by Forest, Will
“Where’s the dipping sauce?” the woman wanted to know. “Do you have ranch?”
Daphne glanced around the restaurant: no supervisor in sight. She sat down in the other side of the booth. “Just try it with a squeeze of lime—see? Here, try the carrot.”
“Look, that’s real nice and all, but I’ll just wait for the food I ordered.”
“Yeah, OK. Uhm, I’m just curious: do you ever eat vegetables?”
“I ordered okra. That’s a vegetable.”
“Do you ever eat raw vegetables?”
“No. Why do you wanna know?”
“You can tell a lot about a person by the food she eats,” said Daphne.
The woman fingered a celery stick. “Well, I’ll bet you can’t tell I have a beautiful daughter. About your age. She has a very nice figure, fortunately, and is very smart. And brave! I guess I live through her, vituperously as they say.”
“Right...Yeah, vicariously? That’s the mother-daughter bond. But she lives through you some too, you know…You don’t need plastic surgery, you just need a healthier lifestyle. Do it for her, but mostly do it for you.”
“How?”
“Little by little, cold turkey, I don’t know. And maybe you could get some sun, and let your hair grow out? Really, I know I’m not anybody to tell you that. It’s just a thought. And...uhm...I think the Coke machine is fixed now and your appetizer is probably ready, let me go get it.”
“Let’s forget the Coke. And please cancel the sandwich and onion rings. I’ll just add these veggies to the sampler plate.”
“Sure thing.”
“Thanks.”
Three hours later Edaline Prichard walked through her front door carrying grocery bags filled with Nicorette, bottled water, carrots, granola bars, sunscreen, a jump rope, and a bright pink tank top she found sale-priced off-season. She placed the bags on the kitchen table, with the little styrofoam shell of leftover fried okra and mushrooms, and sat down.
Her head collapsed onto one outstretched arm even as the other reached for a granola bar. “Lord help me!”
A Philanthropy of Misunderstanding
“Get in the hot tub. Now!”
Christopher undressed and submerged himself while Angela glared at him, her hands on her hips. Then she ripped her own clothes off, hurling them onto the deck. Christopher had never seen anybody get naked so furiously.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Wha...?”
“You know what! ‘Studly GCU prof dangles at bachelorette party’!”
“Angela, I don’t know what you mean.”
“It’s a video on one of these uncensored upload sites, starring the likes of you!”
Christopher swallowed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what? That you were being filmed? You should have anticipated that!”
Angela hopped into the tub, splashing as much as possible onto Christopher.
“The thought did cross my mind.”
“I’ll bet it did! Probably it crossed your mind the first time you and I sat together in this very tub. You could have told me then! It would have been only a week or so after you did it!”
Christopher hung his head.
“Well? What have you got to say?”
Christopher gave up on calm and decided to match her passion. “Look, you only live once, right? It was by request! I was so flattered, and it made me feel alive and curious, and in my body, and those are good things to feel, damn it! All that week, I had trouble sleeping, and I had this disturbing dream, and…”
“You didn’t…tell me…about the…dream…either?” Angela punctuated with splashes.
“Stop splashing, and I’ll tell you. The dream was that I wanted to give a gift, to give of myself a gift, but nobody’s interested, because when they ask what is the gift, I say, me, dancing, with a heap of joy, without a stitch of clothes. And people are alarmed, or confused, or smile politely, but no one understands the urgency I feel. Not the urgency with which I want to give the gift—because I do feel rather awkward about it, I realize in the moment—but the urgency with which I feel the gift is needed. It’s a philanthropy of misunderstanding. And then when I see that some other guy has already begun dancing—naked, joyful, innocent—but that people look away from his dance, and they carry on with their conversations as if nothing were happening, I feel an abysmal sadness. People take pictures and point, but they won’t dance. I disrobe and begin to dance like the other dancer, knowing that it’s just the two of us, that we’ll be stared at and singled out, but that there is no one else who will join us.”
“You’re making this up.”
