The Great Architect

"You just stay right where you are," she said to it. "I don't bother you if you don't bother me, okay? Who am I kidding? This is a rattlesnake I'm talking to. I can't do much to you, but you could easily have bitten me by now if you wanted to. So I'm going to get into my car now and leave you alone now, okay? Don't be frightened, I'm going to move very slowly so I don't upset you."

Stealthily she crept along the side of the Jeep, never taking her eyes off the poison serpent. Only when she was next to the driver's running board did she risk a sudden movement, jumping into the vehicle and getting it into motion as quickly as she could. Catrina had been driving for some minutes before she remembered the fact that she was still naked. Without another soul on the road modesty wasn't even an issue, but she felt she should put some clothes on anyway, to help protect herself from the scorching sun. Catrina reasoned, however, that since the sagebrush on and around the wagon track was now thicker once again, she should not risk getting out of the Jeep. There was no telling how many dangerous creatures might be hidden in that foliage, so she just drove on, agreeing with herself that she would stop if she felt her skin burning, but even then would remain in the Jeep to find some clean clothes and put them on.

By the time Catrina had been on the wilderness road for about an hour, she had become totally accustomed to her own nudity, but it was approaching high noon and the sunlight was more intense than ever. She looked for another clear area where the ground vegetation was sparse so she could spot any approaching wildlife. Once she found a suitable spot she stopped the Jeep and began rummaging in the back for clothes. The dusty air had combined with her perspiration and the sunscreen to create another layer of filth on her, but she decided against getting out of the Jeep for another shower with bottled water. Instead she just put on a sun hat, a thong and open vest, leaving most of her torso exposed to whatever breeze it might be able to catch.

After driving through the sagebrush for almost three hours she was tired, hungry and thirsty. Gradually the flat desert gave way to the gentle rolling foothills of the Spring Mountains, but the expanse of thorny desert foliage and the harshly hot temperature remained. As the Jeep lumbered over the old wagon track, Catrina wondered if anyone could pick a less hospitable place to build a dream community. She changed her mind, however, when she caught her first glimpse of the town site.

The wagon track ended at the crest of a steep precipice on the rim of a canyon. From there a better gravel road wound down to the valley floor, where Catrina viewed an oasis that seemed entirely out of place. A brilliant lake shone like silver in the sunlight. It was fed by a spectacular waterfall on the other side of the canyon, and on the near shore the new community of Tosca City, Nevada, was nestled like a jewel, reflecting the vibrant colours of its gayly painted adobe structures. Even from a distance those buildings seemed to feature an abundance of glass, which shimmered like the lake in the intense desert sun, causing her to squint.

Again she riffled through her baggage to find a tee shirt and a clean pair of shorts. Driving naked and then virtually naked through the desert for three hours hadn't quite calmed her uneasiness over the thought of exposing herself to the citizens of Tosca City. Before proceeding she also took out her camera and made some images of Tosca City from her higher altitude vantage point, then she proceeded down the switch back gravel road into the town.

Driving into the community Catrina noticed that everyone was minimally dressed, in colourful translucent garments ranging from loin cloths to full length robes. Some people wandered about totally naked, except for sun hats, footwear, and accessories like shoulder bags. As the open topped jeep meandered through the narrow streets, every eye examined her curiously. She stopped at a square and asked directions to Andreas Toscano's house. A man walking with his wife and young child directed her to a villa on the lake shore.

At the villa an older Mexican woman escorted Catrina through the house to the patio. Toscano's villa was like a rabbit warren, with a confusing arrangement of oddly angled hallways. Most interior walls were made of clear or mirrored plastic. Catrina doubted she could find her own way back out of the building through the maze of halls and doors, even though she could see through many of the walls. It was like wandering in a house of mirrors on a carnival midway. Finally they passed through French doors at the back of the villa onto a huge patio, which doubled as a private boat dock. AndreasToscano was hovering over a marble table covered with sketches and plans. There were five younger people around him who appeared to be students. No one wore a stitch of clothing. The architect glanced up at Catrina as she strode onto the patio.

