If Tina hadn’t had that third glass of wine at the in-office happy hour celebrating the retirement of one of the firm’s founders, followed by a martini at the continuation of the party at a bar down the street, she most likely wouldn’t have brought up the subject of her occasional experiments with public nudity.
Though Tina meant her comments as compliments, Kristen, her friend, co-worker, soon-to-be sister-in-law, and occasional supporter of Tina’s adventures in exhibitionism was horrified that Tina seemed to be about to bring up their shared hobby in a crowded bar, surrounded by co-workers. She shushed Tina the second it became obvious where her comments were leading.
“I have a confession,” Tina had said, “I couldn’t wait to see how your adventure last Friday went, so I called Dave to get the details.”
“Yeah, okay, maybe we should save this conversation for some time we’re not surrounded by people we work with!” Kristen whispered into her tipsy friend’s ear as she steered her towards a booth as far away from her office mates as possible.
“You didn’t need to shush me, I was going to be discreet,” Tina said, “I just wanted to say how much I admired your boldness and quick thinking. From what Dave told me you improvised your way to being stark naked in front of the whole crowd at the fundraiser!”
“True enough,” Kristen replied, looking around to be sure nobody they knew was within earshot, “but you’ve been just as naked in front of big crowds a few times yourself!”
“I know, but the time I danced at the strip club was, it’s hard to explain, but it was kind of a letdown. Don’t get me wrong, it definitely was exciting, it was just less exciting than I imagined it would be, maybe because when you’re on stage at a place like that you’re expected to get naked. As for my naked bus ride, I was expecting to just ride to the next stop after the one I got on at. If I’d known I was going to end up being nude on a crowded downtown sidewalk I’d never have had the nerve to get on the bus at all; the outcome that night was just an accident, nothing I made happen.”
“I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit — it seems to me you’ve been pretty damned daring!”
“The difference is you’ve made up some of your most memorable adventures on the fly, and have done some wild shit with no backup,” Tina replied, “while I’ve always had a way out and someone ready to get me out of trouble if I have a problem. I know I’m lucky to have the support, but I feel a little like I’m missing out on something.”
“What do you want to do that you haven’t yet?” Kristen asked, “Please don’t tell me if it’s stuff the sister of your fiancee shouldn’t hear about!”
“Nothing terrible, I promise! I certainly don’t want to have sex with anyone but Darren, or any contact at all, really. I would like to be seen naked up close by more people, for a little bit longer. Maybe have some sort of interaction, like having a conversation. Is that too weird?”
“Oh, Tina, after some of the stuff I’ve gotten up to, who am I to say what’s weird? If it’ll make you happy and not hurt anyone, I say go for it! Just stay safe, okay?”
“I might do something a little riskier, but generally safe, I promise,” Tina replied. They rejoined their co-workers, but Tina was too distracted to pay much attention to the office-centered conversation, her mind filled with possible scenarios, any of which would astonish almost all of her co-workers.
Tina spent a good chunk of her free time over the following week thinking about various ways to push beyond the type of flashing she’d done before. A somewhat more daring escapade gradually took shape in her mind, and she was able to work out most of the details by the following weekend.
Hardware stores not being at all her kind of thing, Darren was surprised when she volunteered to pick up a few supplies for a small project he was working on at the house they’d just bought, but was grateful to have more time to work at the house. Tina made use of her solo trip to pick up a couple of items that she might need for her own project, depending on which of the options she dared follow.
The last thing she needed to put her plan in motion came sooner than she had expected. The location she had in mind for her adventure was about a 1 1/2 hour drive from their home, so between the time to get there and back and the time she expected to spend there, she estimated she would need something like a five or six hour chunk of time away from Darren without explaining to him why she needed it.
When he got a last-minute request from a client to meet at the client’s office, far enough away that he’d be gone all day Tuesday and most of Wednesday, she saw her opportunity. She told him (truthfully) that she’d miss him, then quietly logged in to work and signed herself out from the office Tuesday afternoon.
