Naked - Opening and Exhibition

Then I don't move for a minute or two until, with appropriate movements, I begin to undress. One shoe down, another, and I step out of the baggy combat trousers I used to wear during work - the glittery tights with embroidered calves emerge.

I perform the same choreography of poses after shedding each major piece of clothing. Each time, I am quietly embarrassed.

My sweatshirt goes over my head - a tight-fitting silk top emerges, square neckline, cap sleeves, bare arms. I neatly fold all garments and put them on a neat pile.

I sit down and take off the left leg of the tights - can this be done more elegantly? -, then the right, fold the hose and place it onto the work clothes. The silk top follows. So do my lovely bra and knickers - rendering me naked.

Vitavie, the famous sculptress, is now naked in public.

I pick up the pile of clothes and walk to the door. I knock and it opens. I hand the clothes over to an assistant and the door closes again. I hear the door being locked. Now it won't open again for a month, unless in that case of emergency - I might go mad! I walk to the middle of the room and assume what is called the display position: legs apart, arms up and hands behind the neck. Embarrassed!

What am I doing here? So narcissistic! Yes, pull yourself together, woman! Keep going. Be the empress in your new clothes! I concentrate on controlling my breath.

What the audience sees

Here, dear audience, you see a 49-year-old woman, a sculptress, famous, wealthy - and naked. She has a good body for her age, but she is clearly a day or two older than the average girl on display anywhere. She is being judged. Even if many of the viewers are sympathetic to her, she will still be judged. By the critics, the art professionals, who would be critical or envious. There are a few friends, firstly and foremost Julia. In addition, there are two or three former lovers in the audience who go back fifteen, twenty years - when she would have been considered young - and saw her naked then. The ex-lovers may be the more scrupulous judges. Or they may even be embarrassed themselves. We slept with that woman!

I now turn around step by step - about a quarter of a circle every minute until I have turned around twice. Then I stand still for another five minutes until the audience gets restless. Time for the last action until the long, long month begins. A major action.

The sheering

As agreed, the gallery owner lowers the one-way mirror, so that I can no longer see the audience and cannot escape my own image (except by closing my eyes - I am tempted!) The big mirror makes me feel really alone. In a claustrophobic box with mirrors on all sides. I stare at my naked form in front of me, in multiples. I am obscenely naked. Naked. My essence? Who knows? Bullshit, maybe! And why do I say "obscene"? Why do I condemn myself and what does this performance have to do with morality anyway? Your own norm rules, OK! Don't judge yourself. Be breath, and no more. Be, only be!

Here I go!

I sigh, then shrug my shoulders and go to the desk to get the pair of scissors. They are razor-sharp barbers' scissors. I look at the hair on my head. It is lush, healthy, attractive. I look at my ample pubic hair and ruffle it.

Go on, now!

The scissors snap, snap as I cut, and cut and cut strands of my hair with decisive gestures. The back of my head is hard to work with, but with the help of the mirrors I manage. There are no prizes at stake. In just ten, twelve minutes, my shoulder-length, well-groomed hair looks like that of a tramp or, dare I say it, a cancer victim. (The human condition too, but I shouldn't offend real sufferers... To say this is a tribute would be too easy) I slowly trim my pubic hair - careful not to pinch my prominent labia minora. To take things as far as practical, I get an electric buzzer from the bathroom cabinet, rigorously buzz my head and my vulva, again using the mirrors to see the back of my head and the depths of my crotch, and complete the look.

On both my head and my vulva a mere stubble remains.

Vitavie 2.0, Empress Vita - brand new, royally high! - is ready.

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INTERLUDE

The Shaving of Julia

I have just destroyed my hair. For the first time. But destroying hair as such I have done before. That of my best friend. Her choosing.

I had known her since our first year of secondary school, where we were both a bit left of centre, I as a reserved artsy girl and she as a quiet brainy girl, together the smartest girls in our form. Thus, we gravitated towards each other. We were both introverted girls by nature, but soon opened up towards each other. We boosted each other's confidence and helped the other to develop on a personal level, including our attitudes towards sex. We are both indebted to each other for the state and condition we are in today.

