Naked Tao (3 page)

I thought it would be easier to look at Cindy instead of Ginny, but when I turned my attention back to Cindy, she was looking at me like I was food and she was ravenously hungry. She was still cute as a button in a Betty Boop sort of way, with bright blue eyes, a little upturned nose, and girlish features that belied her real age. 

“God, don’t you look yummy,” said Cindy. “I bet you’ll look even better without the clothes. I can’t wait to get you out of them and finally see that big tool of yours.” 

Did she really think I was going to undress for her?  I figured it was time to nip this one in the bud. 

“Do you mind Cindy,” I said. “We’re having a private conversation here?” 

Cindy’s expression shifted from her best cheerleader smile to an unpleasant scowl in an instant. She cut her eyes to Eric, but he gave her a shrug in return. 

Her eyes narrowed for the briefest moment before she caught herself and rolled them upward along with both hands, palms facing the sky. 

“How disappointing…you’re still a square…such a waste,” she said with more than a hint of contempt. 

Cindy laid a hand on Ginny’s arm and said with an exaggerated shake of her head, “Good luck with that girlfriend.” 

Ginny’s eyes flared, “I’m not your girlfriend.” 

Cindy ignored her and was already off flirting with the nearest cute guy. Ginny looked like she wanted to pull her hair. 

Eric shook his head at Cindy and silently mouthed the word “chicks”. 

He turned his attention back to me. Well…his attention was sort of on me. His eyes kept darting between me and Ginny. “I’m surprised to see you here, Grant. But since you are, let’s get you out of those clothes.” 

Eric wanted me to take my clothes off too? That was not going to happen under any circumstances. 

I squared off with him and demanded, “What the hell is going on with you? I came here because I need to talk to you. A lot of crazy shit has gone down today.” 

He stuck his arms in the air and smirked, “Oh, we are so busted. You better sit down, Grant. This is going to take a few minutes.” 

He thought I wanted to talk about his sex party, so I added, “Other than this party.” 

“Grant, I’m sure that it is not as dire as you think,” said Eric. “I love you man, but you’ve always been wound a little tight. Let’s all take a deep breath and get ourselves some drinks.”

“You cannot liberate yourself, until you free your neighbor.” - Padma

We settled into comfortable Adirondack chairs arranged around a fire pit in the backyard. Both Eric and Ginny were still completely naked. It was a huge distraction and I was having a hard time focusing on the conversation. I wished they would cover themselves, but they were oblivious to my discomfort, and I had to settle for a beer instead.

Kinsey insists on buying local and it doesn’t get more local than Fall City Beer. The company was established in 1905 by a group of entrepreneurs who banded together to fight a monopoly that had a strangle hold on the beer market in Louisville. Eric loves David and Goliath stories. It has become a tradition for him to repeat, “Go little guy”, whenever he hands someone a Fall City Beer, and this night was no exception. 

Kinsey poured Ginny a glass of Sauvignon Blanc from Smith-Berry Winery in New Castle, Kentucky. Ginny immediately turned the wine glass up and emptied it. 

Eric raised an eyebrow and quipped, “I didn’t know we were doing shots.” 

Ginny ignored his joke and said, “So, give us all the juicy details. Come on Eric…spill it.” 

I did not like the mischievous gleam in Ginny’s eye and was maybe a bit harsh when I asked, “What kind of crazy shit are you guys into?” 

Ginny’s back visibly stiffened. She squared her shoulders and even her bare breasts seemed to stiffen in indignation. Eric grabbed the bottle of wine and leaned over to refill Ginny’s glass, spilling the last few drops. He avoided both my question and my eyes, choosing instead to look at the spilled wine on Ginny’s bare thighs.

Kinsey chewed on her lower lip as Eric sat back stiffly in his chair. They exchanged a glance. Finally, Eric nodded slightly at Kinsey. 

Kinsey shifted her gaze to me. She took a deep breath and the corners of her mouth turned slightly upward just before she spoke. “Grant, we are swingers,” said Kinsey. 

It’s possible my mouth flew open in shock and surprise. First, Eric doesn’t invite me to his party and now this.  We have been best friends since grade school. I thought I knew every single thing about him. I felt like he had betrayed me and I was pissed. Instead of saying something offensive I might regret, I snapped my mouth shut and crossed my arms over my chest. 

As much as I tried, I couldn’t hold it in. Stabbing an accusatory finger at Eric, I said a little too loudly, “How could you keep a secret like this from me?” 

Eric sunk deeper into his chair looking miserable like his day had taken a terrible turn for worse. Kinsey came to his rescue. 

