Granny Bares It All by Harper Lin

Author:Harper Lin [Lin, Harper]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Lin Books

Nine

The memorial service was held on a hilltop overlooking the camp. A line of trees stood nearby, the crickets already making their whirring evening song.

A small pyre of wood had been set up, its bottom fringed with kindling. To one side stood a table with a buffet meal. Hanging from the edge of the table were several poster boards showing images of Clarissa.

Most of them had been taken at the camp, judging from the large amount of flesh tones I could see from where I was standing. I made a mental note to study those pictures when it came time for the buffet.

Right now, I needed to study the crowd.

And it was an impressive one. At least a hundred people had shown up and stood in a big circle around the pyre. They were of all ages, shapes, and sizes. Many looked somber. A couple cried softly. Others spoke in low tones among themselves. I tried to focus on their faces, imagining them as fully clothed bankers and secretaries and schoolteachers. It was a surreal experience, made more surreal when I recognized a few of them. Over there was the woman who ran the florist shop downtown. Not far away was the woman who gave out parking tickets to the tourists who came to see Cheerville’s Colonial-era sights and inevitably parked in the wrong place. That young man standing nearly opposite me in the circle was the day manager at the supermarket I frequented. To my relief, he showed no sign of recognizing me.

One interesting detail I noticed was that the crowd lacked two things—besides clothing, that is.

The first was that there were virtually no racial minorities. I saw exactly one Hispanic couple and one black man. I suppose it wasn’t so surprising that we were virtually all white, or at least golden thanks to the sun. Cheerville is an unusually white suburb, and I’ve heard that minorities can feel uncomfortable surrounded by a sea of white faces. Being surrounded by a sea of nude white bodies would probably only compound their discomfort.

I also noticed that there were only two teenagers, and they were the only ones wearing clothing. A boy about Martin’s age wore a bathing suit and was staring at a girl aged around fifteen who wore a light wrap around her waist and chest. I saw several younger children, naked as if it were bath time, and even a couple of toddlers who really should have at least been wearing diapers, but the lack of teenagers was noticeable. Many of the adults were of the age where they would have had teenaged children, but they had stayed at home.

I’d read a bit about this on various nudist websites I’d studied. “Clothing-free” nudist camps often made an exception for kids in their teens, recognizing that the stage of life they were going through came with a lot of shyness and awkwardness about their developing bodies. This concession to their feelings showed sensitivity and more than a little practicality. I could just imagine some of the conversations that went on around a nudist family’s dinner table.

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