Brave Nude World: A Preview

My next novel, Brave Nude World, is coming soon.

In the novel, public nudity is no longer a crime in the United States, and a new generation of nudists has begun to become visible in towns and cities around the country.  In this brave nude world we meet Rachel, a 24-year-old designer living in the big city.  Rachel has never considered nudism before but in a world where much more freedom is possible, she finds herself gradually and inexplicably drawn to the world of the nudists, and all the possibilities and problems it brings her.

Below is an extract from this forthcoming work.

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Summer, or at least the season’s earliest form, arrived in the city, and I began to take my lunch in the park.  I do the same every year – it’s pretty common for us office types to take an hour or so and catch some rays there, so it’s always fairly busy.  Some days I even wear a bikini under my work clothes, so I can work on my tan over lunch.  I’m not especially vain but I’m blonde and I think my skin looks better when I’ve caught a little sun.

Of course, this was the year of the nudie, and so for the first time I noticed that the sunbathing people in the park included some who had taken off all their clothes, and decided to sunbathe naked. It was probably only a half-dozen people – at the most, ten, although I didn’t sit and count them.  Some were in pairs or in a group together, some were solo.  Just laying or sitting on the grass, chilling out, minding their own business – men and women.  But all of them nude.

It was the most naked people I had seen in one place, but for some reason it was also the least surprising.  It made sense that if you were going to go nude in public, you would do it on a fine sunny day, in the middle of a green space like the park, to work on your tan.  The girls in the subway station or guys like Chris and Martin didn’t really make sense to me, but the people tanning in the park somehow did.

That’s probably one reason why, after not many more visits, I decided to join them.
I’d been to the park a few lunchtimes that week, and had been doing my usual trick of going to work in a sundress and bikini, and whipping the dress off for half an hour to tan, read and eat lunch before getting back to the office.  But that day, call it fate if you like, I’d accidentally dressed hurriedly, and had worn regular underwear rather than a bathing suit beneath my dress. No big deal though, I thought when I realised my mistake, I didn’t need to sunbathe every day.

But lunchtime came around, and as I headed to the park I noticed how it was particularly hot and sunny today, and it began to seem like a real shame that I wasn’t going to feel the sun on as much of my skin.  Then I reached a suitable spot, and my eyes spied nearby two blonde women, about my age or maybe a couple of years older, who as I watched removed all their clothing and lay down, naked, on the grass to tan.

I wondered to myself.  Dare I do it?

I knew the law was on my side. But here, in the park, it also seemed like culture was on my side.  While the vast majority of people visiting the park were clothed or (like I had planned to be) wearing swimwear, the two women weren’t the only nudies visible.  It felt, to me, like a place where to be naked would be considered not just legal, but within the limits of what was socially acceptable.  I decided, with a little smile to myself, to give it a try.

I’m not a prude about my body.  Get me in the bedroom with a good looking guy and I will fling myself around in sexy underwear or nude with complete abandon.  I’m never self-conscious in the women’s locker room and, hey, I live alone so sometimes I walk around naked in my apartment.  Who doesn’t do that?  But those were all one thing – taking my clothes off in a completely public place in the middle of the city is another thing entirely for me, and I felt flutters of nerves at my decision.

Not so much, though, to put me off doing it.  I decided to move nearer to where the other two nude women were – safety in numbers and all that.  I didn’t want to get too close, though, in case they thought I was coming on to them or something.

Satisfied that I was in a suitable spot – nearer to the nude women, farther from everyone else – I took a deep breath and pulled my dress off over my head.  I paused for a moment, looking round.  Then I reached behind my back, unhooked my bra and wiggled out of it.  Finally, I slipped my panties off and laid my clothes down on the grass.  I rolled over onto my stomach, using my dress as a blanket between the grass and my skin.

I looked around me, cautiously.  Absolutely nothing had changed.  No people were coming to attack me, or arrest me, or perv over me.  Nobody was really even looking in my specific direction.  They were all just busy engaging with their own lives, absorbed in their own worlds.

