Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [145]
As my stomach growled a snappy tune, I entered a small pub named ‘The Headless Horseman’. Not exactly the most appetizing of titles, but the menu pinned outside had some tasty sounding options on it, and they accepted credit cards, which was a plus since the driver carried no cash.
The place was mostly empty, given that the dinner hour hadn’t really started yet, so I took a prime seat near the weathered, stone fireplace at the center of the rough-timbered room. A waitress glided over, handed me a menu, took my drink order, and left me to decide on a meal. She made no comment on the fact that I wore clothes, and I made no comment on the fact that she didn’t.
Life in balance.
Once I’d decided on bangers and mash—apparently an old English favorite because it sounded like something a nude waitress would do in your lap—I settled back and took in my surroundings. Quaint and charming. Rustic and weathered, but not dirty. Interestingly, there hadn’t been one place in this town where I hadn’t felt captivated and comfortable. If not for all the nudity, I could have lived here quite happily. Or at least bought rental property.
I watched the chef prepare my food, while the waitress cleaned and re-stocked napkins, silverware, and condiments for the expected evening rush. Even though he should have been used to seeing her sans undergarments, I was pleased to note that the chef still snuck a glance at her bare behind as she bent over to tuck menus between salt and pepper shakers at each table. It was comforting to know that some truths remained universal.
Content that my food was in the capable hands of a fellow lech, I turned my attentions to the restaurant’s only other occupants, a pair of elderly men—one wearing a hat and both wearing penny loafers— as they played chess beside meals that had long ago gone cold. The hatless player kept reaching for pieces as the other would shake his head and say ‘Nh.’ ‘Nh.’ ‘Nh.’ Apparently warning him off various potential moves. This went on for a few minutes before the player in the hat doing the warning got annoyed and reached over to move some piece the first man had never even gone near. Then the hatted man would slowly and deliberately take his time selecting his move and repeat the process of being annoyed when it was the other guy’s turn.
Bored of this, I gazed out the window at the passersby in an effort to relax and adjust to the openness of it all. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get past such a sheer volume of humanity so comfortable with its own bare-assedness.
Men, women, children, black, white, yellow, brown, red, and one man who looked a little green. It just wouldn’t sit with me. My brain refused to wrap itself around the idea that public nudity was something you should ever feel comfortable with. And for Wisper’s sake, I desperately wanted to. Private nudity—okay. But I’d been raised in an environment where most of our contemporary morality plays end in the violent death and/or dismemberment of openly sexual teenagers at the hands of stinky men in hockey masks. Stay repressed or die. It was a guiding truth as old as the Puritans.
That’s when I noticed another of the dancing, burning Pilgrims. Was that the turning point in this world’s history? Had all the Puritans died in some fire that changed the course of history and led to a world of no clothes, no shame, and—perhaps even more surprising—no Thanksgiving?
As I continued staring through the glass, I noticed, in particular, the children. They seemed happy. Playful. Undamaged. In our world, one of those ‘Great Truths’ is how much ‘nudity’, and ‘sexual openness’ will destroy the minds of the innocent.
Not here.
Was the potential damage a lie? Or was there something about this world and how they raised their kids that helped them cope with whatever damage had been inflicted?
These were questions too weighty for me to answer.