Gordon Mays got up early Saturday morning. He gathered some flowers from the garden and drove the short distance to the cemetery where his parents, sister and other family members were buried. This was something he often did, especially on Saturday. Jane saw him leaving through her window. She had accompanied Gordon to the cemetery a few times, but generally avoided the trip. Gordon could go and spend a couple of hours there sometimes, and Jane never could understand why it seemed to take him so long. She knew that he had more people there, including the twin sister he lost when a toddler, but cemeteries just did not seem to carry the same meaning to her that they did for Gordon. She knew that they contained only bodies and their markers, but she thought that Gordon must seem to think that some of the spirits of the departed lingered.
Jane began to attend to her usual Saturday morning routine of checking her business email and, finding nothing requiring instant attention, started cleaning up the kitchen and getting it more into order. After she had been working for about an hour, the phone on her wall rang. Jane answered it.
“Hi, Jane,” a female voice asked, “Is my uncle there?”
Jane did not place the voice and it took her a moment to figure who might be calling Gordon her uncle. The word did get used liberally around the Compound because there were so many uncles and nieces and nephews, but she couldn’t remember anybody using it to refer to Gordon. The caller ID was blocked, but after a couple of seconds she figured that it had to be Christina.
“Uh, Christina, he’s not here. I think he’s still at the cemetery. Do you want me to take a message?”
”No, that’s OK. You dressed right now?”
Although Jane was Christina’s step-grandmother, that relationship had never been apparent in their interactions. Jane was generally infuriated by the young woman she suspected little more than a rich tramp.
“It is none of your business, young lady, and I am hanging up.”
She hung up. She returned to what she was doing for about thirty seconds and then decided that it might be best to call Gordon. He might want to know that Christina might be looking for him.
“What’s up?” he answered.
Jane told him that his niece had just called and warned him that she might be on the way to the cemetery.
“Well, I just left so she’ll miss me. Got any idea what she wants?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t ask for you by name but as ‘my uncle.’”
“That’s probably not a good sign,” he answered. “Maybe I better call her and hold her off. You got her cell number?”
“Just a second.”
She grabbed an old-fashioned personal phone book and located Christina’s number which she gave to Gordon. They disconnected and Gordon gave Christina a call.
When he contacted her he asked why she had called him.
“Well, you know that Edna and my mother and I and the mayor and some others were out the night before last seeing how well the city was adapting to the new situation, don’t you?”
“Yes. That has gotten around.”
“Well, Justin and I want to go back this afternoon. We wondered whether you might want to join us.”
Gordon knew that Justin had had no part in the matter and suspected that he had not even heard of it yet. He also knew that he had never gone anywhere with his niece that family business had not mandated. He wondered what she was up to.
“Where were you thinking of going?”
“Well, we went to Yankee Joe’s last night, so today I think we just want to walk around Central Park to be sure that nobody is getting hassled for being naked. And maybe to Java Juba Lee. I’m still not sure that Laura is in on the program. And just a good walk downtown wouldn’t hurt.”
“I know that you and Justin will be naked. He probably won’t see another day dressed until you go back to school. But I’m not in a mood to do that. The right to public nudity is something I believe in, but do not intend to use that right myself, at least not now. Kind of like abortion, in a way. A lot of people support the right who won’t ever have one.”
That’s OK. We want a mixed group, both naked and dressed. That shows how tolerant we all are. And Justin’s mother will like it better if we have a lawyer handy. She still isn’t believing in this whole thing.”
“Well, I imagine that there are a lot of people who aren’t convinced. But you don’t need a lawyer. Why don’t you get Anna? She’s closer to your age. She’ll stay dressed, but won’t look so out of place with you as I would.”
“I already talked to her. She might. I think she thinks some of her girlfriends might go to the movies instead. But she is becoming a cool kid. But we’re not worried about you looking out place and you shouldn’t be either. Hey, maybe I should see if Uncle Simon wants to be pushed around town today.”
“Leave him alone. Anytime Uncle Simon wants to go, he’ll go. He’s earned his peace. I know you see him every day, but give him some space.”
“Well, I was just speculating, but you are right. Well, we’ll probably be going around two or so, so give me a call if you want to join us. OK? Or maybe I’ll just call you back.”
She disconnected. Gordon pulled into the A&W stand and ordered two hot dogs and a big mug. He sensed some relieve when the car hop came out completely dressed.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Saturday N-Day +2 Angi, Linda, and Cyd
Angi had worked at Jim’s until midnight on Friday night. Jean usually sent her home earlier when business had tapered below a certain leve, but the night had been busier than normal. hen Early in the evening Joan had had her bouncer deny service to two naked men in their forties who had come together. Angi had not recognized either of them and wondered whether Joan had barred them because of their nudity or perhaps some perceived gayness. Had she had time to think more about it, she would have understood the first situation and condemned the second, although she realized that Jim’s was not really in a situation to become a gay bar. But that was the only time that any one had tried to enter Jim’s naked that she knew of since N-Day.
She went home and showered the smoke out of her hair, slipped on a night shirt, and went to sleep. When she got up at nine in the morning she went downstairs. Cyd and Linda were both on their computers communicating with people from somewhere. Cyd was on the front porch wearing only a pair of black cutoffs and smoking a cigarette while doing something on her laptop. Angi knew that Cyd did not smoke often and surmised that something had her concerned.
“What’s happening? This isn’t the usual Saturday activity,” she asked.
“Pretty much we expected,” Linda answered. She handed Angi some printouts.
“Look at these. The early copies of some of the bigger Sunday papers are out. There are a couple of big ads financed by who knows who and they don’t sound very polite, shall we say. This may be the worst. It says it is funded by ‘Citizens for Families.’ It blames our new clothing optional state on ‘godless and foreign agents and their legislative and judicial cohorts and lackeys’ and calls for the removal of all present office holders except for the attorney general who they say should be installed as governor now because she is the only state office holder qualified to hold any public office. They want everybody replaced by people who will respect the constitution and families and oppose public indecency, and who will end any program which gives any state money, including medical or housing assistance, to anybody who engages in non-coital sex or outside of legal heterosexual marriage.”
“Aren’t they just hotheads?” Angi asked.
“Maybe,” Linda answered, “but they have a lot of money and they have the support of some mainstream politicians, at least from the past, it seems. Does the name of Clark Quentin Throneberry mean anything to you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, he is one of the signers. He used to be governor, a Democrat who some people thought was a liberal, who served two terms and retired to making money almost forty years ago. He’s almost ninety now, but I don’t think he has burned all of his bridges. Some of our correspondents have been telling us that he still makes all the right parties and still meets with prominent people. He is quoted as saying that while the decent people slept that outside forces came and took things over. In increments. First liberalized divorce, then abortion rights, then gay rights, and now the right to ‘flaunt what should not be flaunted’ and says that we need to undo all of these things. He was one of the state’s first prominent supporters of choice, so it really seems strange.”
‘Well, if they’re attacking what so many people are doing, don’t they think that they’ll just be making too many enemies to get their stuff done?”
“We can hope so, but remember there’ll be hell to pay if we’re wrong. That’s why we have to mobilize and do it now. Linda and I and all of us have just too much to lose.”
“I understand.”
She went to the kitchen for a bite of breakfast.
She went home and showered the smoke out of her hair, slipped on a night shirt, and went to sleep. When she got up at nine in the morning she went downstairs. Cyd and Linda were both on their computers communicating with people from somewhere. Cyd was on the front porch wearing only a pair of black cutoffs and smoking a cigarette while doing something on her laptop. Angi knew that Cyd did not smoke often and surmised that something had her concerned.
“What’s happening? This isn’t the usual Saturday activity,” she asked.
“Pretty much we expected,” Linda answered. She handed Angi some printouts.
“Look at these. The early copies of some of the bigger Sunday papers are out. There are a couple of big ads financed by who knows who and they don’t sound very polite, shall we say. This may be the worst. It says it is funded by ‘Citizens for Families.’ It blames our new clothing optional state on ‘godless and foreign agents and their legislative and judicial cohorts and lackeys’ and calls for the removal of all present office holders except for the attorney general who they say should be installed as governor now because she is the only state office holder qualified to hold any public office. They want everybody replaced by people who will respect the constitution and families and oppose public indecency, and who will end any program which gives any state money, including medical or housing assistance, to anybody who engages in non-coital sex or outside of legal heterosexual marriage.”
“Aren’t they just hotheads?” Angi asked.
“Maybe,” Linda answered, “but they have a lot of money and they have the support of some mainstream politicians, at least from the past, it seems. Does the name of Clark Quentin Throneberry mean anything to you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, he is one of the signers. He used to be governor, a Democrat who some people thought was a liberal, who served two terms and retired to making money almost forty years ago. He’s almost ninety now, but I don’t think he has burned all of his bridges. Some of our correspondents have been telling us that he still makes all the right parties and still meets with prominent people. He is quoted as saying that while the decent people slept that outside forces came and took things over. In increments. First liberalized divorce, then abortion rights, then gay rights, and now the right to ‘flaunt what should not be flaunted’ and says that we need to undo all of these things. He was one of the state’s first prominent supporters of choice, so it really seems strange.”
‘Well, if they’re attacking what so many people are doing, don’t they think that they’ll just be making too many enemies to get their stuff done?”
“We can hope so, but remember there’ll be hell to pay if we’re wrong. That’s why we have to mobilize and do it now. Linda and I and all of us have just too much to lose.”
“I understand.”
She went to the kitchen for a bite of breakfast.
