I Used To Like To Run Around Naked
I would do it everywhere. But it's gotten to where I don't anymore. Why is that? Is it because there isn't anybody to really truly enjoy it? I could do it anyway, but the only people who would see me would be strangers, and what's the point then? It's not as if some woman would start whistling at me or something. Or take me back to her place and give me a spongebath.
Running around naked can be a dirty business sometimes.
There is nothing in this cold December world better than being on the receiving end of a hot soapy sudsy spongebath, given by a truly risk-taking woman, after getting splashed slushy gritty by cars running down Martin Luther King, Jr. Parkway.
When I was in highschool I watched The Fisher King and got inspired. I used to get a whole bunch of friends together in order to go out into Earlham College's soccer field and get naked while looking at the clouds and the moon and the clouds covering the moon. It was fun. It was even more fun when I managed to blackmail girls into going with us.
One morning after I woke up my mother asked me if I hadn't been streaking at Earlham the night before. I admitted that I had, and asked where she had come by her information. She refused to tell me. I, in turn, refused to be intimidated by her insinuations that this was something that I shouldn't be doing. I am glad that I didn't, because the next night saw the biggest turnout ever. It seemed as if the entire town of Richmond Indiana congregated onto that one field. Or at least the entire high school, minus the fascist, bureaucratic teaching staff, which might as well have been the entire town as far as I was concerned anyway. I think the reason so many people showed up was because this particular night was the Fourth of July, and the naked festivities involved bottle-rockets, saturn missiles, and roman candles.
Just as there should be rules governing the mixing of alcohols, there should be rules concerning the mixing of nudity, particularly those body parts left most exposed by said nudity, and explosives. This was effectively demonstrated to the involved parties with the concussive flash-burning, by a plastic-tipped whistling moon-rocket, of Analisa's left breast. Analisa was somebody that I had never met before. I meet people in the most unusual circumstances. I learned her name as I was helping her walk from the field, gather her scattered articles of clothing, dress in her clothing because she found it somewhat difficult to raise her left arm to the height required to put on her shirt, and then walk to my house, being the closest house to the center of excess, where she might be able to lie down for a bit in order to recuperate before heading home.
She didn't want to go to the hospital, and I didn't want to take her to the hospital. How would we have explained what had happened? We both understood that most adults frown on those sorts of behaviors, and so we decided that it would be better not to try to explain it to them in the first place.
When we got to my place I tried talking to her, as I found these conditions to be cunducive to the potential of a potential. She said she didn't feel like talking. I understood. However, with the excitement of meeting a new person quickly fading, and color rapidly returning to her face, I desired to be back in the center of whatever action was occurring on the field. I told her to make her home my home, and then I left.
To this day I haven't been able to figure out whether she was just embarassed at the turn of events, or if it was because we belonged to divergent social circles, but I never saw her again.
Back at the field, nothing was happening. The girls had decided that what had happened to Analisa looked entirely too painful to endure, and the guys all realized that had that happened to one of them, in a different but altogether possible place, they would no longer be guys, and so the fireworks were discontinued. Without fireworks there was only nudity. Some people, apparently, cannot be naked without a reason to be naked. I've never understood that. I could sit and look at a naked person all day long. It doesn't matter what sex they are, either. Hell, I could look at myself naked all day long. The self-conscious ones were the first to go. Once they left, others left. Once the others left, everybody left, except for the die-hards that I had turned on to this whole business earlier. We remained, looking at the moon and the clouds and the clouds covering the moon.
I never saw most of those self-conscious people again either.
Anyway, I don't go about naked so much anymore. I'm not sure when that changed. Maybe it was when I realized that most adults frown on that sort of behavior. A specific subset of 'most adults' would be 'most cops'. If I were a woman, it might not be so bad. At least cops give a woman something to wear when they arrest her. Like in the movie Splash, when they gave Daryl Hannah a long t-shirt that covered everything. Unlike Daryl Hannah, I didn't get anything to wear. I didn't even get a private cell. What I got was a sleepless night on a cold bench. What I got was fear: fear of moving, fear of standing up, fear of using the john, fear of criminals, fear of the law.
I'm trying to not be afraid of things anymore. As one of my twelve self-imposed steps on the road to recovery from fear, I need to go be naked in public. But I'm not sure that I can do it by myself. I think I need a little moral support. By that, I mean 'physically present' moral support, and not just 'with you in spirit, man'. So, if anybody's going to be in central Iowa this summer and wants to get naked in public with a poet, let me know. I'll put the light on. We'll look at the moon. And if we get arrested, provided that you're a woman, at least you'll get a t-shirt, right?
