Tami and Rod’s “Passage on the Lady Anne”

“You look beautiful, Tam,” Jen said, kissing her on the cheek (the cheek of her face, that is, though with Tami all four cheeks were always available), then standing back to admire her handiwork.

The nude teenage princess, Princess Tami the Nude, stood up on the footstool in the wing lounge of Pilgrim Hall in front of her friends. The springlike night air wafted in from the open windows. She looked down at Mayree and Dawn and Jen, and was almost overcome with joy. This was like last December, when her adoring friends had made her up for her date with Rod to the Black Formal. They were joined this time by Jeffrey Dillon and his new boyfriend Trent, who sat on a couch in their matching long dark coats and Oscar Wilde haircuts (though Trent’s was blond), holding hands. They agreed with Jen, nodding appreciatively.

Tami the Nude looked down at her loyal subjects and then at herself in the mirror Mayree held up. Streaky blonde highlights in her dark red hair, red rouge on her nipples, yellow and green (spring colors) on her fingernails, a neatly groomed pubic bush (no trimming this time), and toe rings on both feet, with yellow and green toenails. She didn’t feel ashamed of her nudity this time, she felt proud, in a way she never felt before. She told herself: I am a proud, beautiful, naked princess.

Dawn helped her down and as if on cue, a tuxedoed Rod showed up in the doorway. “Deja vu,” he said, hugging her and then kissing her on the lips. “Almost,” she said, putting her head on his shoulder. She wished Rebecca and Marisol, who now lived off campus, were here. That would make it complete.

The spring air made her happy and energetic, and horny too. It seemed that all the desire she just couldn’t summon on Sunday had returned with a vengeance. She whispered to Rod, “I want to fuck you,” and licked his ear.

“I heard that!” Jeffrey said playfully. “Not here!”

“Why not?” Tami said, hugging Rod and looking at Jeffrey with a mischievous smile. As she hugged her boyfriend tighter she did one of her romantic flourishes, kicking one leg back and flexing her foot, spreading her toes.

“Yeah, why not? I think I’d like to see their legendary Sunday-style screwing finally.” Jen said.

“Me too,” Dawn said, though she was clearly joking.

“This is why not,” Jeffrey said, and he pulled Trent up with him and the two young men indulged in a wet, sloppy kiss. “Ewww!” was the reaction as people cringed and Mayree and Rod turned away, though all of them were smiling.

“O.K,,” Jeffrey said, “if they get to screw right here, so do we. C’mon, Trent, take your clothes off. I’ll help.” He started with Trent’s belt buckle but then gave up because Trent was giggling and too shy to play along.

A few minutes later, as Tami and Rod were making their way down the stairs, Tami reflected on her life. It was either horrible, like at the mill that other day, or wonderful, like now. She looked up at Rod’s adorable black face and, as they stepped outside into the cool early spring air, she stopped him and kissed him, giving him her tongue, in full view of students passing by them in both directions. “Go Tami!” said one girl going into the dorm. Then Tami led her boyfriend into skipping down the concrete path that led to the Student Union. It was sickening, like something out of a tampon commcercial, but for the happy 18-year-old girl in the first real romance of her life it was a perfect expression of what she was feeling. As her bemused boyfriend lagged slightly behind, Naked Tami skipped barefoot and carefree along the path like a little girl.

They stopped when Tami stepped into a puddle. In her shoeless and clothesless life Tami had gotten oblivious to puddles and thought nothing of stomping on them. But this time the result was Rod getting splashed on his pants. They stopped and looked at his formal trousers with concern, then deciding it wasn’t too bad, they started skipping again. In a moment Tami couldn’t help herself again. She stopped and kissed her lover under a streetlight. She was really horny and ground her hips into his hardening crotch. When they parted there was the undeniable smell of female musk and they realized that some of it had gotten onto Rod’s pants.

He laughed as he tried to brush it off, saying, “Now you got my pants smelling like pussy!” Realizing he was merely transferring the musk to his fingers, he inhaled them and then licked them, looking at Tami with a devilish smile. Tami giggled and they continued walking, hand in hand, with Tami thinking, here I am, a horny naked girl leaving wet spots all over.

