Body Freedom

Sitting in the cab Sara burst into tears. Her anger had evaporated almost instantly leaving her totally exhausted. It was all just too much! At the party she had drunk several glasses of wine which made things even worse. When she had pulled herself together she got her phone out and tried to decide where to go. She could go to her mom? But she hadn’t seen her for months and it would have entailed lots of explaining and listening to things like ‘I never thought that loser was any good for you.’ and ‘You’re drunk’ etc. This was NOT what she wanted, her relations with her mother were difficult at the best of times. She scrolled down her contact list and chose to call her friend Alison.

Sara’s two friends, Jane and Alison, were gathered at Alice’s Restaurant with seven other students from the Nustock High senior class and a dozen other people, adult members of the Nustock Body Freedom Association (NBFA). All of them were active in the clothing optional campaign, and now after three years of campaigning, a public vote had amended the city charter to adopt the new clothing ordinance and authorize the federal amendment. They were celebrating being officially tolerated by the police department and being allowed to be naked everywhere unless an establishment such as a restaurant or the mall in town, set their own dress code requiring clothing to be worn which covered certain body parts whilst on their premises. The default rule for an establishment was “status quo,” i.e. clothing was required as before the vote unless the business decided otherwise. That meant people could be naked in a street, park or any other public place or their own homes and yards whether screened or not, but had to dress to visit other premises unless the owners specifically permitted nudity or partial nudity. The NBFA activists spent a lot of time lobbying businesses to accept “Body Freedom”.

Over the last few months, as the summer weather got hotter, several private venues in town had agreed and began displaying ‘clothing optional’ signs. The NBFA had produced a stylish ‘CO’ sticker. The first establishment to display it was ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ a clapboard diner on a large run down lot on the edge of town named after the café in the classic 1970’s Arlo Guthrie movie. It wasn’t the only restaurant in California with that name and was often confused with one popular with motorcycle enthusiasts but in Newstock it was THE meeting place for the younger members of the growing nudie community. It had a dirt car park to one side and a vine covered al-fresco dining area overlooking an arm of the lake behind it. The diner was decked out in 1970’s hippy style and nudity fitted right. After adopting CO the staff, both male and female, began wearing nothing but small striped aprons. It was very informal and as the local police stopped harassing people for driving naked patrons soon started going without bothering to dress.

Other places in town were more restrictive whilst trying to be in with the times. The Nustock City Mall had set a dress code, which stated that all visitors, male and female could be topless but, had to cover their genitals. The NBFA had been picketing in the mall car park against this requirement for most of the day.

The naked party on Alice’s terrace went on well into the evening and became fairly boisterous with a small amount of illicit alcohol and home grown weed circulating. The management kept a weather eye on the group of students but had an understanding with the local police that they would not interfere unless trouble ensued. The attitude was that the kids would be in far more danger if they were banned and had to hide in the scrub to drink or smoke.

Around 8.30 pm Alison’s phone rang.

Sara was in a highly emotional state. ‘Hi Alice, HELP, I’ve split up with Peter. We’ve had an enormous row and I walked out on him vowing it was all over. Could I come round? I need a shoulder to cry on.’

‘Sara love, of course you can. We are at Alice’s Restaurant, it’s a party to celebrate three new establishments accepting the CO. ordinance but we can go down by the lake and talk privately if you like.’

‘You nude?’

‘Yup. We are the “Nustock Body Freedom Association” so yes we are nude.’

‘Guys as well as gals?’

‘That’s right three guys with it all hanging out.’

‘Oh!’

‘Don’t worry they won’t molest you – unless you want them to that is.’ she joked.

Sara was silent for several moments, pondering the similarity with the party she had just left, before she answered. ‘Ok if you are sure an old fashioned textile is welcome.’

‘We were all textiles once, more or less.’ Alison laughed. ‘Sara baby I will look after you and you can tell me all your troubles. I will give you a ride to your folks when the party’s over.’

‘Will I need to strip?’

‘It’s clothing optional here, not a nudist resort so of course you can keep your clothes on if you want to. We campaign for body freedom not compulsory nudity.’

‘Ok. If you are sure, I’ll come over, I’m already in a cab.’ She gave the address to the driver.

