by Forest, Will
“Complaint calls, I know. If someone else calls and wants to talk to me, let ‘em. I’ll take the fall. But don’t you forget, there were eleven new students who added the course.”
Tabitha speared a cherry tomato. “Answer me this: when you first proposed this course to me, were you already thinking of doing it nude?”
“Not actively, no. But the idea had probably already formed in my unconscious, don’t you think?”
“Did Dr. Saucedo have anything to do with the decision?”
“Everything. I wouldn’t have found the courage without knowing about her research. She shares my desire to act on it. Her course is clothing-free too.”
“You two make a great team, you know.”
“I do know. I do.”
Leave Your Clothes by the Door
“Hey, Greg, come on in! How you doing?”
Greg stood in Alex’s doorway and looked around the crowded apartment at some twenty nude students forming a thicket of variegated trunks and limbs—ebony and ash and cedar and elm and pine and birch with, here and there, a rounded, ripened fruit hanging from trunk or crotch—and felt out of place in his jeans and sweatshirt as everybody greeted him. Stepping over the piles of clothes, folded or balled up on pairs of shoes, he finally answered:
“Any better and I’d be buck naked.”
Alex laughed. “I think that can be arranged! You probably know most everybody here from the streak or from class, but if you don’t, everybody this is Greg. He’s on the track team and he’s in Dr. Ross’s seminar.”
Amid so much flesh bereft of textile colors, shapes, textures, or even fluorescent body paint, Greg marveled at how much he needed to see individual faces to recognize who was who.
“You can leave your clothes by the door,” said Alex. “We’re just getting started.”
“So the purpose of this group is to take nudism outside the classroom. Right now we’re limited to students in Dr. Saucedo’s and Dr. Ross’s classes, and a few sympathizers, but we should recruit more students!”
Greg didn’t recognize the redhead speaker, who must have been one of the education students. He threw off his clothes and moved over to join the group.
“How are we going to recruit people?” Renee wanted to know. “I don’t think just talking to other students about our goals will work.”
“I think the best option to recruit people is to be together, naked, in a group, doing something totally normal like a bake sale or a disc golf tournament,” said Daphne. “Which could also be great fundraisers at the same time. Two birds, one stone.”
“That’s a great idea!” said Lisa, the redhead. “But how do we get around the police and the GCU administration?”
“Dr. Ross told us what the state and city laws are. It all has to do with lewd intent,” said Terrence. “Like the man says, context is everything. If we’re doing something laid-back like a bake sale, what could anybody object to? We’ve got to challenge people’s expectations! Mess up their comfort zones a little!”
Alex held up his hands to quiet the loud support for these ideas. “You guys, this is great. I mean, you’re right, a streak is one thing but a bake sale is totally different. A streak is all about acting up and defying authority, like saying ‘catch me if you can.’ And a car wash, well that would just be too sexy. That’s been pornographized to death. But a bake sale, especially to start off with, that would be awesome!! Then later maybe we could move on to that all-night dance-a-thon I heard somebody talking about earlier.”
“So, this is great but maybe I missed something since I came in late,” said Greg. “What’s the name of our group?”
“We haven’t decided yet,” replied Lisa.
“How about the Buck Naked Buccaneers?” Jennifer asked, assuming a cheerleader pose.
“That’s got a good ring to it, with the GCU mascot and all, but we need to think big,” said Daphne. “If we limit ourselves to just our university we can’t grow. Think of setting up chapters of our group on other campuses!”
“I like Coed Naked Philosophers,” said Renee.
“I like that too,” said Greg, “but to me it sounds more like a good title for a book about us. For our group we need something more action-oriented, and I’d say we don’t need the words ‘naked’ or ‘nude’ in the name because they just provoke people. We’re bigger than that. Maybe the right to go about your life without wearing clothes is just one part of our mission. Maybe we could expand to deal with nutrition and hygiene and disabilities.”
Daphne flashed Greg a smile.