Of course, they were heading to the annual Chalfont Institute banquet. The invitation said eight o’clock and they decided they should probably get there right on time instead of fashionably late. After all, Tami was supposed to be the “Guest of Honor”. They wended their way along various sidewalks until they came to San Beueno Hall and saw the athletic fields in front of them, like a big muddy moat protecting Castle Chalfont from invaders. They decided to follow an asphalt service road, which was the long way around.

The elegantly dressed young man and the elegantly made up naked young woman finally got to the grand front entrance to Chalfont and started up the steps of the portico. Along the way Tami, remembering they had been walking on asphalt, looked at the bottoms of her feet. Deciding they were a bit too dark, she found a patch of leftover snow and rubbed her feet on it while Rod winced, remembering his own very brief adventure with bare feet on snow. Then they straightened up, like a Lord and Lady, or a Prince and Princess, and entered the Institute in a regal fashion, the overhead chandelier-style light shining on Rod’s carefully shaved black scalp.

For the naked girl there was only one jarring moment in this merry trip. As they followed the printed cardboard arrows to the banquet, going up stairs and along the second floor hallway, she felt a humming sensation coming through the floor. She stopped and stood still, a worried look on her face.

“What’s wrong Babe?” Rod said. He could not feel anything through his dressy shoes and socks but for the barefoot Tami, she could hear the humming through her feet and it seemed to shake her whole body. They were standing over Lab 6. She just knew it. And there was some kind of motor or machinery running down there.

Tami shook off her concern over the future, wanting to get back into her happy mood. She started walking again and pulled Rod along. “Nothing. Let’s go.”

They entered the medium-sized banquet hall and were greeted by a surprised looking maitre d’ who tried very hard to keep his gaze fixed on Tami’s face and not look below. He guided them through the little sea of white tablecloths and up to the dais, about ten seats long with a big easy chair on one end. Near the center of the dais was a lectern with a space next to it and then a little card between two settings that read, “Miss Tami Smithers and Guest”. As the two sat down, Tami enjoyed the feeling of the soft seat cushion under her butt and rubbed herself around on it.

“Have you no shame, Babe?” Rod said teasingly. Realizing she looked like she was rubbing her pussy on the seat, Tami giggled and blushed and said, “Oops . . .A naked person feels a lot of things that a person with clothes doesn’t.” This reminded her briefly of that humming she had felt with her bare feet over Lab 6, but then she returned to the point she was trying to make. “This seat feels good.”

“The seats sure are elegant,” Rod said, looking around. “Everything here is living very large.”

Tami could only agree. She looked at her name card. Finely embossed script. Shiny stiff paper. The walls were covered with ornate, old-style velvet wallpaper, mostly red, and sported a series of portraits of old guys in suits and beards. Doctors from the 1800’s, she thought. She looked around for a portrait of Freud, that old psychology guy. Wasn’t he a doctor? Sigmund wasn’t there, but there were several others who looked like his cousins.

Tami and Rod felt a little foolish. They were the first ones there. Now what? They sat silently for a few moments. Then, drumming his fingers, Rod said, “What do you do here, Babe? They must like you a lot.”

Tami had managed to be vague about the topic and didn’t want to get specific now. She reluctantly decided to lie. “I’m a guinea pig for a project where they tape little wires to my skin and measure what they call galvanic response. That’s electricity that’s in the skin. While I do things like sit around, read, walk, et cetera.” Well, there at least was a grain of truth in that, she told herself. It’s maybe five percent true.

There were a couple of guys in waiter jackets here and there, adjusting the place settings. Tami smiled tolerantly. She knew this behavior by now. What they were doing was totally unnecessary; they just needed an excuse to hang around here so they could sneak looks at the naked girl. Tami looked down. In front the tablecloth on the dais went all the way to the floor. She was mostly hidden from view. True, the crowd would be able to see her breasts, but to be merely bare-breasted was something that Tami would give anything for. She closed her eyes and for a moment thanked God for the covering provided by the dais.

Rod was about to ask something else when another waiter brought in what was obviously Tami’s portrait. A covered flat object on an easel, not a paint-stained scratched-up easel like Tami had noticed while posing in that freezing art class, but finely varnished wood. The waiter put it next to Tami, behind the space between Tami and the lectern, and then left, sneaking a look at Tami from behind as he went out.

