by Forest, Will
Better to be Brave
Angela had restless hands. If they weren’t in transitive mode—grasping and squeezing, probing and exploring—then they would clutch the air in frustration. They preferred human bodies. Her hands had mapped out the blistered history of her mother’s feet, the taut bravado of her father’s shoulders, the precise depth and shape of her brother’s wrestling injury. Constantly feeling up her friends and family, her hands had pulled her into the study and practice of massage. But now they hung relaxed, fingers curved, on either side of a massage table, as Angela greedily played the part of the masseuse massaged.
What taints the idea of a nude, four-hand massage with connotations of luxury or promiscuity, Angela wondered, even as she wanted to let go of wondering and slip into the bliss that twenty fingers were inducing on this, her last night in Sweden. Of the innumerable and inherently guiltless pleasures one derives from a professional four-hand massage, nude, with oil, here’s just one example, she thought: the sensation of having both arms lifted gently into the air while other palms and fingertips press into them, hands swirling around them slowly, firmly, from shoulders to fingertips, is so delightfully and essentially indescribable because it feels like flying, or gliding, through some ethereal substance both gaseous and liquid.
Who knows exactly which or how many positive effects on you—your body, mind, and spirit if you care to differentiate them—are produced? A sense of peace and wellbeing results—this is true, but to say this is to focus only on a sum total of so many diverse sensations, which in turn may recall cherished memories of people and events. The sensations may meld with the music, aroma, and warmth of the massage environment to produce new ways of feeling in you, about you, yourself, and your place in the world. A complete body massage demarcates all your skin, your boundary to the world, the space you fill in the world, from scalp to eyelids to wrists to navel to groin to heels. It can be a profoundly centering spiritual experience, not just a bodily one.
Her massage—did it matter that there was one masseur and one masseuse working on her, that they were also nude, and that it did not bother her that she had no idea whether they were lovers or siblings or cousins or spouses or strangers—would be followed by a warm soak in a mineral bath, then the sauna, then a shower, and finally an all-over skin treatment. Spa: just three letters, one short syllable to encompass so much heaven.
Jim, for one, had always evaded Angela’s requests to rub her shoulders, and he received caresses from her only reluctantly. He said it made him feel too vulnerable. It made perfect sense, she thought, because he always took pains to hide his own body and bathroom needs. And that time she caught him once at an upstairs window, fascinated, spying on a nude neighbor hanging her laundry behind her privacy fence: his morbid and prurient fascination with the body fulfilled the love-hate relationship that the media prefer to portray as a norm, all the better to manipulate consumers’ anxieties and desires.
She wondered if she could find a spa like this back in the States. There would be lots of strip-mall spas, certainly, catering more toward facials and manicures. The full-service spas like this one would be very hard to find and reach, much more expensive, and more likely to require “draping,” which means having half of your body covered so that, heaven forbid, you’re never completely nude, as she was at that moment, receiving the pressure of four hands on her lower back and coccyx, precisely where the drape would get in the way. Those ritzy stateside spas reinforced economic divisions, sawing the body politic in half, in haves, in have-nots, like a magician whose cape cloaks the financial truth to be paid for the luxury of nudity, even as it discloses the amenities al fresco in tantalizing detail.
In Angela’s relaxed, almost hallucinatory meditation—with her head resting in its special cradle off one end of the massage table—the rabbit from the magician’s hat turned into the Playboy bunny, as from the magician’s sleeve a provocatively dressed playmate pulled an endless string of dollar bills, the profit springing from the visual portrayal of human nudity as a commodities market, the nude bound and gagged, handcuffed and submerged, struggling stereotypically in the impermeable tank of the peepshow, the striptease, the transparent urgency of pornography.
