This story is the eighteenth in a series. I felt that I had used the idea of the naked lawyers too long and intended to let Harry, Carla, and Erin fade away. However, a reader recently commented that he/she wanted another story in this series. For that I say "thank you." While this story can, hopefully, be read enjoyably by itself, the earlier installments provide context and character background. My characters and their names are entirely fictitious. Any similarity to any real person is unintended and coincidental.
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I intended to tell the story of how we took Carla's sister Cammie on her first canuding trip. However, as I was discussing my intention to tell more of our exploits, Erin objected.
"Harry, you are too wedded to chronology," she told me. "Tell the story of Melina before everyone gets bored and stops reading your work."
From another corner of the room came a giggle. Then a voice said, "Yes, please, tell the story of Melina."
As president of the NBA (our local Nude Bar Association), Wendy was always looking for new activities for the group. Over the last few years, sand volleyball had become quite popular in our town. A number of businesses had sprung up devoted to providing sand volleyball courts. Most were in highly developed commercial areas, and the courts were often in full view of a major street.
Late the preceding summer, Wendy had found a sand volleyball club on the north side of town that was off by itself in a small valley. The club was below the nearest main road and screened off by an area of brush and honeysuckle. There were no immediately adjacent structures.
It will probably help if I give something of a description of the volleyball club. As I mentioned, it was in a small valley. A short way from one side of the valley, the owner had built eight outdoor sand courts. The courts were enclosed and separated from each other with netting which the owner had hung from cables about fifteen feet off of the ground. The netting kept balls from getting away, but were much, much more forgiving if you ran into it. The netting was also transparent so people could watch the matches.
On the side of the courts away from the hillside, the owner had built a two storey structure that was slightly longer than the area occupied by the courts. The building sat on earth a few feet higher than the level of the courts. On the building's first floor were locker rooms and showers, and volleyball "pro shop" that sold balls, board shorts, sand volleyball bikinis, and the like. Immediately outside, the owner had placed picnic tables and chairs were friends and family of the players, and anyone else, could sit and watch the matches. Below that, just outside the netting were smaller table and benches to accommodate the players. On the second floor of the building, the owner had opened a beer and wine bar and short-order grill (burgers, pizza, etc.). A balcony ran along the outside of the second floor with more tables so folks could watch the volleyball below while they had a drink and a sandwich.
Wendy had several conversations with the club's owner over the winter and was able to convince him that it would be perfectly legal to allow us to use his facility nude. Wendy obtained the owner's agreement that we could use one court on Tuesdays, his slowest night, from 6:00 p.m. until they closed at midnight.
The one condition on our use was that, "Can't serve you and beer or wine because my license says that I can only serve patrons who are 'properly dressed.'" That was no real problem for us.
Wendy had formed a league of twelve two-person teams. Eleven teams were coed. The one all-girl team was Wendy and Carla. We started at 6:30 p.m. and each team was guaranteed one best-of-three games match per night. We were rarely able to play more than that before closing time.
The weather in our area had turned pleasant in late April, so the Nude Lawyers' Sand Volleyball League had started play the first Tuesday night in May. As the owner had told Wendy, the club was not very crowded on Tuesdays and the crowd was primarily young adults who were perfectly happy if there were people using one of the courts to play nude.
We went along merrily until the last Tuesday in May. That night, we had all showed up and stripped down before a few of us noticed a group of what looked like teen-aged girls already playing on the court at the far end from us. We asked some of the other regulars who we'd gotten to know a little and were told that the girls were all on the local public high school volleyball team.
We sensed trouble, but decided to let it go in the hope that this was a one-time event. As we finished the first of our six matches, we noticed that the girls had quite playing and were watching us from the ground-level tables against the building behind our court.
The following week, the girls were again playing on the far court when we arrived. Clothed, Wendy and I went to see the club manager to see if we had a problem. Wendy told the club manager that we'd seen the high school girls here for two of our nights now and asked if that would be a regular thing.
"If it is and its going to cause a problem, we'll leave," Wendy told the manager.
The manager was a generally easy-going guy whom I guessed at about 50. He responded to Wendy, "I thought about that too. We don't want to lose you guys, but we don't want to be raided either. I know Coach Swale, their Coach, so I talked to her. She said that she didn't think it was a problem, but that she'd talk to each of the girls' parents. Late last week, Coach Swale brought me a bunch of letters from the parents stating that they knew that nude volleyball was played here at times, that they agreed that their daughters could play here while nude volleyball was going on, and that they understood that their daughters were likely to see nude people. So, I think we're covered. You guys just have fun."
Our conversation with the manager left us a bit relieved, but I feared that would not be the last of it. We went ahead with our matches. As had become our custom, everyone had shown up in time for the first match and everyone stayed, and stayed nude, until our league's last point of the night was played.
Everything went fine the night we had talked to the manager and the following week. Cammie was in town the third Tuesday in June. Still, there was no way we were going to miss nude volleyball, so we brought her along.
When we got to the volleyball club with Cammie, we noticed that the high school girls were playing on the far court. Rob mentioned that as we stripped down and got ready to play. Suzanne quipped that the girls probably wanted to play with us.
We were all nude and the first two teams were about to go on court when two couples walked up. One couple was a very tall, thin man with longish blond hair. The sleeveless top and shorts on the blonde-haired lady with him suggested that she had once been quite attractive, but had accumulated noticeable bulk in her middle, hips, and thighs. The man in the other couple was about my height with grayish black hair and a build like mine: thick in the shoulders, chest, and thighs. The lady with him was actually the first person whom I'd noticed. She was short and her olive complexion suggested Mediterranean origins as did her long lustrous black hair. The eyes in her lovely face sparkled. All-in-all, she was a real beauty. I guessed both couples to be in their mid-40s.
As they approached, the blond-haired man asked, "You're the nude lawyers, right?"
Wendy acknowledged that we were the nude lawyers. The man continued, "I'm Kent Ruppert. This is my wife Patricia." Gesturing towards the other couple, he said, "That is Stefan and Tia Becker." The Beckers extended their hands and we shook.
Kent continued, "Our daughter Darcy and the Beckers' daughter Melina are high school volleyball players. They've been playing down there," he pointed to the far court, "the last few weeks."
"Here it comes," I thought, "end of nude volleyball."
Kent seemed unsure of how to continue. Kent and his wife looked nervous or unsure. The Beckers seemed more at ease. Stefan and Tia were both slightly smiling.
After a noticeable pause, Patricia Ruppert said, "Our daughters and their teammates have seen you here playing in the, uh, well, the way you play. For the last couple of weeks, Darcy and Melina have been asking us if they can play with you."
Tia Becker spoke for the first time. "They want to play the way you play, with nothing on." She was smiling and spoke with a noticeable accent that I could not place.
Kent Ruppert found his voice again. "Of course, we said 'absolutely not.' But they were very persistent. I spoke with their Coach at the high school. To my great surprise, she encouraged us to let the girls play with you. She thought that it would help their volleyball and what she called their 'person growth.'"
Stefan Becker spoke, with a recognizable German accent. "I talked to the manager here. He said that you had not caused any problems and he gave me your names. I looked all of you up online and you seem very respectable people. We decided that, since the girls are both turning 18 in a little over a week, we wouldn't really be able to stop them. If they are going to take their clothes off, we thought it would be better with you than with boys who will get them drunk and pregnant."
"Anyway," Kent interrupted, "we'd like to ask you if you'll let our two daughters play with you here on Tuesday nights. We've put together written permissions."
