The Volunteer

by D. H Jonathan

  “Yes. If you accept this assignment, you would be required to spend the rest of the semester without any clothing.”

  Dr. Slater had an intense expression as she looked at me, and I realized that, as outrageous as her proposal sounded, she was serious.

  “You mean go to classes naked?” I said, thinking aloud more than anything. “I could never do that. No. Not in a million years. That’s crazy.”

  “Are you sure? Andrew Martinez did it.”

  “And he was crazy. The articles that I read said he was diagnosed with mental illness.”

  “Several years after he left Berkeley,” Dr. Slater said. “And after policymakers had squashed his freedom to be who he really was, to make a bold statement about our society. It’s sad really that he was never accepted. We as a society can be cruel to those who are truly different, who don’t fit into what is considered the norm.”

  Silence descended on the room as Dr. Slater sat and watched me as I thought. I had been going to Coachella Valley University for a year and a half. I had friends. I had two guys that I had dated briefly during my freshman year. And there was Kevin who had been trying to get me to go out on a date with him for over a month. How could I ever just let them all see me naked? And not only once, but on an ongoing basis for the rest of the semester? Today was March 16, and the semester ended in the middle of May. That was two months. I couldn’t think of a time that I had ever been naked for longer than two hours; now this woman was asking me to run around naked for two months, and in public?

  “That’s nuts,” I said. I thought of my two options: leaving CVU forever after this semester, my reputation in tatters, or staying and doing this and ruining my reputation in other ways. I felt trapped, like I was being blackmailed or extorted. They couldn’t do this to me! “How can this be legal?” I said, breaking the silence in the room. “This, as an alternative punishment?”

  “It’s not an alternative punishment,” Dr. Slater said. “It’s an alternative TO punishment. If you do this, you would be performing this department, the university, and the entire field of sociology a huge service.”

  I was still shaking my head. The idea of someone freely walking around the university bare ass naked was ridiculous. That I would be that naked someone was so far beyond the realm of possibility that I couldn’t believe it. Was this meeting even happening? Perhaps I was in a dream, one of those dreams I used to have in high school where I went to school in my underwear without realizing it.

  “I can tell you’re having a problem with this,” Dr. Slater said, “but that’s because of the years of social conditioning you’ve undergone, conditioning that has ingrained in you this notion that our bodies always have to be covered when interacting with others of our own species.”

  “But what if I get arrested?” I said. “Aren’t there indecent exposure laws or something?”

  “No, not really. Thanks to court rulings, nudity in public without any lewd conduct is legal in the state of California. That’s how Andrew Martinez was able to get away with attending classes nude in 1992. There are quite a few cities who have implemented nudity bans, like Berkeley unfortunately, but Coachella Valley University doesn’t fall under any of those.”

  “Palm Desert doesn’t have a nudity law?” I asked.

  Dr. Slater shrugged. “It wouldn’t matter if they did or not. The university’s mailing address may say Palm Desert, but the actual campus is on land that has never been annexed by any municipality. We are in unincorporated Riverside County.”

  I didn’t know what was more unbelievable, that it was perfectly legal to walk around naked or that my university was asking me-—no, requiring me--to do that very thing. Of course, this was California, and I had just read the stories about Andrew Martinez.

  “There may be people who will call the police on you,” Dr. Slater continued, “but any calls to 911 on campus are routed to the University Police Department. Everyone there is aware of this project and are even helping us compile statistics on the calls they receive, whether it’s people calling to complain because they’re offended or calling because they’re concerned for your safety and well-being. But you will have nothing to worry about, legally.”

  I thought back to the summer between ninth and tenth grade. I was spending a Friday night with my friend Samantha. She lived in an apartment complex and as we were talking, she said that she had always had thoughts of sneaking out late at night and skinny-dipping in the apartment complex pool. That sounded so exciting to me at the time, and I told Samantha that we should do it. We stayed up until almost two in the morning working up enough nerve just to leave the apartment. Once we did, we made our way to the pool, which officially closed every night at ten o’clock, and climbed over the gate. We huddled in the darkest corner, quickly stripped, and darted into the pool, careful not to splash or make any noise. Being in the water naked had felt strange and wonderful. Samantha and I held onto the side and whispered to each other. I had forgotten what we talked about so long ago, but I remember being startled by the sound of footsteps and seeing the figure of a man walking outside the pool enclosure. I felt real terror right then, and I think Samantha felt it too. We both held our breath and froze. I remember how vulnerable I felt, naked and in the water so far away from any clothing. I couldn’t even move for fear of making waves in the water that the guy, whoever he was, would hear. My biggest fear had been of getting in trouble. I had visions of being arrested and taken to jail and of having to call my parents to bail me out. Luckily, the guy kept walking. We thought at the time that he was just some drunk who had walked home from a bar up the street. But we jumped out of the pool as soon as he was out of hearing distance and put our pajamas on over our wet bodies because, like idiots, we had forgotten to bring towels.

  I never skinny-dipped again after that. In fact, I always made doubly sure that everything I ever wore was properly buttoned up whenever I was with other people and that I wouldn’t have a “wardrobe malfunction” anywhere embarrassing. Now, Dr. Slater was proposing that I just go everywhere without a wardrobe and that the university would be just fine with it.

