by Forest, Will
“Ah, but it isn’t always clear, though, is it?” asked Quique, still playing with Manny’s buttons.
“In the sand a line is drawn, and with the tide the line is gone,” Christopher uttered, faking spontaneity.
Everything in Moderation
The sacrifice for embracing nudity is that clothing becomes a prison.
Christopher returned to warm and humid weather in Alabama, and the mere anticipation of putting clothes on to leave the house repulsed him. He put on his shirt and felt manacled. He pulled on his socks and felt shackled. He stepped into his pants and felt smothered, desecrated by stifling excess. His breathing became shallower with every button joined, his blood pressure rising with the zipper on his jeans. Inhaling deeply and calmly, he rationalized the need for clothes as layers to keep warm when appropriate, but then he only festered in frustration that the opposite was not true, that he was not free to shed as many layers as he wanted to keep cool. He fervently desired an equilibrium, if for no reason other than to control his emotions, to moderate between the sunny elation he felt while nude and the opaque depression that clouded around him when he had to get dressed, forced to enclose himself in textile swaths, buried alive like an entourage mummy in someone else’s idea of heaven.
So here he stood, on campus, steaming indignantly beneath his umbrella, fully dressed in the rain. Just a few weeks ago he had taken advantage of a morning thunderstorm to shower, soap in hand, on his patio! The front door to the Humanities Building was locked. He tried the back door, and the one down by the service entrance, and finally the one near the muddy trail to the library. They were all locked, and his office key didn’t work in any of them.
“It’s 10:00 AM on a Sunday,” he muttered to himself. “What, we’re going to assume there’s only one temple on Sunday mornings, and this ain’t it? So this is submission, buckling under to what a society or a government dictates. I’ve got my clothes on, isn’t that good enough? What poverty of imagination! What theft of liberty! This is a public university!” he ended up shouting into the wind.
City, city, city... he thought he heard, echoing from the bricks of the empty courtyard in the soft rain. He looked at the trash bins, the squashed cigarette butts on the ground right next to the trash bins, the wet sidewalk, a pink poster—soaked and stuck to the pavement—reading “VOTE STEPHANIE PARKER HOMECOMING QUEEN.” The thirsty wind licked the empty, shining parking lots, as desolate as the church parking lots on weekdays.
What kind of a city is this? It’s no one’s residence, no one lives here. With these unsightly 1960s concrete prisons they call a college campus, it’s no wonder.
The state had run out of money for the Humanities Building, leaving only the courtyard—at least the courtyard—finished in brick, in between two massive, gray, uninspired, three-story wings thick enough to certify the building as a storm shelter. Underneath the red hurricane symbol in the courtyard, the dedication plaque bore the name of the state’s vilified former segregationist governor as president of the council of higher education.
In the middle of the courtyard stood a crude monolith featuring the chiseled names of the various humanities departments, with arrows indicating in which wing they were located. Christopher cherished the interdisciplinary nature of the humanities, but this sign separated everything, banishing curricular traditions to the ends of stacked hallways: LANGUAGES, PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY, ENGLISH, GOVERNMENT, ANTHROPOLOGY. A far cry from Thomas Jefferson’s “academical village,” he thought, where students and professors could be in contact all the time, not just in class. Prolonged contact: more chance for ideas to flow. The thriving “village” is the city hidden in “university,” the city that is the only hope of artistic renaissance, because with its sheer number and variety of people, especially young people, any innocence and arrogance and even insouciance may flower. It’s true that nature breeds fresh perspectives, but only in the city or at least university can the contact and interchange among those perspectives take place.
Christopher recalled conversations with Daphne and Angela as he walked the length of the Humanities Building, brandishing his umbrella against the wind, to the final door left for him to try. What would it take to turn this campus into an academical village? Better yet, how to act on Angela’s research at the Fri Skola, to shift from the academical village to the Palace of Fine Arts? How can I create constructive contexts for being nude around campus? Really, what better place for social nudity?
