Co-ed Naked Philosophy

by Forest, Will

  “Sounds deep. And, coming from just about anybody else, suspicious. But you, I can believe,” said Renee. “So just exactly what have you learned from your ‘research,’ Dr. Ross?”

  “I’ve learned that I never would have guessed how much I still have to learn about anatomy!”

  Tucker cleared his throat. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Color, shape, movement…look, I don’t want this to come out the wrong way. I’m not gawking or spying, or camera-fishing like that intruder. I’m just struck by the variety of what people look like and how they move.”

  “I’m a regular, so I don’t think I notice that so much anymore,” said Tucker. “But it’s true you see all kinds of people out here.”

  “Let me show you what I mean. Look at the ice cream vendor over there.”

  “Señor Espinoza? He’s a great guy. Been here for years, longer than me, maybe,” said Tucker.

  “He’s a walking anatomy lesson. Just look at him pushing that cart through the sand. See how he pushes low, lining his back up with his legs? He gets all the power from his lower body that way.”

  “Yeah, you can tell he’s been moving that thing down the beach for a long time now,” said Alex. “Just look at his massive quadriceps and glutes!”

  “Or look over there, toward the hotels,” said Christopher. “See those two people walking this way, right along the shoreline?”

  “The one on the surf side is a little taller?” asked Tucker.

  “Right. See, I can’t tell their sex, you know what I mean? This is my point. If they had swimsuits on, we could tell from an even greater distance whether they’re both women, or both men, or one each, or whatever.”

  “It’s one woman and one man…no wait, they’re both men,” said Tucker.

  “Sure, now they’re close enough you can see,” said Renee. “It’s only natural. Everybody checks people out, whether they’re wearing clothes or not.”

  “That’s funny,” said Alex. “They’re naked and that actually makes it harder to tell who’s what sex.”

  “Only you would think of something like that, Dr. Ross,” Renee said. “OK, so now it’s your turn. Guess why I’m here today.”

  Chin in hand, Christopher stared into Renee’s eyes. “I guess you’re here on a dare. It couldn’t be to work on that tan, right?” He regretted such a lame joke the second it fell from his lips.

  She laughed. “Yeah, good one, Dr. Ross! I couldn’t be any darker, now, could I? No, but I’m here with some friends from Ricky’s, who are working on their tans.”

  Christopher raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t know you’re a stri…”

  “Exotic dancer. It’s good money—helps pay tuition—and I’m comfortable with my body, so...” Renee paused while she held her arms out wide and lifted her face to the sun, her wavy hair plunging down her back, “...here I am.”

  “That’s what this beach is all about, accepting your body,” said Tucker. “And other people’s bodies.”

  Alex nodded, unashamedly appraising Renee’s fit physique. “You really take care of yourself.”

  “Thank you,” she replied. “Listen, I came over here to tell you we’re setting up the volleyball net. Y’all are welcome to come play.”

  “Thanks,” said Alex. “That’d be great.”

  Tucker declined, stretching his chin to point out the group of regulars sitting around their cooler. “I’m gonna have another beer. You care for one, Chris?”

  Christopher delayed in responding, partly because he was still getting used to natural conversation while nude, and partly because he didn’t like being called Chris. “It’s tempting, but no thanks. I’m going to keep reading here for awhile. I’m working on my lesson plans. Classes start next week.”

  “Don’t remind me,” groaned Renee. “Okay, see you later, Dr. Ross.”

  Walking away, she turned back and called, “Oh yeah, Dr. Ross? You better take off your watch or you’ll have a funny white stripe around your wrist!”

  Christopher grinned and waved as Renee and Alex joined other young women and men setting up their game. Among them he recognized the snorkelers he had followed, and he recalled them now fondly as the catalyst for his new research. Several players began to jump and stretch and serve and volley in preparation. It was a heavenly vision: beautiful young nudes, like Greek gods sporting on the beach, the whole shimmering scene pierced by crystalline slivers of sunshine. Playing volleyball! No clothes!

