Copyright 2024 by James Breitbart, all rights reserved
* * * * *Chapter 1
Ever since the passage of the DECENT
Treaty, officials in Washington State had looked at their counterparts
in Florida with jealousy. The Stripped for Florida program was bringing
in massive amounts of revenue, and within a few years the large
majority of the population had accepted it as a compromise in the
culture wars over adolescent sexuality. Liberals were happy to see
young people embracing sex, while conservatives were relieved that it
was all under the tight control of their parents. Washington had
initially attempted to pursue its own version of a compromise, formally
allowing nudity in select state parks where it had long been tradition
to look the other way on skinny dippers and letting municipalities set
their own rules, but the compromise had only served to make everyone
mad. Social conservatives in the eastern half of the state used
Seattle’s highly permissive ordinance, which allowed any sort of public
sexual activity on any public property, as a wedge issue to gin up
outrage against the degenerate big-city lifestyle, while liberals
outside of Seattle resented the local governments that continued to ban
nudity, and voted for state legislators who promised to override local
government control.
The polarization increased to the point
that the state legislature found it impossible to pass a budget on time
thanks to competing demands to withdraw state funding from
jurisdictions that forbade or allowed nudity. After two successive
government shutdowns, the governor had had enough, and locked the
leaders of each party into a room until they had worked out a
compromise. Like the compromise worked out in Florida, it would offer
liberals an environment in which sexuality was much more on display,
while promising conservatives greater control of children by adults and
an opportunity to avoid tax increases.
From the first Monday
in April, any adult who wished to go naked in public, anywhere in the
state, could register with the Licensed Adult Nudity Program (LANP),
where for an annual fee of 45 dollars, they received the right to
engage in public nudity and sexual conduct anywhere in the state. For
children, the program was less voluntary. Their parents could pay the
same annual fee to enroll them in the Family-Enforced Nudity Program
(FENP), which required them to be naked at all times within the state,
enforced by the same microchips as the Stripped for Florida Program.
Building on the state’s West Coast-libertarianism, Washington added
some enhancements to the program. When they registered their children,
Washington parents could pay an additional fee to waive certain status
laws, allowing their child to consume alcohol or cannabis, get a tattoo
or piercing, or stay out after curfew. The law got a lot of attention
in the press, but in the first day of the program the only parents
signing their kids up for FENP were practicing nudists in Seattle, who
were merely paying the state to continue being allowed to do what they
were already doing.
The local news covered their protests at
the expense, attracting the attention of Jeannette Wagner, a housewife
in the serene town of Pinnacle Bay. She knew that her oldest son,
David, was gay from his internet history and his suspiciously close
relationship with his ‘best friend’ Marcus Walsh, but at fourteen and
almost finished with middle school, he remained stubbornly closeted.
Jeannette wondered if stripping him might be a way to move things along.
She brought it up that night at dinner.
“You know, I saw on the news about this new FENP thing. Maybe we should strip the three of you.”
David rolled his eyes, thinking that his mother was teasing him. “Very funny.”
“I think it’d be cool,” his younger brother Tommy chirped. Tommy was
ten, and still in the stage where getting dressed or shopping for
clothes represents an imposition on time that could be spent playing.
“That’s because you’re a gross creep,” David retorted.
“If you can’t be nice to your brother, that’s an argument in favor of
stripping you.” Jeannette chided. Sensing for the first time that he
might be in real danger, David stared intently at his green beans.
“I’ll ask around and see if people think it’s a good idea,” Jeannette
continued.
“They won’t,” David muttered.
“We’ll just
see about that,” his father answered, “You know some people in the
education department really think this stripping thing could do wonders
for the schools.” Phil Wagner was a professor of sociology at Pacific
Lutheran University.
“How so?”
“When they did it in
Florida, it did wonders for behavior. They think a lot of adolescent
acting out is the result of sexual frustration.”
“Well, I’m not sexually frustrated,” David protested.
