Yarns Without Threads 

A BIG RESPONSIBILITY! Always looking where you're GOING, trying not to get WET or RUN OVER. The best moments are mid-orgasm, or when you feel NOTHING. The rest of the time you're ON CALL, the caretaker doing the rounds, making sure everything's all right and you haven't blown a FUSE or something.

...

And then there's all the CLOTHING of the body that must go on, since it's ILLEGAL or TABOO or at least EMBARRASSING to be naked. The body is an ANACHRONISM -we can hardly bear to admit that it exists! So out you go, traipsing your body round the shops to buy SHOES for it and undies and all the other stuff, the trousers, kilts and dresses, the jackets, ties and T-shirts, summer winter spring and fall. The mothballs alone required to keep this operation going! And then there's all the make-up and jewellery and deodorants you need to MASK the body (or show it off), the shampoo and nailclippers and nail varnish and nail polish REMOVAL PADS, the Elastoplasts and sunblock and soap, the pumice stones and SWARFEGA. The body is so NEEDY. How it LUSTS for its acne gel and ASSHOLE cream, its Pepto-Bismol. Sucks down its glucosamine and echinacea and vitamins by the score, and still it wants more!

... So here she was ... Naturally, she was causing a bit of a stir in the high street. People were mumbling and grumbling behind her back, as usual. Couldn't they leave her alone for ONE MINUTE?

But it turned out they WEREN'T mumbling about Jen. Her customary position in society had been USURPED by a NAKED MAN, who was wending his way down the street wearing only HIKING BOOTS and a HAT!

Children giggled as he passed, men scowled, and women smiled (women LOVE looking at naked men). Jen RECOGNISED him from a news report she'd seen that morning. He was visiting every town in Britain NAKED to spread his message about ACCEPTING THE BODY. His own body was of course not accepted anywhere - he kept getting ARRESTED. Maybe that was why he was tackling this town at such a pace. His long legs were much in evidence: Jen had to RUN to keep up!

'Look at us!' he yelled. 'We're killing ourselves with SELF-HATRED! Where does it get anybody? People still DIE. Millions die every DAY because we hate ourselves! DEMOCRACY'S dying because we hate ourselves!'

A few people clapped. The naked guy stopped so suddenly Jen almost bumped into him.

'Who do we think we're KIDDING anyway with all this secrecy about the human body?' he asked the crowd. 'Animals? CHILDREN? They have bodies too!' A police siren could be heard in the distance, but he seemed unperturbed. 'It's all wrong,' he declared as he started marching onwards again.

'Hooray!'Jen cried, waving a candlestick in the air. She had discovered a new HERO (her Hero slot was unoccupied at present). This was the first time in her life that Jen had been told not to HATE herself and she LOVED it!

A police car now swerved right in front of the naked guy, blocking his path. Three cops jumped out.

'You can't ban the human body,' the naked man declared as they handcuffed him. They led him through the crowd to the police car, amid a few boos. 'You can't crush the body!' he yelled. But they DID, getting him into the car. Then off they sped, three smiling policemen and A NAKED MAN IN CHAINS.

Outraged, Jen turned to a woman near her and said, 'Since when did the human body become illegal? I didn't know clothes were COMPULSORY, did you?'

But the woman stared at Jen with naked ABHORRENCE and crossed to the other side of the street. The rest of the townsfolk meekly dispersed. It was High Noon all over again!

COWARDS. You let ACCOSTERS OF WOMEN roam free but a nice NAKED guy has to be LOCKED UP. What a ONE-HORSE TOWN!

Someone had to carry on his good work! DUTY IS ALL. Jen was tired of secrets, secret eating, secret wives in the attic, the secrets of her body. She was tired of hating herself (REALLY tired of it). EVERYBODY gets to have a body, not just the BEAUTIFUL, not just those in FIRST CLASS. EVERY BODY is a legitimate example of the species! Not fair to treat a single one with disdain - not even JEN'S. The body is where all the LIFE is! Even sick bodies, old bodies. They're ALIVE. Every defect, every illness, springs from LIFE. Every body SPEAKS of life. Sitting up or lying down - LIFE. Rich or poor, fat or thin, fit or feeble - life. They're JAMMED RIGHT THROUGH with life. Friend or foe, liked or unliked - LIFE.

Your body is not something APART from you, something bad to be JUDGED, CRITICISED, SHUNNED. It's YOU, not discardable until death. It's not NOTHING. It's the ONLY thing there is.

DELIGHT in its survival, delight in it!

Following these thoughts to their logical conclusion, Jen ripped off her clothes in the middle of the sad little high street... She wanted OUT of this instrument of ENSLAVEMENT! She then strode BARE-ASSED through the town, holding her dress under her arm and waving the candlesticks above her head, like a Statue of Liberty that finally understood what liberty was all about! The price of freedom is to go UNCLAD: freedom has BACKBONE, and that backbone's got to be VISIBLE.

People covered their ears, their EYES, as Jen drew near. But she didn't care. Equipped with nothing but a couple of candlesticks, a BIG WOODEN THING, and a few insights, she felt full of power and, curiously, LOVE. Outside a shop she gave all her coins to a tramp. The warmth of a beggar's hand!

It was still warm enough to swim in the stream at the bottom of the gorge, a popular place on sunny days. Jen swam NAKED, and tried to convince others to join her! The main reason people LIKE swimming after all is that it's a chance to get naked, or nearly naked, with other people. Apart from eating, fucking, buying furniture, or seeing the DOCTOR, swimming is one of the few occasions when everybody can mutually acknowledge that the body EXISTS.

...

... One by one, Jen suggested to people that they give up their body-hatred and squeamish-ness and, unsurprisingly, they LIKED the idea.

Any minute now that REPORTER BITCH would be back, writing a story on the village where naturism was rife and insurrection in the air! No doubt she'd attribute it all to the WATER SUPPLY or something, but it was Jen, JEN, who had changed - and that whole rural backwater had had to change with her, she was so Mata Hari-esque!

NAKED NURSE TAKES THE PLUNGE 'Skinny-dipping' is not just for the skinny, apparently. A very fat nurse, some might say a woman almost too fat to be a nurse, has begun a campaign to get her patients out of their beds and out of their clothes!

On sunny autumn days the local bathing-hole now churns with a hellish mass of heaving heathen forms who show no sign of shame. The police have been notified.