“Grant, take it easy on Eric,” she pleaded. “You know he loves you. Our lifestyle is not something we have revealed to many people. It tends to upset them.” 

“Some assholes actually think they have the right to control our sex lives,” grumbled Eric. 

“I’m not pissed you’re swingers,” I said. “I’m pissed that you kept it from me.” 

Eric straightened and looked like he was about to say something he might regret. Ginny jumped in and said, “Why don’t you tell Grant how you guys got involved in the lifestyle?” 

Kinsey shot Ginny a grateful look and said, “It didn’t happen overnight, Grant. Do you have a few minutes? This is quite a story.” 

“I really want to hear all about this,” said Ginny. “I love hearing how people connect with their inner freak. We all have our story.” 

Kinsey took a deep breath and said, “Where should I begin?” 

Looking less pained, Eric said, “Start from the beginning, Babe.” 

Kinsey blew him a kiss. “Let’s see…the beginning,” said Kinsey. “Eric and I were so young when we got married. Neither of us had ever been with anyone else and we had a lot of pent up curiosity and lust. For the first three years of our marriage we had incredible honeymoon sex.” 

She got a wistful look in her eyes and added, “We usually did it several times a day those first three years.” 

Ginny sighed and visibly relaxed. “I want that,” she murmured. 

Funny, I was just thinking the same thing. 

Kinsey leaned over and gave Ginny a warm hug. “You will have that girlfriend,” she said. “Let me see…where was I?” 

Eric’s eyes twinkled. “You were telling them how much you lusted for my body and had to have me all the time.” 

“Did I ever,” replied Kinsey. “You are still so hot babe. I’m not sure when things started to change. Only that they did change.” 

Eric chimed in. “Well, we were working our asses off to build the business,” he said. “Long hours can really kill your mojo. You know you’re in trouble when you start lusting for sleep, instead of lovemaking.” 

“Something else seemed to be happening as well”, said Kinsey. “We became more like roommates instead of lovers, with our family being the main focus.” 

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Isn’t family the goal?” 

Kinsey thought about it for a moment before answering, “It’s hard to explain. When you live long enough as a family unit, you start feeling more like brother and sister, than lovers. I don’t know why it works that way, but lots of our friends tell us it happened to them as well.” 

“That’s when the incest block kicks in”, added Eric. “Even though you love your wife, you stop thinking of her in a sexual way. Kissing her is like kissing your sister.” 

Kinsey picked the story up again. “A healthy sex life is critical to a successful marriage,” she said. “Otherwise the marriage is doomed. We loved each other too much to let that happen. So, like a lot of married couples, we started looking for ways to spice things up.” 

Eric smiled. “Kinsey wore out the UPS guy with daily deliveries of relationship books from Amazon.com,” he said. 

“Yea, I really poured myself into it”, said Kinsey. “It was an interesting research project full of role playing, sex toys, and every imaginable sex position. You might say we honed up on our bedroom skills. My favorite was date night. We took turns planning a romantic evening. Some of them were fantasies come true.” 

Eric added, “I began reading Kinsey a bedtime story every night. No matter how tired we were, I would read to her from a collection of erotic stories. Some of them were sizzling hot.” 

“It opened our minds to some of the kinkiness out there,” said Kinsey.  “We started wondering if people really did those things.” 

“And that led us to share our deepest darkest fantasies,” said Eric. “Man was that ever intense. I couldn’t believe the things we admitted to each other.” 

“Our sex lives improved dramatically and that was about as far as we got…until Miami,” said Kinsey. 

All of this talk about what I considered to be very private matters was making me even more uncomfortable than all of the naked people. I looked at Ginny. She was hanging on their every word. They had her rapt attention. “So, what happened in Miami,” I asked. 

They looked at each other for a long moment. Finally, Eric shrugged. “You’re doing a great job, baby,” said Eric. “You tell it.” 

Kinsey took a deep breath and began. “We had gotten buried in a work project and our sex life had started slipping again,” she said. “After the project was finished, our client offered us his North Beach condo for a much needed vacation.” 

“We were exhausted,” added Eric. “The first few days in Miami were spent sleeping and soaking up the sun…mostly sleeping. I don’t think we left our quiet little corner of the beach once. But, when we did, everything changed.” 

Kinsey picked the story up again. “It was a beautiful day,” she said. “Not a cloud in the sky. We decided to go for a walk along the beach. I was engrossed in a pair of stingrays swimming twenty yards from the shore, when Eric tugged on my arm. When I turned in his direction, he was looking around the beach.” 

“There were naked people everywhere and she hadn’t even noticed,” said Eric. 

