some time with her. She felt guilty

that she had not spent more time with her gracious host. They had intended to do that at the resort but things seemed to conspire to keep them from enjoying more girl talk.

Actually, Catherine knew exactly what her friend was doing in disappearing and leaving her with Ryan. She knew her heart and that Diana only had the best intentions for her. Besides, she was enjoying her time with him here.

Catherine slowly walked back to their room, enjoying the view and the fresh, clean air. She found Diana on the phone with her editor. She was just wrapping up as she walked in.

“There you are!” exclaimed Diana, “I am so glad you were busy when I got another text to call my editor. I feel so bad I have neglected you.”

“No worries,” Catherine assured, as she took off her hat and sunglasses and placed them on her bed.

“It looks like you and Ryan are enjoying getting to know each other” observed Diana as she raised an eyebrow and smiled.

“What?” Catherine protested. “Ryan is just a nice guy and we have fun talking!” she said as an involuntary smile hit her face and she blushed.

“I am glad you are having a good time here,” Diana exclaimed, “and that, hopefully, you will enjoy yourself so much you’ll be happy to come back here without me having to formally invite you. Being at a nudist resort is the most freeing feeling. I abandon all my cares and outside thoughts when my clothes hit the floor here, sans these editorial interruptions. I feel a sense of freedom and camaraderie you don’t find outside. Being a writer can be a dog-eat-dog world and the competition is fierce. And the writer’s conferences sometimes degenerate into a ‘one-upmanship’ contest that I don’t like to get drawn into. Here I feel completely relaxed and free,” she said as she jumped up and twirled around with her arms in the air. She grabbed Catherine’s hands so they both twirled around the room until they fell onto their beds giggling and out of breath.

The trio took siestas and met up for dinner at the Café. The walkways were lit with tiny lights and the dark, clear sky caused the stars to shine brighter than anywhere in the city. The theme for the night was “Taste of the Islands,” and everyone was wearing a colorful sarong, flower in their hair, plastic lei, or some other token representation of the island theme. After a delicious dinner of fish, rice, and a pineapple fruit medley, the three moved their chairs to see the “Island Dancers” perform, which entailed volunteers from the resort doing their best to replicate the beautiful island dances seen at luaus.

After the entertainment, Ryan asked the two ladies if they would like to accompany him on a moonlight walk.

Diana confided, “I am so tired from all that sun and back and forth with my editor today,” stifling a yawn. “Why don’t you two enjoy yourselves and we can meet up in the morning for breakfast before we check out.”

The weekend had gone by so fast that Catherine hadn’t realized it was her last night before going home. She felt a pang in her chest. Was she falling for Ryan? She didn’t even know where he lived, what he did for a living, or anything else one should know before…“before whatever this was,” she thought.

Ryan broke her train of thought as he bid Diana “Good Night” and offered his arm to Catherine so they could take a leisurely walk around the property.

In the cool air, they enjoyed viewing the resort by moonlight. The trails were lined with painted rocks as they made their way to an area they had not explored before. It was a beautiful memorial area with two benches and a headstone carved with the names of the previous owners. A small spotlight lit a picture showing two older people looking fondly into each other’s eyes.

Ryan and Catherine sat on one of the benches and looked at the memorial and all the trinkets lovingly left by people. He put his arm around her. She snuggled into him. It felt so different from anything she had done before. Sitting this close to a man who wore nothing but a plastic lei and she with just her pareo and a hibiscus clipped in her hair. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the moment. Neither of them breathed a word. They could feel each other’s breathing as well as their heartbeats. After several quiet moments, Catherine pulled away to look at Ryan. In the moonlight, he was just as handsome and honest-looking as in the daylight.

Perhaps naturism does draw people in and give them a view of life that should be normalized by all. With his finger, he took a lock of hair that had fallen from behind her flower clip and tucked it behind her ear. He drew near and she closed her eyes as he kissed her lightly on her lips. She stayed in position, her eyes tightly closed and he kissed her again. She never wanted this beautiful moment to ever end.

“There is my water bottle, I was wondering where I left it,” exclaimed Diana.

Catherine’s eyes flew open as she heard Diana’s voice. She sat up with a start. There she was, still in the lounger, just as when Diana had left her to check out the activities schedule.

“How long were you gone?” Catherine asked, confused.

“Just about 45 minutes. I stopped by the office and ran into someone I know who lives here and spent some time catching up. Did you miss me?” Diana cajoled. Catherine adjusted her sunglasses and looked at the lounger Diana was now parked on.

“Was there a man sitting here when you first came up?” she implored.

“No, no one. I just came back to look for my water bottle I forgot before going back to the room to unpack for our girl’s weekend” Diana stated. She questioned the look on Catherine’s face. “Looks like I interrupted a great dream. I hope it involved a fabulous man,” she teased.

Catherine was stammering an answer when a man walked up to Catherine.

“You must be Catherine. Diana and I were just catching up and she mentioned she had brought a friend new to the resort.” She turned to see his face. “My name is Ryan; pleased to meet you.” 🪐

More Stories:

More Stories

Editor’s note: This short story is an episode adapted from the novel ‘A Suggestion in Space’ by Alan R. Paine. The book is an interstellar adventure and romance which features nudity from time to time.

For more like this, check out Alan’s substack page Science Fiction and Such Like.

Planet Ukko, Spring, 21 local years after landing

After a New Year’s Eve colder than anyone could remember, New Year’s Day 22 dawned warm and sunny. After the traditional communal brunch, Tanya suggested that they all go to the beach. The five other children, or more accurately young people, all thought that this was a great idea.

“It’s nice today,” said Lucina, “but I don’t think it’s quite warm enough for the beach.” The other adults nodded and murmured in agreement.

“Why do you say that?” said Tanya. “It’s getting hotter and hotter and I’m dying for swim.”

“You’ll get hypothermia jumping in the sea today,” said Tanya’s dad, Berren. “We’re way behind with planting because of the weather. I know today is traditionally a holiday, but we need to spend the afternoon working on that and perhaps have an extra day off in a couple of weeks.” Berren glanced around at the adults, and again everyone nodded in agreement that it had to be done.

“Well, I think we need to go to the beach,” said Tanya, starting to move in that direction. Delcie, Vikki, Brin, Carlo, and Hale all got up from their chairs to join her.

“Tanya,” said Berren. “Come back here and sit down immediately.” She ignored him.

Lin jumped up and took her daughter by the arm. “Tanya darling, I agree that you should go, but please don’t do it this way.” They had an animated whispered conversation and then Tanya, without a hint of contrition, turned to Berren and looked him straight in the eye.

“Dad, it’s New Year’s Day, we’ve been inside all winter, cooped up making and mending from dawn to dusk, so I think it’s only reasonable that we should have the afternoon off.”

“Very well, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” said Berren. “Us soft grown-ups will spend the afternoon working, but the first day that we feel that it’s warm enough to go to the beach, we’ll take the day off and you can get on with the planting.”

Berren and Tanya continued to look at each other in silence for a few moments and exchanged an almost subliminal smile.

“Thanks Dad.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You’re not coming with us, are you, Delcie?” said Hale. “You’re so slow we might not make it there today.”

