by Forest, Will
“Shake them up, Jaime,” Christopher corrected. “Prepositions are so very arbitrary.”
“Yeees, shake them, how do you say it, all over the plaaaaaace,” and with that he began to waggle his ungainly orangutan frame: bald pate and prominent forehead, Roman nose, heavy jowls, spare chest, mid-size paunch, gangly arms and legs, fallen buttocks, and a hairless, rather long, uncircumcised penis that swung around quite shamelessly.
Standing in front of thirty people seated on towels draped over folding chairs and stone benches, CRM president Daphne introduced the featured speaker, Dr. Saucedo, who stood nude at a podium and began her remarks: “Social nudity is like learning to walk.”
Her audience grew attentive as she continued:
“Have you ever seen a baby learning to take its first steps, or even just to stand up on its own? Sometimes, what happens is that the baby will stand up and not even realize how different or important that is, until someone gasps and yells, ‘Look, the baby’s standing up!’ Then, of course, the baby is startled, and immediately sits down or falls down. If you interrupt a new behavior as it’s developing, as it’s being learned, sometimes even if you interrupt for the purpose of encouragement, you risk ruining that new behavior.
“What I’m trying to say is that a new behavior often just happens naturally, and we only become conscious of it if others are surprised by it. Children don’t understand why they have to wear clothes, especially around the house or at the pool or beach. They only learn that running around naked is ‘bad’ if adults or older kids tell them that. So the first time you go nude socially as an adult, or even as a teenager, you feel uncomfortable, self-conscious. You have to unlearn all the cultural phobias about nudity. But once you get used to it, there you go: you’ve learned a new behavior, like riding a bike or playing the piano, that from now on comes naturally to you and even becomes a part of your body memory, your repertoire of corporeal acts…”
As Angela spoke, a growing group of fully clothed protestors began to assemble, standing to one side of her audience. They wore black t-shirts with the letters CLGFC in white over a white cross. After it seemed that enough of them had arrived—about a dozen, young and old—they began chanting, gaining force and volume with each iteration: “Nude is crude! Nude is lewd! God says get a new attitude!”
The slogan bluntly and efficiently drowned out Dr. Saucedo’s speech. She stopped talking.
At that moment, a man from the back of the black-shirted group raised his arms over his head. He held a three-foot white cross. His eyes were closed.
“My children, Children of the Lord our God Fundamentalist Congregation, let us pray that these sinners before us can find the way to God’s forgiveness. Let us pray that here, in this house of secular education, they forget not the lesson of Adam, the lesson of Eve, whose disobedience of God’s holy command brought upon us the sin and the shame of nakedness.”
“Good show!” Dr. Ross rose to his feet, clapping. “I recognize you, Brother Sean, you would-be exorciser of nude beach demons. What I hope for you and your herd is to realize that what you wear, or don’t wear, is no more a condition for sinfulness than for holiness. The Old Testament God recognized Adam’s and Eve’s new self-knowledge by making their coverings for them himself. But, being vengeful, he kicked them out of the garden...”
“And God made us in his image, did he not?” Angela interrupted from the podium. “There is no shame inherent in nudity. If you, as the shepherd of your flock—what is it, CDEFG?—if you say nudity is shameful, then I don’t know what you’re doing here. Look around—are we breaking any of the ten commandments?”
Sean had not opened his eyes, but he was smiling with lips sealed.
“I know not the nature of your sins, and I remain ignorant of them. My eyes are closed, my body is clothed.
“I know not of your disdain for the Word of God. My eyes are closed, my body is clothed.
“I know not the desire of your sex. My eyes are closed, my body is clothed.”
His followers shut their eyes and joined in on the refrain.
“I know not your temptations of the flesh. My eyes are closed, my body is clothed.
“I know not the wantonness of your spirit. My eyes are closed, my body is clothed.”
“And your mind!” Christopher yelled over the chanting. “Obviously your mind is closed too!”
“I know not the color of your lust. My eyes are closed...”
