Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [139]
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.
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.