Revenge, Best Served Nude

"My life might unravel any minute. An asteroid might drop out the sky. Whatevs. I think that's all the more reason to do this on July 14, when everything is peachy. I haven't had too many stretches of sky-high moods in my life. I'm willing to have this mood put on record."

I continued with my spiel about how my public nudity could inch the world towards being a better place, especially with WAHH seeking to provide stewardship in a campaign for sexual acceptance.

"Well, what do you think?" I said.

Cora looked right at Rusalka, and said, "I'm in."

"Me too," said grinning Sue, opening her towel and striking a pose. She was quite angular, but checked the boxes for young, healthy, and conventionally pretty.

Rusalka didn't look happy, but she said, "You think men will notice you? With bodies like that? I suppose I have to bring my boobs, and show everybody a real woman."

The three of us cheered for her.

She continued. "Can we downplay the weight loss aspect? We had no impediments to slimming. To people struggling with genuine obesity, ours was a trivial amount of weight. Just hammer away at the confidence we built, and hope we don't get bullshit-called, at least before end of Nude Day."

"Good idea," I said, meaning it.

Cora stood, tossed her towel aside, and went to the mirror. "I'm not there yet, but I'm close. The tummy should be flatter." To my eyes, her pocket-rocket curves were already quite alluring.

Then she turned to us. "But we don't flaunt, right? And we don't taunt the guys. We'll just show no interest in them. That'll make the revenge clear."

"We simply enjoy our day at the beach," said Sue. "No obvious objectifying."

At the mirror, Rusalka grumbled, "My ass is too droopy." She grabbed a cheek and looked over her shoulder at it.

I didn't look at myself all that closely. "I still have a saddle." I had lately been looking only at problem areas.

"Damnit!" snapped Cora. Then the shortest of our cohort grabbed Rusalka and me by elbow-crooks and arranged us before the mirror. "Look, you two! Ditch your self-image gloom, and see what other people will see!"

"Oh," I said, seeing my eyes widen. I stretched up a little, arched the back...

"Mmm," said Rusalka, raising hands to lift her blond locks...

"Any straight man who sees this," declared Corazon, "not just July 14, but right now, would want to kick you into bed!"

She may not have included herself in that, but she should have. Between my hue and Rusalka's was the cafe-au-lait of a sleek doll with dynamite hair.

I was genuinely surprised at my full-length image. I may not have looked at it that way since the end of high school. I hadn't run track in college, there was no time. So in the final years of my physical maturation, I had unknowingly ceased being a stick figure. I still had the appleknockers, but now the torso and trunk presented sinuous arcs and pleasing flares, and the arms, legs, and butt were in the range of a female human template.

I wanted to flash Dylan.

Sue stood next to Ru, untied her pony tail, and shook her light brown cascade to settle just past her shoulders. The mirror was now jammed with mighty fine womanflesh. Our arms held neighbor's backs, to bring us closer.

Rusalka said, "We're the Four Revengewomen of the Nudepocalypse."

"That's the worst name yet," said I.

Sue said, "And we have three weeks left, to go beyond the five-star level of the male gaze. Remember what you said, Ash? How we should do this for us?"

I spread fingers across my gut, making some faint muscle borders more visible. "You hear that, abs?" I said at the mirror. "More crunches. You gotta look like a Belgian waffle iron."

Sue gave her voice a mooncalf insincerity. "Our bodies will make the world a better place when we show them as nature intended. The positive attitude from this accomplishment can stay with us for the rest of our lives."

"And teach us the lesson," I said, aiming for the same tone, "that there's nothing more important in life than the pursuit of superficial, male-defined beauty."

***

On Tuesday night before Nude Friday, I sat crosslegged on my bed. With my personal laptop, I went to the WAHH website, and clicked through to the local chapter. It didn't take long to sign up to participate, nor to watch the orientation video. Reading the Terms and Conditions, however, took much longer.

I had to provide a name and contact info, but with the option to give it only to WAAH, and tell WAHH not to connect it to me on the site. I opted for that, so there'd be no profile, and no mention of Ashanti Nicholson in captions or reportage. This certainly wouldn't make me anonymous, since there'd clearly be many people I know at the event. But I saw no reason to allow strangers worldwide to stalk me.

