Chapter 18

In the planning stages for Transformations, there had been a log of concern about transferring the the effects of Immersion Therapy and re-birthing, as experienced by Shannon and Kathy at Greg's house, to a larger group of people. There was considerable doubt that the same kinds of effects could be achieved when the subject was one of many naked people.

The concerns were correct, but not in a negative way. In fact, in a development that should not have been surprising, the group had its own very beneficial impact on the individual resident.

On the women's side, in particular, the women talked extensively about everything. The nudity seemed to catalyze communication, and conversation was constant and intense.

Despite the varied problems and past experiences of the residents, accepted norms generally prevailed. That is, the group of residents as a whole was average and typical in most ways, and those generally accepted ideas prevailed. Any resident with experiences, beliefs, or traits outside of the norm soon became aware of their uniqueness. Moreover, that uniqueness usually became a topic of group discussion.

An unexpected benefit of nudity was a noticeably different attitude in conversation for most residents. They tended to be more considerate of others' feelings and less strident about their own ideas and beliefs. Julia discussed this at length with her group of trusted consultants. They postulated that being naked made a person feel more vulnerable themselves. That feeling prevented them from being as critical or as combative as they might normally be.

Mary Hall had already been effected by the group dynamic. She clearly understood that she was considered sexually naive and backward by the others, and it bothered her a great deal. It was a major reason she had been receptive to Barbara's tutoring of her and Floyd together.

The other unique thing about her life that Mary could not deny was her treatment of Lindsey. The others did not make open accusations or criticisms, but just from their talk about their own families, she began to understand just how badly she had erred. In an unprecedented move for her, she began to ask the others what should have been done differently.

More than any other resident, Mary had come in with two strikes against her. The others all knew and loved Lindsey, and knew how she had been hurt be her parents. Largely because of Norma and Barbara, Mary was never excluded from the group, but early on, she was mainly an observer.

Once Mary began to seek advice, everything changed, especially the other residents' attitudes toward her. She was genuinely seeking help, and she became one of them. Once she ramped up her exercise campaign to become one of the most aggressive of all the women, it further enhanced her position as one of the girls.

Immersion therapy, in its unexpectedly revised form was working very well for Mary. She had realized that she needed to change and had set about to make it happen.

Unlike Mary, Dottie Kessler came to the Tee with instant acceptance and sympathy. All of the women, including Mary, went out of their way to help her. For Dottie, the biggest impact came not from sympathy and encouragement, but from just hearing the others talk about their spouses.

Ever since she met Warren, Dottie had viewed him as a social cripple, lacking her 'normal' drive to spend every spare moment socializing. She had always been careful to accommodate his 'reclusive' tendencies because he was otherwise a wonderful man, and she deeply and sincerely loved him. Although she outwardly seemed to accept his different personality, she never really did. Toward the end of their marriage, under whatever strain had knocked her off balance, she had dropped the pretense of acceptance and understanding and let her true feelings show in her ridicule of him, and eventually her betrayal.

No one pointed any of this out to Dottie. Her first disheartening revelation was that none of the other women even shared her 'normal' social drive. All her life, she had fought to avoid solitude of any kind. She had never developed quiet time habits of reading, sewing, playing music, or anything of the sort. If she was awake, she had to be doing something, preferably with someone else.

Little by little it dawned on her that she had been the freak, the one far outside the norm. If she had been a freak compared to all those women, then she must have been the strange one, not Warren.

Dottie thought of all those things in the past tense, because that obsessive drive, the old Dottie, was gone. Until coming to the Tee, she had fearfully avoided all social situations. She had become a devotee of TV, something she had precious little time for during her marriage. She had started reading, as well. The biggest problem with both TV and books was the constant reminders of what she had done and what she had lost because of it. But they filled the hours, which had seemed endless and totally unfulfilling.

'Breakdown' was a word all too freely used when describing psychological phenomena, but it was rarely more a propos than when applied to Dottie's experience. The trauma of her infidelity and divorce completely destroyed her previous personality. The new Dottie had not yet started to emerge. She had arrived at the Tee as an empty shell of a person, without motivation and almost without personality.

It took a few weeks for her new understanding of her previous self to dawn on Dottie, but when it did, it was almost as destructive as her divorce had been. For several days, she reverted back to a zombie state worse than when she first arrived. She would not talk about what was troubling her, even to Julia. Andi tried to get her to sleep with them again, but she did not want that, either.

