For Want of a Mask

"It's okay, Angela," came a familiar voice, speaking from somewhere in the roof. It was the sweatervest man at the front desk. "The camera won't engage until you're standing behind the clothing board."

Angela glanced at what the man had called "the clothing board". It was one of those gimmicky picture frame things with cartoon characters who had cut-outs for heads. You were supposed to stand behind it and take a picture with yourself on the body of a strong man or a princess. But instead of cartoons, this board had a life-size photograph of a 1950s couple. The man wore a suit, and the woman a modest red dress with white polka dots.

"Just step behind the board so we can take a picture for our records," said the man.

Angela couldn't speak. "Is this a joke?" she stammered at last. "I'm still standing here naked, after all your forms and tests and questions, and you want me to pose for a picture!"

"Not a naked picture!" clarified the man. "You'll be completely covered by the board. Look, this is the last part of the procedure, and then I'll give you your outfit. I have it right here, ready to wear."

The man's assurances calmed Angela down substantially. "I guess I've played along so far..." She took a few steps and positioned her head in the cut-out of the 50s housewife.

"Good, good," came the man's voice. "Say clothes!"

"Clothes!" Angela shouted, beaming in anticipation of her long-awaited outfit. She wondered if it would be the same as the one on the board. Old-fashioned, but cute enough. She could make it work.

The camera flashed, and she was done.

"Out the door to your left," said the voice.

This door was already open, and Angela stepped through it. She was back on the stairwell, face-to-face with the chipper, sweatervested man.

"Congratulations, Angela, you are the... first... Totally Naked Individual to come through a Bureau of Clothing assessment and receive an outfit scientifically formulated to your body, personality and priorities."

"Great!" said Angela. "Where is it?"

"One moment." The man ducked behind his counter, rummaged around for a moment, and then appeared again, smiling triumphantly. "Here we go! One outfit, custom designed for Miss Angela."

The man was not holding any clothing, nor were there any shirts, skirts, pants or even panties and bras hanging on the wall behind him. Angela feared the worst.

"I... I don't see it."

"It's right here," the man continued, proudly pointing at his outstretched palm.

Angela glanced down. "You've got to be joking."

In the man's hand was a single loop of elasticised black fabric. A hair-tie.

"Please, please, try it on." The man's smile got even wider. "This really is my favorite part of the job!"

Maybe he was giving her one piece of her outfit at a time, thought Angela. Yeah, that must be it. Another bureaucratic process. Starting with the top of her head, working down to the tips of her toes. She reached out and plucked the hair-tie from his outstretched palm.

The man looked at her expectantly. "Go on, put it on."

She coughed, glancing severely down at the arm in front of her breasts. So far this was like the only guy she'd met today who hadn't seen her nipples, and she would have liked to keep it that way.

The man didn't get the hint, but repeated his exhortation for Angela to put on the hair-tie.

Angela sighed wearily and relented. She dropped her arms to her side and pulled her hair back, then slipped the hair-tie around it and snapped it into place.

The man clapped. "There we are! The outfit looks great on you!"

The outfit, he had said. There wasn't going to be anything else.

Angela was fuming. "The outfit indeed! I came here, asking for clothes, and you promised you had them for me. Then you not only kept me naked, wasting my time with forms and weird questions, but brought in old man to grope me! All so you could give me a hair-tie! A hair-tie, so I could pull my hair away from my boobs, and let you ogle them, you pervert freak!"

The man's smile fell instantly. "Calm down, ma'am, or I will have to ask you to leave. This outfit is scientifically formulated to your unique situation, using the latest advances in clothing science."

"You can take your clothing science and shove it up your ass!" Angela screamed, turning around and stomping off towards the stairwell.

The sound of skin slapping against concrete came up the stairwell, and a lanky, curly haired man man came running towards the Bureau. He was completely naked, with both hands clasped firmly over his crotch. He stopped dead at the sight of Angela, and they locked eyes.

Angela felt a flash of envy for him, having such an easy job of covering himself. "Good luck getting anything decent out of these assholes," she said, as she passed him on the steps. "It sure didn't work for me."