The video showed how WAHH would raise money. Staffers for the event would take still pix of participants, and post them on line, with rectangular blurs to cover the provocative parts of the subject's anatomy--while revealing enough, outside the blurs, to promise nudity. A person logging in to the site could then donate an amount requested by WAHH, and receive the uncensored image. In light of how many places on Earth WAHH would host Nude Day, I mused on the possibility of the internet being demolished.

The Terms and Conditions listed many sticks to go with the carrots. No drones allowed, and any that approached would be diverted by jamming pulses. No phones or cams, except those used by WAHH. Any behavior inappropriate for a public nude beach would lead to dismissal, and maybe charges filed by the local authority. This went into exhaustive detail, starting with the requirement that men must not display erections, and must cover up if they can't remain flaccid. Also, there must be no more than incidental contact with another person's genitals, and a thirty-second limit on contact with one's own genitals. This grace period made possible another moneymaker for WAHH: a Sunscreen Application Video (SAV), in which one other person could assist with inaccessible areas.

As I went through all this, I wondered if Dylan might have a problem seeing me this way. That wouldn't stop me, but I'd been hoping it would please him. Did his shyness indicate a discomfort with nudity? Or with open sexuality? When he didn't turn on the lights, was that out of respect for me? Or fear? Or forgetting, because he was bonkers to bang me?

It was way too late for secrecy. As we were leaving work on Wednesday, I asked Dylan, "Do you have plans for Friday?"

He didn't respond much when I explained. He looked uncomfortable, but he wished me luck.

We didn't see each other Thursday. That was scheduled as a day for individual work. I dreamed up two new prospects for benign solar collectors.

A text chirp woke me up Friday morning:

WHEN WILL U ARRIVE? MAY I JOIN?

As Cora was gathering her Rusalka-vetted breakfast, she asked why I was bouncing off the walls. Incoherently, I gave her too little information while texting Dylan too much.

***

Between two tall, solid fences, the boundary of the clothing-optional beach at Wyandotte Park was filled by a tent with long tables in the front, behind which sat people in WAHH t-shirts. The fronts of the tables were draped with WAHH and Nude Day banners, all the way to the ground. Because this was the interface from the world of modesty, no one outside the tent could see any human nudity.

The first thing a prospective participant did was check in at a table. Everyone received a white elastic band for placement around an arm or leg, with a number that was the person's WAHH-coded ID for the day. The world would know us as 129 through 132.

Next we headed for the large city-maintained building with lockers, showers, and lavatories. On the way, I saw Dylan get in line at the WAHH tent. I called, "Hi Dyl! See you soon!"

He grinned and waved to me. He also checked out my companions. He seemed quite eager to see us soon.

A locker key sealed in a wristband was sufficient to allow a safe return to the clothing-mandatory world. I, and I believe most people today, put keys, ID, phone, shoes, and one set of public clothes in the locker. Then we sallied forth wearing at-beach clothes (in keeping with the 'optional' part), and toting our beach bags with towels, sunscreen, water bottles, and insecticide. I had somehow failed to bring thirty-four pounds of my New Year's self.

Beyond the exit of the locker building there were more WAHH tables, under another tent. Here, the WAHH folks were nude, in some cases identified with body paint. A middle-aged South Asian man advised us to stake out a towel-spreading spot. Then he asked, "When you're ready, would you please come back here to give us some visual content for the site?"

"That's what we're here for!" said Sue, beaming. If there was a lingering benefit to revenge, it was to Sue. Ru had told me that since we started this silly rigmarole, Sue hadn't once slipped into a funk of depression.

Down a dune slope strolled Revenge-'R'-Us (yeesh). I barely confined my giddiness and anxiety. Watching the freed flesh that was already enjoying the day, swimming and frisbeeing and volleyballing (yeesh), I felt overdressed, but nervous about conforming.

We found a good spot, mixed sun and shade. I doffed my yellow floral-print sundress and stowed it in the bag. Soon we were all bikini'd. Mine was red. Then we stood still, each behind two pieces of fabric, and looked at each other silently.

Sue said, "Want to decide on a prize for first?"

"Nope," said Ru, hauling her top off over her head. She spun it while bouncing her formidable gazongage, and shaking her blonde locks to catch the breeze.

It was then that I noticed some familiar faces in the middle distance, atop jaybird bodies. They were watching us. They were male, and motionless. What Rusalka was doing could probably have had that effect on them, even if she hadn't lost forty-seven pounds.