Kinsey shrugged. “It was the off season and the beach had been empty for days,” she said. “The wildlife was the only distraction we had. So, I was shocked to see the beach packed. I still didn’t notice they were nude, until Eric pointed it out to me.” 

“It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen,” said Eric. “I just stood there and stared. The beach was full of tanned naked bodies. We were surrounded. There was even a game of naked volleyball going on. When I turned back to Kinsey, her top was off and the bottom of her bikini was at her ankles. She told me she wanted to play some naked volleyball.” 

Kinsey flashed a good natured smile and said, “It seemed like the right thing to do. It felt natural and normal, as if wearing clothes was weird.” 

Eric shook his head. "I wasn’t sure if I could do it and told Kinsey I thought she was crazy,” he said. “I even tried to get her to put her clothes back on. She wasn’t having it.” 

“My man got suddenly shy,” said Kinsey with a good natured giggle. 

Eric was looking pretty damn sheepish. “It took me a little while longer to get comfortable,” he said. 

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I could imagine Eric’s pain and was feeling it now. The thought of getting naked in public would give me the heebie-jeebies too, even out of town. I’ve done some pretty wild things in my life, but public nudity isn’t one of them. The very thought of being naked outdoors in front of other people makes me sick to my stomach. I glanced at Ginny. She was swallowing hard and nervously rubbing her knees. I wasn’t sure why she seemed nervous, since she was sitting there totally naked too. 

Kinsey went over and sat in Eric’s lap. “Oh honey, it wasn’t too bad,” she said. “It couldn’t have been more than an hour or so.” 

He shrugged and said, “That’s being generous.” 

“Awe, you did good,” said Kinsey. “Once we got those trunks off, you never wanted to put them on again. You were like a little boy who wants to run naked out the front door.” 

Eric’s cell rang. He ignored it. “I started to relax once I realized no one was paying any attention to us,” said Eric. 

“Babe, everyone was watching you”, said Kinsey. “You are drop dead gorgeous. They were just discreet about it.  You know what I mean. Things like not applauding when you finally took your trunks off.” 

Eric gave Kinsey a kiss. Smiling he said, “She’s my greatest fan. It was so liberating to finally take them off. I felt free. In fact, it was kind of hard to put them back on at the end of the day.” 

Kinsey sighed. “We loved it so much we went back every day,” she said. “Somewhere around our third day on the clothing optional beach we realized we were nudists.” 

“Naked on a public beach…where is this place?” asked Ginny.

“Sorry,” said Kinsey. “We were staying at Trump Towers, which is just north of Haulover Park.  A group of local nudist activists who call themselves, South Florida Free Beaches, managed to convince Miami-Dade County to legalize clothing optional in the northern section of Haulover Park.” 

“Surely there was a lot of political fallout from that,” said Ginny. 

“About what you would expect from the moral majority,” said Kinsey. “But the cash strapped park system made so much money from parking fees they weathered the storm.” 

Ginny was hanging on every word. She seemed particularly interested in Kinsey’s experience and directed her question to her old friend. 

“So, how did you end up swinging?” asked Ginny. 

“Well, there is no sexual activity permitted on the beach,” said Kinsey. “That helped us to relax and just enjoy the pleasures of public nudity. Everyone was friendly and we met a lot of people. In fact, we met one couple who invited us to hit a club with them.” 

Eric shifted in his seat. “Humm…the club,” said Eric. “The couple was friendly enough, but I was a little suspicious. When I pressed them for details, they admitted the name of the club is Trapeze. I still didn’t make the connection, so they just came out and told us it was a swing club.” 

“Did you go?” asked Ginny. 

“Not at first,” said Kinsey. “We talked about it for two days, before I finally admitted to Eric that one of my fantasies is to watch and be watched. So we went.” 

I was still stunned and asked, “Watch and be watched…you mean having sex?” 

Kinsey nodded.

It was unimaginable and scared the hell out of me, but I also felt something else…something unexpected and asked, “How could you do something like that?” 

We were interrupted by Eric’s ringtone. He cursed and answered it this time. 

“This better be important,” said Eric. 

He listened quietly, as the blood drained from his face. Nodding his head in the direction of the house, he walked away without explanation. Kinsey excused herself and followed him. For the first time, we were left alone together. 

Without a diversion, or anyone else to distract us, the tension bubbled to the surface. Judging by her pinched brow, I knew something was bothering her and genuinely wanted to make her feel better, but couldn’t get past the naked body so close to me and what I’d seen earlier in the pool.  I disliked what she had become and ended up asking a little too coldly, “What are you doing here, Ginny?”