her unique fashion sense

“Here’s some burnt connective tissue,” she said, wiping a small grease splatter off her nipple and forking three strips of bacon onto Rod’s plate. Before turning back to the stove she snapped off a piece for herself. Burnt connective tissue tasted so good sometimes, especially on a late winter morning like this.

Her comment was playing to her vegetarian guests, Jen and Leisha, married three years ago under the laws of the State of Vermont, who were taking in Tami’s famous soy flour pancakes. Dressed in flannel shirts, jeans, and sneakers with nice thick wool socks, they also took in the trim butt cheeks as Tami worked the stove, cheeks that were always bare like the rest of her and were a prime display of her trademark tan. It was well observed in the Campbell-Frank College community that Tami’s summer skin was copper, but her winter skin was a light brown, a change like the summer and winter colors of certain birds. But at any time of year, her permanently nude body was one of the glories of the local countryside.

She turned to slide another pancake onto Jen’s plate. “Nice, what is that, burgundy, Tam?” Jen said. Tami stood back, playfully tossing her shoulder-length hair like in a shampoo commercial, then looking down to her full length nudity. Her hair, her fingernails, her pubic hair (“lower hair”, she called it), and her toenails were all the same reddish color, a shade lighter than her natural hair color. “No, more magenta-ish. The box calls it ‘Plum’,” she said. “Goes well.” “Thanks. I might stick with this for a while.” “I still like the all-black look on you.”

As Jen said this she brushed aside a few of the beer bottle caps that had some time ago spilled over the top of the big round oatmeal carton that graced the end of the table. Most of the caps reflected Tami’s favorite brand. The carton had been there a year but, still, that was a whole lot of caps. Behind the mountain of caps, on the wall, a bulletin board with various pictures and notices, many way out of date. And a little framed note that said, in Tami’s neat hand,

Would you spend your life

With a naked wife?

Next to that, a Pawtucket Red Sox hat, push-pinned into the board.

Rod, about ten minutes from having to leave for work, ready for the outside world in his gray button-down shirt, dark pants and engineer’s boots, looked up from reading this morning’s news on his laptop. He reflected on how Tami’s appearance had changed over the past three years. Her face, for one thing. Longer, a bit more angular, more like a mature woman. Looking back at those old photos now, like from the Black Formal he had taken Tami to during her first semester, her face seemed more babyish, almost chubby. Now it was more “beautiful”, as if to catch up with those bright green eyes.

Her body, too, was a bit more angular, the muscles slightly better defined, especially around the midriff and that tight little butt typical of white girls. Her breasts seemed a bit larger. Remarkably they did not sag, being without the benefit of a bra all this time. Maybe not so remarkable. When she was a sophomore Tami had dug up a study showing that bras, for all their other purposes, do not really prevent sagging. Sounded wrong, but in Tami’s case the theory was correct.

Looking at her matching hair and nails, Rod was glad that her personal fashion sense, or what fashion choices life had permitted her in light of her allergy, had calmed down. That sophomore year, at least the second half, was a wild ride. Blazing colors, half-buzz cuts, shaving into a “T” for Tami, Bride of Frankenstein shocks -- Tami’s crotch was like a dazzling billboard bopping around the campus and town, making it even more the center of attention that it already was wherever she went. Her upper hair was no less flamboyant, one month almost a Mohawk, the next green dreadlocks, and usually different color nail polish on each finger and toe. It was a trial to be seen with her, though he never admitted it. Just when he was hoping people would get used to this naked girl walking around, she calls attention to herself.

Then that summer internship in Germany, working with a famous math professor on six-dimensional polymers or whatever it was -- he never could quite understand her attempts to explain it, even though he was about to complete an engineering degree with two years of calculus. When she came back in August she was so enthusiastic. “Germany is such a totally nude friendly country. It’s where nudism began. They go out naked to the parks. I’d walk out and, it was like, I’m not the only one for once. It was so nice not being stared at. Everyone was so polite and grown-up about it. One day they had an exhibit at an art museum; it was a really hot day, so if you went naked you got in free. I was just one of the crowd. I wished all the time you could be there and we’d be naked together. Of course,” they were on the bed at the time, late at night, “I wouldn’t be able to control myself, looking at this! Roarrr!” Whereupon she grabbed his dick, swung it around from the base like a floppy baseball bat, then took it into her throat.

When she came back from that summer she was full of German phrases. He had learned a little bit from his father, who had been stationed there during his Army days, and had thought it a military and harsh language. But then he heard Tami speak it in a gentle, musical way and it was enchanting. “I love the way you wrap your lips around those umlauts,” was his favorite phrase for a while.

She had also, really for the first time, embraced what she called “the theory of nudism” -- the beneficial effect of the elements on bare skin. She was determined to live in as natural a state as possible and it was almost as hard to take as The Year of the Dazzling Pubic Hair. She let her legs and armpits go unshaved, let her hair grow wild and long, till it was almost to her butt. And she would take long hikes at night in the woods behind the house. He had quite a shock the first time he woke up in the middle of the night to see a wild naked white woman, autumn leaves in her hair, perched in the opened bedroom window, dirt-covered toes curling over the sill, green eyes glowing in the dark, then pouncing across the room onto him, pulling the covers off, commandeering his dick, and jumping on it to ride him through her many orgasms, his crotch scratched by crumpling leaves that had gotten caught in her lower hair. She did this a number of times until the novelty wore off.

Maybe he was too buttoned-down. Maybe there was a wildness inside him that she was trying to tap, without saying so. Certainly when they were alone she was wild enough for both of them. But it was good to see her calm down and settle on “Plum”.