dead inside

      It was here, in the sunny, balmy paradise of Brian Cook’s southern California estate, that Tami’s sense of modesty, besieged and assaulted and pummeled on a daily basis for almost a year, finally and gently gave up the ghost and left her.

        She didn’t realize it at first.  But on the second day, sitting in the sun with Nina and Helen, she noticed that they were intensely conscious of being naked, and she was not.  Nor was she shy when mowing the lawn in front of people, when saying hi to Mr. Cook or his guests at that party he kindly threw for her, or when going out to Kelly’s club.  She realized that she no longer woke up every morning on her uncovered bed with a desire for clothing, with an awareness that today was another day to be exposed to the world’s gaze.  She was just Naked Tami.  Her skin was her clothes, and there was nothing special about it, just another personal characteristic like having red hair or being left-handed.  She no longer cringed at the idea of going someplace new where more people would see her nakedness.  No big deal, in fact not any deal at all.

        It made her sad.  She felt like a part of her had gone dead inside, a part of her that caused her much distress but she still valued and treasured.  It was a part of her former self, from that bygone era when she was a normal teenager who wore clothes.  To have it disappear was a kind of capitulation to Ross and the Dean and the whole web of people who had been abusing and humiliating her.  Her former self was gone.  They had destroyed it.

        With her return to clothes imminent she fervently hoped she could get this former self back.  What would clothes feel like?  The memory of the feeling of fabric over her body, she was forced to admit, had disappeared.  She had summoned that memory again and again during her ordeal, but as the months went by it became more and more vague and abstract.  Now it was gone.  All she had now was the memory of having a memory.  She began to fear that when she finally got into clothes she would hate it.  That would be the ultimate, horrifying capitulation.