fourteen

“You didn’t” shrieked Charlotte incredulously into the phone

“Yes” replied Alice smugly

“Three boys! Frisbee! Naked!” squealed Charlotte

Alice was sitting alone under a shady tree in the corner of her grandmother’s garden. Her ogling cousins had left now, dragged away by their mildly amused parents.

“How could you do that?” she gasped.

“You get used to it after a while” replied Alice nonchalantly “in fact I’m at the point where I don’t feel naked anymore, if you know what I mean”

There was a silence on the phone as Charlotte pondered that slowly. Alice idly rubbed some grass stains of her bare knee.

“Yes I have to admit I don’t notice my nudity either.”

“So where are you?” asked Alice

“I’m in my bedroom”

“Not hiding are we” she teased

“Yes” said Charlotte in a strange voice

“Oh come on Charlie you can’t still be shy, you’ve been wandering around starkers for the last six hours!”

“It’s not me being nude that’s bothering me, I’m fine with that”

“So, what’s the problem?” exclaimed Alice

“It’s my parents”

“I don’t follow” exclaimed Alice “Lizzie told me that they were OK with it all”

“Oh they are more than OK with it, they’ve up and joined me”

“They’ve what?” queried Alice

“They’re nude” replied Charlotte

“What your parents, no clothes, around the house” Alice’s thoughts stumbled around her mind, this way and that, like a rubber dinghy lost on the wide, wide ocean being driven by merciless winds.
“That’s right they are sitting in the lounge stark naked watching TV”

Unbidden, a picture of her own mother and father, stark naked in her sitting room formed in her mind. She shuddered, it was fine for her to be nude, but them…. After all they were old!

“Oh my God, Charlie, but that’s awful, I don’t know how,” her train of thought branched off into a siding “how long have they been nude?”

“Since before lunch”

“What, you had lunch nude with your parents”

“Well so did you” replied Charlotte matter-of-factly

“But they were dressed” she said in an exasperated tone before continuing in a more thoughtful voice. “I wonder which is worse”.

“I can’t believe it” said Charlotte suddenly with a great deal of exasperation. “I’m sitting in my bedroom hiding from my parents. And it’s not because I haven’t got any clothes on.” She paused briefly for breath before charging on. “Oh no, that’s not a problem for me, I quite happy to parade around starkers” She paused again, the enormity of what she had just said overwhelming her brain like an eclipsing moon.

Alice filled the gap “You’ve got to join them, Charlie”

Charlotte gulped, “I know” she said in a small voice.

“Stay on the phone, and I’ll talk you to the door”

Charlotte looked across her room to the mirror on the wall. A tall slim girl with long blonde hair stared back. Her flawless milky skin shone, her breasts were firm and her stomach taut and flat. To any red blooded male she was the perfect woman. Charlotte however saw only flaws. As Alice prattled on, she noted the asymmetry of her breasts, the freckles that swarmed over her like a rash, her legs were too thin and there was not enough flesh on her arms.

‘Well,’ she thought to herself in a rare rational moment, ‘if my mother can walk around the house in the nude with her saggy podgy body, I certainly can parade around in this one’

And so for the second time this day Charlotte stood naked and nervous at the top of the stairs. The first time she was concerned about her parents seeing her naked, now she was bothered about herself seeing them naked. And for the second time this day she plucked up the courage and walked down the stairs, talking to Alice as she went.

Just outside the lounge door she heard the sound of the television. Charlotte stopped dead. “Alice” she said in a mild panic.

“What?” replied her friend testily.

“What if they are watching something I don’t like?”