“¡Basta!” shouted Dr. Castellón-Reyes from his chair, “¡Basta!” The Spanish professor continued his call until the confused protestors desisted.
“Whyyy do you disturb us with this mindless mumbling of mutterings? And whyyyy are you afraid to loooook, not at the color of lust buuuut, uuuuuuuuuh, the colors of liiiiife. We have what is called the riiiight to peaceful assembly. You have what is called the riiiight to protest. But, you have made your point, uuuuh, such as it is. Let us contiiiiinue to hear the inestimable Dr. Saucedo’s conference on learning new behaviors. I assure you, padre, that you will beeee, uuuuuhh, illuuuuuminated.”
Daphne and Terrence smiled. Renee and Lisa giggled. Alex laughed. Soon there was general mirth, from which Greg called, “Please continue, Dr. Saucedo! You were on the part about getting over cultural phobias to nudity!”
As Angela arranged her notes, her audience stood up too, and some moved over, closer to the uniformed congregation.
But this was too much. Without warning, one of the protestors in front threw a stick, which scraped Angela’s arm before landing on Christopher’s toes. Angela turned angrily to face their assailant. She avoided words for as long as possible, her icy gaze cooling. Christopher also watched the stick-thrower, whose companions were urging him to leave but who would not move, as if he had been turned to stone by the stare of a medusa.
Finally Angela addressed him loudly: “Please don’t throw things at us. We are unarmed. WE ARE NAKED. You gonna throw something at me you gotta take your clothes off first.”
When Christopher and the rest of the group laughed, the young man snapped. He threw his black t-shirt over his head in an instant. His pants were halfway down before he realized what he was doing. “Hocker cool it, you’re crazy” from one of his companions as the stick-thrower stood up straight, bare-chested and with his pants around his knees, staring at Angela and the group. The courtyard kept still.
Paul Hocker, angry but helpless, turned and grimaced at the other protestors. Then he kicked off his shoes. A seagull called out as he pushed his briefs and pants off together. For a moment he just stood, naked and alone, staring into the sun.
When he finally moved, walking slowly into the CRM group, a cheer sprung from the nudists in the courtyard. Angela and Christopher hugged him. Brother Sean’s congregation dispersed, disgusted by this betrayal, but some of the other bystanders disrobed on Paul’s example. Immersed in a sea of welcoming skin, Paul learned that the most daring and the most revealing part of himself that he had exposed was not between his legs, but between his lips: his teeth, bared by his just-born smile.
Towels with Pockets
Consequences of the Corporal Rights Movement’s recruitment efforts at the Gulf Coast University Bookstore were immediate and comprehensive. Sales of sunscreen and other skin-care products skyrocketed. Issues of Fitness, Men’s Health, Exercise and the like disappeared briskly. The students requested back orders. The periodicals clerk, accustomed to back orders for Playboy and Penthouse, found that those magazines had been left on the high back rack untouched. Sandal sales went up. Condom sales remained steady. Cigarette sales dropped considerably. Most notably, GCU clothing items—t-shirts, shorts, jackets—remained on the stands. Two secondary products, however, sold out in one day: GCU beach towels and backpacks. The students requested more. The product manufacturer, sole licensee of GCU merchandise, would not be able to meet the unexpected demand. The bookstore management decided that no further orders were needed from the manufacturer, whose products some students had already begun to
boycott due to allegations they were assembled in Central American sweatshops. GCU terminated the licensing agreement to produce its own merchandise locally, adding an item much in demand: towels with pockets.
The pockets were Daphne’s idea. She explained to the bookstore management that the towels were now APTs (all-purpose towels) in the students’ lingo, used for draping over cold chairs or steaming car seats, for wrapping up if the temperature dropped, and in many other creative ways that some students reverently linked to Douglas Adams’ famous advice in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Since a growing number of students didn’t need to wash clothes very often anymore, they preferred to buy a supply of towels that could last them at least a week, and a pocket would make the towels perfect for carrying keys, cash, I.D. cards, etc. At the local textile plant that won the new contract, Terrence, Daphne and other CRMers helped create slogans and designs for several sizes of towels, as well as backpacks and bumper stickers, reading CO-ED NAKED PHILOSOPHY, GYMNOPHILE, RECLAIM THE IMAGE and even I SUPPORT PUBIC EDUCATION.
