The Volunteer

by D. H Jonathan

  “You’re either very brave or very crazy,” the girl next to me said.

  “Thanks, I think,” I said.

  “You don’t need any help, right?”

  “No, I’m fine. I’m just going back to my dorm room.”

  I walked on, and the girl slowed and merged back into the crowd following me. I heard snippets of conversation and laughter, but I tried to ignore it.

  “Wow, titties!” a guy ahead of and walking toward me exclaimed. I wanted to lift my purse and cover my breasts, but I knew that would uncover something else. And I sure didn’t want to hear what he would say about my vulva. He would probably call it a pussy, a word that I hated when referring to any part of the female anatomy. I had hated hearing guys in high school talking about “getting pussy” as if we were some big achievement or conquest, so I swore that I would never use the word myself.

  I kept walking, passing just a couple of feet away from the guy as he slowed and gazed. I don’t think he ever looked at my face. He did tilt his head as I passed by, like he was trying to look at what was behind my purse.

  “Nice!” he said, nodding, with a smug look on his face, and I was afraid that he might reach his arm out to stop me. Thankfully, he didn’t. I wondered how long it would have taken Greg to come to my aid if he had. I looked behind me to see the guy checking out my butt. I ignored him and tried to see where Greg was. There were so many people following me, looking at my naked buttocks flex and jiggle with every step I took. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. If only I hadn’t dawdled for so long on the stairs, I would have been out of Carlisle Hall before that huge class had let out, and I wouldn’t have this group following me. Greg did not appear to be in that group. As I turned my head back around to face where I was going, I saw him off to the side, facing the people following me.

  I put my head down and quickened my pace. Holding the purse over my crotch was awkward as fast as I was walking, so I let my arm swing normally, showing my vulva to the world. Two guys jogged up beside me, and one of them said, “Hey, can we get a picture with you?”

  “No,” I replied instantly.

  “Oh please? No one will believe us without some proof.”

  “I’m trying to get somewhere,” I said.

  “Well, are you going to be like this later?”

  “Like what?”

  “Naked!”

  “Yes,” I admitted, thinking of those two months. How could I possibly do this for that long?

  “Maybe later then? A photo, that is.”

  “Maybe,” I said, and I quickened my pace even more. But that just made the bounce in my breasts even more prominent. I was glad that the two guys slowed down and merged back into the group so that I could slow back down myself.

  “She says she’ll still be naked later,” I heard one of them say.

  “Awesome,” someone said, and I heard another voice say, “Why?”

  “Hey gorgeous!” another guy yelled. “Why are you doing this?”

  I couldn’t stand having them follow me like this, so I stopped and turned around, facing the entire group. There was a collective gasp when they got a full frontal view of me. My knees weakened, and I prayed that I wouldn’t collapse. The people with phones in their hands held them up to get better shots of me. I couldn’t believe I was doing this.

  “My God, you’re beautiful!” a guy said, and I must have blushed scarlet.

  “Thank you,” I said. I heard the clicking of cameras as I continued to stand there and let everyone look. “After thinking about things, I decided that I didn’t want to hide behind any more masks or costumes,” I said, not sure what I was trying to say or that it was coming out correctly. “I want to live a natural life without worrying what anyone else thinks of me. So here I am. I’m going to be like this for a while, so get used to it. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t follow me around whenever you see me. Like you’re doing now.”

  “You mean, you’re going to be naked all the time,” a girl asked.

  “Yes. As long as I can get away with it,” I stuttered, my momentary burst of confidence gone.

  With that, I turned and started walking again.

  “How do you not get arrested?” someone asked, but I ignored them and kept on walking. “I think I’m in love,” I heard someone else say. He sounded like the same guy who had said that I was beautiful, and the thought of that sent another shiver through my belly that I felt all the way down between my legs. I kept walking, taking a quick glance back to see the group dispersing. No one was following me, thank God.

  I reached the other side of the Commons. My dorm was only two buildings away.

  “Holy shit!” someone said, and I turned and saw three guys coming out of their dorm building and stopping when they saw me. “What the hell?” one of the other ones said.

  The shame I had felt since taking my clothes off in Dr. Cleveland’s office was now overpowering. I put my head down, watching my sandaled feet take each step, and clutched my purse to my belly, my arms covering most of my breasts. I made it all the way to the back entrance of my dorm, Holcombe Hall, ignoring anyone I saw and everything I heard. Slamming the door open, I burst inside and took the stairs two at a time up to the third floor. My room was right next to the back stairwell. I pulled my room key from my purse while still bounding up the stairs. I burst through the stairwell door and quickly unlocked my room. No one was in the hall to see me, and I felt a surge of relief. Letting people I had lived with all year see me naked like this was going to be worse than letting strangers on the Common see me, and I wasn’t ready for that yet. Of course, I wasn’t ready for any of this. I had gone into a morning meeting hoping to keep my college hopes alive, and I had left that meeting stripped of both my clothes and my dignity.

