I'm always sorry to get into a discussion of anyone's morals. But sometimes it just breaks my heart, especially when I see things which shouldn't have been controversial since the culture wars of the first half of the 21st century.
And yet...and yet and alas! The old nature-phobe's expression "the shoe is on the other foot" can surely apply to those of us who go perpetually unshod and uncovered. I must make a confession...a confession of love. I love Alice Madison. I was loath to even recognize that there was a category of being called "love" before I met Alice. Of course I recognized that there was a category called "desire." We nudes have desire no less than anyone else, and furthermore our righteousness is enforced by perception. That's why the brothers call anyone who is aroused a "horse"...since that's exactly what it looks like. In the case of a sister its more subtle, but only a fool would fail to pick up the signs.
But I digress from my subject, Alice Madison. What cruel fate put us into the kind of proximity which causes people to notice one another? Like so many nudes I was determined not to give into desire. That's one of the ideological contentions among our people, although I hasten to say that the strictly asexual party is a vanishingly small minority. Yet my expectation was that, when the time was ripe, I would find a sister who would satisfy my inclinations. That is what one does with desire is it not? One satisfies it. Its like thirst, you simply drink a cup of water and that's the end of the matter. But with love its different. Love is essentially insatiable...which embarrassment can be minimized when the lovers are conventional.
But not so with Alice Madison. I must drop the bombshell at this point. Alice was a skin-concealer!
Now that I have disgraced myself with not only our adversaries but more painfully with my sisters and brethren, I'll try to defend myself as best I can. Love may be a crime but it can never be a premeditated crime. One is always set up like a pigeon stool. In my case I was set up by Mr. Leonard Venn. Venn is one of those people who are called "liberals." Of course he's a skin-concealer as well, but that's beside the point. The point is that there is a certain kind of person who insists on being a mediator between progressives and reactionaries. Generally this kind of person is called a "liberal."
Take yourself back forty or fifty years to the now seemingly absurd cultural conflicts over sexual orientation. In those days a "liberal" was someone who insisted on throwing parties called "mixers" where both the liberal's gay and, what at the time was called "straight" friends were both well represented. Never mind that the gays would have vastly preferred to attend an all-gay orgy, or that the dimorphic couples, called "straight" in the lingo of the day, would have infinitely preferred what was called a "swinger" party. Instead everybody entered into a tacit agreement to sacrifice their libido on the altar of inclusiveness. This resulted in an evening of polite and highly edifying chit-chat during which nobody got laid.
Of course all that has changed, but the mentality of the so-called liberal hasn't. A case in point is Mr. Leonard Venn, the well-known terraforming and exobiology magnate, scarcely less well known for his parties in Venn City, the industrial complex off of Puget Sound. Venn is what would have been called a century ago a "New York liberal"...back in the days when there was still a city called New York. One can only wonder what Andy Warhol would have thought of Venn's n-dimensional "pop" monoliths, priceless and delicate works of art forged by robotized factories deep in the gravity nodes of the Lagrange points. Yet undoubtedly the conversation of Warhol's and Venn's crowd would have been mutually intelligible. Both were premised on a studious attention to esthetic details which ignored the obvious.
Disastrously he found me alone in a corner nursing my so-called "drink" of synthe-haul. "There's someone I would like you to meet...Mr...." The tall bespectacled host paused for a diplomatic moment.
"Caledon...Nathanial Caledon. Just call me Nate"
"Nate, this is Alice Madison. She works as an editorialist for Mind-Implant publishers. I understand you're in the same line of work."
"Hardly. I'm a reflexologist."
"Well, ultimately it's the same industry isn't it?"
All three of us burst into an uncomfortable but diplomatic laughter. What Venn had said was utter nonsense and completely unfunny. None the less it was necessary to laugh just to break the ice. Among other conveniences it facilitated the removal of our host to another part of the room where he could concentrate on further "mixing and matching."
