Co-ed Naked Philosophy

by Forest, Will

  She finally looked at him. “I agree,” she said, with enough reluctance to suggest that she had been coerced.

  “Alright, that’s how we’ll proceed then,” said the provost. “Dr. Saucedo will contact Ms. Baldwin to set up a meeting, and Dean Wishinsky will do the same with Mr. Chapman. The meetings should be within the next two days. The hearing of your tenure and promotion case before the college committee, as a precaution, has been postponed until next Tuesday. I’ll expect phone calls from you to learn how these meetings go. And I repeat that no one outside this room, not even the university counsel, is to know of this decision or our subsequent actions.”

  All nodded.

  “I’m still unsatisfied, though,” continued the provost, “as to why you changed your syllabus to discuss such a controversial topic, Dr. Ross?”

  The philosophy professor couldn’t resist. “Well, how many times a day do you have an erection?”

  Brad McIntire lowered his brow and set his jaws. “It’s none of your business.”

  “You probably don’t even think about it; for most men erections happen, for a variety of reasons, day and night. But wouldn’t you at least concede that erections are important when considering an aesthetics of the body?”

  The provost’s face flushed. He looked incredulously at the three women in the room, all of whom appeared mildly amused, and seethed, “What does that have to do with my question to you? Can you defend yourself beyond physiology, or not? Aren’t you teaching a philosophy course?”

  Angela flashed a danger grimace at Christopher, who realized he had gone too far. “I’m sorry…”

  “Just be glad you have witnesses here, or I’d sue you myself.”

  “Gentlemen, that’s enough,” Florence said, turning to Dr. Ross. “Christopher, we’ll tolerate your academic playfulness when dealing with questions and answers, but you need to respect the gravity of the situation facing you. Whatever the misunderstanding, you have been accused of sexual harassment. The university’s policy regarding such accusation is to defend your academic freedom if it can be shown that you had no intention of causing psychological harm or trading sex for grades. The nature of the topic does not make it easy for any of us, but it seems to me that it would be an especially delicate matter for those of us who strive to educate the public about healthy nudist lifestyles. There is much more at stake here than your tenure case.”

  Herb and Brad seemed surprised by Florence’s use of the first-person plural “those of us,” but said nothing.

  Christopher looked at Angela. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “Me too,” she said.

  Pushing the Limit

  Minutes later, all parties had left the secret meeting. Christopher and Angela stood silent in the Administration Building hallway.

  “Please, Angie, you’ve got to understand.”

  “Understand what?” She dropped her shoulders and turned to face him. “What is it I’ve got to understand?”

  “That I didn’t do anything wrong.” Christopher focused his gaze on the intense turquoise of her necklace.

  “How do you know? Don’t you think that might be up for interpretation? As a teacher you know that sometimes there can be a gap—like an abyss, even—that can open between what you say and what you mean. Or between what you mean and what the student interprets.”

  “Yes, I know that. This case must be something along those lines. Don’t you trust me?”

  “I thought I did. I think I still do. But I am reserving judgment until we find out what Daphne and Brian say.”

  “When did you get so Napoleonic? You’re holding me guilty until proven innocent. That’s backwards.”

  “The United States Justice System can treat you like a citizen. My justice system standards are higher than that, because my system treats you as a boyfriend, as a love interest, a fiancé, carajo, who I already feel attached to.”

  Christopher touched her cheek lightly with his fingertips. “Then by your same logic I deserve a little benefit of the doubt, don’t you think? How do I appeal?”

  “We’ll see. I don’t know why you didn’t invite me to class that day. I would have come! Or Tabitha, or Jaime, anybody. We could have been witnesses for your protection, with you covering a sensitive topic like that. Haven’t you even thought about the fact that you’ve dragged me down with you? All the media attention, to say nothing of the campus community, everybody already treats us as a pair. If this sexual harassment complaint becomes a lawsuit, we’re both hurt. It’s what Florence was saying at the meeting: this goes way beyond your tenure case. It’s not just about you, or you and me at GCU, but the entire idea we’ve been fighting for. Here we are, almost at the end of this marvelous semester. We have survived hostile administrators, church group protests…and now this. Now, because of this, my research is in jeopardy. And so is our relationship!”