Tami looked at the white linen covering with dread. She wished she had X-ray vision or something and could see through it. Her eyes darted around. Could she sneak a peek now? She couldn’t decide. She didn’t want to know what was there. But she wanted to be prepared for the shock when it was unveiled in front of everyone. Please, God . . . Tami just knew that behind the linen was a portrait of her in Lab 6, her legs strapped wide apart, that awful plug in her vagina, sweating, convulsing in orgasm. . .

She was almost about to take a peek when Dr. Harridance’s voice called out from across the room. “Tami!” he barked. Tami flinched, as if she was about to sin and God caught her. “This way, the cocktail hour!”

Walking up to Dr. Harridance, who carefully avoided looking at Tami’s body with Rod next to her, Tami said, “Dr. Harridance, this is my boyfriend, Rod Sykes,” and as soon as she said it terror struck into her heart. With a flash she realized that Dr. Harridance -- or any of the Chalfont people who happened to chat with them tonight -- would probably mention the true nature of the experiments Tami had been involved in. The sexual response. The orgasmMs. The vaginal plug. It got worse and worse in Tami’s mind. Not only would Rod know that she had just lied to him -- how would he react? Would he be jealous? Mad at her? Would he complain to someone? He did have his protective side. . .

The walk down into the cocktail lounge was an agony of shame. The naked girl blushed furiously as she appeared at the top of the stairs with Rod and was met with spontaneous applause. She knew she could not cover herself, so her nervousness was betrayed only by her nervous smile, her increased grip on Rod’s hand, and the flexing of her toes on the soft carpet. The two lovers glanced at each other and, led by Dr. Harridance, descended. Tami quickly took stock of the crowd. There were about forty of them, and almost all of them were old.

They were also very kind, even worshipful. After Tami and Rod were given their non-alcholic drinks, they found themselves doted over by these old doctors, dressed mostly in three-piece suits, and by their grandmotherly wives. There were questions about her studies, about his, comments about their own grandchildren -- it reminded Tami of being at a big family gathering with uncles and aunts who were likely to say, “I remember when you were just a baby!” Both Tami and Rod detected an underlying current of admiration, of Tami for being bravely naked and modest about it and such a boon to the Institute, and of Tami and Rod for being a young interracial couple. Rod squirmed and smiled tolerantly at a couple of well-meaning but tacky comments from this all-white crowd. Such as a kindly, “Young man, do you play basketball?”, even though Rod was barely six feet tall.

It was hard for Tami to keep focused on the conversation at times, so blushingly aware she was of the fact that her total nakedness stood out in the midst of this elegantly dressed, elderly crowd. She knew she was being looked at, especially from behind, and she couldn’t help but picture herself thus, bare shoulders and back, narrowing to a bare waist, then widening (a bit) to her bare little butt, bare legs, and bare feet. She felt like an alien being from a naked race, mingling with the world of the clothed. At least the stares were more tactful than the stares of the students at the college, especially the guys.

She also looked at Rod nervously, dreading when someone would let the cat out of the bag about the experiments. She saw Rod scowl with puzzlement when an old man with an unlit pipe in his mouth told her, “I hear your responsiveness is extraordinary. Good, very good.” That was a close call. She tried not to look at Rod, instead smiling and nodding and sipping some more of her ginger ale. Feeling the need to break up this particular conversation, she finished her soda and politely excused herself and went to the bar, where an elegant man with an Italian accent asked what she wanted.

He quickly added, “Of course, it would have to be non-alcoholic.” Tami looked younger than twenty-one, and she obviously had no proof of age. Where would she be keeping it? She had left her ankle pouch in the dorm (she was intending to go to Rod’s place afterwards) and her naked body was totally unadorned with anything save her nail polish and the toe rings.

As she started sipping her second ginger ale, and turned to go back to Rod, who was listening to an old lady with dyed red hair, she reflected on ridiculous things. Such as the fact that she was forced to go around in public naked, and spread her private parts for the viewing of art students and half the rest of the world, and have devices inserted into her pussy and butt and be driven into unwanted orgasms in front of scientific observers -- yet was considered too young to be served a beer.

Her musing stopped dead when she saw Rod’s eyes open wide and his whole body stiffen, and out of the jumble of words the red haired lady was saying, she could understand only the words that ended the sentence:

“. . . with your girlfriend being induced to have all those orgasms.”

