by Forest, Will
“Why don’t you ask him yourself? Hang on a second.”
“Herb…”
Dean Wishinsky casually opened the window. “Dr. Ross! May I see you in here for a minute?”
Some ten feet across the courtyard, Christopher glanced over at the window and excused himself from his conversation with Angela. He made his way through the throng of exposed flesh to the main door and strolled down the hall to Wishinksy’s office.
“It’s the provost. He wants to know if you understand how big of a deal this is.”
Dr. Ross took the receiver. “Yes?”
“Ross! What are you wearing?”
“Sandals.”
“Dammit, Ross, there’s a news crew over here pounding on my door to interview you and your Ed School colleague. Can’t you at least put on some pants?”
“I left them upstairs in my office.”
“Well go get dressed and then come over to the media center. Is the education professor with you? Make sure you come over the courtyard bridge – don’t go through that mob of your admirers or you’ll never make it.”
“I appreciate your concern.”
The provost smacked his lips dryly. “Hurry.”
Christopher hung up. He looked at his dean, who had turned his back to him to work at his computer.
“Gotta go. We’ll talk later.”
The dean spun around on his swivel chair. “Christopher, how could you possibly think this is going to last? Too many people—mostly men—are already too conditioned to react sexually to nudity like Pavlov’s dog salivating at the bell. Nudism is no panacea! Don’t be so naïve.”
“Naïve? Naïve is looking around at the state of things today and saying, alright, everything’s fine, you just have to put your blinders on, put your bloomers on, okay, mister, now keep your shirt on, keep your pants on… Enough! Off with the pants! And off with everything else until we can learn to see each other, to see ourselves, in the fragile yet glorious possibilities we embody.”
The dean had no response.
Christopher walked upstairs and over the bridge, without stopping at his office. How long had he prepared for this moment, anticipating the media coverage! He had long since decided that he would have to meet the press unclothed. Let them deal with the hypocritical titillation of their blurry bits. The tiniest scrap of a garment on his body at this point would defeat his message. He emboldened himself with Roberta’s wry observation: “The whole ass or nothing.”
Halfway across the enclosed bridge, he stopped. Stepping over to the side of the hall, he slid open one of the windows over the courtyard.
“Hey, Alex! Angela! Grab some CRMers and meet me over at the provost’s office! Right now! It’s room 325!”
He closed the window, then slid it open again.
“No clothes!”
Outside the provost’s office Christopher recognized the reporter from Channel Five’s exposé on the David statue at Louisdale Landscaping. She was talking with the cameraman, but she froze as soon as she saw Christopher, her gaze fixed somewhere around the middle of his chest. He extended a hand.
“I’m Christopher Ross. Nice to meet you.”
The reporter, now embarrassed, stuttered, “Nice to meet you. I’m Lana Fitzgerald, Channel Five News.”
“I’ve seen your work. You’re something of an exposé specialist, yes?”
Lana smiled curtly and nodded at the cameraman to begin filming. “Dr. Ross, what is the meaning behind this indecent gathering?” she asked into her microphone. “This isn’t just another frat boy streak. Why have you incited the students to hang around in the nude?” She thrust the mike in Dr. Ross’s face.
“Those questions are certainly piquant, but very misguided. Here are some better ones: How many fraternities will no longer practice denigrating hazing rituals when those fraternities are composed of young men who grew up comfortable with their bodies and respectful of others’ bodies? How many teenage pregnancies will be avoided when young women are familiar with young men’s bodies, when young men are familiar with young women’s bodies, and when everybody is more familiar with pregnant and breast-feeding women’s bodies? How many crimes by pedophiles will be avoided when the sight of unclothed children is an everyday occurrence? How many adolescents can we save from sex slavery when the sight of unclothed adolescents is an everyday occurrence? How many rapes will be prevented? How many healthier diets—healthier for people and for the planet—will be followed when fat can’t hide behind cloth, and body consciousness is more widespread?”
“You’re asking for numbers…I don’t know.”
“I don’t either. Nobody will know until we try. And I suspect those numbers to be astronomically incalculable.”
“But, what kind of example are you setting?”
Christopher motioned to his just-arrived friends and supporters to stand next to him. “My students and colleagues and I are setting a wholesome, natural example that the people in your profession should learn to promote. Why is there so much violence on TV and at the movies, while nudity is not tolerated? That sends a horrible example to our children by forcing an association of nudity exclusively with sex and promiscuous or taboo behavior.”
Even before Lana could answer, Renee looked directly into the camera and added: “If you can’t see my breasts because they’ve blurred this broadcast, then that’s a perfect example of what we’re talking about. There’s nothing objectionable about nude bodies in a natural context. Context is everything.”
Lana recovered. “So are you proposing that the university is an acceptable context for nudity?”
Angela inhaled and stepped in front of the microphone, determined to speak on TV without jargon. “Many nudist organizations propose that designated areas for nude recreation are the best solution for nudists as well as for our society. We have taken the step of proposing that designated clothes-free areas for learning are the best solution for understanding our humanity. Professional studies have shown that language, movement, and sensation are all interrelated in the brain’s processing. Since nudity gives us greater freedom of sensation and movement, then language, as well, enjoys a greater freedom in the brain’s processing if you’re nude. Language is basic for learning, so what all this means is that if you’re nude, then you’re open to learning on a more profound level.”
