by Forest, Will
She saw but did not see, recognized but did not recognize, her colleagues and students and Florence. How could she resist Florence, whom she knew from so many GCU meetings and Democratic fundraisers? She flinched when the door opened suddenly and Karl reappeared, nude now as well, with a fresh margarita for her. Something happened – did he miss the step? did the door hit his bare foot? – and Tabitha’s statue spell shattered as an icy wash splashed across her lavender blazer and ivory blouse and raised her instantly to her feet, arms extended, gasping. Her ears registered the sudden, complete silence, and then Karl’s apology. Her eyes, arrested, absorbed again the gaze of the immobilized gods, and then the figure of Florence approaching her, leading her gently into the house.
Tabitha let her slack body be pulled, tripping along the carpeted hallway, to the master bedroom, where Florence propped her up against the bedpost. Tabitha could only look pleadingly at her friend and mentor, and Florence realized that Tabitha’s resistance to being nude had dissipated, but that her pride was injured. Florence found a towel and patted Tabitha’s chest, beginning to disrobe her, finally provoking her to speak.
“This is it, isn’t it? You tricked me by not telling me the nature of this gathering. Karl, I’m not sure, but maybe he spilled the drink on purpose. And Christopher, and Angela, and now you! I put up with so much demand from you people! Don’t you see I think of my body as a gift? For my husband mostly, for me as well, and when I dress every day I’m wrapping myself up for presentation to everyone I see. I don’t know why I should give myself away to…me, how I really look, with nothing left to the imagination—look at me! give myself away so…cheaply…like this.”
Completely exposed, Tabitha’s skin still held taut from the frozen splash, and from the soft currents borne of the overhead fan spiriting away the tequila from her compact nipples.
Florence studied the face of the philosophy department chair as if reading her life story: the crow’s-feet and laugh lines of Tabitha’s active social life, offset by a deep, vertical crease between her eyebrows from too much squinting or too much scolding. Her earlobes had begun to sag a bit. Her strict exercise and diet regimen, burning every stray calorie, had fed the flames of her glowing cheeks, sparkling eyes and combustible figure. Her auburn bob with reddish highlights illuminated the room around her like an exclamation torch. Any gray hair had been meticulously dyed and any facial hair strenuously eradicated.
Florence grasped the younger woman’s limp hands. “Don’t be stingy. Let yourself down, Tabitha! If you give yourself, as you put it, it has to be because you do so freely. You’re right that I tricked you. I can’t speak for Karl and the flying margarita, but we definitely both thought you just needed a little nudging. I’ve known you long enough to know that this will be good for you.”
“What? Running around naked at a party with colleagues and students?” Tabitha folded her arms across her breasts. “It could ruin my career.”
“I’m surprised at you! Do you really think so? You’re established, Tabitha! If there’s anyone’s career to be ruined, it’s Christopher’s, and he’s brave enough to risk it, because in fact, this just might help his career. And yours!”
“How long have you been in cahoots with him, anyway?”
“Anyone who reads the paper knows who he is. I invited him here, with Angela, some weeks ago to discuss their initiatives. I think they’re onto something, Tabitha, and this is the time to be brave about it. We all have bodies, you know. Don’t fear your own.”
Tabitha sighed and turned to look at herself in Florence’s vanity. “These stretch marks…”
“What?! Don’t talk to me about stretch marks, you think I don’t have any? I’ve had stretch marks since before you were born. You know, Tabitha, in some ways I feel like a mother to you. I even have at least a small say in your career as well as Christopher’s, and as I told him before, I’ll do what I can to protect him, and Angela, and you, all of you. But, even if you’re right, that your career is ruined, then I say to hell with it. To hell with all of it! If we cannot, as a people, as a society, recognize ourselves in our bodies, and acknowledge the damage we do by cloaking our humanity, then to hell with everything is what I say, Dr. Tabitha Lasseter-Peebles.”
The left side of Tabitha’s mouth rose uncontrollably, and she began to giggle, studying herself in the vanity while on the receiving end of a harangue similar to ones she herself had delivered to Christopher.
