Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms (53 page)

Or a cancer.

Then he flashed on the smiling face of the girl from Toulon and wondered if she would have agreed. Maybe not then.

After too long contemplating the existence of his organ, Winterly stood from the water and stepped out of the tub, toweling himself, lost in thought. As he held the soft cloth to his moistened lips, he lowered his head and continued searching his mind, quietly dripping onto the floor. He felt he was just on the verge of remembering something of significance, but it was too deeply buried beneath the clutter of his mind for him to dig it out.

Making matters worse, disconnected memories of his ex-wife’s complaining had begun to swirl in and out of focus, further obscuring his search. He kept hearing her anguished remarks about how he’d changed, how he’d lost the essence of what she’d loved about him, how he’d retreated too much into dogma to be helpful, either to her or his parishioners, in today’s changing world of new ideas. She hadn’t understood that ‘dogma’ was the only thing that had held him together during every difficult moment in his turbulent life, up to, and including, the failure of their marriage.

Very early on, she had angrily given up trying to convince him that
she
had liked his penis.

And now, this woman, this supposed minister in the buff, had taken the comfort of his dogma away from him. She had challenged him. Stumped him. Embarrassed him. And for the first time in his life, the answers he needed were not readily at his fingertips in the one resource that trumped all other forms of wisdom.

If she was right about nudity not being a sin, that naked pastor had upset the delicate balance of his life by knowing more about ‘dogma’ than he did, and turned his certainties into
un
certainties. If he had seen something in scripture with such clarity, such absolute conviction, only to be shown he’d seen nothing of the kind, where was he? What did that mean about his other ‘beliefs’? His other ‘truths’?

His harsh words to the girl from Toulon?

What
was
God trying to teach him by bringing him to this place? By tempting and testing him so? Where
had
the pious man fallen short?

Perhaps it hadn’t been in denying, or obscuring, or eradicating his feelings. Perhaps it had instead been in
trying
to deny, and obscure, and eradicate.

Was it possible that God was trying to tell him that He—as the nude, lady minister believed—had no problem with the human body being publicly unadorned exactly as He had made it? That His real feelings and intentions and ideas about the naked form had been hidden under layers and layers and layers of detailed tapestry woven from the beliefs and the teachings and the interpretations of others who could not and did not know the truth as well as He.

Perhaps God was trying to remind him that
His
will superceded the will of his mother.

The precipice of doubt loomed and the abyss of unexpected possibility lay below. Would he fly through it, angelically, or fall to his death?

Is this what Eleanor, his wife, had meant when she’d once asked him ‘Why must you always look for what’s “wrong” and never for what’s “right”?’ The parallels here to his arguments with her were so similar. His firm belief in something scripture said, and her firm belief that it meant something else. Being the minister, though, his supposed learning could more readily steamroll her.

But not, apparently, this naked woman in the church.

“If we don’t attend to the little things as if God were watching,” Reverend Winterly said, again, only to himself, “He will eventually remind us that we have fallen short—somehow—in His eyes.”

He sensed, in some profound way, that how he chose to face this crisis would change him for whatever might be left of his life. Whether for good or ill was entirely up to him. Though God seemed intent on hitting him in the head with lessons if he chose incorrectly.

This is why he had preferred Mindie’s company to the others. Mindie never challenged him. Mindie’s arguments were often his own—though perhaps more strident and rude. He had once felt certain that Mindie would have made a comfortable wife for him. But on this trip, she had been continually thrown up before him as a fool, almost as if to show him, in no uncertain terms, the wrongness of her point of view. More importantly, he now saw with looking-glass clarity that no one liked Mindie.

So what did that say about
him
?

While reflecting deeply on that disturbing thought, he turned and was caught off-guard by his reflection in the mirror. At first he was horrified to see a fat old man standing in his bathroom. Then he realized with even greater horror that
he
was the fat old man. His rumpled hair didn’t look as his mind remembered it. No longer blonde and wind-blown, instead, it was thinning and somewhat gray. His body held no familiarity to him. His stomach, arms and neck had become thickened with overeating, sitting, and watching sports instead of participating in them. And was that cottage cheese on his thighs? How had he not noticed
that
before now? Sometimes the ministerial robes and collar hid things a little
too
well.

Or perhaps he’d stopped noticing that he even
had
a body.

Feeling a sudden urge for a return to clarity, he dropped the towel to the floor and studied himself in full.

Once he had been so proud to see himself after a shower. He had been an athlete in High School—a runner—lean and trim. The ‘Handsome American’. Now he pinched his flab—far more than an inch—and
thanked
the Lord for those ministerial robes and collar.

How had he not noticed this deterioration before now? How had he seen things so clearly—and not seen them at all?