  Christopher had no response.

  “Sometimes you just don’t think.”

  Christopher focused his gaze on her necklace again. “You’re right. I honestly did not. For the record, I did not think: I’m going to invite someone, and then forget to do it, or decide not to do it. I just simply did not think of it. I did not think of any jeopardy to our cause because I did not perceive it.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s an intriguing question. Maybe I just felt comfortable, enough, with the whole situation and imagined the students would too. And I think they were indeed comfortable, and I continue to maintain that everything was fine until Daphne’s outburst.”

  “But you’re always pushing the limit, Chris. Always pushing.” Angela turned around and resumed walking down the corridor. “Like with the provost just now. I could not believe you asked him about his erections. It’s as if you completely ignored the context of the situation, when you’re the one who is always saying, ‘context is everything.’”

  Christopher caught up to her. They walked in silence a few moments. “I’m sorry. Somehow I mistook the setting for a learning and teaching context, when it most certainly was not.”

  “No, it was a you’re–being-reprimanded context, and you essentially threw it back in the provost’s face, as if you didn’t recognize, as he said, that he was going out of his way to save your sorry ass.” Angela stopped and smiled. “Which is actually very cute, but you better hope it holds up to the beating I’m gonna give it.” She pinched Christopher’s left buttock.

  “Threat or promise?”

  “Both,” she uttered through clenched teeth.

  “Why do think the provost puts up with me, anyway? How can he support me, and our project?”

  Angela clicked her tongue. “Well, he can always claim he supports us, or at least you anyway, because of rescuing the philosophy department from imminent demise. But I think he must appreciate something else about what we’re doing. Maybe he’s been able to get in touch with himself, I’m guessing, be more in tune with his health and his emotions. And he’s secretly grateful.”

  “I hope that’s true. I was thinking maybe he just recognizes that we’re doing good work, which is ultimately beneficial to GCU.”

  “That could be true too. You see? Give people a chance, they open up, they reach out.”

  “Either that or he just doesn’t want a fuss, like when he was afraid of the media that day Lana came.”

  “Ouch. Yeah, that’s probably true as well. Now c’mon, I already called Daphne. Remember she sent around a CRM contact list? Very useful. She’s expecting us.”

  Perfectly Natural

  Angela parked her car near the swing sets. She and Christopher found Daphne on a bench, looking after Adam in the little water park. Children thronged the playground on this hot day, because the park featured a dancing fountain, a mist-making rainbow, a squirting elephant, and a tall, shower-like contraption with water buckets that would continually fill before tipping over to drench the eager youngsters underneath.

  “Hi Daphne.”

  She shielded her eyes,
looking into the sun. “Hi Professor Ross, Professor Saucedo. Have a seat. Thanks for agreeing to meet here. It’s one of Adam’s favorite places to play.”

  The two GCU professors sat down on either side of Daphne. For a while they all watched Adam and about a dozen other children, running back and forth in their swimsuits, shouting, squirting each other, jumping and laughing, some adults wet as well but most sitting on benches.

  “I do a lot of reading here at this park.”

  “I’ll bet you do,” said Angela. “It’s a nice place to be.”

  “Dr. Ross, I’m sorry,” Daphne began. “Wait, is this, like, on the record or something?”

  “No,” said Angela. “Like I told you on the phone, we’re just here to talk about what happened in class last Wednesday.”

  “So…so I can understand,” Christopher added. “I’m only now beginning to understand, Daphne.”

