What Happens at the Nudist Resort..

All the seats around the massive oval conference table were occupied except one. It was a stylish conference room located just six stories from the top of a skyscraper and provided a panoramic view of the downtown. The trendy graffiti-inspired paintings by a living but high-dollar contemporary artist, the prime location, the state of the art audio-visual system, and the floor-to-ceiling glass walls that could be transformed from a smoky grey to complete transparency with the flip of a switch were all purchased before the economy tanked. In those days, the major concern of the PR MAX marketing and public relations agency was strategic business development (i.e. accepting clients to maximize the prestige and long-term profitability of the firm.)

Now the firm was struggling, and an emergency meeting like this inspired dread. The tone was muted as people engaged in whispered conversations in pairs and small groups. A few sat quietly starring out the wall of glass at the dreary day beyond the rain-beaded window. It was a day in synch with the group's mood. All were worried that the meeting would be to prepare them for lay-offs. As it was, most of them were making a fraction of their usual earnings because bonuses and commissions made up a considerable portion of their compensation.

Finally the boss arrived to occupy the final seat at the head of the table, and began the meeting. Genevieve Larsen was a founding partner in the firm, and her drive was largely the reason PR Max had not gone under months ago. She always seemed to pull in enough accounts for them to keep paying the bills. It was evident to all that she was not just driven in business. Most of the employees didn't believe the rumors, which happened to be true, that she was fast approaching 60. The only readily notable sign of it was that her lustrous, thick, and fashionably styled head of hair was entirely silver-gray. The woman exercised and practiced yoga fanatically, and had a dietary regiment that was Spartan. As a result, she had more energy than some of the interns, and she had the lean athletic body of a professional tennis player.

"Sorry for calling you together on such short notice, but you'll be happy to know that I am not here to announce lay-offs. We have a great opportunity to pull in a new account, but I need to assemble a team quickly. I've called you here to solicit volunteers for this team." Genevieve said.

As expected, before she had finished the word "volunteers", every hand in the room was up. That was how eager everyone was to gain the income and job security implicit in working on a new account. It was interesting that no one seemed to be concerned that she was asking for volunteers instead of just picking her team as was the usual practice.

"Hold on now, and hear me out before you volunteer for something you might regret. The account is a relatively new but prosperous international chain of clothing optional resorts. Because many of the locations are in countries where a comparatively strong dollar is making tourism relatively cheap, and because they attract a wealthy clientele, this company seems to be thriving despite the economic turmoil. At the client's request, I will take a small team to the flagship location south of Cancun for four days. They want us to be thoroughly familiar with them when we build our concept, and don't want a team putting together advertising a thousand miles away without knowing who they are and what their strengths are. Three days will be spent getting familiar with the resort and constructing our marketing concept, and on the fourth day we make our pitch. They are giving us an exclusive opportunity to make a pitch of a marketing concept for their Nude Day Extravaganza festivities, and, if that works out, we may be contracted for all of their marketing needs. This is ours to win - or to lose. It's all about making a good impression and giving a smooth pitch.

"I need to put together a team of five other people, ideally. The resort told us they would comp us three double rooms, and our firm is unwilling to pay for more for fear of appearing to the Board as though we are financing a junket in a severe recession. Not to mention, we would have no guarantee that the expense would pay off. This means we'll need to double up to maximize the size of the team. So, if we can get the right even number combination of men and women, we can fit six.

"Now we get to the catch. While clothing is optional for the resort's guests, the owner/CEO and most of their board are long-time nudists, and built the chain from a single nudist colony. You all know the rule. We dress like our client. The client wears a suite, we wear a suite; the client wears a polo, we wear a polo; and if the client is completely nude, we go completely nude. We need to make a good impression, and so I only want people who will be able to function as professionals in their birthday-suit. No one will be forced to go, but, if you volunteer, you need to be capable of showing a relaxed and confident demeanor without a stitch on. Take a look around this table. If there is anyone you see who you would be traumatized to see you naked, or to see naked, you shouldn't volunteer. Think about it thoroughly because freaking out and staying in your room the whole time, or doing one of these numbers (she put one forearm across both her breasts, the other hand over her pubic region, while squatting and hunching to feign the action of embarrassedly covering up) is not an option. Putting together an outstanding pitch with three days to research and prepare our storyboards will be tough, so I want as big a team as we can manage, but think about this seriously and send my assistant, Elena, an email if you are still interested. Think quickly though. I need answers from those who would like to go by close of business today. Now, are there any questions?" Genevieve solicited inquiries.

"Yeah... Let me go on record as saying that I not only volunteer to go, but, if you have an odd number of ladies, I am willing to go co-ed with any one of them. ... you know, for the firm" Said a pitch man named Josh Fanton in a mock tone of sincerity with hand to chest in an attempt to conceal any hint of lecherousness. "In fact, it occurs to me that if we're all going to be nude the whole time, why even worry about whether rooms are segregated by gender?"

"I don't think, in good conscious, that I could subject any of the female staff to you, Josh, and I think that's enough said on that matter." Genevieve made the jibe in a good-natured way.