Saturday Morning N-Day +2 At the Bowman house
It was Saturday morning, shortly after 7:30 a.m. Public nudity had been legal for almost 44 hours. So far Alicia Bowman had only seen three people naked, a young couple with a toddler being carried by the father. Her husband Tim had decided not to ban naked shoppers at his hardware store, but had told her that he had not seen any yet. A few naked people had been seen about town, but whatever onrush of naked people some had predicted did not seem to be happening. Alicia was glad, in a way. She had come to the opinion that she was not really opposed simple social nakedness, but really was in no hurry to see it and even less to participate.
She just seen her husband and their 14-year-old son Derek off to a day’s work in the hardware store the and was preparing to spend the day at home with her daughter Deanna and her sister Carla’s daughter Brittany. She suspected that their friend Shelly Michalski would be stopping by. She usually did.
Alicia and Carla often exchanged Saturday day care for their children, especially for their daughters who were about the same age, enjoyed each other’s company, and at ten and eleven years of age they felt was a bit too young to leave alone for long. Alicia figured that the girls would spend the morning watching cartoons and playing video games while she prepared for Sunday dinner and worked on the hardware store books. She also wanted to give the kitchen floor a good scrubbing if she could work it in since it had been several days since it had had more than a simple mopping.
The doorbell rang. She had her head in some business books and since she assumed that it was Carla with Brittany, she yelled, “Come in.”
She looked up and saw Shelly come in. Shelly was completely naked. Although she was the same age as Deanna and Brittany, somehow she had not realized how much older Shelly looked than the other two girls. She had not been looking forward to Deanna’s puberty and adolescence with any special zeal and a glimpse of naked Shelly reminded her of uncomforting things. She also found herself concerned for Shelly’s welfare.
She paused for a few seconds before figuring out what to say.
“Good morning, Shelly. Did you bring any clothes with you today?”
“No, Mrs. Bowman. Don’t need them no more. Didn’t you know that?”
“Well, you don’t need them to be legal, but you can’t just go anyplace without them. How did you get here?”
“I walked.”
Alicia wanted to send Shelly home to get some clothes, but the Michalskis lived three blocks away. Alicia was already shuddering at the idea that Shelly had made the trip across the neighborhood naked already and certainly did not want the child making another trip home by herself naked.
“Can I call your mother to have her bring you something to wear?”
“She isn’t home.”
“She didn’t leave you home naked by yourself, did she?”
“Oh, no. I wasn’t naked when she left. Mark is supposed to be looking after me, but he said it was OK for me to come here.” Mark was Shelly’s older brother, about sixteen or seventeen years old.
“He said it was all right for you to come here naked?”
“Well, I just did that. He didn’t say anything about that and he didn’t see me when I left.”
“Well, you need to go home and get some clothes, but I don’t want you walking again –not naked through the neighborhood. You don’t know what kind of people you’ll meet making the trip. Can you call Mark and have him bring you something.”
“He won’t do it. He doesn’t like to touch girls’ clothing, except for what he is trying to get them off his girlfriend. And he’s probably not there. I’m sure that as soon as I left that he left too.”
‘Would anybody be home?”
“Probably not.”
“Can you call him, anyway. I know that nakedness is legal now, but I’m not sure I want it here in my house and I am not sure that Deanna and Brittany will be comfortable.”
Alicia had not noticed that Deanna had entered the room from the door behind her, but her daughter spoke up.
“I think she’s cool, Mom. I was thinking I could maybe take mine off too, only as long as we stay here, but I’m not sure that Brittany is cool with it. In fact, she probably isn’t.”
“Keep your clothes on, young lady. We’ll talk about all this some other time,” Alicia told her daughter.
Turning back to Shelly, she repeated her request for Shelly to call her brother. Shelly grabbed her phone and called him. Alicia was not encouraged by what she heard.
“Can you bring me some clothes? I’m at Deanna’s. … No, I didn’t wear any. …”You didn’t say I had to, either. Nobody told me I had to. … Where are you going? … OK, thanks.”
Turning to Alicia, she said, “I was right, Mrs. Bowman. He skipped out as soon as I left.”
“Well, I better call your mother.”
She called Ann Michalski’s cell phone. The girls could hear her groan when she discovered that she had reached voice mail. She left a message for Ann to call her, but imagined that a response would not be immediate.
“Well, Shelly, you are welcome here, but I really don’t want you here naked. Deanna will see if something of hers will fit you well enough for you to get by for the morning. Your mother and I will need to talk later. Go ahead girls. Go up and see what you can find.”
The two girls went off to Shelly’s room.
“Your mom’s kind of bent on this, ain’t she?” Shelly commented.
“Well, she’s pretty cool, I think. But something about this nakedness thing confuses her. She and my dad kind of promised me that I’ll be allowed to go naked, but they haven’t told me when or where. And Derek is scared shitless that somebody is going to make him do it. That really creeps him out.”
“Scared shitless” was a phrase she knew her parents did not approve of, but she had heard her father and some of the older people in her family use it, so she used it sometimes herself.
Shelly commented, “I think my brothers are all scared shitless too, but I know that any of them will do it if enough other guys call them chicken. And I think that the right girl might get them to do it too. Mark is trying so hard to fuck Morgan and I don’t think she’s ever going to let him. It’s funny. He wants to get her clothes off, but I’ll bet that she has his off first.”
Deanna knew that her parents did not like to hear the f-word spoken and did not use it herself, but somehow accepted that Shelly had no such compunctions.
“You ever seen him naked?”
“Yeah, and I don’t think Morgan will like it if she sees it. It doesn’t look very long.”
“Well, you haven’t seen very many, at least not grownups in person.”
“Well, no. But it doesn’t look like much to me. If he ever gets to fuck her, she’ll be disappointed.”
Deanna knew that her parents had been clear that she was not to use the f-word and she never used it herself, but she knew that Shelly was responsible to a different parent. She had never thought of Derek attempting sexual intercourse and somehow it just did not seem right to be talking about one’s big brother’s sex life or lack thereof.
They looked for something for Shelly to wear. Shelly was taller and heavier than her friend, but they found a pair of Deanna’s sweats which covered her up, although they were a little tight and left some midriff bare and only came down to a few inches above the ankles.
As they finished getting Shelly dressed, Carla had dropped off Brittany and Brittany ran up the steps to greet them. They had started to watch the television in Deanna’s room when Alicia came up to them.
“You girls behave now. I know you will, but I always remind you. I’ll be downstairs. And sorry, Shelly, about that misunderstanding. You can wear those sweats home when you go.”
Alicia left the girls alone but stayed close enough in the house to hear anything louder than usual.
She just seen her husband and their 14-year-old son Derek off to a day’s work in the hardware store the and was preparing to spend the day at home with her daughter Deanna and her sister Carla’s daughter Brittany. She suspected that their friend Shelly Michalski would be stopping by. She usually did.
Alicia and Carla often exchanged Saturday day care for their children, especially for their daughters who were about the same age, enjoyed each other’s company, and at ten and eleven years of age they felt was a bit too young to leave alone for long. Alicia figured that the girls would spend the morning watching cartoons and playing video games while she prepared for Sunday dinner and worked on the hardware store books. She also wanted to give the kitchen floor a good scrubbing if she could work it in since it had been several days since it had had more than a simple mopping.
The doorbell rang. She had her head in some business books and since she assumed that it was Carla with Brittany, she yelled, “Come in.”
She looked up and saw Shelly come in. Shelly was completely naked. Although she was the same age as Deanna and Brittany, somehow she had not realized how much older Shelly looked than the other two girls. She had not been looking forward to Deanna’s puberty and adolescence with any special zeal and a glimpse of naked Shelly reminded her of uncomforting things. She also found herself concerned for Shelly’s welfare.
She paused for a few seconds before figuring out what to say.
“Good morning, Shelly. Did you bring any clothes with you today?”
“No, Mrs. Bowman. Don’t need them no more. Didn’t you know that?”
“Well, you don’t need them to be legal, but you can’t just go anyplace without them. How did you get here?”
“I walked.”
Alicia wanted to send Shelly home to get some clothes, but the Michalskis lived three blocks away. Alicia was already shuddering at the idea that Shelly had made the trip across the neighborhood naked already and certainly did not want the child making another trip home by herself naked.
“Can I call your mother to have her bring you something to wear?”
“She isn’t home.”
“She didn’t leave you home naked by yourself, did she?”
“Oh, no. I wasn’t naked when she left. Mark is supposed to be looking after me, but he said it was OK for me to come here.” Mark was Shelly’s older brother, about sixteen or seventeen years old.
“He said it was all right for you to come here naked?”
“Well, I just did that. He didn’t say anything about that and he didn’t see me when I left.”
“Well, you need to go home and get some clothes, but I don’t want you walking again –not naked through the neighborhood. You don’t know what kind of people you’ll meet making the trip. Can you call Mark and have him bring you something.”
“He won’t do it. He doesn’t like to touch girls’ clothing, except for what he is trying to get them off his girlfriend. And he’s probably not there. I’m sure that as soon as I left that he left too.”
‘Would anybody be home?”
“Probably not.”
“Can you call him, anyway. I know that nakedness is legal now, but I’m not sure I want it here in my house and I am not sure that Deanna and Brittany will be comfortable.”
Alicia had not noticed that Deanna had entered the room from the door behind her, but her daughter spoke up.
“I think she’s cool, Mom. I was thinking I could maybe take mine off too, only as long as we stay here, but I’m not sure that Brittany is cool with it. In fact, she probably isn’t.”
“Keep your clothes on, young lady. We’ll talk about all this some other time,” Alicia told her daughter.
