Conversation

Tonight, Saturday 15 November 2008

People on AOL really drive me crazy sometimes. I have been hosting the 'Naked YF At Home' chat room for a while now, at least since it was summer and the 'Home Nudist' room was usually full, mostly of non-nudists who come in trolling for pics of our naughty bits. The 'Naked YF At Home' room was started as an overflow place, hopefully for girls about my age who do as I do and want a safe place to chat about it where there is an active bolt-holder who will boot out the naughty people. However after all this time I have concluded that there are no girls about my age who like lying outside or lolling about the house naked and like to chat about it, and that there are really only men who like to fantasise about seeing, and probably doing a lot more than seeing, a girl about my age doing that.

One of the questions the men seem compelled to ask me is what the male members of my family think of this. They tend to assume that my male family members 'like' to see me, usually hinting not so subtly that my being naked round the house inevitably arouses my father and brother in a sexual way. I then explain that my brother is 2-1/2 and really doesn't care what we look like, clothed or not (the exception is in my blog, 7 October). And I explain that my father now has three daughters and certainly knows the difference between the relationship he has with each of us and the one he has with his beautiful young, very legally married wife.

Nevertheless the men online all claim that I am lying or living in denial or else that Daddy is 'less than' a 'real man' because he doesn't find naked teenaged girls attractive. I always say that no 'real man', no Christian, and no GOOD parent would have any even remotely sexual attraction towards his own child. That's just sick, and I tell the men online who assume it is true that it's just them assuming that because they think weird sick stuff like that is sexy, or else because they would be guilty of it themselves and they don't want to feel like the only one who might be wrong. It's what my father calls the 'Hilary Clinton school of morality' --to blame the other party for what you yourself are guilty of-- but that's another issue altogether.

One guy online this afternoon, however, put it to me like this: 'I bet if you sat on your father's lap you'd find out.' This comment got me very distressed. I didn't like thinking about it in any way and yet I couldn't seem to forget about it. Finally tonight, after supper, for which I put on my robe (and socks of course), I ascended the steps to Daddy's little office in the third floor of our tower and knocked on the open door.

(I am of course not sure I have all my dad's words right, but I went over this and it's as close as I remember.)

'Hey,' he said, looking up from the computer screen.

'Hey,' I said, closing the robe round myself, and sat on the edge of the sofa there.

'This is just email,' he said, and leaving it on the screen he turned in the chair to face me. 'What's up?'

I shrugged, looking out the window at the black sky. It had gone dark more quickly because of the front coming in. It'll be raining in a few hours. 'I kind of had something to ask, but I'm not sure about it now.'

He nodded, leaning back in the chair and looking at the window too. 'Well, you don't have to feel uncomfortable asking me anything, but if you do, then don't ask me till you're not so uncomfortable about it.'

I shook my head and then bravely faced him. 'Do you mind it that Jessy and I are like this so much?'

He smiled. 'Like you were this afternoon, and, yesterday? No.'

I shook my head again. That wasn't the question I'd really wanted the answer to. 'Does it....' No, I couldn't ask it that way either. 'Do you like seeing us like that?'

Daddy smiled more, and then looked down, sort of at my knees in the robe. 'Well, I do,' he said, 'but I'm not sure it's how you think I do. Or, how you are afraid I do.'

I made half a smile then. 'What does that mean?'

He looked up then, not quite at me, and rocked a little in the chair. 'All men like to look at pretty girls. All men like to see naked girls. But there are two ways of looking at them.'

I was listening. 'Okay....'

'Some men are easily excited by anything that reminds them of sex, even if it's totally inappropriate. Like these guys will catch a glimpse of their own daughter in the shower, and then they turn away and go, "Oh, man, I want to look but I can't!" And they turn away in a second, like it hurts them to see her in there.'

I laughed. 'But you've seen us like that, even in the shower, and you always turn away too.'

'Of course I do, but it's not because I'm afraid to look at you.' He smiled. 'It's because I'm teaching you that that's what a gentleman would do, any gentleman, not just your father. It's form of showing you respect.'

I nodded. 'I know,' I said. 'You always show us respect.'