It all came to a head at 2:00am on a Friday night. Dottie had not slept a wink, nor had she for several nights. She came into Andi's room almost in a panic and shook her daughter awake.

"Andi, Andi," she said before the girl was even fully awake, "you can't be angry with your father! He didn't do anything wrong! I was terrible to him for twenty-five years. He did everything he could - more than any man should have to. He... he... Oh, God! I was so blind! So stupid! I thought..." and she spewed out a stream of self-accusation and regret for ten minutes without stopping.

Even after she woke up, Andi didn't know what to do. Dottie was chattering on, her voice so loud that two or three other women showed up at the open door, wondering what was happening. The same wild look was back in her eyes. Andi swore to herself when she remembered that Andy was gone that night.

Finally, she just grabbed her mother and hugged her as tightly as she could, shutting off her stream of words by practically smothering her. She rocked Dottie back and forth until the struggling stopped and the sobbing started. At least the near-catatonia of the last few days had ended.

A long time after her initial outburst, and after the other women had gone back to their rooms, Dottie pulled herself out of Andi's arms and began talking quietly and tearfully.

"Honey, your father and I can never live together again. You've got to stop even thinking about it."

"Mom, you know I talk to him almost every day. He has changed a lot. You never know, he might want you back."

"No, Honey, you don't understand. I couldn't live with him. It would be too cruel to him. I... I... for all those years, I thought he was strange because he didn't want to do everything I did. The poor man tried so hard to keep me happy - I know that now. I just figured out that I was the strange one! How could he put up with me all those years?"

"He loved you, Mom. That's how. He loved you very much, and I think he still does. He's very sorry for how he treated you after the, uh, miscarriage. I think he was so worn out he just snapped."

"But that's not the worst thing I did to him," Dottie wailed. "I thought he was strange all those years, and at the end, I made fun of him. But I was the strange one! I didn't even know!" She again broke into full-fledged sobs.

Andi's hopes for the reunification of her family had taken a serious blow - or had they? For there to be any chance, Dottie had to get better, and this could be a very big step in that recovery. And one other major change had occurred.

"But, Mom, you're not like that any more. You've changed. You don't want to go out at all, now. The old problem doesn't exist. And now, you know the truth."

"Oh, Sweetie, you don't know how much I want to still hope, but I can't let myself. Warren and I were a mismatch from the beginning. We tried to prove that 'love conquers all', but it just doesn't... it just doesn't.

Andi pulled Dottie down into the bed and held her close until she at long last found sleep. Dottie spent most of the next day in bed, and when she finally joined the group for supper, she seemed almost serene.

The unlikely friendship between Mary and Dottie became even stronger after Dottie's epiphany. She joined Mary in her aggressive exercise regimen, regularly working herself to exhaustion. The 'Mutt and Jeff' image took on new meaning as the two would stagger from the treadmills to the showers together, then into the pool. One would wait patiently and chat while the other got her massage, then they would switch.

When at all possible, they tried to get either Mark or Andy for their massages. Mary stayed on her stomach when Andy did her, but was seemed eager for Mark to work every muscle. She did not have the same feeling for Mark as Dottie's open adoration of Andy, but she had no trouble understanding her daughter's love for him.

As Mark worked on her, Mary could not help thinking about him touching Lindsey. Then, her thoughts would turn to Floyd and their new intimacy, and her nipples would pop out. The first couple of times, Dottie teased Mary about the nipples, but she could not generate any shame. There was no way she could know the kinds of thoughts running through Mary's mind, and Mary was not yet up to sharing at that level.

In a perverse way that both shamed and excited her, Mary wanted her nipples distended so Mark could see them. She wanted him to notice the odor of arousal that must be there, judging from the tingling and the damp feeling in her crotch. Somewhere in her mind, it was important for Mark to know that Lindsey's sexuality did not just come from Floyd's genes, or maybe skip a generation. Her daughter's man needed to know that Lindsey was born from a real woman: a woman with strong desires and responses.

A few times, Mary was stunned to find herself rubbing her thighs together. At other times, she would find her legs unconsciously spreading apart as he worked on them. These little things did not escape Dottie, and one time she chided "I hope you let your daughter have him first!"

