The Volunteer

by D. H Jonathan

  I moved to my computer chair and pulled up Facebook. When I had deactivated my account, I had received a message saying that to reactivate it, all I had to do was log back in. When I did log in, everything looked like it had before. I clicked on the Update Status field and started typing.

  “Hi everyone! I’m back on Facebook after deactivating my account for a few days. I had to do some soul searching about this unusual and special project I am doing. I want my friends here to know before you see it on TV (if you haven’t already) that I am making a statement for humanity, for body image and self-acceptance. I am committed to finishing the current spring semester without ever putting on any clothes. Yes, that means I am naked everywhere I go, to classes, to meals, and anywhere else on campus. People are making a bigger deal out of this than I thought they would, so I felt I had to say something to my friends and family out there. We are all created in God’s image, yet we all spend 99 percent of our lives covering up that image, always hiding parts of it. Here’s hoping that what I’m doing means that we don’t have to hide as often in the future.”

  I proofread what I had typed twice before hitting the Post button. It was a bit less profound than any of the Andrew Martinez quotes I had read just a week ago, but I didn’t think it was too bad. As much as I wanted to sit and watch to see if anyone commented or clicked Like, I was hungry. I put a band aid on my toe and went down to eat lunch. I did have my iPhone with me, so I could log back into Facebook there, but part of me was afraid to see what my friends in Texas would say. The law students were in the dining hall when I got my tray, so I ate with them and didn’t look at my phone.

  When I got back to the room, I worked on my reading assignments for the two literature classes. When I finally did check my Facebook, I was surprised that even though I had over 500 friends, there were only just twenty-something likes and thirty-four comments. None of the comments were overwhelmingly negative, so I could only figure that the people who disagreed with or didn’t like what I was doing had remained silent. The comments that weren’t completely positive were from people perplexed as to why I would consider doing such a thing or how going naked on campus could be legal. I looked at every comment but refrained from replying to anything. I didn’t want to get into any arguments with anyone, especially when I was afraid of slipping and saying something about Dr. Slater’s study. So, I just let it be.

  Diane and James got back from their weekend away just as I was getting ready to go down for dinner. I was standing up, making sure I had a black butt towel in my hand purse when they both walked in. James stopped and just laughed. He seemed drunk, and I hoped that Diane had been the one to drive back. And even though James laughed at me, I never felt the urge to cover up. After one week of this, was I really becoming accustomed to being seen nude all the time? As I walked the hall toward the elevator, my hand brushed against my bare hip giving me a little reminder that I wasn’t wearing any clothes. I rode down with three girls and a guy. They snickered but didn’t say anything. I was a novelty, and somehow, I was becoming OK with this.

  After dinner with Liz and Audrey and the guys, I took a short walk outside. My toe still hurt, but I could walk normally. I was tired of being cooped up in my room, and besides that, Diane and James were probably still up there. I looked around to see who from the sociology department was following me and was very happy to see Greg. But when I turned and started walking toward him, he shook his head. I frowned at him, but I turned and walked toward the Student Union building instead. People smiled politely as I passed them, although I noticed many of them, both guys and girls, taking peeks down at my breasts and pubic area. I didn’t feel any embarrassment anymore. Just knowing that people were looking at me, at the parts of my body that had always been private, aroused me more than it ever had. This project had to have jarred something loose in my psyche.

  I walked into the Student Union building and went up the stairs toward where the church services I had attended last year had been held. I wasn’t too surprised to see that they were holding a Sunday evening service; my subconscious knew they would be. It was sparsely attended with only about two dozen people. I stopped at the glass doors, listening to them sing a song I had never heard. It wasn’t one of the old hymns I had grown up with. My phone had a Bible app on it, and I could follow along with whatever the sermon or lesson was about. But I was naked. They would never let me in.

  I was about to walk away when someone acting as usher pushed the door open in front of me. About half the people turned their heads mid-song to look at me. I felt like running away. Who did I think I was, coming into a place of worship as naked as the day I was born? But I only saw two faces with shocked expressions, one of which belonged to Stacy, the Resident Assistant on my floor at the dorm. The others seemed to be smiling (or were they laughing as James had just laughed at me?). The song leader, a man in his forties whom I recognized as having been the preacher last year, motioned for me to come in. I took a deep breath and hurried in, like jumping in a pool of cold water, and took an aisle seat on the very back row, pausing only briefly to get my little black towel situated on the metal folding chair.

  Everyone was standing to sing, and the lyrics were projected onto a screen behind the song leader/preacher. It was a song I had never heard before, so I mouthed the words and pretended to sing. I couldn’t believe that I was standing naked in a worship service. I had the row to myself. The guy who had opened the door for me sat across the aisle in the next to last row. He kept glancing over at me as if he too couldn’t believe I was stark naked there. Or perhaps he just liked looking at my body. As I stood for the song, I felt that very familiar conundrum of what to do with my arms while standing at church. My natural inclination was to cross them over my chest, under my breasts, but I thought that always made me look either bored or angry. And doing that now would only push my breasts up and draw even more attention to them. I used to force myself to hold my arms behind my back with my hands clasped, unless, of course the song was an upbeat one that we could clap to. The current song was not upbeat, but I couldn’t figure out how to hold my hands behind my back without seeming to thrust my naked breasts out. So I held arms in front of me with my hands clasped for a moment until I realized that this made it seem like I was trying to cover my pubic area. And trying to cover it up only drew more attention to it, so I unclasped my hands and just held them at my sides, with everything on display. The air conditioner vent above me blew cold air across my body, and I broke out in goose pimples. What was I doing here? I felt like I was crashing the place.

