Now When You Say Naked

One night, as Grace Valerio perused Reddit as she often did, she happened upon a topic with a title which drew her immediate attention.

"What's the hottest thing to ever happen to you?" Clicking into the thread, she found it swarming with stories - many of them enough to get her more than a little heated. It took a surprising amount of time before she even considered what her own answer would be. But, she gradually realised, she had one. And so, without really thinking about it, she started typing.

"I had a friend in university (Pakistani, slender, chocolatey skin, wore a hijab, dressed quite modestly as you'd expect) who I only got to know as our bedrooms were right next door to each other. We were both 18 and even though we're from VERY different backgrounds we got on quite well - she had absolutely no idea about me being a lesbian and it became one of those situations where you realise that just too much time has elapsed for you to say anything. Plus at first I had no real understanding of her culture and whether she'd be hostile to me and had to learn through her - as it turned out, she was perfectly cool with it and in fact was in two minds about her whole faith.

After about six months, during which time she'd become almost unrecognisable (drinking, clubbing, kissing boys, though the hijab stayed on - it was pretty important to her, faith or no faith), we were sat on her bed drinking ridiculously cheap wine and talking and I happened to mention the Photography Society I'd been in for a while. I'd gotten a new camera and was doing some practice shots with others members - normal, perfectly innocent shoots out in the woods. My friend (let's call her Farah) was quite intrigued and this led her down a bit of a rabbit hole where she told me about how she was thinking of ditching her hijab and doing Islam "her way" which I thought was pretty cool and obviously a very big deal for her. But she wanted to do something symbolic that would create the sense of turning from one person to another - my joke about her burning her hijab didn't go down too well but it didn't stop her from explaining what she wanted to do and what idea I'd given her. She was super coy about it and danced around the point until she finally said it - she wanted me to photograph her naked.

I nearly leaped across the room to grab my camera, as you can imagine, but she just laughed at me and said no she wanted to do it somewhere special, like the forest I'd been photographing the others. I had maybe a hundred questions about why she wanted to do this, was she sure, was she really sure, no, really, was she REALLY sure? She laughed a lot but essentially said, yes, she really wanted to do it - it'd be her way of casting off her old skin and becoming something new. The most melodramatic thing I'd ever heard but I wasn't about to argue. I also didn't really believe it would happen - we were both fairly drunk - so I just went along but I was putting a lot of effort into not shaking with excitement.

We spent a good hour sat at my laptop together and writing up the plan for this little shoot of hers. I felt so much trepidation when I asked her "now... when you say naked..." and she just looked at me, almost confused, and goes "I mean naked, dude." So we wrote down a list of shots we'd do and, somehow, that was strangely maybe the hottest part of the whole thing. I can't pretend I understand why. All the while this wonderful sense of connection is developing that I'd never really felt before - not exactly standard horniness but just that almost childlike excitement that sexuality can be sometimes. I almost felt guilty for feeling it - after all, did Farah feel the same way? Surely not.

The next day I woke up and was sure she'd either forgotten or, newly sober, changed her mind. She hadn't - we went out for lunch and she confirmed that she wanted to do it tomorrow (it would be a Saturday). So I got the equipment ready, we met at the bus stop (she wore a scarlet jumper, blue jeans, and black trainers to go with her black hijab), went to the outskirts of town, then walked the dirt path into the forest. It was all red and auburn from the fall and Farah loved it, she felt it was exactly what she'd been hoping for, and we spent a while looking for somewhere secluded. Once we found it, a little clearing with rays of light coming through the leaves, I was stood there with camera in hand trying not to betray how sweaty and shaky I was, keeping up the casual banter as she sat on a log to take off her shoes and socks.

Then, barefoot in the dirt, Farah got a bit giggly as the nerves hit her and I realised second thoughts were emerging. I wasn't about to try and make her do this so I asked her, again, if she was sure - she said she wasn't anymore. "It's weird being the only one," she said. That's when I realised what I had to do - I offered to undress as well, and then maybe she'd feel more comfortable. Farah bit her bottom lip and then decided that, yeah, that'd help. So, after again checking there was nobody anywhere near and getting a little nervous about a helicopter passing by somewhere beyond the leaves, I whipped off my unseasonable summer dress and stood there in my underwear watching as Farah turned away from me to unbutton her jeans and pull them down her rich brown legs before stepping out of them and diligently folding them. I remember trying so hard not to stare at her soft peach of a butt hidden behind cute pale blue panties, before she took a deep breath and unwrapped her hijab. All this curly black hair poured out as it came off and, somehow, it felt like I'd just witnessed a huge moment in her life. I guess I had. She turned to me with a grin, I told her she looked beautiful, and she shook her head and pulled off her jumper before quickly losing her panties and matching bra. I guessed I ought to follow suit so I stripped off my underwear and felt nothing but surprise at how casual and normal and unembarrassed I was.

So there we were, both stood naked together, she this vision with pretty perky breasts and a cute shaved pussy and little dimples over her butt and me with none of that, and her hands kept wandering to try and cover herself but it was like she had to keep reminding herself that this was what she wanted. So we went through each pose, one by one - she with hands on hips, facing towards and away from me, sitting on a log (the bark left these deep grooves in her rear that she pulled down her jeans to show me again the next day and which I literally cannot get out of my head) and a few others, before we were interrupted - we heard hikers not far from us, so hurried to get dressed again. Thankfully we weren't caught and then we rushed back to the bus as it was getting cold.

The whole journey back, sat at the back of the bus, we flicked through the photos and Farah made a comment about how next time it'd be her turn to photograph me (it'd never happen). We got home, I uploaded the photos and emailed them to her, and she kissed me on the cheek and kept thanking me for changing her life. I never saw her wear her hijab again (important to note - this was a moment of liberation for her and only her. Wearing a hijab doesn't automatically make someone less liberated or whatever than someone else. It's all down to the individual's choice and that was her choice).

Life being what it is, we fell out of contact eventually and now I think she's doing some high paid job in Europe (good for her!), but it's hard to think of anything hotter than that. I don't still have the photos - I deleted them a while ago after realising that maybe it didn't feel right to hold onto them when they could probably ruin her life if they found a way into the big wide world. Besides, I don't need em - I've got the memories."

Surprised to have written so much in a thread usually inviting responses of a few sentences, Grace re-read her submission twice. She even thought about yanking down her pyjamas and toying with herself to her own writing - but she didn't. She just had one thought in her mind:

"I should give her a call." And then she went back to watching Big Bang Theory.