There seems to be some confusion. Last night, as I sat and reflected on a rather wonderful experience within the realm of the "average" DOMAI short story, one of my fellow conspirators asked me a question; he wanted to know if my desire to see women naked came from a hormonal imbalance. Yet I can say without hesitation that my intents were completely honest and innocent, and that no lust entered my body or my mind.

That has forced me to do some further retrospective study on what this experience - my personal relationship with the female form and with DOMAI in particular - is all about.

Allow me to backtrack for a moment, as I am a stream of consciousness writer. Yesterday I spent some time with several friends on a camping trip, and we were camped next to a rather calm, cool river. Naturally, the urges of young adulthood turn that water into something far more alluring during the moonless night. A female friend (let's call her "Sarah") suggested that we all go skinny dipping, and being the consummate fan of your site, I immediately said "sure, sounds like fun."

When we all headed into the water, we swam in our bathing suits for quite a while, and no one made any move to change that fact. So, as we were letting the tide take us and basically heading back to shore, I decided to call everyone's bluff. I excused myself, saying that I did indeed intend to shed my shorts, and swam upstream a bit. Sarah said that she would love to swim naked as well, so as incentive I proved that I was indeed skinny dipping by holding up my clothes. This seemed to be enough of a cue for her, as she immediately removed her bathing suit and held it up as well. Everyone else... er... followed suit (pun intended, sorry :)

During our swimming, we all made a very conscious effort to remain under the water, so that our friends could not see us naked. I don't know why we did this, perhaps it was the final great barrier that we would have to overcome, but unfortunately I was enjoying myself too much to be the trendsetter on this one.

However, I did have the fortune of looking at Sarah right as she attempted to stand up, and realized that the riverbed was much more shallow than would allow her to stand at full height and retain her desired since of modesty. The image, now permanently seared into my retinas, was quite simply breathtaking. I am a fan of a good A-cup, and she was definitely that; her breasts were perky, firm, glistening with the slight reflected light of a streetlamp which seemed a thousand miles away. And, the water was obviously a bit cold for her. Would that I could describe in more succinct words the perfection of those soft jewels in the night, I would spend the rest of the essay writing on that topic alone. Words simply do not do her justice.

Just as quickly as I received that much blessed view, it was taken from me, as she sat back down and the river once again enveloped her. We soon had to don our attire again and head back to shore, but, as has often been spoken before in such stories, I shall never forget the beauty that I had presented there.

But it did not feel like lust. I had no desire to betray our bond of friendship right there and have my way with her -- quite the opposite; I felt that to do so would be to erase the wonder of that moment. So if my reaction was not lust, then it was not the standard male reaction to bare and exquisite beauty. In that respect, I suppose, I do have a hormonal imbalance, but one which I would not give up!

The answer to my question came this morning, as I arose with the dawn and began making preparations to serve breakfast and strike camp. I had cause to look out onto the river, and I could now see something previously hidden from me the night before. Around the next bend in the river was an amazing cliff, which the early light turned into a fantastic display of reds and golds and greens. Again, the view was stunning, the awesome power of God carved out of the rock to stand for many millennia as a testament to a wonderful, loving creator. Words, again, could simply not do justice, and I found myself staring in awe at the beauty of nature. It felt as though, in that brief moment of time, I had grown closer to my Lord.

It was the same feeling I had had the previous night, though I daresay breasts and cliffs are two very different things! (Unless you're a lonely Frenchman, and end up naming a mountain range Les Grand Tetons!)

Long ago, there was a term to describe this sensation; Platonic. Plato's ideal of love was transcendence from a merely physical passion to an almost religious appreciation of things universal. In Christian terminology, a spiritual enlightenment brought about by the pursuing of an earthly physical relationship. This is what Dante expressed in his Divine Comedy toward the object of his affections, Beatrice, who it must be said was not his wife! Yet most in the Christian faith still regard this as the greatest work of poetic art in the last two thousand years.

That's what I felt last night, and what I feel every day when I visit the DOMAI website -- I feel a spiritual enlightenment, a pulling of my heart that leads me to think of things greater than my job or my hobbies ever could allow. The beautiful women displayed here are not intended to be the objects of crude, hustler-esque lust, but are instead portrayed in an innocent, thought-provoking manner, which lends itself to a much higher ideal. After all, "a thing of beauty is a joy forever," and in these pictures may be preserved the awesome creation of God for another millennia.

So it's awe, not lust. That's also why I can't help but stare.

Regards, Ned