  I closed my door, threw my purse on the desk, and collapsed onto my bed, glad that Diane was gone. My hands trembled as I covered my face with them. I sobbed and cried for a bit before I sat up and took off my sandals. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the full length mirror on my closet door. I stood and walked over to it, trying to wipe the tears and redness from my face. My hips have always been wide, but they didn’t look so bad now, I thought. I turned to the side, put my arms over my breasts, and moved one leg forward, emulating the pose I had seen Venus Williams doing on the cover of that ESPN Magazine that Dr. Slater had shown me. My butt looked smaller than Venus’s had looked in that photograph. I turned this way and that, looking at myself. My butt did round out behind me, but it seemed in proportion with my thickly muscled thighs and my pubic mound. Everything looked in balance as I looked at my full body profile. I turned and faced the mirror, seeing myself the way the guy on the Commons had, the one who had said I was beautiful. And I did look beautiful. The only criticism I could find was my two toned white skin, with the areas normally covered by my swimsuit far too pale. I figured that wouldn’t be a problem much longer, exposed to the desert sun as often as I anticipated.

  Lying back on the bed, I stared at the ceiling and tried to process everything I was feeling. How could I have gotten so desperate to stay in college that I had agreed to go everywhere naked for two months? The walk to the dorm had been humiliating and embarrassing and exhilarating. I shuddered as the word “exhilarating” imposed itself on my thoughts. But how could I have felt exhilarated when I had also felt so ashamed? I thought of that moment when I had stopped and stood in front of that group of people, mostly guys, and just let them look at me, and I felt a surge of nervous energy. Before I realized it, my hands were between my legs, and I was surprised to find how wet I was. What was wrong with me?

  Instead of stopping, I kept touching myself, massaging my labia as I thought of the guy who looked at me naked and proclaimed me beautiful. I thought of the glint in his eyes as he looked at my breasts, my nipples, my pubic mound. I had discovered the joys of masturbation in middle school, and I remembered how dirty I had felt after every time. And then I went to high school and heard other girls talking about sex, and
I didn’t feel so dirty anymore. Since an unplanned pregnancy would have destroyed all of my future plans (kind of like getting caught cheating on a paper could have), I had remained a virgin. Outside of a couple of oral sex encounters with boys in high school, masturbation was my only sexual release. And I needed a release right then.

  I plunged one finger into my vagina, then two, using my other hand to stimulate my clitoris, lying on my back with my feet flat on the bed and my pelvis raised high up in the air. As worked up as that walk across campus had made me, I brought myself to a quick orgasm, with a cry escaping my lips at it rushed over me.

  Spent, I lay back down flat on my bed and tried to catch my breath. I felt the weight of the necklace on my chest, and I cringed when I remembered that it was a microphone. Greg was supposedly in the dorm lobby and could hear everything. Shit! Now he was going to think I was just some horny girl who ran around naked and got herself off every time she was alone.

  I sat up, remembering that one of the other research assistants was going to come and take the clothes I was supposed to pack. All of my clothes-- every single garment. I must be crazy for agreeing to that part of the deal, letting them take every single thing I had to wear, but I got up and retrieved the suitcase from the closet. Before I could unzip it open, I was overcome with the urge to go pee, one of the normal after-effects of my orgasms.

  The floor had two full bathrooms, each with eight stalls and six shower units. The closest to my room was down the hall, past three other rooms. I opened my door and peeked out into the corridor, looking both ways and wondering if that was going to be my standard procedure for leaving a room for the next two months. I didn’t see anybody, so I grabbed my room key, just in case Diane popped in and out and locked the door when she left, and scurried to the restroom.

  “That feels better,” I said out loud to myself as I peed, sitting on the commode. As I wiped, I thought about Greg again, knowing that he was probably listening. Would there ever be an end to my embarrassment? “Sorry Greg,” I said to try to make myself feel better, “when you gotta go, you gotta go.” I washed my hands and walked back to my room.

  “So, I guess you’re still listening,” I said as I started packing my clothes. “That walk back here was…weird. I’m wondering if you envisioned having to follow a naked girl around campus as part of your graduate degree requirements. It’s pretty crazy when you think about it. I hope this gets easier.”

  I got my closet cleared out, the clothes off their hangers and lying flat in the suitcase. I started on the drawers, but all I had in those were socks, underwear, a few t-shirts, and four pairs of jeans. The knock on the door startled me. I instinctively looked for something to put on so I could answer it before realizing that I would have to answer it naked. I opened it slightly and saw one of the girls from Dr. Slater’s office standing in the corridor.

  “Dani?” she said.

  I opened the door the rest of the way and said “Hi.”

  She was a large girl with light brown hair and striking blue eyes.

  “Hi,” she said as she walked in. “You forgot your binder.” She pulled it out of the bag she was carrying and handed it to me. I looked at it and at the corner of the black towel sticking out of the external pocket. In just a few minutes, I would be spreading that towel out on a seat in my Nineteenth Century British Literature class so that my bare bottom wouldn’t touch that seat.

  “Thanks,” I said and set it down on my bed.

