Tami Beethoven

He shook his head quickly, trying to shake this horrible image from his mind.

Dr. Abu Jamal let this sink in before he said, "You understand, Mr. Sykes, why we asked you not to disclose to Tami the content of this discussion."

Rod nodded.

The three men sipped their coffees, changed their crossed legs, adjusted their pants and jackets, looked down at their shined shoes, and contemplated the plight of the nude girl.

Finally Rod said, "So what remains?"

Part 51

"There is a possible behavioral explanation for her allergy," Dr. Kantor said, brightening a bit. "An explanation that was staring us in the face but we did not see it until recently. The explanation involves simple classical conditioning. It is like Pavlov and his dog."

"What?" Rod thought he remembered this from the intro to psych course he took as a freshman but he wanted to be sure.

"A dog salivates when it sees food nearby. Professor Pavlov rang a bell whenever food was about to be given. Ultimately the dog salivated when it heard the bell, even though no food had appeared."

"Right... So?"

"Think about Tami's experience. She comes to Campbell-Frank as a freshman, clothed and insecure. A year later she is popular, loved, by you especially, amazingly creative, getting straight 'A's. And naked.

"From what we know of her early interviews with us, before the second week of her freshman year, she was clothed, she had no sex life except for very occasional masturbation. Now, she has what appears to be a fulfilling sex life with you, and a small army of friends whose sole purpose in life is apparently to give her as many intense orgasms as possible. Clothed, no sexual peaks. Naked, she has dozens a day."

Rod looked down at the coffee set. "I see what you mean."

"She has associated nudity with love, nudity with scholastic excellence, nudity with creativity, and above all, nudity with sexual pleasure."

"Not just sexual," Rod pointed out. "She gets a lot of pleasure feeling the ground underneath her bare feet, the wind against her breasts... Her bare skin touching everything around her." He smiled with a bit of embarrassment. "I'm jealous, tell you the truth. This sounds wack, but I wish I could go around naked too, roll around in the grass like she does. So long as no one sees me."

They all laughed, which broke the tension.

"Our theory," Dr. Kantor then said, "is that the allergy represents the contrapositive of this association."

"The -- what?"

"Given a statement, 'If A, then B', the contrapositive is, 'if not B, then not A'. If a statement is true, then the contrapositive is always true."

"Oh." Again, a vague memory was triggered, maybe from high school algebra.

"Meaning," Dr. Kantor said, "that Tami associates nudity with pleasure, and has extended this to associate clothing with pain. Hence, the allergy to clothes. If the, as you say, the 'TL's', have been especially active and successful lately in their attempts to drive Tami to greater orgasmic heights, this would also explain the recent advancement of her allergy. It has only strengthened the association and hence the contrapositive reaction."

This was a lot to absorb. But after chewing this over, Rod said, "That's irrational. Tami could be clothed and still have my love, and be creative, and have orgasms and all that stuff."

"Yes, but irrational does not stop something from being effective, at least not in classical conditioning. Let's say you were Pavlov's dog. Or that we devised an experiment where, I don't know what you like, say it's a steaming hamburger."

"That'll do." Rod was in fact getting hungry.

"And we sounded a bell just before it was served. You would eventually react like Pavlov's dog did, salivating, or maybe your nostrils flaring, just at the sound of the bell. You would say to yourself, 'this is silly', but the bell would still sound and your nostrils would still flare."

Rod thought for a moment. "I think this, at least, we can tell to Tami."

"True," Dr. Abu Jamal said readily. "From this point on, I want you to explain to Tami everything we are about to discuss. If she wonders why we called you here alone, tell her it would be awkward and perhaps impolite to discuss conditioning her with her sitting there." He pointed to another chair next to them. Rod pictured Tami's nakedness sitting on that chair, her bare butt on the cushion, a contrast to their full sets of clothes, her bare toes maybe idly grabbing the coffee table. He thought of her reaching over with her toes and caressing his dick through his pants. This got him hard and then he had to shift in his chair.

He sensed they were finally getting somewhere and was eager to learn more. With a touch of raillery he said, "What's the plan, gentlemen?"

"Break the connection," Dr. Kantor said. "Get her to associate clothing with pleasure. Put clothes on her while she is experiencing orgasm."