When the episode that I will relate here came to pass, we were both in our mid-to-late twenties and had known each other for over a dozen years, half our lives. For me it was towards the end of my four 'wilderness' years, after I graduated and before my first exhibition. For her, she had served a handful of years as a hardboiled lawyer in a prominent law firm, had quickly risen up the ladder and needed a break. She needed to reconsider whether she was doing what she wanted. She had negotiated a sabbatical for no less than six months. Yes, to take a real break from work and all that, but she had a secret plan that would really make it a break from who and what she was.

During her studies and her career so far, she had modelled herself for success, with regular visits to the hairdressers, therefore 'perfect hair', and expensive clothes, therefore dressed tip-top. All that, in order to 'make it.' She was not a typical student, shall we say.

Now that she had made it, she felt she wanted to break away from this track. It cannot be overstated: she really wanted this break, needed it! Not that she was breaking down. But she had to break away to prevent just that. From a position of strength.

The sabbatical of six months was scheduled for late spring until early autumn, the warm season therefore. She had booked a remote cottage abroad with a sizeable walled garden. She would disappear from the civilisation and, like me now in this place of mirrors, deliberately took little for diversion or amusement, apart from a selection of music and writing and art materials. Like my plan now, hers was to be completely isolated with her thoughts and actions and to reinvent herself in this way. (Yes, this sounds like me now, a coincidence I had not noticed until after my plan was taking effect! Laugh if you want!)

Isolated, but open and in touch with her body and nature, a contact that she felt she had neglected. During these six months she would not leave the house and garden and be naked, with only very basic materials to keep her warm on cold days and evenings; obviously, no underwear; no dresses, cardigans or jumpers, nothing close-fitting; only two loose-fitting ponchos, a feather-light one and a heavier one.

The only clothes she brought were the ones she wore on her body. These she would burn.

How do I know this? I know because she asked me to her accomplice. As her best friend, her truly best friend, she needed me to chaperone her on the day she actually took the plunge.

And I was to shave her. Because she would be bald. Completely hairless. Hairless from head to toe. Fully stripped of that essential element of female pulchritude.

Her name is Julia.

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We have arrived and are relaxing and having tea, sitting at the garden table. We have surveyed the lay of the land and consider it fit for purpose. We are both still fully dressed. What precisely Julia is wearing will become clear as we go along. Suffice to say that she looks tip-top as always. Her make-up is immaculate and her hair well cut, the perfect middle ground between practical and feminine, so shoulder length, chestnut coloured glossy hair. A picture of perfection.

We chat until four o'clock, when my phone alarm announces the time when she is to duly begin her stay and her transformation. We both get up without either of us having to prompt the other and stand opposite each other, closely.

I say, softly, 'Okay, Julia, dear Julia, are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure it is not enough to just stay here for six months, dressed or naked, and be? Can I not just cut your hair short? I do work with my hands, but I haven't cut hair... I guess that isn't critical, given the place you are staying...'

We can't help a chuckle.

'Do you really have to destroy your great looks?'

She remains silent while she looks back at me. Then she speaks.

'I am sure. I am also sure I will regret it and will cry. Also, that I will recover and that I will have relapses and will again recover. I will look radical and will find myself hideous at times. But my hair... that will grow, so in six months' time I will be presentable again.

'I also know that I will feel lonely and bored, will cry over that and will recover.

'The thing is, I want to show that I am strong enough to recover from the mental and emotional stress. I need the stress. The stress will force me reconsider myself and what I want, where I want to go, whether, for example, I want to get back to my old job, full throttle, or more slowly paced, leaving time for pastimes and relationships. And children...

'The route to that mental change is my body, strangely enough. That is the point, to come to grips with my body, to accept my mind and my body regardless of beauty or ugliness. I need to be naked and stripped of everything that can be stripped off. Shock and awe.'

I finally understand her, I think. And am convinced. And motivated to help her. She is right, her looks will recover and her mind will too. She has been decidedly one-sided in her professional pursuits.

Still, my heartbeat quickens. You should know that I haven't seen Julia naked. We're best friends, but not like this, not touchy-feely. If I am, Julia certainly is not, was not. Our relationship has stayed on the cognitive level and the emotions have been in tow, rarely explicitly addressed. I realise that we and our relationship may become more rounded from all this. That is a good thing.