The three of them stood there, the lady with the dyed red hair absently sipping her martini, perhaps a bit sloshed; Rod turning his gaze to Tami with an expression she had never seen before, of surprise and anger; and the naked girl looking up at him in fear.

Tami played back in her mind what the red haired lady had said. The entire sentence came to her: “I hope it hasn’t ruined your love life, dear, this research here at Chalfont, with your girlfriend being induced to have all those orgasms.”

Red turned his attention back to the red haired lady and did not know how to respond. She seemed not to notice the looks being exchanged, she just kept sipping her martini. Rod then said, “Things will be fine. Excuse me please,” and then took Tami by the hand.

He led her around a corner to where no one could see them. “Things are NOT fine,” he said, as his expression changed to more hurt than angry. “What do you do here, Babe?”

Tami had to tell the truth. She did not want to be caught in any more lies, not with Rod. She cleared her throat and forced herself to look him in the eye as she burned with shame and said, “They put . . . things on me that make me come, and then take readings.”

“What??” Rod whispered.

“It’s all scientific, like sex research,” the naked girl said. “These people are strictly objective. It’s serious research,” she said. She meant it. The Chalfont experiments might be deeply shaming, but she never got the sense here that she got with Professor Brignon or with Henry Ross, of people deliberately trying to humiliate her.

Rod looked at Tami for a moment. He seemed to get angry again. It was an uncharacteristic emotion for him, and Tami hated herself for being the cause. “So are these -- ” he turned to make sure no one was watching -- “orgasms as good as the ones I give you?”

“No, no,” Tami said reflexively, not stopping to consider the complicated issue of whether this was a true answer. “It’s -- different. I feel the --” it shamed her to be so specific like this -- “contractions, but it’s not pleasurable. My emotions aren’t involved.” This, she knew, was a blatant lie. Strapped wide and penetrated and vibrated in that lab, somewhere between her sixth and seventh orgasms, she remembered hoping she could get used to them, but with each one came a groundswell of emotion that shook her to her core and made her feel like she was going to heaven with pleasure and then to hellish shame and then back to heaven . . .

Tami endured a few more uneasy moments of receiving Rod’s vaguely stern gaze, and then she gently hugged him, her head on his chest, feeling his buttons and jacket against her nipples and bare tummy. “I love you, Rod. Only you.”

Putting his hands around the middle of her bare back, Rod said, “Babe, why didn’t you tell me before? Why did you lie to me?”

Tami said, “I didn’t want you to get . . . jealous.” Which was one of the reasons, and to that extent was true. Tami closed her eyes and tried to resolve never to lie to Rod again.

They stood there, in a calm embrace, until Rod said, “O.K.,” and slowly they walked back to mingle with the crowd.

Dr. Schnitzler came up to them with a short, wiry man who seemed vaguely familiar, and who was a little younger than the rest of this crowd, maybe in his fifties. Dr. Schnitzler said, “Miss Smithers, this is Jacques Darcel, who painted your portrait. He’s painted many others for our annual banquets.”

Mr. Darcel gracefully kissed Tami’s hand as Dr. Schnitzler had done the other day. “But never with so much pleasure as yours.” He had a mild French accent, maybe Quebecois, maybe a little like some people in Tami’s home state. “I know you never posed just for me but I have sketched you several times. From time to time I have sat in on the art classes you pose for with Professor Brignon.” He pronounced “Brignon” in the French style. “I know your features very well.”

He certainly would. Tami smiled and nodded, cringing at the thought that this man had looked right into her spread pussy lips and into her little pink cave, during those awful spread poses Professor Brignon made her do. And he’d gotten a good view of her butthole, no doubt, too . . . Tami’s mind whirled around again, thinking of all the possible ways she could be portrayed under that white linen cover, all of them deeply shaming. Why couldn’t she have a beer, or maybe three. Sitting up there on the dais and watching her portrait being unveiled would be a lot easier to take if she was drunk off her ass. . .