Turning back to Shelly, she repeated her request for Shelly to call her brother. Shelly grabbed her phone and called him. Alicia was not encouraged by what she heard.
“Can you bring me some clothes? I’m at Deanna’s. … No, I didn’t wear any. …”You didn’t say I had to, either. Nobody told me I had to. … Where are you going? … OK, thanks.”
Turning to Alicia, she said, “I was right, Mrs. Bowman. He skipped out as soon as I left.”
“Well, I better call your mother.”
She called Ann Michalski’s cell phone. The girls could hear her groan when she discovered that she had reached voice mail. She left a message for Ann to call her, but imagined that a response would not be immediate.
“Well, Shelly, you are welcome here, but I really don’t want you here naked. Deanna will see if something of hers will fit you well enough for you to get by for the morning. Your mother and I will need to talk later. Go ahead girls. Go up and see what you can find.”
The two girls went off to Shelly’s room.
“Your mom’s kind of bent on this, ain’t she?” Shelly commented.
“Well, she’s pretty cool, I think. But something about this nakedness thing confuses her. She and my dad kind of promised me that I’ll be allowed to go naked, but they haven’t told me when or where. And Derek is scared shitless that somebody is going to make him do it. That really creeps him out.”
“Scared shitless” was a phrase she knew her parents did not approve of, but she had heard her father and some of the older people in her family use it, so she used it sometimes herself.
Shelly commented, “I think my brothers are all scared shitless too, but I know that any of them will do it if enough other guys call them chicken. And I think that the right girl might get them to do it too. Mark is trying so hard to fuck Morgan and I don’t think she’s ever going to let him. It’s funny. He wants to get her clothes off, but I’ll bet that she has his off first.”
Deanna knew that her parents did not like to hear the f-word spoken and did not use it herself, but somehow accepted that Shelly had no such compunctions.
“You ever seen him naked?”
“Yeah, and I don’t think Morgan will like it if she sees it. It doesn’t look very long.”
“Well, you haven’t seen very many, at least not grownups in person.”
“Well, no. But it doesn’t look like much to me. If he ever gets to fuck her, she’ll be disappointed.”
Deanna knew that her parents had been clear that she was not to use the f-word and she never used it herself, but she knew that Shelly was responsible to a different parent. She had never thought of Derek attempting sexual intercourse and somehow it just did not seem right to be talking about one’s big brother’s sex life or lack thereof.
They looked for something for Shelly to wear. Shelly was taller and heavier than her friend, but they found a pair of Deanna’s sweats which covered her up, although they were a little tight and left some midriff bare and only came down to a few inches above the ankles.
As they finished getting Shelly dressed, Carla had dropped off Brittany and Brittany ran up the steps to greet them. They had started to watch the television in Deanna’s room when Alicia came up to them.
“You girls behave now. I know you will, but I always remind you. I’ll be downstairs. And sorry, Shelly, about that misunderstanding. You can wear those sweats home when you go.”
Alicia left the girls alone but stayed close enough in the house to hear anything louder than usual.
Saturday Morning N-Day +2 Java Juba Lee
Thursday afternoon and Friday had been uneventful at Java Juba Lee. Although Laura Lyon, the owner, had decided that she would tolerate but not encourage nakedness for her customers, nobody had made any attempt to enter undressed. But even as she entered her establishment at 5:45 in the morning, she knew that the first time would come soon, likely that day. She remembered blanching a bit last week about the possibility of seeing a naked Clyde and wondered whether her Saturday morning regular would impose himself upon her in such a way.
She picked up her stack of newspapers and went inside. She put her purse in her locker and started preparing for opening. At about 5:55 Twyla Morris knocked on the back door and Laura let her employee in.
“I didn’t see Clyde’s pickup out there,” Twyla said to her employer. “Do you think we might be lucky and he’s not coming?”
“Well, I don’t know if we’re lucky when customers don’t show up but I know what you mean,” Laura answered. “Let’s just get open and see who shows.”
Nobody was at the door when they opened at the appointed hour. That was not surprising, especially on Saturday. Usually, Clyde was the only one there right on the hour. The others usually took a bit more time to arrive.
Several people came and left during the next two hours. Saturday morning differed from weekdays at Java Jubilee,. Total sales were generally a bit less, but business was more consistent and did not have the surges and lulls that weekdays did. Among those who had come and gone were two J. G. Cherry professors. Laura was able to overhear them discussing something about the nudity laws and campus life, but did not really understand what they were concerned or interested about. Ashley Wilkinson had stopped by and bought a beverage to take with him to his pharmacy. He told Laura that nobody had entered his store naked yet, but that one of his employees had asked if she could work naked. He said that he told her that he would have to study the matter, but confided to Laura that he didn’t think that he would let it happen.
Laura and Twyla had been able to handle everybody comfortably. Clyde had not shown up. Lontrell was scheduled to join them at 11:00 and Laura figured that she would use his arrival as an opportunity to run a few errands, including taking the deposit to the bank. That was her usual Saturday routine and so far everything seemed routine.
About 8:00 a.m. Karen Cahill entered with her partner Taylor. They grabbed a booth and Twyla walked over to serve them. Laura figured that she had time to greet and speak to them briefly while Twyla was tending to their orders.
“I see everybody’s dressed,” Karen noted. “Has it been this way all day?”
“So far nobody since N-Day, but I know that won’t last.” Laura replied. “How is it going for you?”
“Well, we had our first clothing optional evening session last night. There weren’t many swimmers, but of course, we hadn’t done any advertising since it was intended to be a trial run. The swimmers we had seemed to have a good time, but we did have a problem outside the fence – gawkers, maybe a dozen or so, mostly male, and they weren’t always nice or quiet. Well, I guess that nice wouldn’t be the right word. Gawkers are not nice by definition, but they hooted and hollered and pointed out some of the swimmers anatomical disadvantages, but I didn’t hear any of major complaints from the guests. Of course, unhappy customers usually don’t complain. They just don’t come back. Our security people tried to get them to move on, but they seemed to know that they were on public property. Two of the city’s finest came by and told them that they were causing a disturbance on a public sidewalk and suggested that they were loitering and it shut them up for a while, but it didn’t take for the rest of the night. And I can’t say how many cameras there were, but there must have been at least one per person. But I was very pleased at how our staff handled everything they could handle. They took it all maturely and professionally. The security people I got did well too, but I think I will need to talk to Scully about more police presence. We may just have to hire an off-duty cop to patrol the perimeter. And we may still need to put up some kind of opaque fence, especially on the west side where last night’s gawkers found were looking through the chain link.”
“Well, you knew that you would have problems with gawkers. I guess that’s almost an inherent risk for a water park, even when they’re wearing suits. I’d hate to see you have to put up a wall along that edge instead of the chain link, but I suppose you might. I know that if I was a perv with a camera that I would run to your place a lot quicker than I would come here. I may get a few naked people yet, but most of the people here will still be clothed.”
“Well, you may get your first naked people today. I know that my neighbors are going to check out some places to check on what the atmosphere for unclothed people is, but I am not sure they are coming to Conway, much less which places that would be.”
“They nice folks?”
“They’re good people,” Taylor interjected. “They came into town with Karen and I the night before last when we went to the Conway City Inn and the Telegraph Room. They aren’t from around here and we were there with Edna and the mayor and some of the Family and I think they were more shocked that they were socializing with the Family than they were by naked people. They’re younger and seemed to take up with Christina and her boyfriend Justin quite easily.”
“Well, that Christina is just as sneaky as her aunt,” Laura noted. “But I have some more people here and I’d better get back to work. Good luck over there.”
Laura went back to work and Twyla brought Karen and Taylor their orders.
She picked up her stack of newspapers and went inside. She put her purse in her locker and started preparing for opening. At about 5:55 Twyla Morris knocked on the back door and Laura let her employee in.
“I didn’t see Clyde’s pickup out there,” Twyla said to her employer. “Do you think we might be lucky and he’s not coming?”
“Well, I don’t know if we’re lucky when customers don’t show up but I know what you mean,” Laura answered. “Let’s just get open and see who shows.”
Nobody was at the door when they opened at the appointed hour. That was not surprising, especially on Saturday. Usually, Clyde was the only one there right on the hour. The others usually took a bit more time to arrive.
Several people came and left during the next two hours. Saturday morning differed from weekdays at Java Jubilee,. Total sales were generally a bit less, but business was more consistent and did not have the surges and lulls that weekdays did. Among those who had come and gone were two J. G. Cherry professors. Laura was able to overhear them discussing something about the nudity laws and campus life, but did not really understand what they were concerned or interested about. Ashley Wilkinson had stopped by and bought a beverage to take with him to his pharmacy. He told Laura that nobody had entered his store naked yet, but that one of his employees had asked if she could work naked. He said that he told her that he would have to study the matter, but confided to Laura that he didn’t think that he would let it happen.
Laura and Twyla had been able to handle everybody comfortably. Clyde had not shown up. Lontrell was scheduled to join them at 11:00 and Laura figured that she would use his arrival as an opportunity to run a few errands, including taking the deposit to the bank. That was her usual Saturday routine and so far everything seemed routine.
About 8:00 a.m. Karen Cahill entered with her partner Taylor. They grabbed a booth and Twyla walked over to serve them. Laura figured that she had time to greet and speak to them briefly while Twyla was tending to their orders.
“I see everybody’s dressed,” Karen noted. “Has it been this way all day?”
“So far nobody since N-Day, but I know that won’t last.” Laura replied. “How is it going for you?”