Eroticism is not our enemy, it is our ally, she articulated to herself through teeth clenched with the force of her conviction. Sensuality, pleasure, and awareness are not synonyms of licentiousness, lewdness, and lust. The latter are moral transgressions, and, just as importantly, the former are moral obligations. Obligatory, to provide and seek out not just for oneself but also for one’s others. Uninhibited knowledge of oneself and one’s options is always the first thing a tyrant or dictator will suppress in the body politic, because it is that which can unseat him.
Sensuality should include understanding more about disease and paralysis, reproduction, circulation, digestion, and even excretion. How much do we ignore about our own health by not observing more carefully the color, texture, and odor of our feces? How much pleasure do so many people continue to outlaw, and in the name of what, by ignoring the erogenous zone of the anus? Why, why on earth, do so many people continue to shun nudity? The moral of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”: you must be childlike to speak the truth, and you must be brave, or else a fool, to expose yourself to ridicule. Better to be brave, she decided, as four hands ran the length of her thighs, lifting her in a way she had never quite felt before: better to be brave, and with the wonder of a child.
A Jumble of Parts
I will never forget how shocked I was to discover that I felt just the same as that one and only time I walked into class totally unprepared for the day’s lesson (but that’s another story). I felt like I was transparent, invisible, yet for that very reason the object of all visual attention. Remember, suck in your gut, I thought. Look at their faces, but don’t see them, Renee had said. And don’t throw the briefcase. The music starts and I strut out from behind the lavender sheet that serves as a curtain. Cause I got something to say about it, and it goes something like this. Suck in that gut. Smile. Don’t go for second best, baby oh my god there they all are more than I thought that’s her put your love to the test you know you know you’ve got to thrust strut swivel briefcase down start on that tie what did that woman just shout at me make him express how he feels and baby then you know your love’s for real tie sliding in between the thighs I’m tossing it four hands pulling long-stem roses are the way to your heart but he needs to start with your head down the buttons ripping just like in the movies yeah they went for it hands on pecs down what I hope pass for abs satin sheets are very romantic what happens when you’re not in bed the belt’s gotta be real macho make it a snake make it a whip do the thighs again no don’t it’s too late now keep rubbing what you need is a big strong man to lift you to a higher ground play with the button and zipper, run fingers through hair I’m getting hard make you feel like a queen on a throne I hoped that wouldn’t happen make him love you til you can’t come down never come pants down on cue ok keep balance why won’t it kick off just toss ‘em out and rub crotch now turn and thrust he will vow the love he wants back wiggle no no too much cellulite got to carry on but he just won’t get it he’ll be back on his knees so please hand up head up other hand rubbing down crotch hey somebody’s pulling off my no she’s stuffing bills in my g-string you’ve got to make him express himself screaming louder profile that bulge so tight I want to take it off that’s more than I agreed to but I’m starting to pull it down just tease first when she put those bills in she squeezed me like she was measuring me so if you want it right now make him show you how express what he’s got why didn’t I notice the video camera before so darling ready or not keep it on keep it on dance offstage I just want to sleep express yourself I’m going to sleep yourself express sleep your self
***
Angela slept blissfully. The next morning, hopping into the airport taxi, she mentally reviewed her belongings to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything…all her data, surveys, interview
tapes and transcripts, the invaluable copies of scholarly reports donated by the Swedish Naturist Institute—so refreshing to find intellectuals who take naturism seriously, she thought, anticipating one more of the many open-minded aspects of life in Scandinavia that she would miss. But as the taxi drove past the late autumn trees long bare, she looked forward to hitting the Gulf Coast beach at La Rioja, still warm in October.
The taxi stopped at an intersection. She closed her eyes and imagined the sea sights and sounds. The last time she visited the shore, she had gone with her twelve-year-old niece. Angela remembered how the girl’s apprehension caved in to delight in the discovery that she didn’t need her swimsuit. The Fri Skola student’s words came to her as the taxi sped on again through the early morning—“I feel like one big rose…blooming…all of me”—and with each intersection passed she remembered the similar comments of other students, coming to see in the early light that the one big rose destroys synecdoche, that pervasive way of thinking about bodies as a jumble of parts. When you’re at a nude beach, at least a well-populated one, the body parts don’t stand out. Nudity doesn’t stand out. What you see and participate in is a great mass of relatively anonymous and undifferentiated flesh.