“She can’t help being disabled. We’re all going together,” said Tanya, “or you can stay behind. What’s it to be?”

Lin and Lucina were thinning seedlings in shallow pots on Lin’s veranda. The pots were a crude effort fashioned by hand from local clay. Lucina was acutely aware that the amazing technology that had enabled them to cross interstellar space and settle in such a pleasant place would not last forever, and in years to come everything they used would have to be produced from local materials. This included fabrics which were very laborious to make, starting from the raw plant fibre, so both women, like many others throughout history, were working naked to avoid wearing out their clothes or getting them dirty.

Being naked together was routine for Lucina and Lin and they thought nothing of it. Shayla, the mother of Hale, Brin, and Vikki, walked by on her way to the greenhouses wearing a piece of material wrapped around her from her breasts to her thighs. Shayla had never been as comfortable with nudity, but when her children were young, she had been unable to keep up with the task of always having clean clothes of the right size to put them in, and they regularly played naked even in cold weather.

“Where’s Berren?” Lucina asked.

“Oh, he’s gone off to clear the North field, not in a good mood.”

“How is it that he could command a starship and sort out any disagreement between fractious adults without ever raising his voice but he can’t control his own daughter?”

“She’s very strong-willed,” said Lin, “and at home she’s seen Berren’s vulnerable side.”

“In what way is your partner vulnerable?”

Lin smiled, “I don’t think I should say.” She moved the conversation on. “Tanya’s not afraid to tell Hale where to get off either, but I imagine teenage lust will eventually drive them together, whatever their differences.”

“It sounds likely. Hale’s a good-looking guy and Tanya’s incredibly pretty with an amazing body, but you don’t think that she might prefer Brin instead?”

“I doubt it. Even if she did, she wouldn’t take Brin away from Delcie. She knows they’re soul mates.”

“Everyone knows that except perhaps Brin and Delcie.”

“They’ve been inseparable playmates since birth.”

“I think that they’re about to discover a new game.”

It was almost dusk when Lucina got home. Delcie was in the shower, and Lucina went to the bathroom to use the toilet, which was behind a partition on the other side of the shower from the door. Like all other doors in the village, there was no lock, and it was normal for members of the household to go past anyone having a shower in order to use the toilet. Lucina couldn’t understand why the door wouldn’t open.

“Delcie,” she called, “there’s something blocking the door. Can you move it, please?”

“You can’t come in, I’m in the shower.”

“What are you talking about? I really need a pee.” Lucina pushed harder on the door and moved the box that Delcie had put up against it, enough that she could squeeze through the gap and get to the toilet. Delcie was mostly hidden by the shower curtain but still turned to face the wall as Lucina went by. Delcie turned the water off and wrapped the household’s only large bath towel around her. She started to dry her hair with a second towel about 25 centimetres square.

“You look worried,” said Lucina, “What’s up?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Come on, you can tell me, I’m your mother.”

“Are you sure about that?” Delcie said.

“Sure about what?”

“That you’re really my mother.”

“Why are you asking this? What have people been saying? It’s Hale, isn’t it?”

Delcie looked down, “Yeah.”

“What the hell did he say?”

“Well,” said Delcie, fiddling with her hair as she spoke, “after we’d all been for a swim, Brin and I were sitting on a rock talking when he …Oh, there’s a special word for it.”

“He had an erection,” said Lucina more as a statement than a question.

“That’s it, and I’d never really seen that happen close up before, so I was kind of looking at it, but he got all embarrassed and put his hands in his lap to try and hide it.” Delcie paused, uneasy about going on.

“I suppose Hale made a caustic remark about it.”

“Yeah, he said, ‘I don’t know why you’re excited about little Miss Tiny Tits here but don’t worry you can always fuck her with the lights off.’ That means having sex doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Lucina, “but it’s an unpleasant word that means just doing it for the physical sensation without any real feeling for the person you’re doing it with. So, what did he say about me?”

“He said that the reason I’m so underdeveloped is that I was stunted in the womb because I was Lin’s embryo growing inside you. That’s why I have trouble walking and talking and that I don’t really have a proper mother.”

“Why, the little …” exclaimed Lucina. “You know perfectly well that the reason you’ve got cerebral palsy is because of a difficult labour, and if it hadn’t been for Ruban, we might have both died, but problems can happen in any birth.”

“I know,” said Delcie, “but he still managed to get to me.”

“Hale’s a very clever guy, but unfortunately, he uses his cleverness to get under people’s skin just like he’s getting under mine right now,” said Lucina, breathing deeply to try and calm down. “When I set out from Earth, I never imagined that I would ever have children, and even when Lin offered me some of her frozen embryos, I wasn’t sure about it. When I lost the first two, it was utterly devastating. Both times the foetus was only about that big,’ she held her fingers about 10 centimetres apart. ‘You wouldn’t believe how much it messes with you physically and mentally. And when you got going, I was continually sick and felt terrible, but I literally prayed every day, ‘please, please, don’t take this one away from me,’ and finally, after a year of that, I had two days of trying to get you out.”

“Sorry to have been such a trouble,” said Delcie.

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Lucina, “After you finally made it out, I held you on my chest waiting for the afterbirth. It felt amazing feeling you there even though you were very sticky. I could cover your whole body with two hands.

“One more thing, I breastfed you even after you bit my nipples so hard that they started bleeding. So don’t have any doubt that I’m your mother, alright.”

“Sorry, I was just being silly because of Hale.”

“And all that stuff about being underdeveloped. You’re not as old as Tanya and Vikki, and girls develop at different speeds. Anyway, I don’t think I’ve seen you with your clothes off since before winter, so let’s see how this body of yours is coming along.”

“No,” said Delcie, pulling the towel closer

“Come on, I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

Delcie shyly dropped the towel.

“Arms down by your side and stand up straight,” said Lucina. “You are growing up into a lovely-looking young woman, and I honestly mean that. You’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s hardly surprising Brin got aroused.” A concerned look passed across Delcie’s face. “But boys of that age have erections all the time,” Lucina continued, “don’t read too much into it.” 🪐

Subscribe to the author on Substack

Science Fiction and Such Like

Exploring the science and pseudo science behind science fiction

By Alan R Paine

More Stories:

“Should we go in there?”

“I think we have to.”

“Do we have to— you know…”

“We’ll need to blend in, so yeah,” I said.

“Can’t we just report to the client that she went into a nudist resort and leave it at that?” Rebecca asked.

“No. We were hired to find evidence of infidelity on the part of his wife, and her simply driving into a nudist resort doesn’t qualify. And besides, if she’s seeing someone inside the resort, we need to get documentation of that.”

“Well. Shit. OK. You can’t look at me though.”

“Hey, I’m going to be as naked as you are.”

Rebecca, our investigator trainee, and I had driven past the entrance to the Sunny Oaks Nudist Resort while tailing the wife of our client Richard Boone. I had slowed and turned into the driveway of a country farmhouse before backing out onto the two-lane highway to go back in the opposite direction. Boone had hired us because he suspected his pretty and much younger wife Gina was sleeping around and wanted proof of that.