Knowing the real reason for her playing hooky, just scheduling some time off was enough to give Tina goosebumps. Planning her solo adventure had been fun, and itself kind of exciting; now that it was about to stop being theoretical her excitement increased, accompanied by a fair amount of nervousness. She had trouble focusing on work all day Monday, and Darren noticed how distracted she was Monday night, eventually asking, “Are you okay? You seem like your mind is somewhere else tonight.”
“I’m thinking about you being away,” she claimed, “I know it’s just one night, but you haven’t been away at all since we moved in together, so it feels kind of strange. I’ll be fine; sorry to be so distracted.”
Tuesday morning, Darren left for his first flight by 6:00 AM, taking an Uber to the airport and leaving Tina still asleep. She woke up an hour or so later and went through her usual workday routine. “But I don’t expect this day to be anything like routine,” she said to herself as she set out two outfits, “one for work and one for play!” With her anticipation running stronger than her nervousness, she felt a pleasant shiver as she packed her outfit for the afternoon into a small backpack.
Work was a blur for Tina; as the afternoon grew closer she wondered if she should have just taken the whole day off, thinking, “I’m not going to accomplish much of anything here today. The question is, what will I accomplish once I leave?” She was beyond nervous, but was ready to try to live out another fantasy.
Tina was ready to go, but by late morning her adventure had to be put off for some other time; a change in the weather forecast from warm and dry to chilly and wet made the adventure she had planned all but impossible. She was disappointed but figured she could try again some other time.
Wednesday morning, Tina woke up late; she hadn’t slept well, thinking about her canceled adventure. “Not canceled, just postponed,” she promised herself, but worried that after being so close to happening, it might be months or even years before Darren’s schedule, her workload, and the weather all lined up to allow her to fulfill this particular fantasy.
On her way out the door, she noticed the backpack she had loaded up the day before with everything she would have needed for her outing, right where she had dropped it the night before when she came home from work. Already behind schedule, she made a mental note to put it all away when she got home that evening; Darren’s flight home was scheduled to land at the local airport at 6:00 PM, so she figured she would have plenty of time.
At work Wednesday morning Tina was as focused and productive as she’d been distracted the day before. With her solo fantasy off her schedule, she made up for her lackluster performance the day before.
Her productivity took another big hit a little after 11:00 when she received a text from Darren, telling her that his flight had been canceled and that he’d been rebooked on a flight scheduled to arrive at 7:45.
Tina spent a couple of minutes checking and re-checking how long it would take her to get to the place she’d planned on visiting the day before, both from home and from her office. With the trip taking almost a half-hour longer from home, and an hour-long lunch meeting scheduled for noon, she knew the only way she could grab this opportunity and make it home before Darren would be to leave from the office almost as soon as her meeting ended.
She dashed out of the office and drove home to pick up the backpack, scooping it up and turning to head out the door without breaking her stride. She completed the round trip to home and back to the office just before her meeting started. The second the meeting ended, she excused herself and went to her office. She locked the door, closed the blinds, and changed out of her work outfit into the outfit in the backpack. She stuffed her work clothes into an empty drawer in a file cabinet and hurried out of her office, heading for the exit.
Near noon, Kristen noticed Tina had signed out for the afternoon and went to her office to see what she had going on; not finding her there, she went back to work. Busy editing a report, she almost missed seeing Tina heading briskly for the exit just minutes after her meeting, no longer dressed for work. There was nothing particularly flashy about the clothes Tina had changed into, but Kristen could tell something unusual was going on with her friend, catching up with her just before Tina reached the exit, she asked, “What’s up, you never take time off on short notice…oh, wait, is this about what we talked about, you doing something wild on your own?”
“It’s no big deal, I just need a few hours off to get some things done,” Tina replied, but her blush gave her away, at least to Kristen.
“Okay, if you say so,” Kristen said, “Maybe we can have a drink later and you can tell me how your day went?”
“Maybe, if I do anything worth talking about!” Tina answered on her way out the door.
