WIP Wednesday - The Naked Remedy

I'm in the throes of finishing off this novella for an upcoming Amber Allure pax. The pax is about connections made via communications, like Grindr, online dating, and even letter writing. Mine is called The Naked Remedy and is about a young closeted man in his 20s who falls for a blog owner.

This is how it opens...

*_*_*

I've seen a lot of naked guys online. Don't believe me? Look at the facts. I'm a twenty-six year-old closeted gay man with undiagnosed social anxieties who still lives at home. I do have a job, though. I'm not that pathetic. I'm a sonographer at the hospital which actually pays well enough for me to rent a place of my own if I wasn't so nervous about breaking out of my comfort zone.

So looking at naked men on my laptop? That's been the model of my dating life for the past seven years.

But when I saw him...he might as well have been the first. I stared. A lot. I didn't back out or click forward or scroll down or do anything that would erase him from my screen. It was like I had only just discovered how beautiful the male body could be.

He stood in roiling surf, the pinking sky behind him announcing the coming dawn. His sturdy body faced the horizon, arms thrown out in welcome, the smile he threw over his broad shoulder at the photographer radiating joy, but just as compelling as that were the scars that snaked down his right hip and thigh.

Though light brown hair furred his legs, arms, and even the robust curve of his ass, the twisting scars were devoid of any texture but the badge of long-healed skin. The right calf was noticeably smaller than its mate, more evidence of whatever tragedy had caused the scars in the first place. I felt like a voyeur, staring at the imperfections, but I dismissed my unease. He obviously knew he was being photographed. He'd even stripped down for it.

This was a man who wanted to be seen.

No text accompanied the picture. It wasn't a surprise. People shared other people's pics all the time, and this one in particular hadn't merited more than a few hundred when I stumbled across it. When I scrolled down through the list, however, an anonymous fan added a link with its note.

The dude from the Naked Remedy. He rocks.

The Naked Remedy. I'd never heard of that. A guick Google search brought it up first, though, so I clicked on it to get more information.

I'm not sure if my world changed when I saw the blog or when I first saw his picture. I suppose in the end it doesn't really matter which was responsible. The important part was that nothing was the same after that.