Running around naked can be a dirty business sometimes.
There is nothing in this cold December world better than being on the receiving end of a hot soapy sudsy spongebath, given by a truly risk-taking woman, after getting splashed slushy gritty by cars running down Martin Luther King, Jr. Parkway.
When I was in highschool I watched The Fisher King and got inspired. I used to get a whole bunch of friends together in order to go out into Earlham College's soccer field and get naked while looking at the clouds and the moon and the clouds covering the moon. It was fun. It was even more fun when I managed to blackmail girls into going with us.
One morning after I woke up my mother asked me if I hadn't been streaking at Earlham the night before. I admitted that I had, and asked where she had come by her information. She refused to tell me. I, in turn, refused to be intimidated by her insinuations that this was something that I shouldn't be doing. I am glad that I didn't, because the next night saw the biggest turnout ever. It seemed as if the entire town of Richmond Indiana congregated onto that one field. Or at least the entire high school, minus the fascist, bureaucratic teaching staff, which might as well have been the entire town as far as I was concerned anyway. I think the reason so many people showed up was because this particular night was the Fourth of July, and the naked festivities involved bottle-rockets, saturn missiles, and roman candles.
Just as there should be rules governing the mixing of alcohols, there should be rules concerning the mixing of nudity, particularly those body parts left most exposed by said nudity, and explosives. This was effectively demonstrated to the involved parties with the concussive flash-burning, by a plastic-tipped whistling moon-rocket, of Analisa's left breast. Analisa was somebody that I had never met before. I meet people in the most unusual circumstances. I learned her name as I was helping her walk from the field, gather her scattered articles of clothing, dress in her clothing because she found it somewhat difficult to raise her left arm to the height required to put on her shirt, and then walk to my house, being the closest house to the center of excess, where she might be able to lie down for a bit in order to recuperate before heading home.
She didn't want to go to the hospital, and I didn't want to take her to the hospital. How would we have explained what had happened? We both understood that most adults frown on those sorts of behaviors, and so we decided that it would be better not to try to explain it to them in the first place.
When we got to my place I tried talking to her, as I found these conditions to be cunducive to the potential of a potential. She said she didn't feel like talking. I understood. However, with the excitement of meeting a new person quickly fading, and color rapidly returning to her face, I desired to be back in the center of whatever action was occurring on the field. I told her to make her home my home, and then I left.
To this day I haven't been able to figure out whether she was just embarassed at the turn of events, or if it was because we belonged to divergent social circles, but I never saw her again.
Back at the field, nothing was happening. The girls had decided that what had happened to Analisa looked entirely too painful to endure, and the guys all realized that had that happened to one of them, in a different but altogether possible place, they would no longer be guys, and so the fireworks were discontinued. Without fireworks there was only nudity. Some people, apparently, cannot be naked without a reason to be naked. I've never understood that. I could sit and look at a naked person all day long. It doesn't matter what sex they are, either. Hell, I could look at myself naked all day long. The self-conscious ones were the first to go. Once they left, others left. Once the others left, everybody left, except for the die-hards that I had turned on to this whole business earlier. We remained, looking at the moon and the clouds and the clouds covering the moon.
I never saw most of those self-conscious people again either.
Anyway, I don't go about naked so much anymore. I'm not sure when that changed. Maybe it was when I realized that most adults frown on that sort of behavior. A specific subset of 'most adults' would be 'most cops'. If I were a woman, it might not be so bad. At least cops give a woman something to wear when they arrest her. Like in the movie Splash, when they gave Daryl Hannah a long t-shirt that covered everything. Unlike Daryl Hannah, I didn't get anything to wear. I didn't even get a private cell. What I got was a sleepless night on a cold bench. What I got was fear: fear of moving, fear of standing up, fear of using the john, fear of criminals, fear of the law.
I'm trying to not be afraid of things anymore. As one of my twelve self-imposed steps on the road to recovery from fear, I need to go be naked in public. But I'm not sure that I can do it by myself. I think I need a little moral support. By that, I mean 'physically present' moral support, and not just 'with you in spirit, man'. So, if anybody's going to be in central Iowa this summer and wants to get naked in public with a poet, let me know. I'll put the light on. We'll look at the moon. And if we get arrested, provided that you're a woman, at least you'll get a t-shirt, right?
posted by The Vicar at 2:52 AM
2 Comments:
When/if I ride a couple of days of RAGBRAI this summer, I just might take you up on this offer. Good call, by the way, on postponing outdoor nudity in central IA until it's summer.
I dated an Earlham alum years ago. He was pretentious and very mean to me.
Bummer. But damn there were some good breadsticks served in the Earlham lounge.
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