Words, Naked

Part 1

The sun is warm against his skin, the rock against his ass a total pain.

He has been on this section of beach for maybe thirty minutes and lying down for twenty: absurd, the amount of time spent on choosing a spot, getting undressed, oiling up, smoothing the sand, packing the sand, actually moulding the stuff so that he can finally nest his towel in a comfortable hollow.

Except it isn't. There's a rock trying to get up his ass.

It wasn't there to begin with, or then again, it probably was, but the sight never registered, or then again it did but he must have decided that after ten useless minutes he was not going to waste a moment more: roll out the towel, lie down, that's it.

He raises his hips, turns onto his side away from the rock. Gets a different perspective now, the sand, the outcroppings, the lacy edge of ocean and hazy sky above.

The person next to him.

She says: 'Happy Nude Day.'

He opens his mouth to reply but surprise makes speech elusive.

She says: 'You don't mind? I'm not in the mood for the dunes.'

'I didn't see you,' he says. So halting, so weak, she's either not going to hear anything or think he's asthmatic. He sits upright, draws his knees quickly to his chest. 'Sorry.' Tries a smile, but it has about as much strength as his voice. 'Miles away.'

She isn't looking at him because she is sideways onto him, kneeling down to unroll her own towel. It's blue like the sea. But unlike the sea there's no patterning, no texture.

She's in blue denim cut-offs that don't reach the knee and a white T-shirt that hardly covers her chest. The sandals she wore to get here are placed neatly by her towel as is the plain white cotton bag she must also have brought. The bag and the footwear look like they've always been there, not so much set down in the sand as pushed up and out from somewhere deep.

The sun plays on her skin like a stage spot-light picking out a new player. It's not that the light actually shifts, more that there's a sudden intensity about it, the wattage ramping up so that for a moment she is actually too bright for him.

He looks down at his knees. They have caused his belly to compress. He would rather not see the rolls of fat so stops looking at his knees and stares first at the ocean and then at her, his eyes narrowing against the expected brightness but it's all right, the strobing white and the searing blue have gone, she's stuffing her clothes into the beach bag.

She straightens up. Faces him. She's five four, five five, eighteen going on 25, or less than the one or more than the other, he knows intuitively he'll never be able to figure her age. There's no make-up on her mouth or around the dark eyes, no artifice about the tawny hair that sweeps across the forehead and frames her face.

She is naked now and more golden than the sand.

Golden all over. Unblemished.

'Strip.'

Spoken so quietly, he's sure he has misheard. 'Sorry?'

She laughs. The sound is neither high nor low, loud nor soft. 'No. I'm sorry. My fault. My words.'

'Words?'

'I have favorites. Strip is one of them.'

He is trying to hold her gaze, to let her know that is all he is doing, staring into her eyes but it's impossible to blank out peripheral vision, the way her breasts are wide and high and shining, the aureoles narrow, the nipples discreet.

'Strip and stripped' she says.

Negligently, a hand tracks a line across from one hip to a stomach that's almost but not quite flat and then down to her pubic mound. Fingertips graze absently over the triangle of sun-bleached hair.

'But not stripping,' she says.

'No?' Even to his own ears, the sound is hoarse. He coughs but the dryness won't go away.

'No power,' she says. 'And stripper, that's even worse.'

His pulse quickens but it's not desire, the stirring is in his mind, not his groin. This is like encountering a concert pianist who cannot play correctly a single note. There should be melody, not dissonance.

'Yes. Well,' he says, and at that she laughs again.

'You're not comfortable. I'll move somewhere else -- '

'No. It's all right.' Said before he can stop himself.

She's watching him with her head inclined to one side, her expression amused, inquisitive. She does not, he persuades himself, look like any serial killer he has ever read about.

'I do like the dunes,' she says. 'Don't get me wrong. But not on Nude Day.'

'No?' He realises, he's going to have to get beyond the monosyllabic. 'Why. . . why not on Nude Day?'

'Because no-one should be covering themselves with anything. Not today of all days.' She eases herself down onto the towel. Lies on her back, then sits up again, takes the sun oil from the bag and begins to smooth it over her skin. He wants to watch her hands at work on her breasts, see the flesh being kneaded by her long fingers. He concentrates on the ocean instead.

'I hadn't realised,' he says, 'that anyone was. Covering up. Nobody wears anything, this part of the beach. It's been naturist quite a while now.'

'Nude.'

'Sorry?'

'Nude. Naturist isn't one of my words.' She smiles. 'But hey: don't get me started again.'

