Kari
"You're going where?!" Paige asked, incredulous, as she leaned into a squat, holding a dumbbell in each hand.
"Shhh, not so loud," I said, blushing as I finished a set of curls. "No one is supposed to know about this."
"But.. are you? Going to have to be... you know-"
"I don't think so," I said, cutting her off.
"How was that not the first question you asked when you got the assignment, Kari?" Paige asked.
"I think Ray was just so surprised they said yes that he didn't want to ask any questions and make them reconsider. They've never let a reporter from the outside in there."
Ray was my boss at the KRTV, the news station where I worked as a reporter, and he'd just negotiated an exclusive interview during which I'd be embedded in Brazen Bend, a nearby town that was shrouded in mystery.
"How could Ray put you in that position? What if you're uncomfortable with it when you get there?" Paige pressed.
"Ray only cares about ratings, which are shitty lately, so this is a golden opportunity for the station, and for me. And he did say I could turn around and leave if I was truly uncomfortable," I replied.
We bantered on about other things for a while, but soon had finished our workout and walked out of the gym. "Ok, well be careful," Paige said, looking concerned. "When do you leave?"
"I leave tonight after the Friday 5 o'clock news, and I'll be there for a week." I noticed some discomfort in Paige's eyes at that. It was nice to have a friend that was so worried about me. "It'll be fine," I reassured her again.
"Yeah," she said with a forced smile, "I'm sure it will." She paused and then said, "Have you told Jeff yet?"
I winced. "Nope, I'm going by the house to do that now. You know how he can be a little jealous and overprotective."
"Yeah to say the least," Paige said emphatically. She and I had been friends in our college days when my husband Jeff and I had first started dating and weren't big fans of each other. He always thought I was a bad influence on her. They were more amicable now but still not necessarily friends.
Paige and I said goodbye with promises to catch up later. As I drove home, I considered the conversation I was about to have with Jeff.
We're both 26 years old and have been married for 18 months. I work as a reporter for a news station in a fairly remote desert area in the western US. Jeff is a day trader. In a good year he can make upwards of a quarter million, but with the economy where it is, he's earned less than my meager salary this year. We don't have kids and neither of us want them, at least anytime soon, but finances have still been a struggle. I've been offered more lucrative positions an executive assistant or a paralegal, but turned them all down.
The thing is, I've wanted to be a reporter since I was a little girl. I grew up watching the news even as a little kid, just to see the reporters that I wanted to be just like. As I grew up, it appealed more and more to me to be a hard-hitting journalist that told the stories everyone wanted to hear and fearlessly went after the bad guys. Everyone always said I'd be great at it, and I worked hard at my trade. I wasn't kidding myself, part of the reason I landed a job so quickly out of college was because I was petite and young with big brown eyes, a great smile and big boobs. I'm not at all ashamed of using my looks to my advantage.
However, that was 3 years ago and I'd be lying if I said I hadn't become a little disillusioned that I hadn't moved up the ladder any since. At first, I'd felt fortunate to be hired as on-air talent immediatelty when so many had to cut their teeth in the editing room and in other off camera roles. But 3 years of covering single-A baseball and local festivals and beauty pageants had advanced my career nowhere, I was still telling the same boring stories. The TV station was failing and I was concerned about my job.
All of this context is necessary to explain to you why I'd agree to go to a place like Brazen Bend for a whole week. Brazen Bend is about 30 minutes away, and while it clearly falls within the coverage region of KRTV, we've never told a story from there, nor has any journalist. There are a couple reasons for that.
The first is that this us a very private community. Brazen Bend is situated right on the river, on the inside of a horseshoe shape in the river. At the opening in the horseshoe is the only road in or out of town. A police presence is always at the entrance and they strictly control who is allowed in.
The second reason is that the approximately 450 residents of Brazen Bend are all completely naked, at all times. It is America's only permanently nude jurisdiction.
You might be asking how such a place can exist in 21st century America? The answer is complicated and not entirely known, part of the reason is that it's an old Indian Reservation and is still zoned as such. The Federal and state governments are very reluctant to interfere in Native American tribal business. Now, it's said that only a tiny fragment of Brazen Bend's population is still Native American, but the truth is that it's percieved as kind of a shithole in the middle of the dessert and no one really cares. No one knows the reality of Brazen Bend but the rumor mill paints a picture of a bunch of undesirable hippies living in a cult like existence.
People like a good mystery and they love a good cult story, so the opportunity to go into The Bend had been too good for the station to pass on. Ray had taken a while to convince me to take on the assignment but I knew it would be a good chance to get noticed as a reporter. Brazen Bend's legend was a topic in several surrounding states.
As weird and scary as walking into a town like that might be, it was a far more compelling news story than any I'd told in the last 3 years. I reminded myself of this as I pulled into the driveway to tell Jeff.
Jeff
"Are you out of your mind, Kari? You can't go to Brazen Bend with all those people- they are probably all a bunch of sex-obsessed rapists!" I shouted, aware that I was losing my temper but feeling unable to control it.
She looked at me and sighed, as if this was exactly the reaction she expected. "Typical Jeff," her expression silently said. This made me even angrier, the fact that she knew this would bother me but still wanted to go, but even more so the implication that I was the one holding her career back. I'd arranged for fraternity buddies to hire her a couple different times, even for more money than her shitty reporter salary, but she turned them down. It wasn't my fault she was stuck at a dead end job but I'll be damned if my wife was going to be surrounded by a bunch of weirdos with their cocks out.