  Setting up the volleyball court, a fit young woman was flexing her thighs and buttocks, drawing her right foot over to her left to trace the boundary lines in the sand. Christopher watched her for a short time, and although he was thinking about boundaries, he felt himself surprised by the faintest and most involuntary beginning of an erection. He immediately sat down on his towel and drew his knees tight against his abdomen.

  Still watching the young woman set up the court, he shamed himself remembering the covert cameraman, and wondered how to mark the line between the natural and the perverse. What’s out of bounds? To some extent, don’t we all come to the beach, any beach, as voyeurs? Don’t we come to celebrate bodies, our own and others’? And wouldn’t my reaction have been the same if the woman were wearing a swimsuit? He reasoned that the physical, bodily manifestation of his arousal was a perfectly natural reaction to the immediate context, but that photographing the nude beach-goers without their consent, and then using those photos for blatantly sexual purposes, presented a much different situation because it set up an artificial or un-natural context, once or even several times removed from the original environment. He repeated to himself, for the umpteenth time, one of his trademark classroom phrases: Context is everything.

  He debated the possibility of ever completely filtering out the erotic, and the desirability of that condition. If he were over there playing volleyball, he reasoned, he’d be thinking about the game, more than about unclothed bodies. Physiologically, blood would be shunted to his muscles, not his genitals. But to some extent— socially conditioned, and perhaps a great and pleasurable one—while playing volleyball he would still cherish the sensuality of the abundance of skin, of marble-dust sand clinging to buttocks, of bobbing breasts. He rolled over to lie face down, feet toward the volleyball players, and focused on “The Veiled Truth: Human Beauty in the Visual Arts” in the Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth International Conference on the Philosophy of Aesthetics, Vienna 1998:

  Draped over the reclining nude, the veil reveals as much as it hides. Opaque or translucent, it accents the body’s contours even as it covers them. The extended veil, like the entrance to Plato’s cave, filters our perception of the illuminated world and draws our gaze to silhouettes projected beyond the sun’s reach.

  At times the veil provides a welcome relief by shielding us from the unbearable power of Truth. This is because we cannot view Plato’s Forms in their pure state, rather only the filtered images of them. Moreover, the pure state is unalterable, inexorable, whereas veils allow us the pleasure and the diversion of variety in context.

  As Christopher read these opening paragraphs he heard the game begin: the deep, hollow thump of service; some sharp, higher hits as the volley was returned. He struggled with a few more lines but could no longer resist watching the game, enraptured by the bouncing bodies, women and men flexing, tensing, turning, twisting in unrestrained freedom. His penis still felt somewhat thick against his abdomen but he decided it was nothing obscene, nothing to hide. Would a panther hide his skin? Or a bear, or a python? Why hide anything under the cloudless dome, this naked sky, this unveiled heaven? Hearing animated conversation from Tucker and the other regulars, he decided to accept that beer after all.

  When he stood up, a growing breeze enveloped the front of his body. And as he walked toward Tucker’s group he gradually became aware of a parched silence, a void that was too quickly being filled by an alarming hum. Christopher spun around and faced the abandoned volleyball net. He watched three black triangles fu
rther down the beach, looming ever larger as they turned into uniformed men riding dune buggies with enormous wheels.

  The Demons Approacheth

  He cringed at his birthday suit’s suddenly overwhelming vulnerability. Tucker and his cronies had stopped talking, but they remained seated calmly on their coolers and towels. Most of the other people had run off; Christopher regretted not having done the same. The riders, their badges reflecting concentrated sunlight, stopped their buggies but left the motors running.

  Tucker yelled “Turn off your engines already!” and amazingly, they did.

  In the renewed stillness Christopher observed the military policemen, armed with clubs, stone-faced behind their shining mirror shades. An officer’s walkie-talkie conversation broke the silence: “Yeah, there’s about a dozen of ‘em. Bring the big one.”

