Co-ed Naked Philosophy

by Forest, Will

  Dr. Ross projected the next image, a pair of intertwined serpents. “Furthermore, the chief’s plunge resembles part of an extant creation myth of the peoples of that region, about a woman who arose from the waters of the lake suckling her baby son. As the sun’s golden light showered the water, the child grew into a man and became the woman’s lover. They traveled the earth, populating it, and came back to the lake, where they turned into water serpents and submerged themselves, intertwined, again.”

  Renee raised her hand. “What’s the relation to aesthetics of the body?”

  “A very good question. Let me parry with another: did ancient peoples use swimsuits?”

  “I don’t know that we could say for sure,” began Renee, “but I’d guess not.”

  “Good guess. Can you describe for us what happens to the body, unclothed, in water?”

  “Well, you float, and you can dive or surface,” said Renee.

  “Your senses of sight and hearing are not as clear underwater,” said Greg, “and your senses of smell and taste are pretty much incapacitated, but your sense of touch is altered, or maybe heightened, by the fact that your skin is completely enveloped by water.”

  “Very good points. Full body contact with water, whether stationary or mobile, is what is required here for entry into the dreamworld, the unconscious, the source of creation,” affirmed Dr. Ross. “The golden paint dissolves and the golden objects sparkle underwater as the glimmering insights, or the guiding lights, of the collective unconscious. No bodily encumbrance should impede contact with the origin of creativity.”

  “So when the chief comes back out, it’s like he’s reborn, right?” ventured Brian.

  “Yes! That reflects the indigenous creation myth about the two serpents, and it also parallels the Christian rite of baptism and Afro-Brazilian candomblé purification, among other ceremonies,” said Dr. Ross. “Can you think of other similarities?”

  “How about the renewal of life from the ark after the flood?” asked Terrence.

  “Very good!”

  “And the theory of evolution,” said Alex. “The origin of species.”

  “Right,” said Dr. Ross. “The higher vertebrates arose from aquatic invertebrates. The human nude body, buoyed and washed, is the messenger from the sometimes murky, sometimes clear source of creation and of dreams. The chieftain returns from the realm of the unconscious with new insight, new interpretation, as the boon of his circular hero’s journey.”

  Dr. Ross showed the last slide, a photo of a Muisca artifact made entirely of gold. It was a boat with several stylized human figures on board, one clearly larger than the others and standing with a tall headdress. “The Spaniards weren’t the only ones to covet pre-Columbian gold. However, modern-day drainage of Lake Guatavita has produced next to nothing as far as golden objects. But the ceremony participants, we may assume, almost always found what they were looking for in the glittering waters of the sacred lake.”

  “I think this is fascinating,” said Dr. Saucedo. “You know how the baby in the creation myth grew? Milk from his mother’s breast, yes, but also, you implied anyway, from the sunlight, the golden sunlight, on the surface of the water. It seems like that myth, at least the way I see it, joins a feminine, aquatic essence with a masculine, solar essence to explain the origin of life.”

  Dr. Ross smiled. “You’re right. The story pays homage to the twin sources of all life and energy: the sun and water. Or: light and darkness, reason and dream. One without the other won’t work.”

  From the back of the room, where nobody could see her except Christopher, Angela winked.

  Seeing Humanity as it Truly Is

  Terrence jogged along the walkway between the campus center and the bookstore at eight o’clock in the morning. He wanted to find his table early and hang up the banner of his own design. He passed only a few student government officers mounting the last of the portable tables for the campus associations participating in the Student Activities Fair. Terrence slowed to a walk, reading the paper signs taped along the tabletops until he found the CRM table which, he acknowledged with a sharp hiss, sat wedged between “Campus Republicans” and “Muslim Student Union.”