  Daphne trained her eyes on Adam. Then she stared at her philosophy professor. “Let me tell you a story. One day, a few years ago before Adam was toilet-trained, I was changing his diaper. Nothing unusual about that. But this time, Adam had an erection. His dad, who was with me at that moment, saw this and got really agitated. Adam’s dad, I was beginning to realize, was confused about a lot of things, and that’s why we’re not together anymore. But anyway, it seemed to be humiliating to him that Adam, who was probably only fourteen or fifteen months old, would have an erection. He blamed it on me. Said Adam had inherited my sinfulness, or something crazy like that. He grabbed a cup there in the bathroom, filled it with cold water, and doused both Adam and me. I tried to remain calm. I wrapped Adam in a towel—obviously, he was crying—and told his father to leave us. He did, and he only came back once after that, to get his things.”

  “Wow. So that was kind of, crazy, huh?” said Angela.

  “I’m leaving out a lot of details. But that was the last straw. We had never married, so there wasn’t much paperwork to deal with when he left. And he hasn’t once been in touch in almost three years now. So I live without knowing if he’s ever going to show up.”

  “I never knew that about you, Daphne. I hope things will work out for you,” said Dr. Ross. “I don’t know if what I’m going to say is relevant to your reason for talking about this, but actually it’s common for infant boys to sprout erections, even when they are still in the womb, which just goes to show that sometimes erections are merely physiological without being erotic.”

  “I know, and I already knew it at the time this happened with Adam. But I’m telling you this because it relates to class the other day. Somehow, I just knew that the same thing was happening to Brian. He was looking around uncomfortably. And, after all, we were talking about erections. I didn’t even see anything, I mean from where I was sitting I couldn’t see that part of Brian’s body, but I suddenly remembered, when this incident happened with Adam, that Adam’s father had the same kind of anguished look, and that when he threw the water on us it was like he was trying to put out his own fire. I think that at that moment I just shut it out of my mind. There wasn’t room for that observation with everything else that was going on.

  “But I remembered what happened with Adam’s dad in class that day with Brian. It’s like one erection can call another. And he was ashamed. And my mind started racing. If that’s true, that one erection incites another, think of all the societal taboos that have been constructed around that, as if to hide this essential truth, that no matter what kind of man, there’s a good chance his penis can be aroused—involuntarily—at the sight or even the thought of another erect penis. No control, it just happens. And the stimulus in Brian’s case was just talking about erections. And he wasn’t prepared to deal with it, so he pulled his notebook into his lap, and that’s when I started getting insistent with you.”

  Christopher stared at a boy and a girl on the playground, spinning around on a miniature carrousel. “At the time, I couldn’t figure out why you were so upset,” Christopher laughed. “Now I understand. Brian obviously felt very uncomfortable. He probably wanted to get up and leave, but that would have revealed his condition and he would have felt worse.”

  “I really wish you…” Angela started.

  “But why would he still feel embarrassed about an erection?” Christopher asked. “After everything we’ve discussed in class, and especially that very day…”

  “Yes,” Angela interrupted. “Especially that very day. You were really pushing the envelope that day. It’s a credit to everybody else in the class that they put up with you so well.”

  Christopher raised his eyebrows. “I don’t suppose you ever brought up anything controversial in your course, Dr. Saucedo?”

  “I never had any problem, Chris. We talked about all my research in Sweden, we talked about corporal punishment policies, uniform policies…”

  “You never had any problem with erections in class?”

  “No. Well, not that I know of. I can state for sure we never talked about them in class.”

  “And that must be it,” Christopher said. “An erection can trump my ‘context is everything’ motto, because it can happen on its own. No wonder Exu is so dangerous—it’s because he’s so unpredictable. He can pop up, so to speak, at any moment, and radically change, or even destroy, whatever context has already been set up. In fact now that I think about it, this coincides with a view of Exu as someone who always questions limits, and can even destroy tradition on a whim.”

  “Reminds me of you,” Angela said smugly.