* * *

Chapter Eight: The Club

Brimming with righteous fury, Angela stormed down the staircase, out of the building and halfway down the street, too mad to even pay attention to where she was going. There was no-one around, but even if there had been, she might not have noticed. The sun was setting and she had wasted her whole afternoon for a hair-tie.

Which was still around her hair. She had endured all that for something that actually made her feel more naked. Anger dissipated and was replaced with embarrassment, keen awareness that she was standing naked in the middle of a public sidewalk, and wasn't even covering herself with her arms. Angela undid the hair-tie, sliding it onto her wrist and let her hair fall back over her front.

Just then, someone stepped out of a nearby fire exit. It was a naked woman. No, almost naked--topless with a g-string and heels. Her hair was platinum blonde and her makeup was almost comically overdone. She was a good six inches taller than Angela, and her figure was a perfect hourglass.

"Got a light?" she asked Angela, a cigarette between her fingers.

"No, sorry," Angela replied.

The woman frowned, then said, "I'll go get one from the dressing room," and turned around to go back in. She glanced over her shoulder at Angela and looked her up and down. "You wearing a merkin?"

Angela blushed, too embarrassed to answer.

"Brave choice. Lots of guys, they don't like that. But some do, I hear."

Angela glanced down at her bush. She'd never shaved it. And after its heroic pussy-covering service today, she never would.

The stripper disappeared back through the fire exit. The phrase "dressing room" stuck in Angela's mind. A dressing room in a strip club. What better place for a naked girl to get something to wear? This was one place were no-one would bat an eye seeing a naked woman walk past them, where she could actually blend in. She just needed to find the dressing room, get a gown or something and then...

Then she would be lost in the middle of town, without a phone or any money. But she would dressed. And then anything would be possible. She could probably borrow one of the stripper's phones and call... Rachel, maybe? If she'd just called her actual best friend in the first place, she could have gotten dressed in the strip mall bathroom, rather than running around town naked all day.

Go inside. Find the dressing room. Get dressed. Phone Rachel. A simple plan.

But if she was going to go into a strip club looking like one of the strippers, she would need to act the part. That meant no more crouching, no more covering and no more hiding behind things. She would need to walk casually, even slowly, and pretend to be completely comfortable in the nude. Around lots of horny men.

Angela straightened her back and put her hands at her sides. Now she was stiff, so she wiggled around a bit, shaking her arms and legs and body to get loose. Casual. At ease. Comfortable.

Taking a deep breath in and out, Angela stepped through the fire escape. A winding flight of metal stairs greeted her. The steps were cold against her bare feet.

At the top, she had to use her elbow to open the heavy fire door a crack and slip through. Now she was in the club. It was mercifully dark, but she could see strippers walking about, and men of all descriptions sitting around tables. She bit her lip, fighting the urge to pull her arms around herself.

Casual, easy, she told herself. Sensual, even. Gotta look the part. And so Angela, who cried the first time she wore a bikini at the beach, strutted naked through a strip club. Every sense screamed at her to run, or at least power-walk, but she forced herself to keep it slow, and even made a few feeble attempts to sway her hips.

One thing that made her stand out from the other strippers was that she was barefoot. The other girls towered over in their heels, and many of them were tall and slender, making Angela feel like a squat dwarf. For all the compliments and lustful looks she'd received today, she still sometimes felt like her body was too short and too fat, especially in the presence of such willowy beauties.

But she could still feel eyes on her. She was turning heads. That made her feel better. But also worse. Angela, the good girl, the straight-A student, who never wore tops with cleavage, was now Angela the stripper, at least for the moment.

Where was the dressing room? Probably near the stage. Angela walked towards the stage, where a woman with green hair was swinging around a pole to the cheers and shouts of a crowd of men.

"Excuse me," she whispered in the ear of the shortest stripper she had seen so far, "I'm new here. Where's the dressing room?"

"Behind the stage, door to your left. You can't miss it."

"Thank you."

Angela found the dressing room. It was empty except for an older, foreign-looking woman, who was fiddling with something by one of the mirrors. She had a bit of a stoop and was far too well-covered to be one of the strippers.