Genevieve had been almost certain that Josh would be a volunteer. Self-confidence, particularly in his body, was not among Josh's problems. She knew from doing yoga at the same gym as Josh worked out in that he was extremely well-built, with six-pack abs and a lean muscular physique. Still, she wasn't certain she should take the twenty-four year old marketing man. He could be a little prone to cockiness and self-centeredness, though he was not a bad guy. He was certainly personable and confident, and was outstanding at interacting with clients. He had that charismatic ability, often seen in politicians, to make a person he was speaking to feel special. However, he was also known to have a libido that was not well under control, and Genevieve did not know how he would respond to such an environment. He was probably the one person in her department that she feared might be too comfortable being nude.

There were a few mundane questions about things like per diem, and then the meeting drew to an unceremonious close. People filed out of the conference rooms in small groups discussing, in hushed tones, the various pros and cons of taking the job. It was clear from the comments of some staff members that they would not be participating. Representative statements were: "My husband would kill me if I did something like this." Or "I'm not a prude, but I don't know how you could ever be comfortable again working with a bunch of people you spent so much time together with naked." However, there were many others whose concern about staying in work far outstripped the embarrassment of being nude with co-workers.

Most of the volunteers had replied by lunchtime of the day of the meeting. A few later awkwardly retracted their commitments when either their nerves or conversations with others caused reality checks to set in. In the final count 10 of the 24 employees said they were willing to participate. This was twice as many as Genevieve could take, and the task of weeding them down was no simple matter. There were always trade-offs and compromises to accept. She had to make sure the requisite professional skill sets were covered. She needed at least one graphic artist, one copywriter, someone competent with operating /fixing high-tech equipment, a capable photographer, a project manager, and a pitchman.

She also needed to be concerned with the personality traits of the people selected. She needed a mix detail-oriented people, gregarious people, and people capable of making snap decisions well. In Genevieve's experience it was a rare person who met all three criteria. There were also valuable personal skill sets such as language fluency in Spanish to consider. If all that were not enough, she needed a team that would make a good visceral impression with the clients. Genevieve had done her research, and, all else equal, she tried to pick people with things in common with the owners. With such a small team and a limited pool of volunteers, this meant that Genevieve needed people that delivered multi-faceted benefits to the team, even though it sometimes required her to make compromises on items that she thought she wanted from each member.

She had chosen her team by noon the next day, and called the select members for a meeting in her office at 3:00pm. She had her assistant send the other volunteers a cordial email stating how their willingness to assist was greatly appreciated, but that due to the unique requirements of this project others had been selected.

"Elena, please hold all my calls, and tell anyone who comes to see me to either come back in a half hour or reschedule them." Genevieve said into the intercom of her phone after the last of the five members had filed into her office. It was spacious enough to easily accommodate the additional chairs that she had had brought in, and was decorated in roughly the same style as the conference room, but with a few personal touches of the knick-knack and family photo varieties.

"First, let me thank you for agreeing to work on this project, and for being so quick to respond in our moment of need. I spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I think we have an exceptional team. Now we need to get some logistics out of the way. Before our meeting yesterday, I pitched this to the rest of upper management. They insisted on conferring with corporate legal, and the lawyers insisted that, due to the unique nature of this assignment, that we ask you to sign a statement." Genevieve handed a single sheet of paper to each of the assembled staff members.

"Please feel free to read it as thoroughly as you'd like, but it essentially says that you were not coerced into participating in this assignment, that you are doing it of your own free will, and that you have agreed to accept the unique burdens of this assignment. These unique burdens include: being nude in public, being nude in front of co-workers of both sexes and any and all sexual orientations, and comporting yourselves as professionals under the aforementioned conditions. In a nutshell, you won't sue for sexual harassment if the boss asks you to get naked during the duration of this particular assignment, which begins upon signature of the form. Think carefully, this is your last opportunity to drop out with no hard feelings. Take your time." Genevieve walked around her desk and sat down at her computer to avoid looming over them as they made their decisions.

However, by the time she had opened the file she would work on, each of them had signed the form. They all trusted Genevieve as a straight-shooter, and none of them had the slightest concern that she would leave something important out of her summary. Josh, in accordance with a proclivity towards sycophancy, collected the forms and delivered them to Genevieve.

Genevieve nonchalantly plopped them in her outbox, stood, and walked behind them as if she was leaving the room. However, she did not leave the room, but, instead, snapped the lock shut on the door to her office. It seemed like an odd thing to do. She then returned and stood before them off to the side of her desk. "Now... ladies and gentlemen, we have a tight timeline and tight budget on this, and I need to be confident that no one is going to get all the way to Mexico and freak out about this. As I said yesterday, being able to tolerate being nude is not enough, you have to be able to show confidence and poise while working without clothing. So, with that in mind: strip!"

The rapidity of response from the team members gave her a rough an indication of how comfortable each as going to be with operating in the nudist environment. Her pitchman, Josh, disrobed in record time, as was not a surprise.

