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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 the 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