II

Being naked in front of Dad is sweet. He rolls his eyes and gets all huffy, but it’s obvious he loves looking at me. With Mom it’s different. I never know how she’s going to react. And when she sounds mad, it’s hard to tell if she really is, or she’s just playing. I say “just” playing, but nothing is ever “just” with Mom.

Like a couple of days after my little adventure around the neighborhood, I took a shower, then walked through the living room on my way upstairs wearing only a towel — and that was around my hair. Mom and Dad were reading and listening to the stereo. Neither one of them said anything. They just kind of glanced at each other as I went by.

Then, a couple nights later, Mom caught me in her room looking at myself in her dresser mirror. All I was wearing was a pair of red stockings that came up to my thighs and fancy red gloves that came up to my elbows, both of which, I admit, I had borrowed from her bottom drawer. For some reason, that set her off.

“Oh, you are a conceited little bitch,” she said. I was so startled that I covered up my titties and pussy. It was a stupid reflex — I was never shy in front her before. I think I was more embarrassed that the stockings were too big.

“Don’t be so modest,” she said. “Put your hands down ... Pathetic, hardly any tits yet. I don’t see why your father thinks you’re so pretty.”

She came over and grabbed my chin hard. Her voice was quiet and icy.

“I think you need to be taught some humility. What do you think? Answer me!“

“I don’t know.”

“The correct answer is, ‘Yes, Mother.’”

“Yes, Mother.”

“On your knees.”

“No!”

“Don’t you ever say no to me.”

She raised her hand like she was going to hit me. I tightened up all over. I don’t know if she was really going to do it, but down I went. At first I thought she was going to make me eat her out or something, but she didn’t make any move to undo her jeans. Instead, she went back into her bottom drawer and, digging under the lingerie she keeps there, brought out a black leather collar. What do she and Daddy do that I don’t know about?

“All fours,” she said. “Down, girl!”

I saw where this was going, and I didn’t mind. I stayed still while Mom tied looped of Dad’s belts through the collar. I even panted a little to let her know I was getting it.

She gave the belt a yank.

“Now, heel!”

And she walked me around the room. I got into it, raising my hands high as I pranced around, like some cartoon dog. Once I jumped up on the bed, and she smacked my butt and told me to get down.

“Bad dog!” she said, and I did a pretty good imitation whimper.

“Now sit up ... Beg!”

I got up on my knees and held my hands up like paws.

“Good girl. Now, speak!”

“ROWLF!”

“Wow, where did that come from?” she said.

Dad taught me once that the trick to barking like a dog is to inhale when you do it. I think Mom was more shocked at how loud it was than she was at catching me nude.

It was like being a little girl, playing zoo animals with my friends, and it made me feel safe, even if Mom thought she was humiliating me. And it beat getting slapped. When she said she’d have to show Daddy her new pet when he got home, I nearly wet the carpet, like the bad dog I am.

But still, it wasn’t as much fun as running around outside nude, which I knew I was going to have to do again It was only a matter of time. I thought, well, if I only do it late at night, in the dark, I should be OK. Why I thought that, I don’t know, since I nearly got caught by a cop. It didn’t matter, anyway, because the next time I got the urge to strip, I was out in broad daylight.

It was at a mental institution. For real. Mom and Dad got a job playing at Quaker Hospital in Northeast. The main building is a big yellow mansion that was built around 1810. Back then it was in the middle of nowhere, and even though the city grew up around it, it still has like a hundred acres of woods and gardens. Every spring, they open up the grounds for the Azalea Festival. It was awesome the Sunday we went. The blossoms were at their peak, and the bushes were higher than my head and trimmed into perfect balls, scarlet and white and pink and purple, that covered the grounds like a big woolly afghan.

And, naturally, the first thing I thought of was how cool it would be to walk around them naked. That was just a fantasy, though.

Sure.

Mom and Dad set up their chairs and music stands on the front steps of the mansion. Mom played her oboe and her English horn while Dad coasted through some bass notes on his cello. It was the easiest gig in the world, Mom said, since nobody there knew anything about music, and they weren’t listening much, anyway. They did some arrangements of Schubert and Handel, and that tune from the Civil War series, and a couple other dumbed-down things — though Dad always has to throw in a movement or two from the Bach suites. That always gets people’s attention.

I got into the act, too. Dad promised me ten bucks if I brought my flute. So I did my Nielsen, the piece I messed up the first time I played it at the school holiday show. I was fine with it now, though. I didn’t even need the music anymore. I stood between my parents in my sky-blue tank top, my denim pedal pushers and pink tennies, and I pulled in a small crowd. They gave me a nice round of applause, and while I was taking my flute apart and putting it back in the case, I overheard one lady tell Mom I was “lovely.”

“Sometimes she’s a handful,” Mom said.

“It’ll only get worse as she gets older,” the lady said. “You should enjoy her while she’s young.”