"Oh, I'm sure they're well beyond that," Mary replied with no hostility or disapproval in her voice.

Dottie definitely noticed her unaccustomed equanimity and asked "Are you really OK with that?"

"Dottie, I'm not really OK with anything since Lindsey moved out. She should be living at home. I should not be here naked. She should not be singing worldly songs in worldly places. She should not be sleeping with Mark. There are a lot of wrong things going on, but I can't stop them. I... I'm finding out that some of them are my fault."

"I don't even have control of myself. When Mark is touching me, I have this horrible feeling that I want him to climb on top of me and... and... ," Mary's words died out and she covered her reddened face.

Dottie put her arm around her friend and comforted her. "Well, I know exactly what you mean, so don't feel so bad. Did I ever tell you about my first few nights here?..."

Every time she left Dottie for her own room, Mary seemed to question why she had told Dottie so much. She shared things she would never think of telling anyone: until she came to the Tee, that is. These were the times when she started to realize how much she was changing.

Mary could not exercise all day long; there were only so many religious programs she could handle in a day; even talking with Dottie and the others had its limits. She had used a computer some at her job, and Mark had patiently helped her with a word processing program. With the welter of emotions she was now living with, she found that her old interest in writing verse was renewed.

Putting her feelings in words was therapeutic, and the words flowed from her as they never had before. Contrary to things she had done before, she found herself putting very private thoughts and feelings into her poems. At first, she felt guilty, somehow thinking it was wrong to do. But she had begun to question every guilty feeling lately, and she could find no reason for any guilt over her poems. Over a period of a few weeks, she wrote dozens of poems, most of just a couple of dozens lines, at most.

One day, Mark saw her at the computer as he walked by, and he thought he saw a tear running down her cheek. He knew she had been at the computer for some time. The idea of trying to comfort her did not appeal to him, but she was a resident, and more important to him because of Lindsey. Opening the door to the little room with the computer, he called her name, and her head jerked around in response. She stuttered out a greeting, and he walked over to her.

"Anything wrong?" he asked.

"Oh, just the usual," Mary answered. Then, she reached her arm around Mark and pulled him to herself, her arm around his hips as he stood and she sat. This really put him in a quandary. None of the policies on correct behavior fit this encounter. Just reacting in his normal caring way, he put his hand on her bare shoulder and squeezed gently. That unleashed a flood of tears.

As Mary cried, Mark looked at the screen and saw that she had written a poem, the first line starting 'I really didn't know'. The rest told of her remorse at how she had hurt someone. The subject was unnamed, but there was no question it was Lindsey.

"Come on, Mary, let's have a soak," Mark said, pulling her to her feet before she could object. He reached over to quickly save the poem and close the word processor.

Mary tried not to look at Mark's crotch when he stripped off his shorts, but that had never been possible for her. When they were sitting side by side, Mark took her hand and said, "I saw what you wrote, Mary. It was very touching. I assume that's why you're crying."

She squeezed his hand almost desperately, and answered "It seems like every day I find out more about how badly I messed things up. But, Mark, believe me! I didn't mean to drive her away! I thought I was doing the right things, but I ended up doing just what my mother did to me. I really do love her, you know. It's... it's just that she'll probably never believe that."

"Mary, It was not polite of me to look at your poem, but I did see it. Will you let me print it out?"

"Wh... what will you do with it? Will you show it to her?"

"Yes. I'll tell her I found you writing it and begged for a copy," he explained. "Will you let me have it?"

Inexplicably, she gave a humorless little laugh. "I used to think it was important to keep my thoughts and feelings to myself. Now, I don't seem to care. Maybe it comes from having all this," and she swept her had over her front, "out where everybody can see it. You know, not much is secret in this place. Sure, you can have a copy."

They sat quietly for a few minutes, still holding hands. "Mark, you really are a sweet guy," she said to break the silence. "I know you still have a lot of bad feelings about me. But you never show them. I want you to know I appreciate it. How can you do it?"

How could he answer that one? He tried, telling her "The whole idea of this place is to help people change. Julia picked all of us because she thought we could do that. Part of it is thinking about how people CAN be instead of how they are.

"So, what are you thinking about when you see all these fat bodies walking around naked? Or when you are rubbing through all this fat on the massage table."