"You will be the writer from Architect and Designer," he said. "If Chesney had called sooner to let us know you were coming, I'd have sent the helicopter to pick you up. We don't usually expect our guests to suffer the journey here by road."

Catrina was mildly surprised at how uncomfortable she felt, being the only person modestly dressed. Even the Mexican maid wore only a translucent kaftan and a white kitchen apron. For a fleeting moment Catrina wished she could strip off too, but she quickly drove the thought from her mind.

"The magazine has a policy. We're not allowed to accept gifts from people or companies we write about."

Toscano seemed to be suppressing laughter. "A very noble gesture, I'm sure. Trust Chesney to be the model of ethical correctness at the expense of his employees."

"I think it's a sound policy."

"Now that's a real pity. I had hoped you'd join us for dinner this evening. Breaking bread to break the ice is a Tosca City tradition. Maybe you'd consider dining with us despite Chesney's regulations, if I let you bring your own sandwiches?"

One of the students, a buxom young woman, giggled out loud. Andreas scowled at her and she blushed profusely, before scurrying away to the water's edge with a protective young man at her heels.

"I don't think dinner would be a serious breach of protocol," Catrina responded frostily. "Dr. Chesney isn't nearly as tyrannical as you seem to think."

The fifty-year-old architect stepped from behind the table and sauntered toward her. His body was lean and muscular, like a man half his age, and tanned to a rich bronze. As he walked his generous penis swayed and bobbed. Catrina tried not to look directly at the free wheeling organ, but disappointed herself with a few less than furtive glances. He extended his hand in greeting.

"Welcome to my sunny paradise Ms. Balieu. Please relax and enjoy your stay. This place is designed to gladden the spirit. I hope to prove that to you. We don't get many visitors, so I haven't been able to justify building a hotel yet, but if you'll accept my hospitality, offered without any strings, of course, Maria will be happy to show you the room she's prepared for you. She'll get someone to fetch your luggage too."

"You're certain I won't be imposing?"

"I'm an architect with a serious point to make, Ms. Balieu. I enjoy entertaining visitors within my creations. It's no trouble at all, and even Len Chesney would want you to get a decent night's sleep, I'm sure."

"Then I accept your offer, and please call me Catrina."

"Excellent, Catrina, and I'm Andreas, or Andy if you prefer. Dinner should be at six." He glanced at Maria who nodded in agreement. "But if you'll excuse me for now, I must finish briefing these people on tomorrow's construction schedule. I'm sure they're anxious to get on with whatever they have planned after work today."

"Certainly," she agreed. Toscano turned to walk back to the marble table. Catrina noticed his buttocks were equally as attractive as his animated sex organ. Then a thought struck her. "Oh, just one thing!" she called after him. He turned back to face her. "It may seem like a silly question, but do we dress for dinner?"

He smiled. "I seldom do at this time of year, but as a guest you will be entertained in whatever suit of armour makes you feel most comfortable and secure."

Her guest room was at the front of the house. It's window overlooked the street that ran along the lakeside. It was the widest road she had seen in Toscano City, yet not much wider than an alley in some old Mediterranean village. Everything in the town seemed cramped into tiny spaces, although the glass interior walls of Toscano's own villa did give it an appearance of spaciousness. Catrina noted these points to include in her magazine story, although she was personally less than thrilled about having a bedroom with clear walls on three sides, the wall to the street being the only opaque one. She was especially dismayed that the shower across the hall was also in a glass walled room.

"I could really use a shower," she told Maria, "is there a private one in the house?"

"Toilets have solid walls, but not showers and baths. Your privacy is respected."

"How? There is no privacy to respect."

"We do have privacy. I know this, but I'm not so good at English as Mr. Toscano."

"Could you try? It would help me to hear it in your words."

Maria sighed and considered the request. "Andreas says to be private or make privacy for another, we do this with the brains, not the senses. To look at someone or touch them, you don't take the privacy away unless you also don't respect them. Andreas is right. I live this way now and have more privacy than before. I'm sorry, I can't explain better."

