This story is the fourteenth in a series. The prior installments provide context and background on the individual characters. However, the author hopes that this story may be read with pleasure as a stand-alone piece.
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Jane and Lucinda took the impending presentation to the Professional Women's Roundtable (PWR) very seriously. Soon, it was taking up a large amount of our time. Jane had invited the PWR symposium coordinator to the office in order to get a sense of what was expected of us. The coordinator, Janice, was in her early thirties and worked in marketing. Naturally, she was almost excessively upbeat and it seemed like every sentence she spoke ended with an exclamation mark. Also naturally, Jane and Lucinda insisted that we be nude when we met with Janice.
Janice breezed into our offices in the early afternoon. Jane, Lucinda, and I were already in the conference room. Erin followed Janice in. We stood to greet her.
"Hello! Good afternoon!" Then Janice paused, apparently having made the realization that she was looking at four real live naked people. "My God! You really do work naked! That's WONDERFUL!" Janice clapped her hands to put still more emphasis on "wonderful."
Erin quietly asked Janice if she wanted anything to drink and then turned to go get Janice an iced tea. As Erin stepped out of the room, Janice declared "I was my butt was that round and tight! You all look tremendously fit! I guess you need to if you're going to run around naked all the time! Do you guys really go naked all the time, like outside the office?"
I explained that, of course, we dressed to go out on the street, to go to court, or to meet with textiles. "However, since we use the garage in this building, it isn't unusual for any of us to drive into work or home nude."
"But, I mean, don't you just get EMBARRASSED when people see you with nothing on?"
Jane answered with a terse "no."
Lucinda added, "Actually, we all enjoy it when people see us nude." God love Lucinda.
"Oh. Really? I think I'd just DIE if anyone saw me naked, other than my husband of course!"
Erin came back in with Janice's tea. Erin knew me well and could tell that I was already a bit tired of Janice. As Erin left the room, she turned and said to Janice, "Thank you. I'm glad that you like my bare ass." Janice blushed.
We finally got Janice on track. We learned that we were expected to fill an hour and a quarter, and that we'd be the last presentation of the day, finishing at 4:00 p.m.
"Of course, we've got women who are executives with some of our BIGGEST companies, but a large number of our members are ENTREPRENEURS with relatively new or start-up businesses! We want you to highlight the legal issues that they may not have thought of, precautions to take, pitfalls to avoid, that sort of thing!"
We worked out that Jane would address copyrights, trademarks, and unfair competition. Lucinda would give a brief overview on patents. I'd finish up talking about non-compete agreements.
As we wound up the meeting, I asked Janice what I thought was an important question: "Janice, are you sure that you want us to be nude when we give this presentation? Don't we risk offending some of your attendees?"
"ABSOLUTELY, we want you naked! I think our group is more open-minded than you give them credit for! We want to expose these ladies to non-traditional ways of doing business! I don't really expect any of them to start working naked, but it might get them thinking of other non-traditional ways of doing business that could be very helpful for them!"
Perhaps Janice was a bit smarter than I had given her credit for being. "Ok. I see your point," I responded.
Over the next couple of weeks, we honed our presentation. With Erin's invaluable help, we assembled handouts (with our firm name, phone number, e-mail address, and website address prominently displayed, of course). Meanwhile, Carla tried to take care of our clients.
Finally, the day arrived. All five of us were dressed in business suits. While we would be nude to give the presentation, there was a reception following our presentation and we wanted to look professional for that. Erin and Carla were coming along to watch and, hopefully, to network a bit at the reception. Even if fairly conservative business suits, both Erin and Carla looked very beautiful.