He recalled the results of a student survey touted at his new faculty orientation a few years earlier, and quickly sketched out a deductive reasoning approach to the challenge of moving beyond midnight streaks and bachelorette party striptease requests:
College students show better, more original learning outcomes when there is more frequent student-faculty social context, both in and out of class.
College students seek social contexts for being nude.
Thus, college students may show better, more original learning outcomes when there is more frequent student-faculty nude social context, both in and out of class.
“Our daily activities don’t need to be performed while wearing clothes, weather permitting” Christopher said to himself out loud, stepping around one puddle and spanning the next. “Maybe I can envision a time when nude college sporting events are disrupted by groups of clothed streakers…”
As he turned the corner of the building, a gust of wind unloosed a sheet sign—the announcement of some fraternity council event—from the tree trunks where it had been fastened. The soaked fabric collapsed to the ground, suddenly unveiling a view to the university’s recently constructed replica of the Tholos ruin at Delphi, Greece, the site of Apollo’s oracle. There were three contiguous columns remaining along the monument’s circumference, positioned at the entrance to the fraternity housing area, silent in its Sunday-morning stupor. Christopher could not help but see the Tholos replica differently after this dramatic revelation. “Nothing in excess,” he mused aloud, recalling the Apollonian slogan. Everything in moderation. What if…the best tack is to tolerate any state of dress or undress, like we talked about at the restaurant? Isn’t this the meaning of ‘clothing-optional’?
The key finally turned. Dr. Ross entered the cavernous Humanities Building auditorium from the back and fumbled around until he found a light switch. He shook out his umbrella, opened it upside down, and used it as a basket to carry his wet shoes, socks, and pants. Wearing just his shirt and boxer briefs, he proceeded down the steps of the central aisle, across the proscenium and out the side door, through the hall, upstairs and across the bridge linking the two wings of the building, and down the Department of Philosophy hall to his office, where he enjoyed a particularly productive clothing-optional Sunday designing the Humanities Seminar.
Assert Control of Your Body
Way too fast, shit! 81 in a 65 zone! Peel out quick, flashers on, sirens on. White Toyota Celica, pulling over quickly, good. In-state tags, not expired, lights work fine. Tag number checks out, no problems. What’s the deal? Just a few steps to the driver’s window. Knockout! Sweet Jesus what a looker. Probably a college student coming back from a party. Produces driver’s license and insurance card. Eyes a little red. Hair long and blonde, dyed. Seatbelt crossing between her boobs makes them stand out. Cleavage bottomless. Complies with demand to step outside the vehicle. Breathalyzer gives a 0.06 blood alcohol level, that’s only 0.02 under the legal limit. Close enough! It’s another lucky night! Just a few cars whizzing along the interstate at this hour. All right now, ma’am, step on out here and stand with your hands on the vehicle. Good, now spread your legs. Nothing under her hefty hooters. Better check between them. Nothing. Nothing between her smooth, firm thighs. Ma’am, turn around, now. I’m gonna need you to extend your left arm and then touch your nose with your left hand. Good. Can you walk a straight line? No, don’t go fallin’ over now, I’m not gonna wanna think you’re drunk, see? Are your clothes in the way? Is that it? Is it your skirt? I think
your skirt’s too tight, ma’am. No, I’m serious. Your skirt’s too tight. I’m serious. Ma’am, I’m gonna need you to take off your clothes right now and then we’ll try the straight line again. That’s right, your clothes – are you that drunk? Shoes too, yep, take everything off. That’s right. That’s better. Holy cow look at those bazookas. No tan lines anywhere, maybe she’s a nudie. Or else a tanning booth queen. Now here we go again. Can you walk a straight line? Keep goin’. Okay now turn around and walk back to me. Good. Now jump up and down. Higher. Jumping jacks! Jiggling jugs! Alright! Keep going! Ma’am I think you had a little too much to drink. You were cruisin’ along at 81 did you know that? Now honey don’t cry about it, look, if I were you I’d give me a big ol’ hug because I’m gonna let you go with just a warning this time, since you’ve been so cooperative and all. That’s good, oh that feels nice, you’re one good looker you know that? Here let me help you get your clothes back on, now just remember it’s not good to drink and drive, honey. You tell me where you’re headed and I’m gonna follow you to make sure you get there alright. No, my patrol car doesn’t have one of those cameras that film everything, that only happens on TV. Sure wish it did. Except, then I guess I’d be in trouble. Good thing I left my own camera running! Yes, you can have my name, I’m officer Ted Stipes…Miller, Jack Miller.