Personally, I thought the guy was just paranoid. Either that or was just tired of Gina and wanted a way to void the prenuptial agreement she had signed. Whatever the case, I was happy to take his money and follow the pretty redhead around town for a few weeks. I was surprised on this warm Saturday when she led us out here into the country and shocked when she had turned into the entrance to Sunny Oaks. What was even more interesting was that she hadn’t spent very long at the gate, which told me that she had her own code to get in.

Behind the gate

I turned slowly into the entrance of the nudist resort and pulled up to the keypad. I nodded to the camera above the gate as a way to point it out to Rebecca.

“Smile, you’re on candid camera,” I said.

I rolled down the window and looked at the note next to the keypad. There was a number for deliveries and visitors to call. I supposed that one could call on the keypad—there was something that looked like a speaker and microphone—but I called on my cell phone which was connected to the car.

“Sunny Oaks,” a female voice answered.

“Hi. We’d like to come in and visit for the day.”

“For today you mean?”

“Yes. We’re at the gate now.”

“And did you make an appointment?”

“Uh, no. This is kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

“And you’re a couple?”

I looked at Rebecca and shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Normally, we like our visitors to call ahead of time. But since you’re already here, I’ll buzz you in. Turn right just past the gate, park, and come into the office.”

“Will do,” I said.

I did as instructed, and Rebecca and I got out of the car still fully clothed. The registration at the office was simple enough. We had to show the lady our driver’s licenses. She photocopied them and told us she was running a simple background check to make sure we weren’t felons or sex offenders. As the partner of a firm that performed such background checks, I had to restrain myself from trying to sell her our services.

Learning the rules

“Have either of you ever been to a nudist resort before?” the lady asked while she was, apparently, waiting on the background check results.

“No,” I said.

“In that case.”

She handed each of us a brochure with several guidelines. The one she pointed to first was the one about always having a towel between us and whatever surface we sat on. Rebecca and I looked at each other. I glanced around the office and saw that there were several things for sale, towels and sunscreen among them. The prices for the towels were a bit high, I thought, but the towels were nicely thick with “Sunny Oaks” embroidered on them. I bought two of them along with a bottle of SPF70 spray-on sunscreen. I didn’t want to have to rub anything on the nude body of my new investigator trainee. The price of the towels didn’t bother me so much since we would be putting that cost on the expense report that would be paid by the client, Richard Boone.

Once our background checks came in clean and our purchases were bagged and paid for, the lady invited us on a tour of the resort on her golf cart. She took us all around the place, showing us the clubhouse, pools, and hot tub along with the cabins and campsites available for rent. I looked for any sign of Gina Boone from our seat on the golf cart, but I didn’t see her. What we did see was a whole lot of exposed skin. It was Saturday, so the pools and pool deck were crowded.

“Water volleyball is really popular this time of year,” the lady told us, and there were a lot of people playing in the pool with the net strung across it.

Most of the pool lounge chairs were occupied by either naked bodies or towels. I wondered how Rebecca and I were going to find a place that would be good for spotting and surveilling Gina Boone.

“We also have a strict no photography rule,” the lady said once we got back to the office. She handed us two small round paper stickers. “You can put these over the camera lenses on your cell phones. That way, no one will question you.”

Rebecca and I took the stickers and placed them in the proper positions on our phones. Photographic evidence was a big part of what we provide for our clients, but we also had much smaller and inconspicuous cameras, like the one on the end of what appeared to be my ball point pen. We’d just have to be discreet.

“Any other questions?” the lady asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

“Great. Then have fun.”

Thus dismissed, we carried our purchases back to my car. We had been told during the tour that we could drive down to the pool area and park near the clubhouse, so that’s what we did. I switched the car engine off, and Rebecca and I looked at each other.

Blending in

“I guess this is it,” I said.

She looked toward the pool deck and all the naked people there. “It doesn’t seem so scary now, seeing all the people there like that.”

“No, it’ll be fun.”

I opened my car door and stepped out. I took my shirt off first and threw it onto the driver’s seat. Rebecca got out of the car and looked at me over the roof as I stepped out of my shoes. She sighed, and removed her shirt, revealing her white lace bra. I looked away. We may be about to be naked with each other, but it still felt strange seeing her more intimate apparel. In fact, I decided to take my own underwear off with my jeans, taking a deep breath before I did so. After grabbing my phone and keys from my pockets, I rolled the pants up and tossed them into the back seat. I threw my shirt back there too and sat back down in the driver’s seat to remove my socks and then put my shoes back on, wishing I had a pair of sandals. Glancing over toward the open passenger door, I saw Rebecca stepping out of a pair of panties. She was naked now, her breasts hanging low as she bent over, her pubic region shaved bare. I turned away, resolving to myself not to make any comment on how amazing she looked.

I grabbed the bag with our newly purchased towels, tossed the keys, my wallet, and my phone inside, stood up, and shut the car door.

“Can I have my towel?” Rebecca asked after I walked around the car to stand next to her.

“Sure.”

I pulled one of the towels from the bag, and she wrapped it around herself as I locked the car.

“I guess we’ll start at the pool,” I said.

I led the way to the pool deck. The breeze on my skin and the natural movement of body parts that are normally bound up in clothes felt odd but not unpleasant.

“I don’t see her,” Rebecca commented as we walked through the gate. I guess Rebecca was concentrating on work to get her mind off how strange this all felt.

We found a pair of empty pool chairs in the corner although out in the bright sun. All of the shaded spots were already spoken for. I set my towel down and proceeded to spray myself with sunscreen. Rebecca stood watching and shaking her head.

“I can’t believe I’m naked with my boss.”

“But you’re not. You’re in a towel. And we are trying to blend in.”

She gave a loud sigh and unwrapped her towel and set it on the chair.

“Give me that,” she said, referring to the sunscreen.

Once she finished and got settled in the chair next to me, we had a good view of the two pools and of the main entrance to the clubhouse. We watched for Gina Boone but didn’t see her.

“Everyone seems so natural and comfortable,” Rebecca said after several minutes.

“How about you? Are you comfortable?”

“I don’t know. I think I am even though everything I’ve ever been taught is telling me that I shouldn’t be. If you know what I mean.”

“There she is,” I said, spotting Gina walking through the gate into the pool deck.

A much older man was with her, older even than her husband. They were both naked, neither of them carrying towels.

“Who’s that?” Rebecca said to me in a low voice.

“I don’t know.”

We watched the two of them make their way to a pair of lounge chairs with towels on them. A middle-aged lady sat in the lounger next to the two they took, and the three of them talked together. The older man leaned over and kissed the middle-aged lady.

“Maybe she’s gotten herself involved in some kind of threesome,” I whispered to Rebecca as I searched in the bag for my camera pen.

“I don’t know,” Rebecca replied. “Look at their faces.”

“What about their faces?”

“You don’t see the similarity?”

“What?”

I looked back up at them, comparing the three of them with each other.

“If I had to bet, I’d say that those are her parents.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Why not?” Rebecca said.

“Here?”

A family affair

Just then, I saw a young couple enter the pool deck with three kids, two girls and one boy. The girls looked to be between the ages of 12 and 8, with the boy falling somewhere between them.

