Chapter 2: The Naked Truth

My parents had trained me from an early age not to see what was in front of me. To look, but never to truly look. To avert my gaze before recognition could take root. To see my own body as something that needed to be hidden—shameful, indecent—and to extend that same blindness to others, whether they were fully or partially exposed.

I learned to pretend that everyone around me was always properly clothed, just as I was expected to be. A bare shoulder, the curve of a waist, any hint of skin that should have been covered—these weren’t meant to be acknowledged. My mind blurred them out, stitching imaginary fabric over reality as if I could edit the world itself.

In other words, I was brainwashed.

It wasn’t just about modesty. It was about control—a refusal to let the world exist as it was, to let bodies—mine or anyone else’s—simply be. We were taught to live in a carefully constructed illusion, one where temptation lurked in every uncovered inch and the only safety was in denial.

I didn’t realize how deep the conditioning went until I left for university—until the day it finally failed me. The moment I saw—truly saw—and the world didn’t collapse around me proved it. That revelation came later.

First, there was the lie—the one my parents and their community had woven so tightly around me that I believed it without question. For years, that belief isolated me. While other kids my age navigated friendships, first crushes, and the awkward, beautiful mess of growing up, I stood apart, unable to relate. I had no real friends—not in elementary school, not in high school—not until I finally escaped.

By the time I reached university, the illusion began to fracture. As my eyes opened, so did the rift between my parents and me—especially my mother, who fought desperately to maintain her grip on my thoughts. She bombarded me with warnings, with prayers, with frantic pleas to guard my morals against the “evilness” of the world beyond her control.

The truth was already seeping in. Once it did, there was no going back.

The entire morning had been a meticulous calculation—getting ready for the interview, mapping out the four bus transfers, padding my schedule for delays, and obsessively checking my phone for any route changes. Every minute was accounted for. Now, the desert sun blazed through the first bus window, turning the vinyl seat beneath me into a griddle. Sweat prickled at the back of my neck, trapped beneath the tight knot of my hair. I adjusted my navy blazer—buttoned to the throat, starched stiff as armor—and wiped my damp palms on my slacks.

In the smudged reflection of the window, I barely recognized myself. Hollow-eyed, jaw clenched. A woman heading to an execution, not a job interview.

This company—this job—stood against everything my mother had carved into me. Every sermon, every hissed warning, every trembling prayer. Evil wears a suit, she’d say. Evil sits in boardrooms and smiles while it ruins souls. Yet, here I was, walking straight into its jaws.

A part of me wanted to crawl back. To call her right now. To hear her voice wrap around me like a shroud: Come home. Let me fix you. It would be so easy. I could slip back into the illusion, let the numbness settle over me again, and let her rewrite the world in safe, familiar strokes. No more questions. No more fear.

The bus lurched forward, and so did I.

The other part of me—the part that had spent nights wide-eyed in a dorm room, realizing how small her cage had been—whispered something worse: What if she was wrong? What if the world wasn’t a minefield of sin, but just a place? What if I wasn’t a sinner for wanting to stand in it, unflinching?

The next stop was mine. I stood before the driver could call it, my fingers white-knuckled around the overhead rail. Forward. Always forward. Even if it burned.

I stepped off the last bus, exactly as planned—just over a block from the glass-and-steel tower that housed NaturEra Consulting. The name alone had seemed harmless enough when I’d applied it on a sleep-deprived whim after three glasses of wine. Back then, bleary-eyed and desperate for any job that wouldn’t make me vomit from boredom, I’d assumed it was just another corporate wellness gig. Yoga breaks. Meditation pods. Maybe a kombucha tap in the breakroom. Now, standing here, the name sent my pulse skittering.

A group of four professionals strode past me, their laughter sharp against the hum of traffic. One woman stood out—tall, polished, her blazer cinched at the waist like a warning. It wasn’t her poise that froze me. It was the others flanking her. Two women and a man, older, all of them—not wearing a stitch.

My breath locked in my throat. The man’s bare shoulders gleamed in the sunlight; one of the women swung a tote bag casually, her hips swaying as if her skin weren’t on blatant display. My muscles tensed, my mother’s voice hissing in my skull: Look away. I looked away, but I couldn’t. Their ease was a slap. They moved like this was normal. Like I was the odd one, buttoned to the chin in my suffocating blazer.

I nearly walked into a light post. Stumbling, I caught myself, my face burning. This was NaturEra’s doing. Their clientele. The job listing had mentioned “holistic corporate integration” and “body-positive frameworks,” but I’d glossed over it, too fixated on the salary to parse the jargon. Now the truth coiled around me: this wasn’t just a company that tolerated nudity—it embraced it, and I was about to walk into its lobby.

A tremor ran through my hands. I could still bolt—delete the interview reminder from my phone, crawl back to my crappy apartment, and apply somewhere safe—somewhere with dress codes and cubicle walls and rules that made sense.