  “Alright now don’t go runnin’ off,” another MP said. “Y’all are under arrest for trespassing and public nudity. There’ll be a van here in a few minutes to take you to the precinct.”

  A middle-aged, somewhat portly woman stood up and swaggered over to the MP. “Well isn’t that sweet. Y’all really look out for us. But while we’re all waiting, wouldn’t you like to change into something more comfortable?”

  Tucker laughed. “Sure is hot out here, huh Chris. Chris? Isn’t that right, Chris?”

  “Yeah,” said Christopher, hopping from one foot to the other while he rued the damage the arrest would cause his career. “It sure is hot out here.”

  “That’s enough now,” said the MP. “Y’all know this beach is property of the United States government.”

  A twenty-something man with orange hair and a hoop earring spoke up. “Yeah and you all know that we’re out here sunbathing in the buff all the time, and we don’t cause any problems. So why are you after us today? Somebody piss in sarge’s coffee?”

  “No,” said Tucker, snapping his fingers. “It must have been that delinquent with the camera. He ratted on us! He’s got connections or else he wouldn’t have been taken seriously.”

  “Well he’s probably an MP, don’t you think?” asked a deeply tanned young woman.

  Christopher thought that in fact one of the MPs did look something like the t-shirted cameraman, but it was hard to tell with the uniforms, caps, and mirror sunglasses. “Wait a minute,” Christopher said. “How can you charge us with public nudity when we’re supposedly trespassing on private land?”

  The officer with the walkie-talkie grinned. “Y’all aren’t trespassing on private land, you’re hanging out butt nekkid on PUBLIC land, U.S. Navy property. That’s called PUBLIC nudity.”

  “Hey I pay my taxes so this is my land, right? How come I can’t do whatever I want on it?” demanded the orange-haired man.

  “Yeah and isn’t there some law about the coastline being everybody’s property? You can’t own the beach...”

  “Save it for the precinct!” yelled another MP. “Pick up your stuff. And put your damn clothes on! The van is on the way.”

  While they waited for the van, a different arrival interrupted the tension. From the other end of the beach, toward the hotel area, came a progression of several dozen people clothed in pants or pantsuits and long-sleeved shirts or blouses, some wearing suit jackets and ties, marching behind a robed man bearing a large cross and two others carrying a banner with a proclamation that the nude beach regulars recognized even before it was close enough to read:

  CHILDREN OF THE LORD OUR GOD

  FUNDAMENTALIST CONGREGATION

  The banner was affixed to poles that the carriers pushed into the sand just beyond the Navy base boundary. Then the banner carriers helped the robed man erect the cross in the sand next to the banner. Somebody produced a bible, and soon the nudists and police officers could hear fragments of the group leader’s predications on the breeze:

  “And the serpent said unto the woman…and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons…And the Lord God called unto Adam…I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

  “Jesus Christ,” muttered an officer. “Now we’ve got to deal with these loonies, too.”

  “They always come over here right after church, dressed in their Sunday best” said the portly woman. “They’re going to steam like tamales.”

  “Hast thou eaten of the tree,” continued the preacher, “whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?”

  “I’ll be just a moment,” Tucker said, strolling over to the protesters. Christopher followed him.

  The preacher broke from the text and raised his hands. “Shield thine eyes! The demons approacheth!”

  Tucker stopped on the other side of the Navy boundary and addressed the preacher. “Hi, Sean.”

  Sean made a great show of turning his back to the nude men and covering his eyes. “Fie! Thou art clever fiends of lust!”

  “Sean, you may recall that after you came out here last time, I sent you materials about Christian nudism and the purity of God’s creation. Did you receive them?”

  “It was a packet of pornography you sent me, you infernal apparition!”

  Tucker stared at the congregation members, most of whom had turned their backs. A few were only halfheartedly averting their eyes. “Makes no sense to me that you and your people go to all this trouble to come out here, and then you won’t even engage in sensible conversation.”