Then he thought of her. That woman in the church, and the way she had trimmed her…

He felt a part of him spring to life that had been dormant since even before his wife had left him. It surprised him, yet felt comforting and familiar. It reminded him even more of those younger days when he’d looked good in a mirror, when women had eyed him with smiles and interest, and unspoken invitations instead of indifference.

When a pretty young French girl had become excited about the thought of seeing him naked. In public. Before others.

When he’d been hopeful. And happy. And Alive.

The sensation of desire for this female minister was warm, and exciting, and welcome—but it made him a little afraid. Could God
want
him to feel this way about such a woman?

The same way he had felt about the girl from Toulon?

Because—Lord help him, Lord tell him if this wrong—he still liked it, just as he had in Bordeaux, and ever since. The excitement, the uncertainty, the thoughts of her—that minister—nude. All the time. In public.

Okay. If he was going to be honest with himself about what God had lain before him and seemed to be testing him with, he liked it.

He really,
really
liked it.

“These magazines
suck
,” Morgan said, as Waboombas put on make-up for the evening.

“What’s wrong with them?” I asked.

“Look at this centerfold,” he said, holding it up.

It was a typical Playboy image—a beautiful ‘girl-next-door-toplastic-surgeons’ type who never lived next-door to me, and had unbelievably white teeth, perfect hair, and an overly developed body. Only she wasn’t naked. I had been so inundated by naked people for the last few hours, that there was something rather jarring and sexually attractive about it.

“She’s wearing a dress,” Morgan said, annoyed.

He put the magazine down before him and leafed through it with irritation.

“It starts out good, she’s hot, and naked, and then she starts to put clothes on. And then—in the centerfold—she’s
fully dressed
. I mean,
what the hell?”

I took the magazine and looked through it. At first it was hard to see the difference. All the women were partially clothed, or nude, but the preponderance of images seemed to be centered on women putting their clothes
on
, and not taking them
off. Hiding
their intimate bits, not revealing them.

“This is bizarre,” I said.

I flipped further and noticed the cartoons. All of them were of naked people in nude situations, when unexpectedly dressed women suddenly showed up and threw a monkey wrench into the works. Naked women sneered at clothed women. Naked men ogled fully dressed women in evening clothes. Naked people were accosted by an old lady in an evening gown.

Something began to seep into my consciousness, but it only nipped at my brain, and didn’t seem hungry enough to take a full bite.

I reached down and took some of Morgan’s other magazines. They were all essentially the same. At first glance you might not realize it because women were partially
clothed
in some of the images, and could be interpreted as partially
naked
. A glass half full kind of thing. But the goal was definitely to see them ultimately reach a complete state of dress.

I took some of the comics.

On the cover of the first, Spiderman wore a mask, gloves, and boots—and nothing else other than—apparently—body-paint. Dangling between his legs, you could clearly see his blue Spider Wang. Look out!

The X-Men wore leather and spandex like always, but mostly the kinds of clothing that left them swinging pretty free, and loose, like Polk Street bondage outfits. More like Polk Street bondage outfits than their normal costumes already looked that is.

Interestingly, Nightcrawler had two penises.

Penii?

Superman had a logo stuck on his bare chest, wore a cape, and boots, and rescued naked people. Like Nuderman, only it actually said ‘Superman’ on the cover. Batman wore a mask and a codpiece, and punched a nude bad guy. Wonder Woman had head and wrist bands, her pubic hair trimmed in the shape of a ’W’, and wrestled a nude woman painted with leopard spots who had a tail attached— somehow—just above her bare ass.

“Do you suppose these are special editions just for this town?” Morgan asked, becoming nervous. His lip quivered, and a few beads of sweat were creeping down his forehead.

I felt bad for him. His world was coming out from under him in the worst kind of way.

“No,” I said, trying to be gentle. “They’d never. If these got out to normal channels, the stockholders would freak.”

I opened another comic. And another. It didn’t matter which one I picked, everyone in them was, primarily, naked.

Ms. Waboombas came out brushing her teeth and looked over my shoulder.

“Cool,” she said, spitting foam. “Where’d those come from?”

She grabbed one of the comics and started leafing through it.

“Wow,” she said. “I should have done
my
comic like this. It would sell more.”

For many years, during the peak of comics production back in the forties, fifties, and sixties, there were cheaply produced little books called ‘Tijuana Bibles’ that crudely imitated popular comic strip heroes and characters of the time, only naked, and having copious amounts of sex. Mickey Mouse, Flash Gordon, Superman, Wonder Woman—you name it. These could have been something like that, but the quality was too high, the production values too expensive, and you didn’t usually find Tijuana Bibles in classy hotels. Even nudist hotels. Also, there was no sex in these comics. Or at least not much to speak of. It was more like whatever alternate universe they were based in just didn’t bother wearing clothes.