by Chuck Austen
“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.
It was all backward.
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.
The thing in my brain finally took a bite. Ms. Nuckeby kept saying ‘your world’ as if it were an entirely different planet. None of us had ever heard of this place, in spite of the fact that it should be legendary. An entire town of nudists just south of the city…
A chill ran through me.
I dropped the comics and magazines onto the bed, and grabbed the television remote, clicking on the TV.
As it warmed up, we heard the president giving a typical speech. It was our president, no doubt. I would recognize that arrogant voice and lack of linguistic skill anywhere.
Then the picture emerged, and Waboombas gasped.
The President of the United States of America was naked.
Standing at a podium, positioned so we could see only his torso, stood George W. Bush. Naked. Behind him, all the loyal partisans clapped, and cheered, and smiled, nakedly.
Very, very, nakedly.
I nearly fell over onto the bed. Ms. Waboombas sat beside me, and we both continued watching with wide-eyes and open mouths.
“We are facin’ our greatest enemy!” the president said. “People who don’t like our way of life! Bad people! People with clothes, who want to see us in ‘em. Who want to see our women in ‘em. Bad people. Not good people. And God made it clear when He kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden and said—basically, He said—don’t come back till you’re naked! So we need to bring democracy and freedom to the world, and make those people take off their clothes!”
The group behind him cheered, clapped, and held up signs that said ‘THE NAKED WAY IS THE AMERICAN WAY!’
“It’s another dimension,” I said.
“You mean the whole country is like this?” Waboombas asked.
“I think so.”
“Nobody wears clothes.”
“Apparently.”
“I’m out of a job.”
We sat silently for a moment, absorbed by the immensity of it. Morgan looked up from his magazines.
“Hey,” he said, pointing to the television. “That looks like the president.” He squinted at the tube. “Is he naked?”
Waboombas and I sat for over an hour clicking through stations, checking channels, watching movies, and taking it all in.
Sporting events, reality shows, cooking shows, newscasts, soap operas. All the people wore little or no clothing. Though politicians wore ties.
There were some ‘adult’ channels where people put on clothing and had sex. But you couldn’t see it. It was always hidden under the folds of fabric.
I kept flipping through the stations, hoping that at any minute the channels would right themselves, and we’d be back to normal television—like Oprah.
Then I found Oprah, and she was naked. Tom Cruise was jumping on her couch, and he was naked.
“Wow,” I said. “Who knew Oprah was so hot?”
“Just turn it off,” said Waboombas.
She lay on the bed, massaging her head as if Hades, Poseidon, Hestia, Hera, and Demeter were having a massive slam-dance party inside her skull, and her fingertips were trying, Zeus-like, to squeeze them all out.
Morgan had gone back to reading.
“Ha! Spiderman had a little dick,” he laughed, and chewed on a muffin. “Then he got bit by the spider, and it swelled.” He took another bite, and said more to himself. “Man, I gotta get bit by a spider.”
“This doesn’t change anything,” I said, shaking it off and gathering myself. “It just explains a few things. Let’s still go to the Festival and the auction.”
“But…“ Waboombas wondered, “…are we stuck here?”
“I don’t think so. Wisper came to our world. There’s got to be a way for us to get back too.” I was amazed at how calm I was. Years of Star Trek and comic book reading had obviously well-prepared me for just such a trauma as this.
“But what am I gonna do if we can’t get back, Corky?” Waboombas moaned.
It was unsettling to see her off-balance this way. I was used to the confident Waboombas who controlled everything and everyone with a word, and a bend, and a
strut. Apparently this turning upside down of the rules had left her—like all of us—a bit lost. Even her crazy sense of reality no longer applied.
“I make my living off people who want me to take my clothes off. No one’s gonna care here.”
“We’ll get back,” I assured her. “Even my Aunt Helena did, when she dropped off Ms. Nuckeby.”
“Hey. That’s the same name as the restaurant,” Morgan said between chews.
“What a weird coincidence,” I said flatly.
“Yeah.”
He looked at me for a moment, as if waiting for something more. Then the hamster lay down and went to sleep again, and Morgan returned to his comics.