The words of Jesus came to her, laboriously translated for her by the Swedish Naturist Institute director from the apocryphal Gospel of St. Thomas: “When you disrobe without shame, when you take your garments and place them under your feet to tread on them like little children, then will you see the son of the living one, and you will not be afraid.”
He Looked Back
Christopher had a pre-made sandwich in his right hand and his left buttock in his left hand the moment it hit him that he had become a home nudist: the profane, profound miracle of sliding his hand from his lower back to his buttock without the resistance of belt, hem, or waistband, nor even the intermediary of a bar of soap. It was a revelation that seemed to him the natural culmination of his years of curiosity about nudity. He remembered hearing the song about the streak on the radio when he was a boy, and—after having someone explain to him what he felt sure he already understood—closing himself up in his room to run naked circles, hopping on the bed and off again around, the song streaming through his head like an anthem. What toddler isn’t gleeful to run from his clothes? And he remembered spying on his older sister, when she was a teenager, as she bent over nude in the bathroom, buttocks to the full-length mirror, the blood rushing to her head as she pulled her cheeks apart, attempting to observe a hitherto secret part of her anatomy. Of course he captured his next moment of privacy in the bathroom, performing the same experiment on himself, only to be discovered by his younger brother, to whom he muttered something about checking for ticks. And that rainy afternoon when he first scrutinized pornography—magazines furnished by a friend who fancied the sharing of his stash an act of philanthropy—with the astonishing epiphany that genitals, breasts, and buttocks can vary as much as faces.
Now, some fifteen years later—what misplaced guilt provoked such a lengthy hiatus?—his nudity had become an everyday routine: arrive home from work and remove your clothes, stay nude while preparing dinner, grading papers, whatever you are doing do it nude until the next morning when you have to get dressed to go back to work. He deepened his understanding of how his clothes had shielded him when he chopped wet, peeled carrots, and spritzed his groin with every slice. At first he would too often lose control to the abundance of sensation. One evening he found himself aroused by the water and suds splashing onto his chest and abdomen while washing the dishes. A few times he would touch himself in the backyard while gazing at the night sky. He eventually reached a state of heightened awareness, as he called it, in which he was accustomed enough to his nudity not to become aroused by the slightest sensation, but also in which he was always aware of the sensuousness of being nude. He realized that this conscious sensuality was the equilibrium to strive for. On his record-setting weekend, he clocked forty-two continuous hours clothes-free. The practice of being nude at home had become so comfortable that he would even water the flower garden behind the house in the late afternoon, or take the trash out to the front curb at night, wearing nothing. How stirring his furtive curb deposits, the night breeze caressing his moonlit body unencumbered!
One afternoon as he was sweeping the leaves and pine needles from the back patio in the nude, a noise from his neighbor’s driveway startled him. The neighbor was cleaning his car. The patchy hedgerow between their yards only partially obstructed the neighbor’s view of him, so Christopher panicked and dodged into the house, dropping the broom. When he heard it clack against the cement, he looked back and saw the neighbor staring right at him. Christopher closed the door behind him, cursing himself. “I try to live without regrets,” Tucker had said. He sighed and marched determinedly to the computer to do some Internet research on what he predicted to be the draconian nudity laws for his area. While he waited for the operating system to boot, he chastised himself for not having reacted naturally. His attitude with the neighbor should have been, of course, that he was doing nothing wrong and therefore had nothing to hide.