"Sounds straightforward enough."

"It's not a sure thing. There might be an unexpected interaction with some deeper psychodynamic which would even make the allergy worse. Also, even if, as we expect, it is straightforward, it will not be easy, because both elements of the association are extremely strong. Tami's nakedness has been utter -- possibly nobody in the history of the human race has been so naked for so long, in relation to the person's surroundings, a nude in the middle of a world of the clothed, often HEAVILY clothed, as when she walks barefoot and naked through snow in the middle of the campus. And Tami's orgasmic pleasure has been so great as to be perhaps unique. It is off the scale."

Dr. Abu Jamal got up to his desk and came back with an oversize leaflet which he handed to Dr. Kantor.

"As you know, when we discovered that Tami's consent to the experiments in Lab 6 had not been properly obtained, we destroyed all the records we had made of those experiments. This included brain wave studies done during her stages of arousal and climax. To emphasize our contriteness we gave the floppy disks to Tami personally -- we were still using floppies at the time -- and she did the erasing herself, in this very room." Rod looked over at the computer next to the desk. "But one record of her responses does survive: the replication experiment she volunteered to do when she heard our accreditation was in danger."

Rod remembered that, the airplane trip to Chicago, the brightly lit stage with the dildos, Tami heaving into ten orgasms surrounded by the rows of professors taking notes, during the climactic moments looking up at him for support with mixed feelings of love and shame.

As Dr. Kantor opened the loose leaf, Rod said, "You folks owe Tami a hell of a lot of thanks."

Dr. Abu Jamal said, "It is not an overstatement, Mr. Sykes, to say that we would sacrifice our professional reputations for her if required."

"See this chart," Dr. Kantor said. "These are Tami's delta waves at plateau, orgasm, plateau again, orgasm again... Delta waves are 'pleasure waves', as has been shown in a variety of contexts."

"Like when eating chocolate?"

Rod meant this as a little joke but Dr. Kantor said, with a straight face, "Actually yes. Chocolate studies have been done... During this plateau/orgasm series here, see how the delta waves were particularly prominent. This was during --" he pointed to another squiggly line in the chart, lower down, "a certain type of clitoral and Graffenberg spot stimulation."

"It would probably be more effective, from a brute force standpoint, to work on the 'pain' end of the association, giving her electrical shocks when naked and stopping them as she puts on an article of clothing. But that would be inhumane and besides, we want to her to be free to be naked when she wants. We propose instead to work on the 'pleasure' end of the association. If clothing could be introduced exactly during that time, perhaps just a small article at first, then taken away as stimulation ceased, then introduced again -- "

Rod suddenly sat up. "You're not suggesting strapping her into that -- Lab 6 -- thing --"

"We would hate to do that," Dr. Abu Jamal said. "Lab 6 has been boarded up for three years. The equipment has been disassembled but is still there. It probably is not a good idea anyway because in Tami's mind the equipment has a bad association of its own. But it occurred to us that such a mechanical process, the thrusting of dildos into Tami's vagina and rectum, and the suctioning of her nipples, is too crude for the split-second timing and delicate manipulation of her genitals that would be required."

Rod swallowed and said, "I will... perform with her if that's what's needed."

"Actually, more than one set of tongues and fingers will probably be required. Tongues and fingers that are intimately familiar with every nuance of Tami's reactions..."

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By the time Rod came home it was almost ten o'clock. He was really hungry now and hoped there was enough in the refrigerator to put together a sandwich. Also he needed a full stomach to think about the mouthful Drs. Abu Jamal and Kantor had said at Chalfont and think about what to tell Tami.

He came in to the kitchen and Tami was at the table, sitting at it instead of on top, dawdling over a cup of tea. When she saw him she came up and hugged him. She seemed sad. They separated and she held his hands in front of her. Then she brought her limber leg up and placed her foot on top, grasping over his hand with her flexible toes.

Rod looked down and playfully and made the standard chimpanzee sound when Tami used her feet like hands. "Ooo ooo ooo."

Tami smiled wanly and looked down at her toes. Rod gave her toes a closer look and his eyes widened.

On her third toe, where the wedding band used to be, was a tattoo!