I was completely naked, in a park in the middle of the city, in sight of who knows how many people – and everything was fine.

I lay down and enjoyed basking in the sun for a while, feeling the warmth on my bare butt, before rolling over again on to my back.  I put my arms up behind my head.  I was totally exposed now.  I looked down the length of my body – the peaks of my breasts, nipples pointed at the sky.  My ribs, the flat curve of my stomach, dented with the well of my belly button, then leading down, a tiny, barely-visible trail of silky hairs connecting with the fine, patch of curly light brown hair on my mound.  I don’t shave my pubic hair but it grows fine and neat so it looks as though I spend a lot more time on personal grooming than I actually do.

The notion that I was nude in public was somewhat exhilarating.  I thought back to my only real previous experiences with nude sunbathing; specifically the first time I tried it – as a teenager, in the back yard of my parents’ house while everyone was out.  Then, I jumped and reached for my bikini at every noise, imagining mom, dad, my brother, the whole high school football team and the marching band about to come streaming through the gate and catch me tanning in my birthday suit to try and eradicate my white marks.  It had been such an anxious experience that I had not dared to repeat it more than a handful of times in my life, and when I moved to the city a series of apartments had meant I no longer had any sort of yard in which to tan.  The parks had become my yard instead, but I had never dreamed I would one day sunbathe not just fully nude in these public places, but with a confidence I’d never had at fifteen or so.  Who could ever have expected that?

After a while I realised that the other two women, whose examples I had followed, had slipped their outfits back on and left.  I alone in this area of the park was nude.  Yet I didn’t feel uncomfortable or worried.  I was no different to any other sunbather, other than that I had not even a bikini covering myself – but my experience had taught me that this was a safe place to lie almost-nude in the sun, why not fully nude?  Public nudity was allowed now, and it was only the social contract we observe – and my own sense of modesty – that discouraged it in me.  But here, with no friends, family or colleagues, only strangers minding their own business – here nakedness seemed a reasonable state to be in.

My lunchbreak over, I reached for my clothing.  I experienced a peculiar sense of disappointment as I dressed.

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Keep an eye on my Amazon author and Goodreads author page to see Brave Nude World when it is published.

Forced Nudity in The "Volunteer" and the Tami Smither series

It's probably become apparent now, but a central theme of my writing is scenarios in which a person (usually a young woman) is without clothing in a place where their nudity is the exception, rather than the norm.  Whether it's Becky in Best Friends With a Naked Girl streaking around the library at Lisa's university, or Rachel in my forthcoming novel Brave Nude World riding the subway naked, I seem to have a real weakness for putting naked people up against clothed people, often in public places.

In the majority of my stories, the people are naked because they want to be, because it's fun and enjoyable for them.  But imagine you weren't naked in public through your own choice but because you were somehow required to be - and for a very long time!  In other words, forced public nudity.

The concept of forcing a character to go naked in public concept relates broadly to the BDSM side of  the public nudity theme in erotic fiction.  To make a character be naked in front of other people is often to make them vulnerable, embarrassed, humiliated.  It's therefore the perfect action for a dominant character to do to a submissive one.  Much of this type of fiction is written in that mould.  A character does something they shouldn't, and is forced therefore to submit to the whim of an authority figure who, out of their own sadism, decides that the character should be forced to be naked in public.  It might be a mean boss making a secretary strip while at work to keep her job after a bad mistake, or a pervy college professor forcing a co-ed to attend class naked after they are caught cheating on a test. But the point is the humiliation and degradation of the naked submissive, who is robbed of free will and subjected to embarrassing exposure to teach them a lesson.

I was thinking about this concept in relation to what is one of my favourite public-nudity themed stories; The "Volunteer" by D H Jonathan.