'Ah.' Not sure what she means. Not sure what he means. Or what he even thinks.

'Anyway,' she says. 'I know the gays don't cover up. At the dunes. They are who they are. The others though, those who aren't gay -- '

'The peepers?'

'Yes. They're always covered. In mirrors.'

To hell with the ocean, he decides. He turns to her again. 'Mirrors?'

She's finished oiling herself. Is sitting there with body arched towards the sun, breasts thrust forwards, arms stretched down and backwards in support. 'They go there to watch but what they mainly want to enjoy is their reflection. The reflection in their mirrors. Not real mirrors, of course. But you know what I mean. The mirrors that lots of people carry everywhere.'

'They do?'

'Yes. So they don't see themselves as they are. Why are you sitting like that?'

'Sorry?'

'Your tummy rolls. Nothing wrong with them but if you want to lose them, you should lie down.'

'Oh.' He manages a grin but his face is burning and it's not because of the sun.

'Mirrors,' he says, because it's going to be more comfortable to return to that topic. 'I hadn't realised.'

'Well usually, it wouldn't matter. I go down the dunes with someone, the reason I'm there is to be watched.'

He swallows hard.

'Well, to be more accurate: the reason I'm there is to be fucked and watched.'

He's jolted more aggressively than the rock ever managed.

'But all those single guys,' she's saying, 'they want you to watch them. I mean, you're just lying there -- this is before you're being fucked, I mean -- and they're not looking at you, they're going along the shoreline, staring in their own mirror. They see their hard bodies. Their out-size cocks. They want you to see the same thing, too. Only. . . You're not looking at their mirror. You're looking at them.'

He swallows again. Somewhere along the line -- along her lines -- he's lost the power of speech.

'And the point is,' she says, 'the point is, who cares? Guy goes past me with a big belly and a small cock, so what? He goes by with two heads and three arms then OK, I am going to think about it. But otherwise?' She shakes her head. 'The mirror's bad enough but what's even worse, as soon as I'm being fucked, what do they do? They run off to the dunes, that's what. Hide in the grass and watch from there. When what they should be doing is standing around me and masturbating.'

Speech completely gone, he realises. He may never be able to utter another word again.

'OK,' she says. And sighs. 'You've come here for some peace and quiet but a strange woman has settled down beside you and oh Christ, what kind of trip is she on?'

'No, look,' he manages, and that's a start, that's good, but she's not to be diverted:

'Some woman, she's going to dump all her neuroses. Going to talk and talk and then, who knows, get hysterical and scream and yell and . . .' She stops. Smiles. There's a kind of sadness to her expression. 'It's not like that,' she says.

He nods again. Swallows again. Manages to smile back. Exhausts an entire repertoire of non-vocal responses even though he realises that he must do something, and do it now, because if she is a crazy woman, then his inarticulate inertia may signal a submissiveness of the most provocative kind.

He lowers his knees.

It's not much of an act but at least it's decisive.

The only unfortunate consequence is that having been scrunched up for so long, his pubic hair is beaded with sweat and his cock squashed almost to vanishing point. He reaches down. Tweaks it.

'I only have one neurosis,' she says. 'It's called honesty.'

Having but recently lost the power of speech, he now seems to have lost the substance of his penis. He closes his eyes, the better to shutter out the thought that he is actually touching himself in front of this completely strange and completely unnerving naked woman.

What should have happened, of course, was that the instant he saw her -- and this, he decides, is the scenario he would have imagined, had he ever felt like exercising his imagination in such fashion -- his cock would've assumed gigantic proportions and she would have fallen upon it with the mouth of one only too grateful to be in the presence of such magnificent manhood.

What could well happen instead is that she'll think he's about to go fishing and has just found a worm.

'That better?' she asks.

'Better?' Reflexively, his hand moves away.

'Sitting like that can be bad. I had a boyfriend once, he sat with his knees up, the sun got between his thighs and burnt his balls.'

'Jesus.'

'Are your balls OK?'

'Yes.' Adding: 'Thank you.'

She laughs. 'You're funny.'

'Me?'

'I like people with a sense of humour.'

'How. . . how d'you know, I've a sense of humour?'

'Because you're polite.'

'They don't necessarily go together, do they?'

'More often than not. Also: add humour to politeness and you get something else. Intelligence.'

'Really?'

'Really. And intelligence in a man, in a woman, that's the most important of all.'

It's time, he decides, to seize the initiative. 'Well. If we're going to be polite, I'd better -- '

'No.'

