by A. J. Jacobs
I adjust my pose, lowering my knee. Nigel raises his eyebrows.
“Not like that. I can see your chopper,” he says.
I move my knee fast. I don’t want my “chopper” on film, even if I know Esquire would never publish anything with my chopper exposed.
Esquire is generally opposed to showing the real naughty bits—whether male or female—in their nude photos. This can be quite a creative challenge for the photographers. In my case, Nigel is using a tried-and-true strategy: contortionist, yogalike body positions. Another option would have been props. For our seventieth anniversary, I compiled a list of objects that Esquire had used to obscure the nipples on women’s breasts over the years: flowers, paperback books, peaches, suspenders, and on and on.
Even though I knew my chopper would be covered, I’d spent the previous three days worrying about its debut in public. I became irrationally obsessed with the idea that it might misbehave. Which is highly unlikely. It’s not like I’m thirteen. But what if it does? Stress can do strange things to the body. And if it does, I’d never live it down. I’m terrified of losing control in any situation, and this would seem to be the worst. So I took measures. I’ve brought along a small black-and-white photo of my late grandmother just in case.
“Your poor grandmother,” Julie said, as I scoured photo albums for the picture the last night.
“It’s not disrespectful,” I said. “It shows my respect for her.”
The photo, which I stashed in my shoulder bag, will hopefully never be called into duty.
“Try smiling,” says Nigel. “Now serious…Now look up for me.”
I tilt my chin toward the ceiling.
I’ve read interviews where celebrities claim to have felt empowered by their nude photo shoot. They learned to embrace the freedom and love their body and throw off the constraining shackles of repressed society. Not me.
I just don’t feel comfortable nude. Even when I’m alone in my apartment, I keep my pants zipped. No doubt this comes in part from my ambivalence to my physical self. Maybe it’s a Jewish thing—never has a race of people been so disassociated from their bodies. Like many Jews, I spent a lot of my life viewing my body as a way to transport my intellect from place to place. In my twenties, I had a brief half-year fling with weight lifting and StairMaster (guess what? I was single at the time!), but other than that, I haven’t logged a lot of hours at Bally Total Fitness. And it shows. My chest has an indentation where you could store a half cup of flour.
I’m much more comfortable exposing the contents of my mind—even when those contents are potentially more humiliating than my chopper. I’ll expose my ignorance long before I take off my T-shirt. I’m not sure why I’m okay with laying bare my brain.
Maybe there’s a sense of relief in confession. As I discovered while being radically honest, there’s freedom in keeping no secrets. Throw all the junk on the lawn and hope the good outweighs the bad.
Perhaps it’s so I can beat others to the punch. You’re going to make fun of the mole on my nose? I’ve been doing it for years.
Or maybe it’s that when I confess the most embarrassing secrets, there’s comfort in knowing that others are just as abnormal as I am. In my book on reading the encyclopedia, I made a throwaway comment about a high school fantasy I had involving pancake batter. A few months later, I got an e-mail from a guy who said he was glad to hear someone shared his passion for pancake batter. It was simultaneously the creepiest letter I’ve ever gotten, and the most reassuring. Well, more creepy than reassuring, come to think of it.
My sons, incidentally, don’t have the same problem with bodily repression. Zane, for instance, loves to get nude. A few months ago, I was on a book tour stop in Cincinnati. I had a prearranged video chat with Julie and Zane. I was on wireless at Starbucks and called them up on my Mac laptop. Julie put the camera on Zane.
And Zane decided, at that moment, that his clothes were restraining, and whipped off his shirt and pants.
I chuckled. Until I started to figure out how this might appear: a thirty-nine-year-old man watching a naked toddler cavort on his computer screen. I glanced around to make sure no one was calling the authorities.
“Okay, then. You can put your clothes back on now.”
Julie stayed offscreen. Did she leave? Did she have a pressing appointment?
Zane continued dancing joyfully.