  The song mercifully ended, and the pastor broke into prayer. When he was done, he motioned for all of us to sit. When I did, the back of the chair was cold against my bare skin, so I leaned forward to avoid touching it. I crossed my legs, and pulled my Bible app up on my phone. The pastor started into a lesson on the dangers of temptation, with references to the story of David and Bathsheba in 2nd Samuel 11 and the adulterous woman in Proverbs 7. The pastor looked directly at me throughout most of the sermon. Had this guy planned this particular topic, or had he decided to switch to this when he saw me come in? I struggled with an impulse to just leave, or to at least cover myself, but I also wanted to stand up and tell him that Bathsheba hadn’t done anything wrong, that in the days before indoor plumbing everyone bathed outside, that what David did when he saw her was all his sin, not hers. What was a girl, married or not, supposed to do when the King, who had the power of life and death over all of his subjects, initiated sex with her? And as for the adulterous woman in Proverbs 7, I wanted to tell this preacher that it was right there in the text that she was DRESSED like a prostitute and that everything else alluring about her was because of her actions and attitude. Even though I was naked, I was sure that nothing in my current actions or intent was designed to lead anyone astray, especially after the episode with Dr. Biden. It would probably do most of these guys good to see more naked women in regular every day activities, so they didn’t drive themselves crazy f
antasizing about what we looked like under our clothes. I was sure that if they did see more regular girls naked, they wouldn’t turn to porn so often, building up unrealistic expectations. But I kept my mouth shut. The guy talked for over thirty minutes, but I had tuned him out as I thought about the benefits of my nudity project for everyone else. I may have even, for the first time, felt just a bit proud of what I was doing, if such a thing were even possible. When the preacher finally closed, I slipped out during his prayer before anyone could stop me.

  The campus is mostly quiet on Sunday evenings with students all inside doing last minute work for the week ahead. The day had been cooler than it had been the previous week, with temperatures in the early evening only in the low seventies. Still, I avoided the concrete walkways and enjoyed the feeling of the cool, freshly watered grass on my bare feet. My hurt toe was numb, and stray blades of grass clung to the band aid around it. A gentle breeze ruffled the leaves of the palm trees far above me. As disappointed as I had been with the preacher, I was glad that I had gone to the service just for the opportunity to process my thoughts and feelings about how to reconcile my constant nudity with my beliefs. It had taken a week, but I was OK with this. I was going to be able to make it through the semester; I no longer had any doubt of that.

  Perhaps my good feelings after the service were just a coping mechanism for how my life was. I don’t know. But in spite of the looming television coverage, I was feeling good about everyone on campus seeing me naked all the time. And it had only taken a week.

  I slept OK Sunday night, waking up once in the two o’clock hour needing to pee and stumbling around in the dark looking for a nightshirt to throw on before remembering that I was now naked all the time. Old habits are difficult to break, especially when one is only one-quarter or so awake. My first class Monday was at eleven o’clock, so I didn’t get out of bed until after nine. After pulling a brush through my hair a few times, I grabbed my hand purse with my room key, my iPhone, my meal card, and a black butt towel and took the elevator down to breakfast. The buzz of conversation was louder than usual, so the silence that ensued when I entered the room was even more pronounced than normal. I went through the serving line and got my breakfast. Liz waved me over to her table, much to the consternation of the law students who were also making a place for me. I shrugged to them as I made my way over to Liz.

  “Hey, did you see the vans outside?” Liz said as I sat down.

  “No.”

  “Six of them, at least,” Audrey said.

  “What!” I exclaimed. Sylvia had said there would only be three stations taking footage.

  “Are they here for you?” Bruce asked.

  I sighed and nodded, pulling my phone out of my hand purse.

  “Damn,” Liz said. “When is your first class? I may want to walk with you so I can get on TV.”

  “Eleven o’clock.”

  “Crap. Mine’s at ten.”

  I suddenly had little appetite for the scrambled eggs and sausage in front of me. I found Sylvia’s number in my phone and hit the dial button.

  “Good morning Danielle,” Sylvia said in a loud voice.

  “Hi.”

  “Are you ready for your big day?”

  “Not quite,” I said. “I’m eating breakfast now, and then I’m going to shower.”

  “Wonderful. There have been a few changes since we talked yesterday, and I want to go over them with you. Are you in the cafeteria?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. I’ll see you in just a bit.”

  She hung up without giving me a chance to ask anything over the phone. I grabbed my fork and took a few bites of egg while watching the door for her and shrugging off everyone’s questions about what was going on. When Sylvia did walk through the door, I jumped up, grabbing my tray and all my things, and hurried over to the dishwasher conveyer. Sylvia saw where I was heading and met me there just as I set my tray down with my plate of half eaten eggs and untouched sausage. I thought better of letting that get away and grabbed the sausage patty.

