Chapter 12: Snowy Saturday

For Saturday, there was no early schedule, like the previous day, so I was allowed to wander out of my room on my own recognizance, around 8:30. I kind of wished there'd been excuse for Lissa to come in and rouse me as she had the day before, but such was not my luck.

Delightfully, and completely contrary to the mild weather of the previous two days, it was snowing outside. That was the upper midwest, behaving uppermidwesternly. Very cozy feeling, inside mysister's modest home.

I emerged in my kimono, naked underneath as previous mornings, and, like the first morning, with an insistent, throbbing erection. I decided, as a matter of a sort of ascetic self-teasing, to sit down and join the girls for breakfast, rather than hiding in the bathroom to try to subdue it. A little more psychological edging, of course -- the girls were at their teasing best. Both were still in their sleeping attire -- Lissa in her long nightshirt, and Denise in her new baby doll. Neither had anything underneath, I was certain. Denise was sipping coffee and eating toast, while Lissa was having some orange juice and something that looked like a microwaveable breakfast sandwich.

Good mornings were grunted. I got some coffee and joined them at the table. Enjoyed gazing at my sister in profile, as she perused at the newspaper, her left nipple amazingly, starkly outlined under the thin, green, silky material of her top. I could make out the tiny bumps of the flesh of her areola, and even the tiny indentation at the tip of the nipple. It must have been incredibly rigid, to show such contrast.

A little later, finally feeling more caffeinated, I went to take my shower. Having gotten cleaned up and put on some clothes, I set up with my laptop, in what had become my customary corner of the living room, and pretended to work. Actually, for a little while, I actually did work.

Until Lissa, who'd disappeared into the shower, re-emerged in her now standard turban and towel outfit. Rather than get dressed (I wondered, was she as reluctant to dress when there were no uncles around to tease?), she came into the living room and sprawled onto the couch with a combination of utter casualness and successful modesty that seemed to defy the laws of physics (as such laws applied to towels, anyway), and quickly appeared to become absorbed in a magazine.

I continued to work, though now somewhat more distracted than before. Perhaps fifteen minutes further on, Denise emerged, fully dressed, from her room and strolled in. She gazed at her daughter on the couch, and then at me, for a few seconds, silently, taking the two of us in. "I've got to run an errand," she announced.

I decided I didn't need to know. Might be a real errand, after all. Or just a contrivance to leave me alone with her scheming, horny daughter. What, me worry?

"Need anything, Jase?" Denise asked me.

"Not that I can think of," I replied, staring intently at my laptop screen.

"Hey, pumpkin -- you need anything from the store?"

Lissa looked up, shook her head.

"You planning to get dressed, today?" her mom then teased.

Lissa grinned. "Not if I don't have to," she sniped. Her mom rolled her eyes and quickly left.

A few more minutes had passed, when Lissa cleared her throat ... looking for my attention. I looked up at her, as she loosened the turban around her head and began toweling her long, damp locks.

"I really wonder what it's like being a nudist," she remarked, quite out of the blue, and with a somewhat transparently feigned casualness.

Faking a level of distraction I wasn't feeling -- I was, in fact, alarmingly focused on her every movement -- I responded, "what brought that on?"

"Mom's comment," as if that explained things completely.

"Sorry. I didn't hear what she said." A bit of a lie ... but I was curious what her train of thought was. I was hyperaware of what their tasks were for the day.

Lissa laughed, and said, with an exaggerated tone that indicated her disapproval of my lack of attention to the situation, "Well ... mom asked if I was planning to get dressed today, and I said, 'not if I don't have to.'"

"Ah." I met her eyes as she draped the turban-towel over the coffee table as if it were a drying rack. I decided to give her lots of rope, and concluded laconically, "don't let me stop you."

She turned shy, suddenly, and sat up straight, arranging the towel carefully, where it fell on her upper thighs. "Are you serious?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you kinda just gave me permission to be a nudist," she said.

"I did?" I played stupid.

"Uncle JASON," she groaned with annoyance, that perfect teenage tone of contempt mixed with ennui.

There was a silence, she returned to her magazine; I plonked at my computer.

"I would never be a nudist unless everyone else around was one, too," she said, at last.

"I see," I muttered, non-committally.

"Would you ever do that?"

"What? Be a nudist?" I asked.

Lissa nodded, and met my eyes again, but more skittishly than before.

