by Chuck Austen
As a delighted murmur rose from the gathering crowd of men, Wisper shot Petal a look, and her talkative sister finally discovered another fine place to put a period.
“Sorry,” Petal said, a little hurt. “I was just selling you, is all.”
Wisper’s look said plainly that additional selling would be severely punished.
“Okay, fine,” Petal whined, and as every available male in the place tensed for the frenzy of bidding to commence, she opened the floodgates. “Then, without further ado, which is such an odd thing to say really, especially if you don’t know what an ‘ado’ is…”
Wisper rolled her eyes and held up a hand.
“What am I bid?” she said, not needing a microphone to be heard.
“One hundred thousand dollars!” a voice shouted, closing any potential floodgates with a slam.
Wisper’s eyes went wide and she froze, hand in the air.
The entire audience, including me, gasped and turned to her bidder-slash-suitor. Washburne just smiled that cat-eating-my-girl’scanary smile of his and stared unblinking at Wisper. She only stared back, though without the same feelings I noted. Washburne, apparently, believed a hundred thousand to be the magic number, given Ms. Waboombas’ instant success.
And from the looks on all the men’s faces, and the fact that I was broke, he was probably correct. I gritted my teeth and fumed. Dammit. How did ordinary people live without wealth?
“Oh,” Petal said. “Wow. That was fast. So. Okay. I guess we’re done. Going once, going twice…”
“Five hundred thousand!” I said.
If it was possible, this new gasp was even louder and more shocked than the previous one, and now every eye trained on me. Which really wasn’t a good thing because at least some of the eyes belonged to police officers and angry teenagers, possibly one or more of those who had been chasing Morgan and me earlier. And apparently Ms. Waboombas hadn’t quite gotten River out of the picture quickly enough because I saw their faces appear at the edge of the crowd, and River just couldn’t be less happy, no matter which part of him you studied.
“Withdraw your bid!” Wisper snarled.
“What?” I said, caught off-guard by her anger.
“I do not want you bidding on me!”
“Do the rules say anything about you getting a choice in the matter?” I asked.
She said nothing and continued glaring at me, then abruptly turned to Petal, who looked sheepish and could only shrug.
“Never been a problem before,” Petal told her older sister.
Wisper turned her attention back to me, speaking volumes without saying a word.
“Then my bid stands,” I said.
She glared at me, fixedly, as her expression slowly softened to one of hurt and sadness. It was unexpected, and I instantly wanted to do whatever it took to make her happy again. Except withdraw my bid.
Then Washburne went and made things even worse.
“Seven hundred thousand!”
I drew a breath to respond, but Wisper cut me off. “Let it go!” she said furiously.
“No,” I said, and began to speak again, but she cut me off once more.
“I don’t want anything to do with you!” she said. “Not now, not ever! Don’t force me!”
Now it was my turn to be hurt.
Every eye was on us, ping-ponging back and forth between her and me with expectation, and I could physically feel how everyone present wanted more—if just so they could understand what the hell was going on. Unfortunately for Wisper, I wanted to know too, and only stoked the fires of interest in the crowd.
“Why not?” I asked, genuinely not understanding.
“Why not?” She was plainly shocked at my ignorance. “Look at you! You’re the only one in this entire crowd, in almost this entire town, who’s wearing pants—if you can even call what’s left of them pants. Yet I know—inside—you’re thinking we’re the one’s who are weird.”
I started to respond, to deny it, but then abruptly realized she was right and only goggled, wordlessly, like a gaffed flounder. To my mind, even with the modest gains I’d made in my time here, on some level I believed that everyone in this town was weird. Ridiculous. Even laughable.
There was no denying my opposing point of view. No matter that I was in the clear minority. No matter that I might have become more enlightened as the day went on. No matter that on some level, I enjoyed aspects of social nudity—as long as it wasn’t mine.
I turned and slowly studied the various faces around me.
I was definitely the outsider, and every glaring eye in the crowd knew it.
“It may be interesting,” Wisper continued, sadness creeping into her voice, “a little exciting—kind of sexy and thrilling, on some levels. But ultimately, you are a foreigner to our point of view. You come from a world where people define themselves by what they wear, and only tease with their sexuality. Show it all, without showing anything. You wear spandex and thongs…”
“I’ve never worn a thong in my life,” I told her emphatically.
“…run around braless, in low-cut tops, and see-through sundresses, and your men ogle your women in those filmy garments and imagine them unclothed. Young girls develop websites so they can sell naked images of themselves and make money from men who will leer at them with guilt-filled pleasure in isolation, secrecy, and privacy.”
“Privacy is a relative thing. The Bush administration…”
“Where you’re from, lingerie is exciting because it’s almost nudity, because you’ve made the human body something titillating, and dirty, and taboo, attaching a sense of wrongness to the most human of all human traits. There’s an inherent self-loathing in the way you’ve twisted the most natural thing in the world into something perverse, something shameful, something fearful that makes getting undressed into a dark, emotionally charged ‘event’. You…you personally, Corky—like to swim in the nude…in your own back yard.”
I gasped. She knew!