An hour and change later, Tina pulled into a parking area at the edge of a state park with several trailheads. The trails varied from one barely longer than a walk around a city block to one 18 miles long which was connected to the Appalachian Trail. Tina had something in between in mind, a loop trail a little over 4 miles long, mostly level but with some sections where scrambling over rocks was necessary. She hoped her choice would discourage parents with small children, and being a weekday would keep the trail free of older kids. She assumed being as far from her home as this park was, any people she saw here or was seen by would-be strangers.
Tina sat in her car for at least half an hour, thinking about whether or not she could really do anything like her plan. The several dozen cars in the lot both frightened and excited her, as she considered the range of possibilities, “So many variables,” she thought, “how many hikers in each vehicle, which trails are they on, and who are they all? Are they the sort to be offended by someone wearing less clothing than normal? How about someone wearing way, way less? Or would they be likely to welcome such a sight?”
Tina’s nervousness made her worry about how bystanders would react to her being naked, or even partially undressed; if she hadn’t been on the verge of putting herself in such a vulnerable position, she’d have remembered how men usually looked at her when she was fully, conservatively dressed at work. Her regular sessions at the gym kept her better toned than when she was a teenager, and what exercise didn’t take care of genetics did, as she inherited the generous hourglass figure of her mother. Thinking hopefully about having enthusiastic spectators to whatever she might be about to do was enough to finally overcome her jitters and get her out of the car.
Thinking carefully about her preferred scenario and its options, Tina locked the car and put her wallet and phone away out of sight in the glovebox. All she took with her was her backpack, which contained nothing but her car’s keyfob, a couple of small padlocks and a 3-foot long piece of lightweight metal chain. After checking the contents of her backpack one last time and verifying that the car was locked, she took a deep breath and began walking towards the trail she had chosen.
To an observer watching her cross the parking lot, nothing about her outfit would make a fellow hiker expect anything unusual from her. Though obviously attractive, she looked more like someone dressed for an office picnic or a trip to the grocery store; a sleeveless button-down chambray blouse, a loose pair of chino shorts, and a pair of pink walking shoes gave no hint of what she had in mind. The baseball cap and sunglasses she wore to provide at least some anonymity if she was spotted by someone she knew, or worse, ended up on the internet in all her naked glory!
The first stretch of the trail was level and well lit, having relatively few trees to block the early afternoon sun. Tina began to relax, walking at a leisurely pace and enjoying the scenery. She was distracted enough to be surprised when she came upon a sign indicating she’d already covered a half-mile. She noticed a few other hikers, none really close yet but headed her way. Already slightly behind her loose schedule, she began to unbutton her blouse, not all at once or in a hurry, just sort of casually opening the blouse a little bit at a time.
Near the start of the trail, Tina had crossed paths with a younger woman showing a similar look, wearing a tube top under an unbuttoned blouse, letting her think briefly that what she was doing wasn’t really so unusual, but deep down she knew that it was different; form-fitting as it was, the tube top was intended to be visible. Tina’s bra was bright red, lacy, with a deep plunge to show off her cleavage. “Definitely not meant to be seen in public,” she thought, “unless your job description includes the term ‘lap dance’ and most of your income comes in small bills.”
She decided to let the bra have its moment in the sun, drawing the sides of the blouse’s open front wider and further back until the only thing denying her fellow hikers a complete view of her torso was the lacy red bra cups!
Still playing catch-up, Tina slipped her backpack off, with her blouse coming most of the way off along with the pack. Though the reason she took the pack off in the first place was to be able to finish removing her blouse, having it basically fall off her was a bit of a shock, but she finished what the pack’s straps had started, slipping her arms free. Focused as she was on getting out of her blouse, she hadn’t noticed how close a cluster of what she guessed to be college students hiking in the opposite direction was; now she noticed how she was being noticed, seeing all eyes on her, and hearing several comments as she passed by, “Woohoo! Looking good, babe!”