  “But I really think it’s more than that, even, Dr. Ross. Take what you’re saying about unpredictability and add to it what I’m saying about contagion, the way a yawn brings a yawn, or the way that seeing someone eat or sleep can make you hungry or sleepy. It doesn’t always happen automatically, but the potential is there for our involuntary muscles to do their contracting or expanding. A man could find this to be very uncomfortable, if exposed, in front of his mother, or his daughter, or in a group of men who might try to redefine his sexual orientation.”

  “How would they even know, unless everyone’s nude, or unless this hypothetical man is the only nude person in the group?” asked Christopher. “And if he’s in a nude group, then I would argue that being in a nude group in the first place, even more than in a clothed group, means accepting people’s bodies, with their unpredictable yawns, belches, sneezes, erections, farts, and many other completely normal manifestations of having blood running through your veins.”

  “Getting an erection is one thing, but running around flaunting it is quite another,” said Angela.

  “I agree. That’s crossing the line. But either a man or a woman would cross the line in a nude group if they touch themselves or dance in a flagrantly erotic way where others can see ...”

  “Oh my God.”

  Daphne’s hands grasped Angela’s and Christopher’s thighs on either side of her.

  “Look at that. How funny this is happening right now, when you guys are here. Okay, I’m not gonna do anything…”

  Adam had taken off his swimsuit. He had deposited the soaked, toddler-size blue bermudas on one side of the misting rainbow and resumed running around and playing. Angela scanned the benches and saw that a few parents seemed to have noticed, but were not yet reacting. They won’t do anything until their own kids take their suits off, she thought, which is just a matter of time, and as she was thinking this, sure enough, another boy took his suit off, and then another, and then a girl too.

  Suddenly parents hopped off benches, laughing good-naturedly but moving with unmistakable haste to dress their unwilling toddlers. Still-clothed children stopped playing to watch the drama. Daphne and her professors heard a mother exclaim, “You’ve got to keep your clothes on outside, silly-pie!”

  Adam heard too. He looked at Daphne, stopped playing, and walked directly to her without collecting his swimsuit and without noticing that another nude boy, unthwarted by parent or guardian, was following him. The three CRMers, clothed
and seated, found themselves availed of the confusion of two nude toddlers standing before them, eyes upturned to their faces.

  “Mommy.”

  Daphne took a deep breath. “Yes, Adam?”

  “Mommy, is it true I have to keep my clothes on outside?” Only then did he turn, as if to locate the source of this questionable thing that he had heard, and in turning see his nude friend who had stopped a few steps behind him. Daphne did not have to respond: there before him stood the incontrovertible answer. Immediately, the two boys ran back, stiff-legged like young children do, and jumped through the misting rainbow, any assertion about outdoor clothing forgotten.

  Christopher scanned the other adults in the area, and the parked cars, trying to make sure no one was filming anything. He noticed a young woman on another bench, watching them, and when he made eye contact, she pointed to Adam’s friend, then to her heart, and gave a thumbs-up sign.

  “Did you see that?”

  “Yeah,” said Angela. “I think it’s the other boy’s mom. It looks like she approves.”

  But the other parents, who had interpreted that Daphne had given the boys permission to keep their suits off, were not amused. Most of them gathered up their children and left, although one father, in the process of changing his daughter’s diaper, happily let her wobble back onto the wet concrete au naturel, and that girl’s six-year-old sister, upon seeing her nude sibling, took her suit off as well.

  One mother carried her daughter, still wearing her wet swimsuit, to the car. It was the same woman Adam had heard. As she approached Daphne’s bench she shot her a look. “I don’t think it’s very appropriate,” the woman called out in a sing-song tone, broadcasting her efforts to mitigate her hostility, “to let your kids run around naked in a public park.”

  Daphne, still clutching her professors’ legs, looked at her and forced a smile. The answer that her son had not needed, she gave to this woman: “You don’t have to keep your clothes on outside. Being naked is perfectly natural.”

  “It’s a beautiful day, and the kids don’t know any different,” Angela added.