Chapter 4

They sat for a while, without talking. John seemed to be daydreaming, while his daughter Sophia, sprawled naked on the living room floor, clicked through some of the pictures they’d taken earlier on her laptop.

A little bit out of the blue, Sophia returned to their previous conversation topic. “Do people really do that? I mean, be nudist?”

John considered. “I guess so. You hear about it, but I guess it’s kind of one of those things people don’t publicize if they do it, because other people disapprove or think it’s weird.”

She nodded. “That makes sense. Did you ever do it?”

“Well, I guess I’ve hung out naked, if that’s what you mean. But, just alone, mostly. Or with Mary, when we were together,” he added, mentioning his divorced wife, Sophia’s mother. “Maybe that doesn’t really count.”

“I figure that counts, in a way,” Sophia countered, reflecting on it. “I mean, not when you’re alone. Everyone does that - they have to shower or change clothes, right? I get naked in my room all the time. That doesn’t count. But ... I mean I guess it’s when you do it while you’re around other people, right? So when you were with mom that would count.”

John nodded.

Sophia went on, “Normally, though, isn’t it like everyone’s naked? Like, when you were with mom doing that she was naked too, right?”

John’s gut tightened, as he wondered where she was going with this. “Well, yes, mostly. But it’s not always like that, maybe.” He paused. That sounded irrelevant. “Actually, I have no idea,” he admitted.

Sophia laughed. “I just mean ... like, now, wouldn’t you be more comfortable if it was equal? Like ... I don’t want you to feel weird from just only me being naked or something.” Her motivation in this was, sincerely, exactly how she phrased it. She certainly didn’t have in mind some special agenda. The aspect that shot immediately to the fore of John’s mind, however, was that she would then be seeing him, just as he was seeing her - with all the awkward self-consciousness that might imply, for him.

Perhaps sensing her dad’s hesitancy, she strengthened her argument, by adding, “Anyway, it’s not really equal, with just one person being naked. Like, it would be more really nudism if it was everyone, is how I see it.”

The thing was, John didn’t really feel he could legitimately resist the suggestion. On the one hand, he didn’t actually feel uncomfortable by the disparity of her being naked while he was clothed. But on the other hand, he immediately understood and was forced to concede her second point about fairness. His dilemma, of course, was that his getting nude was likely to open a can of worms he really had neither anticipated nor was particularly prepared to deal with - a very specific, one-eyed worm, in fact, that had a rather primitive mind of its own.

Finally, looking down into Sophia’s bright, inquisitive eyes, he said, carefully, “Actually, I don’t feel weird, it just being you ... but, regardless ... I think you have a good point about it being equal. I guess,” he sighed, plunging in, “I’ll return to what I said earlier. You’re the director. So, if you would prefer it, then I’m happy to, of course.”

Sophia grinned, pleased both with his honesty and the way he let her be in charge. She rather liked being in charge. But she sensed her dad’s hesitation, too. “Dad, you know,” she began, “you also said about that you could stop it, too, if you were uncomfortable. So, I mean ... would it make you uncomfortable? You shouldn’t do it if that would mean you’re saying we should stop.”

In her mind, she wasn’t clear on why he would feel uncomfortable - her dad seemed like the most laid back, comfortable person imaginable, most of the time. But she wasn’t bad about reading people, especially someone she knew well, like her dad, so she sensed something in his attitude.

“To be completely honest, I admit ... well, let’s just say I really never expected to have to deal with this. Maybe the phrase would be ‘slightly uncomfortable, ‘ but not so uncomfortable that I would push the stop button.”

Sophia grinned, sensing victory. “Cool. “ She considered for a minute. “How about this. Just try it for a while and if you don’t like it you can say and put your clothes back on?”

John laughed at that. “You sound like me,” he observed.

Sophia laughed too. “I guess so. Like when you tried to get me to try riding my bike over instead of you giving me a ride. I was like, man that sounds like a lot of work, and you said, just try it. And now I do it all the time.”

“Right.” He nodded. “Hm. I guess that’s fair, then.” He paused. There was a kind of expectancy in her gaze, and he realized the negotiation was over. She was waiting for him to take off his clothes. Mostly he didn’t mind at all. He was mainly worried about the issue of what questions or issues would come up due to his erection, which he was wise enough to realize was inevitable. More than inevitable - it was already a concrete reality.

But, thinking about it the same way his daughter had earlier, when she’d first stripped off during her first change of clothes, he realized there was no point in delaying it. It wouldn’t change anything and just made it more awkward. So, without further ado, he stood, pulled off his t-shirt and yanked down his sweatpants and briefs together. Setting them aside methodically, trying to avoid seeming rushed, he finally sat back down on the couch. His erection was fully formed and after bouncing out as he’d dropped his bottoms, it was now jutting out from his lap like a curious prairie dog checking the lay of the land.

