Chapter 1: Defied

Your child is created from your genes of course, together with the genes of the partner you chose, and you’ve brought them up with your culture and values. So you’re hoping for the best, but at the same time you know that if things go bad, it’s basically down to you.

In my daughter’s case, I’d chosen her wild mother, who is literally wild enough to have decided, four months ago, to join in a rewilding project a thousand miles away in Romania. We’d raised Della teaching her how to think, more than what to think, and unsurprisingly she’s inherited some of the mother’s temperament. So it was down to me that now, with adolescence doing its thing, confrontation and argument were her exploratory oxygen, as ideas ran free.

“Clothes are men’s way of oppressing women,” she was scowling at me, over breakfast one Saturday morning.

“Everybody wears clothes,” I pointed out with a smile.

“The point is covering girls’ tits and vaginas. So that men have control. It’s the same as burqas, basically. Same principle.”

“Men have to cover our bits too,” I played along.

“You talk about ‘bits’ instead of just calling it what it is: a cock. The whole thing, bodies, just gets turned into a dirty secret.”

“Yes but isn’t it the same for men and women?”

“The idea is that a girl has to stay covered up until she marries a man and THEN he gets to see her without her clothes. Or a boyfriend at least anyway. And so she’s his, to keep wrapped up and stop anyone else even seeing all of her.”

“Well I have to stay covered up, apart from with your mother.”

“That’s just your choice. Nobody’s going to call you a tart or grab you if you go round in the nude, are they?”

“But nobody...”

“And heels! I mean. What is the point of heels? What IS the point? They mean you’re supposedly shorter than you ought to be, and you can’t do anything like lift or push or carry or do anything useful, you’re just an ornament, for men. That can’t run away!”

“But women choose to wear heels, or not.”

“No we don’t, not really. They hurt! Who’d want to wear them for any real reason whatsoever? It’s just men making them mean status or like something expected. They’re disabling, that is the whole point about them! They literally make you disabled, as though you’ve got two broken ankles. It’s so it’s just men who do things, and women don’t, apart from get chosen.

“And tits. And nails, the same. Or dresses. The whole male idea of ‘a woman’ is someone in a dress which gets caught in everything, and blows around, or rides up and has to be literally stuck to your ass with carpet tape, and is completely impractical, and with ‘big tits’ that don’t actually do anything they just get in the way but guys drool over them. Like they’re symbols for having their babies. I mean they don’t make any more milk than small tits do they?”

“No I suppose not,” I had to admit. “But you can wear what you like - we chose a school that doesn’t have a uniform. And if you stay lean like you then your breasts are smaller, and you can dress to emphasise them or not, so you have some control.”

“Still,” she searched hastily for an objection, “men can go round with nothing on top, with bare nipples. If I did that I’d get guys grabbing them or god knows what ... taking photos and posting them, like ‘oh my god actual breasts’, cos it’s if they can see a girl’s tits it gives them something over them, like rights or power.”

“It’s just a convention,” I soothed, “that you just have to live with ... like there are lots of conventions and it doesn’t mean they’re all oppressive.”

“And if a guy flashes his dick it’s an assault and actually a crime, but if a girl flashes her tits it’s a come-on.”

“Women go topless in some resorts and it’s fine. And who says guys would grab them? They’d probably just look, admiring, and wondering what you were doing, in a film or something.”

“Huh.” She ate in merciful silence for a couple of minutes. “So if I went out topless you think I’d be fine?”

“You are NOT going out topless!”

“See? But you can’t stop me anyway.”

I glared at her challenging face. Was this whole conversation a setup? Her mother being away seemed to have triggered a spurt of independence.

“Of course I can stop you,” I tried not to sound hopeful. If she really decided to go topless of course, she could just take her top and bra off anywhere. And her tits would get plenty of attention, being not ‘big’ but not small either.

“You couldn’t even stop me if you were there. In fact you couldn’t stop me right here in the house. Or going nude. What could you do?”

It was definitely a setup. It was true I couldn’t dress her by force, or keep her dressed. Playing the allowance card would be weak and a bit cheap, as she’d immediately point out. She’d found a pretty good way to have a daughter victory, in fact, if she was really as bold and reckless as she was making out.

What would her mother do? ... Well, if I knew Claire, and I do, she’d debate the point honestly. Parents have to set an example for our offspring don’t we, even when it’s a bit awkward: “I couldn’t stop you by force, as well you know. But I wouldn’t like it: that should be enough, now you’re not a child any more. And some other people would react in a way you wouldn’t like either.”