Tina put her blouse away in the pack and continued her hike. She hadn’t quite calmed down from losing her first piece of clothing or from the reactions of her fellow hikers to her behavior when she spotted another mile marker just ahead, this one marked, “1 mile.” She had thought that by this point in her hike she’d be wearing nothing but lingerie between her sunglasses and her ankles.
She briefly considered taking her bra off next, but two very different feelings led her to unbutton and unzip her shorts first. Part of what kept her, at least for the moment, from being half-naked was her unsurprising anxiety about being topless in public. The other thing holding her back from stripping out of her bra, really the main thing, she was surprised to realize, was her feeling that the revealing of her breasts deserved a more substantial audience, not be wasted on the only other hikers currently near enough to see her clearly, a middle-aged couple approaching her, only a few dozen yards away.
Tina paused, let go of the waistband of her shorts, and shivered a bit as she looked down at her shorts, now down around her ankles, and also at her tap-pants, now visible with her shorts out of the way. Part of a set with her bra, the satin and lace undies, while fairly modest compared with many varieties of panties definitely covered less than the chinos, much to the delight of the male half of the couple. He was particularly pleased to be less than 10 feet from Tina when she turned her back to him and bent at the waist to work her shoes free of her chinos, then picked up the discarded shorts and stuffed them into her pack.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to moon you,” Tina lied.
“I doubt that,” the woman laughed,” but no worries, and definitely no need to apologize; after the view you just gave my husband, we might not make it all the way back to the parking lot before we go at it.”
“So, is ‘you’re welcome’ more appropriate?” Tina asked, giggling.
“Probably,” the woman said, “I hope!”
The couple continued on their way and Tina did as well. She was getting more nervous all the time, only partly because she was strolling along a busy trail wearing only two pieces of flashy lingerie. What really had her stress level shooting skyward was the knowledge that if she stuck to her plan she was only a few minutes away from giving up half of what little was left of the outfit she’d been wearing when she started down the trail. “This is crazy, what the hell am I doing?” she mumbled, looking down at her mostly exposed body, but she kept walking.
Looking down, Tina didn’t notice another group of college-aged men and women, larger than the group she’d passed by earlier until she was less than 40 yards away. “Must be some college holiday,” she thought. She saw at least 10 or 12 in the mixed group, apparently taking a break. Most of the group were wearing bathing suits. A few of the bikini-clad young women were sitting on large coolers. She knew that if she really wanted to have an audience for the next act of her journey, this was likely to be the best opportunity she’d have.
She was already close enough to see that a few of the group were watching her intently, which wasn’t surprising considering how she was dressed. Being watched as she took down her bra straps and slipped her arms out made her tremble, but she managed to reach under her backpack and undo the hooks. By this time most of the group had caught on to her performance. Holding her bra loosely over her breasts with her left hand, she thought,”Last chance to stop while I’m just in the outrageous zone, going any further at all puts me squarely in scandalous territory!”
Tina’s left hand kept a firm grip on the lacy red garment, but after a short pause to consider what she should do, what she wanted to do, and what she needed to do, her left arm dropped to her side, her bra now dangling uselessly next to her leg. She took a deep breath and realized she’d been holding her breath while she debated exposing her boobs. She felt her heartbeat pounding in her ears and began to hear various members of the group reacting to her show. Her favorite comment was from one of the women, who simply said, “I wish I had the balls to do that!”
Tina spent a few minutes chatting with the group, learning that the ‘beach’ they were dressed for was really a meadow with a small pond off a side trail up ahead. Standing around half-naked in this group felt strange at first, then became oddly normal for a while, then felt strange again once she did the math and realized that most of them were still in preschool when she was their age! She decided it was time she moved on, so she said her goodbyes and headed for her destination, the halfway point of the trail; once she was there, going forward and going back the way she came would take more or less the same amount of time.