Waboombas sighed, heavily. “All right. If you really think so. But I’m gonna be pissed off if we get stuck here and I have to put clothes on to make a living. I like getting naked.”
Then a light seemed to go off in her head, and she smiled suddenly. I frowned at her, curious as to what she was thinking.
“What?” I asked.
She thought for a moment more.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Then—you’ll still do this?”
“Absolutely,” she said and smiled, a little menacingly. The Great Black Shark, Waboombimus Maximus Dominatricus, scented fresh blood in the water, and was circling her prey.
A little bird was telling me I should be worried, but other than in cartoons, who listens to little birds?
Mindie ran through the bushes for what seemed like hours. Breathing hard and terrified beyond words, she couldn’t manage to bring herself to stop no matter how much her legs ached.
She was slashed, cut, bruised, and boiled, and her skin itched insanely. Once or twice she thought she had seen or heard animals in the undergrowth, but fortunately, they always seemed to scamper off in a direction other than toward her, and nothing had yet attempted to dine on Butterwycke a la Poissone Oake.
The sun was going down in the late evening summer sky, and through the shadows of the foliage it was difficult to see farther than a few feet in front of her. Eventually, she decided she could no longer tolerate the leaves and branches abrading her skin, so she staggered out of the local plant-life and onto the beach, moaning loudly. She nearly collided with a nude young man, and nuder young woman walking along the shore. They screamed at the sight, and sound, of my former fiancée and ran away back toward the village.
Slowly, steadily, Mindie shuffled in the opposite direction, away from them, me, and naked civilization in general, and was minimally comforted when the going became much easier over the damp sand. Not, of course, as easy as it might have been had she spent less time trying to cover her various exposed naughty-bits, but far quicker than rumbling, bumbling, and stumbling through the darkest jungles of Nikkid Bottoms had been.
She came to a large mound of rocks that resembled the droppings of some long-dead, Brontosaurus-sized horse, which had likely sat there for centuries, petrified near the waterline. Deciding she needed a rest, she ran around the pile of stones to squat and hide, and nearly fell over an elderly, naked couple making love in the sand. The pair was considerably older, though fit (if a bit worn), and had apparently decided to take full advantage of a beach that was supposed to be deserted while everyone made their way to the first night of the Summertime Soiree.
All three of the surprised individuals in question, Mindie the Monster, Old Naked Man, and Old Naked Lady, shrieked in horror. Scared and revolted, Mindie whimpered pathetic sounds of anguish, disapproval, and disgust, grabbed tightly to her crotch and boobs, and hurried away as if terrified the aged nudists might leap up from the sand at any moment in an attempt to have old-people sex with her. She lurched off, far into the distance, crying, stiff-legged, and faltering now, due to massive influxes of lactic acid. The aged couple watched her go, panting heavily with their own rush of adrenaline.
As Mindie receded down the beach, staggering, groaning, and moaning, the old man and old woman looked at one another, shocked and confused, each shaking their head ‘no’ to indicate that neither of them knew what the hell that was. After a moment of staring into each other’s eyes fearfully, they suddenly leaped on one another again, and began kissing passionately, returning, undeterred, to nature’s timeless, siren song of lust.
Farther along the beach, Mindie saw the stone bridge leading off the Island, and—breathing a sigh of relief—hurried that way.
At last she could get away from this crazy place and make it back to the real world where people had the common courtesy to keep their nudity hidden under clothes.
The crowd at the Summer Soiree was immense. I hadn’t seen so many naked bodies outside Hieronymus Bosch paintings of hell. The scene was decidedly more pleasant here though than in old Boschie’s twisted imagination. For one, there were no demons prodding people over flames with wicked-looking instruments of torture, only aproned chefs prodding roasting animals with barbecue forks.
Really, it was just a party like any other: People eating, drinking, and hitting on each other, families with children, couples of all variations, sugar, salt, fat, and cholesterol sprinkled with tall tales, jokes and laughter. People just happened to be doing it without being separated by layers of clothing, which—when you think about it— really saved time in the ‘what does this person look like naked’ department. The lack of knowing often plagues people seeking romance—particularly those who don’t want to get shortchanged when the evening is otherwise going so well—by bras stuffed with socks, or jeans stuffed with salami.