  He unfurled the banner and fastened it along the front length of the table. The logo he had conceived displayed the words CORPORAL RIGHTS MOVEMENT in green lettering below the stylized black silhouettes of a man and woman, facing each other and with arms raised toward a yellow sun in the center of the banner. The genius of Terrence’s design lay in its ambiguity. The silhouettes were not obviously nude, yet a certain fullness of breast, buttock and groin did suggest, for those willing to recognize it, a lack of textile constraints. He set up the folding chairs, humming a jazz melody, and set out the lumpy chocolate-chip cookies he had managed to bake in the dorm kitchen.

  The fair would run from 9:00 to 3:00, and the CRMers, after rechecking the appropriate municipal, county, state and federal statutes, had decided to commit to complete nudity during those hours so that nobody would be able to allege stripping as a basis for an accusation of lewd exposure. In order to avoid missing classes, shifts of varying lengths had been set up for the volunteers at the table, two at a time, one woman and one man. The volunteers would arrive dressed, with towels to sit on, and then unclothe behind a screen that Renee was supposed to bring. Lisa and Terrence had the first shift.

  Greg stopped by to drop off a batch of brownies and a metal box stocked with coins and small bills for change. Daphne delivered an apple pie, a cherry pie, and the sign with the prices. Renee arrived with a lightweight, three-panel folding screen, and a basket of warm pão-de-queijo Brazilian cheese biscuits. Lisa brought plum tarts, Heather brought mini-loaves of banana bread, and Alex brought almond cookies along with the flyers listing the CRM goals and activities schedule. The list of events included a Campus Clean-Up Nude Saturday, a group trip to La Rioja, and an ad for nude tutoring services. A few more CRMers showed up within the first hour bearing more baked goods to sell.

  By nine o’clock, most of the student organization tables were festooned with posters and brochures and sign-up sheets, bumper stickers, t-shirts and soft drinks to sell. The two earnest young Campus Republicans had arrived wearing white shirts, ties, navy blue blazers and khaki slacks, a formal dress code shared by many of the fraternity representatives at their tables scattered along the walkway. The Muslim Student Union representatives wore traditional tunics, one with a white turban and the other with an embroidered vest.

  Lisa looked from side to side, forcing herself to breathe deeply and slow her racing heart. Further down the row of tables she recognized a sorority sister. “You first, Terrence,” she whispered, “because once you sit down again it’ll just look like you’re not wearing a shirt, and a man shirtless is, unfairly, easier to accept.”

  Terrence agreed and stepped behind the screen. Within a few minutes, Lisa had taken her turn behind the screen as well, and both students slouched low in their seats, partially hidden behind the table and the low-hanging banner along the front, sure that they had already been noticed and that those who had noticed them were debating how to react. Terrence mused that their nudity enhanced the contrast between the dark pigmentation of his skin and the light, freckled coloration of hers, his short wiry black hair and her long wavy red tresses, combinations of phenotypes that, even if he and Lisa had been dressed, his conservative table neighbors might have baselessly deemed provocative.

  Lisa saw the green-tied Campus Republican sitting next to her take a long, astonished look at her and then turn his back with more reluctance than rejection. She noticed the other young GOP supporter glancing at her as he faced his stalwart companion, seemingly absorbed in conversation, as she heard a fragment of their conversation: “her skin is so white and his…” Suddenly the turbaned MSU representative, seated next to Terrence, moved his chair as far away as he could, and then helped his companion pull the table away as well.

  Terrence felt the need to say something. “What’s t
he matter?”

  Hesitant stares.

  “What are you protesting?” asked the turbaned student.

  Terrence followed the connection to the popularity of nude protests. “We’re not protesting anything.”

  “Then, why are you naked?”

  “Because I’m free. That’s what our group is all about,” Terrence declared loudly, looking back and forth to address both groups flanking the CRM table. “I celebrate my body. And the human body in general. We’re all free.”

  “Only God can make you free,” said the turbaned Muslim Student Union representative.

  “Yeah! Only God can make you free,” said the red-tied Campus Republican representative.

  “God did make me free, and I praise him and thank him for such a wonderful blessing!” shouted Terrence, who was beginning to attract students walking among the tables.

  Lisa remembered something Dr. Saucedo had read in class. “According to St. Thomas, Jesus said that when you take off your clothes and throw them aside like a child, only then will you behold God unafraid.”