***
“Jennifer, I have a doctorate in education, and I’m studying the way people relate to their bodies when learning. But I’m not a professional counselor. I don’t have a lot of authority to talk with you about what happened, even though it does have to do with body image…but I do think I can help you as a friend. That’s why your uncle called me.”
Jennifer Prichard glanced at Dr. Saucedo, who was certainly not fat but definitely on the voluptuous side. The professor wore a loose blouse, no bra, a flowing, brightly patterned skirt and sandals. Jennifer, in her hiphugger jeans and navel-exposing t-shirt, looked away, staring at the pattern on the throw rug inside the door of her mom’s trailer. Ed had gone outside to wait with Tucker so that Jennifer and Angela could talk privately.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Angela’s nostrils twitched at the acrid odor of cigarettes that permeated the trailer.
“It was my fault,” the younger woman said, still staring at the rug.
“What was your fault?”
“I was speeding.” Jennifer stared at the professor, angry to have to say those words.
“Right, right, I know. You shouldn’t have been speeding. That is a very serious offense, and for everyone’s sake, let’s hope you learned your lesson. But no matter what happened, the patrolman had no right to make you undress.”
“Who says he made me? I was playing a game with him, and it worked, didn’t it? I got no ticket, no fine, and an escort home.” Jennifer fidgeted with her watch.
“So it was your idea?”
“What?”
Angela resisted her urge to sigh. This was someone else’s daughter, not hers, she reminded herself. “Was it your idea to take off your clothes?”
“No. But when he searched me he felt me up all over the place, so I knew what he wanted. So, I wasn’t, like, surprised when he said something like ‘I need you to take your clothes off.’”
“So you played along?” Angela regretted this query as soon as it was out of her mouth. She had wanted to avoid leading questions.
“Yeah, I even played drunk. I stumbled a couple times when he asked me to walk a line, but it was because I couldn’t see anything. He thought I was drunk. I drank one beer at the party—that was it. I know I wasn’t drunk.”
“What would have happened if you had refused to undress?”
Jennifer’s gaze lowered to the rug and stayed there for a few seconds. “I guess he would have fined me.”
“You don’t think he might have used force on you, forced you to take your clothes off?”
“I don’t know.”
Angela began to think there wasn’t much she could do to help Jennifer, or even needed to do to help. It seemed probable that Jennifer had rationalized the whole event and felt like she was acting maturely.
“Okay, Jennifer, just out of curiosity, when you were standing there naked and he was telling you to hop on one foot or whatever, how did you feel? Sexy?”
Jennifer exhaled sharply and looked into the eyes of her interlocutor. “Scared. I felt scared.”
“But you were playing along, right?”
“Nah. I guess ‘playing’ isn’t a good word for it, because he held all the cards. I was naked, and he was dressed. I think it was his uniform—the helmet, the pistol, the dark glasses—and the flashing lights on the patrol car: it all really intimidated me.”
Angela felt relieved to hear Jennifer admit her feelings. It was a good first step.
“But, you know what? I think if he had tried to rape me I wouldn’t have let him. I think I would have react…oh, shit, I don’t know.” Jennifer burst into tears. “He probably could have! He could have raped me and what was I going to do about it? I was scared! And it was like I was powerless. He put his hands all over me, my breasts and legs…I asked him if his patrol car camera was on and he said only TV cop cars have those…cameras.” Jennifer sobbed.