  “All right,” Sylvia said, “I know you still have to shower and get ready, so I’ll make this quick. In addition to the three local stations, we now have two major networks and one private production company. And since we have so many, I’ve moved your interviews up to twelve o’clock, right after your first class. Two of the crews will be taking footage inside your classroom. I’ve already cleared this with your professor.”

  “What’s the private production company do?”

  “I don’t have a list of all of their credits, but I know they have done shows for HBO and Showtime.”

  Great, I thought, two networks that could and probably would show my naked body completely uncensored.

  “Make sure your hair is nice and that you put on some make up,” Sylvia continued. “And I want you to use these interviews to promote the school. Make sure you say ‘Coachella Valley University’ in each of your interviews and talk about how precious it is to have the freedom to express yourself and make a statement about our world.”

  “Yes ma’am,” I said as we walked out of the dining hall. Everything was going too fast for me to argue with her. Having someone from HBO or Showtime here bothered me since so many people I know have one or both of those channels and could be seeing me walking naked across campus without any digital blurring. They could probably find uncensored photos or video of me on the Internet if they looked, but that was the catch: they would have to look. If I were on HBO, they could stumble upon naked me just by accident.

  “You go get ready and come out the front door at 10:30, OK?” Sylvia said as we approached the elevator.

  I nodded and hit the button to go up. Was this really my life? Walking outside without a stitch of clothing on to multiple cameras that would be airing stories about me all over the country? It didn’t seem real. The elevator arrived, and I stepped on.

  “Remember to smile when you walk out of the building,” Sylvia said as the doors were closing.

  Life is just a show, I thought to myself as I hurried into my room, eating the sausage patty as I went. Diane was still in bed, but she was stirring. I ate the last of the sausage, grabbed my shower pack and towel, and hurried off to the bathroom. As I waited for the shower water to heat up, I noted to myself that it had been exactly one week since I took off my yellow dress in that office next to Dr. Slater’s, and I hadn’t worn any clothing since. I wondered how many other people could say that they had spent an entire week naked. There were a few I was sure, but as a percentage of the population, that number had to be extremely small.

  I spent a little longer than usual in the shower shaving my legs and pubic area, and more time still at the sink, putting on just a bit of makeup after brushing my teeth. I even used the blow dryer on my hair, something I rarely did. By the time I got back to the room, I was dismayed to see that it was already 10:25. At least I didn’t have to take any time to get dressed. I grabbed my binder, put a fresh band aid on my toe, and sprayed on a coat of sunscreen so thick that my body glistened. Upon leaving my room, I turned and started to take the side stairs before remembering that Sylvia had told me to walk out the front door of the dorm. I took the elevator down with two perplexed freshman girls from the upper floors.

  I stopped in the building foyer and peeked out the window next to the door. Six news vans were parked on the street in front of the Holcombe Hall, and several men with cameras on their shoulders were lined up on the grassy area between the curb and the sidewalk. I thought about my future husband, whomever he might be, and our future children. Everything so far had been local or on the web, things that could be buried over time. National network coverage was something else entirely, especially HBO. I had HBO at home before Daddy got tired of paying for it and had had it cancelled a year or two ago. I had caught episodes of a show called Real Sex, most of which were produced in the 1990s but were still being aired twenty years later. Walking out that door guaranteed that this time of my life, as the n
aked girl on campus, was going to follow me forever and affect that future husband and children. Sighing, I tried to remember what I had thought last night during the worship service, that what I was doing could have long-lasting beneficial effects for everyone, leading to a healthier view of our bodies and each other. My future family would just have to be understanding of this nudity project and of my reasons for doing it.

  I forced a smile onto my face and pushed through the doors of Holcombe Hall and out into the mid-morning sunshine. All of the cameramen sprang into action, pointing their cameras at me and jockeying with each other for position. I tried not to look at them, to just walk normally, looking forward like I always did. Two of the camera guys stalked off ahead, to get full frontal shots of me walking, while the others were content to stay behind, getting shots of my backside and of the reactions of people I passed. I wondered how the cameras behind me avoided having the other cameramen in front of me in their shots, but I also figured that they were shooting far more footage than they would use in their final reports. Sylvia was standing next to one of the news vans talking to several well-dressed people.

  People turned to stare during my walk to class, but this time they weren’t only looking at me but also at the media circus all around. The camera guys in front of me had moved off the trail and took footage of my profile as I walked. Once I had moved away from their view, they jogged ahead, set up, and took more video. For some reason, I thought of Princess Diana trying to get away from a mob of photographers before crashing to her death, and I felt a new empathy for her. At least she got to wear clothes when the photographers hounded her. I had thought I was getting used to being nude, but having all these video cameras pointed at me made me feel more naked than ever. I wondered how many millions of people in the years ahead would see the footage being taken of me right now. The thought was enough to almost make my legs buckle. This wasn’t fair, to be forced to show myself naked to the entire world. People not even born yet would be watching this walk across campus, with me the only naked person in the midst of all these normally dressed people.