Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [159]
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