Some more kindly old people spoke with Tami and Rod, and then there was a general migration into the banquet hall. They were starving, and were glad when they finally got served. The food was excellent. Tami looked up amid the clinking of forks and the low hubbub of conversation. Eating naked at a banquet was strange. She was glad to have the napkin on her lap and enjoyed the feeling of the fabric against her thighs. She again realized: this is a old, old crowd. Fortunately she was sitting between Rod and the portrait and didn’t have to speak to anyone. Rod was next to Dr. Schnitzler, who spoke from time to time about the history of the Institute. Tami overheard him. He was talking about how many of the now retired faculty had come from Europe, something which the two young people had already figured out from the foreign accents.

There was a general commotion behind them and soon a very, very old man was being helped into the room behind the dais. The buzz of conversation died down as everyone watched. When he came into full view of the crowd, helped along by a middle-aged doctor on each arm, there was applause, with the old man acknowledged with a quick nod of his head.

Tami and Rod turned this way and that, looking at this old man and everyone’s reaction. They noticed that everyone on the dais was standing up, as if in deference to the old man, so they did too. Tami saw him approaching her, and felt very embarrassed displaying her full frontal nudity to such an august personage.

The old man, little and crumpled but dressed in a suit, greeted Dr. Schnitzler with a slow, labored hug, then turned his attention to Tami. He reached out to hold her hand and shook it with a weak handshake, saying with what was left of a ruined voice, “Young lady, glad you could come.”

Tami scolded herself for having heard this surely unintended pun, and noticed that the old man glanced only briefly at her lower body and was now looking at her face with twinkling blue eyes. Dr. Schnitzler leaned over to her and said, “Miss Smithers, this is Herr Remmler, director of the Institute for many years.” He leaned closer and said tolerantly, “If he refers to his ‘mentor’, he’s talking about Sigmund Freud, one of his early teachers.”

Tami looked again at this wizened old man, amazed that he actually knew that old psychology guy Freud. She pictured herself a nude princess, receiving visiting dignitaries at her banquet, and said graciously in a manner befitting her station, “Sir . . . I’m honored.”

“No, no, it is I who am honored,” Herr Remmler said. He also greeted Rod affectionately but wordlessly, then was helped along to the big soft chair at the end of the dais.

The dessert was as excellent as the rest of the meal. Tami had to control herself. She wanted to eat and eat and eat, but didn’t like the idea of getting the slightest bit chubby. For a girl whose naked body was always on display, that would be just one more embarrassment. She dreaded what Lorinda would make of it in her bathroom-stall portraits. Tami smiled as she thought of the elegant, dignified portraits on the Chalfont walls, and Lorinda’s “Tami” series. About as far apart on the spectrum as one could imagine. She looked over at Rod, who was picking at his food and seemed subdued, and her smile faded. Despite his assurance, she knew Rod still wasn’t O.K. with the sexual aspect of the experiments.

The speeches from the lectern started with an introduction by Dr. Schnitzler, and the naked girl began to get nervous again. She looked respectfully at the lectern in the middle of the dais but couldn’t help but sneak looks at the covered portrait on the easel. As for what was happening on the lectern, she had expected the speeches to be dull, and lo and behold, they were dull. She looked out on the crowd of old retired doctors and their elderly wives, realizing again that everyone could see her bare breasts but thankful that the rest of her was covered. This was a friendly, insular crowd; it was clear they all had known each other for years and years. She saw Dr. Harridance, in the back, looking a bit out of place. She didn’t really expect to see Mr. McMasters. Where was he now? She thought of the humming she had heard with her feet in the hallway . . .

A mention of “this young lady” caught her ear and she started listening. It was Dr. Schnitzler up there again, and he was speaking in general terms about the experiment. He introduced Dr. Harridance, who had been sitting in the back of the room, and everyone applauded him for having the article published. Tami could tell that Dr. Schnitzler was right when he said that this was a really big deal that had the whole Institute thrilled.

Then Dr. Schnitzler said, “Of course, equal credit is due to our Guest of Honor, Miss Tami Smithers, a religious nudist whose lack of sexual inhibitions made this research possible. Yet she is a fine young lady of good character. Very modest, in fact, and a straight-A student. What a relief!” At this last comment there was scattered chuckling. Tami then remembered Dr. Harridance saying once that he thought he had found a subject for his experiments a few years ago, but she turned out to be a porn actress who wanted to record them for one of her films, and he had found out just in time to avert a public relations disaster. Tami smiled. Yes, the Institute really was lucky to have found her.