“Julie, can you come back on for a second.”
I looked around the Starbucks. I had about forty-five seconds before someone would call Dateline.
“Julie? Please.”
Nothing.
“Okay, then, daddy has to go now.”
I snapped my laptop closed.
Maybe that’s the key. It’s a generational thing, this privacy gap. My mother still shakes her head in wonder that I use my writing as public therapy. And when I told her that I had to pose naked for my job, she looked at me the way I imagine John Walker Lindh’s mom looked at him when he said he was joining the Taliban. Meanwhile, I shake my head in wonder that kids in their twenties “sext” each other during work hours or post MySpace photos of themselves doing naked three-legged races, or whatever the kids are doing nowadays.
Nigel keeps snapping away. I adjust my face. I adjust my butt. I never get comfortable. I try to zone out and think of sandy white beaches. I fail.
“Okay,” he says, after half an hour. “We’re finished.” Finally.
I grab my clothes, ready for my walk of shame. As I’m leaving, I catch sight of the crew setting up for Mary-Louise. The table fills up with champagne bottles and plates of couscous and grilled chicken. My catering had consisted of a six-pack of Diet Coke and a bottle of wine. An eloquent statement of my place on the celebrity chain. If I thought my dignity was at a low ebb during the photo shoot, the buffet just took the last of it.
CODA
The photos came out a month later. The results were actually much better than they could have been. I swear I almost look buff. Never again will I question the miracle of good lighting. Or of black-and-white film, which makes everything about 50 percent less sleazy. You take a photo of a Delta Nu sorority girl lifting her baby T at Mardi Gras, and if it’s in black-and-white, it’ll somehow look poignant and profound.
Still, the reaction wasn’t good for my ego. You had your expected taunts from coworkers and friends, most saying that I had successfully torpedoed any slim chance I ever had of a real journalistic career. Someone anonymously scribbled on the photo “Time to invest in some Nair”—a reference to my hairy legs. We also got a half-dozen nasty letters. Most complained that my photo, which came right after Mary-Louise Parker’s beautiful black-and-white layout, ruined the portfolio. Like enjoying a fantastic tasting menu at a Michelin three-star restaurant, then getting botulism immediately after. “Well, at least there were no subscription cancellations,” my boss told me.
I do respect Mary-Louise for putting me through photographic hell. Fame is about exposure, whether it’s exposure of your medical records or your past peccadilloes or your onset tantrums. And she decided to give me a lesson in literal exposure.
And I give her this: She succeeded in her goal. I can never look at a nude picture the same way. I can still admire a nude photo, but I can no longer separate it from the context in which it was created. I can’t forget, as Mary-Louise put it, the loss of control and possible objectification.
What were the negotiations like between the editor and the model? Did the person getting photographed feel empowered? And if she felt empowered, was it just a rationalization for allowing herself to be stripped of her pants? What was the dynamic between her and the photographer? What CD was playing to get her in the mood? Did she hate the outcome? Did she like the couscous?
Before this book went to press, I got in touch with Mary-Louise Parker to ask if she’s made any other editors expose themselves. She hasn’t. But she did say she was satisfied with the results of our experiment. “I think you learned your lesson,” she said. �
�And I’m supergrateful to your wife. She really pushed you to do it.”
I told her that just a month ago, I finally got my first piece of positive feedback on the nude photo. A San Diego man e-mailed me asking for a JPEG of it. (He said he preferred me with my biblical beard, leading me to think he’s what you call a “bear.” I appeal to a very narrow demographic.) Mary-Louise seemed pleased. “I was actually hoping you’d get a lot of fans in prison to boost your ego. That was my real goal.”
Chapter Seven
What Would George Washington Do?
PREAMBLE
After Julie and I watched the John Adams miniseries on HBO, I had two reactions. The first was unsettling: if I’d been alive in Colonial times, I would not have been on the side of the patriots. This is an unpleasant epiphany for someone who’s always considered himself moderately patriotic. But I’m convinced of it.