“Don’t even get me started. And don’t you laugh at me, I could really open your eyes about some things…”
“Oh, they’re open alright. More than you know. I’ve opened up. I...” Dr. Lasseter-Peebles looked at Florence, and gave. She gave in, she gave out, she gave all of Jaime Castellón Reyes’s prepositions at once, though she chose only one with which to finish her thought for Florence, passing her arm through hers and leading her back out onto the terraza: “I give up.”
Barefoot, Tabitha did now step strongly into the sunshine of the Olympian garden reception. After warm applause, Florence offered cups of nectar and Karl proposed a toast “to the many participants, henceforth known as innudators, who have taken the leap, now called the uncovery, to the Corporal Rights Movement specifically and to nudism in general. May your numbers grow and your goals be met, and may no one this splendorous day forget.”
Tucker Bierson looked especially wistful as he drank to the toast. “I don’t know if this is the right time to say this, but I just want to mention that I…I fought in Vietnam. I’m not saying that for anybody’s sympathy. I’m saying it right now because I saw a lot of beautiful, ‘splendorous’ days in Vietnam ruined, and I saw a lot of…destitute people naked out of need, because they had no choice, and they were ashamed by the circumstances. Their world had been torn apart, and their basic needs couldn’t be met, not anymore, anyway. It’s a big difference to stand here today with you all, a day of starting off new and making things, not destroying things, and not only that but to stand here among a group of people who are nude by choice, because we accept and cherish and celebrate our bodies without shame. We have…a lot of work to do, that much is true, but I can’t think of a better group to get this work started. Thanks for inviting me.” Cheers and applause ended Tucker’s speech.
Florence announced that it was time for the special nude portraits she had charitably commissioned. Dr. Liang’s students assembled their photographic equipment and props, and organized a series of shots beginning with a group photo of the Olympians, the twelve brave persons linked by the knowledge that their bodies, and faces, would soon be on display in the calendars. During one of the poses Florence heard from Christopher the story about the David lawn statue, including the part about Lana’s later ‘uncovery.’
“Yes, another of your neologisms that I adore, Christopher! And I’m certainly impressed with your tactics for thwarting the press, Mr. Bierson.”
“Well, I wish I could have avoided them completely,” Tucker replied. “But there they were, filming the lawn ornaments. By the way, I see that you have quite a few statues yourself.”
“Yes, Karl and I collect them. Tell me,” said Florence with a conspiratorial air, leading Mr. Bierson away from the group after the photo had been taken, “whatever became of that David statue?”
Further photo sessions produced some elaborate and enthusiastic montages continuing the classical mythology theme, including a version of the Judgment of Paris in which a low-angle camera caught Paul cupping an apple, kneeling before the triple splendor of Aphrodite, Hera and Athena as exuberantly interpreted by Renee, Florence and Daphne. Paul tossed the golden apple to Jennifer, who used it for a photo series re-enacting the race between Jennifer as the heroine Atalanta and the slightly slimmed-down Jacob as her persistent suitor Hippomenes. Some of the art students staged a clever recreation of the famous Laocoon sculpture, featuring Karl as the doomed patriarch and two of the male students as his sons, all wrestling outlandishly with garden hoses. Even Tabitha, a water nymph peeking barely
over the edge of the pool, agreed to be photographed.
After the last picture had been taken, somebody jumped into the pool, others went to find a discus/frisbee, and still others put on some dance music. Maggie Liang, escorted by her husband, eased her pregnant self into the pool for the first time all afternoon, delighting in the respite from gravity. Florence, Karl, Tucker, Jaime, and Tabitha took seats around a poolside table for drinks and cards.
In the Lowells’ well-tended and professionally landscaped garden, Angela and Christopher found an isolated bench under a little trellis facing the bay. They sat for a few minutes, watching boats and birds on the horizon. She clasped his hand in hers. “Do you remember the ISCD?”
“The Institute for the Study of Cognitive Development. They funded your research overseas.”
“Right. Well, now they’re ready to publish it.”
“That’s terrific!” Christopher hugged her tight. “You are such a wonderful woman. I love you!”
“I uh...I don’t know if I’m ready for them to publish it, but they told me that the press coverage of our ‘innudations’ prompted the decision.”
“Prompted, or forced?”