Through his students’ class journals, Dr. Ross learned about changes in attitude around campus. He kept an HUM 200/Corporal Rights Movement file in which he noted, for example, that according to his students’ reports, confidence had soared in public speaking classes and recitals. Spring Break travel plans had dissipated. Instead of diving deeper into credit card debt for the sake of drunken wet t-shirt contests, more students had opted for extra hours on the job or for volunteer mission trips. The CRM group successfully petitioned, financed, and installed a solar-heated open-air shower in the Humanities Building courtyard. A significant and unfortunate increase in the number of accidents—falling off ladders, dropping heavy equipment—had been documented among the construction workers engaged in various campus projects. Most unexpectedly, a considerable increase in demand for toilet paper in public restrooms, especially men’s rooms, had been reported by the Buildings and Grounds crew.
A Lesson in Erotics
The visceral stench of Bourbon Street—a commingling ferment of beer, urine, vomit, sweat, and rot—permeated the thick air that hung low over New Orleans. Glad to be wearing high-heeled boots, Renee stepped warily though the crushed and crumbled moon pies, bottles, beads, cans, and suspicious puddles. Heather, Jacob, and Jennifer followed her, all of them negotiating their way through the packed bodies cheering at the parade of gaudy floats. Last came Terrence, struggling through the crowd with a bulky duffel bag. They turned onto Canal Street, where Renee’s cousin owned a second-floor apartment with balcony.
Once inside the apartment, the CRMers undressed and enjoyed a few drinks from the stocked refrigerator before stepping out onto the balcony. There, Terrence unzipped the duffel bag and produced the purple, green, and gold sparkling body paints with which they began to adorn themselves while the motorcycle brigade of the Society of Mystic Wizards rolled along below.
Across each other’s chests they spelled out the slogans conceived during the two-hour drive from GCU west along Interstate 10. Renee’s breasts and abdomen now proudly declared “NUDE FOR MARDI GRAS” while her back, fully visible now that she had put her hair up in a bun, read “AND EVERY OTHER DAY TOO!” Terrence’s chest gave a similar message: “NUDE DAILY NOT ANNUALLY,” and his back spelled out “TOPLESS AND BOTTOMLESS,” the final word across his buttocks. Heather’s ample bosom proclaimed “BREASTS ARE BEAUTIFUL,” and her back continued with “NO BEADS NECESSARY.” “JUST NIPPLES, NO BEADS,” read Jennifer’s breasts and abdomen, and across the back of her shoulders, “ALL BODIES ARE GOOD – ALL YEAR LONG.” Jacob, a connoisseur of García Márquez novels, had designed the slogan “This is a BODY. You use it to LIVE LIFE FULLY,” divided between the considerable expanses of his chest and back. They hung a banner behind them declaring “RECLAIM THE IMAGE!”
As they painted, they began to hear shouts at them from below. Cameras quickly trained on them from other balconies as well as from the street, filming the CRMers as they painted each other, and then as they danced awhile, turning to show the slogans across their fronts and their backs.
Just as suddenly, the cameras panned away, focusing on women exposing their breasts for beads. Only the float-riding Mystic Wizards, high enough to see the CRM group clearly, showed any new interest by tossing beads and moonpies as they passed by.
“What is going on?” asked Renee. “Is that it? All our plans to lure people’s attention away from those boob flashers, and that’s all we get?”
“Look, what happened is that after they read our messages, the novelty wore off,” said Heather.
“It’s a lesson for us,” said Jacob. “A lesson in erotics. I’m remembering an essay by Barthes where he says a striptease is successful only as long as it delays any final uncovering, because when all the clothes are off, the voyeuristic interest is lost.”
“What haven’t you read, Jacob?” asked Jennifer. “Well, I remember Dr. Ross saying he didn’t want to undress in class, in front of us, that first day, because we could have easily misinterpreted it as a striptease.”