I wouldn’t be a king-loving Loyalist, mind you. I’d be somewhere in the middle. John Adams estimated that a third of the country was patriots, a third loyalist, and a third neutral. That’d be me: neutral.
I don’t have a revolutionary nature. I’m not confrontational enough. I’d probably grumble about the tax on tea, but in the end, I’d cough up the money rather than putting on a feathered headdress and storming a ship. I mean, I’ve shelled out $3.45 for a tall pumpkin latte without declaring war on Starbucks. That’s truly intolerable.
I knew that the Founding Fathers took a risk. But it didn’t sink in quite how breathtaking their leap of faith was. They had to realize that their odds of failure were staggeringly high, like Rob-Schneider-winning-the-Oscar high. And if they did fail, they wouldn’t go back to their farms and lick their wounds and play cribbage; they’d all end up swinging from the gallows.
If I’d been alive, I would have sided with Pennsylvania lawyer John Dickinson, who wanted to keep negotiating with Britain, telling the Continental Congress they “should exhaust all peaceful approaches.”
“Precisely,” I’d say. “If we can get electricity from a kite, we can work out this tax dispute. . .”
So I’m thankful I wasn’t born in the eighteenth century.
The second realization was that I wanted to know more about George Washington. In the past, I’d found him the least interesting of the Founding Fathers. Undeniably great, but kind of bland. He was the market leader, sure, but he lacked pizzazz, sort of like Wal-Mart. Give me Ben Franklin and his wry, sometimes randy wisdom. Or Jefferson and his political poetry. Or cantankerous old John Adams, and his strange obsession with his compost pile (see note in back).
But in the miniseries, there was a moment that crystallized Washington’s greatness for me in a new way: John Adams had come up with a list of highfalutin titles for the new president (“His Majesty the President” and “His High Mightiness”). Washington scolded him: “Mr. President. That is all.”
What restraint! This was a man who could have crowned himself Czar Washington if he’d wanted to. He could have occupied a throne for life. He could have had a harem of big-bustled women. Instead, restraint. This humble act of heroism—which helped assure our democracy didn’t become a monarchy—is as impressive to me as Washington’s battles. We need more restraint, more civility. I’m writing this as the Dow continues its free fall. And what got us into this? You could argue it was a lack of restraint. Unbridled hunger for power by some rogue emperors of Wall Street.
The next week, while reading Joseph Ellis’s biography of George Washington, I stumbled across something extraordinary. Namely, a list Washington wrote called “Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation.” It’s exactly what it says: an easy-to-read rundown of how to behave while talking, eating, doing business, courting, you name it. There are 110 of them.
Providence—as Washington used to say—has provided me with my next experiment.
First, it’s a list of rules. I love those. Frankly, I miss living by the Bible’s laws. I miss the stable architecture, the paradoxical freedom from choice. This will be like living biblically, but with a Colonial flavor—less stoning adulterers, more bowing. Second, I’ll get a crash course in this remarkable man, the Founding Father in Chief.
And, most important, I’ll get to mainline the ideals of a long-ago, seemingly more civil time. I may never become a revolutionary, but maybe I can become a better leader and more dignified human being.
THE LIST
Washington wrote the Rules in his notebook when he was a young man. Rumors to the contrary, he didn’t actually come up with the 110 Rules in the first place—they were originally from the pen of a French Jesuit in the late sixteenth century. But he copied them painstakingly by hand. And the list had a deep impact on him. Many historians say it shaped his character throughout his life.
The list itself is an early version of Emily Post mixed with GQ, with a dash of Ten Commandments thrown in to give it heft.
The first rule is this:
Every action done in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present.
In other words, be aware of the consequences of your actions on others. An elegant notion that’s often ignored in our era of unabashed individualism.
Rule 2 is this:
When in company, put not your hands to any part of the body not usually discovered.