It was exquisitely made, evidently done at that place in town. It was in the shape of a ring, taking up the area formerly hidden by the band. In spiderly but flowing words it read across her toe, "I belong to Rod," with a heart.

Rod tried to form words but couldn't. Getting a tattoo, marring her perfect nudity, was always one thing Tami was against. As was he.

"I just had to, Baby," she confessed through moist eyes. "I want the world to know I'm married to you but I can't wear that ring even for one minute now. It burns like fire. And I can't wear a ring on my finger either. Not even a little necklace. Baby, I don't know what's happening to me!!"

Part 52

Snow.

On the morning of April 4, Tami and Rod woke up at the same time, Tami on the hardwood floor, Rod on the bed. Though it was before sunrise the bedroom was bright and silent. They knew what it meant. Wordlessly they padded to the bay window and saw the white mounds and valleys, the fluffy white cotton balls encoating the recently sprung buds on the shrubbery, luminous in the predawn light.

The April blizzard, a yearly tradition up here in the Vermont north country.

As Rod watched, Tami slid open the glass door and stepped out, her bare feet silently and effortlessly fluffing through the soft white stuff. Rod crossed his arms, shivering in his pajamas, as his wife strolled nakedly and languidly through the drifts, at one point up to her thighs, as relaxed as if she were sauntering along a warm beach. Then she sat down in the luminous snow. Tami had no fear of being naked in the snow, she knew that it was harmless for short periods, plus she had built up a resistance to the cold far greater than a normal person's. Still, Rod cringed as he imagined the tiny flakes pressing up into her pussy and her little brown-skinned sphincter.

Now she lay back, and stretched herself out into an 'X'. She seemed in position to make one of her 'snow angels' but for her mood. The snow was so deep that he could only see the tips of her breasts, disembodied nipples poking out from behind the drifts.

Tami had gotten to love playing in the snow. She was a great one at throwing snowballs at friends on campus, a long left-handed sidearm delivery that would reach a surprised Trent or Gretchen from halfway across the quad, before laughingly running away from any counterattack, her toes kicking up bits of white behind her. Or spending half an hour hefting rolled-up white boulders across the field in front of the art building, painstakingly building a snowwoman (always a female, with breasts and a "V" below) while half the campus walked by.

But now she seemed almost like she was lying down in the snow to die. It was very unsettling.

She had been depressed since he came back last night and showed him the tattoo on her toe. Giving her the Chalfont doctors' explanation for her allergy improved her mood a little, but just a little. She must have been aware of the advance in her allergy over the past few months, and it was touching that it began to concern her only when it meant she could no longer wear her wedding ring. But she had gotten to love being naked and the prospect of a program to get her back into clothes did not seem to excite her much.

Maybe she sensed that the doctors had told more to Rod than he let on. A couple of months ago she said they were holding back on her. Maybe she was still sensing that. Hence the lack of any relief as to a theory of her allergy finally being disclosed.

Rod was so lost in his thoughts that it gave him a start to see Tami rise out of the snow, like a corpse coming to life. The sun was rising and the pale light graced her bare shoulder and hip as she approached. Her head down, she padded back to him, then hugged him, the snow on her bare skin chilling him as it melted through his pajamas. Then she knelt down and without closing the sliding glass door behind her, took his limp dick out of his bottoms and started sucking him.

He wanted to tell her to stop, she was doing it so joylessly. But her technique was so good, and it occurred to him that she was sucking him as therapy for herself as well as for his pleasure. Maybe as a kind of recompense for not being able to wear the ring that bound her to him. Though of course that was not fair. The tattoo around her toe was far more permanent that any ring that one could slip off.

Rod looked up at the snowy back yard, the trail incongruously made by bare feet, breathed in the cold air, looked down past his wife's head at the bits of snow stuck to her bare butt cheeks, and rose up and deposited a full load of semen down Tami's throat. She gulped it down to the last drop and kept sucking until the last, weak spasms, then took his softening, floppy dick out and kissed it. She got up and hugged him again and he felt about to cry.

He followed her as she went to the kitchen. Even though it was morning, she popped open a can of Naragansett, the cheap beer she knew from Providence that for some reason one could buy at the supermarket up here in Campbell County, Vermont. She sat in her usual cross-legged position on top of the table as she sipped it.

