There was something that struck me as odd from the moment I met him. Yet, it was nothing that I could immediately place, nothing striking or obvious. Nonetheless, I seemed perplexed by that of which he spoke: a perfect place, far from the pressures and conformities which worked in symbiosis within modern everyday society.
He spoke in a sophistication which overtook me and with a manner that intrigued me. As his speech droned on it mattered not that I had ceased to follow his sense; rather, it mattered only that he continue so to let my dream of what he offered take full shape in my mind, and in that convince me completely of the world in which he spoke.
Later I would dote upon this first impression and remember the little round man of such proper manner and such proper speech, and I would again wonder why he struck me as so instantaneously odd, as so slightly a skew from the ordinary. I would rack my brain for every detail of that meeting; I would remember his appearance as he came forth from the crowd: like royalty he seemed to ascend to the platform before us, smiling, waving and clasping hand with those nearest to him.
Remembering his figure I would recall his roundness: not a small man, though he could not have been more than three or four inches past five foot, and yet he had girth for a man far in excess of six. In my mind I would place on him a red cap and a white beard and I would chuckle, as he had a build one would suspect of Saint Nick.
That evening however, he had not worn the costume of Father Christmas; rather, he wore one more like that of a penguin, wearing most formal attire, which included a small bow-tie and a large top hat, which he would remove and tip whenever a jeer would escape the crowd.
It took many a session of remembrance to discover why a man of such sophisticated manner, wit and dress had come across so strikingly odd. It was on such an occasion just after the winter of my stay with him that I finally realized what it was: when one looked upon him it appeared that he had no neck. His, round body, pillowed out immediately after his rather robust chin, in fact, his chin seemed to be resting within his fatty chest. A smile had crept across my face as this thought had come to light.
It was laughably true, not only did he appear to have no neck on his short spherical body, but I had yet to realise that this was the sole reason for any disillusionment I had felt during the speech I had attended all those months before. As the realization of the waste of worry during the months that had followed escaped, my laughter grew until it must have chorused through the halls, echoing no doubt to the quarters of he who was its source.
*****
There is nothing in the world as pure, as innocent and as vulnerable as human nudity. When confronted with another, who is in such a position, one's initial impression is always one of immense power and control and is often followed by violent, oft impure thoughts of the uses such a commodity as the naked human form, in view of their unrestrained power, could have.
However, it is not this situation that makes the nudist so weak and powerless; rather, it is that in the mind of the nudist that this reality exists, regardless of the will or want of whomever realises this inevitability, in their position of nudity the nudists are without means of taking these thoughts from the mind of he who is having them; feeding his mind, thus feeding his power.
This perception leaves the nudist in a paradox of vulnerability, without means of practical escape. Yet, it leaves the other in a position of ultimate power and authority, and in the knowledge of such power, in the position to control the every thought and action of the nudist who may stand, kneel or lay before them.
Imagine my first glimpse of the slave rows at the Castle: near a hundred girls, kneeling heads down, hair draping below them, in silent replica of one another. A line that stretched on for what seemed like an eternity in the greatest of the great halls of the Castle, and each girl seemed more beautifully powerless than the last.
The Round Man in his tuxedo straightened the sides of his blazer and allowed me the silence to intake the entire scene that stretched out before me. The symmetry, the perfection and the exactness was unparalleled to my eyes: a giant window reached for the high ceiling of the hall behind every fifth girl, the rows would gap until began another such window, whereupon another five women would kneel, lined up each as the double of the one in which she followed. The rows stretched five deep toward the five giant windows of the great hall, leaving an estimation of the numbers all but too much work for me. Regardless, the grandeur of the scene would remain with me always throughout my journey at the Castle.
That much nude skin has a powerful smell. A smell, their smell, that is one that since I will never forget, and moreover always remember when in that the greatest of the great halls where that scene first met my virgin eyes. Even the boom and echo of the Round Man as he cracked the air of silence with his voice could not cut through the dense smell of female flesh and nudity.
