Story to date: Mark enters college a virgin knowing nothing about sex or women. The college is remarkably permissive with public nudity and sex commonplace. Within a few days Mark falls in lust with Janice. As the first semester unfolds he develops an increasingly intimate relationship with his male roommate. His girlfriend leaves him for a friend, Drew, and Mark hooks up with actual love: Sylvia.

Second semester his relationships deepen and he learns more about himself and his environment. Over the next summer he and Drew room together and start a business before Drew becomes mentally ill. Sophomore year the business expands rapidly, and Mark's sexual partners (both female and male) increase. Near the end of the first semester Sylvia uncovers a likely cure for Drew's illness. It works and he returns to help run the business.

Nate joins the group, then his girlfriend as the Chief Financial Officer. Both fit in remarkably well with the FWB atmosphere.

Drew polled the faculty. What kinds of business services could an Anthony student provide based on his or her major? It turned out to be almost endless.

We had decided to set up a Liquid Autumn job brokering website for Anthony students. Students put together profiles and skills lists and examples of the kinds of work they could do. I started programming the website but Sylvia stopped me.

“Mark, you’re a mathematician,” she said. “I love you, but your programming skills are kind of like a first-grader with crayons trying to stay within the lines. You can afford to hire somebody better.” We hired computer science majors at $25 an hour and quickly had a winner.

Students working directly for us on no-brainer stuff like indexing got $15 an hour. We were paying Nate $25 an hour for his work. Marcy suggested that this be standard for every professional worker gerbil, and that they be charged out to local businesses at $45 an hour. I did the math (it was my major, after all). We’d make $20 an hour minus overhead for a couple hours a week times a few Anthony students. This all sounded like last summer’s grass watering job. We took out an ad in the Ledger and sent out flyers.

When the four hundredth Anthony student signed up I re-did the math. That was the end of the second week. Chemists and graphic artists were the first to be hired, and computer programmers followed quickly. Not everybody got work, but the first four hundred averaged four hours a week each. The website was a million dollar a year business on its own.

When we started allowing for fixed price work, our net doubled in one quarter.

The computer sciences and business faculty helped some enterprising students set up a business services company with one client: us. They uploaded profiles, maintained the website, enabled job listings, answered phones and e-mails. We paid them a flat rate plus transaction fees. It was easier than hourly. A couple of years later we started reselling their work world-wide. That alone was $17 million the first year. Net. Ten years later, the net from that division was approaching a quarter billion a year. But I digress.

I was beginning to wonder if I was relevant any more. I was bullshitting with Nate and Janice one day while Drew and Marcy worked their asses off. Then Drew got a call from Dr. Nakamura, head of the business department. “Please see me immediately.”

Nate and I grabbed beers and got Marcy to take a break. In the cottage she and Nate were always nude. Janice was dressed formally in a see-thru teddy. I had walked over from my dorm in my jockeys. That was it, just friends drinking and talking. Of course, when Sylvia, Valerie and Jay showed up, we couldn’t help ourselves.

I’m not sure if I have the details right. When Drew returned I think I had just cum in Valerie’s mouth. Jay was plumbing the depths of my ass with his fingers while he ate Marcy’s cunt. Nate was fucking Sylvia, who was jacking Jay’s dick. Janice was taking pictures while pawing her crotch. All perfectly innocent fun. Then Drew spoiled everything.

“Holy shit! Dr. Nakamura wants me to teach a seminar this summer on startup businesses. He’s put together an accelerated program for me next year so I can start my MBA the year after that.”

I was stunned. “Drew, I’ve seen you play basketball,” I told him. “You’re fucking hopeless. If we actually had a college team you’d never make ninth string.

The NBA is out of the question.”

“No, silly,” said Sylvia. “It’s not basketball, it’s the other NBA: Naked Business Advisors.”

That became the tag line on our website. We asked Marcy’s brother, the lawyer, to give us some wording that would make sure nobody thought it was a sex cam site. The fine type filled two pages and included the word “prurient” seven times. What baby food had to do with it I had no idea.

We finally settled on “This is not a sex website. You will never see a business advisor actually naked.”

Of course, that wasn’t entirely true. One of the first hires was a male underwear model for an ad agency’s photo shoot. We sent them a picture of Brett in his boxer briefs. The ad agency asked how much for overtime. The twelve hour job earned him almost $300 and us about $200 after overhead. Brett admitted he did get naked a couple of times while changing. He also got lucky with the photographer.

A few months later Drew was asked to visit a business downtown and consult on how to raise their margins. He drove the company car (we’ll get to that later on) to the business, walked in and started talking to the female owner. Only when a customer walked in and said something did Drew realize he had forgotten to wear any clothes. The female owner said she thought the view of his dick was just part of the consulting package.

Even Jay got a job. He wrote an advertising jingle and quoted four hours. He was thrilled when $98 and change wound up on his PayPal card. He also said that it had actually taken him six hours. So we changed his profile to a minimum of six hours. The ad agency sent his work to its other offices and soon Jay was turning down everything over twelve hours a week. He got college credit for the writing, of course. When he started charging fixed prices he was clearing $5,000 a month.

By the fourth week the website had an average of 3,150 hours a week of billed work for local businesses and their more distant offices. After overhead we were netting more than $50,000 a week just from the NBA. I absently asked Drew one day why other colleges didn’t do this. I knew the look that crossed his face: “Holy shit, there’s money to be had at that.”

We grew at a phenomenal rate. We rented an unused storage building on campus. Gerbils used it to meet with clients. There was a receptionist gerbil area. The rest of the building was evenly divided into two rooms. They were labeled “Naked” and “Afraid.” Naked gerbils met with clients in one room. The other was reserved for the prudes.

Nate identified a potential problem and, as usual, had an artful solution. He wrote the script and directed the play.

He recruited a comely female senior English major who would graduate shortly and didn’t give a shit. She played the lead. A sophomore computer programmer played the supporting role. One of the Dean’s poker buddies played the customer.

The woman met the “client” in the Naked room, something about a writing job. She started by letting her fingers wander over her vulva, then into her canal, then getting more animated. She toyed with her breasts.

“So, Mr. Smith (yeah, not very inventive), you want your readers to be aroused to action by my writing. You know, your $45 an hour can buy a lot more arousal, and not just for your readers.” She unzipped his pants and pulled out his dipstick. The Dean’s poker buddy owed him one.

“So, for $45 an hour I can do a lot more than just write,” the English major said. She then added, “If you want a boy and a girl that’s only $45 an hour for each of us.”

On cue the programmer jumped up and told her to get out. “You’re a fucking whore,” he said. (Honest, Nate did get better with his dialog later). “Get out.

“Sir, Mr. Smith, I apologize. Yes, we are the NBA, the Naked Business Advisors. No, we don’t fuck for money.”

The story spread quickly. Everybody got the message. It was okay to work naked. It wasn’t okay to offer sex for money.

Why do that when everybody else was giving it away for free, anyway?

In the middle of the second semester disaster struck. Marcy was rushed to the hospital after collapsing in the office from overwork. I had no idea. Neither she nor Nate had said anything, and Drew was pretty oblivious to his surroundings. Janice had noticed and tried to tell Drew, but, again, it was the oblivious thing. Without Marcy we were dead in the water.

Her brother actually bailed us out on that one.