Sara arrived ten minutes later. She was dressed in a party outfit of white jeans and a cropped sequined top and had felt pretty good when she set out. Now she felt distinctly over dressed as she sheepishly walked across the terrace which was crowded with mostly naked people. She hardly seemed to notice them and headed straight for Alison and Jane who were sitting at a table overlooking the lake, slightly away from the rest of the NBFA party. They had moved there after her phone call.

‘So what’s wrong between you and Peter then?’ Alison asked after they had been served with a round of sodas and a knickerbocker glory that Jane insisted on buying for Sara.

Sara took a deep breath and began, ‘Well it all started when this clothing optional law was passed at the last election. Now that people can go nude almost anywhere Peter has become obsesses with girls, like you two, who go out in public without panties. There are so many now and he has started looking at every girl in a short skirt to see if she is commando.’

‘We don’t mind people seeing us do we Alison?’

‘Nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of.’ said Alison, quoting a catch phrase from the campaign. ‘Part of our campaign is to make it normal for people to see each other’s bodies and understand that seeing someone’s genitals or boobs is not an invitation for sex. We like our bodies and if someone is offended by them it’s their problem. Also woe betide anybody who tries to molest us.’

‘The trouble is Peter is not discreet about looking and if he thinks a smartly dressed woman is not wearing panties he gets a great big hard on. As you saw a while back, when he came in his pants in the diner and that’s not the first time.

‘That is a bit pig like but really does it seem that bad, boys will be boys and as things change they will get used to it. We’ve noticed his roving eye when we saw him at Kale Bay a few weeks ago. I think he is a bit sad but that’s all really.’ Alison gave a little laugh.

‘Up to now I have been able to cope with his roving eye but he gets really cross because I won’t play along and risk flashing my pussy in public. It came to a head tonight at Ronnie’s party when I caught him snogging Lulu Davis with his hand on her naked butt. I think he was actually fingering her pussy from behind. I know Lulu is a nympho slut and up for that sort of thing almost any time but he was really out of order. We had a big row and I stormed out telling him it was “over, over, over” and never to call me again. I ran out and jumped in a cab. So here I am.’

‘Do you want it to be over?’ Alison asked.

‘I did at the time.’

‘But now you are not so sure?’

‘Maybe? Well, many guys are pretty confused with the new rules,’ Sara was thoughtful for a full minute, then she went on, ‘I am confused too, perhaps I should be more like you lot and wave my beaver at the sun?’

‘What’s stopping you?’ Jane asked with a grin.

‘It’s just not how I was brought up. I know the theory of Body Freedom and being “body positive” but it has never seemed to be for me. I’m nervous about what people will think of me, that they will judge me negatively. It’s men I worry about mostly so many men think you are a whore if you show a lot of flesh but women can be just as scary I’ve seen them damning a girl to hell for showing her breasts. I know you two aren’t sluts and showing your pussy doesn’t mean you are inviting sex but too often people still think just that and I never have felt comfortable about it. I felt awkward and couldn’t bring myself to join in when you two started swimming naked and campaigning outside the town hall and riding down the street with your buts on display. Also I don’t think my pussy is worth looking at, its kind of messy.’

Alison replied, ‘OK no sweat Sara love. We are not pushing you but I will say this is just what we are campaigning about. So many men have a streak of misogyny in them and think of women partially as “objects to be lusted after or owned”, rather than people who like sex, but want it on their own terms. It really is part of the traditional male dominance. Misogyny is still so powerful in the world. Even it these so called liberated times the relations are not that different underneath, and this is in the ‘West’ many other parts of the world are far worse as we all know.

Now about the other thing you said. This is also part of the same problem. Considering our bodies in terms of some scale of beauty usually defined by a male aesthetic and internalized by women and men, helped by the fashion industry and these days by competition on social media. You call your pussy “kind of messy”, last time I saw it you were perfectly normal. Very neat with a pretty little pointy clit.

‘You were studying my pussy! When!?’

Alison laughed aloud, ‘Not really but I do like pussies they are so interestingly varied and so good to play with and I always remember a good one. Besides I was fifteen and stoned when I saw at it.’

Sara’s eyes went wide but she said nothing. She recalled a vague and distorted image of the time they got stoned in Jane’s yard and skinny dipped in her parent’s pool.

‘Don’t look so shocked Sara, you know I swing both ways.’

Jane chipped in ‘Look around here and you will see just how varied women’s vulva’s are. We are all gloriously different. And yes we look at each other.’

