Noyes gave a bitter little grin. “I know you don’t want to see me, but unfortunately the way things have worked out there is no getting away from it. I, uh . . . -- ” he briefly looked down and tapped at some dust with his elegant shoe -- “I do want to give you credit for toughing it out all year. I admire you, in a way. But it doesn’t change my opinion that you are getting jollies out of displaying yourself, especially sexually, which means that all these sexually oriented exhibitions --” he waved his hand dismissively in the air -- “though others might consider them, uh, appropriate for their own reasons or motivations, they don’t cut any ice with me. I want to ask you, once again, and be honest --” he looked Tami right in the eye now -- “are you really a religious nudist? Do you really believe that modesty is against your religion?”
Tami had little trouble telling the lie one more time. Only one day left, she wasn’t going to blow the whole thing now. “Yes, I am.”
Noyes looked at her for a silent moment, fixing her with his steady gaze. Tami resolved to meet his stare, not to turn away. At least it was good that, unlike some others, Noyes never ogled her nipples and bare pussy. “Your, uh, nakedness has been a great trial to many who have been with the college for a long time and who care a lot about it. Some want to expel you because of your ‘religion’. I think that would be for the wrong reason. The RIGHT reason is because you’ve been lying to us. And every time you lie to us, every day you stay naked, the dishonesty gets worse and worse.”
Tami didn’t like listening to this. For the first time she felt some kind of respect for this overbearing, headstrong man. He wasn’t a creep, he just cared about the college and the effect of having a girl walking around naked all the time. Of course, now that she thought about it, she was headstrong too. With Mr. Noyes it had been Stubborn versus Stubborn, a more honorable contest than with the Dean and Henry Ross and Wanda, which had been Stubborn versus Slimy, or Sadistic, or just Creepy.
Noyes went to open the door and three other men came in, all dressed in business suits. One she recognized from the scholarship committee. They stationed themselves all around her, and the naked girl felt very vulnerable standing in the center of their attention, fighting the urge to cover herself and run.
“This is Mr. Comstock from your scholarship committee, I’m sure you remember him,” Mr. Noyes said. “And this here is Mr. Griffin and Mr. Jonas, from our foundation committee.
“We’ve come to monitor you. I still don’t believe you, Miss Smithers.” Noyes stood up straight and tall and huge in his three-piece suit, looking powerful and armed with clothing in front of the helpless, naked girl. Mr. Comstock, the reptilian smaller man, stood to one side, devouring her with his eyes.
Tami was intensely conscious of Noyes’s gaze but at least he was looking at her face. Comstock was another matter. She tried not to look at him but his beady little eyes were gleaming with lust. He had a sort of half-smile which partly revealed what looked like sharp little teeth. One more time, she felt the urge to close her legs and cross her arms over her breasts but knew she dare not.
In her mind Tami was exasperated and pissed off. Trial after trial, this man Mr. Noyes and his friends put me through trial after trial. She thought back to the confrontation with Mr. Noyes last winter, when he forced to her stand outside naked in the bitter cold as he scolded her. With a flickering glance upward at him, the toes of her foot twisting nervously into the cold tile floor, Tami said, “I -- I don’t know what you want from me. I went to my friend’s party at Christmas. I went to midnight mass.”
“Yes, you did,” Noyes said. “But this is not supposed to be an obstacle course. If clothing and modesty are against your religion, going to that party and going to that mass are just all a matter of everyday life for you. So is this seminar. And the art classes. And the research at the Chalfont Institute.” Tami cringed inwardly upon hearing this cataloguing of the ways she had been forced to intimately expose herself. Noyes exhaled. “In fact we’ve been giving you the benefit of the doubt.”
Tami remembered something. “After Midnight Mass . . .Did your friend call the Dean to spring me from jail?”
“Yes, we did. “ Noyes glanced over to Comstock and then hooked his thumbs into his vest pockets as he turned back to Tami. “Ordinarily, being arrested for moral turpitude would get you expelled from the college. But when we found out the only charge they were going to bring was for indecent exposure, well, because your tiny little home state has declared that nudity is a religion, we obviously couldn’t use that as an expellable offense. So we pointed out the law to them and talked them into releasing you.” He wrinkled his chin. “Once again, the college acts to protect your right to remain naked. And once again, if you ask me, you play us for fools.”
Tami looked down at her bare feet, sharing the same floor with the men’s elegant polished shoes, and shook her head slowly at the craziness of the year she had been through. The college had been forcing her to stay naked, yet Noyes was twisting it around to make it look like they were doing her a favor.
Noyes cleared his throat and said, “Miss Smithers, I’m still determined to, uh, expose your whole charade. You are about to serve as an exhibit for Dr. Isadore’s physiology seminar. I’ve spoken with him and what he has planned has no sexual aspects to it, but it is, once again, something which a person who does not believe in modesty would not have any problem with. But not you. I think this time you’ll fold. What he has planned will break you.”
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