When Christopher arose from the computer several hours later, after accessing dozens of websites about nudism and naturism, including the sites for The Naturist Society and The American Association for Nude Recreation, with information about the physiological and psychological benefits of nude recreation, nudist etiquette and protocol, observations on hiking in the nude, locations to play nude volleyball or run in nude races, nudist or clothing-optional resorts in many countries, nude comics, nude blogs, nude quotations, nude news stories and nude newscasters, he felt as much exhausted as exhilarated. He took particular note of Christian sites that promote nudism with scripture and papal decrees, knowing that such information might be needed to strengthen a defense. He studied Gulf Coast area statutes, and came to the conclusion that he could in fact be arrested, depending on the circumstances of an allegation, and charged with “lewd behavior” or “indecent exposure” merely for being nude in his own backyard. And he could find no such thing as a nude outdoors work permit. But overall he felt emboldened by his research, how it built on what he had inferred from Tucker, and how it led to an awareness of naturism, beyond nudism, as a social cause.
Learn For Real
Through the glass wall of his rectangular partition office, Alex saw the crayon-spilled colors of the row of gumball and candy machines that contrasted with the dark-paneled hallway. He could also see the business and employee award certificates hanging in their frames along the wall, and the clock over the potted plant at the end of the hallway. And he could see a sliver, maybe a bit more if he moved his chair, of the floor model speedboat, an Aquaflash LE. It was his top-selling model, one he had driven himself. Refocusing his gaze on his desktop, near his business card holder, pen set, calendar, and a pile of receipts, Alex found the framed photo of himself among a group of friends on one of those very boats, taken some four months earlier, the day he first started to think about why anybody, on a bright summer afternoon out on the bay, would want to burden his body by draping cloth over it or stuffing it into tight strips of fabric.
As one of the best salespeople at Stevens Sporting Goods, Alex had earned the privilege of taking the Aquaflash out on the water to get a feel for how it ran and a better grasp of its selling points. He had invited his girlfriend at the time, and a fraternity brother with his girlfriend for a double date. It was a sweltering afternoon out on Mobile Bay, even with the Gulf breeze. Of course they tested the boat’s speed and acceleration once they got out into deep water, and its banking and cutting abilities as well. Then they stopped the engine, dropped anchor, and dove off the side of the boat to swim. Alex wanted to jettison the cut-off jean shorts he was wearing as a swimsuit, but he held them on because he imagined his friends would think he was crazy or perverted if he let them come off. The shorts gained so much weight in the water they almost dragged off anyway. Later, the friends enjoyed some beer, s
tories, and jokes back on the deck until the sun started going down.
On the way back to shore, as they slowed the Aquaflash to guide it between the buoys marking the edges of the channel through the shallows, they passed a modest yacht moored some fifteen yards beyond one of the buoys. Thinking the other boat had struck ground, Alex stopped their boat and called out to the woman they could see reclined on the deck. As she stood up to answer them, they all realized she wasn’t wearing anything. Alex heard his friends’ shocked exhalations amid the words “knockers” and “hussy.” The woman on the boat yelled out that they were fine, they had dropped anchor for a while to watch the sunset. Then a nude man walked out of the cabin to see what was going on. Alex and his friends couldn’t hear what the man said to the woman, but the man pointed at them and then started to wrap a beach towel around the woman. But she refused the towel and they heard her say, speaking loudly, “It’s alright, hon, they don’t have cameras. Let those college kids learn something important for once: You don’t need clothes!” She had shouted that last line with her hands cupped around her mouth. The man with her laughed, shrugged, and held out his drink to Alex and his friends in a mock toast. Then he and the woman kissed and gave a cheer.
“I’m getting my camera,” Alex’s fraternity brother said.
At first, Alex smiled, but then his reaction clicked: “That’s not right. You heard what she said. Let’s learn. Let’s learn for real.” He put his hands on the waist of his cut-offs, cold and still dripping wet, and raised an eyebrow in challenge. He unbuttoned and unzipped, finally letting the denim plummet to the deck while staring down his friends’ astonishment.
“Alright, Alex!” his girlfriend said, as she undid her bikini top with a whoop.