For an eternity I sipped on the syntho-haul and hoped this Alice creature would simply go away. For all his condescension about our professional lives, Leonard Venn had failed to mention the obvious. Ms. Madison was smartly dressed in a sequined party gown which fell in diaphanous drapes down to the middle of her thighs. After a few inches' intermission of bare skin around her knees her covering was resumed around her calves by leather from some unfortunate animal which terminated in ridiculous stiletto heals. In addition to this there was shoulder length auburn hair which seemed to be her own, as well as a decorative broach on one shoulder and a corsage on the other. Needless to say I didn't sport any decorations whatsoever, except for that rather complicated endowment which flaps between the legs of a male.
Thus our liberal host had managed to turn a blind eye to the fact that I eschewed clothing, and no doubt thought that he was doing me a great service introducing me to the upcoming assistant editor or whatever. After all, nudes are a minority and should be grateful for acceptance. I looked nervously around the room, and by casual induction reckoned that nudes were somewhat less than a fifth of the invitees. That was in close agreement with the latest demographic sample of the North American population. When asked "Can you wear clothes?" roughly 18.2% responded negatively. A generation ago the question would have been worded "Do you prefer to go naked?" which shows how radically the category "nude" has been refined according to contemporary standards. Probably one could garner a bare majority (pun intended) if that question was asked the old-fashioned way today. But that would be a sell out, a betrayal of the fact that "nude" is not something one does, it is something one is. Ultimately I have faith that science will demonstrate that the rejection of clothing is genetically based, and a trait shared by a far greater segment of humanity than has hitherto been acknowledged.
I was starting to feel a surge of anger. Was Leonard Venn such a calculating liberal that he had adjusted his invite list to the latest demographic findings? Was it to be wondered at that he didn't remember my name if I was just a statistic to register in the cause of political correctness. I looked across the room at an attractive sister. Her name was Ophelia Katz and I frequently ran into her at cell and sector meetings of the CNP. Why hadn't I struck up a conversation with her? She was certainly attractive, her breasts elongated in that pleasant and serviceable way characteristic of women who have never used, or have long eschewed, artificial support. Indeed, why hadn't I struck up a conversation with her...instead of being a sitting duck for people who had less excuse for feathers than ducks did? Perhaps the devious machinations of Mr. Venn and his ilk weren't entirely to blame. Perhaps nudes, as they became more prominent and threatening to the mainstream, were themselves succumbing to nervous self-hatred. Looking over the room, I could see that the nudes were mostly isolated, either peering with feigned curiosity at Venn's collection of monoliths, or trying to avoid the appearance of bunching up by mixing dutifully with the skin-concealers.
"You're either farther out into space than Venn's factories or there's something else in what your holding than syntho-haul."
I was glad that Alice brought me out of my funk. "Sorry. I'm being impolite."
"You don't like me because I go textile? It's political?"
"No, of course not." I lied.
"Really?" This one was sharp. Evidently draping rotting weaves and animal skins on your body didn't ensure a low IQ.
"Well...to be candid. Venn sort of irritates me. Don't you think its kind of patronizing the way he just throws people together at these mixers? I mean...it must be just as embarrassing to you as to me."
So paused just long enough for me to notice how wide and bright her eyes were. There's something about a woman's face which can betray innocence. Except in the darkest chapters of human history women have always been allowed to keep their faces nude. I tried to think about Alice as she was from the neck up. After a while she confessed. "If you mean by embarrassed...that I think talking with a man who doesn't have any clothes is....I don't know....what they used to call 'obscene'? Well, even I'm not quite that conservative. How could I be? Nudes are all over the place today...you'd have to wear blinkers not to notice them. But if you mean we've been set up. Yeah, Leonard is kind of manipulative. He knows that the whole nude against textile thing is the upcoming red button issue in this country...so perhaps he's trying to set off some fireworks in the interests of notoriety...as if he doesn't have enough of that already."
"You mean he wants us to get into a fight?"
She laughed, it was a clean laugh...in fact, if a laugh could be called naked, that was just what it was. "No silly!"