I had an instant of timidity. Then I started a silent recitation of my credo about nudity saving the world, and yanked down my suit bottom. "First pussy!" I said, straightening up to present it proudly.

Soon we were ready to parade around naked. Responsibly, however, we arranged our bags and sandals to anchor the towels. Then we extracted our sunscreen tubes, and sashayed back to the tent. Sashaying made me extra aware that I was now unsaddled.

There were several nudies at the tent, posing and photographing. The South Asian guy, toting a formidable camera, waved us to an open space. "Who wants to go first?"

"Can you take us together?"

His eyes popped. "Sure! But I'd like solos too."

"This first," I said, arranging us as we had been at the locker room mirror, arms behind backs.

The photog centered himself for the shot, and crouched. His manhood nearly grazed the sand. "Wow," he said. "I'll get you in wide angle."

"Why dangle?" I teased him. "Because you're nude!"

Despite his guffaws, and ours, he got about five steady shots quickly.

If we weren't diverse enough already, down-there hair made us more so. I'm already pushing my limits by shaving my legs and pits. I scissored the delta, but that can't go too short. It's a Black thing. I will not give my curly, spiky pubes a chance to cycle back and drill into skin, where I'd like to enjoy pain-free fun, thank you very much.

At the other extreme is Rusalka. It's like she could run a whiskbroom lightly between her legs, and what's left is totally bald, with a camel toe the size of, well, a camel toe. Cora has opted for a thin rectangular landing strip as black as her tumbling tresses. Sue trims her light brown thatch to a cute li'l heart-shape.

The photog then separated us for solo shots. Out of the tent stepped an elderly East Asian woman with a camera, and also a large laptop, which she set up on a table to show pix that had already been processed. She looked at us as we finished our solo posing and asked, "Sunscreen?"

We showed our tubes.

It might have been fun to linger over the smearing of SPF 50 gunk on our naughty bits, but the waiting crowd was pretty big. The female photog talked us through getting full coverage in short time. I appreciate my natural melanin, but it's not enough for this much sun on this much skin. So my use of sunscreen was actually necessary, and not a porn stunt on my delectable surface.

When we were done, I indicated the laptop and asked the female photog, "Does that have word processing?"

"Yeah."

"When it's not so crowded, may I create a text file on it?"

She glanced at the male photog, who shrugged. "Okay."

Which is why I've been able to churn this out, a few minutes at a time, without electronics of my own.

We departed as a group. In passing I glimpsed Dylan, nude, in a still-photo shoot.

I finally saw what was on top of me when I had my ribasm.

He has an average body, no sharp muscle definition. Yet now he showed poise that surprised me, and a confident smile. As if he knew he was cute, with laser-like blue eyes.

"Yours?" Cora murmured to me.

How to answer that quickly and honestly? "No, but yes."

"Muy guapo. Good get, Room."

At our HQ, my colleagues stowed their sunscreen and began to stroll towards the water. I sat down.

Ru asked, "Don't you want to join us in a slow-motion jog along the water line?"

"Maybe later," I said, timid for the first time that day.

Cora smiled, but didn't blow my cover. "Let's go," she said to Ru and Sue.

Once they were gone, I stood, and moved to be more visible. There were maybe ten other Black women here, but I left nothing to chance.

Soon I saw Dylan approaching, with a wad of towels under one arm, his clothes jammed among them. As a man, he was unaware of the technological advance of the beach bag.

"You can set up in close proximity," I told him. "Maybe a couple feet of sand away. WAHH seems worried about excessive contact."

"It's all good," he said, complying.

I was nervous. I clasped my hands behind my back. "When we texted, I think you said you wanted to, ah, talk."

"Yeah," he said, standing. With both of us barefoot, he seemed to be as 5' 8" as I was. "I'm impressed that you're doing this, taking a big risk to help WAHH. I hope it doesn't cause you trouble later. And, um, I'm glad that you're willing to have me here with you."

"As close as we've been," I said, quietly, stifling a giggle, "I didn't want you left out of something I thought you'd enjoy."

"Thanks," he said. "But that's today. Next week, Ash, will we go back to being brainy drones in lab coats?"

"Not necessarily." My areolas started to crinkle. Thanks a lot, nudity.

"I'm a nerd, Ash, and a white-privileged one. If I have to risk ridicule, I appreciate that it can be in a one-on-one conversation, and not in a venue that would drive me into solitude forever. Ashanti Nicholson, if I were to ask you for a date, would you reject me?"