“Yes but here in the house there aren’t any other people are there?” she grinned at me. “And you wouldn’t like to look, even a teeny little bit?”

She knows she’s a very attractive, developed girl now. About five foot seven, with a downright arresting face and an athletic build that, in the abstract, I’d have to say is very attractive as well. I suppose she does get a lot of looks. But of course I don’t react to her sexually.

“No I certainly do not want to look at your body, or your tits or vagina,” I fired back. “Just wear clothes like your friends do, being normal. It’s to keep you warm as well: we don’t want to be heating the house more than we need do we? Making CO2 unnecessarily.”

“It’s summer Dad, we’re not heating the house at all.”

“You’re still more the right temperature in clothes.”

“Not always. Not when I’m sunbathing, or even when the sun’s been on the back windows all afternoon and the living room’s about a million degrees. And my bedroom’s the same and the kitchen.”

I sighed. “Well I’d like you to stay decent, please.”

“Decent? So my actual body is indecent, is it?”

“Nudity gets called ‘indecent’, that’s all.”

“That was my whole point Dad.”

“Alright,” I had to admire how she’d worked her argument, “yes there’s nothing wrong with your body, or bodies. People generally are a bit repressed about them I suppose, and more about girls’ bodies than boys’.”

“So you’re repressed as well?”

“Yes.”

I waited for her rejoinder, but there wasn’t one, in words at least. She just looked at me, with a satisfied smile and a glint in her greeny-grey eyes. They’re fairly wide-set, with big pupils and long lashes. She’s already gone past the stage of using too much makeup, so with her strong eyebrows, lashes, cute nose and all the rest of it, she actually didn’t need to say any more. She has presence, and a face that can convey attitude fluently.

I smiled at her, liking her and admiring her values too, and she smiled back, running fingers through her long, thick brown hair, pulling strands across her face so she was looking through them; with her smile that said she’s learning how to influence people that way.

So that was the context she’d set up when, a couple of days later, she brought a friend home from school. As kids do of course.

“This is Olivia, Dad,” she stopped at the kitchen door with her, on their way up.

“Hello Olivia,” I smiled.

“Hello,” she smiled back cheerfully.

They disappeared onward and I reviewed the image they’d left in my head: Olivia perhaps five feet one; younger, slighter, in brightly coloured leggings and a crop top. The leggings were pink, purple and blue, patterned and fading one colour into another, and wrapped revealingly round a lean but notably girl-shaped pelvis and thighs. The top was just blue, but floppy, small, and distinctly high-risk, above a bare and very small, lean waist.

Her skin was tanned, or pale brown, and her slender neck was on show with her hair done up into two blobs, or bobs or buns or whatever they call them; one either side near the top of her head. Big, sparkling brown eyes. Good shoulders finishing off the shape.

Della’s arm had been round her. Della in her usual tight, low rise flares, and a rather similar top. Her abdomen was equally part of the look, and equally taut, lean and eye-catching.

I tried to stop thinking about them and get on with some work, while they did ‘whatever’ in her room - who knew. In effect it’s the whole top floor of this three-storey house, and off limits to me these days of course: she cleans it herself, changes her own sheets, does her own washing, and generally makes sure it’s her space. She has a good-sized TV in there and speakers, so the days of a family watching TV together are mostly over. I’m not actually banned, but she makes it clear I’m not expected to drop in either. Which I accept. There was just, at this moment, the sensation that they’d been looking forward to the privacy.

They came down an hour or so later, with matching happy grins.

“Can Liv stay over Dad?”

“Sure,” I looked at them standing very close together. “Just curry and rice for dinner, I can easily do a bit more. Your parents know?” I checked with the little hotpants Olivia.

“Yes,” she smiled. “They’ve met Delz, they’re cool.”

“Are you going to sort out the spare room?” I asked Della, feeling I had to ask even though I was already suspecting the answer. The top floor has a second bedroom, in theory, though it is very small and normally just has Della’s less favoured clothes in it.

“Oh we can squash in,” she grinned naughtily into my eyes. “She could just do with some fresh undies and top...” She left a pregnant pause.

A pair of Della’s panties would be too big, clearly, as I failed to resist the invitation to check out her young friend. Olivia’s hips were not narrow, and in fact they were deliciously curved, but they were still a size or two down on my daughter’s. Not that Della is especially broad in the hip - her proportions are athletic - she is just generally a couple of sizes up the scale.