by Chuck Austen
I signed the receipt she laid before me, and she studied me rather intently. I added a small tip, and she gasped, delighted.
“Oh, that’s not necessary.”
“Nice people need to be rewarded,” I said. “That’s a rarity too.”
“Well, aren’t you the sweetest thing. Thank you.”
As she bagged up the goods, she continued to eye me, carefully. Perhaps the tip had been a mistake, and she had taken it as a flirt of some kind. I was so bad at this interpersonal, human-to-human communications stuff. She finished stuffing and handed me my things.
“You like girls?” she asked, clearly referencing the magazines.
“Um…those are his,” I said, annoyed. Then, startled, I threw in: “But I do like girls!” Realizing the tone of my first answer might be taken completely the wrong way.
“Oh, well that’s good. You in town for business?”
“No. Um…pleasure, of a sort.”
Morgan snorted. I pretended not to hear.
“But…” she said, seemingly struggling to get to something, “…you’re a businessman or something? I mean—you have that cleancut look about you, like you must have a job, right?”
“Um, yes. I have a job.”
“He’s rich,” Morgan said, once again proving how utterly useless he could be in almost any situation.
“Not that rich,” I said.
“Then you should go to the auction!” Sandy chimed. “I think you’ll get a kick out of it, and there really are an awful lot of pretty girls there.” She eyed me with purpose. “My daughter, for instance.”
Ah! So it wasn’t her she wanted me for, but Sophie. I glanced out through the glass wall toward the reception desk, where the child in question was bouncily helping other customers, and probably telling them aliens lived in her head.
“Well, you see, I really…”
“She’s awfully pretty,” Sandy pressed, overstressing the ‘awfully’ part, and not catching the linguistic contradiction, “and if you buy her, she has to stay with you the whole weekend. Those are the rules. Follow you wherever you go—the street-fair, the carnival, the fireworks. She could even show you around if you want. We have some very beautiful scenery here in Nikkid Bottoms. The Big Giant Heads. The Singing Caves. The Indian Village. The Druid Altars. The Hanging Gardens of Freilichtpark. Very unique. Very romantic.”
I could already imagine what was hanging in those Hanging Gardens, and the thought wasn’t terribly romantic to me.
“I’ve seen some of it. And it is quite lovely, but…”
“Of course, tonight’s just a kind of a ‘get-to-know-you’ thing, so you don’t have to be naked, if that makes you uncomfortable.” She glanced at my ruined pants. “But by tomorrow, sunrise, nudity will be required everywhere in town. Would that bother you?”
Around her, and alien Sophie? Yes.
“Thanks,” I said. “You’re very sweet. But it’s really a moot point. We’ll be leaving—even before tonight, I’m afraid.”
“Oh,” she said, seeming genuinely disappointed. “Well. It’s our loss, isn’t it?” She handed me my freshly bagged smut. “And I suppose Washburne’s gain. I hope you at least enjoyed your stay.”
Morgan snorted again. I glared at him. Having the true size of his penis on display had made him unforgivably rude. I turned back to Sandy and smiled.
“I did enjoy my stay,” I told her. “Truly. Thank you.”
Heading for the door, I gave it some thought, and suddenly realized I hadn’t lied to her. I had enjoyed my stay—even the being chased with sticks and rocks, and being thrown out of the restaurant part. How was that possible? Was I a secret masochist? It’s possible as I was considering marrying Mindie.
But maybe it was because for the first time in my life, I realized, I had been pursuing something that made me happy and living. Doing things. Facing consequences.
I let my mind wander back through the day’s events, and it all came around to Ms. Nuckeby. She had thrilled every inch of me, and motivated me, even when things went wrong. I had never really been motivated before, in my young life, and it had all been exciting. Exhilarating.
Fun.
And in the midst of it all, I had learned that she was—truly—only interested in me, for me. While that may have left her tastes in question, it was nonetheless true. She was even willing to live with me and be poor. My fears really were all that had held me back, and she hadn’t become disheartened until I couldn’t find my way clear to either live off of her, or run around without pants.