I stifled a laugh, then knew I'd have to keep him from taking that the wrong way. "I would NOT reject you, Dylan Courtney!" I said, quickly and too loudly. "In fact, I'd like to throw you a rope and drag you up from the friend zone."

"Really?" His surprised smile got to me. It made me feel like I'd won something.

"Yes, really! Um, starting gradually, okay? I mean, if what you really want to know is if I'd ridicule you, it won't be about that! And, um, what we did at your place? That could happen again, sometime."

His posture wavered. He closed his eyes. I think he was trying to avert violation of the no-boner rule.

"You need some cold water?" I asked.

"That might help," he said tightly.

I made a show of bringing out a water bottle from the beach bag I had brought. As I handed it to him, I saw that my fellow revengistas were returning. "You can drink it all," I said, guessing what the approaching pulchritude might do to him, "And if you need to leave, I won't be offended."

Beyond the three women, other people were approaching. What was about to happen might not be lighthearted fun.

I barely had time to introduce Dylan to Ru, Sue, and Cora, when Marcus and Brent arrived, ahead of a phalanx of more cowardly douchebags.

"Wellllll," drawled Brent, "what have we here?"

Marcus made a show of turning towards other approaching men. "Check it out, Dudes. Let's appreciate our handiwork."

"That's right," said Brent, gesturing with both arms, to include all four of us. "We won! We made them into hotties."

Marcus stepped up closer to us. "You've taught us a valuable lesson, ladies. All we have to do, to make a chub into a dime, is to tell her how fat she is!"

"You were our submissives for six months, obeying our command," said Brent. "And we didn't even have to be around."

What stopped us from laughing this off was their appearance. Not just naked, but jacked. They looked like doctor's office posters that illustrated and named male muscles.

Marcus's torso was definitely not the soft one from when I had slept with him. Lying under him now might give me a multiple ribasm. His shoulders, biceps, and thighs bulged. Brent wasn't as large, but he was just as defined. From what I saw of Cora's expression, his body now wasn't what she'd encountered before.

Then our brains caught up with, and passed, our pounding hearts. "So," I said, "you didn't have to do anything? Congratulations on having been in perfect condition in January."

Rusalka folded her arms under her breasts, giving them some extra elevation. "Gotta say, Marcus," she said with a smirk, "you look amazing right now. In fact, have you ever looked like that? I recall a time when your gut wouldn't stop wobbling."

Marcus lowered his eyes, and seemed to search the sand for his lost smile.

Her brows faking puzzlement, Sue said, "Could it be that we weren't the only ones whose behavior was modified by what other people might think?"

"So this is what social media does," Cora added. "It must have given away our gym work, so certain douchebags could get in shape somewhere else."

Marcus looked a little twitchy. "You can't say no to this," he said, gesturing vaguely at himself. "Y'all know where to find me. Get in line, and good luck." He headed off to his right, as if he had an actual destination.

This left Brent alone at the vanguard. It was now more obvious that the nude losers behind him hadn't improved much.

Brent didn't seem bothered that we figured out what he'd done. He ambled up to us, grinning. He was confident, arrogant, and well aware of the effect his surfer dude look had on us. His average-ish dick was limp, in keeping with the etiquette. I had heard, however, that he was a grower, and that the growth could remain in effect for quite a while.

He looked us all up and down, and nodded. "Nice," he said. "Really nice. The potential was always there. All it took was for you to put in the work." He began a slow stroll around me, his eyes drinking in all of what I offered to everyone. "And all that took was for you to finally figure it out. If you wanted to aim for the heights, you'd have to drop the take-me-as-I-am routine. Sure, you're a brainiac. What did that get you?" He glanced at Dylan, and chuckled. Then he looked back at me, smile even nastier.

"Did you realize," Brent continued, again to all four of us, "that this would be a two-stage process? You definitely nailed stage one. Here you are, total smokeshows. But you only get the revenge from stage two. Once the guys who snubbed you start pursuing you, you have to snub them back. Forever." Brent stepped up to about eighteen inches away from me. He was upwind, and knew it. I now had to fight off his scent, as well as his sight and sound. My left leg shook. I winced as I stilled it.

Loud enough for all of us to hear, but right in my face, he said, "Me and some bros will hang out at the boathouse, in half an hour. Can you stay away?"