On the surface, The "Volunteer" seems to be in keeping with that dom/sub, forced-public-nudity-as-humiliation power dynamic.  Pretty college student Dani screws up and cheats to get ahead, and is caught out by an influential sociology professor, Dr Slater.  Dr Slater uses the information about Dani's transgression to essentially blackmail her into taking part in a unique sociological experiment - she will test her fellow students attitude to nudity by attending class, social events and anything else on campus completely naked for the remainder of the semester - and pretend it is all her own idea.  The effect of her behaviour on others will be observed via a microphone and earpiece.  At the end of it, she'll not only have avoided academic punishment for her crime, she'll also be rewarded, enabling her to graduate debt-free and with the highest faculty recommendations to carry her to her future career.

It would seem, then, that we're about to have a classic dom/sub relationship between the professor and the student.  Dr Slater will force Dani to be naked, Dani will hate it, and the Doc will get off on the subsequent humiliation and degradation of the pretty girl while all the while sternly forcing her to do her bidding.

Except that isn't the book at all.  In fact, rather than desiring Dani's humiliation, the sociologists genuinely believe in their research (for some very personal reasons for Dr Slater, we later learn) and don't view what Dani is doing as any sort of punishment at all.

The only reason they blackmail Dani into "volunteering" is because they have been unable to find a genuine volunteer to take part and carry the study to a viable conclusion.  Desperation (remember, the Doc has some particularly personal reasons for wanting her research to succeed) pushes them down this dubious path, not a desire to assert authority or sadistically punish pretty girls.  True, they behave unscrupulously at times, and are ultimately no heroes.  But their motives remain somewhat higher than simply desiring Dani's sexual humiliation.

In the key scenes where Dani is persuaded to take part, or continue her participation, she always has a choice - she isn't going to be stripped against her will.  She can accept the consequences of her actions in cheating, and take the academic punishment that might well mess up her future dreams.  Or, she can undertake participation in an experiment where she will be naked in public for two months, in front of all her friends, peers and teachers, without even being able to offer the excuse that she's taking part in an experiment - but which will be over after that and, coming out of the other side of it, she will have financial security and a strong chance of getting the future she has always wanted.

Dani agonises over this choice - after all, wouldn't you? - but in the end she agrees to volunteer.  It might not have been a great choice, but she starts the experiment with the view that going around campus naked is the lesser of two evils compared to owning up to her misconduct.

Of course that lasts about two minutes before she realises what she's let herself in for - but rather than assert their authority and force her to stay naked against her will, the sociologists are supportive and even kind, constantly monitoring her safety as well as gathering their data.  Their role in the narrative, like many of the supporting characters, is to enable Dani's nakedness to continue even at points where she finds it unbearable - so, for example, a lecherous teacher who tries to assault her is quickly found out and dismissed - and they do so by making it more possible for Dani to cope, rather than by simply asserting their authority and threatening her with expulsion.

I'm inclined to compare The "Volunteer" to an earlier "naked in college" story - the Tami Smithers series, which begins with The Unintentional Nudist.  In this series, a college freshman panics when she is caught streaking on campus - an activity for which she fears she will be expelled - and explains her nakedness by stating that she has taken a religious vow to never wear clothing again.

Of course, Tami is then forced to make good on this hasty declaration and begin attending classes and everything else in the nude, not because she wants to, but because if she doesn't, the administration will know she lied (and is using the religious aspect of her story to claim protection from punishment on the grounds that it would be discrimination).

Where Tami's story and The "Volunteer" differ (aside from the fact that D H Jonathan has obviously put a lot more thought into shoring up his premise than the author of The Reluctant Nudist did: both require suspension of disbelief but Tami's story demands several crane-loads of suspension) is that Tami is from the start at odds with the authority figures in her college.  They seem to know - or outright know - that her story is a pack of lies - but as long as she walks the walk, they can't question her talking the talk.  As long as she continues to go everywhere naked, they can't prove she has lied - after all, who would ever pretend to be a person whose religion obligated permanent nudity if they didn't have to?  As her nudism is some sort of protected religious activity, to avoid a potentially costly discrimination suit, they have to force a confession from Tami that she made up her "religious nudist" status to cover up campus misbehaviour.