What the hell was wrong with me?
I looked at the chocolates in my hand. And now I was going back upstairs to Mindie?
I needed a shrink!
I looked around at Sandy, and she smiled again. She was a lovely person, and while I wasn’t interested in her, or her daughter, she seemed willing to accept me because she felt I might be good to Sophie. Might not Wisper’s parents be the same? And if not, wouldn’t it be worth learning how to feel good without clothes to have someone as magnificent, and caring, and beautiful as Wisper? I’d done it to annoy Mindie. Why not to show appreciation for Wisper?
My thoughts seized. What was to learn? I had already felt good without wearing clothes.
First, in the restaurant parking lot, the sensations were sensual and pleasant. Then on the beach with Wisper—that was, of course, beyond all description. Her appreciation of my nudity was—well, there were no words—and it was again only my ridiculous fears that had interfered. Even before I’d come to this place, while still at home, I preferred to swim in the nude rather than in a suit, and here, ‘this is the one place no on cares if you’re naked’. If I had said it once, I’d said it a hundred times since arriving, and never once processed the words myself.
No one cared.
No one but Wisper.
Morgan had a point. I liked the way it felt. Enjoyed the sensations. Why couldn’t I manage it for as glorious a prize as her?
Because I liked the way it felt.
Like being chased with rocks and sticks, my life had been spent running and hiding from feelings of all kinds. If one never reached, one never missed, and thereby never suffered the pain of missing. Better to slog through life in an endlessly dull, unchallenged state than to fly, get too close to the sun, and suffer the fate of Icarus. No matter that you might get an island named after you.
And yet, even at that, I was constantly failing. In the eyes of a family who didn’t understand me, of a friend who wanted me to come back to our adolescence and be who I no longer was, of a fiancée who only wanted me for…
For what?
Why did Mindie want me if she didn’t really ‘want’ me? And why was I willing—even now—to live a life of endless rejection with her rather than acceptance with someone as intelligent, and discerning, and incredible as Wisper?
Especially when Wisper hadn’t rejected me. I had rejected her.
Because she felt too good, and I didn’t think I deserved her. Couldn’t come to terms with the fact that she wanted me, and knew she would eventually leave me so that—again, like Icarus—I’d end my days floating on an empty ocean of pain, surrounded by a gooey puddle of waxy feathers and pointless aspirations. A dull, unappreciated existence was far less frightening than losing something I might be emotionally unequipped to survive losing. Even now, the pain of missing Wisper was almost debilitating. Imagine if I had actually fallen in love with her.
Imagine? Did I really need to imagine?
I sighed heavily again. This was how it had to be, clearly. Mindie was all I could handle emotionally. If she left me, it wouldn’t hurt. Eventually, I would only disappoint Wisper, and she would rip my heart out. So we were both better off with someone else. Me with Mindie, and Wisper with—anyone else. Even the rich man who had wanted her so badly, whose interest had made her flee Nikkid Bottoms in the first place would be a vast improvement over someone like…
I froze as my brain finally stopped moving like a limbles
s frog struggling to escape a bowl full of tapioca and began functioning as it was generally intended to. I turned to the woman behind the counter and looked at her intently. I could see no family resemblance, but…
“Mrs. Nuckeby?”
“Yes?”
My heart skipped a beat. I gasped for breath and must have looked like a goldfish that had gotten above its station and learned— drying out on the carpet—that he really does need water to breathe. I felt jolts of anger flash through me, and they made my testicles— Grinch-like—grow to three times their size that day.
Wisper was putting herself up for auction.
To Washburne.
Even in my mind, his name sounded like a multi-legged, garbage-dwelling creature that needed stepping on.
I was jealous. Ragingly so. And I couldn’t contain it. Sandy’s real genetic affiliation had changed everything.
“You just want your daughter to be happy, don’t you, Sandy.”
“Of course,” she said, as if it were self-evident.
“So do I,” I said and ran out the door.