I glanced again at that polished woman in the blazer, walking alongside her bare-skinned colleagues like it was nothing. Like she was nothing like me.

My fingers tightened around my portfolio.

The interview invitation had arrived with an unexpected footnote that made my screen blur: “Our workplace culture embraces textile-free authenticity. Please dress (or not) in whatever makes you comfortable.”

My finger hovered over the delete button. Then it twitched to the trash icon. Then back again. I took three breaths. Then four. Still, the email glared up at me, daring me to pretend I had options. I almost did—until I remembered the hollow clink of my last quarters hitting the counter at the bodega yesterday, and the eviction notice curling under my coffee table like a sleeping viper. My former boss’s dimpled smirk as security shadowed me through Evergreen’s glass doors (“We’re restructuring,” he’d said, like it wasn’t personal like he hadn’t seen me coming in early for three years straight) That smirk was why I’d applied to NaturEra in the first place. Why I’d drunk-wheedled my liberal arts degree into sounding like “transferable skills” at 2 am. Why I now stood sweating through my thrift-store blazer in front of a building that might as well have had ABANDON MORALS, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE carved above the revolving doors.

The glass façade reflected my grimace—a funhouse mirror version of the girl who used to cross the street to avoid bikini ads. Somewhere inside that tower, people were working without clothes. Answering phones. Attending meetings. Maybe even making fucking spreadsheets while their bare thighs stuck to ergonomic chairs.

My stomach lurched. I could still walk away. Spend my last twelve dollars on bus fare to my mother’s place, kneel on her scratchy floral couch, and let her stroke my hair while whispering “I told you the world would break you.”

The revolving door spat out a laughing couple—both naked except for lanyards and hiking boots. The woman tossed an apple core into a bin while the man adjusted his genitals—casually like they were cufflinks. I blinked hard and turned my head, heat crawling up my neck. Was this my life now? I buttoned my blazer to the collar and walked inside.

Stepping into the lobby felt like crossing into another dimension. The blast of cool air carried a faint scent—like sun-warmed skin. Everything was sleek white minimalism: curved benches that looked more like art installations than seating, a living wall of ferns trembling under the AC vent, and at least a dozen people milling about in varying states of undress. My vision automatically fractured, eyes darting from face to face like a pinball machine, desperately avoiding the expanses of exposed flesh in between.

The reception desk might as well have been a mile away. I focused on the click of my heels against polished concrete, counting steps like a prisoner walking the plank. That’s when I saw her.

Nancy. Mid-fifties, silver bob perfectly styled, fingers flying across her keyboard with the efficiency of someone who’d worked this job for years. Completely and unapologetically nude from the collarbones down. No artful drapery. No strategic folder placement. Just ... Nancy. The name on her lanyard might as well have been flashing in neon.

“Gwen McNeil?” Her voice was warm, the kind that usually made people relax. My spine locked tighter.

I nodded, chin jerking like a marionette. My eyeballs burned from the effort of maintaining strict eye contact—somewhere between my mother’s voice hissing about modesty and my starving artist budget screaming that I needed this job. The rules played on a loop in my head: Face. Only the face. If you look down, you’ll scream. If you stare, they’ll know you’re broken.

Nancy’s smile didn’t waver as she tapped her monitor. “They’re ready for you on the third floor.” She gestured toward the elevators where a group of three nude associates were laughing over iced coffees, condensation dripping onto—nope. Face up. Always up.

The elevator doors opened with a chime that sounded suspiciously like judgment. Stepping onto the elevator, I nearly sagged with relief at the sight of two fully clothed individuals—a man in a gray suit and a woman in a conservative blouse and slacks. For a blissful second, I thought maybe, this was just some elaborate misunderstanding. That’s when I realized: they were probably here for the same job. Competitors. Allies. Fellow outsiders, just as desperate as I was.

The woman—young, early twenties at most—exchanged a nervous glance with me as the elevator climbed. She chewed her bottom lip, fingers tapping against her portfolio. When the doors opened on the second floor, she hurried out without a word, leaving me alone for the final ascent.

I took the moment to steady my breathing, pressing my clammy palms against my slacks. You need this. You need this.

The woman at the reception desk had given clear directions: Conference room 303, end of the hall. My heels clicked too loudly against the hardwood, each step echoing like a countdown to my undoing. When I reached the door, I hesitated, hand hovering over the handle. This was it—the point of no return.

Then I stepped inside. Four people sat around the sleek glass table, all of them completely nude. All of them stared at me like I was the one exposed.

My pulse roared in my ears. Every instinct screamed at me to turn around, to bolt, to pretend this had never happened. If my family ever found out—if they so much as suspected I’d be interviewed at a place where clothing was optional—it wouldn’t just be a matter of disowning me. They’d scrub me from memory. A ghost. A cautionary tale whispered at family gatherings. “Remember what happened to Gwen?”