  “If it’s legal to just walk around campus naked,” I asked, “why doesn’t anybody do it?”

  “Because it isn’t ‘socially acceptable,’” she replied, using her fingers to accentuate the quotation marks. “And that’s the point of this entire project. Can it become socially acceptable? Which groups of people will accept you; which will applaud you; which will shun you? Will there even be anybody who joins you?”

  “Joins me?”

  Dr. Slater shrugged. “You never know.”

  I turned my head and looked out the window at the Commons. Students were walking to and from different parts of the campus. A guy and girl were sitting on the bench beneath the three tall palm trees, talking and drinking coffee. Another girl in shorts and a halter top was lying on her belly on a blanket on the grass, text book opened in front of her as she studied. I tried to picture myself walking through the area with nothing on. What would it feel like to be so naked and vulnerable and free? Something caught in my throat when I thought of the word free. Would being naked really feel free, I wondered. Was I actually considering doing this?

  I turned back to Dr. Slater and asked, “Would there be any alerts going out, telling people about the project.”

  “Oh no. If people knew about the project, they would alter their responses and interactions with you.”

  “So if I did this, what would I say to people about suddenly going everywhere naked?”

  “I’d prefer that you never said anything,” she replied. “Just act like you normally do when you’re dressed whenever someone talks about what you’re wearing. But I know that’s not realistic. People will be persistent about something so… unusual. So, you could just say that you wanted to try becoming a full time nudist and that you just discovered that nudity on campus was legal. And if that doesn’t work, use some of Andrew Martinez’s quotes. That’s one of the reasons I h
ad you look him up on the Web.”

  I turned and looked back out the window. I thought of the people in my dorm, in the food hall where I ate, in my classes, and I wondered what they all would say to me, what they would think. How did I feel about that? Afraid, mostly. I had spent a year and a half building up a network of friends and acquaintances here, both male and female. All of that had the potential for falling apart. But the alternative was leaving the school forever at the end of the semester. That social network wouldn’t matter one tiny bit after that. And I didn’t come to Coachella Valley University to socialize; I came to get a solid degree that would get me into law school. I had promised myself on the walk over here that I was at least going to try to do whatever it was that Dr. Slater proposed, no matter how outlandish it sounded.

  “OK,” I said, still looking out the window at the people outside and imagining myself naked among them, my voice sounding far away as if someone else were speaking. “I’ll do it.”

  Chapter Two: Preparations

  “Wonderful!” Dr. Slater exclaimed, and I could see a sense of relief in her expression. She had been almost as tense as I was, with her lecture-like spiels, but I was just noticing it now that she was relaxing. She pulled a manila file folder from her desk drawer, set it on her desk, and pushed it toward me. “Here’s a contract for you to read over. It spells out our expectations of you and what you will get in return for finishing the study.”

  I opened it and started reading. The contract was pretty straightforward. I was to remain nude and on campus from now until the end of final exams, the last day of which was May 16th. I could only wear a hat, cap or visor, protective footwear, and minimal jewelry (rings on my fingers and ears only). I also had to wear a special necklace with a tiny embedded microphone that I was to charge every night while I slept. I was expressly prohibited from wearing pants, skirts, socks, shirts, bras, underwear, backpacks, and any shoulder bag with a strap wider than two centimeters. I looked at my current purse, which I was only carrying today because my dress didn’t have pockets, and wondered how wide the shoulder strap was on it. There was a release for photos and videos of me should any be used for any academic publications related to the project, and my stomach turned as I thought of how many pictures would be taken of me over the course of the next two months. Everyone I knew carried a smart phone at all times, and every one of those smart phones was equipped with a better than decent digital camera.

  “While we’d like to prohibit people from taking photos of you,” Dr. Slater said when she saw where I was reading in the contract, “that just isn’t feasible in today’s world.”

  “I know,” I said and went back to reading.

  Upon successful completion of the study, my suspension was to be rescinded and my disciplinary record expunged, just as Dr. Slater had said. My scholarships would be continued, pending only my grade point average. I would also be awarded six credit hours of Sociology 4950, a special topics course, with a grade of A, something that would greatly help my grade point average after the anticipated lower grade in Dr. Finfrock’s history class. It would also save me from having to take two elective courses later on. But there was a clause at the end of all this stating that if any representative of the University of Coachella Valley Sociology Department caught me wearing clothing of any kind before the end of the semester, the entire contract was null and void.

  “I can’t wear anything ever?” I asked Dr. Slater.

  “Correct. We are studying long term social patterns relating to the acceptance or rejection of a nude person. That person needs to be nude at all times for this. In fact, I would recommend packing up all your clothes and having them stored here in the Department. It’s not required of course. And you can always withdraw from the project at any time. But having your clothes removed from your room and stored here would help ensure that any decision you make would be done with some premeditation and calculation and not in the heat of the moment.”