With Morgan close behind, magazines flapping over his crotch, I raced to my hotel room and found a naked man with white hair, glasses and a satchel waiting outside with the equally naked Ms. Waboombas.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Hey, Corky,” Waboombas said. “Mindie’s in a snit.”
“Why?”
“I’m Doctor Wedgwood King,” Doctor Wedgwood King said, as if I’d been expecting him. He could see by my expression that I hadn’t. “Someone called me?”
Still nothing from me.
“Is this your room?” he asked me.
“It is, yes.”
“Someone rang my office. Said it was an emergency, but the woman inside won’t let me in.”
“Why does she need to?”
“I don’t know,” he said, exasperated, and pointed toward the door. “But she admitted she needs a doctor, and she won’t let me through. Should I just leave?”
“Mindie needs a doctor? Why?”
“I just said, I don’t know.”
My brain was finally beginning to catch up with the actual conversation in the hallway and disengage from the one in my head. Talking to naked people often meant needing an extra few sentences to stop the internal dialogue of ‘look at his dick’. ‘Stop looking at his dick’.’ ‘Look at his ass’. ‘Stop looking at his ass’. Before you could actually pay attention to the sound coming out of their mouths, far, far north of your unintended point of interest.
Rather than try any more actual attempts at speaking, I pulled the key-card out of my pants pocket and slipped it through the slot on the door. It beeped, and I pushed.
The room was dark, curtains pulled tight, and Mindie began screaming almost immediately.
“GET OUT! GET OUT!”
“Mindie, it’s me! What’s the matter?”
“Corky?”
“Yes. And I’ve got the doctor here.”
“DON’T LET HIM IN! HE HASN’T GOT ANY PANTS ON! I SAW HIS THINGIE THROUGH THE PEEPHOLE!”
“Mindie, we’re in a nudist resort,” I said, honestly tired of saying it. “Even the doctor is a nudist.”
“I’m not going to have a man touching me while his thingie is out.”
“Why do you need a doctor anyway?”
“I’m sick,” she said pathetically.
I moved farther into the near-blackened room and tried to see where she was.
“Sick, how? What’s the matter with you?”
“STAY OUT!”
“Mindie, this is ridiculous,” I said.
I turned on the light and screamed myself. I was really going to have to take some vocal deepening lessons.
Mindie lay in bed, under the covers, and wearing someone’s pajamas. Every bit of her exposed flesh—and, one had to assume, her unexposed flesh, as well—was covered in boils, welts, and red splotches. Her head looked like a bubbly pomegranate with spiked hair. She was scratching like a dog trying to dig fleas from its internal organs.
“Dear, God,” I said.
“It itches!” she wailed.
“Don’t scratch.”
“IT ITCHES!”
I moved over to her and grabbed her hands, but she struggled to get away.
“What are you doing? Let go of me!”
“Doctor!” I called. “Please come in!”
He moved quickly through the door, and Mindie yelped. “Oh, dear God, doesn’t anybody hide their uglies in this vile little town?”
“She rolled in some bushes,” I said. “It must be Poison Oak, or Poison Ivy, or poison…Oak,” I repeated, not able to think of another poisonous plant.
“Wow. That’s what Poison Ivy does?” Morgan asked, opening Mindie’s chocolates. “No wonder she’s evil.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant Mindie or Batman’s arch villainess. Evil could aptly apply to either.
“Oh, my heavens,” the doctor said with profound concern upon seeing his blistered patient. “I have some calamine lotion. But the best thing is a hot shower. As hot as she can manage. It releases the histamines.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I am a doctor.”
True. He even had a bag to prove it.
He moved to the other side of Mindie, her eyes following his loose penis everywhere it went, and we began to lift her from the bed. As he raised her, she leaned away from him and into me, whimpering and wailing.
“Oh, God. Oh, God, Oh, God, don’t let it touch me. DON’T LET IT TOUCH ME!”