Not wishing to having to talk to this woman and possibly give herself away, Angela tip-toed into the room, scanning for something to wear. Bingo, there was a coat-rack of hanging gowns right by the door. All Angela had to do was reach out and take one. With a pang of guilt, she noted that this was technically stealing, and she might be leaving one of these girls without a gown. But they had their street clothes here, and she did not. This was no different from the destitute stealing food to feed their families.

Thus resolved, Angela clutched a puffy crimson dressing gown, but was interrupted by a sudden stream of chatter in another language. The older woman had noticed her. And she seemed angry.

Angela released the gown, but the woman continued to shout and gesticulate. "English, English, only," said Angela, but the woman paid her no mind, grabbing her forcefully by the upper arm while continuing to jabber incomprehensibly.

The woman pulled her to the other side of the room and gestured feverishly at a full-length mirror. Angela looked at her reflection. Seeing herself head to toe under the dressing room's harsh lights, she understood what the woman had been freaking out about. She was a mess.

Angela's hair was frizzed up and all over the place. The light coat of makeup she'd put on that morning was mostly gone, except from some crying-smudged eye-shadow. Streaks of dried dust and dirt peppered her body, and her feet were filthy.

"Muddy little piggy," said the woman through a heavy accent. These appeared to be her only three English words. Then she pulled out a phone and snapped a picture of Angela in the mirror.

With surprising force, the woman grabbed Angela's shoulders and forced her down in a chair. She disappeared for a moment and then reappeared carrying a large bowl of soapy water and a brush, which she sat down on the table in front of Angela. Then she began to scrub.

The scrubbing was fast, rough, and thorough. With surprising quickness, the woman attacked every individual spot of dirt on Angela's body, scrubbing her clean. She then set to work on Angela's feet. Two new bowls of soapy water were required before those were cleaned to the woman's satisfaction.

"Th-thank you," Angela stammered, though feeling raw from the harsh brush bristles. She wiggled her pink toes and then started to get up, but the woman shoved her back down. She then wheeled a portable hairdresser's sink from corner of the room, ran it, and started washing Angela's hair, gently massaging conditioner and then shampoo into her scalp. This felt relaxing, even luxurious after the harsh body brushing.

Once her hair was washed, the woman brushed and combed it, smoothing out all the tangles. She sprayed some more product on it, and then got out a blow-drier and blasted Angela's hair into a bouncy blow-out. This strange, angry foreign stylist had done a far better job with her hair than Sharon had managed. This was a style worth undressing for.

The stylist started immediately on Angela's makeup. Thinking of the clownish look of the stripper at the fire escape, Angela tried to protest, but the stylist was having none of it. Fortunately, she did a nice job, applying product judiciously to enhance Angela's natural features. She smoothed Angela's skin, darkened and fulled out her lashes and reddened her lips. Angela focused intensely all the while, hoping to replicate some of this brilliant woman's techniques on her own.

Once her face was done, the stylist made Angela stand up and applied some oils and foundation to her body, smoothing out her skin tone and obscuring some of the redness from where she'd scrubbed earlier. She worked quickly and with a light touch, even taking out a tiny brush to neaten Angela's pubic hair.

Finally, the stylist sprinkled a light smattering of glitter on Angela's face and body, focusing on areas normally covered. Then she led her back to the mirror, and held another mirror behind her.

Angela's jaw dropped. She looked like she'd stepped off the cover of a magazine. Or rather, given her state of undress, a Playboy centerfold. She was almost unrecognizably hot. The stylist smiled proudly and took a photo with her phone. Now she had a before and after.

"Ms. Shenkovich sure works miracles, doesn't she?" said a voice behind them. It was the stripper from the fire escape. "And just in time too. We've got a vacant spot in the stage schedule. New girl, you're going to have to fill in."

"Oh, no, I--" Angela's words caught in her throat. What was she going to say? That she, a stripper who had just received a full beauty treatment, was going to decline an empty dance spot, an extra opportunity to make money at the one part of her job that didn't involve getting up close and personal with businessmen's hard-ons? "I"--she glanced around the room--"still need to get dressed. You know, so I have something to strip out of."

Clothes, glorious clothes! But once again, clothes that she would only wear for a few minutes.