Sophia watched, silent, staring, and suddenly burst into giggles. She had forgotten about what she had seen earlier. It looked strange. It’s not like she hadn’t seen others. Just earlier she’d seen the one in that picture she’d been looking at, from his folder. That one was bigger, too. But seeing it on her dad was somehow quite unexpected. Her dad wasn’t some anonymous Dick from the internet. Her dad was ... dad.

John was wise enough to know that this was a natural teenage girl type reaction, and not an insult of some kind.

He felt the need to offer some excuse. “It’s not exactly something a man has complete control of,” he explained.

“I know. I had sex ed, you know,” she answered, defensively. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh,” she continued. because she could see his discomfort. “Actually, it looks ... cute.”

“Cute?” John echoed. That wasn’t a word he’d ever had applied to his cock before.

Sophia shrugged. “I don’t know.” She got on her knees and moved over to a spot a few feet away from him, in front of the couch, and tilted her head, making a show of looking at it.

John almost flinched under the focused attention, but he kept calm.

A bit belatedly, Sophia asked, “Um, you don’t mind that I look at it? I mean, it’s cool to actually see a living one. I only ever saw pictures.”

John sighed, and gave a slight, nervous laugh. “I kind of figured that would be the consequence of ... getting naked.”

It was Sophia’s turn to almost flinch. Her eyes snapped up to his face. She realized now why he had felt uncomfortable, earlier. “Oh,” she finally said. “Sorry. I really wasn’t ... I mean, I didn’t think of that. This.” Her eyes dropped down on the last word, to his lap, and back up again quickly.

“It’s OK, Sophia. Really. I’m not mad. How could I be mad? Of course you can look. It’s natural curiosity.”

That was sufficient permission for her to recover from her nervousness. She moved forward on her knees another foot, and leaned in, looking at it even more carefully. She had this urge to want to touch it, to see what it felt like. That was a very strange urge. She reflected that if you’d asked her even two hours ago if she would ever want to touch her dad’s boner, she’d have said, quite confidently, no thanks. But somehow, having it in front of her, “live,” so to speak ... well, the “dickness” of it outweighed the “dadness” of it. All the same, she decided this was not a request she would make - mostly out of a consideration for her father’s evident continuing awkwardness.

Instead, she rather unpredictably turned around, leaning back against the couch in front of him, and, grabbing the remote, turned on the TV. By way of explanation, she offered, “Maybe we can just sit and kind of relax for a while ... like get used to being naked and stuff.” She was perhaps partly reacting to her own intense feelings, which felt a bit overwhelming, but she also figured her dad genuinely needed a bit of a break from the intensity too.

In fact, they spent about half an hour mostly not talking, as Sophia rather distractedly channel surfed. Without her direct attention, and with the passage of time, John was indeed able to relax and soon his erection has subsided, and he let his legs fall to more natural open position, one shin touching his daughter’s shoulder where she slouched in front of him.

It was still remarkably early, he thought, looking up at the clock. Sophia was thinking that too.

She announced she was bored with the TV, and turning it off, added, “Are you feeling more relaxed now, dad?” As she said it, she turned around to look up at him, which gave her a view into his lap, too. “Oh,” she reacted, an eyebrow twitching upward. “I guess so. It went down.”

John laughed. “Yes, it did.”

“It’s like it’s sleeping,” she observed. But even as she did, it twitched and tilted, under the close attention.

Rather than letting himself feel embarrassed again, John made a joke. “Right. You just woke it up.”

Sophia laughed, and had an interesting thought. “It’s like my nipples,” she said. “Like, they go up and down and I can’t even figure out why.”

“That’s probably really accurate,” John agreed.

Sophia felt pleased with herself. She turned to her laptop, still open on the coffee table, but in sleep mode. “Here, I’ll wake this up too,” she added to his joke. She spun her finger on the touchpad and began clicking through the pictures they’d taken again.

“I really want to do more poses,” she said, with a sigh, “but I feel like we kind of did most of the different types. You have all those pics, so can you think of any that we didn’t do.”

John shrugged. “Not specifically,” he answered, “Although I’m sure there are.”

“Maybe we should go in the office and look through them,” Sophia suggested. When John agreed, they got up and went in there. It felt strange, both being naked, but already both of them were getting used to it.

There was a moment of awkwardness, when they got to his desk. There was only one chair. If they’d been clothed, probably he would have sat down and she would have perched on a knee or an arm of the chair, but being naked that felt too awkward. Finally, John told Sophia to sit in the chair and he fetched another chair from the kitchen. By the time he got back, she was already clicking through his folder again.