"I can't lie to you, Baby," Tami said, looking down at her nipples, wet with the melted bits of snow, "I have a feeling something bad is about to happen. I can feel it in my nips."

She could pick up barometric pressure with her nipples, it had long been clear. And could sometimes pick up other people's thoughts with them. But foretelling the future was a new ability.

"Like what?" he felt compelled to ask.

"I don't know." Another sip. "I don't feel well. I think I'll call in sick today."

Tami had always been driven by a work ethic and the need to impress. Kind of like he was, though with him it was the words his parents had brought him up with, the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. -- "burn the midnight oil", "I hate being even one minute late". With Tami, he took it as an expression of Catholic guilt, original sin. So this calling in sick was unusual. He felt like she wanted to be alone for a while. So after sitting around a few moments, he got showered and dressed and went to work.

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The return of snow brought the return of Yvette, once again having broken up with Pierre, once again dancing at Teaser's and calling up Tami's house, this time without getting into trouble and leaving it for Luci the manager to call.

"Um, OK/. Sure," Tami said. It was after supper and she and Rod were sitting around glumly watching T.V., almost as if waiting for the bad thing that Tami had predicted to happen.

Yvette needed a place to crash tonight but was not in crisis. She simply needed time for a callback from a friend in Montreal she could stay with. Now that she was in that kitchen again, the kitchen she had such fond memories of, she felt a little guilty, like she was intruding. There was no atmosphere of gaiety. Tami the Naked Girl, the girl who was allergic to clothes, seemed preoccupied, depressed. Even her big brown nipples seemed to droop down a little, not stiff and perky as usual.

Fortunately Tami's coffee was as terrible as before.

"Oh, sorry," Yvette said, as she coughed upon the first sip of the bitter, grounds-filled fluid and spilled it across the table.

Tami looked at her for a moment and then giggled. It was good to see. She reached over with a napkin and cleaned up the spill, her breasts jiggling and dancing as they pointed downward.

After she was done Tami said, "You look better than last time."

"Much. Partly because of you. Merci. My dancing is better now too. I think I like it."

Tami began to roll her eyes but then corrected herself. "OK.

"Want to see my new costume?"

Tami hesitated but then said, "Sure." Yvette found herself back in that bathroom, with the big enema bag near the toilet, and remembered her first conclusions as to how weird this naked girl was, the enema bag, the smell of vomit that she attributed to Tami being bulimic but later realized had been her own, seeing the naked white girl in a kitchen full of black people.

In a moment she was out in the kitchen, proudly showing off what she wore at the beginning of each set. A lacy black bikini top, a black g-string with feathers that stuck out from the waistband, and over it, a sheer red baby-doll cape. On her sock-ess feet were high heels with clear glass soles. Yes, a typical outfit for a topless dancer, but she liked to think of it as a bit classier than the usual.

As Yvette stood there, tottering on the high heels, hands on her hips, her 32B breasts stuck out just so, Tami applauded. And then, her expression getting more serious, looked Yvette up and down and walked around her, eyeing her from every angle. It was a little disconcerting. At first she thought Tami was getting turned on. Some of the other dancers had made lesbian advances and she still didn't know how to deal with it. She didn't dare tell Pierre -- having a threesome was one of his announced fantasies and if he got wind of it, well he could be quite overbearing when he wanted something, especially something sexual. It still hurt a little when she swallowed, from that time he forced his dick into her mouth.

But then it seemed like Tami's interest was more clinical, like a doctor doing an exam. And it was odd being in this skimpy outfit and yet feeling so dressed next to Tami's utter nakedness. She looked down and saw Tami's strong, tanned bare feet next to her pale white toes strapped into the high glass heels. And looked sideways at Tami's plum-colored pussy hair next to her g-string with the feathers and the baby doll over it. Even at Teaser's you weren't allowed to take off your bottom, though some of the girls cheated in the lap dance booths. Yet Tami went around bottomless all the time, in public no less.

Tami touched the feathers and said, "If you don't mind," and cinched about an inch of the waist band between two fingers. "Does this fit better?"