On the cage, the money, and the morning I stopped pretending There's a robe on the back of my chair that I almost never wear. I keep it because it's pretty, and because it's a good reminder: the difference between a naked man and a clothed man is one decision, and most people never make it. I made it at twenty-seven. Everyone called it early retirement. Everyone was wrong — it wasn't early, it was overdue. I was raised in clothes the way some children are raised in religion. Pajamas with the feet sewn in. Socks to bed. A shirt on at the breakfast table like a tiny suit of armour. And underneath all of it, this boy who wanted out — out of the fabric, out of the heat, out of the pretending. I didn't have language for it. I had a creek behind the house and the specific, unbearable pleasure of taking my shirt off where no one could see. I spent the next fifteen years being a closet nudist. Clothes at work. Clothes at dinner. Clothes, clothes, clothes. And then, one ordinary Tuesday, my software did what software does when you build it well, and the money started arriving whether I was dressed or not. So I did the obvious thing. I quit. Now my alarm is the light. My wardrobe is a sarong I wear at a low, indecent knot and nothing else. I have a lake, and a forest, and a house with mirrors in it because I like watching myself move, and a rule that has never once failed me: if I'm home, I'm bare. People ask what I do all day, as if nakedness isn't an occupation. Darling, it's a whole practice. There's the water in the morning. There's oil after, because a body you love deserves to be touched well. There's the garden, which gets more attention than it needs and less than it deserves. There's the mirror work. There's the afternoon appointment I keep with myself, which you'll hear about. And there's this: every day, someone tells me I'm lucky. I'm not lucky. I just finally stopped negotiating. If you've been waiting for permission to live with your skin out — this is it. Take off the robe, my love. There's a whole Eden in your own house.