She spotted the next distance maker, marked “1 1/2 miles” no more than 100 yards beyond the group she’d just left behind, and smiled as she realized her eagerness to have a good-sized audience watch her take off her bra had led to her going topless slightly ahead of schedule! There turned out to be a downside to being ahead of schedule; having the whole next half mile to cover with nothing to think about but what she was planning to do when she reached the 2-mile marker did nothing to banish the butterflies in her stomach. The trek to the next mile marker seemed to take forever; Tina began to wonder if it was missing.
Just as she began to doubt there still was a “2-mile” marker, she saw it a dozen yards ahead. What had seemed to be taking too long now felt like it was happening too soon. Tina was shaking from head to toe, but was determined to complete this part of her plan. She tugged on the strings at each side of her tap-pants and felt the waist loosen as the bows unraveled. She hesitated for a moment, then let go of the strings; the silky garment slid smoothly over her ass and down her thighs, settling on the ground in seconds. She stepped out of the small pile of fabric, still shaky but grinning from ear to ear at having completed the main part of her self-imposed dare.
Tina looked around, slightly disappointed she’d hurried through the last part of her hiking striptease instead of waiting for someone to come along and watch her final reveal. “Anyone sharing the trail with me now will just have to be satisfied seeing me already in the nude!” she said, laughing. She was proud that frightening as it had been at times, she’d done this on her own, with no help or backup, and no easy way to escape.
“But there is still a quick way for me to bail out now, even before anyone’s seen me completely naked,” she thought. Instead of losing her clothes, with no way of getting them back the way Kristen had done during some of her adventures, if she lost her nerve now all she needed to do was pull clothes out of her backpack; in a few seconds she could be wearing her blouse and shorts.
Despite feeling pretty triumphant at the moment, Tina knew if her trip back to her car became too challenging she might well give in to the urge to cover up. She had thought about how to take away any option to cover up quickly and had built the methods she’d decided on into her planning. Now she needed to decide whether or not to commit to any or all of her plan’s options, each designed to take away her own options.
Her two-mile long hiking striptease, complete with a few encounters with strangers had made her feel like she could take on almost anything, handle any situation, so she decided with no hesitation to activate the first option. She put her tap-pants into the main compartment of her backpack with all her other clothes, pulled out one of the small padlocks from a smaller pocket on the front of the pack, and threaded the lock’s hook through openings in the main compartment’s two zipper pulls. She pushed the hook into the body of the lock.
The loud click confirmed that the lock was now locked!
It could only be opened with a key.
A key Tina had intentionally left behind, sitting in a cupholder between the two front seats of her car, approximately 2 miles away.
Tina smiled as she tested her handiwork, confirming that the lock was indeed locked and that the tiny distance the two zipper pulls could be separated wouldn’t allow fishing any of her clothes out. “I’m gonna be naked until I get to that key, no way out!” she said, proud to have committed fully to her vision of what this hike would be like.
She had one last option to consider. The first option was all about not being able to chicken out and get dressed before the trek was finished. The second option was designed to keep her naked longer, and most likely be seen by more strangers, maybe many more! In her current euphoric state, more time in the nude seemed like a good thing, so she retrieved from the pack and eagerly put in place the hardware required for the second option.
The arrangement was simple but effective; a piece of chain wrapped around a birch tree’s 6″ diameter trunk, each end slipped through a metal o-ring on the pack, with the two ends of chain padlocked together. Once she clicked the lock shut the backpack would be tethered to the tree until the padlock’s key could be retrieved from the car and brought all the way back to this, the farthest point on the trail from Tina’s car.
Swept up in the wave of excitement she’d unleashed by getting completely naked and then completely denying herself access to her clothing anytime soon, Tina wanted the buzz her shameless behavior had provided to go on as long as possible. She knew herself well enough to be aware that pausing to think about this last bit of recklessness for very long would almost certainly result in her backing away from the challenge. She clicked the lock shut, settling the issue.
In well under a minute of setup time and just a few seconds more to click the lock in place, Tina had impulsively doubled both the length of her hike and the time she would have to spend hiking in the nude!
To be continued…