So they endeavour to either catch her out, or make her experience of being nude on campus so horrible and sexually humiliating that she gives up and confesses her lie.  They take sadistic delight in placing this naked girl in scenarios deliberately intended to maximise her exposure and embarrassment (for example, forcing her to do work placements in customarily male-only environments, or act as a life model in a series of ever-more-explicit poses) while constantly monitoring her behaviour for any sign of inconsistency in her religious nudism.  Even when, in later stories she leaves campus to visit home or travel, Tami finds the fear that the administration are still monitoring her means that she has no choice but to continue to be naked everywhere she goes, on the off-chance that some spy for the college might see her if she put her clothes on.  And of course, the more she does it, the worse consequences she will face if she ever cracks and confesses - her crime escalating from 'streaking on campus one time' to 'spending four years walking around in public completely naked' - so the more incentive she has to keep going.

The contrasts and commonalities between the two stories show two approaches to writing a "forced nudity" narrative.  Both are stories of young female college students pretending to be some sort of devoted nudist by going everywhere in public.  Tami has to pretend to be undertaking a religious vow, and Dani has to pretend she's a body freedom activist so that the integrity of the social experiment remains uncorrupted.  Both stories have to construct their narrative in ways that mean the protagonists continue to be naked in public long past the point where a real life woman would have said "screw it, I'll take the punishment for my original crime" and put her clothes back on.  And both use a young college student's natural obedience to authority figures to make that happen.

In the Tami stories, the authority figures are there simply to make Tami be naked 24/7 - they force her to endure the endless parade of humiliations they dream up in the hope of breaking her spirit.  But in The "Volunteer", the authority characters are, for the most part, on Dani's side. They want her to be able to continue her public nakedness even though they know it is difficult for her, and their primary concern is with keeping her safe.  They may have selfish reasons for doing so - they want their experiment to succeed - but from that selfishness comes a supportive factor that leaves Dani much less alone in her endeavour than Tami is.

It's one of the things that makes The "Volunteer" the better story, in my opinion.  In Tami's tale, humiliation upon humiliation is piled upon her while all the time she longs tearfully to be able to clothe herself and end this trial by endurance; as a reader, we start to become weary of her persistence.  Just take the punishment, you find yourself exclaiming as Tami once again laments her naked life and stares with longing at some clothes in a shop window.  No matter how much her college education means to her, her endless suffering seems somehow a disproportionate endurance.

But The "Volunteer" isn't about Dani enduring suffering.  It does a much more successful job of making her an agent in her own continued nakedness, as she gradually adjusts to each new experience and finds that, actually, this is something she can manage to pull off.  Of course, then events begin to escalate beyond the wildest imaginings of the sociologists - and beyond Dani's control - but by then she is in too deep and, again, manages to not just endure but adjust to and even enjoy her experiences.  The ending (which I will try not to spoil) leaves you in no doubt that Dani's experience of public nakedness has been a defining and ultimately positive one, no matter how difficult it was along the way.

Tami Smithers never gets a definitive conclusion.  Her stories are written by a multitude of individuals whose intent is to give the reader as much time to play in her universe as possible; and here status quo is the enemy, as instead of evolving and growing as a person, Tami starts and ends each new story the same utterly humiliated young woman, ever the victim of determinedly sadistic authority.  The stories about her aren't bad, although the original is kind of flat some of the later ones are written well and enjoyable to read up to a point, but I much prefer The "Volunteer" for Dani's spirit and agency than I do Tami's gritted-teeth endurance of her various authors' whims.

Read for yourself 
The "Volunteer" by D H Jonathan can be bought as an e-book or paperback from Amazon.
The Tami Smithers stories have various authors and can be found all over the internet.  The original story, The Unintentional Nudist, can be read here.