by Mike Heppner
Other friendly, supportive contributors forwarded their responses to the woman’s story:
“Welcome!!! Sounds like you had one hell of a night. Keep it up, and let us know the next time you do something crazy.”
“I had a similar experience when I was in La Junta, Colorado. One word of advice: you should always keep an extra change of clothes hidden if you plan on going out for more than a few miles. It can take a little preparation, but it’ll save you a lot of trouble in the end. Other than that, good work. BTW: Anyone want to trade pix of PN in urban settings? I have construction sites, abandoned factories, highway overpasses. Daytime only, please. No shoes.”
“SandyS, you are a madwoman. I’d love to live in your building. Good for you. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Have you ever considered doing a 48-hour nude? It can get boring but it’s a fun way to spend the weekend.”
For several minutes, all Marlene could do was stare at the screen. The sheer quantity of the postings was impressive. Public nudity was everywhere, in stores, parking lots, every conceivable mode of mass transit. The idea bothered her. She felt as though something tiny and fragile had been taken from her and stretched out of shape, made grotesque. According to these people, public nudity was like a sporting event, with its own lingo and code of ethics. “Secret exhibitionism”—a term Marlene had never heard before—was defined as “the display of the unclothed human body in places and situations where nudity is not permitted by law or social custom.” Fair enough. But why sound so clinical about it? This was a compulsion, not a sport. No equipment, no qualifying rounds, no tips from the experts. Just nightmares, and anxiety, and self-doubts. One or two brief glorious moments, but that was it.
While Marlene began spending all her time on the Net, Stuart had worries of his own. He still owed his publisher what his contract referred to as “The Work,” for which he’d been paid more than half of the money promised him as an advance against royalties. Weeks ago, his agent had given him a new deadline for the book. Write an outline, he’d suggested, something to get the ol’ wheels spinning. Problem was, Stuart didn’t know where to begin. An outline? Whatever for? Why not outline the stages of his emotional breakdown instead? His mounting depression, the chapter-by-chapter dissolution of his marriage. That’d thrill everyone. Stu, his agent would say, whaddaya doin’ to me here? You’re giving me garbage. I’ve got cookbooks to sell, self-help guides, stop smoking, stop eating, stop jerking off ten times a day. You’re too depressing, man. Too wrapped up in your own head. There’s gotta be some sizzle, an element of fun. Don’t judge people just because they don’t want to read about your miserable life. I don’t want to read about your miserable life either, about your wife’s kinky sex hang-ups or the fact you can’t keep your clothes on for more than five minutes. That’s icky, man. Gross. Too much fuckin’ information. Write a book about George Washington. Write about the history of prostitution. Gene splicing, Jacques Cousteau. Something specific. When people read a book, they want to feel like they’re learning something. What are they learning from you? They’re learning dick, they’re learning cock, they’re learning ass, they’re learning fucking on the front lawn. This is advice from a friend, Stu. You did the self-indulgent thing once. You can’t do it again. Write about big-band music. Sophocles. Sophocles’ sister. Write about art!
These days, Stuart didn’t want to write about anything. When it came right down to it, even he could see through his own act. He knew he wasn’t the “sharp, smart voice of his generation,” as his publicist had once described him. He wasn’t smart or sharp or any of that. He was an airhead. A dodo, a moron. Whatever those other geniuses had, he didn’t have it. It was an easy enough matter to get the publicity blurbs together and make everything look peachy from a distance, but up close, there wasn’t much there. He was lucky, that was all. His book was a souvenir. His career, a joke.
Still, he did his best. He tried writing an outline, just as his agent had suggested. After a few days, he gave it a title, changed Characters A, B and C to real names and got started on a draft. Marlene was so out of it that he could easily imagine she wasn’t even there, and his mind returned to when he was writing My Private Apocalypse, living as a single man in his single-room apartment. Then as now, writing helped to ground and protect him; if not for his work, he would’ve succumbed to worse habits.