“All right,” Ms. Waboombas said, moving away from me and wading into the naked ocean, still wearing nothing but high heels. Morgan had decided to stay in the room, alone, possibly forever. “I’ll see you at the auction.”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Got things to do. Don’t worry,” she said, sensing my nervousness. “I’ll be there.”
Apparently, she could see I wasn’t convinced.
“I want to be there.”
“Okay.” I said finally.
She stopped and focused on me.
“I can’t help but notice, Mister Wopplesdown,” she said, pronouncing it correctly with mock formality, apparently teasing me over my constant referrals to her as ‘Ms. Waboombas’. “That your solution to this problem is money oriented.”
“Not money, no. The money gets me next to Wisper, sure. But the rest is up to me.”
“Mmm,” Ms—Wendy said, nodding slowly, apparently not convinced.
“I understand what you’re getting at…Wendy. But I do know not all my problems can be solved with a simple outlay of cash.”
She still didn’t seem to be buying it. I looked off into the distance to give it some thought, and immediately regretted doing so as my eyes fell on a particularly large and incredibly hairy man happily lumbering and swinging my way. He looked like a naked Hagrid.
“Money can be the easy answer, sometimes,” I said, quickly returning my attention to Wendy. “It’s hard to get away from. Sometimes you feel trapped by it. Like a tar baby.”
Her tone and expression suddenly became more focused, and a bit stern.
“A what?” she asked.
“A tar baby. Haven’t you ever heard those fairy tales?” I asked, missing her change of mood and expression. “When you were a kid?” “Why don’t you tell me about them,” she said quietly.
“Well, there’s this fox, right? And he wants to trap this rabbit that’s bothering him. So the fox, he makes a baby out of tar, right? And leaves it on the side of the road. So when the rabbit comes by, he tries talking to the baby—which, I guess, isn’t really a baby, it’s more like a kid—and when the kid doesn’t respond, the rabbit gets annoyed and starts pushing on him and roughing him up a bit, and before long, he’s wrapped up in sticky goo, and there’s nothing he can do to get out.”
“And what makes br’er fox know br’er rabbit is going to get rough with the tar baby, Corky…?” she asked, smiling, though her voice felt measured, r
estrained. “…Just because the baby won’t talk to him?”
“Well,” I said, never having given it a moment’s thought before, seeing as it was just a children’s story, and I’d been just a child listening to it. Even as an adult, I hadn’t always bothered with why things happened the way they did. That’s why I liked Michael Bay movies. “I don’t know, I suppose he…”
It was then that I really took in all of Ms. Waboombas, or rather, all of Wendy. Tall, stately, her dark skin standing out in stark relief against the crowd. Here and there behind her I could see other, darkskinned bodies, but mostly the majority of the crowd was pink and pale, or at best evenly tan, though very few were anywhere near as dark as she. It made her stand out plainly for obvious reasons.
And hit my like a brick.
“Because…he was…black?” I asked. Not really asking, more realizing and dropping an insincere question mark in at the end to show I’d just learned something unexpectedly profound from a stripper.
“Could be,” she said, obviously not thinking there were any other possible reasons.
“It’s a racist story,” I said, horrified at my own ignorance.
“Most of Uncle Remus’s tales are.”
“I’m sorry, Wendy. I didn’t mean anything…”
“I know you didn’t,” she said, smiling. “I got a pretty good idea who you really are by now, Corky.”
“Still…”
“Still,” she said. “The thing you need to take away from this moment is this; that sometimes the reason people from different worlds prefer to associate only with other people from those same worlds is: you don’t get them accidentally saying stupid shit like that.”
I swallowed hard, supremely humiliated.
“And if people want to cross into other worlds, then they need to see that sometimes shit like this is going to happen, and you have to have the strength to step back and see the intent. See if whoever said it is really a jerk racist, or just a dumbass.”
“I’m just a dumbass,” I told her.
“No, you’re not. You’re just not too deep. But I think we’re starting to move out of the shallow end of the pool now with you, aren’t we?”