This story is a work of fiction. Some real places and institutions are mentioned, but they are used fictitiously. Insofar as the author knows, no real person affiliated with any of those places or institutions has done anything akin to what is described in this story. Any similarities between any character in this story and any real person are coincidental and unintended. I encourage comments on this story, both favorable and unfavorable. Thank you for reading.
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I met April Davis about a year after I had graduated from law school and started working for a large firm. April worked for a tech company that had made a vague contract to supply an online platform to a doctors' group. Although April had received her Master's in Computer Science only a couple of years earlier, she led the team trying to create the platform. A lawsuit resulted because the tech company and the doctors had very different expectations about what was to be supplied and when. My firm represented the tech company.
The real issue in the case was the meaning of the vague contract and the primary witnesses on both sides were the people who had negotiated it. However, April was deposed. I was assigned to prepare her for her deposition. We worked together for about ten hours over two days.
I guess you'd call April a computer geek, but she was (and is) a damned beautiful geek. She was about five feet six or seven inches tall, with dark brown hair and a face a bit like the actress Sandra Bullock only more beautiful. Even facing the prospect of being grilled by hostile lawyers, April projected a poise and confidence that was, itself, very attractive. She could be very funny, and had a talent for explaining very complicated, technical things in simple terms that even a techno-peasant like me understood.
April and I hit it off. I'm not sure quite what she saw in a former college tight end who had nothing better to do than go to law school, but I wasn't arguing. Once she had survived her deposition, I asked her out. I was surprised, and a little scared, when she said yes. Dating a client was a no-no, but I rationalized that by telling myself that the client was her employer and April was a software developer, not a corporate decisionmaker. What I feared was that this beautiful, bright young woman would quickly decide I was a dud.
It was spring and I picked April up at her condo. She opened her door wearing a lightweight dress that was perfectly decent, but which made clear that April's athletic body was at least as beautiful as her face. Thankfully, April tolerated my initial anxiety. By the time we were halfway through dinner, she had put me almost at ease and we discovered several things in common. April had also been a college athlete, playing tennis at a large state university in the same conference I had played in. We were both fitness nuts of a sort, loved sports, were fascinated by history, read mystery novels, and had similar views on politics and the world. April was almost too good to be true, and, I feared, much too good for me.
My fears notwithstanding, April and I were married about 18 months later. By mutual agreement, our daughter Gwendolyn was born a year after that. We both followed the script. I went with some other lawyers when they left the large law firm to start their own firm and quickly became a partner. We did quite well. April's original employer went bankrupt, but she found another job and became a self-employed consultant a few years later. She did quite well. Our lives revolved around work and taking our daughter to swim and tennis practice. Once Gwen got to high school, April and I saw a lot of swim meets and tennis matches.
April and I were both in our middle forties when Gwen went off to college in Boston. I don't think either of us had realized how much our lives were built around Gwen's activities until she was gone. We suddenly had a lot of time to fill. I think we both thought we had done well. We loved our daughter and were very proud of her accomplishments. But we had been, to use a clichΓ©, checking off boxes. We both thought that Gwen leaving the nest should be an opportunity for us to have new experiences and excitement. We were a little stumped about how to do that.
April and I were friends with a German couple, Iens and Ute Harz. Iens was a chemist who worked for a large German chemical company. Around the time Gwen started high school, Iens had been promoted to the position of head chemist for the company's US subsidiary, which was based in our city. Iens' company had lawyers in New York who had handled the immigration issues. However, Ute was a doctor. She connected with a group of doctors in her specialty here and wanted to practice with them. Having her credentials accepted and obtaining permission for her to practice medicine in our state was horrendously complex.
One of the best lawyers in the state at dealing with our state medical board was my partner Glenda Porter. Ute found her way to Glenda, which was how I met Ute and Iens. By sheer coincidence, they bought a house in the same development April and I lived in. We began seeing them at the quarterly parties given by our HOA and became friends to the point that we had regularly had dinner at their home or ours. Iens had developed an interest in American football, a passion of mine and an interest of April's, so we often watched football games together. We knew Iens and Ute well enough to know that they spent a month back in Europe each summer.
The college football season started about two weeks after we had taken Gwen to Boston for freshman orientation. Ute and Iens had just returned from Europe, so we invited them over for a cookout and to watch my old team open its season against Michigan State.
After my guys won the game in overtime, Ute pulled an iPad from her purse and asked if we'd like to see pictures from their trip. April and I hadn't been to Europe in several years, so our "yes" was more than just politeness. We looked over Ute's shoulder as she scrolled through several pictures taken in Southwestern Germany, where they were from.
The first dozen or so of Ute's pictures were standard vacation stuff. Then, she scrolled to a picture which, figuratively, threw us for a loop. Iens and Ute were standing on a beach with another couple who looked a bit younger. It was obviously a warm, sunny day. The two couples were facing the camera, smiling. What jumped out at me, and from April's expression at her, was the fact that all four people in the picture were stark naked.
I initially thought this was a private picture that had accidentally gotten mixed in with the ones Ute meant to show us. However, Ute explained, "this is us on an FKK beach in Croatia with my brother Peter and his wife Ilse." Ute showed us several more pictures which made it clear this was not some isolated beach which they had found. There were a lot of people on the beach. As far as I could tell, none of them were wearing anything. I didn't know what to say and had no idea what "FKK" meant. Finally, April asked, "Was this something you just got a wild hair to do?"
Iens understood the colloquialism. "Oh no," he responded, "every summer we meet Peter and Ilse some place where we do not have to wear clothes."
Ute must have seen the skeptical, if not shocked, expressions on our faces. "It is wonderful," she said, "to feel the sun and breeze all over your body. It is much nicer to swim with nothing on, and people are much nicer to each other when no one is wearing clothes." She paused before adding, "and it is a little sexy, seeing everyone exposed and knowing that they see you."
Ute and Iens left not long after they showed us their pictures. As they were leaving, Ute said to both of us, "I hope we did not offend you with the pictures from our holiday. FKK is a large part of our lives. We thought it was time that we let you know that." April and I assured Ute and Iens we were not at all offended.
We did not talk about the Harz's vacation pictures after they left, although they were on my mind and, I'm sure, on April's. Ute's words extolling the virtues of being nude in a public place with other people played in my mind. I waited for April to bring the subject up. When she hadn't mentioned it by the following Monday, I decided that she just wanted to forget about it.
It stays warm in the lower Midwest through most of September, and we often kept using our backyard pool into early October. It was hot the Friday night after Ute and Iens's visit. We had cleaned up from dinner when April surprised me. "You remember what Ute said last Saturday about swimming naked?" she asked. Not knowing where April was heading, I just nodded. She smiled and said, "Want to find out if she's right?"