Naked (31 page)

“Well, sir, there isn’t much
to
say except that it doesn’t got any bones and comes with fries and a half-gallon ‘Thirsty Man’ soda.”

My father shouted as if her dusky complexion had somehow affected her hearing. “But the chicken itself, how is it prepared?”

“I put it on a tray,” the girl said.

“Oh, I see,” my father said. “That explains it all. Golly, you’re a bright one, aren’t you? IQ just zooming right off the
charts. You put it on a tray, do you? I guess that means the chicken is in no position to put itself on the tray, which tells
me that it’s probably been killed in some fashion. Am I correct? All right, now we’re getting somewhere.” This continued until
the girl was in tears and we returned empty-handed to the car, my father muttering, “Jesus, did you hear that? She could probably
tell you everything you needed to know about trapping a possum, but when it comes to chicken, she ‘puts it on a tray.’”

Under normal circumstances my mother would have worked overtime to protect the waitress or counter help, but tonight she was
simply too tired. She wanted to go somewhere that served drinks. “The Italian place, let’s go there.”

My brother and I backed her up, and a short time later we found ourselves seated in a dimly lit restaurant, my father looking
up at the waitress to shout, “
Rare,
do you know what that means? It means I want my steak the color of your gums.”

“Oh, Lou, give it a rest.” My mother filled her wine glass and lit a cigarette.

“What are you doing?” He followed his question with an answer. “You’re killing yourself is what you’re doing.”

My mother lifted her glass in salute. “You got that right, baby.”

“I don’t believe this. You might as well just put a gun to your head. No, I take that back, you can’t blow your brains out
because you haven’t got any.”

“You should have known that when I agreed to marry you,” she said.

“Sharon, you haven’t got a clue.” He shook his head in disgust. “You open your mouth and the crap just flies.”

My mother had stopped listening years ago, but it was almost a comfort that my father insisted on business as usual, despite
the circumstances. In him, she had found someone whose behavior would never vary. He had made a commitment to make her life
miserable, and no amount of sickness or bad fortune would sway him from that task. My last meal with my parents would be no
different than the first. Had we been at home, my mother would have fed him at seven and then waited until ten or eleven,
at which time she and I would broil steaks. We would have put away several drinks by then, and if by chance the steaks were
overcooked, she would throw them to the dog and start all over again. Before moving to New York, I had spent two months in
Raleigh, painting one of my father’s rental units near the university, and during that time our schedule never varied. Sometimes
we’d eat in front of the television, and other nights we would set a place for ourselves at the table. I try recalling a single
one of those evenings, wanting to take comfort in the details, but they are lost to me. Even my diary tells me nothing: “Ate
steaks with Mom.” But which steaks, porterhouse or New York strip? What had we talked about and why hadn’t I paid attention?

We returned to the motor lodge, where my parents retired to their room and the rest of us hiked to a nearby cemetery, a once
ideal spot that now afforded an excellent view of the newly built Pizza Hut. Over the years our mother had repeatedly voiced
her desire to be cremated. We would drive past a small forest fire or observe the pillars of smoke rising from a neighbor’s
chimney, and she would crush her cigarette, saying, “That’s what I want, right there. Do whatever you like with the remains;
sprinkle them into the ashtrays of a fine hotel, give them to smart-assed children for Christmas, hand them over to the Catholics
to rub into their foreheads, just make sure I’m cremated.”

“Oh, Sharon,” my father would groan. “You don’t know what you want.” He’d say it as though he himself had been cremated several
times in the past but had finally wised up and accepted burial as the only sensible option.