Mark had never before allowed himself any levity when dealing with Mary, but he took a chance. "I think about all the beautiful, naked women strutting around when they reach their goals." He turned as he said it and gave her a grin that he hoped was a leer.

In an uncharacteristically coquettish move, she blushed as she gave him a playful slap with her free hand. "So, you put up with this ugliness because you think I will look, uh, interesting someday?"

"'Sexy' is the word you meant, isn't it?"

"Mark! I'm your mother-in-law! Er, I mean, uh..."

"So what man minds having a sexy mother-in-law?" he teased, ignoring her slip-up.

"I... I can't imagine ever being sexy," she said softly.

"Why not? Because you think it would be wrong?" he prodded.

"Yes, but I just don't think I'm like that," she replied.

"Well, wouldn't you like to be for Floyd?" he asked, taking a chance.

Mary was quiet for a while, than she told him "Yes, I would. That day we were all in the pool, I saw how he looked at all the other women, even Lindsey. I wondered if he would ever look at me like that. I'm almost afraid to wish that he would. It seems impossible."

"Well, the way you are exercising, anything is possible." He should have stopped there, but their relationship went beyond just resident/staff. "Maybe someday when we sit here like this, I will get a reaction like that," and he pointed right at her nipples.

She glanced at her 'headlights', then snapped her head round to look at him. She was blushing, but there was something else there that shook him up. There was a little of the way Dottie looked at Andy. Mark was not at all sure he welcomed that from Mary, but it looked like he had made it happen.

Despite being startled, Mark had to admit that with each encounter, there was less and less reason to dislike Mary. From a staff standpoint, he had to be happy with the way the Tee was succeeding with her. From a personal standpoint, he worried about the impact of the changes on Lindsey.

Later that night, Lindsey and Mark were relaxing in the basement room, in their sleepwear. Despite all the time they spent naked, she usually slept in panties and tee, and he in boxers. Mark showed her the poem her mother had written, and watched her face as she read it through three times. At first he saw anger, then surprise, then sadness and wetness in her eyes.

"Do... do you think she means all of this?" Lindsey asked.

"I can't read her mind any more than you can, Honey, but I think so. She was in there by herself a long time, and she had tears in her eyes when I found her."

"I don't know what to think, Mark," she told him. "You had it right before. I don't want to stop being angry at her. I can never forget all the bad stuff." She saw Mark about to speak and cut him off. "Yeah, I know. Even if I can't forget, I should forgive. Do you have any idea how hard that is?"

"No, I don't know personally," he answered, "but I can see how hard it is for you." With that, he pulled her into a hug and they just cuddled for a while.

"You know," she said after a bit, "that really is a beautiful poem: sad, but beautiful. That last part, where she is asking for forgiveness - that just tears me up inside. I never knew she could write like that."

Mark told Lindsey about the long talk in the hot tub. "She said she started when she got bored in classes in junior high. She even admitted that she would do it in church." That made Lindsey giggle.

"I'm not sure if I want to do this, Mark, but what if I had Margo and Hank make this into a song?"

"Geez! It's just like one of your songs. The only difference is this one is from the other side," he remarked.

"Huh?"

"In the first one," he explained, "you were not the one who had done anything wrong. In this one you would be."

"Oh, I didn't mean I would sing it. I don't know if it's really that good," she demurred.

"Look, Lindsey. Suppose you want to let your mother know that you really want things better between you two," he said. "Can you imagine a better way?"

"But I'm not there, yet!"

"Please don't be angry, but I think you are, Baby. It wouldn't tear you up as much if you weren't." After saying that, he looked at her a little fearfully, but rather than anger, she just settled into him with her head down.

She needed closeness right then, but just the hug was not enough. She moved around and sat on his lap, her legs straddling his lap. She wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed him firmly, then rested her head on his shoulder. He caressed her back and they just cuddled for a bit. His hand dropped to rub her pantied-covered bottom. But there was no panty, just bare bottom. He had not even seen her shed them.

She gave a couple of short giggles and said "We're not nearly close enough, yet." Having said that, she reached down and opened the fly of his boxers. That was enough to bring him to life before she even touched him. She held him against her lips and pushed to get him inside of her. "I'm not real wet, yet," she mouthed, already breathing quickly. It took a couple of minutes, but when she was all the way down, she let out a long breath. "Now we can really communicate."