Christopher put his arm over Angela’s shoulders and squeezed her forearm in support.
Adapting to the interview’s serious tone, Lana turned to Greg. “Do you agree that being naked helps you learn?”
“I never would have thought that it could,” Greg answered. “But after I took that first step of shedding my clothes, I was amazed at how comfortable I felt around other people in the nude. I gradually stopped worrying so much about image and started thinking more about substance. I felt more like part of a learning community where all the participants are on equal ground.”
“If you’re surrounded by nudity you gain more respect for people’s bodies,” added Daphne. “It’s not pornography, it’s just biology, and it starts to be uplifting in a general humanitarian sense.”
Christopher spoke up. “My colleague Dr. Saucedo and I can offer solid proof, from our own experiences both here and abroad, that students accustomed to nudity in the learning environment show greater self-confidence and reduced apprehension toward the unknown. Students become more willing to open up to the topic at hand, entering into active inquiry and debate.”
The provost walked out into the hall. When Lana heard the office door close behind him, she turned around and queried him immediately. “Does the university support this, uhm, experiment of a clothes-free learning environment?”
The provost decided to ignore the camera, looking back and forth between the reporter and the group of nudists. He offered his hand abruptly. “I’m Brad McIntire, the provost here at Gulf Coast University.”
Lana proffered a salutation and repeated her question. The provost accepted the microphone but avoided an answer
, instead launching his usual panegyric extolling the accomplishments of the university’s students and faculty. Lana listened to the provost while turning repeatedly to acknowledge the nudists. Her body moved with a natural fluidity that led her to assume she was dreaming. She was aware of the provost’s continued remarks, but only in the same indifferent sense in which she began to register his open mouth, his reddened face, his sudden expletives. Very much on their own, her practiced fingers had unbuttoned her blouse and unzipped her skirt. More consciously she perceived the awkward thrust of her elbows as she unclasped her bra behind her back. She released her breasts, arms, shoulders—all of herself out and down. She felt afloat. Only when she heard the cameraman repeating her name did she realize that she had almost completely undressed.
“Lana! Lana, are you okay? What’s going on?”
“It’s all coming off, Tim.” She smiled at the cameraman and bent over, lifting her legs out of her panties.
The next thing she heard was an eruption of clapping and cheering. The CRM members, poised as Lana undressed, had waited to synchronize their ebullience with her liberation.
Fearing that the cameraman would either film his reaction or undress too, Brad turned away, looking back wide-eyed as he retreated inside his office and shut the door.
Angela put her hand on Paul’s shoulder. “Now you know how we felt the day you joined us.”
“Yeah. She took the plunge just like I did. It’s beautiful.”
Christopher had already commended and welcomed Lana. “Oh, I feel strange, but so wonderful,” she enthused. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to use any of this footage.”
“Please! We need positive publicity.”
Lana looked around for Tim. “My cameraman left. I don’t know what he’s got on film, but I’ll see if we can put a story together.”
“I know that your editors will have to blur our bodies,” Christopher said.
“I’m sorry.” Lana caught herself. “No, really—now I understand why I truly am sorry.”
“No apology necessary. Just help us spread the word.”
“Certainly.”
“Do you mind if I tell Tucker Bierson about these incidents today?”
Lana thought for a moment. “Oh, the owner of Louisdale Landscaping! Is he part of your group?”
“Well, he’s a naturist and he’ll be very happy to know about your discovery. Or shall we say ‘uncovery.’”
“Uncovery! I like it. And I’m very pleased to have met you.”
Angela moved over to stand by Christopher. “Come on out to the courtyard with us.”
Lana nodded and greeted the other CRMers as they walked back down the hall. Her arms and breasts, buttocks and legs swinging naked through space felt gloriously free to her, free of weight as well as pretension. She felt a heady, contagious mix of rebellion and wisdom possess her, and respect and wonder for the people walking nude all around her.
They heard the singing and guitar-playing before they saw the now much larger group at the “Nude-Out” in the Humanities Building courtyard. Body painters had already spawned sparkling butterflies hovering over navels and clavicles, flower petals radiating out from nipples, rainbows running up thighs and down shins, and a delirious pair of cross-eyed buttocks. One middle-aged woman’s painted breasts donned the theatrical masks of comedy and tragedy, perched above wine-colored curtains painted to hang from her hips and extend down her thighs. A young man sported the traditional good-luck fist, with the thumb between the first two fingers, painted ingeniously over his genitals as if it were a low-hanging amulet on a long chain around his neck. Another man had a Mexican-style eclipse painted in orange and purple across his posterior. An open book spread across the buttocks of a young woman, with intricate pages featuring an illustration of Lady Godiva and text painted so finely it was legible. Another woman had an anchor painted down her spine with the crown bottoming out gracefully along the curves under her buttocks. When this same woman turned around, Lana observed, much impressed, the fine detail of the twin sea stars that appeared to cling to her breasts, and the beautifully stylized conch shell that stretched from her sternum to her groin, with the shell aperture positioned at her shaved vulva.