  We stood looking at each other for an awkward moment, me naked and her in her frilly blouse and Capri pants.

  “I also brought you a couple of other things,” she said, reaching into a plastic grocery bag that she was carrying. She pulled out a strapless hand purse and gave it to me. “For when you go out and don’t need to carry the binder,” she explained.

  The purse was only large enough to hold my phone, my room key, and a little bit of money. I could carry it easily in the palm of one hand.

  “Thanks…?”

  “Ginger,” she said. “I know. It was kind of crazy this morning. I couldn’t believe it when you came in all naked and everything. She has been pushing for this for a long time, and I never thought she would find someone to do it.”

  “Dr. Slater?” I said.

  “Yeah. She’s been trying to get this project going for I don’t know how many years.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know. She had two volunteers last semester. The first one never did get her clothes off before backing out. The second one never made it out of the office. So you walked all the way over here like that?”

  I looked down at my bare feet and said, “Not exactly. I had sandals on.”

  She looked down and giggled. “Cool.”

  She was silent as she slowly looked up from my feet, taking in the rest of my naked body. I really wanted to cover up right then, but all my clothes were in the suitcase on my bed. I don’t think I could ever be attracted to a woman, but the way Ginger looked at me excited me somehow.

  “What else did you bring me?” I asked, nodding toward her bag.

  “Oh, yeah.” She pulled several cans of spray-on sunscreen and set them on my bed.

  “Awesome!” I exclaimed. I took one, saw the SPF90 label, went to one of the corners of the room, and started spraying myself.

  “You should probably spray that on at least three times a day if you’re outside a lot,” Ginger said.

  I got the front with no problem, but Ginger came and helped me when she saw I was having trouble getting it sprayed evenly on my back.

  “Thanks,” I said when she was done. I took the can from her and threw it on the bed with the rest of them.

  Ginger looked at my open suitcase and said, “Did you get everything in there?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Everything that’s clean, that is.” I had my clothes from Saturday and Sunday in my dirty clothes hamper.

  “Here,” Ginger said, holding out the bag that she’d used to carry the sunscreen in. “Put your dirty clothes in here, if they’ll fit, and we’ll have them laundered and put with the rest of your clothes.”

  I grudgingly grabbed the hamper from the closet and dumped my dirty clothes into the grocery bag. Ginger tied the bag shut and zipped up the suitcase. She pulled it down onto the floor and lifted the handle so that she could wheel it out with her.

  “OK,” she said. “I guess that’s it.”

  “Yeah,” I said, looking at my suitcase.

  “I’ll be seeing you around. Although Dr. Slater doesn’t want us interacting with you very much.”

  “I know.”

  “I did see Greg downstairs, and he wanted me to tell you that he was very impressed with how you handled that crowd following you.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Thanks.”

  Ginger shrugged. “Well, I had better get this stuff to Dr. Slater. Good luck. And have fun with this.”

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  I watched Ginger wheel all of my clothes out of my room and out of my life for the next two months. I wondered if Dr. Slater’s two previous volunteers had been in the same position I was in, where saying no would have come at great cost. But I couldn’t think about it for long; I had to get to my British lit class. After making sure I could navigate through the Kindle in my binder, I got my sandals on and the binder zipped back up. I paused at my closed door, looking at the last remaining guardian of my privacy. And once Diane saw me naked later, even the door wouldn’t provide me much refuge. I wished Dr. Slater had been able to get me a room without a roommate for this experiment. Diane was such a party girl that I was sure she would make a big deal out of my nudity. She’d probably even invite a few guys up to the room, just to be a bitch.

  I pushed thoughts of her aside and tried to mentally prepare myself for class, giving a brief thought to skipping today. But my grade point average was more important now than ever before, and skipping classes was just not an option for me. As strange as that walk to my room had been, I kn
ew I had to try to act as normal as possible and even try to ignore the fact that I was naked, as impossible as that sounded. So I opened the door and walked out of my dorm room without even so much as a peek into the corridor first.

  Chapter Four: First Class

  Heading toward the back stairwell, I was just starting to think that I was going to make it out of my dorm without being seen when I heard someone open one of the room doors behind me. Maybe whoever it was wouldn’t look this direction, I hoped as I started to push open the door to the stairwell.

  “Dani!” I cringed when I heard the voice of my floor’s RA, Stacy. “What in the world!?”

  I had thoughts of just ignoring her and rushing down the stairs, but I knew that, like everyone else, she was going to see me soon enough anyway. I turned and faced her, holding my binder in front of my crotch. The embarrassment of being caught and seen naked would just not go away. My heart was beating so hard that it felt like it was trying to bang right out of my chest. I took a deep breath and tried to remain cool and collected.

  “Hi Stacy,” I said.

  She had stopped in the hall, her mouth hanging open. “What is going on?”

  I shrugged. “Just going to class.”

  “You can’t go like that!”

  “Like what?” I said, wondering how long I should continue to play dumb.

  “You’re naked,” she said after stuttering a few times.

  “I prefer the word nude,” I said.