Oh goodness. Yes, it had much to do with my outlook on things and, particularly, things at Amherst. Yes, it had just as much to do with whim. I just felt like getting naked and figured it was one of the last warm days.
As for "outlook" ... print this: Print that students here aren't mischievous enough. Print that we wait for stuff to happen. Print that we rely on a certain familial group of friends too much, instead of doing what we want to do and finding the best friends through that. I heard stories, for example, about people like Mike Sullivan '00, who took a prospective student tour naked, and I got inspired. To say "fuck it"? No, not exactly. To make a statement? No, I'd be too embarrassed to do something as stagey as that. To remember that we're alive and that Amherst is safe and offers freedoms that we can only take advantage of for so long, and that we just spend most of our four years walking by-but I don't want to? Yeah, that's more like it.
Print that people were surprised, but I didn't see anyone offended, and if they were, then they need to take an apple and bite it and tell me if it tastes like life, because their corpse is pretending to move. Print that even the little old ladies in the mailroom had a sense of humor for life, and that they, too, will be naked at some point today. Print that we take ourselves too seriously sometimes and need to be able to laugh at our silliness.
Print that none of us owns anything-not our clothes, not this school, not each other, not this education ... not even ourselves, and that understanding this stewardship is the most liberating way to live the world; to live the life given (but not ours).
Print that I'm not searching for a revolution of nakedness or a revolution of whim or a revolution of anything really, except maybe, yes, a revolution of expectations and a revolution against walking through Amherst. I started to walk across the Freshman Quad giving into not doing it. I knew I would never do it again, and before I stopped my
feet, I said, "No, I do want to do
this, and I am free to do this. And I'm not drunk but at my most sober. I won't run streaking screaming. I just want to walk around." And I'm not trying to be "the naked guy" on campus. But I might get naked here or there. I might-it depends on how the idea floods my chest.
Print that I'm not asking people to applaud my decision to strip but, rather, to try something which strips their own comfortably possessed living routines. Print that I think there are those characters who choose to bite the nipple of life and laugh at themselves while doing it, because they know it's not "the answer," but a fun part of it. Print that there's no need to wait until you're a junior to find those people. They are here, now. So are you.