“I’m not making it up.”
“Well since you didn’t tell me when it happened, I’ll never know for sure, will I?”
“What difference does that make? I still could have been making it up!”
“So you admit you’re making it up?”
Christopher caught a glimmer of uncertainty in her gaze, and splashed back.
“I’m not making it up, and you know it!”
Angela wiped the water from her face. “It’s a beautiful dream. But you messed up. What you performed may have been joyful, but it wasn’t innocent. It was lewd.”
“I recognize that now. At the time, it was like I needed to get it out of my system. I don’t have any desire to do it again.”
“This is all over campus, Chris. Don’t you understand this has dealt you a serious blow?”
“Says who?”
“Just about everybody.”
“To hell with everybody else. They’ll come around. The person I care about is you.”
“Then you should have told me.”
Christopher sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I should have told you. I didn’t want to hurt my chances with you, but I realize now that I was dishonest.”
“If it had been me, I don’t know if I would have done it. I mean, I would have felt flattered too, and I like your dream about the dance gift, but I wouldn’t have done it.”
“It’s different for women.” He shrugged. “You know, stripping. It shouldn’t be, but it is.”
She gave a half-smile, unconvinced but unwilling to comment.
“Anyway, the lighting was really poor and it was a short routine...”
“I’ve seen it, Chris! Anyone who knows you can recognize it’s you! And now it’s out there, in the ‘cloud,’ copied who knows how many times.”
Neither said anything for several minutes.
“You’re not even a good stripper.” Angela rose from the tub, splashing Christopher once again, and went inside.
Christopher stayed on, soaking and sulking. When he finally went inside, he found Angela cuddled up in an old fluffy robe on the couch, watching a black-and-white movie and eating popcorn.
“I’m going home. See you tomorrow.”
“No, you won’t. Maybe I’ll call you some other day.”
“Forgive me, Angela.”
She threw popcorn at him, and the tiniest trace of a thin smile.
A Hassle
Angela stood, inert, staring at her outfits hanging in space like the assembled spirits of colorful memories past. Her arms, now and then, made fruitless attempts to reach out, to allow her hands to finger a silk sleeve or a woolen hem. What’s appropriate for the Education School’s winter holiday party? I’m feeling slightly bloated today – what fits? My skin tone, at least, seems good lately, she thought as she scrutinized the café con leche color of her arms - what color will work? Not teal or turquoise, not today. This one’s too heavy, that one I wore just last week to the women’s and gender studies panel, this one’s too formal. Where on earth did this one come from – did I buy it? Who was I kidding? This one makes me look like a tamal. I don’t have anything that fits, to match this top! Oh and my shoes. I hate shoes. What did Chris call them? García Lorca’s miniature coffins. Hell is a shoe store. She sighed with a growl, resisting the vortex phenomenon that the mo
re clothes you have, the more you want to think you need.
Still, she found some spare enjoyment in choosing, laboriously, an outfit: a loose, patterned cotton skirt, mostly ivory and hunter green, and a ruffled blouse of the same green hue, with a blanched stone necklace and matching earrings, and understated sandals. She looked passable, she thought, even good, with her hair dried naturally to give it more curl. Ideally, clothes can give variety to the body without erasing it or constricting it too much. This was her occasional reason for not wearing undergarments. Although she usually wore bras and panties, they made her feel clasped or pinned too tightly. She preferred outer garments only, mostly loose, sometimes a little snug, but never more difficult to remove than those folded-tab cut-outs that slip so easily off a paper doll. The muscle memory of her prodigious fingers always evoked those folded paper tabs when satisfying her compulsion to tuck under the upturned garment tags splayed over the necks of her friends and colleagues.