Jacob, from Dr. Saucedo’s course, shifted his considerable heft on Alex’s desk chair, causing it to squeak. “How about the Body Movement?” he asked.
“Sounds too much like ‘bowel movement,’” laughed Alex.
“But I like the idea of calling it a ‘movement,’” said Terrence. “That’s forceful.”
“And I like Greg’s word ‘right’ as in the right to be naked,” Lisa said.
“But only if we can make the context clear so it’s not confused with ‘right-wing,’” added Renee.
“How about the Corporal Rights Movement or CRM?” offered Daphne. There was a pause. “Well, it’s not especially exciting,” said Alex, “but maybe that’s what we need to get people to think about nudity as a normal, anytime way to be.”
“Corporal,” said Terrence. “I like it. It sounds militant.”
“Let’s hear it for the CRM!” yelled Greg. “And for Daphne!”
“I nominate Daphne for CRM president,” said Alex.
“I second,” said Jennifer.
“Thanks.” Flustered, Daphne looked away. “I really have too much going on. My job, and family commitments…”
Greg glimpsed Daphne’s hazel eyes from behind a lock of her wispy hair. He gave her his best imploring look, surprising himself when he punctuated it with a wink.
Daphne smiled. “Oh, all right, all right. I accept the nomination. Can we at least have a vote? And if I’m gonna be president I need lots of help, so let’s set up a ballot full of officer positions!”
Buffoonery
“… and so the nudity in this film, casual as it can seem today, was quite daring in its time and became one of the first challenges to the ratings system’s definition of …”
BBBLLLAAANNNGGG!
“Sorry, class, the administration has made it clear to us lately that we must participate in their series of fire drills. So much wasted class time… Alright, we’ve got to get dressed quick. As I always say....”
“Context is everything!” yelled the students.
While Dr. Ross threw on the shorts and t-shirt he had brought for just such an emergency, there ensued among his students the most slapdash, lackadaisical parody of a fashion show that he could ever have imagined. There were students grabbing each other’s clothes, putting shirts on backwards, mismatching shoes or wearing only one shoe; there was Alex, who stuck his feet through the sleeves of his shirt, pulled it up over his legs, and bound it around his waist with a borrowed bra strapped cups over buttocks; there was Terrence, his groin enveloped by white cloth in a Gandhi-style dhoti; Renee, who simply wound a long, brightly patterned pareo around herself; Jennifer, in an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka-dot bikini; Daphne, who donned only a mini-skirt, a tight vest and a tie, which of course had been knotted ahead of time, ready to slip on; Heather, in her policewoman outfit from Ricky’s; and Greg, who pulled a ski-mask over his head, covered his backside with a cape made from a garish cartoon-character twin bed sheet, and stuffed his genitals into a sock. The entire class looked like a minimalist clown convention.
At first Christopher’s face registered confusion, then intrigue, and finally the understanding that the buffoonery he was witnessing had all been planned in anticipation of this very fire drill. Much amused, he quickly took his shirt and shorts back off, only to put them on again backwards and inside-out, the least he could do to honor his students’ foresight and creativity.
Be
aming impishly, all filed out the door and down the central stairwell, the sirens growing in intensity as they reached each floor, to the courtyard between the two wings of the Humanities Building where the other classes scheduled at that time had already congregated. Christopher saw Tabitha and Herb standing together, talking, waving to him with bemused expressions. He joined them.
“What’s today’s lesson? Sartorial aesthetics gone awry?” joked Dean Wishinsky.
Christopher winced. “No, today’s lesson seems to be that fire drills are very effective for eliminating any kind of lesson whatsoever.”
“I agree. This is, what, the third evacuation in two weeks?” asked Dr. Lasseter-Peebles.
“Yes, I hear you. You’re right,” replied the dean. “But you won’t be getting any apology from me. I’m as surprised as you are, because I didn’t schedule them. It’s all about compliance with new state regulations. Let’s not forget that fire drills are a serious business.”