“Apparently, this is a family thing,” Rebecca said.

“Who woulda thought.”

“The client didn’t mention anything about his wife growing up in a nudist family, did he?’

I went over the initial interview in my mind, all the reasons he suspected his wife was involved in some kind of affair, but nothing was ever mentioned about Gina or her parents being nudists.

“No,” I said. “But we don’t know for sure that those are her parents.”

I grabbed my phone out of the bag and dialed our client’s number.

“Hello.”

“Rich,” I said. “This is Jack from Wallace Investigations.”

“Jack, how are you? Any progress?”

“I’m good. I was just wondering how much you know about Gina’s parents.”

“Her parents?”

“Yeah.”

“Not a whole lot. I think they were both teachers. Retired now. They live out near Decatur, I think.”

I looked over at Rebecca. The resort where we now sat was very near Decatur.

“Have you ever visited their home?”

“No. Gina has always seemed resistant to the idea.”

“Did she say why?”

“Just that I wouldn’t like their place for some reason.”

“But Gina visits them all the time, right?”

“Yeah, they’re her parents. I suppose she goes out there all the time. Why? Is that where she is now?”

“Yeah, I think so. We are near Decatur.”

“But you haven’t found her meeting anyone else?”

“A man, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“No, nothing suspicious as of yet.”

That seemed to be the end of the call, but I couldn’t just leave it at that.

“Gina never mentioned growing up in anything like an alternative lifestyle?”

“What? No. What is that supposed to mean?”

So he had no clue his wife was a nudist. Was the hiding of her nudist activities what had caused his suspicion? And would this news be welcome if it meant that she was still faithful to him?

“Nothing yet,” I said. “We’ll go over the results of our surveillance at our next meeting.”

“All right.”

I ended the call and looked at Rebecca. She was looking back at me with a questioning gaze.

“I don’t think he has any clue she comes to a nudist resort.”

Rebecca laughed. “That’s crazy.”

“Yeah, well, he seems like a bit of a stick in the mud. If Gina thought the news wouldn’t be welcome, she might try to hide it.”

“Why did she marry him in the first place if he wasn’t going to be willing to at least accept his in-laws’ lifestyle?”

“Who knows why people do anything?”

“So what do we do?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. First thing is, we need to confirm that those really are her parents.”

“We could ask her?”

“No, we couldn’t. If we made ourselves recognizable to her, we could no longer surveil her.”

“Does that even matter? We’ve been on her tail for two months and haven’t seen even a hint of infidelity. Coming here is the only thing she might have kept secret.”

The older man next to Gina got up as Rebecca and I talked, headed toward the clubhouse.

“Dad!” Gina called out to him, jumping up and running after him.

“Well, that solves that problem,” Rebecca said.

We watched Gina hand her father a ten-dollar bill and then go back to her chair to sit beside the older woman, presumably her mother. I got an idea, so I grabbed my wallet out of the bag and stood up.

“Stay here,” I said to Rebecca.

I hurried toward the clubhouse. Inside, the kitchen window had opened up, and someone behind a counter was serving snacks and drinks. Gina’s father was last in line, so I stood behind him.

The truth uncovered

“Nice day today,” I said.

The man turned and glanced at me. “It is. I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”

“You haven’t. This is my first time.”

“Well, glad to have you here. I’m Ted.”

“Jack,” I said, unable to quickly think of a fake name I would remember.

We shook hands.

“Is that your family out there with you?”

“Yes, my wife and daughter.”

“I’m here with my girlfriend Rebecca.”

“Yeah, I saw you across the deck. What do you think so far.”

“Oh, we love it.”

“Great. If you’re able, you should think about getting a membership.”

“We will. Think about it, that is.”

Ted nodded to me and turned back toward the counter.

“I noticed your daughter had a wedding ring on. Does her husband come out here too?”

“No.” Ted sighed. “It’s a point of contention in the family. Gina, my daughter, says that he wouldn’t ever come out here. He’s got burn marks on his chest and side from his military service, and he won’t even go shirtless when he swims.”

“But he knows she comes out here, right?”

“No. She’s afraid to bring the subject up with him.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” I said.

“Tell me about it.”

The person in front of Ted left with her food, so he turned to order. I waited, thinking about the case. Rebecca was right. In over two months, there had been no hint of infidelity, not even a potential candidate for a lover. Keeping this case going would be milking the client beyond what was ethical. No, we would present our final findings at the next meeting. He could then decide on his own how to proceed. We were getting out of it.

“Nice talking with you,” Ted said, his drinks and snacks on a tray in his hands.

“Same to you,” I said.

I stepped up and ordered a couple of Diet Cokes and took them back to Rebecca.

“So the husband doesn’t know that his in-laws are nudists, and he doesn’t know that his wife comes out to visit them.”

“Told you,” she said.

“So, I think we’re done here. We can leave, and I’ll drop you off wherever you need to go, and then I’ll work on the client presentation.”

Rebecca took a sip of her Diet Coke, looking out at the two pools.

An unexpected ending

“Do we have to go right away?”

I shrugged. “I guess not. You’re getting into this, aren’t you?”

“It’s nice, you know. The sun, the breeze. And I’m about to get in the water. You want to join me?”

I looked at the pools and the people. If you had asked me about going to a nudist resort earlier, I would have denigrated it, said that it was for people without all their marbles. But now that I was here, seeing and talking to the people here, I could see the appeal in it.

“All right. But we need to steer clear of Mrs. Boone and her parents. We have a confidentiality agreement with our client, so we can’t disclose anything about being hired to watch her. All right?”

Rebecca looked away and then back at me. I could tell that she wanted to fix things. That was her nature. She wanted to tell Gina that she had to be honest with her husband. But she couldn’t do that in her position. We’d both just have to hope that Gina and her husband could work things out.

“All right,” she said.

“Good.”

“Now, let’s get in that pool and enjoy the rest of our little adventure without clothes.” 🪐

Editor’s note:

“Surveillance” by D.H. Jonathan was originally published in the anthology Adventures Without Clothes and is reprinted here with permission. The licensing fee for this publication has been donated to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) at the author’s request in support of their lifesaving work.

Buy Adventures Without Clothes here.

More Stories:

Editor’s note: This story is a work of fiction, part of Stories, Planet Nude’s new creative writing section. Stories are available exclusively to paid subscribers for one week before they unlock for free readers. For this month only, get 50% off a paid subscription.

Get 50% off for 1 year

Larry the Trivial Nudist stepped inside the country grocery store. A relaxed, fit guy of retirement age, he wore sandals, and a black pima cotton t-shirt tucked into khaki cargo shorts. The store seemed dark, in spite of the dirty show windows that flanked the screen door. It had a high, stamped metal ceiling with hanging etched glass lamps and unmoving wooden ceiling fans. The ancient gondolas held packaged staples like salt, sugar, bread, and soap, and the place smelled of dry, unpainted wood floors, sweeping compound, and coffee that had sat on the burner all day. It was late afternoon.