'Sorry?'

'You'd better introduce yourself. That what you were going to say?'

'I. . . Yes.'

'Then don't. No names. No mirrors. No clothes. It's Nude Day. We are as we are.'

'What, everything stripped away?'

'Yes.' She smiles. 'Everything.'

'So if I was to ask you,' he continues, surprised by his own doggedness, 'if I was to ask you where you were from. . .?'

'I'd tell you, I was from where I was.'

'And you don't want me to tell you anything either?'

'I can see you. I can hear you. That's all there should be on Nude Day.'

He mulls it over. Realises his unease is subsiding. Says, because he can't now think of anything else: 'Can I ask you something?'

'Go ahead.'

''What I just said, before. About everything being stripped away. Stripped. You said, it was one of your words. Favorite words. Why?'

'Power.'

'Power?'

'Erotic power. Power that doesn't fade.'

He falls silent again. Frowns.

'Look. Let's say. . . ' She pauses, hunts for an analogy. 'Try this. In your mailbox, one morning, there's an invitation. To an orgy. It's going to be held at a beautiful house with lots of beautiful people. Yes?'

'I don't know. The only ones I get are from Publisher's Clearing House.'

She tries to stifle her laughter. Fails. 'No, seriously. You get this invite, okay? And at the bottom it reads: "Please note that on arrival, all guests should undress".'

'Wow.'

'I don't think so. No wow there. "All guests should undress". Where's the impact? Those aren't words that kick. Words that you feel. They're, well. . . Nothing.' She shakes her head. '"Undress". God above, what is it, you're being asked to report for a medical?'

'So,' he says, taking it slow, concentrating hard, because she's obviously heading somewhere with this and he'd really like to hang on for the ride, 'so how should it read? This invite?'

'Well first off, delete the "please". It may be polite but you really don't need politeness here. "Please" is adding a garment when removing garments is the only consideration. Yes?'

He nods uncertainly.

She considers him. 'You don't seem sure.'

'I'm not. Well; what I mean is -- '

'Oh, come on,' she says. 'People who can't speak the language of sex are never going to have great sex. Or offer it anyone else. An orgy, you minimise the semantics, maximise the semen.'

If he hadn't understood before what she meant by words that kicked, he does now. He breathes deep to steady himself.

'So how it should read,' she's saying, 'it should read: "Note: you will strip on arrival". Or, better: "Note: on arrival, you will be stripped". See? Strip. Stripped. Words that make you warm, make you shiver, all at the same time.'

He says, in a voice turned inexplicably husky: 'But not stripper.'

'No. Too banal. There was power once, there isn't now.'

He turns to her. Props himself up on one elbow. 'I don't understand.'

As if in counterpoint, she now lies down, turns on her side to look at him. 'Simple,' she says. 'Years ago, you went to watch a stripper, she comes on stage, dances around, gets her top off and lets you see her pasties. Then she might or might not drop her G string. But all you'd have seen was her ass when she left the stage.'

'How d'you know that?'

'I just do. And I'm assuming, you know, too?'

'I was very young.'

'Yeah. Right.' She laughs again. 'So anyway. This stripper. What did you really want to see of her?'

'I wanted to see her without her clothes.'

'Her body.'

'Yes.'

'Her breasts.'

'Yes.'

'Nipples.'

'Yes.'

'And?'

'And. . . You know.'

'Tell me.'

It's his turn to laugh. He shakes his head. 'I don't believe I'm saying all this.'

'But you aren't saying anything. So go on. Tell me. What else did you want to see apart from her bare breasts?'

He takes a deep breath. 'I wanted her to take it all off.'

'So you could see. .?'

'Down there.'

'Down there.' The echo mocks him. 'Thing is, my friend, even if she had of taken it all off, you wouldn't have seen what you wanted to see. Back in those days, she would not have opened her legs.'

The jolt this time is much more localised. It's warm and gritty, too. His cock has somehow managed to rediscover its substance, to extend sideways and, because of his position, touch the sand.

'Whereas nowadays,' she continues, 'that's what they do. Well; some, anyway. But though that's good in one way, it's not in another. Because where sex is concerned, money only buys banality. When people paid to see everything she'd got, but didn't get everything, then yes, the stripper had power. The word had power. Now people get what they pay for, well, that's it. Routine.'

'You'd rather she didn't, you know, show herself?'

