I’m behind the recycling bins in the alleyway beside Drury’s café, yanking off my blouse, bra, skirt and knickers, stuffing them into a Sainsbury’s bag. My heart hammers as I wait for someone to pass. I hear the clink and clatter of cups, laughter. A woman praises a dog. Surely staff will use the bins? But no one comes by and after ten minutes I put everything back on.
It was my therapist’s idea. She thought I wasn’t connecting with people.
“We connect.” I heard her sigh before she even sighed.
“You need friends.”
“No one wants to talk to me.”
“And you don’t want to talk to anyone,” she said with that annoying little smile of hers. “Sitting alone isn’t healthy. Step out of your comfort zone.”
“Like how?”
“You’ll know,” she said and did her glance-at-the-clock-your-time’s-up thing.
On the bus home I ran through scenarios. Steal something from the Co-op? Knock on doors claiming to survey deviant sexual habits?
Actually, I knew all along what I needed to do, I just hoped for something easier. Drury’s is close, which is why I started there, but Drury’s is a bust.
After some baked beans and a nap, I put on a fresh top and skirt and head to Churchill Square, an area I loathe because of the crowds.
I choose the busiest pub, taking a corner table beside an empty one. Almost everyone is crammed against the bar, wanting action, alcohol, each other. I order a double vodka, down it in one. Slowly, very slowly, I unbutton my shirt, slip it off, fold it before sliding it into my bag. People shove and shout for drinks, oblivious. I unclip my bra. Still nothing. The skirt is easy, a wrap-around thing from Oxfam. All I’m wearing are knickers and sandals. A bearded guy at the bar raises his glass and I think, Finally, but he thrusts himself towards the door, through the crowd battling to get inside. I slip off my knickers, shifting my chair so the table doesn’t hide my nether regions.
Someone yells, “No one likes us, we don’t care!” Everyone is too drunk to notice a naked person, especially given some of the customers barely wear anything anyway. There’s a bare-chested man in shorts, two girls in mini-skirts and halter tops, breasts tumbling out.
“Do you mind?” I hear. A man, his pint sloshing as he settles down. The empty table, no longer empty. He’s two feet from my naked thigh, my unwaxed pubes. I fix my gaze on a woman with red hair gyrating about, her girlfriends laughing hysterically.
“That’s what I came here for,” the man says, raising his glass at the woman. “But it’s no effing use.”
I look at him. He keeps looking at the woman.
“All I want is my wife.” He downs his beer. “Packed her shit into the car and drove off to her mother’s, that bitch.” His shoulders heave. He glances at me. “She’s okay. Her mother. I didn’t mean that.”
This is the first time a complete stranger has spoken to me other than to tell me to hurry up get on the damn bus. Must be the drink.
“Don’t know what I did wrong,” he mutters. He’s sobbing now. “Fuck this,” he says and peers into his empty glass. “What’s the point to life?”
I lean over and pat his arm. “I’m sorry.” See, talking to someone, I say in my head to my therapist.
He has blue eyes. Laugh lines. Other lines, deeply scoured into his forehead and bracketing his mouth. “You’re a good kid,” he says. I watch him leave and then put my clothes back on as slowly as I’d taken them off.
By the next morning I’m still too nervous to go the full hog so I clutch my plastic bag and walk along Portland Road taking off one piece of clothing after the other. The same routine: take a breath, undo one button, take another breath, undo another button et cetera until the blouse slips off. Into the bag it goes. An elderly woman smiles at me. Perhaps she thinks the bra is a bikini? Perhaps her eyesight isn’t good, or her mind, but by the time I’m fully naked, I’ve passed six people, eight if you count children. Only the children stare. The adults carry on chatting with each other. Cars roar past. I’ve had enough for today so I turn back, perching on a low wall to dress.
The next day I do the same thing. This time a man pruning his fuchsia says, “You’re that flasher.” He has a menacing grimace. He’s squeezing his shears open and closed making an unpleasant swishing noise but then he leans down to tug something from between the flagstones. “Bloody weeds.” He starts attacking them with his shears. “It’s not even my job. It’s the landlord’s job. We had an agreement.” He straightens. “It’s in the contract. Medical exemption.” He flings his hands up. I worry the shears will hurtle from them but they don’t. “The man lives in Ibiza. Ibiza!” He turns and walks through his open door, into darkness.