“You sure about that?” Tommy teased, “what about you and Marcus?” He
enunciated Marcus’ name in a teasing manner that made it clear he knew
that his older brother was romantically engaged with the boy.
“Tommy,” his mother admonished, “don’t tease your brother. David, go do the dishes.”
The next day, Phil took some time on his lunch break to check books on
the Stripped for Florida program out of the university library. There
were several studies finding exactly what the Wagners were hoping for,
that being stripped was a massive long-term benefit for gay boys like
David. It was enough to convince Dr. and Mrs. Wagner to go through with
it, much to David’s chagrin.
“This is totally unfair!” he protested as soon as they announced it to him.
“We’re not asking you to do anything we aren’t willing to do,” Dr.
Wagner intoned calmly, “Your mother and I will be registering for LANP
at the same time as you kids, and living nude as much as possible.”
“You know that makes it worse, right?”
“David, a naked body is nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Yes it is! This is weird.” David’s
protest earned him a lecture about not conforming with the crowd just
to fit in, which only worsened his mood. He stormed upstairs to his
room, slamming the door behind him. Jeannette decided that it would be
better to let him calm down than to force him downstairs for dinner,
and made the announcement to Tommy and his younger sister Natalie.
Tommy was enthusiastic about being the first naked kid in his
fourth-grade class, while four-year-old Natalie was sad about not being
able to play dress up anymore until her mother told her that she’d be
able to paint on a costume when the occasion warranted it.
Jeannette left David in his room until he came down for breakfast the
next day. He gestured to the rain outside. “You really want me to be
naked in this?” The temperatures that day were supposed to range from
the lower 40s to the mid-50s.
“They have pills that will keep
your body temperature up,” she explained. “You can go barefoot in the
snow and be perfectly comfortable. Plus, skin dries faster than cloth.
Once you kids are stripped, you can play in the rain without getting
your clothes wet.”
“Awesome!” Tommy cried out. David glared at
his brother, then retrieved his coat from the front hall closet and
walked a half-mile through the rain to school. He spent most of the
morning trying to think of ways to get out of it, and lunch time
complaining to his friends. They were all sympathetic, although Marcus
found himself aroused at the prospect of getting to see his secret
boyfriend naked everywhere he went. He couldn’t say anything of course,
both because it would upset David further and because their other
friends didn’t know that they were lovers beyond the juvenile
experimentation all the boys had participated in. He stood up carefully
to obscure the tent in his pants.
The conversation at the
elementary school was much more upbeat. Tommy’s friends were actually
jealous of him getting to be stripped.
“So are you going to get to play with your wiener in public?” Danny Tipton asked innocently.
“Yeah, anywhere I want. Except mom says I can’t do it in class or church.”
“Can we play with it?”
“I dunno. I think maybe you have to be stripped too if we’re going to
have sex with each other.” Tommy wasn’t quite sure how it worked, but
he’d seen a TV show set in Florida where a major element of conflict
was that two boys in love couldn’t consummate their relationship when
one was stripped and the other wasn’t, until naturally the first one’s
parents decided to strip him and everyone lived happily ever after.
“Maybe I’ll get my parents to strip me too.”
“That’d be awesome! We could be naked everywhere together.”
Tommy was practically bouncing off the walls when his mother picked him
and Natalie up from school, but she tried to get them to tone it down.
“You need to not tease David about this. It’s going to be much harder for him than it is for you.”
“Why,” Tommy asked, “’cause his penis is all gross and hairy like Dad’s?”
“That’s part of it. When you start puberty you get self-conscious about
your body, and sex. I know for you it’s just another game to play with
your friends, but for your brother it’s more complicated.” Tommy was as
of yet blissfully unaware that he was supposed to be keeping ‘I’ll show
you mine if you show me yours’ games secret from his parents, and
seemed to be curious about both genders. Jeannette guessed that he’d
end up bisexual. “To be honest, part of the reason I’m stripping you is
so that will go a little smoother for you when you get to be the age he
is now.”