A hatchet faced old fart in starched and pressed work clothes sat, reading a tattered Louis L’Amour novel, behind a glass display case full of paperbacks and magazines, bought for nothing from estate auctions, next to the ornate brass cash register. There was a dirty, white cordless phone next to the cash register. He watched Larry find the cooler that held the soda pop and milk (the township was dry) and bring two twenty-ounce Cokes to the register. He stood up when Larry laid a sawbuck on the glass.

“That all for you?” the man asked.

“Yeah. Thanks.” Larry took his change. “Is this Altgeld?” The store occupied one corner of a blacktop T-intersection. There was corn surrounding it and in the other corner. Two houses were across the street with hickory trees and sycamores in the yards. A few outbuildings separated the grass from more corn.

“Yep. You don’t look like you’re looking for me, though. Me and the missus live in the little house, and the big one’s empty.”

“No. Sorry.” Larry hesitated, then said, “I am looking for a somebody. Holly Sumner.”

“I know her. She’ll come in here from time to time. Used to try to get me to carry whole wheat flour and vegetables. Olive oil. That sort of stuff.”

“I suppose she would.”

“She couldn’t buy enough to make it worth my while. Nobody else would buy it. It’d just go bad or sit on the shelf until kingdom come.”

Larry opened one of the Cokes and offered it to the man, who declined it. Larry took a swallow. “Know how to get to her place?”

“What about GPS?”

“Never needed it before. My ex-wife calls me radar brains, so I’m not even sure which phone app GPS is.”

The man chuckled and said, “Never been to her place, but I know where it’s at. Word is she goes nekkid most of the time. People come by—city folk. Professors and whatnot” He giggled. “ Come a lot. Sometimes they come in here like you. I figure she’s got sort of a nudist colony down there.” He looked a question at Larry.

“Something like that.”

The man asked, “She a friend of yours?”

“Friend of a friend. How do I get there? I have directions, but I’m not finding her place.”

The man continued to look speculatively at Larry. He stooped down and opened a drawer under the display. He put a nudist magazine from the 1960s on the display top. It was called Sundial, and the cover photo showed a tanned, nude woman leaping out of clear, blue water, possibly playing water volleyball—A modest layout man had covered her bush with a red and white ball. A fire-engine red margin framed the more cool-colored photo. It was a vivid composition.

The man said, “You might be interested in this. Fifty dollars.”

“I think I saw this when I was a kid, but fifty’s too much.”

“Dirty Frakes told me he saw this very magazine on the internet for twice that. eBay or something.”

“Fifty would mean I’d have to go into town to get some more cash.”

“Forty bucks.”

“Twenty. You bought this with a lot of other stuff in a box for five.”

“That might be true. Thirty.”

“Okay, but you throw in the Cokes I just bought. Here’s my change and another twenty.”

“Nice doing business with you.” The man picked up the cash on the counter. “What you do is you head south. That’s that way. In a couple of miles, the road’ll sort of wind down a long hill. At the bottom there’s a pretty little valley. Pres Icenogle has some steers grazing there, and there’s a rusty old truss bridge over Anvil Creek. Don’t cross the bridge. There’s a mud road into the trees, and that’ll take you to your friend’s house. You want a bag for your book?”

“Nope.” Larry had finished his Coke. He left the bottle, picked up the other one and the nudist magazine, and headed for the door. “Thanks for the directions.”

A sunburnt woman with white hair came through the door. She was husky and barefoot, wearing faded jeans and a bathing suit top. She took in Larry and his magazine, grinned, and said, “You must be Larry Murphy. I’m Holly. I gotta get some stuff, then you can follow me to The Would. Did Fred make you buy that book before he’d tell you where I live?”

Fred said, “I didn’t make him do nuthin’. He come in here lost. We kind of got talkin’ and he offered that he’d be interested in seein’ a nudist book I picked up at Jim Dickey’s mother’s sale. Say, when are you going to let me come over for a cookout?”

Holly was by the laundry soap, loading herself with washing soda, borax, and Fell’s Naptha. “Fred, if it got around that you were at my place, Ruth would have your guts for garters. Or we can ask her to drop by, if you think I’m wrong.”

“Oh, I don’t think she’d be interested.”

“No. I guess not.” Holly put the laundry things on the glass counter. “Got any beer cold?”

“It’s across the road the shed refrigerator.”

“I’ll take a six pack.”

Fred went out the backdoor. Holly took the magazine and flipped through it. “How much did your directions cost you?”

“Thirty bucks, but I got him to throw in a couple of Cokes. And the magazine of course.”

“Steep.”

“I can get it back on Etsy.” 🪐

Read more Stories:

In 1991, I celebrated my eleventh birthday. One day that summer, my mother told me she was going over to her friend Donna’s place and asked if I wanted to go. It was an easy decision since I was friends with Donna’s children. Little did I know that summer would change my life.

When we arrived, Donna told me her daughter was out somewhere in the apartment complex and her son, Thomas, was in his room. I went in, knocked on his door, and he called for me to come in. I walked in and shut the door behind me. The bedroom light was off, and the small window near the ceiling was open, trying in vain to bring in some cool air. Thomas, who was a few months younger than me, was sitting on the floor wearing only his underwear.

After a few minutes of talking and playing with his toys, he stood up, took off his underwear, and tossed it to the side.

“Won’t you get in trouble?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “We’re usually naked when no one’s here, but when I heard you knocking, I put my underwear on. You should get naked too.”

I got undressed, and that was the first time I was naked in front of another person just because. About an hour later, his younger sister came in. She was excited to see me, and after catching up for a bit, she took off her clothes and joined us in playing. Neither of them seemed concerned about their parents walking in, but I was nervous because my mom could be a bit of a prude. However, I realized I didn’t have much to worry about—our parents spent most of their time in the other bedroom doing drugs.

Later that evening, as the sun began to set, Thomas and his sister put on t-shirts and shorts and told me to do the same just as Donna yelled for us to come to dinner. After we ate, we took turns showering and getting ready for bed. Once Donna came in, turned off the lights, and told us it was time to sleep, Thomas and his sister got undressed and went to bed naked. I slept in my clothes, too anxious to sleep nude since I was on the floor and worried about someone seeing me. I also tend to move around a lot in my sleep.

We ended up staying there for the entire summer, including my birthday. Every day, we stayed in the bedroom and stayed naked. Sometime later, after my mom and Donna had a falling out, I lost contact with my friends. I didn’t think much about being nude again until after I turned 18.

Rediscovering nudity and finding comfort

When I was 18, my mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Twice a week, her best friend would take her to physical therapy. One day while they were gone, I was waiting for a friend to go online so we could talk. I needed to wash the dishes before my mom came home, so I quickly got to work and ended up soaking my clothes. I decided to close the living room blinds and get undressed. This time, being nude felt liberating.

From then on, whenever my mom went to physical therapy, I got undressed as soon as she left, relishing the freedom. One day, she told me her therapy schedule had changed, and she’d now be going three times a week. I had to hide my enthusiasm, not wanting to make her suspicious, especially since my younger brother had recently been picked up for public intoxication.

Sadly, it didn’t last. My mom and I started having more arguments, and eventually, I moved out to stay with a friend. Over the next few years, I stayed with different people, but most of them equated nudity with sexuality, so I didn’t try being nude again.