One spring morning, he set his notebook aside and walked to the Citizens Bank on Brook Street. Marlene had been dismissed six weeks ago, but neither of them had worked up the courage to pick up her belongings. She certainly wasn’t going to do it, so that left him with the job. The walk was peaceful and pleasant; now that the college kids had all gone home, the locals could reclaim the area around Brook and Thayer. He smiled as he walked past a sushi restaurant near campus. His stomach was growling, and he weighed the happy idea of treating himself to a nice lunch.
Carla Marshall was working at the bank that morning and waved when he entered the building. The other tellers and financial consultants looked up from their desks and stared. He could feel his face turn red, so he made a direct diagonal across the banking floor to Marlene’s old office. Someone had put her things in an open cardboard box that sat in the middle of the otherwise bare desk. The cubicle walls afforded him some privacy, so he sat down and looked through the box: a calendar; a coffee mug with a brown halo-stain in the bottom; pictures of Stuart, her parents, someone’s baby—probably a coworker’s; pens, paperweights and an unopened pack of chewing gum.
A voice interrupted him. “We thought we’d never see you again.”
Carla was standing inside the cubicle. He blushed, wondering how long she’d been watching him. She’d always struck him as an exceptionally sexy woman, in a trashy, ex-stripper sort of way. She and her husband, Bill, were both huge stoners, and generally good for some high-quality hash whenever Stuart and Marlene came over for drinks.
“How’s Marlene?” she asked.
Stuart gazed down and saw she was pumping her right foot in and out of her shoe. No point in pretending; he stared at it, then back up at her face. “Not too good,” he said. “We hardly talk anymore, and when we do, she’s out to lunch.”
She tsked sympathetically. “Poor kid. Marlene always takes it on the chin. And what about you?”
He shrugged. “I’m all right. We’re just trying to get through this together.”
Stepping back into her shoe, she sat in the empty chair across from Marlene’s desk. “To be honest with you, Stuart, I tried convincing our regional managers not to let her go but no dice. You know how conservative bankers are.”
It’d been so long since he’d spoken to a woman other than Marlene that he felt like flirting with her. “You’re not conservative,” he said.
She laughed. “No, I’m not. I think what Marlene did was really cool. I could never do that. I’m so self-conscious about my body.”
Sure you are, he thought.
“By the way,” she said, “my offer about Martha’s Vineyard still stands. We’re going up this weekend.”
He hesitated. “I don’t know, Carla. I don’t know if she’s ready for that yet.”
“Ask her. She needs to get out of the house. You both do.” Carla’s bright, super alert blue eyes held his own for a moment, then blinked away. “I don’t see what the big deal is. In Europe, people walk around naked all the time. One of Bill’s friends is a photographer from Paris. He’s got a whole Web site filled with pictures of girls wandering around Europe without any clothes on. City streets, parks, everything. It sounds like fun to me.”
Stuart smiled. “Well, maybe we’ll move to Europe someday.”
Carla’s laughter sounded forced, as if she hadn’t actually heard him. “Look at it like this—at least it’ll give you something to write about.”
Ah, yes: good advice. Even a passing conversation with Carla wasn’t possible without his writing coming up. Because she’d once seen a profile of John Grisham on 60 Minutes, she believed that all writer
s were the near-equivalent of movie stars, if slightly less recognizable on the street. He’d tried explaining that, unlike John Grisham, he wasn’t swimming in royalty checks, and that only a handful of people had actually read his book from beginning to end. She didn’t buy it and felt he was being falsely modest. Why argue with her? he wondered. Let her think what she wants. At least someone’s impressed.
Carla’s habit of slipping her shoe on and off was making him horny, so he said goodbye and hurried home to his wife. Marlene was in the kitchen when he returned, frying an egg on the stove. He crept up behind her, then reached out and turned off the burner.
“Hon, don’t do that,” she said. “It’s not finished cooking.”
“I don’t care.” His kisses were everywhere: her mouth, her chin, the side of her neck. “I need you. Right now. Please, hon, I’m going crazy.”