We restrained her as best we could and dragged her toward the bathroom. As we stumbled and struggled, Mindie noticed Waboombas and Morgan in the doorway, eating her chocolates while he read a comic.
“Oh, my GOD!
HIS thingie is out, TOO!” Morgan quickly covered up. “What is WRONG with you people?”
Inside the bathroom, the doctor pointed to the shower.
“Turn it on. As hot as she can handle, then a little hotter.” Mindie’s struggling had subsided. She was weak and tired, probably from her endless scratching and whining. So I could operate the faucets, we set her on the toilet where she sat still and calm, though continuing to scrape away with her nails.
“Stop itching,” the doctor warned. “You’re making it worse.”
He then began to undo her pajama buttons, and she slapped his hand away. He tried again, and she slapped again.
“Miss. You have to…”
“Absolutely not,” she said.
“I’ll do it,” I said.
I had the water running—just the hot until it could warm up— and moved over to where Mindie sat, once again scratching madly. I reached for a pajama button. She stopped scratching and swatted me.
Reach. Swat. Itch. Reach Swat. Itch. Reach Swat. Itch.
I sighed and turned to the doctor. “Can she just shower like this?”
“The water needs to touch the skin, so it can open the pores and wash away the histamines.”
“What happens if we leave her alone?”
“She’ll continue to open her skin with all that scratching. This looks like a very serious case. It might even be in her lungs. Perhaps I should hospitalize her.”
“NO!” she said, horrified, then softened and looked at me pitifully. “They’re probably all naked there too.”
I sighed heavily and became angry.
“Whatever. It’s your skin, Mindie.”
“Which could scar, terribly,” the doctor said, trying a different tack, “if you damage the skin with all that itching.”
She looked at him with concern, still slowly scratching her stomach. She looked sad and defeated for a pomegranate. “I don’t want to be scarred,” she whined.
“No, you don’t,” I said.
“I’m young and pretty.”
I hesitated. “You’re young…” I said.
The doctor, apparently seeing an urgent need for the powers of his Hippocratic oath, dove in to
salvage things. “… And very pretty. And you should stay that way.”
She looked at him, then at me. “He is a doctor.”
“As far as I know.”
Reluctantly, she acquiesced and moved her arms away.
“All right,” she said bravely. “Take them off. I’ll try the shower.”
We both reached for the pajama buttons, but Mindie pulled back from the doctor.
“Let Corky.” I felt momentarily touched. “He has pants on.” And I shouldn’t have been.
I slowly unbuttoned her shirt, and found the skin hidden behind the clothing to be far worse than anything we had seen so far. Her breasts were malformed, blistered melons, mottled with strange hues of inflamed red and pus yellow. She groaned as I slipped the light fabric from around her shoulders and off her arms, all of which were worse than her breasts. The cloth stuck to open sores in a few places, and she squealed a little with each tiny tearing of flesh and material. I reached for the pants, and she slapped me.
“Sorry,” she said, sheepish. “Instinct. Go ahead.”
She stood to allow me easier access, and I slipped the pants slowly down from her waist, trying to avoid sticking sores and split skin, for as with the shoulders, it had adhered in places where wounds had broken open and fluid had leaked. Mindie moaned a bit, and just as I got the pants down around her pubic area, she suddenly screamed, and slapped my face this time.
“DON’T LOOK AT MY KITTEN!”
“Your what?”
“JUST DON’T LOOK!”
“Mindie… ”
She stared at me for a long moment, then softened.
“I’m overreacting again,” she said.
“Somewhat.”
“I mean: we are going to be married.”
“No, we’re not,” I said firmly.
She looked like she’d been poked with a hot stick.
“What?”
“We’re not getting married, Mindie. But we can talk about that later.”
“But we have to get married. What will I do if we don’t get married?”
“I’m sure you’ll be fine, Mindie.” And I pulled again, gently, at her pajama bottoms.
“I won’t be fine!” she screamed. “GET OFF OF ME!”
She cuffed me in the side of the head, and I went down, ripping her pajama bottoms with me.