Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [129]
I looked down at them. I wouldn’t for Ms. Nuckeby; I sure as hell wouldn’t for Morgan.
Yet I had when ordered to by Mindie. Apparently fear and pride beat out love and lust as the overriding human emotions. How truly sad.
“We’re in a town full of nudists,” he prodded.
“Come with me to the shop,” I said, ignoring him. “Maybe they’ll have something there.”
With his hands and shirt remnants blocking all possible views of his crotch, we walked down the corridor, through the lobby, and into the little gifts/sundries shop near the entrance to the hotel. Morgan kept turning away from anyone who passed—girls in particular— spinning madly as he walked, as if his penis were magnetized, and everyone else had been charged with opposing polarity.
“Are you gonna tell me what you were doing with that waitress on the beach?” Morgan asked, rotating, top-like.
“What did you think I was doing?” I snarled.
“Wow,” he said, clearly amazed. “Yeah, that, actually. Man, right there on the beach too. Cool. Sorry I screwed the pooch, so to speak. But, dude, you can’t blame me for not knowing. You got your game on fast.”
“Not really. She was also the model in my closet last night.”
“Holy, SHIT, are you fucking kidding me?”
“No, I’m not.”
“How did I not notice that?”
“Maybe because you never looked at her face.”
“Yeah. Maybe that’s it.” He thought about things for a minute. “Dude. What are you doing with that bitch Mindie if a hot piece like that waitress—model—whatever—wants to have actual sex with you?”
I stopped short in the hallway and turned to look at him.
“Morgan,” I said. “She’s from here. She’s a nudist.”
Morgan snorted, shocked at my apparent stupidity. “So?”
“My grandfather would disown me, I’d have no money, and her parents would never accept me because I could never live here naked all the time as they do.”
“Why not?”
“Are you kidding me? Live this lifestyle? And on top of that, I’d be broke. With no idea how to support myself, or her, and no family to help us.”
“Welcome to the club.”
I stared at him for a long minute as the shock slowly sunk in. I’d been whining endlessly about my fears, about the life I’d lose, the things I’d miss, the money I would no longer have, not realizing it was a life Morgan—and most people really—never even had to begin with. Everyone else had to find a way to survive in the world. So what if I had to as well? Welcome to the club indeed.
“At least you’d have her,” Morgan said, driving it home. “Someone who wants you. That’s more than I’ve ever had.”
He stepped past me, and through the doors into the hotel store.
Lost in my own fears, I hadn’t given any thought to what I’d gain, as Morgan just had. Something potentially so meaningful, so much deeper, and far more lasting than mere ‘things’.
I stood there a very long moment before entering, frozen with horror at the thoughtless choice I’d made.
Inside the shop, I felt feverish with loss and lunacy as thoughts of Ms. Nuckeby now began to obsess me more than ever. Somehow, still unable to let go of my fears and just race back to her, I vaguely wandered around the tiny store more-or-less looking for Mindie’s chocolates, but mostly just beating myself up with a mental stick.
Aggravating me all the more was the fact that there were far too many kinds of chocolate for such little a store. Decision making at this point was difficult at best, so I simply grumbled, picked up the smallest, least romantic box available, and stood staring at it, wondering if Ms. Nuckeby liked chocolates, and if she’d prefer eating them, rolling naked in them, or smashing them in my face.
Probably the latter.
As I stared blankly, unable to think or move, Morgan—in another part of the store—continued looking for anything that might even marginally be considered pants, or could in any way cover a man’s crotch unobtrusively. That’s when he noticed a comic book spin-rack in a corner.
“Hey!” he said. “Comics!”
Suddenly he was happier than I’d seen him at any point during the entire trip.
“Get some,” I said. “As many