“I suppose you could see it that way, ‘forced,’ but their attitude was more positive than that.”
“When’s it come out?”
“Early June. I’m really anxious about it, Chris.”
“Don’t be. Don’t lose faith in your hard work! We need to celebrate, not worry! Let’s plan a big party! ‘Cause I’ve got good news, too – my Humanities Council grant came through for research in Brazil!”
“Congratulations!” Now it was Angela’s turn to give a bear hug. “Don’t you think Rio would be a great place to honeymoon?”
Christopher didn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, but it’s in the Southern Hemisphere so you have to say moonhoney, not honeymoon.”
“Okay, you moon my honey, and I’ll honey your m...” Christopher’s kiss crossed Angela’s chiasmus.
“There’s no time like the present,” he whispered, his lips parted only slightly from hers. “Angela María Saucedo Ramírez, will you marry me?”
She separated her face from his, just enough to look clearly into his eyes, his deep blue irises sparkling with the reflection of her chocolate brown ones in their mutual El Dorado submersion. “Yes!”
They hopped off the bench, jumping up and down and embracing each other, each one in the other, until Christopher braided some leaves of grass for a ring, and they sat down again, Angela on Christopher’s lap, their sexes aroused, their bodies flush and fused, warming each other to their cores, their scintillating eyes bestowing light that radiated like an aura, joining the fire falling into embers over the restless Gulf.
Manifestation
The brisk calendar sales—in the Humanities Building courtyard every afternoon, but also online—emboldened the CRM to try another visual venture. Sketches were made, paints procured, ladders borrowed, coolers packed, tunes selected. On a Saturday afternoon, the CRM infiltrated the Humanities Building and set up shop in the bridge corridor between the two wings. The bridge housed a few old sofas and some vending machines as a low-budget study lounge. Its long, straight, parallel walls formed a virgin canvas of whitewashed cinder block, broken only by a thin horizontal line of narrow windows on each side.
Daphne and Terrence chose the side overlooking the courtyard and sketched out a bucolic landscape with figures walking among neoclassical structures. Paul and Jennifer rolled out the dropcloth. Then everybody began painting in the details, except two film students producing the “making of” video, complete with innovative techniques such as the floor-level filming of painters on ladders, camera aimed toward the ceiling.
There were inevitable paint spills and splashes on all the exposed skin. At one point a few CRMers got sidetracked painting themselves, only to be reminded that they needed to finish the project by Sunday afternoon. When it became apparent that they were in fact going to have to keep at it through Saturday night, Greg and Daphne went for Chinese take-out while Jennifer and Alex drove to their homes to get all the pillows, blankets, cushions, sleeping bags and mattresses they could possibly find.
The gathering turned into a nudist sleepover, a pajama party sans pajamas. Some students painted on into the morning. Others played get-dressed poker, only for the satisfaction of confirming that it was much worse to lose at that game than at strip poker. Still others, unbelievably, curled up and slept amid all the noise and excitement.
They finished just before noon on Sunday. Renee called Drs. Ross and Saucedo to come see a surprise. She met them at the door to the back of the Humanities Building auditorium, and led them to just outside the south entrance to the bridge, where they undressed. When all the painters had lined up along the opposite wall, Renee escorted the professors into complete stillness and awe.
Opposite the row of paint-splotched nude artists, Angela and Christopher saw a sprawling mural of the Gulf Coast University campus, with recognizable landmarks like the Tholos replica, but with much nicer-looking buildings, lots of trees, a fountain, a sandlot. Appropriately, predictably, nudes populated the landscape. But the mural’s most surprising and impressive details could be found in the painters’ own depictions of themselves. There were Alex and Jennifer playing volleyball, easily recognizable, painted proportionately and realistically. Lisa appeared as Lady Godiva astride her horse, while Greg and Daphne, as Adam and Eve, hung from the branches of the Tree of Knowledge, a serpent coiled round its trunk. Daphne hung from her hands and Greg from his knees. There were no fig leaves to be seen, but plenty of apple cores piled under the tree. Christopher recognized Renee and Terrence, as the orixás Oxum and Xangô, from the illustration in Terrence’s journal. A golden Paul stood proudly, arms outstretched, on a raft on the lake, while a marble Jacob—muscular but still recognizably corpulent—posed near the Tholos imitating Michelangelo’s David. Donning only a graduation cap and tassel, Heather was walking along playing the flute, leading a group of nudists behind her. In the figure of Archimedes, Tucker Bierson was leaping nude from a tub with a shout of “Eureka!” There were many anonymous figures, one of whom cautioned a group away from an ominously labeled “SYNECDOCHE TRAP,” and another distributing pamphlets titled “Your Right to the Light.” All the CRM faculty filled a scene imitating Raphael’s School of Athens, the historical figures replaced by professors Liang, Castellón Reyes, Lasseter-Peebles, Saucedo and Ross, and Florence and Karl Lowell. Angela traced her fingers along a scroll, beneath the scene, with the legend: The human body is the most ordinary of things, yet also the most extraordinary.