Alison stood up and put her foot on the table so that the light shone on the folds of her large and convoluted labia bordered by a neatly trimmed bush, her clitoris projected as a sharp point.

Jane stood beside her and displayed her very different vulva which was completely shaved with minimal labia and a thick rounded clitoris which lay in the folds until it started to rise of it’s own accord. ‘I get very easily aroused,’ she said with a grin, ‘just finding people looking at me and I start becoming wet, my clit expands and my nipples get hard. I used to think I was abnormal but now I know lots of other women are the same and I have learned to enjoy it.’

Alison had remained calm, her nipples were soft. ‘It takes a certain kind of man to get me aroused like that,’ she paused and grinning added, ‘or a good vibrator.’

Sara looked doubtful. ‘Ok I know the theory, I’ve read lots about the new, love your body and don’t hide it whatever shape it is, “Body Positive” movement. I could hardly have avoided it but I still feel all my imperfections. But …’

‘But what?’

‘Another part of me wants to strip off and be free, it seems so naughty but I want to be naughty sometimes. But again It’s frightening, don’t you feel vulnerable? Surely it’s risky, you might get raped.’

‘Well there is always a risk of men attacking women but a pair of panties isn’t going to stop a rapist. We go to self defense classes where we learn how to look after ourselves,’ Alison grins at the thought, ‘We practice kicking men in the balls and stabbing them in the eye.’

‘No! Really?’

‘Well not actually stabbing of course but we practice the moves and we do real crotch kicks. We are naked to make it seem real and we have no clothes for them to grab us with which makes it a lot more difficult.

‘But how do you really kick them in the balls without injuring them?’

They wear a pouch and a sports box with an alarm in it. It bleeps when you make contact and howls if you kick so hard hard that it would have caused real injury.’

‘Wow! Perhaps I will enroll if I ever dare to go nude but I would still feel vulnerable naked.’

Alison jumped in always ready to recruit another nudist. ‘It certainly feels odd at first but if you try it with friends first it’s a lot easier.

Sara was still doubtful and shook her head.

‘Now what shall we do about Peter? Is he a complete pig,’ asked Jane, changing the subject.

‘Not really, mostly he’s a lovely man but I can’t stand this obsession of his.’ Sara thought for a moment. ‘Alone together his is fine, especially when we get naked, I couldn’t wish for a more considerate lover. He eats me out brilliantly’ Sara reddened but grinned as she said it and her hand moved unconsciously towards her crotch. ‘We are often naked in the house and have fucked deliciously in every room. He works really hard to give me a great time and fantastic orgasms. I feel guilty that I cannot bring myself to indulge his fantasies and become the kind of exhibitionist he would like me to be.

‘Bring him here and get him used to lots of women being naked. He needs to learn that it’s your relationship that is important and to stop lusting after women who are free and don’t care who sees what part of themselves. One of the big points of the NBFA is to educate people away from this obsession with appearance, men as well as women.’

‘That doesn’t seem to work with Peter, when we went to the Kale Bay last week there were lots of people nude swimming and sunbathing and he remained calm most of the time. Only when a girl put a skirt on and strolled around wearing nothing else did he start to get aroused.’

‘A concealed pussy fetish?’

‘You could call it that. The smarter and more formally dressed the woman is the more excited he gets if he sees her beaver.’

‘You should insist he goes naked himself,’ Alison went on,‘or more important make him dress so that you can easily tell if he is getting aroused.’

Jane suggested, ‘Make him wear thin close fitting shorts or pants and no underwear so that you can spot a hard on at once and any leakage will be immediately obvious.’

‘Maybe that will shock him into changing – I’ll think about it.’

They continued the chat in a lighter vein, laughing now about how Lulu had suddenly disappeared. Discussing her relationship with Jane and Alison, Sara began to feel better. and realizing she had disrupted their party she suggested they joined the other members on the NBFA committee who were seated around a large table near the steps down to the lake.

To be continued

Note to readers.

I originally poster a much longer Chapter 2. On reflection I decided it took too long to read and divided it into three chapters.

These will be posted as soon as the weekly pause period is over (I do support this BTW) they will be:

Chapter 3: Sara – Nustock Body Freedom Association

Chapter 4: Sara – Visiting with Jane

Those readers who have already read the long version of chapter 2 will need to wait for chapter 5 to proceed with the story.

Rikki