It also came as no surprise that Carmina Villa was the second one to get undressed. Carmina was a natural choice because, besides being a skilled writer, she was fluent in Spanish and had traveled extensively in Mexico. The reason it was no surprise that Carmina was unfazed by nudity was that she (along with Josh) filled out Genevieve's quota on beautiful people. The girl had fine light-brown hair that she wore long, flawless bronze skin, a lean waist, high firm round breasts whose mounded tops were ubiquitously revealed by her choice of tops, and was, just generally, the epitome of Latina beauty. While Genevieve wanted to include staff members that were shapely and beautiful for the same reason she would include sharp-dressed beautiful people on teams for other clients, she also knew that nudists believed that nudism was a way of life for everybody. She, therefore, did not want to take more than two beauty contest winning types. Instead, she wanted the majority of the group to be "regular people with real bodies."

Genevieve believed herself to be in the "regular people" group. While she was patently aware that most considered her to be extremely attractive for her age, the qualifier "for her age" was ever-present. The truth was that she did not have the skin she had when she was 19, and, even sporting only B-cup breasts and with frequent exercise, gravity took a little toll. None of this was depressing to her, she was quite comfortable with who she had become.

The third one to make it into her birthday-suit was the project manager, Malia Johnstone. Malia also had a body that was pleasant, but would not win her any modeling contracts. She was in her forties, and had had three children. While she had stretch-marks, because of her dark -almost black- skin tone, they didn't show at a passing glance. She also had a tiny bit of paunch, and breasts that were bigger and more pendulous than Genevieve's. Malia was not the kind of person to get flustered by challenging conditions. That was why Genevieve liked her, and why she was needed on this project. Malia sat back down to make herself comfortable once she was done undressing, and let her fingers drum lightly on the arms of the chair as if bored. She did not seem the least bit concerned about her own nudity, or that of the people around her.

The next one undressed was Mark Liu. Mark was a tech-person, a skilled photographer, and was a bright problem solver. He was a little doughy of form but not hue (which light-brown) with slight swells of man-boob and a little extra-weight around the middle. He was a neither particularly handsome nor particularly ugly man of at least second generation Chinese ancestry. While often quiet and reserved, he could be one of the most affable, good-humored, and humorous people on Genevieve's staff. At the moment he was clearly a little nervous and not sure how to stand or whether to sit, but Genevieve suspected he could get used to the whole matter in short order. Genevieve, without being obvious, stole a glance downward. Her ulterior motive for this whole strip-tease exercise was to make sure that there would be no surprises that might be consciously or subconsciously off-putting to the client. She included among these possibilities massive burn scars, neo-Nazi tattoos, or even a cock like an elephant's trunk. As it happened, Genevieve placed Mark at about average size among the considerable number of men she had seen over the course of her 58 years, the bulk of which she spent single. Josh was a couple inches bigger than average, but nowhere near the freakishly disconcerting level that she was concerned about.

Not surprisingly, both Josh and Carmina were the only ones with obvious tattoos, but, in both cases, they were of a modest and unobjectionable nature. Carmina had a butterfly on her left hip in addition to the Celtic pattern on the small of her back, which Genevieve had once seen while Carmina was clothed. Josh had a deltoid tattoo of some Chinese characters that she presumed conveyed some sort of manly message.

Bringing up the rear, also predictably, was Julie Szabo. Julie had both the appearance and demeanor of a librarian, and Genevieve couldn't for the life of herself figure out why the shy girl would volunteer for such duty. Julie was bright red from blushing, which showed all the more due to her alabaster skin tone. Furthermore, her hands were slightly but noticeably trembling. This was disconcerting to Genevieve, who had selected Julie based almost entirely upon the fact that she was without peer as a graphic artist. At 29, Julie was both creative and technically proficient in a way that other artists could not hope to achieve in a lifetime. She was also fastidious, and could be counted on to catch minor errors and defects that slid by multiple others. Because of her professional skills, Genevieve didn't think twice about adding her to the roster when she volunteered, though she suspected that Julie would not take to the nudist lifestyle well.

It was not that Julie had anything to be particularly self-conscious about, but rather that she was just painfully shy. Julie was a little on the heavy side, but was not ill-proportioned. This was another way of saying that she had plump pleasing breasts that would draw most men's attention away from any of the features with which she felt less comfortable. She had skin that was like cream, and her facial features were sweetly feminine, if not classically beautiful. Her mousy hair was cut in a short curly hairstyle that suited her, but that she most often wore pinned back for convenience.

Genevieve was in a bit of an ethical quandary. She desperately wanted Julie for the team, but there was something endearing about the girl that made a person want to protect her from distress. Furthermore, Genevieve knew that others felt this way as well, and she risked losing legitimacy as a leader if her staff thought she was callously taking advantage of the girl. Even Josh, who could be self-centered and even inconsiderate of his co-workers, had a soft-spot for the girl. Granted, this was because Julie had saved his ass on many occasions by scribbling up masterful artwork for his mock-ups on last minute notice when he had not been sufficiently organized. It was that cheerful willingness to take on other people's burdens, make them her own, and make everybody look good in the process that made her so beloved. Genevieve could only figure that that was why the girl was there now, because she was selfless. To be honest, Julie probably had the least employability issues of anyone at the firm. Her portfolio would have gotten her work during the Great Depression.