Chapter 31: Up North
I hit my goal a few days later, just before we were about to return to Salt Lake: I had been utterly naked for one hundred hours straight; four days and four hours! Mary noticed the specified time first and led the group in a round of cheers and applause.
“Well, I suppose I’d best go get dressed,” I told the group after the happy noises subsided.
“Do you have to?” asked Allison. Before I could answer, she continued, “I mean, I saw how Kaitlyn got out to the car naked for our mage communication experiment. I assume you can go invisible, too?”
“He not only can, he’s a lot better at it than I am,” Kaitlyn said, bragging on me.
“What, he gets even more invisible?” Allison teased semi-sarcastically.
“No, Ali dearest — don’t make me thump you — I mean he can remain invisible longer than me. I’m still limited to streaks of half a minute or so, but he can go for a few minutes at a time.”
“It’s come in handy a few times,” I replied, trying to be modest. At their probing, I told them about one of the times I’d used the skill to my profit, a story you may have already read elsewhere, so I won’t repeat it here.
“So how about it?” challenged Allison. “I dare you to stay naked all the way back to Salt Lake!”
“And if I do?” I returned with a smile. “What do you dare, my proto-exhibitionist?”
“I’ll… I’ll… I’ll get married naked! Just like you two!” she returned with a final rush, pushing past her own internal hesitance, her cheeks coloring.
I knew this embarrassment wasn’t for the idea itself, it was because she was committing to this before the whole family, not just in private with Kaitlyn as she had back before Labor Day, so I said, “You’ve got a deal if you do it in the full spirit of how Kaitlyn and I did it: the ceremonial altar strip, the naked oiled group hug, camping out fully nude through the next day, the whole schmear. To be fair, I’ll grant you a few contingency exceptions, as for the public post-wedding photos and when I had to dress to drive my parents back into town later that day. The main thing is that you do thirtyish hours of social nudity with the whole wedding party, from just after the wedding photos until we broke camp the next evening.” I extended my hand toward her and asked, “Do we have a deal?”
Allison clasped her hands in front of her, down by her belly, shaking her head, “No, if I’m doing all of that, I want more from you in return. Your wedding strip last summer ended with a necessary return to civilization, so if I’m to do that, the fair trade is for you to agree to the same condition: you stay naked from now until you’re also forced to dress by some unavoidable rule of civil behavior!”
“It’s winter break,” I pointed out. “That might take us clear to the start of classes on the 5th.”
“I don’t care. You want the deal, them’s my terms,” Allison said stubbornly.
I re-extended my hand, but before Allison could clasp it in agreement, Carmen butted in, “Hang on, hang on, this isn’t fair to Davie! You’re making him do something immediately, but so far as I know, you aren’t getting wed any time soon. Why would he agree to something so indefinite?” Then she squinted a bit and asked more sharply, “…Unless you’ve got some plan you aren’t telling us about?”
Mary was now looking quite avid at this turn in the conversation.
Allison took another deep breath, then said rapidly, “Joss proposed to me the day after Christmas!”
The women all squeed and ran at each other, gathering into a tight knot of jabbering excitement. I assume they could understand it, but I missed about three words out of every five, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t primarily because English is my second language. There was something in there about “Why didn’t you tell us earlier?” and “Where’s the ring?” and other things, but it took a few minutes before I got the full sense of it all.
Allison went and retrieved the engagement ring that she’d been too nervous to wear around us until now, told us of their plan for a summer wedding just after they graduated from college, and more.
I’d been utterly upstaged, but I was smiling. This beat any silly old nudist streak record.
When the excitement began to level off, and the question I most wanted answered didn’t get asked, I finally broke down and threw it out there. “If we’re having a nudist wedding, who are you going to get to officiate?”
“Well,” Allison answered slowly, “I hadn’t quite planned that detail out yet. Could you ask that Poulsen guy for me?”
“Whaddaya think,” I asked my wife with a quirked smile, “can we dragoon Poulsen again?”
“I think he’d be happy to do a repeat performance,” she answered. Turning to her sister, she asked a considerably more important question, “When is this wedding planned for?”
“We were thinking mid-June. You know, a few weeks after college graduation.”
I asked, “Can we push it back to July 4th? It’ll be a Saturday, and I’ve already got some plans that will fold nicely into a wedding after-party. Make it extra-special.”
“Yeah, should be fine,” Allison agreed. “We can wait a few more weeks. Might be good to have the time to settle our lives a bit first.”
“You want to call Joss and ask whether he’ll agree to all this? He probably ought to have some say in the matter.”
She looked at me like I was a space alien with no concept of the way Earth culture functioned. Allison dug her phone out of her jeans pocket, poked at it, held it to her ear, and said, “Hey, teddy bear!” Pause. “Look, you remember that nudist wedding you so enjoyed back in August?” A brief pause. “Well, we’re having one, too. Get your parents on board or else.” Pause. “Oh, and we’re doing it on Independence Day, just so you know. You should be there.” Pause. “Love ya, ’bear. Bye-eee!”
Then she poked the “End Call” button, and we all broke up laughing. A smile still on my face, I extended a hand toward her, and we shook, cementing our agreement.
I didn’t end up streaking invisible to the car as they’d suggested, because it left me with a choice of bad options: either let them do all the work loading the car back up or help them load it while invisible.
The second option was simply far too risky. The only other house out here in the farmland with a direct view of Kaitlyn’s Subaru was the house where Mrs. Ann Johannsen now lived alone, her immediate family all now gone away, one way and another. Ann didn’t know about our magic yet, and though I thought I could trust her with the secret after the last few days we’d spent with her, I wasn’t certain there were no other onlookers, perhaps someone taking a winter hike out in the nearby red sandstone landscape. It wouldn’t do to have someone untrustworthy see suitcases bobbing along between house and car with no visible means of support. No, not at all.