Why does being a nudist feel so subversive, she pondered while raising her skirt to contemplate her genitalia in the full-length mirror. She remembered the time she shaved her pubic hair, how much it itched when it grew back in, and her vow to never repeat the act. Will I ever give birth to a child, she asked herself, or will I run out of time on my ‘biological clock’? Will this vulva ever christen the crown of a newborn, will ever these breasts nourish a baby’s urgent kiss? She imagined giving birth right then and there, squatting in front of the mirror, imagined having to dump the books from her woven Mexican bag so she could use it to catch and contain the baby. How much of a hassle would it be to have a nude birth? How much would it cost? I mean, she clarified to herself, not just the baby and me, but the baby’s father, and the obstetrician, and the nurse, and everybody in attendance, nude. Underwater? Open air? Something so natural, it’s, maybe, unnaturally natural.
She let her skirt fall and raised her blouse. Is it true my breasts will sag more, and sooner, if I don’t wear a bra more often? Is it true that wearing a bra increases my risk of breast cancer and high blood pressure? She lifted her breasts with her hands, using her fingertips to feel for lumps under her skin, and remembering an advice column that her mother had clipped and sent her—of course, her mother—that advocated wearing bras as often as possible to prevent sagging, and even cradling your breasts with your arm while showering! Does Chris worry about the same things—sagging, cancer—when he looks at his scrotum?
She pulled her blouse over her breasts again. I may not have the answers to all my questions, she thought, but at least I’ve been a nudist for many years now, me pelé los ojos bien pelados en la playa de pelados que no peladotes, no me pelen porque estoy pelada, ni tampoco porque soy una pelada, sino porque soy pelada de los pelados de pasarlo de pelos. A definite attraction of nudism is that the more you see so much naked flesh, the better you appreciate relationships between bodies, health, beauty, movement, and thought. Winter holiday party: there’s a thought – let’s move our bodies to the Southern Hemisphere, and travel light. No shirt, no shoes, no problem. No chestnuts roasting on an open fire, just chests and nuts roasting in the southern sun. Why didn’t I invite Chris? He needs some contrition and humility, that man. And I don’t want to be too pushy under the mistletoe. I want to make sure I really do miss him tonight. And I want him to miss me too, extrañarme también.
Skinny-Dipping
fog… is that her… is she standing in the water… the light spreads around her silhouette… like shattered crystals… like the retinal remainder of a stained-glass allegory… that’s him… magic… on the beach… in the warm morning fog on this day of sunny outlook… is that Sr. Espinoza pushing his cart near the dunes… or just my memory of him… somewhere over here is where they sped away from the volleyball game that day… the boundary lines didn’t last… todo está tan borroso… I am lost among the cardinal points… spinning like a whirlwind… the fog shrouding my every pore… I can’t see where the shore ends… or the ocean begins… la bruma espesa de la desolación… imagine a captain trying to bring a ship to shore… but isn’t that what lighthouses are for… I feel a breeze picking up… I feel it on every inch of my skin… the ceaseless communion with the wind… the sun, the rain, the grass underfoot… those lines from Ableman… the foliage which brushed their skin as they moved through forest or jungle… the water of lake, river or sea slipping past their bodies… the play of the elements over the body… produces an ever-changing response that may reach almost erotic intensity… the skin becomes alive and responsive and a whole new spectrum of sensation is generated… above all, the ceaseless communion with the wind… but the fog… or is it mist… does not lift… is that something moving over there… somebody… there you are… give me a hug… why did we decide to meet here today… it’s a little chilly… but it is eerily beautiful… in the fog… the fog, which is a cloud at ground level… but it’s supposed to be warm today… do you ever take off your watch… it’s my little carpe diem ticker… it reminds me that every minute… that I don’t want to wear clothes but have to… is a theft, a crime, an abuse… what’s that noise… sounds like someone shouting… or barking… look out get out the way, you’ll get run over… will you look at that they’re just pummeling out of the fog, out of nowhere, how many they keep coming… rows of nude men running along the beach, with one of them calling out orders… they’re all young and in good shape… very impressive musculature… what joy in the jostling of genitals… they