She put her hand on my forearm. I felt the hairs stand on end. “Exactly!” she said, “And most of the critics are men who can only think of sex, sex, sex when they see a naked woman.” She paused. “And they can think that if they like. I don’t mind. Most of them can’t help it, but if they at least try to understand what they are seeing and how they are reacting to it, then I can forgive them.”

I felt it was too early to ask her about her relationships. From what I had managed to find out, there had been very few of them, and they’d been short-lived and from a time before her nude performances began.

“But to those who see you…,” I said, “If you don’t mind me saying, you have an amazing body, and you wear sexy red shoes, bright red lipstick and dark eye make-up and, for most men, the only time they see a naked – sorry, nude – woman who looks like you do is only in pornography.”

Mia waved a finger at me as if she were about to contradict me. “Yes! Exactly! But you are wearing lipstick, are you not? And eye make-up? And dainty high heels too?”

“Well, yes, but I’m… I’m not naked.”

Mia smiled the smile that I was beginning to learn meant that the discussion was going exactly the way she planned it. “And what do you think clothes are for, eh? To keep warm, yes. Maybe in Finland. And in the UK too, no? But in Spain? Spain is so often too hot. No, clothes are not for warmth. We wear clothes to make ourselves look more attractive. I look at you in your trousers and your blouse and I can imagine the curve of your hips and your narrow waist and your soft yet pert breasts with their small pink nipples. Or maybe brown. I have no idea whether you have those things or not, but what my mind does not do is fill in these missing details with sagging and folds of fat. No, it paints a very pretty picture, imagining what you might look like naked.”

Read the rest of Interview With An Artist, and 11 other ENF stories, in Naked Women in Shorts

“How come,” I continued, “How come you’re naked?” I didn’t want to offend her by making it sound like it was a bad thing. “I mean, the tattoos are really great, and you look great…” She smiled kindly, but was still going to let me keep digging myself into this hole. “You lost a bet or something?… Or you turned into the Hulk and your clothes didn’t fit and then you turned back?…” I tailed off and Natasha laughed.

“Oh, no,” she said, “I live here. With Georgia.” She tipped her head in the direction of our party host who I’d been introduced to, and then summarily bored witless earlier.

“Oh,” I said, and was about to add “I see…” but then realised that it didn’t explain anything at all.

“No,” Natasha said, “I just… prefer it this way. I used to hang about in the house naked when I was by myself, and then Georgia would come home and find me like it and at first she thought it was weird, and then she got used to it, and then I’d completely forget about it and answer the door to some friends without putting anything on first, and then they’d get used to it too, and now I’m pretty much naked all the time, unless there are a lot of strangers around.”

Read the rest of Dressed in Tattoos, and 11 other ENF stories, in Naked Women in Shorts

“Now,” she said, “How does that feel.”

Her eyes were sparkling and I felt as if she had admitted me into some kind of inner circle. I wasn’t used to being so… accepted and it made me feel warm inside, but my skin was tingling at the realisation that I was nude and helpless, for the moment at least.

“Even… odder,” I said, “I feel… I feel so naked.”

Lisa smiled as if that was exactly what she wanted.

“In case you hadn’t noticed,” she said, “You are naked.”

We both laughed and I took another nervous sip from my glass.

“Here,” she said, and with one hand firmly on the small of my back and another more gently touching my stomach she pushed me gently backwards and I let myself sink down onto the sofa.

Lisa sat beside me and picked up her own gin and tonic. She tapped the glass against my own.

“Cheers,” she said with a wink. Her eyes stayed fixed on mine as she sipped.

Read the rest of A Very Grown Up Party, and 11 other ENF stories, in Just ENF

“Now imagine,” she said, “Imagine you’re sitting here naked. Just me and you, and everyone else is where they are now. Nobody knows, but you know the waiter is coming back with our coffees in a minute. Hold that fantasy in your mind.”

With that, I saw the waiter approaching from the bar with two espressos. I tried to imagine myself sitting here naked and confident, that we would exchange a glance, that he would look at my body and approve of what he saw, and then he would leave, thinking I was out of his league.

But instead of imagining that, my mind imagined me curling up in the chair with my arms clamped over my chest, and then trying to wrap the table cloth around myself.

The waiter placed our coffees on the table and Elisa thanked him before he left again.

“And?” she said.

“It was… terrifying,” I said, “I would have to hide.” The plotline of my book was going to need a bit of a rethink; sitting confidently in the nude didn’t seem very realistic at all.

Elisa sat back in her chair. “You see?” she said, “I told you that you would not know how it felt. You needed to know that to be able to write about it.”

Read the rest of The Author, and 11 other ENF stories, in Naked Women in Shorts