The dare with Allison made my choice clear: load the car naked or don’t do it at all.
‘By Ritchie’s beard, why not?’ I asked myself. ‘How about one last surprise gift for my newest friend across the way?’ That resolved, I announced my plan to the family, whereupon everyone else decided they were now spectators, not helpers. “Fine, then,” I told them, then began loading the car naked and alone, taking three trips, everyone else staying inside, watching the show from the living room’s broad tri-pane window, packing it edge-to-edge, smiles aplenty.
And from another living room window, across the gravel lane from the Gutierrez driveway, Ann watched the show as well, a broad smile on her face, too.
In the spirit of the dare with Allison, I made sure to go to the bathroom just before we left, knowing I wouldn’t be able to honorably claim a bathroom break on the road as my reason for re-dressing.
Kaitlyn drove, and she carefully kept our speed just over the limit for the same reason, not wanting my cause for dressing to be her getting pulled over for speeding.
Jess and Vin even joined in the effort of removing ‘civilization’ as an excuse for me to get dressed again, taking my order at our mid-trip stop for gas, drinks, snacks, and such, bringing my requests out to me in the Nude-Mobile where I hid in the back seat, unnoticed by the other few travelers there at the time, ready to go invisible if I saw I was about to be discovered, but no one came near the car, so I wasn’t forced into that extremity of action.
I did have to go invisible once we finally got to Jess’ house, since she had only a one-car garage, presently occupied by her little luxury sedan, so we had to park in front of the house. Once Jess got the front door open, I snuck up the ice-slick sidewalk as quietly as I could, since we hadn’t yet worked out the trick of inaudibility.
This left the other three to begin hauling our things inside, which I thought completely fair since I’d loaded the car alone.
While I sat in the living room, once again visible on a couch without a direct line of sight in from the street, I heard Kaitlyn’s smartphone ring outside the front door. She hurried up the front steps and inside the house, swiping to answer the call as she came over to sit with me on the couch. As she was hoisting the phone to her ear, I saw the name on the screen: Molly Alexander! Sitting there beside me as she was, I heard both sides of the conversation clearly.
“Hi, Molly!” my wife greeted our second-best friend up here after Jess.
The two chatted sociably for a while, then Molly got to the cause for her call, “How would you two like to come to our New Years’ party?”
“We’d love to! Um, only…”
“Yes?” Molly asked.
“Well, I’m assuming this is going to be more of a black-tie event than the previous two, and all our formal evening wear is back in Moab,” Kaitlyn began to explain.
“Yes, that’s right, black tie for this one, but you two are an exception as always,” I heard Molly say. “Something like your snow elf costumes from last time will be just fine.”
Kaitlyn paused for thought long enough for Molly to ask, “Are you still there?”
Kaitlyn then got an evil little smirk on her face and replied, “Yeah, I’m here, I was just thinking… Molly, can Davie come naked?” I leaned away from her in shock, and she returned a Cheshire grin at me, phone to her ear. Then just as I was thinking of grabbing the phone away from her, Kaitlyn continued, “Y’see, Davie’s currently working through a dare where he can’t put on clothes until forced by some civil rule or law, but if we can exclude your party from that list, I think I can get him to stay naked until school starts back up on the fifth!”
As Kaitlyn was finishing this explanation, I’d started to grab at the phone, Kaitlyn squirming away, still trying to listen for Molly’s answer, phone clamped to her head as well as she could manage through our struggles. By the time Molly’s answer came tinnily through the speaker, Kaitlyn was up off the couch and running into the kitchen, getting around behind the dining table before I caught up, using it as a buffer to keep my hands off that blasted phone.
I was still close enough to hear Molly’s answer. “Well, sure, I don’t see why not. Our courtyard is semi-private, so I don’t think you’ll have any trouble getting into the house without alarming the neighbors, as long as you use the valet service. Only… I think I’ll have to insist on you coming that way, too, Kaitlyn.”
My wife’s triumphant grin fell.
“It’s only fair, Kate,” Molly said politely but pointedly into her silence.
It was my turn to grin in triumph. This put a whole different color on the affair, so I stopped trying to chase my wife down and began mouthing, “Do it! Do it!” at her.
Kaitlyn clapped her left hand over her eyes and said in a capitulating tone, “All right, you’ve got it.”
“Great!” Molly said,
Then my wife dropped her hand, revealing eyes now squinted with resolve, adding, “On two conditions.”
“Yes?”
“First, cameras are banned again.”
“Of course, no question about it,” replied Molly. “And the second?”
“You and Norman are the solarium massage recipients.”
I heard nothing from Kaitlyn’s phone.
And then I heard more nothing.
“How about it?” my wife finally prodded.
“Orgasms and all?” Molly answered faintly.
“Orgasms and all.”
I heard an “Oh, shit,” from the tiny speaker.
“Is that a yes?”
“I’d best go ask Norman. Gimme a bit.”
There was a pause, then Molly came back, “You’re on.”
I pumped my fist, and my wife replied, “Glad to hear it. What time do you want us there?”
They continued negotiating the details while I stood across the table from her, arms crossed over my chest, grinning ear to ear at her.
As she stabbed the “end call” button on her phone, I told her, still deeply amused at this turn of affairs, “You dug that hole awfully quick.”
“What hole?” Vin asked, hauling the last of our bags in, Kaitlyn having abandoned the last half of the task to our traveling companions.
After Kaitlyn explained the situation, Jess begged, “Please, oh please tell me I’m invited!”
“Oh yeah, you and Vin are invited, too,” she said almost absently. “You’ll be there; ringside seat,” hand returning to cover her eyes.
“This is going to be awesome!” Vin said.
“Damn straight, my Captain,” added Jess, grinning as widely as me now.