"You have explained it very well, Maria. I guess I'm going to have to get used to a different kind of privacy for a day or so."

Maria smiled and looked suitably pleased with the results of her efforts. As she turned to leave the room she told Catrina there were clean towels in the shower room, and promised to have her baggage brought up from the Jeep.

Left alone in her glass room, Catrina watched the maid walk away until she vanished into the maze of windows and mirrors, then steeled herself to the idea of disrobing where she could be seen by anyone wandering in the hallway. The dust from her ride through the desert was more irritating than the idea of being visibly naked, so she took off her clothes and tossed them on a chair. Then she walked across the hallway to the shower room.

As the water splattered over her, and created a partial curtain of rivulets on the clear walls of the shower cubicle, Catrina found herself thinking once again that she was more comfortable naked than clothed in this peculiar place. This time she allowed the idea to gain a greater reign over her judgment, and was pleased to find it calmed her considerably. When she had washed herself, she wrapped a large towel around her torso, and grabbed a smaller one before returning to her room. She was sitting on the edge of the bed drying her feet and legs with the small towel, when the man arrived with her bags.

She didn't see or hear him approaching in the hall, until she heard him put a bag down outside her room. When she looked up at him, she almost lunged instinctively for the bed linen, to shield herself from his eyes. Then it struck her that this would be a silly, prudish response in what was essentially a nudist colony. In any case, she was quickly reminded of Maria's privacy definition, when the man knocked on her glass door. He was looking at her. They could see each other clearly. There was eye contact between them. Yet the man knocked on the door as though the walls were as opaque as granite. It was strange, but it made Catrina feel secure.

"Come in," she said, her voice croaking somewhat with lingering uncertainty.

He opened the door, and carried her luggage into the bedroom. He was in his mid twenties, and weathered by sun and wind like Toscano. Without a shirt his abdominal muscles rippled like smooth stones lining the bed of a clear running brook. Translucent robes or loin cloths wouldn't have suited his street-wise features. Instead he wore a pair of cut-off blue jean shorts, slashed to ribbons yet still holding their shape. His hiking boots were coated with desert dust, as though he had spent his day working outdoors, yet somehow he didn't strike Catrina as one of Toscano's student labourers.

"Hello, where would you like the bags?" he asked politely.

Catrina shifted along the bed to make room for them. In the process her wrapped towel parted, revealing her torso from just below her breasts all the way to her crotch. Though she tried to be nonchalant about it, habitual modesty forced her to adjust the towel quickly. She knew he had noticed both her bareness and her shy reaction, yet his expression didn't change at all.

"Are you the lady from the magazine?" he asked as he loaded the luggage onto her bed.

"That's right, and are you one of Mr. Toscano's students?"

The man smiled, as though he found the question highly amusing.

"Depends how you look at it. Andreas is my father. I'm Sal Toscano, heir to paradise."

Catrina thought she detected a note of sarcasm in his voice as he mentioned his expected inheritance. For some reason she had not associated the elder Toscano with normal family things like wives and offspring. Familial trappings were for mortal men, which seemed too small for Andreas Toscano. Without saying so, his manner suggested he viewed everyone as his children, like a god. Looking at Sal jarred her out of this frame of mind. The son was living evidence of the father's mortality.

"Is it really paradise?" she asked skeptically.

Sal's smile faded, replaced by a thoughtful expression as he contemplated her eye to eye. There was a warmth in his eyes, similar to his father's.

"It's a lot closer to it than anywhere else I've seen, but that's a personal judgment. You'll have to decide for yourself. I'll probably be showing you around over the next few days. That's the usual routine with visitors."

"I was only planning to stay for about a day," she corrected.

Once again the younger Toscano looked highly amused.

"Do you have any watches, clocks or calendars with you?"

"All three, why do you ask?"

"If you really want to find out whether this is paradise, the first thing you should do is put them away somewhere, where you won't be tempted to use them. It isn't compulsory. Just friendly advice."

"I'll keep it mind. Any other tips?"

