271 Days #7
The last thing she wanted was Danny thinking of her as some kind of prude.
She’d gone to Mardi Gras when she was nineteen and showed a crowd of men her breasts.
She felt objectified and terrible afterward and vowed never to do it again, but she didn’t want Danny to know that part of her.
She wanted him to know the former part, the part that let loose and lifted her shirt, thirsty for a raucous reaction from horny strangers.
She was not some neurotic overthinker; she was a free spirit. She was a loose pile of yarn.
“You sure?” Danny asked.
“Totally. I just feel silly for putting on my bathing suit, but no big deal, I’ll just…take it off.” She had to really work to get those last few words over the giant lump in her throat.
Danny walked ahead of her and stripped down to his stunning nakedness.
Rhea wanted to walk closer to the clothing hooks and do the same, but her feet no longer listened to her brain.
She stood mannequin still and tried to look at anything other than Danny’s muscular back and shoulders, his lean legs, his adorable butt.
He grabbed a towel from a shelf and wrapped it around his waist before she could ogle his front half.
“I’ll see you out there,” he said, and walked through a large opening into the night.
Rhea did not know what “out there” meant; what was on the other side of the opening? In her mind, the springs were on a platform under hot stage lights, and everyone she had ever met was in the audience.
An ancient man with hanging skin and the longest, thickest penis Rhea had ever seen strolled past her.
A young couple with equally beautiful, plump bodies got out of the shower and spoke in low voices as they toweled off and got dressed.
Everyone was naked. She thankfully did not recognize anyone from her workshop but assumed it was only a matter of time before Gary would strut in playing guitar with his penis out.
Rhea’s feet finally accepted the fact that running home was not an option and headed over to the clothing hooks.
She took off her clothes and stood in her bikini.
Mere minutes ago, wearing a bikini in front of Danny was an intimidating thought.
Now the bikini felt like a space suit, safe, protective, the only thing standing between her and certain death, and she had to take it off.
A woman, who looked like she could’ve been Wild Eyes’s mother, entered and stripped down to nothing.
Her breasts were resting comfortably on her vagina.
Her buttocks’ flesh had been eaten away by time.
Rhea could see her entire prolapsed anus, and yet the woman walked confidently out into the night, stark naked.
Rhea could not go out there and be the only person wearing a bikini.
She had to just grow up and get over it.
But she decided to wrap herself in a towel first, then take off her bikini; she was technically still naked.
She hung her precious bikini on a hook and took one last sad look at it before plunging forth into her inevitable humiliation.
—
The nudist grotto Rhea entered was lit primarily by starlight, and still she wished she could reach up to heaven and turn down the brightness.
She discovered Slates Hot Springs was precariously situated on a cliff’s edge.
Dim floor lighting assisted her navigation past small pools built from rock.
In each of the pools, naked humans soaked.
Some softly chatted; others stared out at an ocean that was much closer here than up the hill at the retreat center.
Waves smashed onto nearby rocks, spraying salty mist on the lounging bodies.
As she continued, Rhea tried to spot Danny without looking directly at anyone’s private parts, but her eyes were magnetically pulled toward unusual sights, which meant no nipple or genital escaped her reluctant darting glance.
She clocked several claw-foot tubs; each contained a nude individual lying back with their eyes closed.
Their breasts and pubic hair floating carelessly, an intimacy Rhea felt she should not be witnessing, and yet, there she was.
The primordial woman who could’ve been Wild Eyes’s mother was standing naked, no towel, completely uninhibited.
She was holding a hose, filling the last empty tub with sulfuric spring water.
Rhea wished there were more empty tubs. She could not imagine joining any of the naked people in their group soaks, like a human soup, marinating in a testicle broth that made her queasy.
She pulled her towel tighter around her body.
She walked down some steps, even closer to the ocean, and spotted Danny.
He was alone in a group pool, looking out at the waves.
He leaned his chin on his forearms, which were propped on the pool’s edge.
His profile glowing in the starlight took Rhea’s breath away.
She stood still and watched him. She wanted to straddle him.
She wanted to turn and run. Before she could do either, he looked at her.
Water dripped down his chest as he sat up. She wanted to tell him he was perfect.