'You're my child,' he said. 'Would I not respect you?'

I smiled. 'No, you always would.'

'I would. But I would respect anyone's daughter if I inadvertently saw her naked in the shower or something like that. I would just think, that's some good man's daughter in there; if I have any respect at all for women, or for men and fathers, I don't treat her like a sex object. She doesn't belong to me, and there's no agreement about it.... It would just be a cowardly kind of Peeping-Tom thing to take advantage of the opportunity to see some poor girl like that against her will. Even a husband.... Would you marry a guy who stood there ogling you in the shower?'

'Ew, no.'

'Well, then, see? But you know this. A gentleman never imposes on a lady. I mean it's hardly noble.'

'No,' I said. 'It's not. It's like the opposite of noble.'

'And it goes both ways. If you choose to be naked in front of me, because you trust me and respect me, I have to show you the same level of trust and respect back. It's not about me and what I want. It's about what you feel comfortable with. And if that's what you feel comfortable with in front of me, I'm just going to respect you for showing how much you trust me. Does that make sense?'

I nodded. 'Yes, of course. I mean, it's not like we think you would treat us any differently like that, because we're still your daughters.'

'Well, yes. And you do know me, Janine. I have always treated all your friends the same as I treat you, with the same kind of respect. I mean we laugh and joke around a lot, but really the fact is still that I'm still a gentleman and you are still ladies, and there is always a line to be drawn; but believe me, Janine, it's not because you and your friends are potential... I don't know, "conquests" for me, but precisely because you are not.'

I nodded. 'I know,' I said, feeling much better about this whole topic now.

'I mean, you know, I can't watch porn. I can't watch it at all.'

'Daddy--!' I giggled-- and blushed.

'I mean, I have seen some of it, not so much watched it, really--' he saw me looking wryly at him-- 'other people's bachelor parties, when I was younger-- okay, Uncle Rick's-- and it always makes me think that that poor girl there is some guy's daughter, who used to have her school pictures taped on the refrigerator and brought home cardboard cutouts of the Easter Bunny and had a beautiful new dress for Confirmation and curls in her hair and dimples in her smile. How could I ever think of someone like that as a sex object?'

I smiled, but I had tears in my eyes from that. 'I know what you mean,' I said.

'And I know people talk about your stepmother,' he said, 'being so young and beautiful and all, and that I must be some kind of perverted old fool. But I swear to you, her age had nothing to do with it at all-- I might have married her if she were ten or twenty years older than she is, because I married her because she's such a good teammate and so unselfish and so positive of a person, and that's what I needed seven years ago and that's what I want for the rest of my life. And the fact that she was committed to staying a virgin until marriage didn't make me want to rush things at all, not how people said, but it did make me value her like nothing else in the world. It takes a special kind of woman to commit to something like that, and that's something that she and I have always tried to impress upon you, and your sister, you know.'

'I know, Daddy. You know how I feel about that.'

'I just hope you will keep to it.'

I nodded. 'I promise I will.'

He sighed. 'And so, in answer to your question, I do like seeing you and your sister's bare bottoms out there--' I laughed then, still blushing-- 'because you represent to me two happy girls, good girls, who aren't afraid of anything, especially not their own family. There isn't anything sexual or inappropriate about it, not to me. I know what naked girls look like. I've seen a couple of them myself, you know.' He smiled a little.

I know there were probably more than two, more than Mommy and our stepmother, because of what I have heard. No matter how hard a parent tries, if he is well-known enough someone will have said something about him that he wouldn't want his kids to hear someday. (At least Daddy is no Billy Ray Cyrus!)

'It's just that I would be a bad parent indeed, Janine, if you DIDN'T feel comfortable lying out there like that. It's your way of showing you trust me, and this family; and I always draw myself up to anyone's trust in me. It's just what I feel is right. It's noble, it's respectful, it's gentlemanly, it's Christian. What kind of father can't be trusted by his own child to accept her as she is, unconditionally?'

'Yes. I know, Daddy.'

He smiled at me. 'Besides, you know, you and Jessy are just so cute--!'

I laughed and pretended to swing at him.

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