We laid our Econolodge bedspreads over the dewy grass of the cemetery, smoking joints and trying to imagine a life without
our mother. If there was a heaven, we probably shouldn’t expect to find her there. Neither did she deserve to roam the fiery
tar pits of hell, surrounded for all eternity by the same shitheads who brought us strip malls and theme restaurants. There
must exist some middle ground, a place where one was tortured on a daily basis but still allowed a few moments of pleasure,
taken wherever one could find it. That place seemed to be Raleigh, North Carolina, so why the big fuss? Why couldn’t she just
stay where she was and not have cancer? That was always our solution, to go back in time. We discussed it the way others spoke
of bone marrow transplants and radiation. We discussed it as though it were a viable option. A time machine, that would solve
everything. I could almost see its panel of blinking lights, the control board marked with etched renderings of lumbering
dinosaurs and ending with Lisa’s wedding. We could turn it back and view our mother as a young girl, befriend her then, before
her father’s drinking turned her wary and suspicious. See her working in the greeting-card section of the drugstore and warn
her not to drop out of school. Her lack of education would make her vulnerable, causing her to overuse the phrase “Well, what
do I know” or “I’m just an idiot, but…” We could turn it back and see ourselves as babies, our mother stuck out in the country
with no driver’s license, wondering whom to call should someone swallow another quarter or safety pin. The dial was ours,
and she would be at our mercy, just as she had always been, only this time we would pay attention and keep her safe. Ever
since arriving at the motor lodge, we’d gone back and forth from one room to another, holding secret meetings and exchanging
private bits of information. We hoped that by preparing ourselves for the worst, we might be able to endure the inevitable
with some degree of courage or grace.

Anything we forecasted was puny compared to the future that awaited us. You can’t brace yourself for famine if you’ve never
known hunger; it is foolish even to try. The most you can do is eat up while you still can, stuffing yourself, shoveling it
in with both hands and licking clean the plates, recalling every course in vivid detail. Our mother was back in her room and
very much alive, probably watching a detective program on television. Maybe that was her light in the window, her figure stepping
out onto the patio to light a cigarette. We told ourselves she probably wanted to be left alone, that’s how stoned we were.
We’d think of this later, each in our own separate way. I myself tend to dwell on the stupidity of pacing a cemetery while
she sat, frightened and alone, staring at the tip of her cigarette and envisioning her self, clearly now, in ashes.

It is disconcerting to talk to someone on the phone and know that he is naked. Every now and then I might call a friend who
says, “You caught me on my way to the shower,” but that’s different. The man at the nudist colony sounded as though he had
been naked for years. Even his voice was tanned.

“All right, then, have you ever visited us before? No? Well, you’re in for a real treat. We’ve got a heated pool, a sauna,
Jacuzzi, and a fully stocked pond for fishing.”

I tried to imagine what one’s ass might look like having spent several hours pressed against an overturned log, but the mental
picture was too brutal and I forced it out of my mind.

“We can give you a tour, show you around the place once you arrive, and in the meantime, I’d be happy to send you a brochure.
Let me just… get your… information here…”

Where
, I wondered,
did he keep his pen?
Unlike me, he would never instinctively reach for his breast pocket. Keys, lighters, cigarettes, change — all the things a
reasonable person might carry were jumbled together somewhere else, and it took him a while to find something to write with.
He took my name and address saying, “All right then, we look forward to seeing you.”

“Yeah, right. You bet.” Freak. I’d just called for the brochure, wanting to give it as a joke to my brother, Paul, a floor
sander who, due to a recent polyurethane spill, had been discovered naked by the startled owners of the condominium in which
he’d been working. Ever since he’d told me about it, I’ve been calling him to suggest other nude activities he might enjoy.

“I keep telling you it was a goddamned accident.” He yells so loud, I have to hold the phone away from my ear. “I had clean
clothes down in the kitchen, motherfucker, I was just trying to get
to
them when…”

Ignoring him, I plow ahead. “Or boating, you might like doing that naked. There are plenty of things a person like you can
do without having to wear clothes. There’s no need to feel ashamed of your desires. ‘If it feels good, do it!’ Isn’t that
what you young people like to say?”

I keep at it until he slams down the phone, threatening to cross state lines and kick my ass. This brochure will be just the
thing to send him over the edge. It occurred to me later that I should have had it mailed directly to his house in North Carolina.
It would have been much more effective that way, but I don’t want to call the colony again. They might think I’m a nut.