“Cut it out, Stuart. Now I’m going to have to start all over.”
“Who cares? Let’s go upstairs. I want to see you naked.”
“It’s too soon.” Squirming away, she carried the frying pan over to the sink and dumped the egg down the drain. “I’ve been through a lot, Stuart. Don’t blame me for being upset.”
“I don’t, Jesus, but come on—you weren’t raped, Marlene. You were arrested. It happens.” He followed her to the kitchen counter. “I’m sorry, this is just driving me insane. I’ve got cabin fever. It’s just you and me in this little apartment, and . . . you won’t let me touch you. You won’t talk to me, you won’t even look at me. You’re not looking at me right now.” She glanced up at him, then down again. “Let’s go away for awhile. We need a change of pace. I do.”
“You can go without me,” she muttered.
“I don’t want to. Look.” He took both of her hands in his. “Let’s go to Martha’s Vineyard. This weekend. I ran into Carla Marshall at the bank. She wants us to come, both her and Bill. You can bring a book and lie on the beach. Whatever you want to do. Please, Marlene.”
“Go by yourself.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“Because no one likes me.”
“Carla does. She told me just today. She even said that she tried to get your job back, but her bosses wouldn’t listen.” This ought to have made her feel better, but it didn’t seem to. “What can it hurt? We’ll go for a few days—a week, if you want. Come on, you’ve been talking about this for months.”
Her eyes avoided his. “It’s just too much right now. I’m sorry, Stuart.” She knew she was disappointing him but couldn’t help it. “I don’t deserve you. You should be with someone else. Someone who’s beautiful and intelligent, who doesn’t complain all the time and isn’t a big drunk.”
“Oh, stop being so goddamned hard on yourself. We both fucked up. You did and I did. We’re both guilty.”
“No, only me. I’m the bad guy.”
She was looking for sympathy, though he didn’t feel much like giving it to her. “You think you’re bad? You’re an angel, sweetheart. You don’t know what bad is. I’m the one who’s bad. I shouldn’t even be in the same room as you. I shouldn’t be in the same house. Don’t tell me about who deserves who and who doesn’t. I don’t deserve anything.”
He stormed off, leaving her alone in the kitchen. He’d never yelled at her like that before. Marlene was used to thinking of Stuart as a steady, stabilizing presence. She felt she owed him an apology, though she wasn’t sure for what.
Later, in his office, she turned on the computer and logged onto secret-exhibitionist.org. Stuart had left for a walk an hour earlier, and she hadn’t decided whether to start worrying or not. As a distraction, she went to the open forum page and browsed through the latest postings. About two dozen entries had been added since the last time she’d checked. Reading them quickly began to bore her. So many reports of flashing, streaking and masturbating in front of windows became monotonous after awhile, and she wondered if everyone else who visited the site eventually came to the same conclusion: there was only so much you could do, so many different variations before the stories began to repeat and break down into categories. She never thought she’d find the topic boring, but there she was—bored stiff.
Then, at the bottom of the page, she noticed a posting whose title, Female Streaker Busted in RI, intrigued her. The message went on, “Attention! Check out this article. Her name’s Marlene Breen, and she lives in Rhode Island. This is, without a doubt, the ultimate streak!!!”
The posting contained a link to an article in the Providence Journal about Marlene’s arrest. In response, other contributors added their own comments: “Cool! Who is this person? Is she a member?” “Does anyone have a picture? I tried doing a search on AOL, but nothing came up. I will pay cash for top-quality jpegs. Urgent!” “Any ideas on how to track her down? Maybe s-e.org could do a profile—or, better yet, let’s set up a live twenty-four-hour webcam feed. I have to meet this woman.”
Marlene reread the entry several times. To her, this was like receiving a glowing review in the New York Times—the ultimate expression of respect from her peers. I’m famous! she thought. People are talking about me. People I’ve never met, never seen before. Streakers, nudists, perverts, exhibitionists. People in different states, in different countries. They all want to meet me. Me. Marlene.