“But the thought of doing it where others can see? Horrors. Even though you obviously prefer it to wearing a suit, certainly because you enjoy it, probably because you get a kind of sexual thrill from being exposed, a kind of naughty delight in doing something you consider, quote, ‘wrong’.”
“Delight may be a bit strong,” I said. And not very masculine sounding I might add.
“No, it isn’t,” Wisper corrected. “Hell, your society is so repressed and awkward that finding a willing woman is so potentially nerve-wracking, difficult, and painful that you’d rather have sex with a water-pump than…”
“Three men in dark masks held me at gunpoint and made me do it,” I said to the nudists closest to me. “First I slipped, and fell, then my shorts were viciously sucked off…”
No one was buying it; not surprising really.
“You’d rather have sex with a water pump,” Ms Nuckeby said more forcefully, “than someone who actually wanted you, someone who might really, genuinely care for you.”
I winced, humiliated, and lowered my head to hide my shame.
“Yours is a world of private nudity, Corky. Where the society, the mentality, and even the economy, to a large extent, depend on human repression and guilt, and deeply seated shame,” she finished with some intensity. “And you, Corky,” she said, choking on more than a few tears, “you…sell clothes.”
The assembled crowd gasped with shock, revulsion, and surprise. I glanced around at them nervously. Apparently, here, selling clothes was akin to marketing marital aids to children. Wisper was right. I might never, truly, understand this place.
“This may be fun for you,” she said, her voice cracking, tears fighting their way free of her eyes, “and something you’ll love to talk about when you get home. But you can’t be comfortable here. Not really. And so you need to realize—as I have—that you and I will never be compatible. There will come a day when the newness and the thrill of me being naked all the time will wear off, and you’ll need to get back to th
e place where you really live, mind, body, and soul.”
Oh, God. She was right. After meeting her mother, I had imagined I could stay here as the outsider. But I was too outside. More so than I ever realized.
This had been a delight—in a way the word ‘delight’ can be applied to manly endeavors—a joy, a pleasure on many levels. But always my thoughts were of getting back, never of staying. I imagined myself with Wisper, true, but only as something—someone—who had made me feel good for now. Not in a realistic way that took me beyond the obsession of new love and into the unthinkable territory of the mundane. The routine. The day-to-day existence of living with nudists.
She was beautiful. And sweet. And obviously cared about the world around her in ways I never had. She was relatively poor, and the only time I’d seen her show any interest in money was for the benefit of underprivileged children. I was rich and had never done anything with my money, except waste it on comics.
And wasn’t that her point? I’d never stepped out of my own, selfish worldview so that, other than the temporary thrill of a moment’s sensual pleasure—plastic-covered memories to hang on my wall and remember fondly from time-to-time without ever needing to touch them physically again—other than those, what was Ms. Nuckeby to me?
I looked at her onstage. So lovely, even with her tear-stained eyes and damp breasts. Every inch of her a physical and emotional thrill for me to be sure. And yet she did represent all my greatest fears. Openness. Honesty. Nakedness in all its many forms.
Faced with women almost as beautiful as Wisper every day, I was able to control any urges I might have had—not entirely out of respect, or sensitivity, or courtesy to them, though that was there to be sure—but largely out of fear for losing what I had. I imagined this was how it was for many men, faced with requirements to be politically correct. But the understanding was a surprising revelation to me, and one that spoke volumes about me personally, as I had believed myself above that. Was I now merely succumbing to the baser male nature, confusing lust with love, and harassing an innocent woman, someone with whom I could never, ever, share a meaningful life? Had I become what Grandfather had repeatedly been sued for—someone who chased their urges without consideration for the pursued?
I’d spent my youth devouring four-color comic-book page after four-color comic-book page about the courage of heroes who make the right decisions in difficult situations, only to crap out all those lessons and sustain myself on stored-up fat deposits of fear. But as I watched Ms. Nuckeby’s distraught features plead with me silently, I knew now was one time I had to dig deep within myself—very deep, as deep as it took—find the hero inside, face my innermost demons, battle them down, and return to my tortured soul the elixir of an honest answer.
If I felt anything genuine for Wisper, I owed her that much.
I took another look at the faces and bodies around me. This was their lifestyle. It wasn’t a joke. If I made a similar choice to stay here, that decision would have to be sincere and internalized, or Wisper was right, I didn’t belong in this place—I didn’t belong with her. I would eventually return, again and again, to the idea that the people around me were strange, or outlandish, or bizarre, then probably, horribly, unbelievably, that Wisper herself was just as weird.
I closed my eyes for a moment and bowed my head again. I remembered the excitement and fear of being nude in my closet with Wisper, followed immediately by the humiliation and horror of standing naked before my family and friends in my foyer. I shuddered and pushed those anxieties away to let my mind, instead, drift back to more pleasant thoughts; the sensuousness of swimming in my pool; the luxury of lying nude in my bed sheets as I slept, and…did other things. The sensation of a breeze caressing my all in the Nuckeby’s parking lot.
I opened my eyes and looked down at my ragged pants, virtually destroyed after all I’d been through that day, and yet, there they still were. Binding me. Constraining me. Separating me from those around me.