My grandmother, who was in remission from cancer, later asked if I would stay with her and help out. She lived in a small, two-bedroom mobile home. She often slept during the day, so I started spending more time naked. The first night I slept nude, I woke up feeling amazing.

About a year later, my grandmother had a stroke. After she recovered, my mom suggested we all move in together so I could help take care of both of them. I agreed. A week after we moved in, my grandmother had to be hospitalized due to complications from the stroke, and she passed away a few days later.

Afterward, my mom and I talked about what we’d been going through. She admitted she’d been clean for a few months and asked me to continue being her caregiver. I agreed, as it provided decent income. I started sleeping naked again and even bought both of us cell phones so she could call me if she needed something instead of yelling for me over the air conditioner. She didn’t mind my nudity, even when I once told her, “I had to dress in the dark because I couldn’t find my shorts.” Much to my surprise, she just shrugged it off.

Eventually, though, I had to leave. My brother brought his friends over, and they all got high together. I packed up and moved halfway across the country.

Embracing who I am

About a year after moving, I ended up in jail. I spent five years on probation in a halfway house and then served ten years in prison. During my incarceration, I came out as transgender. Near the end of my sentence, I became cellmates with another transgender woman, and we fell in love. In the summer, we both slept naked, though we kept ourselves covered with a sheet to avoid getting in trouble.

Today, I live in transitional housing. For the first four months, I didn’t have a roommate because the woman before me had moved out and locked the door, keeping the key. It took four months for the staff to get a locksmith to open it. During that time, I spent most of my time nude in my bedroom. I even told my case manager that I’m a nudist and put a sign on my door that says, “I am naked.” She was fine with it as long as I stayed mindful of staff walk-throughs.

On Christmas, when my roommate went on a ten-hour pass to visit family, I spent the entire time naked in the apartment, reliving the comfort and freedom I hadn’t felt in years. Recently, I made a friend who invited me to move in with her and my girlfriend when she gets out of prison. I told her that both my girlfriend and I are nudists, and she said that was fine.

Looking back, my journey has been full of challenges, but I’ve learned to embrace who I am. Nudity, for me, is about more than just being without clothes—it’s about freedom, self-acceptance, and finding peace in a chaotic world. As I look ahead, I’m hopeful for a future where I can continue living authentically, surrounded by people who support and accept me. 🪐

Editor’s note: While this story is not technically fiction, we are sharing it as a Stories feature because we believe it represents creative writing and a compelling personal narrative that aligns with the ethos of Stories.

More Stories:

Editor’s note:

This story was originally published in the anthology Beneath Healing Skies and is reprinted here with permission. The typical licensing fee for this story’s publication here was paid forward to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) by request of the author in support of their lifesaving work by.

Hey, Miss Bassgirl is a work of fiction and is being published as part of Stories, Planet Nude’s new platform for original naturist fiction and narrative writing.

All four of us in the band acknowledged that the experience had been good for us. So, it had been the wrong audience for the material we played. The crowd were all, except a few young kids, much older than us. We had been playing Punk Rock to a crowd that had mainly grown up on Cliff and the Shadows, like my Mum. However, they had invited us to play, and we needed a gig of some sort.

It was our first public performance. I am not sure how we had landed it. We had been rehearsing for months and felt it was time for us to get out there, to play before an adoring crowd. One of the guys must have mentioned it to someone. It has to have been one of the guys, I’m the only girl in the band, and I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. So ‘he’ had mentioned it to somebody, and they had passed the news on. Eventually, the news must have reached Flatlands Sun Club, because their Secretary had phoned asking if we would play this gig.

We had been desperately nervous about the gig. Playing in front of an audience. Our first public performance. An audience of mainly naked people. It had been a daunting prospect, but we were all pleased we had accepted the challenge. I couldn’t imagine the crowd at the Hole in The Ground Club being more intimidating, and they were all hard-core punk rockers! All we had to do was imagine them naked! Just so long as they weren’t imagining me naked.

One of the younger women from the naturist club had chatted to us while the amps and drum kit were loaded onto the barrow and wheeled to the gate, ready to be loaded into John’s big brother’s van and driven away. Like all the other people we had encountered, she had been friendly. Naked and friendly. She had invited us to stay on for the rest of the afternoon. “Unless you want to go in the pool” she had explained, “There is no need to get nude!”

The boys had laughed and said ‘no thanks’. I was rather glad they had made that decision. I might have been a member of the band, but I was still the butt of a lot of teasing. I got it, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

I suppose I could blame my parents. They were the ones who called me Philomena. I mean, who in their right mind gives a girl a name like that nowadays? Half the kids in my infants school couldn’t pronounce it; “Phil” or “Philly” was as close as they could get. Then their older siblings turned Philly into Filly and I became Horsie.

“Gee-up, Horsie!” was bad enough, until I tried the other end of my name, ‘Meana’. “Meaner than what?”

I gave up and went back to being Filly and started eating like a horse. Nobody would have ever paid attention to Fatty Filly except …

Except I developed faster and more fully than most of the other girls in the class. The boys had certainly noticed. It became almost a rite of passage for the boys to grab me by the boob. Which turned into a tale about how I had let them ‘cop a feel.’ Free Feel Filly’ or ‘Free Effs’ the second of which turned into even worse teasing.

I put on more weight to discourage the increasingly nasty attention I was getting.

Through all this the one thing that had kept me sane was music. I love music. I sang in the school choir. I played the cello in the orchestra. I wanted to play the violin, but they said my fingers were too fat! Besides, the cello meant I could hide in the back row.

One afternoon, during sixth form, I had walked into the school music room where Kenny and a couple of other guys were trying out a bass player for their group. The guy was useless, and I said so. “OK, you do better!” they challenged. I picked up the double bass that was in the corner of the room and left the guy with a bass guitar speechless before walking out.

Two years later I was in the music shop, looking for sheet music, when I saw Kenny pinning up a notice. I wandered, all casual like, over and peered over his shoulder. “Still looking for a bass player then Kenny?”

“Filly?” I had decided that being ‘Fat Fil’ wasn’t going to get me promoted at work and wasn’t doing me any favours in the dating game. I had managed to shed a few inches everywhere except around the hips.

“Yes, Kenny, it is me. Still trying to get that band off the ground then?”

“A different band, none of the guys from school wanted to get into the new wave music.”

“What, the punk stuff?”

“Do you fancy the gig then? I remember you being pretty good.”

That is how I came to be playing the bass guitar in ‘K-Nup’ as we called ourselves. The rest of the band, John and Terry were enthusiastic but far from great musicians: Terry could count to four and chew gum while bashing around a drum kit. John shouted and screamed abuse with the best of them. Kenny and I supplied the music. I loved rehearsing. Even the jokes about the ‘big-bottomed bass’ parts were good-natured. Not that … I mean, I had lost a lot of weight and I planned to stand right at the back and hide behind my bass and the microphone stand. We had already discovered that our shouting and spitting vocalist needed a bit of support in holding a tune.

Which brings us back to the gig. “It’s a gig innit and even if we are rubbish, who is going to say to their mates, ‘We saw K-Nup at a nudie colony and they were crap’, even if we are!” Terry, who acted as the band’s (non) intellectual, decided. “We are on to a no-lose one here!”

