Only two days until Naked For Alessia is out, and this is the last of the previews I’ll be posting. It’s from a return trip to Vienna and involves a cross-town journey, on foot, and naked…

It was still light. I was very naked, and very visible. The doorman looked me up and down and was about to say something. I looked down at my phone, noted it directed me to turn left, and started to walk.

I have learned the hard way that putting your hands over your body is not conducive to moving fast, and I decided I would rather move fast than slow, even if people saw every part of me that they could ever see. It’s not like they couldn’t tell I was naked anyway.

The problem was there was only so fast I could move. These heels were just too damn tall, but I wasn’t going to stop and take them off. Getting the straps off would take more time than it’d save.

And I couldn’t even try to run. Not only was it too risky, but everything bounced, and I’d draw a lot more attention to myself.

So, phone in hand, keeping an eye on its directions, I walked as briskly as a naked woman in high heels can walk down a busy street.

At least people got out of the way. Most were on their way back from work. They stared, many stopped, some took photos. Thankfully I didn’t know enough German to understand the comments.

It was thrilling, though. It was also terrifying. All I had was my phone.

It directed me to turn left, into the park. My heels crunched on gravel. It slowed me down, but I could never have walked on it in bare feet. There were fewer people here but many commuters used it as a cut-through.

An old man on a bench said hello. I gave him a wave and smiled.

A piece of gravel worked its way between my shoe and the sole of my foot. I had to stop and fish it out. Two men in their twenties stopped in front of me and said something I didn’t understand. I looked at them and smiled, which must have looked like I was agreeing to something as one came and stood beside me as the other lined up his phone and took a photo of the two of us standing together. They laughed and said something else, but I had to get going.

You can pre-order Naked For Alessia on Amazon.