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.