“Oh, we enjoy her thoroughly,” Mom said.

“That was lovely, Sweetie,” Dad told me. “See what happens when you practice?”

“Can I get some lemonade?” I said.

He stretched his legs out and dug into his pocket for his wallet.

“Here’s your pay,” he said. He handed me a ten.

“You’re not treating?”

“Spend what you earn, and learn to budget,” he said.

Everything’s a lesson with those two. I left my flute on the steps, and as I went off down the path, Mom called after me —

“Don’t get lost. You play again in twenty minutes.”

“I already earned my money,” I called back, and trotted away.

I followed the signs around the mansion, down a brick stairway, and back past rows of long, low buildings that looked like they used to be stables. The refreshment stand was in the last stable at the end. I paid two-fifty for a large lemonade with ice — one quarter of my day’s wages. The old lady at the counter put a top on it and handed me a straw. I stuffed my change in my pocket and went off sipping. It was good — not too sweet, definitely not from a mix — and I needed it after my performance. My mouth was dry, but more from nerves than from blowing. It’s weird: playing a simple melody for a few undemanding old people gives me the shakes, but I have no problem running around my neighborhood with nothing on...

Pretty perverted, right?

I wasn’t thinking about getting nude when I started back to the mansion, but I missed the first little sign with the arrow on it, and I found myself going up a red clay trail that led into the grounds, away from the buildings. It felt like wilderness back here, with nothing but weeds and twisted old trees that hadn’t started to bloom yet. I looked over my shoulder. There were no people, either.

No, I told myself. Nope. No. Uh uh.

But by the time I finished that profound meditation, my lemonade was sitting on the ground, and my tank top was balled up next to it. On Mom’s orders, I was wearing a blue cotton bra. I have almost nothing to hold up, but Mom said I didn’t want anyone looking at my nipples through my shirt. The truth is, she didn’t want anybody looking at them. And it didn’t work anyway, because my stiff buds were sticking up pretty emphatically through the thin padding. The Poky Little Puppies. I brushed them with my fingers while my other hand went down my pants. I thought maybe if I played got myself off in my clothes, I would get over this crazy mood. I really wanted to talk myself out of it, because it was certifiably nuts. There were people walking around not fifty feet away, and some of them might miss the turn, just like I did.

Yeah, but isn’t that what make it sweet? said the Devil on my shoulder.

Wanting to get it over with, I slipped out of my shoes and unhooked my bra at the same time. Then came the jeans, which I folded neatly. I stood in my blue cotton panties and socks and played with my nipples some more. Really, it just made things worse. A few seconds of that, and my panties were feeling uncomfortably damp. I tugged at the waistband, letting the air in, until finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. I stuck out my ass and rolled them off completely, doing a striptease for all the little woodland creatures.

The air was even nicer than it was that night in my neighborhood. It felt thicker, and it smelled like fresh, warm dirt.

I sat my ass down and put my shoes back on, in case I had to run fast. Then I hid my stuff behind a tree and continued back along the trail. Right away I was swallowed up in the weeds. The trail seemed to dead-end. Off to my right, though, the ground began to rise into the trees. There was nowhere to go but up.

The hill was steep, but it didn’t seem so high once I reached the top. I could see the people on their way to the refreshment stand, and they weren’t far away at all. If they’d bothered to look, they would have been treated to the sight of a naked girl in pink sneakers waving back at them.

This was more fun than stripping at school, because it was out in the open, and more fun than going out at night, because it was the middle of the day, with the thin shadows of the tree branches dancing on my bare skin. I snuck along the ridge from tree to tree, peeking around the trunks, working my way back to the mansion. The big surprise came when I hid behind a beech tree, pressing myself flat against it. The bark was just the tiniest bit rough, and it ground against the top of my slit, right on the magic button. That was ... interesting. So I leaned my shoulders back and pressed my slit harder into the trunk. That was even more interesting. I jiggled my butt, which quickly escalated to a full-on hump of a fucking tree. I called him Woody, and then Woody Darling, just when I came I threw my arms around him and frenched his blank gray face.

Hey, don’t judge me till you’ve walked a mile in my shoes, and nothing else.

The fresh air made me dizzy. Well, so did the orgasm. I slid down Woody’s solid body and stretched out on the cool ground, looking up through the swaying branches. That should have been it. I’d gotten away with it. Nobody had seen me, I’d had a nice come, and it almost time to go back to Mom and Dad. But they could wait. I wanted more of the air and the sun and the moving shadows on my body.

I got up again. Down below, a mom was pushing a stroller toward the lemonade stand. There was a little girl in the stroller, with a balloon tied to her wrist, and a boy walking with them who might have been seven or eight. The boy looked right up at me. He turned to his mom said something, but I jumped behind Woody, and if the mom looked up she didn’t see me. I counted to ten and peeked out again. They were gone. I continued along the ridge, the naked forest sprite that appears to the boy in the story and then disappears.