"No time," insisted the stripper, grabbing Angela's arm. "The last bitch didn't even take off her top, so the guys are all blue-balled now. They'll appreciate you dispensing with the foreplay and just dancing au naturel. Especially the rug lovers and foot fuckers."

As she was saying this, the stripper was pulling Angela out of the dressing room, away from any chance of clothes, and towards a stage where she would need to gyrate in front of a rowdy audience of horny men. On further reflection, she appreciated not having to dress in clothes she would have to slowly remove for an audience. She imagined herself trying to unhook a bra on stage and just breaking down crying. To stay naked was better. But it still wasn't good.

"Come on, you'll do fine. You're gorgeous, they'll love you." They were behind the stage now. "What's your name, by the way?"

"Candy," said Angela.

The stripper raised an eyebrow. "I'm Star. But you'll need to choose something else. We've already got a Candy. And it doesn't really suit your whole sweet, earthy girl-next-door vibe anyway. What about Candice?"

"Uh, sure."

Star smiled. "One tip, Candice. You might want to put that hair-tie around your ankle instead."

Angela had forgotten about the hair-tie. She pulled it off her wrist and slid it over her foot.

Star nodded approvingly. "Vodka?" she asked, producing a couple of shot glasses from somewhere.

Angela downed hers, and then Star gave her the other one too. "You look like you could use a bit more." Angela obediently downed the second vodka shot. It dawned on her that she hadn't eaten all day. Then Star slapped Angela's ass and pushed her through the curtains.

Time froze as Angela stood before the crowd, her eyes bouncing from dimly lit face to dimly lit face. Fat, thin, tall, short, old and young, the audience was a cross-section of the town's adult male population. And all of their eyes were fixed on her naked body.

Every fiber of Angela's being screamed at her to wrap her arms around herself, to cower down and run off the stage, to get away, far away. But it was far, far too late for that. In search of clothes, she had impersonated a stripper. In hindsight, a very stupid idea. And now she had to uphold the illusion.

What was the alternative? Make a run for it back through the fire escape? That would cause a commotion and bring her right back to square one. No, she had to play this part. She would dance. She would give these men a show. She would make them love her. And then she would return to the dressing room, wrap a nice warm gown around herself, and try to forget the whole experience.

The crowd, which had cheered for her initial appearance, was now quiet. Men fidgeted. Someone coughed. They were growing restless with Angela's statue impression. It was show time. She wasn't Angela anymore, but Candice. She felt light-headed from two vodka shots on an empty stomach.

Candice smiled, shook herself all over, and did a slow runway walk to the end of the stage, the part with the pole. Some of the men started cheering, and a few of them shouted things like, "You're beautiful" and "I want to bury my face in that muff!"

Playing the part of a professional adult entertainer, Candice tried not to let any of it rattle her, but she could feel a blush spread up her neck. She advanced to the front of the stage, and... then what? The volume of the music increased, and she tried to give herself over to it, to lose herself in it. She had never been much of dancer, but then, these guys probably weren't all that discerning. They wanted to see her body, was the main thing.

So she showed them. Candice swung her hips, rose up and down on her knees, pushed out her boobs. The crowd hollered. She clapped her hands and waved her body, getting into the music now. She whipped her hair around and pouted at the audience, catching individual men with bedroom eyes. She couldn't believe what she was doing.

Candice moved her arms, swayed to the beat. Now she turned around, and another cheer erupted from the crowd at the first sight of her bubble butt. She stuck her hip out to the side, flashing a sultry look over her shoulder, and then did the same on the other side. Then she got low and wiggled.

Paper money fell all around her, and she felt hands slipping more notes into the hair-tie around her ankle. She didn't want to think about how this money compared to what she was getting at her actual job.

"Sit on my face please goddess!" shouted someone in the audience.

Right, that was enough butt focus for now. Candice smiled and winked in the direction of the voice, but started turning around slowly, bringing her boobs and pussy back into focus. She moved her arms across her body, one then the other, lingering only briefly in the covering positions they'd been stuck in most of today. Then she worked those into the dance, playfully covering herself and making a shocked expression at the audience, before slowly moving her arms away to show them the goods. The crowd went wild.