I keep on down the road, my bag banging against my thigh. When a young man heads towards me I barely flinch. Nor does he. He just slides his eyes down my body and then away. I feel weirdly comfortable about this.
I’ve failed my task. It needs to be harder.
Sainsbury’s. The guard won’t let me in starkers, so I do my usual, removing one piece after the other as I wander the aisles. By the time I’m naked I’m in the frozen food section. A woman says, “You’ll catch your death,” and insists I wear her cardigan which barely reaches my navel. She grabs a bag of peas. “It’s not the first time,” she says, and I think she means me until I see the bruise beneath her eye. “Used to take me for a curry every Sunday, and now it’s this.” She giggles, embarrassed, as if it’s her fault. My thighs mottle with cold.
“Leave him,” I say to my surprise.
“I keep hoping it’s the last time.” And then she looks at me. “I should,” she says, pressing the peas to her face. “I will.”
A shop assistant strides towards us and I’m tugging down the woman’s cardigan, but it’s not me he wants. “You can’t put food to your face,” he yells. “It’s unhygienic.” The woman places the peas back in the freezer, enraging him even more. “You’ve touched it! You buy it!” He turns to me. “You’re a witness!”
“I’ll buy it.”
“You bloody won’t.” He waits until the woman is at the till, counting coins. I slip her cardigan over her shoulders.
I’ve had enough. I don’t want to be a sounding board for anyone’s rage or pain. I empty my bag and get dressed in the cereal aisle.
The next morning, I don’t even bother to dress. I leave the house without a stitch, clothes in my trusty bag. A cop car stops. Okay here we go, this is it. The passenger window winds down.
“You’ve a long walk,” he says. He leans across and opens the door.
“Shouldn’t I be in the back?”
“Don’t like driving taxi,” he says waiting until I’ve snapped the seat belt into place.
“Aircon or plain air?” He gestures vaguely at my naked body, “Plain air, I guess.” My hair flies about. He drives with one hand on the wheel. Traffic piles up until we’re barely moving. My thighs stick to the seat. A young couple dart across the road, licking ice creams.
“Would be nice,” the policeman mutters. The crowds are all bright colours and children screaming to ride the roller-coaster. A man in tattoos and leather jerkin leers through the windscreen. “Bit early for nicking hookers!” He slams the glass with his palm. I wait for the policeman to get out and arrest him but he doesn’t, he just shifts into second when the lights go.
I roll my body to the right to unstick my left thigh.
“Used to think I’d make a difference,” he says. “Stop the baddies, help little old ladies, keep the peace. Anything but this…,” and I wonder if he means carting flashers off to prison but he’s gesticulating at the crowds. “Glorified nightwatchman.” I start to say it’s daytime but he thumps his fist against the steering wheel. “And everyone hates you.” He looks at me. “They don’t tell you that at police academy.” He hangs a right at Sussex Square, a left at the electric railway station and then pulls up.
I’m waiting for the handcuffs, but he says, “Not too many nudies today.”
I’m not sure I’ve heard right. Are there other people like me, trying to leave their comfort zone?
“The naturist beach?” he says.
I realise I’m not spending the night in a cell. I must look crestfallen because he says, “I hear it’s great. I’d do it myself if I didn’t have this tire around my waist.” His waist looks just fine to me and I almost tell him this but instead I unstick my thighs from the seat and get out.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Anytime.”
I lean through the window. “I don’t hate you.” He looks at me and then away. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down. And then he’s gone, siren blaring for such a split second I’m not sure it happened.
I step over the tracks. The beach is filled with people in swimsuits. “Bit further along, love,” says a woman dragging her Shih Tzu behind. The first naked person I see is a man doing the standing ab workout I once saw on YouTube. I wave. He doesn’t wave back. Two men lie on the sand, a single towel covering their faces. I wonder if they’ve applied sunscreen to their penises because they’re very red. A woman jogs past, her breasts flapping one way and then the other. She doesn’t even glance my way.