“Right,” said Terrence. “It’s like setting up an erotic context unintentionally.”
“But the bead flashers,” Jacob went on, “they keep on lifting the veil that entices and excites.”
Renee sighed and leaned on Heather’s shoulder. “We know all about that. They flash, they flirt, they flaunt.”
The dank air over the parade started to melt into rain. “Oh well,” shrugged Heather, as purple paint began to trickle down between her breasts and collect in her navel.
The nude friends showered in the apartment, hopping in and out so that there were always at least two of them under the showerhead, the better to scrub the paint off their backs. They dressed with as much feckless reluctance as they could muster against the inevitable, locked the apartment, and dashed across the street through the rain for some gumbo and po’boys.
Just outside the door of the eatery, they were stopped by a policewoman on horseback.
“Hey, didn’t I see you on a balcony down the street there, naked as jay birds, with messages painted all over you?” The officer, of impressive girth, glowered at them from astride her mount.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jacob said.
“Well I’d like you to know that, officially, there is a no-nudity policy here in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.” She looked down sternly at the group. The horse snorted. Terrence and Renee glanced at each other. Jacob studied the sidewalk. Heather put her hands on her hips and stared back at the officer.
Jennifer looked at the horse tenderly—no sirens, no flashing lights. “Are you going to arrest us?”
“No, but I’m going to give you a citation.” The policewoman scribbled furiously on her pad. It had stopped raining. Her impassive visage lifted into a beatific smile as she handed down her citation to the GCU group. The paper read: RECLAIM THE IMAGE!
“I think you guys have a wonderful message.”
A few minutes later, after Terrence’s quick retrieval of paints from the apartment, the officer rode off down Canal Street on her freshly painted steed. “I AIN’T NO CLOTHES HORSE,” declared his left flank, while the revelers on the other side of the street saw “MY OTHER RIDER’S LADY GODIVA.”
The CRMers finished eating and walked outside into a freshly swept cityscape. The clouds were gone; Jennifer stumbled along sneezing in the light. As they headed back to the apartment, Heather spotted a camera crew filming bead-laden young women flashing their breasts. “Are those girls drunk, or just playing drunk?”
Terrence sighed. “Probably a little of both.”
“Did you see that clipboard?” Jacob asked. “The flashers have to sign a consent form. That is seriously insidious.”
“But…you know, it’s not that bad,” said Heather. “At least what they’re doing is sexual in a life-affirming sort of way...”
“Heather!” Renee interrupted. “This is the Chicas Locas crew, or whatever the hell they’re called. You know perfectly well thes
e videos are destined for frat parties, dirty old men, nasty internet sites, and countless masturbation sessions. Life-affirming? How about social hypocrisy-affirming? That is no way to reclaim the image.”
Renee grabbed Heather and pulled her in front of the camera. Somebody handed them a pen and a clipboard. “No, we’re not signing anything. My friend and I,” Renee said into the camera, “we used to work at a strip club…”
“I still do.”
Renee faced her friend. “Didn’t I tell you I resigned for you? You quit yesterday. As I was saying,” she said, turning back to the dazed women ready to lift their tops, “we know what this is all about, and let me tell you, you need to rethink what you’re doing with your body. There is no reason for you to get drunk and go flip your top up and down for a few bucks and a cheap thrill. You should be fighting for the right to show as much of your body as you want, whenever you want.”
“Greater acceptance for social nudity,” Heather added.
“Well, c’mon ladies, practice what you preach,” said the cameraman.
Terrence, Jacob, and Jennifer joined their friends in front of the camera. “Context is everything,” Jennifer said. “If we take our clothes off, you do too.”
“What is this, a dare?” asked the man with the clipboard.
“A dare to imagine a more tolerant society,” said Jacob.
“Reclaim the image,” said Terrence, “the image of the nude.”
The crowd thinned. Nobody removed any clothing, except for a middle-aged Mystic Wizard who draped his Keystone Cop costume over his motorcycle seat and rode away into the parade.
