####
Rebecca Winslow looked at the spreadsheet and let out a sigh. No matter how she looked at it, the town of Coral Point was on the verge of bankruptcy. It was going to take a great deal of creativity to avoid going under. Being the youngest mayor of a dying town wasn’t a glamorous position, but she loved her community, and was determined to save it.
Coral Point was founded in the 1950s, a small town on the Southeastern coast of Florida. It’s not that it wasn’t a nice place, but it wasn’t terribly convenient to get to, and didn’t offer anything that wasn’t available in abundance elsewhere. There was one road in, with a causeway leading over a swamp to the town itself, which was built on a peninsula. The architecture was nothing special, best described as 1950s bungalows, there wasn’t a school, nor any families with kids living in town for that matter. There was a main street running through the center, where a good number of the shops and restaurants were boarded up. The four story hotel near the end of the point was looking threadbare. The entire place was looking run down, and the population had shrunk from a high of 1,500 residents in the 1960s, to barely 600 now.
One thing Coral Point did have was a beautiful beach, the white sand surrounding the town on all sides. Unfortunately, there were a lot of nice beaches in that part of the world, and it didn’t draw in many visitors.
Rebecca stared again, willing the numbers to show less red and more black. At the current rate, they wouldn’t be able to keep the lights on for another year. She wracked her brain to find a way to bring Coral Point back to life.
She sighed and closed her laptop. She walked out onto the patio and looked out towards the beach, where the long shadows of early evening were starting to stretch across the sand. She decided to take a walk on the beach to clear her head.
She headed down the sand covered path leading onto the beach. She looked up and down, and there wasn’t a single person in sight. She started walking along the sidewalk that paralleled the beach, watching the waves flow across the sand.
The warm September breeze plucked at her light sundress, picking up the hem and blowing it up over her stomach. She smiled and pulled it down over her small black thong. As if it had a will of its own, it blew up again. Rather than fight with it, she just pulled the dress over her head and folded it up.
She glanced around to see if she was still alone. She grinned and pulled the thong down to her ankles, and quickly stepped out of it. She hadn’t been on a nude beach in a long time, and the warm ocean breeze felt wonderful on her naked body. She took her small bundle of clothes and walked over to the sidewalk and stashed all of it underneath the nearest bench.
She walked down to the water, and waded in, enjoying the sensuous pleasure of the water washing over her. She floated on her back for a little while just letting the waves move her.
“That’s it!” she thought, standing up in the shallow water with a jolt. She waded back to shore and ran back to collect her clothes. She hurried home without putting them on, too distracted to notice her neighbors were watching her from their patio.
####
The next day, Rebecca hurried into the town hall. She smiled at her assistant, and rushed into her office.
“Hold my calls please, Janine!” She called out as she stalked by.
“There hasn’t been a call in a week, Madam Mayor.”
The pretty, petite blonde grinned at her distracted boss and went back to work.
Rebecca rolled her eyes and her assistant a mock stern expression. She firmly closed her door and sat at her desk, pulling out her laptop and plugging it in. She started outlining her thoughts in broad details, until she had enough to work with.
She copied the outline into an email and sent it to Janine, asking her to come in when she’d read it.
A few minutes later, a she heard a timid knock on her door.
“Come in, Janine!”
The door opened and her assistant’s head poked around it. “Are you serious?”
“Completely. Come in and grab a chair.”
“Wow. That’s going to cause some waves.”
“I know, but we’re in trouble. This is a way I think we can recover. I know I just dumped this on you, but seriously, tell me what you think?”
“I think for the most part, you’ll find people receptive to the idea, everyone around here is mostly a beach bum at heart. Nude beaches aren’t that unusual though, so I don’t honestly see how that’s enough to bring back the town.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking on that. Maybe we take it further. What if we took Coral Point Clothes-free? I mean, would that chase you off?”
Janine sat there for a minute, a pensive look on her face. Nobody could accuse her of being a prude, but other than a trip to a topless beach with her boyfriend a couple of years ago, she’d been pretty strait-laced, and even her swimwear was pretty conservative.
Rebecca started to get worried, the longer the silence lasted. If even Janine wasn’t up for this, she’d never get the town to vote on it. As it stood, she was already apprehensive, likely for the same reasons she suspected Janine was. This wasn’t a huge leap personally, but there were still implications that could change both her personal reputation and that of the town she loved.
Janine finally spoke, choosing her words carefully. “I don’t know about me, I’ll have to think more about it, but it can’t hurt to put together a proposal, and work through the idea. Hell, it might not even be practical. I’m willing to help you figure it out though.”
Relief and gratitude flooded Rebecca’s emotions. She had one ally already.
“Right, then let’s get to work!”
They spent the rest of the day, brainstorming on the newly dubbed “Project Eden.” By the end of the day, they had a basic plan, and figured out what topics they would need to research for presentation.
A week later, they had a basic plan for how to revive Coral Point to bring to the council, and eventually the voters.
A successful vote would lead to setting a date for the change. Janine and Rebecca’s research came up with a good day for it, July 14th, otherwise known as National Nude Day, a little over ten months away.
###
Janine knocked on her office door, and stepped in.
“Good news. I just finished going through all the bylaws, and there’s nothing about public indecency or dress codes in them. In fact, there’s nothing legally preventing me from stripping down right here.”
“Nothing indeed! We should set that as the new dress code.”
Janine laughed for a second, then stopped. “Maybe once we get it past the council vote.”
“I’m holding you to that.”
####
Rebecca knocked on her neighbors’ door.
Frank and Lilly were in their mid-forties although you’d never know it. Both of them seemed to have found the Fountain of Youth somewhere along the lines, as either could have passed for 35. They moved to town fifteen years before and got involved right away by joining the town council. They enthusiastically supported Rebecca’s mayoral run, making themselves indispensable allies.