Jeannette drove to the middle school, and was the
first parent in the pickup line. She honked for David when he came out,
surprising him. He usually walked or rode his bike home, and had
decided that today he was going to run away, instead. There was a
grandmother in Pennsylvania who was a rigid Catholic, and David figured
that if he managed to hitchhike out there and told her what was going
on, she would shelter him from his heathen parents, at least as long as
he didn’t tell her he was gay. His mother’s presence ruined his plans.
The vice principal was standing right behind him, and David knew that
he would be more than pleased to chase him down on his mother’s orders
if he tried to run away, which would only compound his humiliation. He
would look like a big baby throwing a temper tantrum, and they’d
probably rip all his clothes off right there in front of everybody.
Shoulders slumping in defeat, David saw no choice but to get in the
car.
Tommy, who looked up to his brother even though it
seemed like he was mad all the time these days, heeded his mother’s
admonition and was dutifully quiet as they drove to city hall, where
they met their father. Dr. Wagner filled out the forms and wrote a
check for the cost - $225.00 to strip the whole family, plus $135.00
each for David and Tommy to be allowed to drink alcohol, smoke
marijuana, and engage in sexual activity. He could certainly see how
they thought they were going to close the budget gap with this.
The clerk had every member of the family hold out their wrist, and
quickly injected each of them with a microchip implant. “Those implants
will automatically interact with the state’s sensor network,” she
explained. “For Mr. and Mrs. Wagner, it will register that you’re
allowed to be naked, so you won’t have to show any ID. For you kids, if
it catches you wearing clothes, an alarm will go off and you’ll be
arrested. You can just present your arm if you’re buying pot or booze,
and the clerk will scan it. Now you need to take your clothes off
before you leave the room.
Forcing back tears, David complied
with the order. His parents and siblings stripped off with much more
enthusiasm, and handed their clothes to the clerk for donation. The
clerk handed them each a set of pills.
“These will warm you
up. We also recommend that girls be on birth control, but you can wait
until she starts menstruating. Unlike in Florida, we don’t throw in
sildenafil free, but you can get a prescription from a doctor.”
David ignored the pills and stomped through the parking lot to the car,
his bare feet splashing through cold puddles and the rain masking the
tears he could hold back. As soon as they got home he stormed up to his
room and slammed the door behind him. He discovered that his mom had
removed all the clothes from his drawers while he was at school. Even
if he wanted to take his chances with the sensor network, he wouldn’t
be able to.
Chapter 2
Jeannette had known that the first day would be difficult and braced herself for it before going to wake up David.
“I’m not going to school!” David called through the door when she knocked.
“If you’re not out of there in five minutes, I’m sending your father in.”
David was not out in five minutes, and Jeannette sent Phil in with the
key to David’s lock to drag him out of bed and shove him into the
shower while she got breakfast for the younger two. David came
downstairs, soaking wet and mad as hell, and Jeannette produced a set
of the warming pills.
“We all need to take two of these. It’s colder than it was yesterday.”
David was already shivering from the shower, and reluctantly swallowed
two of the pills with a glass of water, followed by his parents and
siblings. Within a few seconds, all of the Wagners felt a warming
sensation and a flush. His mother drove him to school, to make sure he
didn’t ditch, and waited to drive off until he saw him go into the
building. People turned and stared as David walked as quickly as
possible to his homeroom and slumped down in a seat at the back of the
classroom.
His friends Marcus, Brendan, and Ethan, who knew
what to expect, sat on either side of him, to give him a protective
barrier from their peers. Unfortunately, the English teacher, Ms.
Newton, thought it would be a great idea to use David as a
demonstration of the FENP program, and had him stand at the front of
the class after the pledge of allegiance. She gave a brief presentation
on the history of the legislation as David stared at his toes.
“Why did your parents decide to strip you?” Ms. Newton asked, assuming incorrectly that David had been a willing participant.