“It’s the Palace of Fine Arts…” Dr. Ross swung his head to take it all in. “Daphne, this is exactly what I had in mind that day we spoke at The Dive! I am so proud of you.” He gave her a big hug. “I am so proud of all of you!”
“What can I say?” Angela added. “You guys have really outdone yourselves!”
The camera crew filmed their reactions.
“I’m glad to see you’re filming all this! Any idea how long the mural may last?” Angela asked. “I mean, did you get permission, or is it all going to be whitewashed tomorrow?”
“No permission,” said Jacob.
Nervous laughter.
Paul walked in, dressed, carrying a stack of flat boxes. “Pizza’s here!”
“Wash your hands first!” Angela yelled over the commotion.
“Yeah, the halls are empty,” said Paul. “You can streak to the sinks!”
Daphne approached her professors. “We knew you’d like it!”
“It was your idea, wasn’t it?” Christopher asked.
“We all pitched in,” Daphne said. “Thanks for coming. We did it for you both.”
They both hugged Daphne. Then Christopher took Angela’s hand, and she kissed him, and they sat down opposite the mural to study this manifestation of their dreams.
Into the Light
“Listen up, class, so we can get started. As I sp
ecified on your revised syllabus, this week we discuss portrayals of obvious physical changes in the human body. We have already explored representations of bodies young and old, and middle-aged, and of all kinds of phenotypes. But I realized that we had not talked about representations of pregnancy, for example. That’s the reason for the handout I gave you that describes the last few class days of the semester on your revised syllabus. Today I’ve invited two international guests to speak with us about images of pregnancy in their cultures. Our first guest, already here, is my colleague Dr. Jaime Castellón Reyes from the languages department. Jaime was born in what is now one of the most liberal countries on the planet with regards to social nudity.”
“Yeeeees,” said the professor, who rose to his feet and began to pace and pontificate, very comfortable without clothes. “I was born in Spain, a much more conservative Spain at that time. But I grew up in Mexico. So I have dos patrias – two homelands. And now I have lived in the United States long enough to say, uuuuhh, tres patrias. Anyway, I am going to tell you a story about when my family had to leave Spain for Mexico.
“I was five years old. It was 1938 and my family was running from the Spanish Civil War. My parents were republicans, but that doesn’t mean what republican means today in America. Republican meant that they wanted Spain to become a republic, not to continue as a monarchy. And not to become a dictatorship. Their battle was lost in 1939, but, as I was saying, we were running from Spain in 1938, during months of attacks in northern Spain.
“We were crossing the Pyrenees Mountains into France, and my mother was pregnant. As you can imagine, that was very difficult to her. We tried to move quickly though the forest and reach the French, uuuh, frontier… I mean the French border. Suddenly, my mother’s fountain broke! But she kept going, cradling her belly, and my father and my older brother helped her along. There were only a few other people, neighbors from our town and an aunt of mine, to help her, and because we were in the middle of the forest we didn’t know how far away the border lie. We could hear dogs barking and howling in the distance and we didn’t know if the dogs were hunting us. Weeellll, finally my mother dropped to the ground. She was already in labor. I will never forget how she pulled off her clothes, ripping some of them, until she was, uuuh, naked. Someone pushed a bunch of pine pins under her head to make a cushion.”