  The green-tied Republican spun back around. “Where did He say that? What’s the verse number? Is that from the apocrypha?”

  “I humbly suggest that the prophet Jesus was speaking metaphorically,” ventured the Muslim student with the vest.

  “Maybe so, but it is said that man was made in God’s image…” started Terrence.

  “And woman too,” interrupted Lisa.

  “And woman too, so, what he means is that literally by seeing humanity as it truly is, we behold the countenance of the Lord,” Terrence finished, acknowledging the enthusiastic response from some of the students now gathered around the table.

  “Do you profess any faith?” the turbaned student wanted to know.

  “Yeah, do you even have any religious training?” asked the red-tied student.

  A young man approached the table. “Excuse me, how much are these cookies?” he asked with a wink. It was Alex.

  Lisa and Terrence both knew that another of Daphne’s fabulous ideas was underway. She had proposed “planting” some clothed CRMers to simply pass by the table nonchalantly, or to ask questions, or even to become motivated to disrobe.

  Glad for the distraction, Terrence nodded at his nude companion and said, “These scrumptious plum tarts were baked by my friend Lisa, and they’re a bargain at fifty cents each or three for a dollar twenty-five.”

  The Muslim Student Union representatives, and the Campus Republican representatives, had to acknowledge that yes, the plum tarts did indeed look scrumptious, and everything else on the table as well.

  “Did you say three for $1.25?” The red-tied student stretched his leg out under the table to fish for some change deep inside one of his pants pockets.

  “I would like to try some of those cheese biscuits,” said the turbaned student.

  “They’re still warm,” said Terrence. “That’s when they’re best.”

  Alex saw his chance. “Hey, what group are you guys anyway? I’m intrigued. What’s this, what’s it called—Corporal Rights Movement—what’s this about?”

  Doling out tarts and biscuits, Lisa and Terrence indulged Alex’s questions and even managed to attract some authentically new interest from students who were beginning to file by, including Lisa’s sorority sister, more impressed than scandalized. A photographer from the student newspaper stopped by and set up a clever shot in which Lisa and Terrence are standing, she covering her areolas with cookies and her pubis with a pitcher of water, and he covering his genitals with the basket of cheese biscuits. The photographer then snapped a slightly different take, just in case, in which two pies blocked Lisa’s entire breasts. Lisa and Terrence played along, but they won the photographer’s agreement that if the photo appeared in the student paper, it would have to include the caption: “The CRM: Working against censorship so you can see the whole picture. Reclaim the image!”

  Business was brisk. Fair-goers were first drawn to the table as voyeurs, and then their guilt would compel them to buy something. The emboldened CRMers invited students to the table by shouting slogans like “Free your body” and “Undressed is best,” and even “Cookies, four for a dollar”! The various volunteers throughout the day for the Campus Republicans and the Muslim Student Union began to shout their own slogans too, but they realized any interest they attracted was immediately mitigated by the CRM. Greg came to relieve Terrence, and then Renee replaced Lisa, all dressing and undressing behind the screen, and later came Daphne and Jacob, and then Alex and Heather had the last shift. A few inspired students partially disrobed in solidarity. At the end of the day, the group had earned ninety-seven dollars and seventy-five cents with nary a crumb left over, and, more importantly, had collected eighty-three email addresses on the interest list, representing students, faculty, administration and staff.

  “Almost miraculously, a climate of compliant peace and respectful curiosity prevailed,” Daphne wrote in the follow-up message to the new email list. “No one reported any incident of offense, abuse or provocation, and no photo was taken or video filmed, that we know of, other than the two planned shots for the student newspaper. As the day progressed, the word got out, and more and more folks just could not resist showing up only to verify with their own eyes that, yes indeed, in fact and in truth, verily verily I say unto you, there really were nude students calmly selling baked goods outside the campus center.”