Neither of them spoke; he could not invite her in without feeling creepy, and she could not join him without feeling mortified.
Their awkward smiles acknowledged their predicament.
Danny playfully put his hand over his eyes, covering them.
Rhea got in the pool with her towel on, and at the last possible second, she tossed it on the ground and hid under the water.
“Such a gentleman,” she said.
He laughed and took his hand off his eyes; they instinctively flicked to the top of her breasts floating on the water. He quickly looked away as Rhea sank deeper in an attempt to submerge them.
“Sorry I didn’t tell you about the whole clothing-optional thing, I thought you knew and then—”
“Not your fault and truly, totally fine.”
They were three feet away from each other without even the thinnest layer of fabric between them. The man she had been fantasizing about for weeks was within her grasp. All she had to do was reach out, pull him toward her…wrap her legs around him and—
“You’re way cooler about it than I was when I first came here. I hadn’t been naked around strangers since high school.”
“Definitely takes some getting used to, but yeah, totally fine.”
She was relieved he was buying her free-spirited, laid-back routine.
“But now I’ve been here four times and I barely even think about it.”
“I can see why you keep coming back. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.” She said this while looking out at the churning ocean, although she was referring to Danny.
“So…why did you come here? To the workshop, I mean.”
She knew what he was really asking: Why did you tell me you weren’t looking for anything serious right before attending a soulmate workshop?
She had been trying to avoid this moment, but diving into the ocean and swimming off into the horizon seemed too cold and perilous, so she met his gaze and explained herself.
“Well…I might not have told you the whole truth when I, uh, texted you….”
“Yeah, I sorta gathered that.”
“The truth is, I am looking for something serious, but…”
“You actually don’t owe me an explanation—”
“No, no, I do—”
“You really don’t. I just…I had a good time with you and thought—”
“I want kids,” she blurted out.
“Ah,” he said, and fell silent.
“You said you didn’t want kids, and I do, so I didn’t want to continue down a road that has a dead end….”
“I understand.” His voice was thick with sadness. The moment seemed far bigger than saying goodbye to a woman he had gone on one date with. A lifetime of loneliness hung in the air, making Rhea want to crawl onto his lap and bury her face in his neck.
“Well, I’m glad it came up early,” he said, clearing his throat. “I don’t want to waste anyone’s time and the older I get, the more it comes up, and, yeah…”
“You should just start dating twenty-year-olds,” Rhea quipped.
“Yeah, it’s too bad I don’t want to have children or date them.”
“Too bad.”
They sat in silence.
“Why don’t you wanna have kids?” she boldly asked.
“No, nope, I’m not gonna list all my reasons to someone who wants them. That’s like if I read you the ingredients while you were eating a Twinkie.”
“You can’t ruin it for me, I promise, I’m rock solid.”
“Rock solid? Okay…well—no, I don’t even like hearing myself talk about this—”
Rhea looked at him expectantly.
“Okay, fine…The planet is overpopulated. Each American creates about a hundred thousand pounds of garbage in a lifetime, and I don’t want to double that by having a kid.
I just read that we’re eating about a credit card a week ’cause so many microplastics are hidden in our food and our water.
The whole thing has gotten way out of hand… .”
“So, you’re forgoing the miracle of childbirth to help the planet? That’s very noble of you,” she said while internally rolling her eyes.
“That’s one of the reasons….”
“Well, what if your child was going to be the person who invented a biodegradable replacement for plastic and you’re refusing to bring them here, thereby dooming the planet?”
“Okay, fine, point taken, but it’s not my only reason. I was raised by nannies. My parents both worked all the time. It was lonely and…I don’t want to do that to a kid.”
“Well, what if your wife stayed home with the kid?”
“But I would still have to abandon them every day. The thought of wrenching their tiny hands off my leg in the morning so I can go pursue my passion just…doesn’t work for me.”
“Fathers have been leaving their children to go off and hunt for hundreds of thousands of years, and we’ve somehow managed to survive as a species.”
“And who did those fathers leave their kids with? Their mothers and grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, an entire tribe. Not one stressed-out adult in a house by themselves. Our current system is so broken….”