I’m on the Internet!
Alone in the empty house, she leaned back in her chair and, for the first time in many days, smiled: a great, glowing, sun-shiny smile.
3
A few weeks after Marlene’s arrest, Heath and Allison went up to New Hampshire for a sneak peek at phase two of the Independence Project. Unlike with phase one, Pike hadn’t allowed cameras on the site until it was nearly finished. Allison didn’t particularly want to go, but she didn’t want Heath making the trip by himself either. They’d become much more clingy in the days since she’d returned from London, and less spontaneous. Their relationship had all of the hallmarks of two people who were either about to break up or get engaged.
Just outside of North Conway, she asked, “Do you know if Stuart’s going to be there?”
“Beats me,” Heath said. “I think he’s got a lot on his hands right now.”
“Oh . . . right. Have you ever met his wife?”
He didn’t want to get into that, so he said, “Not really.”
“I feel sorry for her. People in this country are so fucked up. So goddamn conservative. You should see some of the sex clubs in Soho. Even the English are more hip than we are.”
“You went to a sex club?” he asked.
“Not a real sex club. It was more like a rave.”
“A dance club.”
“No, a rave. A fucking rave. You know?”
It wasn’t worth fighting about, so he closed his eyes and listened to the music on the tape deck. As the driver, Allison had agreed to let him play his music for the second half of the trip, much as it annoyed her. Allison liked songs, finished songs, not half-baked works in progress.
“How can you stand this junk?” she asked.
Heath reluctantly turned down the volume. He’d brought along a box of Smile bootlegs for the three-hour trip, most of which consisted of multiple takes of melodic fragments: the same xylophone passage repeated sixteen times, or a vocal line sung a cappella, then overdubbed ad infinitum. This particular session, “Surf ’s Up,” was one of his favorites. In late ’66, Brian Wilson was working with a lyricist named Van Dyke Parks, and “Surf ’s Up” was their greatest collaboration, a multipart suite featuring sleigh bells, horns and Brian’s own wide-ranging vocals. Unlike a lot of Smile, “Surf ’s Up” sounded fully realized, even on the session tapes. This alone made the song unique. Avid Smile fanatics had learned how to deal with disappointment; “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow” might’ve been an interesting title, but as a song it wasn’t much. “Surf ’s Up” didn’t disappoint. The demo version of Brian playing the middle movement on the piano was gorgeous, complete in itself.
“I’m sorry,” Allison said. �
��I just need silence for a few minutes.” Shutting off the tape, she concentrated on the traffic, which had picked up considerably since they’d arrived in North Conway. During the warmer months, the roads leading in and out of town were always bumper to bumper—quite a change from her last time in New Hampshire.
“Why are you so uptight?” Heath asked.
“I’m not.”
“Okay.”
“What does that mean?”
“Okay, you’re not uptight.”
“That’s right, I’m not. I’m just tired, and I’ve been driving all day, and I want to get off the road. My bra’s killing me.”
“Would you like me to drive?” he offered.
“No, we’re almost there. You should’ve asked me an hour ago. What’s the point in only driving the last five miles? None, nothing, there’s no point.”
“Okay.”
“What do you mean, Okay?”
“Okay, there’s no point. I’m sorry.”
Allison leaned on the horn and flipped off the driver in front of them. She grumbled, “Why are you sorry? You’ve got nothing to be sorry about.”
Leaving town, they continued north to the ski lodge, where Pike was waiting to take them to the top of Mount Independence. When she pulled in, he was standing in front of Sarah Cranberry’s place, which he’d commandeered for the duration of the project. Heath and Allison joined him on the porch.
“You’re just in time,” Pike said. He looked as upbeat as ever, and his bright blue camouflage jumpsuit made him stand out in the woods. “We’re meeting a pilot to take us to the construction site. Anyone afraid of flying?”
“What kind of a plane is it?” Allison asked.