“Well, we had our first clothing optional evening session last night. There weren’t many swimmers, but of course, we hadn’t done any advertising since it was intended to be a trial run. The swimmers we had seemed to have a good time, but we did have a problem outside the fence – gawkers, maybe a dozen or so, mostly male, and they weren’t always nice or quiet. Well, I guess that nice wouldn’t be the right word. Gawkers are not nice by definition, but they hooted and hollered and pointed out some of the swimmers anatomical disadvantages, but I didn’t hear any of major complaints from the guests. Of course, unhappy customers usually don’t complain. They just don’t come back. Our security people tried to get them to move on, but they seemed to know that they were on public property. Two of the city’s finest came by and told them that they were causing a disturbance on a public sidewalk and suggested that they were loitering and it shut them up for a while, but it didn’t take for the rest of the night. And I can’t say how many cameras there were, but there must have been at least one per person. But I was very pleased at how our staff handled everything they could handle. They took it all maturely and professionally. The security people I got did well too, but I think I will need to talk to Scully about more police presence. We may just have to hire an off-duty cop to patrol the perimeter. And we may still need to put up some kind of opaque fence, especially on the west side where last night’s gawkers found were looking through the chain link.”
“Well, you knew that you would have problems with gawkers. I guess that’s almost an inherent risk for a water park, even when they’re wearing suits. I’d hate to see you have to put up a wall along that edge instead of the chain link, but I suppose you might. I know that if I was a perv with a camera that I would run to your place a lot quicker than I would come here. I may get a few naked people yet, but most of the people here will still be clothed.”
“Well, you may get your first naked people today. I know that my neighbors are going to check out some places to check on what the atmosphere for unclothed people is, but I am not sure they are coming to Conway, much less which places that would be.”
“They nice folks?”
“They’re good people,” Taylor interjected. “They came into town with Karen and I the night before last when we went to the Conway City Inn and the Telegraph Room. They aren’t from around here and we were there with Edna and the mayor and some of the Family and I think they were more shocked that they were socializing with the Family than they were by naked people. They’re younger and seemed to take up with Christina and her boyfriend Justin quite easily.”
“Well, that Christina is just as sneaky as her aunt,” Laura noted. “But I have some more people here and I’d better get back to work. Good luck over there.”
Laura went back to work and Twyla brought Karen and Taylor their orders.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Chapter 11.1 Sunday After Church
NOTE: Somehow this chapter did not get posted into the proper sequence when I first posted this story. I apologize for the seeming incontinuity. -- Lee
Alicia and Tim Bowman were sitting in the fellowship hall of First Presbyterian Church. They were sharing a table with Marlys Ziemann and Tim’s mother, Susan.
Marlys was a friend of Susan, about the same age, a widow of a J.G. Cherry chemistry professor. She was one of those people who had opinions on everything and could not imagine that there might be some people who did not want to know them. The Bowman children were elsewhere in the building with others their own ages and the four of them were discussing the service they had just heard, given by Rev. Julia Ward, the associate pastor.
‘I just can’t believe that she didn’t really lay it into those judges for putting us in this spot,” Marlys was saying. “It’s so disgusting and immoral and all she could do is say we should pray for help and tell us to remember that humans are made in God’s image. I was made in the image of God, but I can tell you that I haven’t kept it that way and I don’t want everybody to see how poorly I have maintained it and I don’t want to see how everybody else has mismaintained theirs. I suppose that next week she’ll be preaching without her robe, just her stole.”
“Well, Marlys,” Alicia interjected. “Dr. Wilson will be back next week so I imagine that he’ll be doing the preaching. I would be interested in hearing how he addresses these things, but I didn’t think I heard Julia say that she was going naked or suggesting that any of us should. She just reminded us that we are all responsible for our own choices and that there are things we should seek divine help for. And,” she just had to insert her own zinger since sometimes Marlys got on her nerves, “don’t you think that God already sees how poorly you’ve maintained His image?”
“Well, it still isn’t right,” the older woman replied. “I never thought I would live to see the day that people will be running around in public naked. And nobody in this church seems very concerned. I won’t be that long before we have a naked man serving communion.”
“Well, calm down a minute,” Susan Bowman replied. “Nobody’s going to church naked. We don’t even know that anybody’s even going anyplace else without their clothes on. Maybe a few nut cases, but probably not many others. Twenty years ago we went crazy when the homosexuals came out in public so hard. We thought that they’d be recruiting all of our youth and giving everybody AIDS. We survived that. I know that the Mays family wants us to consider some of the economic plusses of the situation, but I haven’t heard of anybody who is signing up. The politicians are screaming, but dysfunctional, but even the ones who kept them from doing anything in the special session, even none of them has said that he or she will make personal use of their so-called ‘new freedom.’ I imagine that if we go downtown or drive to any place in the state, except possible for a few people in a few places in the capital on a weekend evening that you won’t see a single naked person. Remember, they let all of us women go topless a couple of years ago, but outside of a few lesbians at gay rights marches, has anybody ever seen a topless woman?”
Tim Bowman noted, “Well, Mom, I suspect that we will see a few new nudists, but it won’t be a lot. Donald and Edna want us as a business community to be welcoming to visiting naked people, something like a ‘More Light’ church is to wandering, gay Presbyterians. Remember how strange that sounded when that came up? Dad didn’t go to church for a year after that, remember, but it really didn’t change much when all was said and done. I guess that they will be going nude themselves to kick it off, but I’m not sure it’s all that big a deal.”
Marlys was still upset. “And Edna and Donald Mays and most all of that clan are members here. How disgusting! They ought to excommunicate them, but I know they won’t. They give too much. It’s as if they think they’re buying heaven. Like the indulgences the Catholics have, but cleaner.”
Well,” Alicia noted, “I really hadn’t thought about it in the context of indulgences and I’m not sure that it’s the same. Maybe Hugh or Julia could explain that, but it seems different to me. But I do think it’s interesting that I have heard of no politician or any judge in the whole state who has demonstrated an intention to use their new freedom. I think it’s just being overhyped. But Donald and Edna and the rest of them will be doing what they want to on this. We may all find out that the Emperor has no clothes in more than just a symbolic way. But even so, I’m not so sure that I don’t like the idea that whether we wear clothes or run about in our birthday suits is any of the government’s concern as long as we aren’t perverts or something.”
“Well, I think they’re all perverts,” Marlys retorted.
Pastor Ward was making the rounds of the tables and approached theirs. Marlys was still feeling a bit disgruntled and asked her, “What kind of vestments does a naked clergyperson wear?” she asked the associate pastor.
“I don’t know. I have never looked into it,” the young associate pastor chuckled. She had been at the church for a bit less than a year and like many young associate pastors she was more acquainted with the children and their parents than the older people of the congregation. Seeing the look on Marlys’ face as she answered the question so flippantly, she suddenly realized that the older woman wasn’t joking so she straightened her demeanor and continued her response.
“I don’t expect that it will happen. Maybe in the Unitarians, but not with us. We’re too conservative socially. I was thinking of it as I did my sermon prep and I tried to vision it, but I just can’t imagine a naked person in a pew. I’m sure that it will happen sooner or later that somebody will at least try to come in that way, but I imagine that Dr. Wilson and the elders will have come up with a position and that the session will have too, so we’ll have to go from there. You know, this is only the second table where anybody has even brought the subject up and I’ve only had two calls from church members since this whole subject came up. This is either a big thing that nobody is taking seriously or a little thing which is being overblown and I don’t think a lot of us can figure out which it is. So I don’t blame anybody for their concern on this. We all have a lot of praying and thinking ahead of us on this.”
Well, I still think it’s wrong,” Marlys told her. “Like I was just telling Susan and her kids here, I was made in God’s image, but I think that the way I have maintained it is between me and Him. I expect that you and Dr. Wilson will be keeping the right position on this.”
“Thanks for stopping by,” Alicia told the pastor. “We’ll let you go on, but I imagine that a lot of the parish will be asking a lot more about this after Thursday if it actually goes through.”
“You probably are right. Thank you,” Julia said and started to move on.
Alicia turned to Tim and suggested, “You go find those kids and I’ll help Mom get to the car.” Turning to Marlys she noted, “You never did say whether you would join us for dinner.”
“Not this week, thank you,” the older woman answered. Tim and Alicia were not surprised. They extended Marlys the same offer every Sunday that Tim wasn’t at the store and his mother was coming home with them for dinner and almost always she declined the offer. Alicia always wondered why Marlys would want to go home and eat by herself, but Tim had reminded her several times over the years that Marlys was his mother’s friend, not theirs, and had no intention of becoming theirs. She was a professor’s widow and they were merchants and she had some status to protect. The fact that Susan was a merchant’s widow somehow was not a factor, possibly because Susan and Marlys had known each other for almost forty years. Alicia did not appreciate this aloofness, but had too much grace to let it show much.
At the same time a discussion was being held in the social call of St. James Lutheran Church in Monticello, a town about twenty miles north of Blacksburg. Cyd Lee and Linda Wyatt were standing near the beverage table waiting to get coffee when a guy they only knew as “Sid” joined them.
They had been driving the distance to Monticello for several years because they thought St. James was more GLBT friendly than any of the churches in Blacksburg. They had visited Protestant churches in both Conway Corners and Elmerton which professed to welcome GLBT people, and while they did not question the friendliness of the parishioners, they thought that they did not fit in at any of those congregations. The parishioners of one church seemed too affluent and pretentious, those of some others too old and rural. A third church just seemed too small.
Sid had not been attending for long and nobody seemed to know much about him. Linda and Cyd thought that maybe the pastor or somebody in the church office knew his last name or address, but they weren’t sure. Sid was tall, tattooed, and about forty and he seemed to make it pretty clear that he was gay. They had had only brief conversations, but he seemed to be somebody who didn’t want anybody too close. He did, however, definitely have a lot of opinions and was willing to share them with all.
“It just isn’t right,” he said to them.
“What,” Cyd asked.
“They got their rights before we got ours.”
“Who got what rights?” Linda asked.
“The nudists. They weren’t even trying to get them and they did.”
“I’m not sure what makes you think they got any rights they either deserved or wanted,“ Linda commented. “I think that there must be a lot of nudists who aren’t happy with this. After all, who will pay to go to one of their places if they can run about nude anyplace?”
“Well, if one of them tries to prance around in front of the wrong person, they’ll regret it,” Sid said as they moved on to different tables.
On the way home both women discussed his last comment. They agreed that Sid sounded somewhat threatening.
They talked a bit longer and Linda observed, “I think I’m having an epiphany. I had never thought of nudists as being a group of people being deprived of their rights, but I suppose that they must be, at least to a lot of people. It might not be the same as race, creed, or affection – it clearly is not - but I guess they must be some kind of discriminated against group. And I had never thought of it as a contest to see who gets what rights first, I guess. And the nudists don’t have a lot of rights yet. They can run around naked, but they can’t stop others from discriminating against them because they do. I suppose that if FSH decided to say that people who exhibit themselves can’t work for us that I’ll be writing up a lot of severances. Of course, I don’t think that Connor Fredricks would ever do that.
“But back to what is threatening us now. I guess I figured that things wouldn’t be right until everybody got their rights, all the rights everybody else has. I never thought of blacks or Hispanics or Indians or Jews as competition, just people who still suffer even though like us they have had some progress. We don’t resent them for their progress, so why would we wish to resent the nudists for theirs, even if they hadn’t been looking for it as much or even needing it as much as we have. We’ve never thought of blacks or Hispanics as competition, have we? Why nudists? I guess that now I will need to rethink things a bit. When the nudists lose their new rights as they will when the politicians get their act together, we will all have to wonder who’s next. If the wrong people get power after a hyped-up election or two, they’ll be the people who’ll go after us next.”
Cyd agreed, adding, “I suspect that most people like us have already figured that out, but far from all. I think we have some surfing to do this afternoon. And we have a message to get out.”
Linda replied that she agreed with Cyd that there was work to do, adding that she was not so certain that other lesbians and gays saw the backlash that might materialize. She also wondered what might lay in store for blacks and Hispanics.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Sonja visits Yankee Joe's
SONJA VISITS YANKEE JOE'S
N-Day plus two
Sonja Westermeyer lives with her parents on a farm near Bevel, a small town fifteen miles southwest of Conway Corners, just across the state line. She will be twenty-one on Sunday, N-Day plus three. She is a student-athlete at a major university -- Northwestern in Evanston, Illinois. She is taller than most women, about five-foot nine, a good enough swimmer to make the varsity swimming team, but is far from being a star. She maintains her scholarship but has to acknowledge to herself that she will never be a world-class swimmer, finding that Big Ten competition is difficult enough. She wants to attend graduate school to study French Literature after graduation.
Her mother, Pauline, is Phil O’Hara’s sister. Phil owns the Conway Tap in Conway Corners. Pauline is approaching fifty, but still shows evidence that she used to be a tall, slim redhead who turned an eye or two when she was younger. Sonja has inherited her mother’s slimness and height, but seems to have her father Harold’s rough skin and brownish hair color. Her mother was small breasted. Sonja, although a little better endowed, still only requires a B cup.
Although Sonja is an athlete, she has never been very comfortable with her body, or at least with its looks. She knows that it functions properly and that she can run and swim faster than almost everybody else she knows, even her brother and most of her other male acquaintances, she considers her looks plain, her skin and hair both of poor quality and the hair of bad color and totally without structure, and her body too tall and too angular. Being a swimmer she has shaved her body hair, but probably would have anyway, partly because the hair on her legs and her pubic hair seem to be a different, redder color than the hair on her head.
Although Sonja grew up on her parents’ farm, three years at a large university have her uncomfortable with her rural background. In her head she knows that farmers are important and the world does not eat without them, but still feels too uncomfortable to mention her heritage to most of the people she meets in Evanston.
Sonja did not pay much attention to the whole ruckus that the approach to N-Day caused. She was spending her time doing farm chores, reading French publications, and swimming. Her high school coach had made the high school pool available to her almost every weekday through the beginning of August and, although she had made a few trips to Yankee Joe’s Water Park in Conway Corners, she really has not been paying much attention to events on that side of the state line. A couple of college friends had called it to her attention through email and instant messages, but she had really not paid any attention until she saw something the day after N-Day on a French website. Moreover, like many others when they first heard of the news, she had concluded that clothing optional was indeed optional and probably short-lived. Since she had no intention of going naked herself regardless of which state she was in, she had not thought much about the matter, con or pro.
It was now Saturday, two days after N-Day. School was starting where Sonja lived and the high school pool was no longer available. The highs school pool had been closed for repair at the beginning of the summer and was not scheduled to be available until late July so Sonja had purchased a season discount package for Yankee Joe’s, but had not used it much since the pool work had been concluded by the third week of June and it was closer and cheaper.
However, since she had a bit more than a week to go yet before returning to college, she decided to go into Conway Corners for a few laps early at Yankee Joe’s. The staff there kept the lap swimming area free for the first few hours for people who really wanted to do laps undisturbed. Sonja knew that she would be making two trips that day since she had promised her parents that she would have her first legal drinks at her uncle’s bar. She would be making that trip with Gaylord, her frequent escort both when she was home and at college when one or the other found an escort desirable. Gaylord was a few months older than she. They had grown up together and gone to the same schools until graduation and Gaylord went to college in Chicago, near where Evanston where Sonja was in college. Some people thought they made a good couple, but she knew that was because the people back home and many in Chicago did not know (or did not wish to acknowledge) that Gaylord was gay and he preferred life in the closet.
She put one of her one-piece athletic swimsuits, wrapped a skirt around its lower portion and put a skirt over the top. She slipped on her sandals and put a clean set of underwear and a couple of towels into her gym bag. As she was leaving her mother handed her a couple of envelopes and asked her to drop them into the mail. She gave her mother a peck on the cheek and drove into Conway Corners.
She dropped the mail at the Bevel post office and entered the convenience store next door. She picked up a cappuccino and, unsure whether her mother had made her usual lottery purchase, bought a ticket with the numbers her mother always used.
It was 9:50 when she pulled into Yankee Joe’s parking lot. She saw a few more cars than she expected to see in the parking lot and was surprised to hear splashing since she thought the Saturday opening time was ten o’clock. As she got out of her car and grabbed her bag she looked up and saw about four people, all naked, in the parts of the park she could see. It seemed that there was a white middle-aged couple with a significantly younger light-skinned black woman. There was also a lone male across the way from them. Suddenly she remembered what she had been hearing about. Nudity actually was legal here. She had heard about it, but somehow had not actually come to believe it. Oh well, she thought, I guess I can live with a little nudity as long as it isn’t mine. She walked up to the entrance and went in.
Maddyson was working at the desk. Sonja knew Maddyson a bit from her previous visits to Yankee Joe’s. Sonja asked her whether the time for opening had changed. Maddyson replied that they had, that this was the first day. She then gave the warning that Karen had said to give, to make sure that all guests knew that there might be naked people around until 11:30 and again in the evening.
“Thank you. I’ve already seen a few of your naked customers,” Sonja answered. “But if I have it right it’s all optional, right?”
Maddyson assured Sonja that she was right.
“Has there been any misbehavior because of this? Any perverts acting out?”
“Not yet, I don’t think, but of course, this is the first day. But if you have any problem see a lifeguard or security person.”
Sonja thanked her for the answers and went to the women’s changing room.
It did not take long for Sonja to get her shirt and skirt off, grab her goggles, and secure her things in her basket. Nobody else was in the room and she walked out toward the swimming area in a matter of seconds.
She walked towards the pools. There were only a few people in the place. Sonja noticed a couple of mothers and some small children in the kiddy area. All appeared to be fully clothed. She saw some older suited children using one of the slides and noted a couple of suited adult men watching them. She surmised that they might be with the mothers and smaller children. She did not see the couple she had seen before or the woman who had been with them, but she saw the solitary man outside walking around the pool seeming to be looking outside the fence almost aimlessly. Nobody was around the lap swimming area. She slipped her goggles on and started swimming.
She swam hard for several laps and then did some more at a more leisurely pace. She figured that she had about two or three more sessions before she would return to Evanston and felt confident that she was where she should be considering in her training. She started to get out of the pool. She did not like what she saw as she was coming up the ladder.
She found herself looking straight on at the man who had been walking around. He seemed to be semi-erect. Sonja suddenly felt naked herself. Even though she was wearing a swimsuit, her athletic suit seemed to be offering little protection. She knew that her nipples would be protruding some and was certain that somehow the suit was revealing to this guy that she had been shaving what many women do not shave. She could see his whole body. He seemed to be a white male about mid-thirties with pale skin, light brown hair, slightly balding with a small beer gut. His penis seemed unimpressive even when half aroused, but somehow Sonja felt just as naked.
“Got a light?” the man asked.
“No. And get your fucking ass out of the way,” she shouted back.
“Now that’s no way for a nice-looking young lady to talk,” he answered.
Sonja shouted even louder.
“Get away from me you fucking pervert! Get the fuck away!”
A security guard had already heard her and was grabbing the man, turning him away from Sonja who had stepped back down into the pool. The guard had grabbed his walkie-talkie and was saying something as he was crudely shoving the man away from the scene, making certain that he was not looking in her direction. Sonja, meanwhile, realizing that nobody was in her immediate proximity, had turned to look about the park. She saw the naked couple she had seen before walking past the other side of the pool. She started to curse herself out for not having her glasses with her, but thought to herself that something about them seemed strange, not necessarily strange in a sinister way or in a way which might suggest peril, but strange more in the sense of unusual.
She was watching them when she heard a young man’s voice behind her.
“Are you all right?”
Sonja nodded and turned around. She saw a tall, young blond man wearing a Yankee Joe’s uniform, yellow trunks trimmed with green and a yellow-and-green Yankee Joe’s t-shirt.
“Y-yes, I am. A little surprised maybe, but I’m OK. Thank you.”
“Can I talk with you about it for a minute? If you prefer I can get into the pool and we can talk there?”
Sonja did not answer right away and the man took off his t-shirt and jumped in with her. He offered his hand and Sonja reflexively shook it.
“I’m Carver,” he said. “I’m one of the managers. I kind of caught what happened and just had a brief talk with security. I am really sorry for what happened. We are trying hard to make sure that the new law doesn’t create any problems, but I guess we don’t always succeed. This seems to be our first incident and I am afraid it won’t be the last, but we are trying to be vigilant. We are ejecting the guy from the park and won’t be letting him back in.”
“Well, I guess that’s good, but why are you letting naked people in here anyway? I guess I didn’t care when it was just theory, but if your naked people are going to attract guys like him, why?”
“Well, we have had problems even when everybody wore suits. There’s just a lot of strange people out there. But we think that there are a lot of people who want to swim naked. We haven’t seen a lot of them yet, but we think they’re around and will be coming. A lot of people prefer things that way and we want to be accommodating. If it doesn’t work I suppose we’ll have to switch back.”
“I see what looks like suited parents with suited children. Are there that many parents who are cool with this? Or is this less than usual?”
“Well, we did not use to open this early, so I guess you would have to say that attendance is up. But I suspect that most parents in the state are going to have to take it the way my sister is, whether they like it or not. My nephews are three and five and she would just as soon not get into discussing all the body difference questions and whatever else may be coming, but she knows that they are going to be seeing naked people whether they like it or not. I imagine that some people like that may stay away for a while, but in the long run they’ll come back. There really aren’t many alternatives.”
‘Well, I don’t mean anything bad. I like this place and have been coming here since I was little, but more guys like that one and nobody will be here no matter how many legal naked people they see on the street.”
“I know. We have our work cut out for us. Not just Yankee Joe’s or other water parks, but everybody. Legalized nudity will not be easy. We sure did not ask for this. Well, you didn’t come here to talk to me, so I’ll let you get back to what you came here for. See Maddyson at the desk when you go out, will you. It’s been nice talking with you and again, I’m sorry about what happened.”
He climbed out of the pool and Sonja thanked him for his concern. Sonja decided that she had done what she had come for and figured it was time to go, but not until she had swum two hard laps to finish things off. The laps happened uneventfully. She got out of the pool and headed back for the changing area.
As she entered she noticed that the younger, black, naked woman she had seen earlier was leaving the restroom area. The naked woman greeted her and Sonja returned the greeting.
“This is our first time here,” the black woman said. ”It seems like a nice place but there aren’t many people here.”
Sonja answered. “It does seem like attendance is a little low today. I think it may be associated with all the nudity these days.”
Thinking she might have inadvertently offended the other woman, she quickly added, “although I see you are adapting well.”
Sonja had retrieved her basket and slipped her glasses on. She suddenly realized that she was speaking to somebody about her own age who had no tan lines. She suddenly decided that introductions might be in order.
“I’m Sonja,” she said as she dropped the upper portion of suit down over her breasts.
The other woman replied, “I’m McKenna. We come from out of state, about seventy miles south. My boyfriend had to take care of some business in Elmerton today so we came with him this far. Him and me and his folks, I mean. They’re here somewhere. He should be here soon. We’re thinking this might become a regular place to go for us.”
Sonja was a little flummoxed.
“You were out there naked with your boyfriend’s parents?”
McKenna chuckled.
“They’re old family friends. They’re naturists – nudists, you might say. So are my parents. I’ve known them my whole life. I think we all are wondering if stopping driving fifty miles to a club south of us to go to a whole state seventy miles north of us might not be a good idea.”
“I guess I never met a nudist, er, naturist before. No wonder you move about so comfortably. You’ve been doing this all your life then, right?”
“Well, I didn’t like it and for a few years starting when I was about eleven I got my parents to let me stay with my grandparents while they went to the club most of the time for a few years. But I’m older now and I guess I like my body better.”
Sonja took another look at McKenna. She stood about five-foot six and her shoulder-length black hair which looked almost dry. Had Sonja had to guess, she would have thought McKenna had C-cup breasts, but detected no sag. Something about McKenna seemed familiar. She seemed to have an athletic body and Sonja wondered whether she had met her before.
“You look like you have a good body,” Sonja said. “I wish mine were half as good. I probably couldn’t make it as a naturist, but I still would feel better.”
Sonja resumed taking her suit off. She figured that a nudist would not mind and she needed to be getting on with her business.
“You really look quite good, dressed or undressed. Don’t put yourself down. We women don’t think well enough about ourselves the way it is. Haven’t you heard of the teen suicide rate which really doesn’t drop much until much after that?”
“I’ve heard about that. But I’m not suicidal. Just a realist.”
That’s some fucking bull,” McKenna noted. Changing the subject she went on.
“Don’t you hate taking one of those off wet? I swam in high school. I hated that part of it. But I bet that you have a lot of swimming experience. I’m just guessing that from the looks of that suit. You came here for business, I can tell. Not just to show that body to the crowd.”
“Well, one can’t show this body to a crowd with any poise or flair, anyway. I guess I really hadn’t thought about taking a wet suit off all that much. Yeah, I guess it is a bit of a hassle. But it isn’t the hassle those guys in those new Olympic suits have to use.”
“I don’t swim competitively any more, but when I did, that was the only time that I had to wear a suit. And I didn’t like it. I guess that once you’ve swum naked you don’t want to swim with a suit anymore.”
Sonja suddenly knew that she had indeed seen McKenna before and where she had seen her. They had both competed in the state swimming tournament, although in different events. She couldn’t remember how McKenna had done. She was wondering whether she wanted to mention it. If she did, she would probably have to reveal her own identity and she wasn’t sure that she was ready to trust this stranger with so much about herself.
They were interrupted. A mother with two pre-teen girls, presumably her daughters had entered from the outside and the naked woman Sonja had seen outside had come in from the other direction. Sonja had to admire the naked woman. She seemed to be about fifty and stood almost six feet tall and was tanned all over. She seemed to have no excess body fat under her short-cut black hair.
“McKenna,” the older woman said. “Carl just called and said he won’t be here until about noon. Somebody screwed something up over there. It’s almost time to have to get dressed here anyway, so I thought maybe we should just go into town for lunch and talk things over for a bit. You must not have had your cell with you, so he called John.
“Lynda,” the younger woman said. “I’d like you to meet Sonja. We’ve been talking. We haven’t got to it yet, but I think maybe she used to swim against me someplace. Sonja, this is my boyfriend’s mother, Lynda.”
The two women said that they were glad to meet each other. Now that Sonja knew that McKenna had figured out so much of who she was, she seemed a lot less cautious.
She grabbed a pen and a piece of paper from her purse and wrote something down one of her secondary email addresses and handed it to the black girl.
“It’s been nice to talk you. Here’s my email, in case you want to talk more. But I really need to get a shower.”
McKenna thanked her.
“I need to shower too,” Lynda added. All three women found themselves heading for the showers.
“Why was that woman coming in here naked from the pool?” Sonja heard one of the girls asking her mother as they left.
After she showered Sonja returned to the changing room and started to dress. Lynda and McKenna followed her. As the three got dressed, Sonja noted that Lynda was had donned a gray t-shirt with “BELLEVILLE SWIMMING” written across the front. She made a mental note of that in case she wanted to learn more about her new nudist acquaintances. She started to say good-bye to them, but Lynda asked her to wait just a few seconds so they could all go out together and she could introduce Sonja to her husband.
A minute later Lynda did introduce Sonja to her husband John. They all chatted a moment and left. When she was about a mile away, Sonja remembered that Carver had asked her to see Maddyson on the way out. She grabbed her phone and called the water park.
Maddyson told her that Carver had just wanted her to pick up a free day pass as a sign of thanks. She told that if Sonja did not want to come right back that she would leave it at the desk in case she was able to come back to the water park.
On the way home Sonja was thinking that she would tell her mother about the guy at the park. But by the time she got there, she had changed her mind. It would just get her mother excited and worried. She did her afternoon chores and went to bed right after supper. She wanted to be rested a little for her birthday in Uncle Phil’s bar.
Her mother, Pauline, is Phil O’Hara’s sister. Phil owns the Conway Tap in Conway Corners. Pauline is approaching fifty, but still shows evidence that she used to be a tall, slim redhead who turned an eye or two when she was younger. Sonja has inherited her mother’s slimness and height, but seems to have her father Harold’s rough skin and brownish hair color. Her mother was small breasted. Sonja, although a little better endowed, still only requires a B cup.
Although Sonja is an athlete, she has never been very comfortable with her body, or at least with its looks. She knows that it functions properly and that she can run and swim faster than almost everybody else she knows, even her brother and most of her other male acquaintances, she considers her looks plain, her skin and hair both of poor quality and the hair of bad color and totally without structure, and her body too tall and too angular. Being a swimmer she has shaved her body hair, but probably would have anyway, partly because the hair on her legs and her pubic hair seem to be a different, redder color than the hair on her head.
Although Sonja grew up on her parents’ farm, three years at a large university have her uncomfortable with her rural background. In her head she knows that farmers are important and the world does not eat without them, but still feels too uncomfortable to mention her heritage to most of the people she meets in Evanston.
Sonja did not pay much attention to the whole ruckus that the approach to N-Day caused. She was spending her time doing farm chores, reading French publications, and swimming. Her high school coach had made the high school pool available to her almost every weekday through the beginning of August and, although she had made a few trips to Yankee Joe’s Water Park in Conway Corners, she really has not been paying much attention to events on that side of the state line. A couple of college friends had called it to her attention through email and instant messages, but she had really not paid any attention until she saw something the day after N-Day on a French website. Moreover, like many others when they first heard of the news, she had concluded that clothing optional was indeed optional and probably short-lived. Since she had no intention of going naked herself regardless of which state she was in, she had not thought much about the matter, con or pro.
It was now Saturday, two days after N-Day. School was starting where Sonja lived and the high school pool was no longer available. The highs school pool had been closed for repair at the beginning of the summer and was not scheduled to be available until late July so Sonja had purchased a season discount package for Yankee Joe’s, but had not used it much since the pool work had been concluded by the third week of June and it was closer and cheaper.
However, since she had a bit more than a week to go yet before returning to college, she decided to go into Conway Corners for a few laps early at Yankee Joe’s. The staff there kept the lap swimming area free for the first few hours for people who really wanted to do laps undisturbed. Sonja knew that she would be making two trips that day since she had promised her parents that she would have her first legal drinks at her uncle’s bar. She would be making that trip with Gaylord, her frequent escort both when she was home and at college when one or the other found an escort desirable. Gaylord was a few months older than she. They had grown up together and gone to the same schools until graduation and Gaylord went to college in Chicago, near where Evanston where Sonja was in college. Some people thought they made a good couple, but she knew that was because the people back home and many in Chicago did not know (or did not wish to acknowledge) that Gaylord was gay and he preferred life in the closet.
She put one of her one-piece athletic swimsuits, wrapped a skirt around its lower portion and put a skirt over the top. She slipped on her sandals and put a clean set of underwear and a couple of towels into her gym bag. As she was leaving her mother handed her a couple of envelopes and asked her to drop them into the mail. She gave her mother a peck on the cheek and drove into Conway Corners.
She dropped the mail at the Bevel post office and entered the convenience store next door. She picked up a cappuccino and, unsure whether her mother had made her usual lottery purchase, bought a ticket with the numbers her mother always used.
It was 9:50 when she pulled into Yankee Joe’s parking lot. She saw a few more cars than she expected to see in the parking lot and was surprised to hear splashing since she thought the Saturday opening time was ten o’clock. As she got out of her car and grabbed her bag she looked up and saw about four people, all naked, in the parts of the park she could see. It seemed that there was a white middle-aged couple with a significantly younger light-skinned black woman. There was also a lone male across the way from them. Suddenly she remembered what she had been hearing about. Nudity actually was legal here. She had heard about it, but somehow had not actually come to believe it. Oh well, she thought, I guess I can live with a little nudity as long as it isn’t mine. She walked up to the entrance and went in.
Maddyson was working at the desk. Sonja knew Maddyson a bit from her previous visits to Yankee Joe’s. Sonja asked her whether the time for opening had changed. Maddyson replied that they had, that this was the first day. She then gave the warning that Karen had said to give, to make sure that all guests knew that there might be naked people around until 11:30 and again in the evening.
“Thank you. I’ve already seen a few of your naked customers,” Sonja answered. “But if I have it right it’s all optional, right?”
Maddyson assured Sonja that she was right.
“Has there been any misbehavior because of this? Any perverts acting out?”
“Not yet, I don’t think, but of course, this is the first day. But if you have any problem see a lifeguard or security person.”
Sonja thanked her for the answers and went to the women’s changing room.
It did not take long for Sonja to get her shirt and skirt off, grab her goggles, and secure her things in her basket. Nobody else was in the room and she walked out toward the swimming area in a matter of seconds.
She walked towards the pools. There were only a few people in the place. Sonja noticed a couple of mothers and some small children in the kiddy area. All appeared to be fully clothed. She saw some older suited children using one of the slides and noted a couple of suited adult men watching them. She surmised that they might be with the mothers and smaller children. She did not see the couple she had seen before or the woman who had been with them, but she saw the solitary man outside walking around the pool seeming to be looking outside the fence almost aimlessly. Nobody was around the lap swimming area. She slipped her goggles on and started swimming.
She swam hard for several laps and then did some more at a more leisurely pace. She figured that she had about two or three more sessions before she would return to Evanston and felt confident that she was where she should be considering in her training. She started to get out of the pool. She did not like what she saw as she was coming up the ladder.
She found herself looking straight on at the man who had been walking around. He seemed to be semi-erect. Sonja suddenly felt naked herself. Even though she was wearing a swimsuit, her athletic suit seemed to be offering little protection. She knew that her nipples would be protruding some and was certain that somehow the suit was revealing to this guy that she had been shaving what many women do not shave. She could see his whole body. He seemed to be a white male about mid-thirties with pale skin, light brown hair, slightly balding with a small beer gut. His penis seemed unimpressive even when half aroused, but somehow Sonja felt just as naked.
“Got a light?” the man asked.
“No. And get your fucking ass out of the way,” she shouted back.
“Now that’s no way for a nice-looking young lady to talk,” he answered.
Sonja shouted even louder.
“Get away from me you fucking pervert! Get the fuck away!”
A security guard had already heard her and was grabbing the man, turning him away from Sonja who had stepped back down into the pool. The guard had grabbed his walkie-talkie and was saying something as he was crudely shoving the man away from the scene, making certain that he was not looking in her direction. Sonja, meanwhile, realizing that nobody was in her immediate proximity, had turned to look about the park. She saw the naked couple she had seen before walking past the other side of the pool. She started to curse herself out for not having her glasses with her, but thought to herself that something about them seemed strange, not necessarily strange in a sinister way or in a way which might suggest peril, but strange more in the sense of unusual.
She was watching them when she heard a young man’s voice behind her.
“Are you all right?”
Sonja nodded and turned around. She saw a tall, young blond man wearing a Yankee Joe’s uniform, yellow trunks trimmed with green and a yellow-and-green Yankee Joe’s t-shirt.
“Y-yes, I am. A little surprised maybe, but I’m OK. Thank you.”
“Can I talk with you about it for a minute? If you prefer I can get into the pool and we can talk there?”
Sonja did not answer right away and the man took off his t-shirt and jumped in with her. He offered his hand and Sonja reflexively shook it.
“I’m Carver,” he said. “I’m one of the managers. I kind of caught what happened and just had a brief talk with security. I am really sorry for what happened. We are trying hard to make sure that the new law doesn’t create any problems, but I guess we don’t always succeed. This seems to be our first incident and I am afraid it won’t be the last, but we are trying to be vigilant. We are ejecting the guy from the park and won’t be letting him back in.”
“Well, I guess that’s good, but why are you letting naked people in here anyway? I guess I didn’t care when it was just theory, but if your naked people are going to attract guys like him, why?”
“Well, we have had problems even when everybody wore suits. There’s just a lot of strange people out there. But we think that there are a lot of people who want to swim naked. We haven’t seen a lot of them yet, but we think they’re around and will be coming. A lot of people prefer things that way and we want to be accommodating. If it doesn’t work I suppose we’ll have to switch back.”
“I see what looks like suited parents with suited children. Are there that many parents who are cool with this? Or is this less than usual?”
“Well, we did not use to open this early, so I guess you would have to say that attendance is up. But I suspect that most parents in the state are going to have to take it the way my sister is, whether they like it or not. My nephews are three and five and she would just as soon not get into discussing all the body difference questions and whatever else may be coming, but she knows that they are going to be seeing naked people whether they like it or not. I imagine that some people like that may stay away for a while, but in the long run they’ll come back. There really aren’t many alternatives.”
‘Well, I don’t mean anything bad. I like this place and have been coming here since I was little, but more guys like that one and nobody will be here no matter how many legal naked people they see on the street.”
“I know. We have our work cut out for us. Not just Yankee Joe’s or other water parks, but everybody. Legalized nudity will not be easy. We sure did not ask for this. Well, you didn’t come here to talk to me, so I’ll let you get back to what you came here for. See Maddyson at the desk when you go out, will you. It’s been nice talking with you and again, I’m sorry about what happened.”
He climbed out of the pool and Sonja thanked him for his concern. Sonja decided that she had done what she had come for and figured it was time to go, but not until she had swum two hard laps to finish things off. The laps happened uneventfully. She got out of the pool and headed back for the changing area.
As she entered she noticed that the younger, black, naked woman she had seen earlier was leaving the restroom area. The naked woman greeted her and Sonja returned the greeting.
“This is our first time here,” the black woman said. ”It seems like a nice place but there aren’t many people here.”
Sonja answered. “It does seem like attendance is a little low today. I think it may be associated with all the nudity these days.”
Thinking she might have inadvertently offended the other woman, she quickly added, “although I see you are adapting well.”
Sonja had retrieved her basket and slipped her glasses on. She suddenly realized that she was speaking to somebody about her own age who had no tan lines. She suddenly decided that introductions might be in order.
“I’m Sonja,” she said as she dropped the upper portion of suit down over her breasts.
The other woman replied, “I’m McKenna. We come from out of state, about seventy miles south. My boyfriend had to take care of some business in Elmerton today so we came with him this far. Him and me and his folks, I mean. They’re here somewhere. He should be here soon. We’re thinking this might become a regular place to go for us.”
Sonja was a little flummoxed.
“You were out there naked with your boyfriend’s parents?”
McKenna chuckled.
“They’re old family friends. They’re naturists – nudists, you might say. So are my parents. I’ve known them my whole life. I think we all are wondering if stopping driving fifty miles to a club south of us to go to a whole state seventy miles north of us might not be a good idea.”
“I guess I never met a nudist, er, naturist before. No wonder you move about so comfortably. You’ve been doing this all your life then, right?”
“Well, I didn’t like it and for a few years starting when I was about eleven I got my parents to let me stay with my grandparents while they went to the club most of the time for a few years. But I’m older now and I guess I like my body better.”
Sonja took another look at McKenna. She stood about five-foot six and her shoulder-length black hair which looked almost dry. Had Sonja had to guess, she would have thought McKenna had C-cup breasts, but detected no sag. Something about McKenna seemed familiar. She seemed to have an athletic body and Sonja wondered whether she had met her before.
“You look like you have a good body,” Sonja said. “I wish mine were half as good. I probably couldn’t make it as a naturist, but I still would feel better.”
Sonja resumed taking her suit off. She figured that a nudist would not mind and she needed to be getting on with her business.
“You really look quite good, dressed or undressed. Don’t put yourself down. We women don’t think well enough about ourselves the way it is. Haven’t you heard of the teen suicide rate which really doesn’t drop much until much after that?”
“I’ve heard about that. But I’m not suicidal. Just a realist.”
That’s some fucking bull,” McKenna noted. Changing the subject she went on.
“Don’t you hate taking one of those off wet? I swam in high school. I hated that part of it. But I bet that you have a lot of swimming experience. I’m just guessing that from the looks of that suit. You came here for business, I can tell. Not just to show that body to the crowd.”
“Well, one can’t show this body to a crowd with any poise or flair, anyway. I guess I really hadn’t thought about taking a wet suit off all that much. Yeah, I guess it is a bit of a hassle. But it isn’t the hassle those guys in those new Olympic suits have to use.”
“I don’t swim competitively any more, but when I did, that was the only time that I had to wear a suit. And I didn’t like it. I guess that once you’ve swum naked you don’t want to swim with a suit anymore.”
Sonja suddenly knew that she had indeed seen McKenna before and where she had seen her. They had both competed in the state swimming tournament, although in different events. She couldn’t remember how McKenna had done. She was wondering whether she wanted to mention it. If she did, she would probably have to reveal her own identity and she wasn’t sure that she was ready to trust this stranger with so much about herself.
They were interrupted. A mother with two pre-teen girls, presumably her daughters had entered from the outside and the naked woman Sonja had seen outside had come in from the other direction. Sonja had to admire the naked woman. She seemed to be about fifty and stood almost six feet tall and was tanned all over. She seemed to have no excess body fat under her short-cut black hair.
“McKenna,” the older woman said. “Carl just called and said he won’t be here until about noon. Somebody screwed something up over there. It’s almost time to have to get dressed here anyway, so I thought maybe we should just go into town for lunch and talk things over for a bit. You must not have had your cell with you, so he called John.
“Lynda,” the younger woman said. “I’d like you to meet Sonja. We’ve been talking. We haven’t got to it yet, but I think maybe she used to swim against me someplace. Sonja, this is my boyfriend’s mother, Lynda.”
The two women said that they were glad to meet each other. Now that Sonja knew that McKenna had figured out so much of who she was, she seemed a lot less cautious.
She grabbed a pen and a piece of paper from her purse and wrote something down one of her secondary email addresses and handed it to the black girl.
“It’s been nice to talk you. Here’s my email, in case you want to talk more. But I really need to get a shower.”
McKenna thanked her.
“I need to shower too,” Lynda added. All three women found themselves heading for the showers.
“Why was that woman coming in here naked from the pool?” Sonja heard one of the girls asking her mother as they left.
After she showered Sonja returned to the changing room and started to dress. Lynda and McKenna followed her. As the three got dressed, Sonja noted that Lynda was had donned a gray t-shirt with “BELLEVILLE SWIMMING” written across the front. She made a mental note of that in case she wanted to learn more about her new nudist acquaintances. She started to say good-bye to them, but Lynda asked her to wait just a few seconds so they could all go out together and she could introduce Sonja to her husband.
A minute later Lynda did introduce Sonja to her husband John. They all chatted a moment and left. When she was about a mile away, Sonja remembered that Carver had asked her to see Maddyson on the way out. She grabbed her phone and called the water park.
Maddyson told her that Carver had just wanted her to pick up a free day pass as a sign of thanks. She told that if Sonja did not want to come right back that she would leave it at the desk in case she was able to come back to the water park.
On the way home Sonja was thinking that she would tell her mother about the guy at the park. But by the time she got there, she had changed her mind. It would just get her mother excited and worried. She did her afternoon chores and went to bed right after supper. She wanted to be rested a little for her birthday in Uncle Phil’s bar.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Courtroom security in capital city
A NEW APPROACH TO COURTROOM SECURITY
N-Day plus one
Across the state from Conway Corners, in the capital city, a kidnapping murder trial had been going on for several days. The defendant, a 49-year-old, self-proclaimed white supremacist named Charles Dennis Ball was accused of kidnapping a young couple from a freeway rest stop, killing the 20-year-old Asian-American man immediately and raping the 21-year-old Hispanic woman several times before killing her, all while in violation of Ohio parole as an unregistered sex offender. He had a lengthy criminal record and had already been convicted of a federal gun charge which promised to keep him in prison until he was into his seventies. During a previous trial in Indiana, he had attacked his own lawyer, a judge, and a witness in court with a smuggled knife. He was being handled with all available security. All the victims in the crimes he had been convicted or accused of committing had been members of racial minorities.
Lavelle Price was the sheriff’s deputy in charge of courtroom security which included transporting prisoners between the jail and the courtrooms. He was the first black man to have moved so high up in that sheriff’s department. When he had left the court house on N-Day afternoon he noticed two naked men and a naked woman walking along the sidewalk across the street. He had been busy and had not really thought about the ramifications of Bear v. Beardsley much. He had been busy and like many others had assumed that legalized nudity would never actually happen.
An idea suddenly hit him. If these people could move about in public nude, why couldn’t the county move Charles Dennis Ball from cell to courtroom naked? He picked up his cell phone and called the sheriff. It was immediately clear to him that he had piqued the sheriff’s curiosity, but the sheriff told him that he would have to check with the District Attorney’s office before doing anything,
There were many telephone calls made, emails sent, and references looked up overnight as attorneys, local and state, looked into the matter. When Price returned to work in the morning, he had a message from the sheriff: “Go ahead. Take CDB to the courtroom naked. He won’t be hiding anything under his clothes.”
Price knew how he wanted to handle it. He told guards to seize all of Ball’s clothing while he was showering. He made sure he was there in person when the shower was over and explained the situation to the defendant. After receiving many obscenities and racial epithets from Ball and giving a few of his own back, another deputy approached the distracted inmate and slipped handcuffs on him. Before Charles Dennis Ball knew what was happening, he was being escorted through the tunnel toward the court house and sitting at a courtroom table waiting for lawyers, judge, and jurors to arrive.
Cynthia Boswicz was Ball’s public defender. Despite the fact that she despised Ball, she was committed to ensuring that he had all his rights respected. So she was aghast when she entered the court room and found him sitting there with no clothes on.
“What the fucking hell is going on here?” she shouted at the deputies who were watching Ball.
“He’s naked, that’s all, counselor,” Price said, coming from the other door to the courtroom. We could not find any law or rule which said that he is required to be dressed and we brought him here that way for security reasons, at least until the judge orders otherwise. This really ought to make you feel better. He has attacked his own lawyer in court before, you know.”
“And that’s why you fuckers are here. You’re supposed to be protecting all of us here, not running some kind of kinky sado-masochistic thing.”
“That’s what we’re doing today, protecting you and everybody else who comes in here today, giving the security you all are entitled too,” Price answered. “The Supreme Court has given us a new tool and we’re just using it.”
“They said that people were not required to wear clothes. They never said you could strip a defendant who wanted them, in a courtroom of all places.”
“They said that clothing is no longer a requirement. Just think of that as a new, special cases jail uniform.”
When the judge entered the courtroom she had many of the same questions as the defense attorney. She stated that she would not abide the nudity of a defendant in front of the jury and ordered the sheriff’s office to bring a robe for Ball to wear. After they did, she allowed the jury to enter the room and the trial to proceed.
Reporters who were there to cover the trial had a new story to cover also.
Lawyers, judges, and legislators had something else to consider. Cynthia Boswicz attempted to get the judge and a higher court to allow her client to wear his clothes for the remainder of the trial, but was rebuffed and the sheriff’s office continued to transport Ball without his clothes on until the trial ended the next Tuesday, giving him a robe only after had arrived at he courtroom.
Ball was convicted on all counts. Boswicz is working on an appeal, claiming that her client’s not being allowed to be properly dressed influenced the jury against her client.
Public and private security people are studying whether or how they can use nakedness as a security tool.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Edna organizes a check-it-out party [N-Day evening]
This summary is not available. Please
click here to view the post.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)