In this afternoon’s mail I received my brochure which reads, “Body acceptance is the idea. Nude recreation is the way. Bring
your towels and suntan lotion and relax with us. You will experience a freedom of movement that cannot be felt with clothes:
the freedom to be yourself ”

The brochure pictures a swimming pool, the fully stocked pond, a sundeck, and the inevitable volleyball court, which leaves
me to wonder: What
is
it with these people and volleyball? The two go hand in hand. When I think nudist, I don’t think penis — I think net.

Included in the envelope is a calendar of events. Late April marked the reopening of the snack bar, which goes by the name
Bare Necessities. In May they held a golf-cart rally, several theme campfires, a chili cook-off, and something called “Wild
West horseback riding.”

Test eye shadow on all the rabbits you want. Strap electrodes to the skulls of rhesus monkeys and shock them into a stupor,
but it is inhumane to place a nudist on horseback the day after a chili cook-off. (“Was he
always
an Appaloosa?”) The calendar is filled with mystifying events such as nude bowling night, the Hobo Slumgullion, and Nudeoween.
The restaurant opened the first week of June. A nude restaurant. They seem to have taken care of just about everything. Under
the heading of “What to Bring,” they list only towels, suntan lotion, and a smile.

Last night I was in a foul mood and provoked Hugh into a fight, goading him until he left the bedroom, shouting, “You’re a
big, fat, hairy pig!”

Big
is something I can live with.
Fat
is open to interpretation, but when coupled with the word
hairy,
it begins to form a mental picture that is brought into sharp focus when united with the word
pig
. A big, fat, hairy pig. Well, I thought, pigs provide us with bacon and watchbands, and that’s saying something. Were they
able to press buttons and operate levers with their sharp hooves, they would have been sent into space long before monkeys.
Being a pig isn’t so bad. I wiped a driblet of snot from the tip of my snout and lay there feeling sorry for myself. If I
were a nudist, Hugh’s words wouldn’t have hurt me, as I would have accepted myself for who I am. There were, of course, other
options. I could trot down to the local gymnasium and tone myself up. It’s a nice word,
gymnasium
, unfortunately it’s also archaic. Gone are the jump ropes and medicine balls of my youth. Now there are only health clubs
and one-syllable
gyms
where sweat-drenched he-men bulk up through the use of weight machines and StairMasters. I’ve seen them through the front
windows of the city’s many fitness centers. Dressed in costumes as tight as sausage casings, these men and women intimidate
me with their youth and discipline. It’s them who have removed both the
g
and the
h
from the word
light,
reducing it to its current, slender version. Everything is “lite” now, from mayonnaise to potato chips, and the word itself
is always printed in bright colors so your eyes won’t get fat while reading the label. Diet and exercise are out of the question
as far as I’m concerned. My only problem with nudism is that I don’t even walk around my house barefoot, let alone naked.
It’s been years since I’ve taken off my shirt at the beach or removed so much as my belt in the presence of strangers. While
I long to
see
naked people, I’m not so sure I’m ready to be naked myself. Perhaps the anxiety will cause me to drop a few pounds and I’ll
come out a double winner. The less I have to accept of myself, the easier it will be. Already I can feel my appetite waning.

This afternoon, after a half dozen false starts, I phoned the nudist colony to make a reservation, speaking to the same fellow
who’d mailed me the brochure. This time I could hear people in the background, splashing and yelling with glee. The sound
of them made me giddy, and I unbuttoned my slacks. The brochure had mentioned rental cabins, and I was wondering what it might
cost to stay for a week.

“You want a trailer for how long?” he asked.

I refastened my pants. I had imagined tree-shaded bungalows paneled in knotty pine. That, to me, is the essence of the word
colony.

This place was, instead, a nudist trailer park.

“We don’t use the word
colony
anymore because it’s too spooky. No, what we have are trailers. The smaller units run thirty dollars a night, but if you want
your own kitchen and bathroom, your only option is the double-wide, which will run you an extra seventy dollars a week.”