“Headcount is approximately 200!” Alex called out from atop the Humanities Building monolith.
“This is very impressive, Dr. Ross,” Lana said.
“Please, call me Christopher. It is rather a lot of skin, isn’t it?”
“How many of them are your students?”
“Oh, about fifty current and former students of mine, plus another twenty or so of Angela’s, and probably twenty Spanish students from another colleague’s class. I believe most of the rest of them are also GCU students, but I don’t know for sure. They call themselves CRM, the Corporal Rights Movement.”
Lana scanned the crowd. People were singing, talking, hugging and swaying, laughing and joking. Nobody was doing anything obscene, not even in the slightest sense. She found Tim easily, since he was the only clothed person in sight. He was filming everything.
Nude-Out
Frustrated that it was not porn, willing it to be but fascinated by just how much it was not, Tim kept filming. Through his moist palms slipping on the camera he relived his teenage sneak peeks at his father’s hidden magazines…the gratification; the pupil-widening, pace-quickening gratification…but this was so live, so real and unscripted, uncompromised, even asexual. He found his arousal replaced by an exhilarating curiosity, and that it took all he could muster simply to assume the role of documentary filmmaker, matching tone and pace to the happenings around him.
The handstands astounded him. A young woman and a young man planted themselves feet up, ankles supported by other students, and Tim thought, I’ve never seen this. Why have I never seen this? Gravity worked its magic on organs accustomed to an opposite orientation. Why have I never seen breasts slung upside down just like that, rolling to one side like cantaloupes spilling from a market bag, or a penis and scrotum hung backwards, like a snail inching its way down the fork of a tree? Even before he could finish marveling at these unprecedented perspectives, a few other students began an impromptu interpretative dance, assuming poses reminiscent of yoga or tai chi, in which their bodies swayed and swung at every conceivable angle.
Tim kept the camera running, filming everybody—people eating, singing, talking, laughing, living—without clothes. On some level he wanted to remove his own clothes as well, to join in, to somehow be more than a voyeur, because even though he suddenly became very self-conscious about the kind of love handles that encompass a middle-aged man in average health, he marveled at the display of body types around him, ectomorphs, endomorphs, and mesomorphs all. But he just kept filming, and when Lana approached him to ask how they could assemble the footage, he ignored her.
She said, “Any of this shows up on the Internet, you lose your job. I’ll see to it personally. I’ve got my eye on you.”
The possibility of world wide web distribution had not even occurred to Tim, and he became intrigued by the idea, although less so than by thinking about how Lana would ever find it. But he realized he wasn’t filming for cyberprofit, he was filming for his own memory, to prove to himself that this was really happening, that nudity, incredibly, can be communal, and sensuous in the way everyday life is, only even more so, and without being overtly sexual. The hundreds of times when he had operated the camera mechanically, standing still, simply recording some ephemeral event to show up on the nightly news and be forgotten the following morning, had nothing to do with this moment, in which he trailed around slowly but deliberately, actively determining what to record, when to change focus, whom to portray.
He even began interviewing, asking basic questions about what was going on, and received inquiries himself, from nudists wanting to know if they would appear on the news. So absorbed by his content was he that he tripped on the stairs that formed the west entrance to the courtyard, and would have fallen over backwards had i
t not been for two students who caught him on the steps below. When Tim thanked them on camera and asked why they were there, they replied that they had heard about “naked parties” at other colleges and wanted to give it a try. The camera frame showed even more students arriving in the background.
Tim kept filming until he could no longer put off going to the bathroom, and Lana cornered him as soon as she saw him put the camera down. “Tim, we’ve got to talk. I’m going to need your help on a big investigative piece on nudity and society.”
Tim watched her check her makeup in the van’s passenger-side mirror while she continued to talk to him. He decided that this was no life-changing experience for her. She must have disrobed for publicity, for a ratings stunt, something.
“Later. I’ve gotta pee.”
Lana grabbed his arm. “Why are you still dressed?”
“’Cause I’m operating the camera.”
“For two hours? You couldn’t put the camera down at some point and take your clothes off?”
Tim looked steadily at Lana’s eyes to avoid dealing with her nudity. “Didn’t wanna.”
“Tim, don’t you remember that piece we did on the David statue? You know, the lawn ornament that had to be covered up?”
“I really, really, need to use the bathroom.”
“I’m going to recycle some of that footage and put together a new report with what you shot today. Talking with the professors, I just found out the landscaping guy’s niece was victimized by a corrupt cop. It’s a long story but it’s got hot-button potential for our viewers. We’ll do a segment on nudity as something good and wholesome in contrast to this delinquent in uniform.”
“I’m happy for ya. Now let go of my arm.”
“I’m going to need lots of editing. Will you help me?”
He sighed, staring now at Lana’s bare feet. “I’ll help you. Bye already, see you tomorrow.”
Hungry
Greg walked into The Dive as Daphne was reaching around below her long ponytail to untie her waitress apron.