I make a little cushion out of my plastic bag of clothes and sit on it. It’s not very comfortable because my sandals are inside so I take them out but it’s still uncomfortable so I sit on the sand instead which is hot and scratchy and all I can think about are the places I’ll have to dig sand from. I watch the waves. I lean back. A couple wander past my head.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi,” they say.
Mostly it’s men here. One has the biggest penis I’ve ever seen and he stands in such a way to give it the most air, legs apart, arms dangling slightly towards it as if to direct attention in case anyone somehow misses it.
I’m hot and bored. And then despairing. Once again I’ve failed to leave my comfort zone and my session is tomorrow. I’ve long suspected I’m a disappointment to my therapist, and now there’ll be proof.
There’s nothing to do but get dressed and leave. The next day I head to my appointment. I’ll walk the whole way as penance. I notice I’m getting some weird stares, especially from people I’ve seen before. I check if I’ve left a button open or put my blouse on inside-out. The only odd thing I see is the man in his patio, pruning another of his fuchsia bushes. He’s starkers.
“Gorgeous day!” he calls, waving his shears. He looks much happier other than the little frown he has when he notices I’m fully clothed. Then I see the young man who’d glanced at me, and he’s starkers too only this time I don’t even get a glance. Across the road a couple in the nude are chatting away. Even the guard at Sainsbury’s has joined the trend, other than his menacing-looking belt. I’m going to be early for my appointment so I’ve time for a shop, but I daren’t go in without taking off my clothes, so that’s what I do, right there, in front of the guard. Barely a flicker of interest in my direction.
It’s getting exhausting all this dressing and undressing. I’m getting pissed off. If everyone steps outside of their comfort zone, there’s nowhere left to step. Not to mention what’s going to happen to the world economy if everyone stops wearing clothes? Thank God for winter.
By the time I’ve tromped up and down Sainsbury’s aisles and bought baking potatoes and a slab of cheddar and a couple of courgettes I realise I don’t want to see my therapist. Ever. But the very thought of calling to cancel doubles my heart rate. Really? Is this stepping outside of my comfort zone? I can barely speak into her answering machine I’m so nervous. But then it’s done.
That’s when I see the cop car. I’m curious if cops are doing it too. I saunter towards it. It’s him, the same policeman who took me to the nudist beach and he’s fully clothed. He rolls the window down. “Wondered how you were getting on.”
“Going home to bake potatoes,” I say because I can’t think of anything else.
“I love baked potatoes,” he says. He glances at his watch. “Shifts over. I don’t suppose…?”
“Of course,” I say, reaching for my clothes.
“I won’t look.” And he doesn’t, he waits patiently while I do the rigmarole and then I climb in and give directions to my apartment. We don’t talk much. When he’s inside he settles himself on my sofa as if he’s done it all his life. He is the first man ever in my home and I’m not sure how to behave. I pick up the remote and turn on the TV so there’s something to keep him company while I cook.
“Naked Attraction?” I say waving a courgette at him.
“Nah,” he says. “I’d rather just talk. You’re so easy to talk to.”
I’m on the sofa now, the courgette resting in my lap awkwardly. I make a little annoying smile that feels uncomfortably similar to the kind my therapist uses. “Have you ever stepped out of your comfort zone?”
He looks at me. “It’s what life is, being uncomfortable. Just breathing can be uncomfortable.”
“Yeah,” I say. “It can. I’ll put the potatoes in.”
“Groovy,” he says, which actually does make me feel a bit uncomfortable. My annoying smile turns into a grin. “Groovy,” I say as I make my way to the kitchen, swinging the courgette like a baton. I notice there’s a message on my answering machine. It’s my therapist. She’s got a special assignment for me, and she’s certain it’ll really help me, lots of people are doing it, in fact she’s even doing it herself and she feels utterly amazing, so free. I don’t bother calling back.
Image by Teslariu Mihai on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
- Comfort Zone - October 21, 2025
Loved this. I was completely rooting for the narrator. The ending with the therapist was perfect. Congratulations.