  My immediate inclination was to reject this suggestion out of hand, and I started to say something to that effect. But I thought of my morning routine and how I never felt fully awake until I had gotten downstairs for coffee and breakfast. I could see myself getting dressed automatically, without thinking, and then violating the contract before I even realized it. And it might also be good to have temptation removed. I had no idea how difficult it was going to be to go nude anywhere, but I could imagine that the urge to cover up might, at times, become overwhelming.

  “OK,” I said and thought I sounded too meek. Then I realized that I was going to be naked in a world of clothed people, where clothing denoted status and power. How could I not feel meek?

  “Excellent. I’ll have one of the RA’s meet you at your dorm to take them.”

  “RA’s?” I asked, thinking of the Resident Assistants in charge of each floor of the dorm. My RA was a theology major named Stacy. She seemed very religious and was very vigilant in making sure any males on my floor were properly escorted at all times and were off the floor by the ten PM curfew. I wondered what she would say the first time she caught me naked outside of my room.

  “Research assistants,” Dr. Slater said. “I have a team of six. They will take shifts shadowing you, taking video and making sure that the audio from your microphone is being received and recorded. All covertly, of course. Their video cameras are very small and will be mounted on some part of their clothing. They will follow you at a distance, and the people you encounter will never know that they are being recorded. They will also serve as your bodyguards and will intervene if your safety is threatened.”

  “That’s good to know,” I mumbled as I continued reading the contract.

  “Any questions?” Dr. Slater asked as I looked up from the last page.

  “Backpacks,” I said. “What am I going to use to carry my stuff?”

  Dr. Slater smiled and unzipped the gym bag on her desk. “I think you’ll like this,” she said as she pulled out a gray binder. She set it on her desk facing me, unzipping and opening it. She pulled a Kindle from the pocket on the left side. “This has all of your college text books, including the entire reading lists from your literature classes.” She set the Kindle aside. “That will be yours to keep, by the way, once you complete the project. Here’s a spot for your phone, room key, and pens or pencils. You have paper here for note taking, and a copy of that contract.” She flipped the pocket page over. “And here you have several towels to use as seat covers.” She pulled a black cloth from the back pocket. When she unfolded it, I saw that it was larger than a washcloth but smaller than a hand towel. “For sanitary reasons, you know. It’s common nudist etiquette to sit on a towel. You just put one of these down wherever you sit, either in class or the library or wherever.”

  Dr. Slater put the Kindle back in its spot and zipped the binder closed again. “And there’s a pocket on the outside here where you can keep your current seat cover,” she said as she folded the black towel and stuffed it inside the front pocket of the binder.

  She left the binder on her desk, and I looked back down at the contract. Seeing the black towels and hearing what I would be using them for just made me even more conscious of the fact that I would be completely naked for the next two months. Surely, this had to be some kind of joke. Maybe the experiment was seeing what Dr. Slater could get a student to agree to do. Once I signed the contract and started taking my clothes off, she would stop me and tell me April Fools or something. I could only hope.

  “Any other questions?” she asked.

  I shook my head, picked up the pen, and signed on my space at the end of the contract. Dr. Slater smiled as she turned the contract around and signed on her designated line. She put the contract back in the manila file and put it back in her desk drawer.

  “Now that the paperwork is out of the way,” she said, “let’s get started.”

  She reached into the gym bag and pulled out a brown cord with a large sand-colored carved bead. I could see that there were clasps on
either end of the cord. “This is the necklace you’ll wear. It’s the same kind that the people wear on that Naked and Afraid TV show I told you about. The little ball here is actually a microphone.”

  She turned it over and showed me the bottom side of it. “It has a micro-USB port here. You can charge it every night with this.” She pulled a charging cord and plug from the gym bag, showed it to me, and put it in the outside binder pocket with the black towel. “Go ahead. Try it on.”

  I took the necklace from her and put it on. The little ball naturally hung down just past the notch of my collarbone.

  “Perfect!” Dr. Slater exclaimed as she stood up and moved to my side of her desk. “We also have some sandals for you,” she said, pulling them out of the gym bag. “You can go barefooted whenever you’d like, but the concrete walkways get too hot for bare feet most of the year.”

  “Yes,” I said. It was only mid-March, but high temperatures in the Coachella Valley were already topping 90 degrees most days.

  Dr. Slater dropped the sandals back into the gym bag and pushed it toward me. She was standing right over me, so I pushed my chair back and stood up beside her.

  “Dr. Cleveland, the assistant chair, is on sabbatical this semester, and his office is right next door,” Dr. Slater said, pointing toward her door and to the left. “You can use it to change in if you’d like some privacy.”

  “Change?” I said.

  “Well, undress might be a better word,” Dr. Slater laughed. She took my elbow and guided me toward the door to her office, grabbing the gym bag off her desk. “Isn’t this exciting?”

  The word I would have used was terrifying, but I didn’t say anything. I looked out into the reception area and saw a group of students standing around the receptionist’s desk. She was talking to one of them, a tall guy with sandy brown hair, her cheeks blushing slightly as she batted her eyelashes at him. Under other circumstances, I might have thought he was good looking, but at that moment, I felt like I was walking to my funeral. What had I gotten myself into?