  Strokes

  The morning star has just cleared the horizon. There is a car parked at the dock some distance down the lake. He should see the headlights of the car flash through the morning fog any moment now, and he does. He secures the camouflaged contraption, the fake boulder that unhinges for storage of their clothes. She arrives, with the first tepid sunshine, gliding noiselessly in the canoe that had been resting on the lake beneath an overhanging branch. The accomplices embrace quickly, breathlessly, lips locking as hands unfasten, unbutton, unpeel. A nascent breeze welcomes their nudity.

  He begins to paint her face in golden ripples glowing out from her eyes to the coastline of her hair. As he extends down her chest with the sparkling solution, her breasts balloon, overflow into her nipples. He carefully and wisely spreads his brushstrokes like tantalizing caresses, following her curves, her sinews, the open oxbow of her hips, the flooded shallows between her legs, her every flowing surface, down to some final loving licks as he seals the soles of her golden feet.

  She accepts the brush matter-of-factly, gripping it as she had just handled the oar, gliding firmly over the rough surfaces of his face and chest. Her passage over the rapids of his ribs accelerates her descent to the pubic precipice, his poised penis extending with each luminous stroke. Moments later, his golden legs, from buttocks to heels, sparkle in the dawn. Both standing, they open themselves to the breeze, allowing the paint a few moments to dry as they listen to the exhortations of the starlings and the jays.

  They step into the canoe, taut muscles gleaming. Their oars paint the lake surface with phosphorescent streaks that swirl and dissolve behind them in the mist. They quit stroking before reaching the middle of the lake, and as the canoe slows they lie back off the ends of it, their shining toes touching, their dangling hands finger-painting arcs of gold as the canoe gently spins. At their feet, a box contains the all-natural golden paint solution and brushes, and the ritual artifacts: his high school class ring, her ring given by her former lover, their poem sealed in a jar weighted with golden pebbles. Eventually they sit up, facing each other, and extend their right arms like beams of light to drop their sparkling rings off opposite sides of the canoe, with simultaneous tiny splashes. Their arms swing back ceremoniously and raise the poem jar above their heads. Then she opens the jar. They read aloud the poem she composed for two voices:

  LOS DORADOS

  SHE HE

  reflect

  reflect

  the light the light

  reflect

  reflect

  the truth
the truth

  the glittering surface

  the shimmering cutis

  adorns the form

  bedecks the shape

  the waters will wash the waters will wash

  the waters will wash the waters will wash

  what is below?

  what is beneath?

  an essence

  a presence

  uncovered uncovered

  unclothed unclothed

  reborn today

  and reborn tomorrow

  liberate me

  liberate me

  liberate us liberate us

  pure pure

  good good

  nude nude

  She returns the poem to its container and they rest the jar on the surface of the water, retracting their hands as it sinks out of sight. Then they swing their legs over opposite sides of the canoe, breathe deeply. And jump. The water seals them instantly, covering every painted crevice in a fresh, cold coat, forcing crisp air into their chests in jaw-dropping gasps. Motion, sound and color are muted, transformed. Glittering paint floats cloudily to the surface, transcends itself in the glistening first light of the sun’s rays on the water. From gravity unbound, hair, breasts, penis, scrotum trace fluid trajectories. Frigid bodies seek each other’s warmth, dive through each other’s legs, rub each other joyously clean as they level and bob. They swim back to shore, towing the canoe. As they break the surface of a new day, the breeze greets their scrubbed bodies with a thirsty tongue. They lick too, hot strokes to redden blue lips. The love they make, with clouds and songbirds and breeze and the rising sun, rends all veils.

  The Most Revealing Part

  Bodies in various stages of skin exposure began to populate the Humanities Building courtyard on a comfortably warm evening in February. Among them were professors Ross and Saucedo, speaking with Jaime Castellón Reyes, a ready-to-retire Spanish Republican exile whose decades of teaching the literature and culture of Spain to American students led him to remark to his colleagues: “Our students, mostly the ones who are not here toniiiiight, they don’t know how to reeeead, they don’t know how to eeeeeat, even, they don’t know how to live life. They are too buttoned up. We need to shake them out.”