“Christopher, why exactly is it that your students are dressed like that? And you, with your shirt backwards…” Tabitha’s voice trailed off as she noticed his shorts were on backwards as well.
“Well, speaking of surprises…they had planned this without telling me, can you believe it? They’re just as sick of these fire drills as the rest of us. So after the last one, they decided to prepare for the next one, which happened to be today. They wanted to be ready with crazy ideas and with clothes they’ve been carrying around for a few days, just waiting for the moment. It’s a bit chilly today, so I’m sure they don’t mind too much!”
As he spoke, Dr. Ross looked around at his students, spotting them by their outfits, and noticing that they were all fielding questions and comments from their conventionally dressed peers.
“I imagine you’ll be able to craft some class discussion, maybe even a research topic or two, from today’s events,” ventured Tabitha.
“Yeah. I’m proud of these guys. What you see is only one of the many creative ways they have taken this seminar to heart.”
“They’re obviously enthusiastic. But some of them are really pushing the limits, like that young man with the precarious bra-and-t-shirt wrapper.”
“Herb, they’re questioning societal values and norms, just like any philosopher worth his salt,” said Dr. Ross.
“That’s a good point,” admitted the philosophy department chair.
“Besides, we could have just marched out here naked. Maybe next time we will! There would be enough of us to ensure a decent, not lewd, context, and enough witnesses just in case someone tried to allege something post-facto.”
Herb Wishinsky raised an eyebrow, considering this unforeseen possibility. “Are you versed in the local nudity laws?”
“You bet your birthday suit I am. Municipal, county, state and federal. No more run-ins with the authorities for this tenure candidate.”
“So what do the laws prohibit?” asked Tabitha.
“The exposure of the genitals, buttocks, or breasts is penalized by fine and possible imprisonment if, and I stress the word ‘if,’ someone can prove that the exposure involved a lewd or prurient intent.”
“Like flashers?” asked the dean.
“Exactly, or streakers, although there’s a greater leniency for streakers unless they start dangling their bits in front of a clearly unreceptive individual. There are also zoning regulations that dictate the legal areas where strip clubs, for example, can be opened for business.”
The muted sirens finally stopped. Several professors began leading their students back to the classrooms.
Dean Wishinsky looked at the maverick philosopher whose back pockets hung slack over the fronts of his thighs. “Your students are exploring the boundaries between the clothed and the unclothed body. That’s all well and good. Just don’t let your course become a case study of the boundaries between ethical and unethical behavior.”
“Christopher’s classes are going very well, Herb. Why haven’t you visited yet?”
“Because your word, Tabitha, is good enough for me. Good talking with you!” The dean nodded to both of them before heading back to his office.
“Thanks for your support, Tabitha.”
“You’re quite welcome, Christopher. You really do have those young people practicing philosophy in action, and for this you are to be commended. Herb, meanwhile—and you don’t know this yet—deserves kudos for doing his best to keep this quiet. As far as I can tell, the provost and the other administrators don’t know about your unclothed classroom experiment yet.”
“I guess he’s only doing what he has to do. And the dean of the education school must be following the same policy regarding Angela’s class. But it’s just a matter of time. I think probably the entire campus has heard about some naked class, but that’s all they know. In many ways I wish we could be very open about this, advertise it, use it for recruiting…”
“Time will tell. For now be thankful that the administration has your best interest in mind as far as your tenure.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Christopher said, with a broad wink, as they approached the Humanities Building door. His face lit up. “Want to come back with me to class for our discussion about the students’ wacky get-ups?”
“I have a meeting,” Tabitha said, as she pressed her bottom onto the door’s horizontal bar opener to hold the entrance for him. “Let me know how it goes.”