'Julia, I see. I will faithfully do what you have asked me to do. You asked me to order you around and I will try.'

We smile at each, still facing each other and at arm's length. I take a deep breath.

'Julia, here we go. Let's get in gear.

'You, please, take step one and strip. No, sorry, forget the "please." Strip, Julia! Take it slowly so that I have the opportunity to look at you. You asked me to observe and stare you into the ground, as it were. So, I will. And turn around full circle after each piece of clothing you take off, so that I won't miss a thing.'

'Cardigan!' I order. She is startled, casts me an uncertain look and then unbuttons her lime green mohair cardigan and looks at me. Nervously, in spite of everything, in spite of her requesting this from me.

'Drop it right here in front of me.'

She follows my command and drops her cardigan at my feet. She gasps when she sees me trample it under my boots. (I am amazed myself - the role has taken over!) She looks at me, then makes the first full circle turn.

'Skirt!'

She unzips her beige, knee-length leather skirt, drops it to the ground and steps out of it. I kick it far away, with vigour. She follows it with a focused and intense gaze.

'Shoes!'

Her shoes are nubuck leather loafers with a modest heel. She takes off the left one first, by hand, then the right, and stands on the cool grass on bestockinged feet. She respectfully offers her shoes to me, as if she can't bring herself to kick them away, as if she doesn't know I will do just that. And I do, giving them a good kick.

'Come on, Julia, turn around!'

And she does, trundling around like a little girl.

'Blouse!'

A lovely, expensive silk blouse, loose-fitting, lime green. She starts to unbutton it, but I correct her, 'Rip it off!'

She looks at me, shocked, but sees my determination. She has told me to be domineering. With a sad face and clenched teeth, all the same, she slowly rips off the remaining four buttons and takes off the blouse. She has torn the fabric in one place. My God! And she drops it. Looking her in the eyes, I drill it into the ground with the nose of my right boot.

She appears close to tears, as she now stands before me in her underwear and pantyhose. A shadow of her strong and confident old self.

The bra and knickers are pale pink with blue embroidery and the tights are 'nude'. Beforehand, she has told me that she chose her favourite pieces and made the sacrifice all the greater. (Clothes bought for seduction, yes, she did have her lovers, none meant to last...) She twists and turns while she feels my gaze surveying her from head to toe.

'Bra!'

She undoes the clip at the back, lets the garment fall forward and takes it off. She tosses it gently to the side. I leave it lying there, don't do the grinding this time. (To mess with her expectations. I don't know.)

Julia stands in front of me, her arms along her flanks - I see her arms twitch a bit, showing that she has to work to fight her tendency to cross them under her bare breasts. She appears to fight hiding her vulnerability, or is it the impulse to fight and resist this ordeal? Not sure how comfortable she is with her body, per se. I don't know that about her. (Sadly. But we are making progress.) I see the jiggle of her breasts during the stepwise rotation. They are nice, B-cup breasts. I prefer them smallish. She'll sees me seeing them jiggle.

'Pantyhose!'

She carefully balances on each leg to get out of the other leg and throws the hose aside. I pick it up and smell her crotch. A strange sensation, but I don't give in...

'Good thing you took off those tights. I can smell your sweat and heat, Julia.'

No sarcasm intended. I am secretly in awe of her, of seeing her, of commanding her, but don't mean to let it show. Her look back is resigned, not unhappy. She makes her rotation. Jiggling breasts.

'And finally: knickers! This time, you smell them!'

She takes them off and hold them to her nose. She looks emotional now. She will also smell her heat. And sweat and... (arousal?) The occasion is momentous. 'Taste it,' I sternly command, in low voice. She stuffs them into her mouth, gagging. I see her standing naked in front of me. And, naked, she looks stripped of her dignity, with her knickers in her mouth. Is she thinking of her hair, realising that her still perfect hair will go shortly? Is she thinking of her reputation? Her self-image, which is being rattled? Yet this is the route she wanted to take. 'You said... I know you want this,' I murmur.

I instruct her to lift one arm and smell her armpit, then the other, inhaling deeply each time. And her crotch. I have never done that to anyone, nor wanted to. I open her labia and smell her vagina and inspect it up close. She flinches!