  “The demon tempts, oh my brethren! It wants to corrupt our God-given mission! It wants to corrupt our holy ministry…”

  “Alright, that’s enough! Just shut up already!” Tucker’s patience vanished. “Don’t you call me ‘it’ when I’m standing here before you as human as possible, just the way the Lord made me! Don’t you even know what a ‘he’ looks like? Now you all just go on back home and try cracking open a dictionary instead of the bible, and look up what ‘prurient’ means. Next time you come back we’ll talk about that.”

  “You might want to look up ‘dehumanize’ while you’re at it,” said Christopher. “It’s a few pages before “demonize.”

  Sean had not turned. “Brethren, when the Lord our God warns us about temptation…”

  “Let’s go, Brother Sean,” said a congregant tugging at his collar, “it’s too hot out here.”

  “Yeah, and there aren’t any demons playing volleyball this time, either,” said another church member.

  A third congregant fanned her blouse up and down over her abdomen. “Anyways, look behind you. The police got here first. These naked demons are going to jail.”

  An MP had arrived. “Listen, people, you can move along now. We’re taking custody of these folks.” He turned to Tucker and Christopher. “You two need to go get in the van.”

  His arms finally lowered, Sean turned to face the nude men. “I was tricked, officer,” he said. “I did not recognize these poor souls for what they are: merely men, sinners already chained to the corruption of their carnal knowledge.”

  “Not merely men,” said Christopher. “Not merely but gloriously so, and we’re no more limited by our bodies than you are. Carnal knowledge means knowing your body, not hiding it.”

  Tucker nodded and looked the preacher in the eyes. “Don’t be afraid, Sean. And don’t incite your congregation to fear either.”

  The officer slipped a hand around each nude man’s upper arm and led them both across the beach. The Children of the Lord our God Fundamentalist Congregation slowly disbanded, slogging through the sand back toward the church bus. Sweating and grunting, Sean heaved the cross onto his back, and stooped and stepped along behind his erstwhile followers, the standard bearer bringing up the rear as the cross dragged along the dunes.

  Arriving at the van, Christopher started to get dressed as the MPs had ordered, but he saw that Tucker and his group did not.

  “It’s a matter of principle,” Tucker said, and so Christopher nodded and left his clothes off.

  An officer waiting with the van witnessed this exchange. “C’mon, stop scoping each other out and
get your clothes on! Do I have to dress you up myself?!”

  Tucker shaded his eyes with his hand to look into the officer’s face. “You’d like that.”

  The officer heaved a pile of musty wool blankets at them. “If y’all won’t get dressed, at least cover yourselves up with these blankets.”

  Everybody grabbed a blanket, but only to use for sitting on the floor of the stripped van.

  “What are our rights?” asked the deeply tanned woman seated next to Christopher. Then the back door slammed shut and the van started moving slowly over the sand.

  “We haven’t committed any felonies,” Tucker said, “but you will have a police record, if you don’t already. They’ll cite us for trespassing and for public nudity, which are misdemeanors.”

  “You should have run away,” the orange-haired man said to Christopher.

  Tucker stared at the professor. “I know it’s a rough break for you, your first time and all that, but we all sure appreciate you supporting our cause. You’re a brave man. Besides, you can be thankful they didn’t handcuff us this time.”

  The trip in the van lasted about half an hour. While munching on some soggy pretzels from the bottom of someone’s cooler, Christopher learned about the nudist group’s crusade to designate a legal clothing-optional beach area.

  When the van stopped at the precinct, an officer finally read Christopher and the others their rights. Still the nudists refused to dress, but the police insisted they cover themselves with the moldy blankets. They gave their information, and the officer interrogating Christopher laughed out loud, sneering about “Mr. Philosophy Professor.”

  Christopher overheard another officer talking with Tucker: “Look, you know I support your lifestyle. I go to nudist clubs myself. Y’all have just got to stop using the Navy beach.”

  Then they all had to pose for mug shots. As the group filed by, Christopher thought the policeman with the camera seemed to be snapping extra pictures, taking “accidental” shots below the neck whenever someone’s blanket fell open.