"Yes," he replied without hesitation, gesturing at the towel she was still subconsciously clutching tightly at her breast. "Also not compulsory but advisable: if I were you I'd try to do without the security blanket."

Catrina's entrance into the dining room wasn't what she had expected. After unpacking her bags she had Maria show her where the dining room was, then she went back to her room, stripped off her clothes again, and worked taking notes on her portable computer until just before six. Accustomed by then to her own nudity, and able to virtually ignore the glass walls, she felt ready for her grand entrance au naturel. Walking into the dining room in her birthday suit she found that not only was her nudity ignored, but she was not the only naked guest at the table.

Kate Black and Bret Swenson were two of Hollywood's biggest stars. Every week they brightened the pages of the gossip rags, and their films were a series of back-to-back box office creamers. Each were sex symbols in their own right, but after marrying and making a few steamy pictures together, they became the model pair for millions of virile young couples. Despite their slickly packaged sexual image, however, Catrina was still taken aback to find them both naked in Andreas Toscano's dining room.

Sal was also seated at the table, along with his father. Everyone was nude. Mandatory introductions preceded a tasty but simple three course meal, which included fish and meat dishes, but consisted mainly of fresh fruits and vegetables. Bret Swenson was a vegetarian and touched none of the animal foods. Tabloids loved to depict him as a hell raiser, but Catrina discovered it was all Hollywood hype. His conversation was informed and animated on subjects ranging from art and architecture, to health, travel and global economics. It turned out he and Kate had recently bought a home in Tosca City, and they listed a number of other legendary Hollywood couples among their new neighbours. Keeping secret homes in Tosca City, according to Kate and Bret, was fast becoming a social necessity among the Hollywood elite.

"I can understand the attraction of these spaces," Catrina admitted, "but I must confess that I'm still confused about the connection between architecture and sex. If talking shop wouldn't spoil your dinner, Andreas, I'd love to hear it explained in your own words."

"My work is my life, Catrina, and I confess I'm sufficiently self absorbed to enjoy discussing it whenever the opportunity arises. Sex isn't really the theme of my designs, it's more like a repeating motif. The real theme is almost Buddhist. It's: Enjoy the freedom to do no harm. Human society is already overcrowded, Catrina, and as medical science advances overpopulation can only grow worse. The response of our outdated governments is to keep increasing the levels of restriction on our ability to enjoy Earthly pleasures, in the hope they can herd us like cattle and thereby control crime, balancing power between rich communities and poor ones; rich individuals and poorer ones too. But even if they manage to keep us from each other's throats, they offer no practical solution to the problem of environmental destruction, which is another brutal byproduct of overpopulation, perhaps the most fatal aspect of all.

"In desperation they are now seriously contemplating the colonisation of outer space. They sell us that idea as though it's some bold adventure into a brave new world, but millions of people don't want to live in outer space, Catrina. They want to remain on good old mother Earth. As an architect I accept the challenge that Earthly cross section offers, and I seek to design communities in which we can live much closer together and have much less impact on our surrounding natural environment. To achieve this, people must learn to live in groups so dense they defy traditional concepts of privacy and individualism. Making life livable in an extremely dense population means designing living spaces that are a pleasure to inhabit. The old maxim, form follows function, must be abandoned for a more humane standard in which function follows form. My Sensual Schemas have a minimal impact on the environment, but they crowd people together in tighter spaces than they ever dreamed they might enjoy. I achieve this by catering to people's sensuality. Everything in Tosca City is created to pamper and nourish our senses, and of course, when one embraces sensuality as a way of life, sex becomes an important motif. My spaces are designed for pleasure and enjoyment. It's up to the inhabitants to find functions for these spaces; a more open and natural sexuality is a function we all seem to enjoy."

"Form follows function is the most sanctified principle of architecture, Andreas," Catrina responded. "If you reject it you will threaten the physical symbols of everything we know and accept. What is religion without its Vatican enclave, without imposing mosques and gargoyled cathedrals? What is government without its White Houses, Logthings or Kremlins? I like sex as much as the next person, but to convince someone like my boss that you're not a heretic I'll have to show him something more than monuments to orgasm."