Angela took Jennifer’s hands in hers. “Jennifer, you don’t have anything to be ashamed of. Your uncle thinks he knows who the officer is, even though he gave you a fake name. And there have been rumors about this man doing similar things before. I want to congratulate you for having the courage to confront your emotions. And I want to make three recommendations.”
Jennifer dried her cheeks. “What?”
“First, come with me to La Rioja.”
“When? Why?”
“Hell, let’s go right now. It’s only about twenty minutes from here, right? Why? Because it’s important for you to assert control of your body. You were forced to strip, you were fondled, and you were close to being raped. If it weren’t for the handful of times you’ve already experienced being nude on the beach, you might be doing much worse right about now, psychologically speaking. At least you know—and you feel, which is just as important—that nudity, even or especially in front of other people, can be an affirmative, terrific experience. So let’s go today - we can still make it for a couple hours before the sun goes down. It’ll be like a purification.”
Jennifer sniffled. “Do you think maybe Sr. Espinoza will be there?”
“The ice-cream man! I forgot all about him! Does he still work there?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been in a long time now.”
“Well if he’s not there we’ll get ice cream somewhere else.”
Jennifer grabbed a napkin and blew her nose. “What’s the second recommendation?”
“Have you taken your HUM 200 requirement yet?”
“No.”
“Take it next semester with my friend Christopher Ross. He teaches philosophy, and your uncle knows him. They met at La Rioja!”
“What’s the topic?”
“Aesthetics and the Body.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“It’s about how cultures represent and display the human body, including when nude. Look, just take the course. He’s a great guy and I think you’ll appreciate the subject matter.”
“Okay, as long as it fits in my schedule. But I’m not the one who needs to learn about contexts for nudity and displaying the body or whatever you said. I hear that from Uncle Tucker all the time. It drives my mom crazy. The cop—he’s the one who needs to learn about that.”
“That’s my third recommendation. With your story alone, I think we’ll be able to denounce him if you’d be willing to pick him out of a line-up. We also have all the evidence your uncle has compiled. And if you spread the word about what happened, lots of people can learn to watch out for corrupt officers like him.”
“I’ll think about it while we’re at the beach. Let’s go!” Jennifer started to get up. “What are we going to tell Mom?
”
“The truth. I think she’ll understand today.”
“You don’t know her like I do.”
“Maybe not, but Tucker’s here, and he’ll back us up. He’ll stay here with her if he needs to.”
They stepped outside the trailer, blinking in the afternoon sunlight. Jennifer sneezed.
“Photosensitive,” she explained to Angela. “Coming out into strong sunlight overwhelms my system. Everything looks so…” She sneezed again. “Clear.”
Ed yelled, “Gazoontide!”
“We’re going to the beach for awhile, Mom.”
Ed exhaled and dropped her cigarette stub on the ground. She stamped on it. “La Rioja?”
“Yes,” Jennifer said, preparing for the worst.
Ed looked at Tucker, who put his arm around her. Then she looked at Angela. “Go,” she said simply. Tucker squeezed her shoulder.
***
Some years earlier, Sr. Espinoza had realized that a willingness to shed his clothes would open up new business possibilities at La Rioja, and he had enjoyed a monopoly on the sale of ice cream there ever since. His inventory always featured traditional Mexican popsicles with tropical flavors: guava, passion fruit, coconut, lime. Pushing his “La Michoacana” cart along the dunes, he would alternate high-pitched, vowel-bending cries of “Ice cream!” and “¡Helados!” He sold his last two paletas that day—one mango, one guanábana—to two immensely pleased women who skipped away into the waves brandishing their popsicles on high, whooping heartily after each sweet, creamy lick.
3
DECEMBER
December
Open Up
Dr. Tabitha Lasseter-Peebles, her pressed outfits hanging from the hook inside the backseat passenger’s door, pulled out of the drycleaner’s parking lot into traffic. A crimson flash caught her eye as she drove through the intersection.