That’s right. The second rule that formed the character of our first president? Do not touch your pecker in public.
Turns out this advice is so important, and the habit so rampant among eighteenth-century men, it merits repeating just a few rules later.
Rule 11: Shift not yourself in the sight of others.
Okay? No pocket pool, as we called it in eighth grade. And ladies, no adjusting the bra straps.
This much is clear: the list has quite a range.
Some rules are general, some wildly specific. Some reflect the era, some could have been written this morning. And they will affect every part of my existence:
• The way I talk (“mock not at anything important,” “speak not of doleful things in a time of mirth or at the table”)
• The way I think (“in all causes of passion, let reason govern”)
• The way I laugh (not “too much at any public spectacle”)
• The way I squash bugs (“kill no vermin, or fleas, lice, ticks, etc., in the sight of others”)
• The way I sit (“keep your feet firm and even”)
• The way I eat (don’t complain about the food, don’t “gaze about while you are drinking”)
• The way I treat my friends (“Show nothing to your friend that may affright him”)
• The way I treat my bosses (“In company of those of higher quality than yourself, speak not ’til you are asked a question”)
Oh, and by the way, I will not be spitting for the next few weeks. Washington’s Rules were very opposed to spitting. And if I see spittle on the ground, I should “dexterously cover it up” with my foot. (For the full list of 110 Rules, see Appendix A.)
BASIC TRAINING
Before I try to spend a few weeks behaving like George Washington, I figure I’ll consult a man whose full-time job is to behave like Washington. His name is Dean Malissa. He’s the Sean Penn of George Washington impersonators. Or interpreters, I found out later. That’s the preferred term.
Malissa agrees to meet me and invites me to see him in action at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. So on a late September day, I join a group tour at Valley Forge. I’m standing next to Phineas Folger, a Quaker merchant who is wearing a Huskies baseball cap and is getting sunscreen applied to his face by his mom.
We’ve all been assigned a Colonial character to portray—it’s part of the tour’s living-history shtick. I’m Charles Carter, a “gentleman of the highest honor.”
On my other side is a seamstress named Abigail (aka Irene, a nurse from Seattle). She looks like a naturally aged Diane Keaton—and she’s a Washington groupie. She spends her vacations visiting places where Washington has slept.
I tell her about my project on the rules of civility.
“That’s what I love about George Washington,” she says. “He embodies those rules. He was virtuous. He did things for the right reasons—out of service.”
She pauses.
“Not like that Jefferson. He liked to stir things up. He’d do something awful, then say ‘it wasn’t me!’”
Irene throws up her hands in mock “What? I’m innocent!” pose.
We stop for a Colonial-themed dinner (the dessert includes Martha Washington’s coconut balls, which caused some snickering among the teenage congressional delegates). And then we walk to Washington’s headquarters. The door swings open and out strides George dressed in smart yellow pants and a blue waistcoat. It’s kind of startling how much Dean looks like our first president. He breaks six feet, has the president’s substantial nose, and a mane of white hair tied behind his head. (Later, I’ll learn that his Achilles heel is eye color—Washington had blue, Dean has brown. For close-up film work, Dean puts in blue contact lenses.)
“What I am about to share is of the utmost sensitivity and I need to be certain that all of you will keep this confidence,” says Dean-as-Washington.
He tells us that his spies inform him that the British plan to evacuate Philadelphia imminently. They’ve ordered all their laundry to be returned immediately.
“My friends, we entreat your fervent prayers.”
And now, he’ll take questions.
On the back of our name badges, the Valley Forge folks have suggested questions for our characters to ask General Washington.
The delegate from New York asks the old chestnut: “Are your teeth made out of wood?”
“No, they are not,” replies Washington. “I have problems with my teeth because my father had very bad teeth. I also like to crack Brazil nuts with my teeth and that’s not a very smart thing to do. I do have false teeth and they are made of animal bone.”