I was going to be hiding at the back, in a corner, behind my bass guitar, besides, who was going to be looking at me with all those naked bodies around the place?

That morning I had dressed in my black outfit. Black, it was a deliberate choice, camouflage to help me hide in corners. I loaded my bass and amp into John’s brother’s van and climbed in with the guys. The others were all dressed to be forgotten too. There were a lot of nervous jokes and twitches as we pulled up at the nudist club gates.

“Get your equipment unloaded here. You can’t take the van in, we don’t have enough parking space inside,” the old boy who met us announced. “There are a couple of barrows you can use to take that stuff to the stage area.”

“Not a problem mate. I have work to do today,” John’s brother responded. “I’ll be back at six to pick you up. Be careful not to get your bits burnt!” Then turning to me he added, “I’ll bring some aftersun in case you need it, love!”

‘Two chances, mate, fat and none.’ I thought but until my gear and I were home safely, I wasn’t going to tell him.

As I said earlier, the gig wasn’t a great success. The wrong audience, but we had learnt a lot from the day. For example, we would need a new van driver. John, the singer, had lost his bottle in front of the crowd. I had found mine after a fashion, add singer to bass player; so much for hiding in the background.

The crowd remained polite enough, they clapped at the end of each song and refrained from booing. Then that woman made a point of coming over and talking to me as we were packing up. At first I found it a little unsettling talking to a naked woman. I mean, apart from shouted comments in the swimming pool changing rooms, it isn’t something I do every day. “Have you got any talc? I forgot mine ... Thanks” was about the longest conversation I have ever had with a naked woman.

This lady seemed genuinely interested in me and asked lots of questions. After a few minutes I forgot about her being naked and I was telling her all sorts of private stuff. I even told her how impressed I had been, seeing all the different women here. There were ladies with wrinkles, rolls and scars, all enjoying themselves, not giving a shit about other people seeing them without clothes. None of that dressing to impress or to minimise and not being worried about their shape and imperfections. As she put it, “None of us are perfect.”

That thought was going around in my head for the rest of the day. She was an ordinary-looking woman. Not the sort of beauty that stops people in their tracks. She was pretty enough, a little bit thick around the waist, dark not blonde. Apart from her Welsh accent, I doubted whether I would even recognise her if we were to meet in a supermarket queue. How come she has the confidence to come up to a complete stranger and hold a conversation, while I hide from girls I had been to school with?

Did it have anything to do … I fell asleep with that question going around in my head.

I hadn’t slept well when I woke up early Sunday morning. Dreams, all sorts of dreams. None that could be called nightmares, but I could remember that they had been unsettling. Naked people had been a bit of a theme. I lay there, the sun streaming through the weave of my curtains. The sounds of the rest of the family moving around in the Sunday ritual. I must have dozed off, an image of me arriving at work naked and being greeted by my colleagues, “Looking good, Phil!” “Filly, I love the new look!”

By the time I had washed, put on my face, dressed, and got downstairs for breakfast, I had a plan. All I had to do was get on my bike and put it into action.

“Where are you going, Philly-me-gal?” Dad was pottering around in the garden as I dragged my bike out of the shed.

“I’m going to look for my guitar strap, Dad. I left it somewhere yesterday.” I wasn’t going to tell him where I was going.

“You’d better find it, Sweetheart. It cost your Gran a lot of money!” I knew that I hadn’t expected her to buy me a hand-tooled leather guitar strap when she asked what I wanted for Christmas.

“There are only a few places it can be, Dad.” Rolled up in the case alongside my bass for instance. “That is why I want to check them out before someone else does.” Two quick scoots and I was pedalling away.

I have lived all my life in this part of town but I never knew there was a nudist club – I’d been warned not to call it a colony – just a couple of miles away. It was nearly five miles according to the gadget I had got for my thirteenth birthday. It had seemed shorter in the van.

I pressed the intercom button on the gate. I was going through with this, I wasn’t cycling ten miles for nothing. I could tell my leg muscles were going to make me pay tomorrow, so I might as well complete my quest.

“Hi, yes, erm.” A good response to the simple greeting. Try again! “Yes, my name is Filly, I was here yesterday, a part of the band. I think I left something here.” My sanity perhaps, then nothing ventured and, well I had escaped unscathed yesterday.

“OK, someone will be down to let you inside.” That was it, I was in. All I had to do was to wander around a bit and … and what? The door hinges squealed as a small door in the main gate was pulled open.

“All alone, love?” The middle-aged man looked around. “Bring your bike in for safety.” He helped me fit my cycle through the narrow opening and pointed to where I could prop it against a tree. It was the closest I had ever been to a naked man except, well you know.

“I think I left a guitar strap here yesterday. It is rather special, that is why I cycled over here first thing.”

“Well, nobody handed one in but I guess you know where you went. Come to the office when you have found it and someone will let you out.” That was it. I was alone in a nudist club. What next?

I started my ‘search’ by walking towards the area where the stage had stood. Only an area of flattened grass and a pile of scaffolding and planks gave any clue to yesterday’s event. I scuffled around a bit pretending to be looking for something rather than at the people emerging from tents and caravans and heading to the shower block. They were carrying towels and wash bags and nothing else. They would wave to couples going the other way, sometimes stopping to have a conversation.

Time to move on before someone spotted me staring. I followed my feet lost in…

“Hello!” I turned around, and saw a woman of Mum’s age sitting in a chair outside a caravan. “Do you fancy a cuppa? My husband has gone off with one of the work parties, and to be honest I’m a little bit lonely. Please say you will.” She pointed to a second canvas chair. “Bring that one over while I fetch a mug.”

I pulled the chair up to the table while she got to her feet and walking, very delicately, stepped into the caravan and fetched a mug from a cupboard. She returned holding herself erect, an arm across her abdomen. “I recently had a hysterectomy,” she explained, “I’m still supposed to be at home resting but I was going stir crazy. Help yourself to milk and sugar.” As I reached for the milk I caught sight of a red slash across her belly, where her pubic hair would normally be.

“The surgeon did a neat job of stitching me up,” she must have seen me looking. She arched back in her seat. “Do you think I should try to grow the hair back to cover the scar or keep trimming and show it off, a battle scar?”

“I don’t know, what does your husband say?” I was out of my very shallow depth.

“Howard? He keeps saying it is my body, my choice but … Well, it is my body and I think I might stay shaven for a while longer before I let him talk me into growing it back. We have to let men have these small victories … Oh my goodness! I don’t know your name. I am Harriet, Harri.”

“I am Filly short for Philomena.” Hold on Filly, you don’t give out your name that easily normally. Now, I was sharing it with a woman I had only known for a few minutes. Someone who had shown me her recent scar and discussed her personal grooming choices with me. My real name was small change in this transaction.

“So, what brings you here, Filly?”

“I was in the band that played yesterday, I might have left my guitar strap behind.” Well, I might have, that I hadn’t was immaterial, I might have so it wasn’t a lie.

“A little loud for my taste I’m afraid, I’m more of a Beatles fan myself.”