“Because they’re jerks,” he answered venomously.
Ms. Newton immediately realized her mistake and let David sit down,
handing out a set of flyers for the FENP program that the state
department of education had provided her with and moving on to the
English lesson. She made sure to quickly reprimand anyone who turned
around to stare at David, giving him something of a respite.
Gym would prove to be much worse than English class. Of David’s friend
group, Ethan was the only one he had the same class as. The two boys
walked to the locker room together, with David looking down in
embarrassment and Ethan glaring at everyone who stared at him. Coach
Lee noticed David as soon as he came into the locker room.
“David, did your parents strip you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you bring tennis shoes with you?”
“Uh…no sir.” Tennis shoes were required for PE, but David normally just
kept the same pair he’d worn to school, except after it got warm enough
for flip-flops, when he left his sneakers in the locker with the rest
of his clothes. With everything else on his mind, he’d forgotten all
about them.
“Well, you’re supposed to sit out if you’re not in
uniform – or as much of the uniform as you’re allowed to wear, but I
don’t think it’s fair to dock points from your grade when you weren’t
planning on being stripped.” Coach Lee blew his whistle and informed
the whole class that to enable David to participate without risking
injury, they would all have to leave their shoes and socks in their
lockers and participate barefoot for the day. Most of the class was
secretly glad that they got to go barefoot for a bit, but David had a
problem. He had long ago developed a foot fetish, and the sight of his
classmates barefoot in their PE uniforms provoked a natural reaction.
In spite of his embarrassment, he was fully hard by the middle of class.
Ethan noticed but didn’t say anything, hoping that the other boys
wouldn’t notice or would graciously assume that it was just one of
those random erections that they all got. Unfortunately, he was vastly
overestimating the kindness of teenage boys. Jake MacDonald noticed and
shouted across the gym. “Hey, Wagner’s got a hard-on!”
Coach
Lee blew the whistle and shouted at Jake to mind his own business, but
the damage had already been done. David was the subject of giggles,
which Coach Lee knew were likely to escalate into something more
serious once the boys got back into the locker room, unless he could
separate David from the rest.
Despite his shame, David’s
hard-on refused to go down. In fact, although he didn’t realize it, the
humiliation was arousing him further. When class ended Coach Lee took
him aside again.
“Why don’t you take a cold shower while
everyone else is getting dressed?” Thanks to the squeamishness of
middle school boys about being seen naked, Magnuson Middle School’s
showers had gone virtually unused for decades. Coach Lee and many of
the other teachers hoped that the FENP would change that, but for now
David was the only student likely to use the showers, and since he was
already naked, he had nothing to lose.
The shower had the
desired effect, and Coach Lee handed David a towel to dry off with,
then ordered the crowd who’d gathered around the door of the locker
room in hopes of getting a glimpse of the naked kid to disperse. They
cleared just enough of a path for David to get to his next class,
technology, where he shared a lab table with Marcus and Tyler
Wilkerson, who wasn’t part of David’s core friend group but was nice
enough.
Unfortunately, they also shared the class with Jake
MacDonald, who muttered “I’d better not catch you looking at me,
faggot” just softly enough that the teacher didn’t overhear him.
“What was that about?” Marcus asked.
“I’ll tell you at lunch,” David whispered.
By the time the bell for lunch rang, word of what had happened in gym
class had gotten around to the whole school, although Ethan was the
only one of David’s friends who had actually seen it firsthand. Joey,
Scott, and Brendan had heard rumors, confidently stated, that David
popped a boner in the boys’ gym class, with no girls around, which was
enough to convict him of homosexuality in the court of public opinion.
They kept an open mind, reasoning that it could have just been an
unfortunate coincidence, and that even if David was attracted to boys,
it was no reason to make fun of him.