And beneath those pants? Though there was nothing now, once there had been the underwear of another company, because they were more comfortable. But nothing was more comfortable than nothing.
I began to think of my life in general as something uncomfortable.
I looked over at Morgan, who had his arm around Sophie. She was delighting in his attention, and I could tell she was hoping he would stay. He gave me an enormous grin and a thumbs-up, and I knew he might—but not for long.
I thought deeply about Morgan, and about Grandfather, my family, my butler—all the things that made my life difficult, and began to see—very slowly—that my world was not all that wonderful. It was, in fact, deeply lonely and nowhere near what I’d once hoped it might become. It was more like a Tar Baby, to use that despicable racist term, and I was stuck in it rather than living because of it, and I realized that this is what Wendy must have been referring to in her private little lesson to me. Stay in your small, lonely world if you want. But if you choose to venture into the world of others…
I looked over at her as she readied herself to keep River in check, waiting with real concern for me to make the right decision. As I studied her sweet, troubled face, I realized that I had failed to see my existence as anything but better than all other options, because it was all I’d known, and so much what others—like her and Morgan—had desired for themselves. I had stayed within that life and fought desperately to keep it, even though it wasn’t really happy. Wasn’t really for me.
Be honest. Be moral. Be comfortable.
It wasn’t a joke.
Be honest. Be moral. Be comfortable.
It was a call to those who kept themselves apart with falsity.
Be honest. Be moral. Be comfortable.
Suddenly, in a flash, I saw the truth with perfect clarity.
“One million dollars,” I said.
The crowd erupted with a gasp, followed by a chorus of sounds, not many of them supportive.
“Corky,” Wisper began.
“I think you need a little daring in your life, Ms. Nuckeby,” I said. “A little spontaneity! A little fun!”
“What?” she asked, not understanding.
“One million, one hundred…” Washburne began.
“TWO MILLION!” I yelled, cutting him off.
More gasps all around. Petal and Wisper were speechless. River made a move to stop me, but Waboombas grabbed him by the penis. It surprised them both and stopped him in his tracks.
“‘You’re too damn repressed for someone so young and so cute,’” I reminded Wisper. ”You said that to me.”
“I wasn’t thinking straight,” she said. “I didn’t know you well enough.”
“Or maybe you did. Maybe you knew me better than I knew me.”
“That was when I thought I could stay in your world. I thought maybe we could split the difference. But people don’t change. I couldn’t change. Not really. Not that drastically.”
“You could if it’s who you were all along and you just hadn’t faced up to it yet.”
“Two…eh…two million…” Washburne stammered, and I could tell his heart wasn’t in it.
But mine was.
“THREE—MILLION—DOLLARS!” I shouted.
Astounded gasps raced throughout the courtyard. I think a woman fainted.
“And worth every penny,” I told Wisper. “Life is hard enough not to take advantage of a little harmless joy when it comes your way.”
She was moved for a moment. But not quite enough. Not yet.
“Are you saying I hadn’t faced up to something?” Wisper asked, sounding annoyed.
“No,” I said, reaching for my pants. “I’m saying I hadn’t.” And I ripped away the trousers to reveal my all.
Aaaand, unfortunately, I was erect, again, and everyone stared.
“Dude,” Morgan whined. “Put that away!”
Wisper stared at it, and me, for a stunned moment, then slowly began to smile. But as quickly as the happy expression had reappeared, it fa
ltered and I stepped forward so she could hear the sincerity in my voice.
“I love you, Wisper,” I said, and her smile blossomed in full. She took a step back in shock, then forward again, and really studied me.
“I know that much, at least,” I said. “And I know that this feels more right to me than anything in my short, bland, unpleasant life up till now. Be honest. Be moral. Be comfortable. Take however long you need to ‘be comfortable’ that I won’t change back, or hurt you, or ever, ever leave you.”
She stared at me a long moment, as did Petal and River, and the entire village of Nikkid Bottoms.
“Give me that chance at least,” I said.
Her happy expression faltered slightly, and for a moment I thought she might turn and walk away from me, but instead she leaped down from the stage, ran into my arms, and held me as though she would die without my touch, as I knew, in that moment, that I would die without hers.
After a long, sweet, passionate embrace, we finally pulled apart and smiled at one another, forgetting for the moment that everyone she knew surrounded us. But then they reminded us by breaking into sustained applause.
As I stood there, joyous, smiling, and erect (ho hum), I leaned toward her, her lips so close to mine, the kiss I needed to sustain me so near, and I knew I would never feel a happier, or warmer, or more perfect moment in my life.
Which is just about when Grandfather showed up.
“Dear GOD, are you insane?”
“Grandfather!” I said, absolutely floored by his presence. “What are YOU doing here?”
The crowd parted, pushed aside by the old man’s palpable fury, and opened a clear path between him and me. I said a quick prayer that he was unarmed.
He stood—fully dressed in suit and tie—with Manschingloss, Aunt Helena, and Uncle Pjuter. I could see Biddleby in the car, parked just outside the square and—was that Woodruff near the statue of Homer? What an odd and unexpected assortment of characters.