I yank her knickers out from between her teeth and casually toss them aside.

'So, Julia, how did you like your inspection? Are you enjoying yourself?'

She hardly dares looking at me. She looks over my head when she groans, 'I hate it... and I love it.... And I can't explain why.... The feeling is deep, it is shocking... Thank you, Vita...'

There is Julia thanking me... Lord! I shouldn't lose my cool, compose myself and respond, 'You are welcome, Julia. But let's not get sentimental. There is work to do. This is only the beginning. Now, go and get us some firewood. You are going to burn your lovely clothes.'

I sit down and watch her while she goes about collecting fallen branches and twigs from the trees in the large walled yard and make the fire. A new sensation, for her of course, but also for me, as she fulfils these jobs naked and exposed and watched by me.

Within twenty minutes she has a nice little fire burning. Nice, but the purpose is eery.

I instruct her. 'First the pantyhose.' She throws it into the fire and it burns away in a flash, leaving a burst of foul burning-plastic smell. 'Underwear, please. Hurry up.' With a sad face, she sees her beautiful bra and knickers also quickly burn into nothingness, except for the metal parts of the bra, which remain glowing in the fire and fade away to nasty, soot-covered pieces of metal. 'The blouse!' That's gone quickly too, her best blouse! She moans. 'The cardigan!' Soon all that is left of the blouse and cardigan are a few distorted buttons. 'The skirt!' The leather doesn't burn well at all, it shrinks, gets charred, curls up and gives off a highly unpleasant smell. 'The shoes!' More of the same.

Madness.

She is now stripped of her dignity and there is nothing left for her to wear. We stand by the pyre for a while, watching the flames and the scant smouldering remains of her wardrobe, mourning the passing of her attire. She wanted this, and she stands by her decision. But it's strange and sad. Destruction is not my game, neither of things nor of personalities.

Then an idea enters my mind, one beyond playful, one bordering on the sadistic. But Julia wants me to be extreme! I don't hesitate, pick up a burning stick from the fire and stand in front of her. Her look is serious and she has to swallow, fearful of what I am up to. To her horror, I pick up a strand of her hair and scorch it with the glowing stick.

'In case you were thinking of changing your mind about your hair.'

I repeat the singeing a few times, each time with a fresh stick. Seemingly endlessly. She is really scared of injury, making noises to that extent, but does nothing to stop me. There must be no worse way to get rid of one's hair. Thankfully, it doesn't catch fire. It melts and embrittles, smelling horrid. Then I have done enough. I go to the garden table and take a mirror out of my handbag. I show her ravaged head of hair to her - she is a scarecrow! The contrast with the perfect hair she had until a few minutes ago is cruel. Still, this is what she wanted. The blow has merely been advanced and refined.

I stand in front of her and hug her, ruffling her now clearly less than perfect hair. Brittle bits fall off.

'It's hard, Julia, I know. It's hard for you but hard for me too. Of course, I'll survive physically unscathed, but I have to force myself. You pushed me to do all this. I am doing this for you. Yet I feel it's a life-changing experience for me too.'

Then I change my tone again, reverting back to a commanding stance.

'Slut, we are going to complete your transformation. You'll look nothing like you did before. Your mother wouldn't recognise you.

'Go and fetch a pair of scissors. They'd better be sharp.'

She fetches the brand-new razor-sharp barbers' scissors she bought for the occasion and hands them to me.

'Thank you, Julia. Go sit on the edge of the table and open your legs wide.'

So, there she sits, the upwardly mobile lawyer, with open legs, open sex. I look at her sex, bend over and sniff at it again.

Julia says, 'You know, Vita, no one comes close to having smelled me, my sex. No woman, anyway.'

I reply, 'Julia, the strangest thing... I think you're aroused. Can that be right?'

'Oh, Vita... I shouldn't be... I don't know... Try it out if you want,' she replies softly. And I stroke and caress her labia and her clitoris, starting with a soft touch, increasing the pressure more and more... Her slit gradually opens and my finger, two, three fingers, start to penetrate her, sliding in and out, ever deeper... I let her lick my finger, after sampling her myself... In spite of the horror, she has got excited. I stop abruptly. 'You're not coming. Bet you were getting ready.' She moans. We look at each other, she is frustrated.