“Sure thing,” Christopher nodded vacantly, as he caught the door with his own back end and she proceeded on down the hall. He stopped a moment to ponder this double demonstration of a certain tactile prescience of the buttocks, which allows them to seek out—on their own, blindly—a wall, doorframe, or ledge against which to rest, or to thrust out to meet a door, opening it or detaining it. Maybe some people have this “sense” more developed than others, and maybe its use in front of someone else can indicate a certain level of familiarity between them. Is this function hampered when nude, bereft of the extra cushioning of cloth? If this search-and-detain function of the buttocks is indeed more common when dressed, then shall it be more fruitfully interpreted as their constant attempt to bust out of their textile binding? He decided that in his own case, the latter was definitely true, since the denim of his shorts-on-backward rubbed awkwardly against his nates.
Back in the classroom, he threw his clothes onto the pile that the students had made of all their costume paraphernalia on the front table. And then the revelations came tumbling out in a heap of excited exchange, in which the teacher learned his students’ detailed history of how they had planned for the fire drill, how they had created the Corporal Rights Movement, their plans for the bake sale, all the myriad ways in which they had taken the concept of social nudity and run with it, nay, streaked, of course, streaked with it down a gauntlet of conceptual and logistical obstacles.
Dr. Ross seized the garbled intensity of the moment to introduce the idea of journals—at least three entries over the course of the semester, to be included in their class participation grades.
“Let your ideas flow unrestricted. Then inscribe your thoughts like tattoos on the nude pages. Take the opportunity to get things off your chest, including your clothes, of course. Open up and show your naked self…on and beyond to spiritual nudity!”
3
FEBRUARY
February
No Bodily Encumbrance Should Impede
Dr. Ross strolled into the classroom nude. A few students were still undressing. As he was pulling down the screen over the whiteboard, Dr. Saucedo walked in and disrobed nonchalantly near the back of the room.
Dr. Ross cleared his throat. “Let’s play a guessing game: imagine a man standing on a large raft in the middle of a lake. The man’s skin is gold. He dives into the lake, and on the lake bottom he sees a spilled treasure of jewels, golden goblets and statuettes. Who is this man?”
“James Bond!” yelled Alex. “Wasn’t that a scene in Goldfinger?”
“King Midas!” yelled somebody else.
>
Daphne remembered a page from a high school Spanish text. “El Dorado.”
“Very good, Daphne! I would like to begin today with an example of the body in non-Western aesthetics, and so I have prepared a presentation about the golden chieftain whom the Spaniards called El Dorado. What the Iberian conquistadors imagined to be a tantalizing tale of material prosperity can, in fact, be interpreted as the account of a harmonious worldview linking cognitive and oneiric thought processes to express human belonging in the universe.”
Dr. Ross dimmed the lights and showed the first slide, a map of northern South America indicating the region of the pre-conquest Muisca civilization and the location of Lake Guatavita.
“There is reason to believe that the accounts of El Dorado given by several Spaniards in sixteenth-century Nueva Granada, now Colombia, were based on descriptions of indigenous practices. Juan de Castellanos’s chronicle, for example, states that a tribal leader of the Muiscas would be painted with gold dust over every inch of his body and then ferried out into the middle of a lake on a raft. His subjects would burn incense on the raft and along the shore, enveloping the lake in a smoky haze. Golden objects were tossed into the lake, and the chieftain would also dive into the water. He would emerge washed clean, in what can be interpreted as a purification ritual. Some have suggested that Lake Guatavita was the site of this activity, although there may have been several such lakes.”
A photo of some earthen vessels appeared on the screen. “Anthropologists have compared the patterns of wavy lines found on Muisca pottery and petroglyphs to the rays of the sun, to gold and glittering substances in general, to light patterns on the retina when beginning shamanic hallucinations, and to glimmering light on the surface of water. According to one theory, El Dorado’s submersion under water re-enacted a passage into the dreamworld, perhaps what could be called the unconscious. In contrast to the incense smoke above the water, everything underwater was clear, like a window into a dreamworld. Water seems to be a universal symbol of the unconscious.”