In truth, all four of
Marcus and David’s best friends were at least somewhat bisexual. The
six of them had engaged in innocent sex play among each other in
elementary school, which tapered off when they got to middle school and
started understanding the connection between what they did and the
cruel words that got thrown around the cafeteria. Joey formed crushes
on girls and boys with about equal enthusiasm, even though he had never
admitted this to any of his friends, and all the boys found the sight
of David’s nude body exciting.
The six of them decided to
forsake their usual lunch table to eat in the library, normally
occupied only by social outcasts. The stacks of books hid them from
public view.
“What happened in gym?” Scott asked.
“Do you really need to know?”
“People are talking about it. They said you got a boner and they’re
trying to make it out like you’re gay or something. We can just tell
them it’s a lie, or, like, you got turned on by being naked and it
doesn’t have anything to do with guys.” Scott assumed that David got
turned on by being naked because he had exhibitionist tendencies
himself, and had in fact jerked himself off the night before to a
fantasy that he was the one getting stripped.
“It wasn’t that,” David whispered, “I do like guys.”
“I mean everyone gets hard sometimes looking at a hot guy,” Joey said defensively, “that doesn’t mean you’re gay.”
“It’s more than that for me.”
“David and I do stuff together,” Marcus admitted.
“Like the stuff we used to do when we were kids?” Joey asked hopefully.
“More than that. Kissing, stuff with each other’s feet…”
“Coach Lee made everyone do PE barefoot,” Ethan remarked.
“That’s what did it.” David said, “there’s no point in trying to deny it, I’ll just keep getting hard around guys anyway.”
“So, what should we do?” Brendan asked.
“We could kick Jake’s ass,” Joey suggested, feeling a little defensive about his own sexuality.
“The whole class saw Jake say that” Ethan pointed out, “if he shows up
to school looking beat up everybody will know it was us. We’ll need to
wait a few weeks until he fucks with someone else.”
“And it
probably won’t do anything,” David said, “and when my parents find out
they’ll come up with something even worse to punish me. There’s nothing
any of you can do. I’m totally fucked.”
Marcus had an idea for
something that might help, but it would be a pretty big step, and he
wasn’t sure that he wanted to go through with it or that David would
actually think it was helpful, so he kept quiet.
The lunch
bell rang, and the boys went off to their afternoon classes. David had
social studies with Marcus, Scott, Joey, and Ethan, but only Brendan
and Ethan for Science.
“Do you want me to see if my Mom will give you a ride home?” Brendan asked.
“No, I don’t want her to see me like this.”
The offer turned out to be unnecessary. Jeannette had discovered that
the warming pills wore off after an hour or so and didn’t want David
walking home in the cold, so she was waiting for him in the car again.
Unfortunately, his peers seeing his mother naked only compounded
David’s misery.
“How was school?” She asked innocently.
“Fuck you!” David snarled in reply.
Jeannette gritted her teeth. “David, I know this has been hard for you, but that doesn’t mean you can talk to me like that.”
“Fine, ground me. I don’t care. It’s not like I want to go anywhere like this anyway.”
David made a good point, Jeannette thought. Maybe he needed a couple of
weeks to get used to being naked before being expected to keep up his
normal social routine. Being grounded would give him a good excuse.
Optimistically, she decided to set the grounding for two weeks.
She had barely gotten home when Coach Lee called.
“I noticed today that David was stripped.”
“Oh, yes, we’re all nudists now.”
“I called to figure out a solution for the P.E. uniform. Obviously he
won’t be dressing out fully, and that’s not a problem for his grade,
but he needs shoes for safety. I was able to have all the kids practice
barefoot today, but if you could send him to school with gym shoes,
that would make things simpler.”
“Oh, dear. I didn’t even
think about gym shoes. I gave all of David’s shoes and socks away. I
guess we’ll have to by him a new pair.” Jeannette was mentally kicking
herself for not realizing that David would still need tennis shoes. The
shopping trip to replace the pair that had been donated was sure to be
miserable for both of them.
“Well, maybe we can work something out. Can you come by the office tomorrow morning?”