'Of course she has to show herself. No point in paying to watch her strip, she doesn't open her legs. But what should happen is, after she displays what she's got, she must then show how she uses it. She must do herself. Do herself till she comes. That way, her body is bared, her emotions are bared, her essence is bared. She has become truly and completely. . . Naked.'

The pulse that is hammering in his temples is also beginning to hammer in his cock.

She props herself up on one elbow. Her gaze moves from his face, slowly, deliberately. Down his chest. Over his stomach. She smiles again.

'What?' he says.

'Genitals.'

The electricity surges again, powers him into a position without prior thought so that before he is even aware of it, he's kneeling in front of her, his penis high and hard, the foreskin back from the purple bell, his hand under his testicles the better to splay them out.

'I did wonder,' she says. 'Why you were covering them.'

'Another of your favourite words?'

'Genitals? Definitely.'

'You have a lot of such words?' Unthinkingly, he moves his hand to his shaft. Grasps it. What he is doing, and what he is saying, are pretty much dislocated and he knows it but that doesn't matter, all that matters is that she is looking at him, looking right there at him, and her smile is one of gentle pleasure, of quiet satisfaction, no more than that, but no less than that.

'You want to know?' she asks. 'About my words?'

'Yes.'

'Then lie down again. Lie down, and we'll discuss.'

PART 2

'Okay,' she says. 'Where to start?'

They're both on their backs now, three or four feet of sand separating them, he'd like to move his towel and get next to her, get his flank against hers but he senses, though doesn't know why, he senses that such would not be appropriate. Not polite. Not funny. Not. . . Intelligent. Any space to be bridged between them, they'd have to do so together.

Instead, he says: 'Power.'

'All right. Tell me: what's the most powerful sound in the English language?'

'No idea.'

'Uh.'

'Sorry?'

More emphatically this time: 'Uh.'

'As in. . .?'

'Fuck.'

'Ah.'

'Go on. Say it.'

'Fuck.'

'Savour the word, don't just throw it out. F-uhh-kk.'

'F-uhh-kk.'

'You see?' She pauses. 'Right. So that's the most powerful sound. What's the most powerful word?'

'Fuck? Sorry: f-uhh-kk?'

'Cunt.'

His balls seem to spin. His cock definitely surges.

'C-uh-nnt.' She says it slowly this time. 'Go on. Your turn.'

'C-uh-nnt.'

'Great, isn't it? How it sounds, what it is.' Another pause, then, softly this time: 'Cunt.'

'I thought,' he says slowly, 'I thought, you know, girls. Women. They didn't like that. That word.'

'No?'

'I thought. . . Pussy.'

'Aw, Christ.' There's an edge to her voice that has never been there before. 'You thought pussy. What else did you think? Beaver? Beaver, perhaps? Or what, something else from the animal kingdom? Zebra?'

'Hang on, what I meant was -- '

'Listen. You ever meet a woman refers to her cunt as her pussy, move on. She's actually under-age, if not physically, then certainly mentally.'

'Ah.'

'You ever meet a guy, he tells you he fucked his wife's pussy, also move on.' She pauses. 'Or call animal rescue.'

Laughter engulfs them both. Finally, she says: 'I'm sorry. But really. . . It gets me. The most powerful of words, and people run away from it. Run away like the peepers in the dunes.'

He has to look down to check. Surprisingly, his erection is softening. For some reason, that doesn't matter. And also, for some reason, the rock doesn't matter, either. After too long a time in his life, much, much too long, he finally realises: he's becoming comfortable.

'Genitals is all right though,' she says. 'Like: we were discussing, the stripper? And if you'd said, or if I'd said, what we wanted to see was her cunt, well. That's true. But somehow, it's. . . Oafish. Much more polite to say, her genitals. See her genitals.'

'And you would have done?'

'Done what?'

'Wanted to see them?'

'I already told you, be no point in paying to watch a woman strip if I don't get to see how she looks between her legs.'

'Ah.' He doesn't have to open his eyes to know what's happening again elsewhere.

She says, softly: 'I see her mouth, is it full lipped? Her smile, is it warm? Her eyes, are they welcoming? I look at her breasts, are they generous, are they firm? Her nipples, are they small? Erect? Well then. Her cunt, I need to see that, too.' A pause, then: 'Is it closed like a clam? Partly open, like a smile? Her cunt lips, what are they like? And when she spreads them -- because she definitely has to spread them -- her hole. How pink is it? How dark is it? Is it wide? Is it wet? Is it dripping?'

He can't help himself. He has to reach down. Grasp his cock. She has touched him only with words but she might just as well be jacking him off, sucking him off.