Another old doctor, a Dr. Holdshauer, got up. From Dr. Schnitzler’s introduction Tami deduced that he was traditionally the one who introduced the artist and unveiled the portrait of this year’s Guest of Honor. Tami’s legs clenched together under the table and she glanced quickly at Rod, whose attention was on the white linen cover.

“The portrait of our guest of honor was painted, as always, by Mr. Jacques Darcel. Please come up, Jacques,” Dr. Holdshauer said. In a moment Jacques was standing respectfully to the side of the portrait. Tami winced. Please, please, I don’t want this . . . Make the portrait be of me in clothes . . . Ha! Fat chance! she told herself. She felt a heart attack coming on . . .

“And now,” Dr. Holdshauer said, clasping a corner of the linen, “let me present this year’s Guest of Honor, Miss Tami Smithers!”

The linen was pulled away and Tami looked into the crowd with a grimace, dreading what was next to her. But she could not resist. She had to look. She turned to the three-foot-high portrait, and her expression went from grimace to wide-eyed wonder.

In the portrait she was sitting in a chair, legs modestly crossed, looking up from a book titled “Calculus” with an open-faced, good-natured smile. Of course she was naked, and the portrait did not flinch from showing her full length nudity, from bare shoulders to one bare breast (the other was hidden by the book) to a little tuft of pubic hair poking out past one crossed thigh to long legs and bare feet resting on the carpet. She was in front of bookcases, as if in a library.

No wide-open pussy lips. No stretched butthole. No sweating, bug-eyed depiction of orgasm. But even more than relief, the naked girl felt suddenly flattered, honored, as if someone had given her a great gift. Jacques was a stupendous artist. The likeness was dead-on and . . .Tami had never had her portrait done, and the idea that someone had spent so much time and put such care into rendering her features . . . and had done it with such respect! The Tami of the portrait was intelligent, dignified, and beautiful. Really beautiful!

Tami wanted to be that person in the portrait, and in a flash realized that maybe she already was. As these thoughts tumbled through her mind, and as she stared open-mouthed and felt her eyes getting wet, she was startled to hear a loud round of applause. She turned, still open-mouthed, to the crowd, some of whom were on their feet. A quick glance at Rod, and then she slowly stood up, scarcely aware that her pubic hair and frontal features were now on full view, and acknowledged the applause with a bow.

She was still looking at the portrait a few minutes later, as Herr Remmler rose to speak. Refusing a transfer of the microphone to his special chair, he slowly and painfully made his way to the lectern. “I am . . . very glad . . . to be here,” he said in his slow, ruined voice. He was so crumpled and bent over that his face could barely be seen over the lectern. “Every year I am more and more glad to meet with my old friends.”

After a few other remarks, spoken in a deliberate manner, he said, “The thing one notices at this year’s banquet is our Guest of Honor, a young lady. And one immediately notices that she is naked. She says this is the way she wants to always be. Now some might think” -- here he had to catch his breath and clear his throat before continuing -- “some might think that this is in some way wrong. But from what I know of her, and seeing the way she conducts herself, and with her companion, with whom she is obviously very much in love” -- some more breath-catching and throat-clearing -- “I think that she is what one can hope is a new type of human, free of the cathexes and inhibitions that has kept mankind in a state of ignorance and violence. My mentor was very concerned about freeing man from these problems, which can lead to horrible consequences, as he well knew, and as some of you remember.”

After another short bout of coughing, Herr Remmler concluded, “I think if he met our guest here, my mentor would be very glad and would come away with a new hope for the future of man. Thank you very much.” He slowly made his way back to the big chair to loud applause.

Tami felt Rod take hold of her hand and squeeze it. She smiled at him as he leaned over and said, “I love you, Babe.” She thought of an episode of one of her favorite old shows, Twilight Zone, where a quarreling young couple finds themselves on a ghostly cruise ship filled with kindly old couples, who make them realize how much they really do love each other. She looked around through tear-blurred eyes at this kindly old crowd in this ghostly banquet room from the past, from a vanished world, and saw that they were starting to direct their applause at her and Rod again, and then she looked back at the beautiful, flattering portrait. She gave Rod’s hand a squeeze and wiped a tear that was rolling from her eye.