appear, they disappear through the fog… piercing the veil… they must be soldiers… or sailors… this is a navy beach, right… that’s not very fair, is it… they can have us arrested for being nude out here… but they have no qualm being nude here themselves… wish we had a camera… some of them look at us, nonplussed, as they pass by… it’s probably against regulations for them to yell out to us… what would they yell… get a room… look it’s Adam and Eve… before the Fall… neither Good nor Evil just Innocent… you must not be aware that you’re trespassing… ah, but we seem to have lost our way… what with the fog and all… the boundary is invisible… so much confusion… too much hypocrisy… Michelangelo’s David is mistaken… in the glittery gloom that must always accompany the lack of reason… for a scapegoat for prudery… officers of the law enforce nudity… in unwarranted circumstances… students risk arrest… merely to feel moving air masses… the very idea… that a body should be able to expose itself under the sun… such a radical act… what are we so afraid of… hide and seek… show and tell… what is it that we do not know but are afraid we just might find out… who is to say… name someone… who is to say what we might learn… or relearn… if we held our Monday morning briefings in the buff… not just once but always… in a clothes-free or at least clothing optional work environment… if classes were taught and attended au naturel… if we boarded planes in the buff… if we painted our houses without our own first coat… if we prepared our give-us-this-day-our-daily bread in our starkers… if we went to the doctor unattired… just like those Mexican papier-mâché miniatures… the calaveras that depict everyday scenes with skeleton citizens… “el médico”… “el salón de baile”… “la escuela”… “los mariachis”… “el café”… “los marineros”… except instead of Posada’s skeletons… bereft of fleshly exuberance… we’re Rivera’s shapely nudes… if the skinny on skinny-dipping applied… to the ethereal element as much as to the aqueous one… skinny-jumping and skinny-running and skinny-climbing… skinny-hiking and skinny-gardening and skinny-cycling… skinny-wheelchairing and skinny-skateboarding… skinny-skydiving and skinny-sleepwalking… skinny-novel-reading and skinny-novel-writing… skinny-teaching and skinny-learning… oh, the calories to be burned… if the birthday suit were the Mad Hatter’s unbirthday suit… an outfit ideal for daily celebration… one-button suits for all the career politicians… I can’t believe they’re still running by… must have been fifty or sixty men… I think this is the last of them… the tail end of the tail ends… it fades before our ey
es… rather like the Cheshire Cat’s smile turned sideways… but these are all attractive, fit young men… and we work surrounded by attractive and fit young students… maybe it’s too easy to talk about social nudity in a situation like that… do you really want to see everybody naked… it’s not about who you want to see, it’s about who you want to be... what’s that famous nudist phrase… is this the line for potato salad… that’s used to answer people who think nudism is one big orgy… but my point is who is to say what effect it might have on our collective body image… our sense of self, of gender and identity, of age and ethnicity… of our very humanity… these are the questions, dear colleague… we must begin… the search for answers… and the answer to our repeated question, who is to say… the answer is that we are to say… we must accept the challenge for the love of humanity… our wonderful, ridiculous humanity… but this may not be a rescue… it may only be an experiment… there may be adverse outcomes… what’s the hypothesis for your humanities seminar experiment… the hypothesis… is that despite anticipated initial obstacles, nudity in the classroom… nudity in the Palace of Fine Arts… can facilitate learning by creating a comfortable yet respectful learning environment where skin exposure aids exposure to new ideas… look the fog is starting to lift… promise me something… what, anything… promise me you will be very clear, in your classes, that being nude is not an excuse for being sexual… these are impressionable young adults and we have edgy, nervous colleagues… I will promise you that. And you promise me as well. Haven’t you forgiven me yet? Do you think that nudity is never sexual? Some nudists would have us all believe that, you know. No, but we have to make it clear that the nude classroom is still a classroom, and the classroom is not supposed to be sexual. This will be the biggest general misinterpretation. Do you mean something misunderstood by the students, or by people outside the class who hear of it? Well, potentially everybody. Let’s just strive to make things as clear as possible.The possibilities are clear.