I felt compelled, unnecessarily, to try for a thoughtful answer. "I suppose I've thought about it. I didn't like getting dressed either, as a kid -- and even now, I agree there's a kind of free feeling to being naked. But there are sexuality issues," I concluded.

She mulled this over -- certainly, what I'd said was not out of her depth, but once again she seemed rather thrown off by an unexpectedly thoughtful answer from her uncle.

"What do you mean, 'sexuality issues'?" she queried.

"Well, in our culture, nakedness is associated very deeply with sex. With sexual attraction. I personally don't believe those nudists who say it's non-sexual -- you can't just talk yourself out of your cultural background."I paused for a second. "But I do believe they're TRYing to make it non-sexual. So, I do think they're sincere ... and some may succeed more than others."

She had a bit of a dazed look on her face in response to this bit of abstract discourse, but it lasted only a second.

"You haven't really explained, though. Are you saying you think it's a bad idea?"

"Not at all. I just think, if you're going to be a nudist, you should be honest -- with yourself as much with as with anyone else -- about the fact that it can be sexually exciting."

"Hmm," she said, thoughtfully. "Sounds like you're saying I said I want to be a nudist because I think it's exciting."

"Exactly." I really hadn't meant to steer the conversation this way. It just kind of WENT.

She sat back in genuine surprise, and I couldn't help but watch the hem of the towel ride up her thigh. Then she said, "Well actually yeah that's probably true."

A long pause. "You're pretty smart, uncle Jason." She grinned, still shyly. "You know how my mind works better than I do, I guess."

I looked back up from my laptop and grinned back at her. "Thanks, Lissa. Really, I'm just opinionated and annoying. And I know how the horny mind works."

She looked up, almost alarmed, and I felt my heart sinking very rapidly for a second. I wondered if I might have made a mistake -- I was making to open an admission of the subtext of recent days. But the open, mature level of the conversation had made me forget for a second the context, and the fact that I was talking with my fourteen-year-old niece.

"Uncle JASON," she protested again, more firmly than before. "I am NOT..." she continued, but didn't finish her denial, and instead just looked down and fiddled with the hem of the towel at her thigh.

"Whatever," She finally said. "I agree about the part that you're opinionated and annoying." Then, still not looking up, she asked, "so ... but you never really said about whether you would be a nudist." A bit nervously, almost.

"I did kind of avoid answering the question," I agreed. I looked at her but she wouldn't meet my eyes, now. "So, uh, to answer ... sure, I would try it, in the right company."

"' ... in the right company'?" she echoed. "That's funny. Hah. No one wants to get naked in bad company," she observed, with unexpected, wry maturity -- but still studying her lap.

I laughed out loud. "That's an excellent way to put it, Lissa. You're pretty damn smart, yourself."

She actually blushed, under her latte-tone skin. Flattery will get you everywhere. Lissa stretched out a leg, straightening a knee, as if to study her toenails or something, but she sat at an angle to me such that nothing more was revealed.

Then she flipped my remark back at me, and put me on the spot. "So. Am I good company or bad company?"

I mulled that a bit. Finally, I said, carefully, "You're very good company ... with reservations."

"Reservations?" she appeared almost hurt, but then joked, "I don't take reservations."

I laughed out loud, again. She was proving quite fun to talk to.

"All I mean, is, you're young, Lissa." I realized I was starting to go down that path that Denise had as much as begged me not to take, the other night. I was forcing onto my niece an awareness that her teasing and flirtation might not be, well, appropriate. Just as my games as "Finn" were clearly not appropriate, for that matter. Such a hypocrite I am, I admitted to myself.

Her eyes continued to remain downcast, as she meditated on what I'd said. "That's your only reservation, is that I'm, like, 14?" she finally phrased, very precisely.

"Precisely," I echoed my internal narrative.

"So if I was, like, 18, you'd be a nudist with me, no reservations?"

"Yes," I said, simply. A bit too quickly, I thought, too.

"Even though I'm your niece?"

I thought about this, briefly, and said, "right. That's not an issue."

I could tell she found this flattering. Then her mind took a different tack. "Would you be a nudist with my mom? I mean, if she was too?"

"Sure. If she wanted to," I said. Truthfully. Excited by the notion, of course, as I thought about it. I recalled an elaborate fantasy centered on exactly that idea, that I'd developed some years before. I felt as if Lissa were reading my mind. There was a fairly long silence, then.

After a trying to find a different magazine in shelves of the coffee table, and adjusting the knot in the towel around her, she at last looked up again and said, "I don't understand why my age is an issue."