We had been chatting about music for an hour or more when Harrisuddenly announced, “I mustn’t keep you any longer. You must be dying to go for a swim or to carry on with your search. I think I need to have a lie-down; I still get very tired.”

She assured me she was fine and an hour on the bed would sort her out. “The pool is that way.” She pointed as she disappeared into the caravan. Lacking a reason to choose a different direction I went the way she had indicated.

The pool was surrounded by naked people and full of children. Laughing, shouting and sometimes screaming children, jumping and diving into the water and splashing each other. Naked children. I was the only person who had clothes on.

“Unless you want to go in the pool.” The words of the woman I spoke with yesterday came back to me. I would go and look somewhere else.

I found my feet drawn to a small stand of trees. It was getting warm. I needed to think. I suppose I had been expecting to be horrified and hurried off out of the club. It hadn’t happened. Now what?

First I was going to get comfortable. I slipped my feet out of my shoes. Bliss. I took off the cardigan I had put on early that morning and spread it under the tree and sat down in the dappled shade.

Feeling more relaxed, I mulled over what I had experienced so far. I had seen dozens of bodies, tall or short, thin or fat, young or old, male or female and they all looked remarkably similar. I had been befriended by a woman who was thinking about showing off her ‘battle’ scar to the world.

The sun had shifted and was getting stronger, I was getting hotter. “I suppose I could take off my jeans, I have coloured knickers on, they’ll look like bikini bottoms at a distance.’ I stood up, unfastened my belt, and the button on my jeans. I was looking around before undoing the zip when the stupidity of my actions struck me. I was in a nudist club’s grounds. Somewhere where I could be naked legally. Even if someone saw me, it would be unremarkable in this setting.

‘And face it, Gel, you are never going to have a chance to do it again.’ It wasn’t something I thought I’d hear my dad saying, even in my head. Then he claimed his motto was ‘It is better to regret doing than not doing!’ A philosopher, my dad.

I looked around again, quickly dropped my jeans and pulled my top off, then dived onto my cardigan. Before I did a ‘John’ and lost my bottle, I wriggled out of my knickers and unhitched my bra.

The release. Taking off my bra at the end of the day was always an ‘Ahhh!’ moment. This was …

I stretched out on my clothing, closed my eyes and listened to the breeze in the leaves overhead, the birds singing and, Joni Mitchell was right, the hissing of summer lawns. I could feel the air stirring my intimate hair and the sun pricking my skin, all of my skin. I relaxed, unwinding right back to my childhood and …

“There you are!” I woke, startled by a voice, a woman’s voice. Before I could react a towel hit the turf next to me. “You don’t mind me joining you, I heard you were on the club grounds. I wanted to run an idea past you.” A naked blonde plonked herself on the towel.

Blonde, a little less pear-shaped than me, five maybe ten years older but still young-looking. I recognised her from somewhere, ‘Look that is Filly, I saw her naked at the cl …’ It wasn’t going to happen. My panic subsided.

“I’m Maggie, I was playing the keyboard for Justine, the singer, yesterday.”

“Oh, yes. I thought I recognised you. I’m Filly.” There I went again, giving out unsolicited information to naked strangers,

“You were playing bass and singing. Punk? is that the sort of music you are into?”

“Sort of, I was just thinking about Joni Mitchell, I play classical cello, sing in a choir and I discovered, after yesterday’s problem with our frontman, I enjoy performing.” I had only realised that truth in the past minute. However, that it was absolutely true, I knew to my core. On stage, in front of a crowd, I wasn’t Fat Filly, I was … I was Neana, singer and queen of the bass.

“Good, would you be interested in doing something different?”

“How do you mean different?”

“You as the bassist and lead vocalist, me on keys and backing vocals. I know a good drummer and lead guitarists are ten-a-penny. We can advertise, is the guy who was with ..”

“Kenny? No the punk thing was his idea.”

“No emotional entanglement?”

“No way, that’s not to say he wouldn’t use me to add another notch on his bedpost.” He had tried once or twice but I’d fended him off easily enough.

“Men!” Maggie grinned, “I wonder if we can find a girl guitarist.”

“I’d prefer a man.” That grin had worried me.

“Me too,” Maggie smirked, “don’t worry, I am thinking how different it would be, an all-girl lineup.”

“You mean the drummer is a girl too? I thought they were like hen’s teeth!”

“Yep, Debs is short and chunky but all woman!”

“What sort of material are you thinking of doing?” I wasn’t that concerned, I could see Maggie and I getting on like a house on fire.

“Stuff you’ve never heard. Lots of synths and organ stuff. I write a lot. And the clever thing is if we turn the volume down … we can do background music for dinner dances. Nice regular gigs before we hit the big time! I can get us The Club Christmas party, maybe Halloween if I get enough numbers sorted out in time!” Maggie was getting excited.

“Guitarists like playing loud.” I pointed out.

“True, maybe another keyboard player …” Maggie went quiet, her head and fingers moving to a silent melody. “Yes, that might be it!”

“Just one fly in the ointment.” I didn’t want to get all fired up only to discover an insurmountable obstacle in the way. “I am not a member of The Club.”

“I can get my husband to fix that, he’s on the committee.”

“And I’m not sure I want to be. I’m not a nudist.”

“Yesterday you weren’t the frontwoman of a punk band.” Maggie jumped to her feet. “Come on let’s go get a drink to toast the new band!”

She grabbed my hand and pulled me, totally willingly, to my feet. “My clothes …”

“…Will still be there when you come back!” She gave a gentle tug and we were heading for the clubhouse. “Don’t be surprised if you get one or two looks from men in particular. Few people have your presence.”

“Presents?” I slowed momentarily.

“Heads turning as you walk into a room, that sort of presence. It started to come out when you were on stage yesterday and I watched it grow as you became more confident in your skin while we were talking.”

“Then you’d better start referring to me by my stage name … Neana, Singer and Queen of The Bass.”

Maggie dragged the clubhouse door open and, in a loud voice, announced my arrival, “Ladies and Gentlemen put your hands together and give a big naked welcome to Neana, Queen of The Bass!

People turned towards us, someone shouted “Yay! Neana!!” Then the applause started as I walked into the room and I loved it! I had come a long way from dressing in black and hiding in the shadows to being Naked Neana, band frontwoman, in barely two days under the healing sky! 🪐

More:

At Planet Nude, we’ve explored nudity through history, journalism, interviews, essays, and comics. Now, we’re opening up a new dimension: fiction.

Introducing Stories, a new section of Planet Nude dedicated to narrative writing. Here, you’ll find original short stories, serialized fiction, and literary experiments that use storytelling to explore themes of nudity, body freedom, identity, and transformation. Some stories will be deeply personal, others playful and surreal, but all will embrace the power of fiction to reflect, challenge, and imagine new possibilities.

Just as Planet Nude has provided a home for thoughtful essays and Strips has been a platform for boundary-pushing comics, Stories will be a space where the written word can explore the complexities of nudity in a clothed world. Expect fresh perspectives, compelling characters, and narratives that surprise and provoke.

The first Story arrives soon. I can’t wait to share it with you. 🪐

Have a story you’d like to share? Send it to us at evan@planetnude.co.

More: