Connor Fredricks, jr. arrived at work at Conway Market shortly before his scheduled starting time of 1:00 p.m. Stepping into the back room where the time clocks were, he noticed a memo affixed to the bulletin board. The heading, in bold print on two lines, read, “Employees will stay clothed while on duty and on the premises.” Language underneath elaborated that the policy came from the store’s insurer.
“Bummer,” he muttered to himself. But business was fairly busy and he found himself working before he could ask anybody about it.
Shortly after two o’clock, Madison Wells, one of the employees was not working at that moment came in to buy some cigarettes. Madison was a short and brunette, a few years older than Connor. Connor had a poorly disguised crush on her, although she was deeply involved with her boyfriend of several years. Approaching the counter she asked him if he had seen the memo.
“Yeah, I saw it. Don’t know nothing about it. Haven’t talked to anybody about it, but I guess it explains itself.”
“Well, Luis said that ownership wanted that sign up in all the stores in the group. Insurance companies rule the world, my dad says. But I was looking forward to seeing you walking around with nothing on but your birthday suit.”
“Well, you’ll probably get that chance. I’m not really big on clothes when they aren’t needed, but I am beginning to be concerned a bit that my family intends on marketing this whole thing like it was more of a business thing than a step toward a freer society.”
“But you’d still give little Madison a chance to look, wouldn’t you?” she replied, almost purring.
“Well, it might not be so social in that case, but we could probably work something out.”
“Well, maybe Damon can be there to appreciate it too.”
“He going to go along with the new ways? Or are you?”
“Well, we’ll just have to wait and see. See you later, sport.” She walked out, wiggling her butt just enough catch Connor’s attention and peeking back at just the right time to ascertain that he had.
His older co-worker noticed and sympathized with him.
“You look. She knows you look. But you know you’ll never get her.”
“Yeah, Leslie, but it’s fun looking. And who knows? Maybe something will happen. But she does seem pretty set on that Damon. But I’m young and am not seeking anything permanent, anyway.”
“Well, I like your spirit, but I still think that you’re going to make peace with that family of yours, marry some rich girl, and move up to that Compound or some fancy place in some big city. You don’t want to be here when you’re my age.”
“Nothing wrong with that. And experience here may help me someplace else. And there are issues that I don’t talk about. You know that. But even if I do go back up there sometime, this is good for me. But I do wish that those insurance companies stayed out of people’s business.”
“You know, so do I. I imagine that you do look good strutting. I’m just an old broad, but I still can look.”
Two customers came in and the conversation ended.
Wearing only socks and a pair of tennis shoes, Christina Cedar walked around the Compound to Harrison. She wanted to talk to Uncle Simon about his comments at last night’s meeting. At the beginning of the trip she passed the barbecue pit behind Adams. Gary Matthews had begun preparing the pig per Edna’s request and she stopped to talk with him for a bit, noting that the pig was starting to smell good and complimenting him. Gary thanked her, but told her that all she could be smelling so early would be the wood, but that things boded well for dinner.
She went on around the ring route wondering how things would indeed go that night and why Gary never made use of the Compound’s clothing-optional rules. When she got to Harrison she pushed the doorbell and Simon Simon’s nurse Jennie let her in.
“He’s feeling pretty good this afternoon. I imagine that he’ll be glad to see you,” the nurse told her as she led her to the living room where Simon was seated, his head on his chest. A television was on set to CNN, but Simon was not really watching it. He was not really reading the copy of Business Week on his lap, either.
The old man seemed to perk up when he saw Christina. Although he did wish that she would cover up sometime, he knew that he was responsible in large part for creating the atmosphere which made her continuing nudity possible and he appreciated that Christina did seem to be the only one of her generation who did not seem either afraid of him or find him irrelevant. Connor Fredricks, jr. would also pay his respects when he was on the Compound sometimes, but he knew that Connor was estranged from most of the family and could not seem to learn why.
“What brings you by this afternoon,” he asked her.
The nurse brought Christina a Diet Pepsi, as she always did whenever Christina visited. Christina gave the required thanks and turned to Simon as the nurse left the room.
“I just wanted to thank you for coming to our house for that meeting last night. I had never seen you at a family business meeting before. Of course, I haven’t been to a whole lot of them, but I appreciated your input.”
Simon suspected that he was being flattered, but wanted to believe that somebody in the younger generation was at least partly interested or serious about the family’s matters.
“What do you mean about people abusing their new freedom? I’m so thrilled to think that other people are getting it. You seemed concerned about pedophiles. They’re already bad people, so how can this make them worse?”
“Well, it isn’t that we’ll make them worse. They’ll just have more chance to do their thing. But it is not just pedophiles who worry me. I am worried more about people who have choices that it never occurred to them to have who now won’t be ready to use it wisely. And I am concerned that there will be those who have sway over them who abuse that situation. Do you know why we have minimum wage laws? or legal mandates for overtime pay?”
“I guess I really hadn’t thought about it. But what is the connection?”
Simon suspected that Christina was quick enough to make the connection but deferential enough to ask.
“Well, I was against them when they first came about. But they haven’t really been a problem and I can see now that they have been quite helpful for our society as a whole. Otherwise we’d work some poor schmuck to an early pauper’s grave and leave a lot of people with good minds or bodies with nothing good to do. A person with full-time work who is making a decent wage contributes to society with his labor and feels more like a part of the society he is in. And he is less tolerant of those who do not contribute or who would disrupt the social order. I don’t think we were paying anybody minimum wage when the minimum wage laws were first enacted. Maybe we were. The Depression really screwed up the market, but I don’t think we were. You can’t live on minimum wage. You had an outside chance then, but certainly none now. Of course, payroll taxes screw up the numbers.”
“But as I say, I did oppose the changes. I thought it took away the freedom to contract from both employee and employer. But as I have grown older, I have come to respect that none of our freedoms can be exercised in an absolutely free way. If there is somebody else who will do something for less and we lose the business, well, that’s the American way. Or so we say. And our companies have lost many a contract because we were underbid. But we had resources and could go on until the next opportunity came around. Joe Blow with a wife and kids couldn’t find work at sixty cents an hour because John Doe would do it for fifty. And after a few years of good service, John Doe would find himself displaced by a younger, stronger, Bill Jones who has a sick wife and six kids would do it for forty-five. And he’d stay half an hour longer and never put it on the time card.”
“Right now minimum wage doesn’t help anybody directly, but it does help establish a floor for other people’s pay. But put it with the new rights. I kind of imagine that you would never wear anything any place, right?”
“Well, not if it is warm enough, I don’t imagine.”
“Well, that’s your right, your privilege while you’re here. My own opinion is that you may use that freedom too much, but the agreement here is that it is your choice. And you’ve had almost your whole life to learn how to use that right. And whether you dress or not doesn’t affect whether you can feed yourself or somebody else. But there are others who don’t have your experience with nakedness and don’t have your nice trust accounts to run back to.
“Brenda called me this morning. She said that after I left that Maria really raised good points and she wondered whether Donald and Edna might not have listened better. I love both Donald and Edna and I imagine that they are using their usual sound business judgment in this. I have been trusting them for a long time now. But I do wonder if they might not be beyond listening right now. And I also trust Brenda. She has one of the best abilities to read the pols’ minds of anybody I have known. So I imagine this will be another thing in which the whole family has dubious consensus. But we have had a lot of those and have worked past them.
“She said that Anna spoke up too. She is really impressed with what your generation is doing, at least some of you. Connor, jr. is a disappointment to most of them, of course, but I really don’t worry about him. He has a good head. He will be all right.”
“I think you are right about Connor. I like him and when I talk to him I find him to be a person with a good conscience, maybe a better conscience than a rich kid can afford, but a good kid with a good mind. He really ought to go to college, but I imagine that he will someday. And he might be a better student for having had time to live on the outside first.”
The old man chuckled. “On the outside? You’re making this place sound like a prison.”
“Oh, no. I didn’t mean that. This is a lot more paradise than prison. But Connor feels that he was more caged here than I feel that I have been, in some ways. He’s got both parents here and his father is kind of a control freak. My father is a nice guy and he doesn’t try to run my life and he’s not even here. And my mother is pretty cool.”
Simon scowled momentarily. He had never liked Christina’s father. He had thought Bill Cedar a shady character from the first time that they met. When Bill came out of the closet Simon’s opinion declined even more. He really did not hate gay men but felt that men who were not certain that they were straight should not get married and distribute the consequences of the ambiguity to a woman and children.
Simon decided to get back to the topic of the day.
“You saw this morning’s Capital Communicator, I imagine, didn’t you?” he asked her.
“Well, I had several emails suggesting that I look at it. Connor was the first. I don’t usually read the paper but I looked it up on their website.”
“It’s not a very well written article and it is not well researched,” the old man commented. “There just aren’t many good newspaper people these days. I don’t know about all the legal stuff and I don’t think the lawyers do either. But there is truth behind the story and we can’t let poor writing cause us to forget that. Brenda wrote me about what Maria said and I have heard Maria mention the other Maria Cortez before. Bill Engel and Gordon are both good lawyers and they haven’t been able to show that there are no risks coming up. They’re just showing us possibilities. Maria really believes that bottom line people in service industries are especially vulnerable and I think she is correct. I think Donald has his fears too even though he seems more gung-ho on the way we are going. I understand that Yankee Joe’s is going to flat out ban staff nudity, maybe because Gordon has scared them or maybe because they see it as an unproductive employment practice. But will they maintain that resolve if the other water parks and pools in the state take a different course? Will they be able? We just don’t know.”
“I used to be on the library board and we used to want to get more people to go to the library. Don’t you think a nice, good-looking naked library assistant could increase traffic? But the library is not for profit and can afford to wait this out. But how about Ashley Wilkinson or that Lyon woman with the coffee shop? How about the bartenders and barmaids at Conway Tap or Jim’s? Even receptionists at Davis and Mays are not beyond the threat here?”
“Receptionists? In a law office? Working nude? Come on.”
“I’m not saying it will happen, but it sure seems like it could very easily if we do not keep some perspective and values here. Who is the receptionist at Davis and Mays now? You know?”
“I don’t know. I don’t go there, but I think Alicia Bowman does it part of the time, at least.”
“From the hardware Bowmans?”
“Yes, her husband owns that.”
“Oh, from that Greek family. I don’t suppose I have seen her in twenty years. She used to be fairly good-looking as I remember, but that was a long time ago. How do you think she’d like to be working naked?”
“I wouldn’t know, but if she didn’t she could probably work in the family business.”
Simon knew that he was about to make a point.
“Ah, but what if her family did not have its own business? She’d be out of luck. So if the firm decided that she was just too old and the parts weren’t in the right places any longer, what would she do? There would always be somebody else out there with different standards or a better body willing to do the job. Maybe not as well qualified, but willing. Discrimination laws are hard to enforce. Employment laws the same. It might become a lot harder for older women to get or keep work and in some fields it might rule men out altogether. I do think that clients of some businesses would much prefer seeing a naked woman over a man, clothed or unclothed, and most businesses could get away with it.
“Maria says that the other Maria, the one she has been somewhat anonymously befriending, has had to put up with gropes and suggestive hints even though she is a married woman of middle age. These things happen without witnesses and even when the hotel can find out who did it they can’t do much with the culprit. How much worse will this be for people like her who may get into this kind of situation? And how many will lose their jobs to twenty-year-olds who have just arrived from Latin America or Africa who are even more desperate than they are?”
Christina did not answer immediately, trying first to determine whether the question was actually awaiting an answer or was merely rhetorical and then how to respond. While pondering she inadvertently spread her legs, giving her old uncle more of a view than he thought proper.
“For God’s sake, girl, close those legs,” he said in a raised voice. “Even when Donald and Anna came back from Chicago, they felt that the new freedoms we used here should be used with some decorum.”
Christina knew that Simon had always been a bit prudish considering everything that happened at the Compound, much of which he had been involved with, but she quickly closed her legs. Simon decided to keep on speaking.
“You’ve lived through Simon and Mays 101, the basic course on what being in this family means. You know that we have seldom taken one of our companies public? You know why?”
“Well, it has to do with accountability and control,” Christina answered.
“Yes. Yes again. We aren’t dumb people. We aren’t going to run things to lose money. Any business set up for profit has a duty to try for profit. But when you go public, you pick up more duties. And you have to make not only the profit you want, but all the profit possible or you will lose the company. And pure bottom line accounting only considers things like human rights or any other form of individual dignity as far as the law and the law’s enforcement require, things to be worked around rather than with or for.
“But we have probably talked this out and I’m getting a bit sleepy. Just wait until you’ve seen ninety and you’ll understand. But it has been nice having you here. Do we understand each other a bit better now?”
“I think so, Uncle Simon,” Christina answered. She got up, put her arm around his neck and bussed him.
“We’ll talk tomorrow. I’ll let you know how the barbecue went.”
“I just might be there.”
“Well, I’ll see you there then. Bye-bye. We all love you.”
She left and went back home.
Welcome
I have been intrigued with how society handles the freedoms and opportunities it has and how various rights and responsibilities can sometimes conflict with others’ rights and responsibilities.
I came up with the idea of a place like Conway Corners and the choices it is facing, perhaps because I have also spent more of my life naked than most women my age. The situation that Conway Corners is in seems bizarre, yet it is not so implausible as to seem totally impossible.
The state's Supreme Court has just given everybody a new right, one few had asked for or ever expected to be granted, the right to go about undressed, and now society is transitioning to becoming clothing optional. This story examines how people adjust to that right, how it might be used and abused, and how people who have been seeking other rights or who would prefer to reduce existing freedoms adjust to the changes. It also looks at the ways that families and people interact with each other.
The story does involve a fair amount of nudity, but if you are looking for pornography you are in the wrong place. (However, with a little searching, you can probably find a porn site if you try hard enough [or even if you don't]). There are no lingering descriptions of the naked bodies or body parts and the specifics of any undressing are not lingered on. The most explicit reference to a sexual activity (in the initial story, at least) is one in which a couple wakes up in bed and a used condom is thrown into a waste basket.
The large, initial story (Conway Corners approaches N-Day) covers a lot of ground and introduces many people and situations. It is intended to provide a “universe” in which other stories, short or long, can be added. Reader suggestions or input for more stories will be accepted and I have established a moderated Google Group (Conway Corners -- discussions of choices and consequences) for this. Feedback is welcomed.
The chapters are posted in reverse format. I guess blogs work that way. However, links to individual chapters are on the left and you may find them helpful in navigating the story.
Enjoy this story and maybe let it make you think.
Leelee
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Do not post anything from here on any other site. You may feel free to link to this site from your free, non-porn site, but it would be nice to learn if you do.
