Chapter 18

It has been ten days since I completed my naked time for the Corporal John Freeman Mackie Military School for Boys edition of The Naked in School Program. That wasn't the end of being naked. It merely conditioned boys who habitually wore clothing to accept being naked while sleeping, during most physical training, during gang showers, during "field days" (clean-up details) when appropriate, and during educational activities requiring nudity.

For me, wearing clothes was a new experience. I had forgotten how to wear clothes. I dimly remembered wearing pajamas on the trip from a hospital in Arizona. At Mackie I now dressed head to toe routinely. The worst of it were the heavy boondockers. The drill instructors wore jump boots. Boondockers were ankle-length. For wilderness use gaiters were worn over the boots to keep stuff from falling into the boot. At first, it was like strapping bricks to my feet. Eventually I managed to learn walking again. I gradually ceased stumbling and tripping over the boondockers. The hat was sweaty and I had to remember to take it off and put it on at the right times. Underwear was a jock strap and a crew-neck tee shirt. There were long drawers and a thermal undershirt, too, but I didn't wear them during the last week. The coat was welcome on chilly mornings—even though I now exercised the dogs during the afternoon.

There was an everyday uniform for classes, a working uniform for fatigue details that included rubber Wellingtons, and accessories to dress up the everyday uniform. The weather was becoming too cold to go camping—even with the murderers in jail, nobody was anxious to go camping.

There were plenty of times when the uniform was my birthday suit. First Sergeant Kelly Wexford was on vacation from the US Army and was closely observing life at Mackie. If she were into watching naked boys, she got an eye-full! Speaking of eye full, some days Harmony tasted life as a cadet even though that young woman was 20 and Mackie cadets graduated at age 18. Harmony went the entire route, even spending a couple of nights in my assigned quarters, the kennel. Harmony wore the Mackie cadet uniforms just like I did, her head shaved as if she were a cadet. She even showered with me—and the other boys.

"I'm demonstrating to Kelly Wexford what life here is like for girls," Harmony told my classmates. A few of the boys made rude comments, and the group was punished with pushups—not quite forever, but enough! Harmony was a good stand-in for a girl because of a birth defect; Harmony's ovaries didn't fully form and Harmony never entered puberty. There were treatments that would make Harmony look more like a woman, that would trigger an artificial puberty, but the treatment is expensive and would last for the rest of Harmony's life. There is no cure. Remember, I'm twelve and I'm no doctor, so I don't really know much about Harmony's condition except that she will always look like a child. On the other hand, most people aren't doctors. Fortunately for Harmony, she and Miss Krystal will marry soon—same sex marriage has just been legalized—so Harmony will always have somebody.

The boys at Mackie keep their heads—and the rest of their bodies—shaved so that when naked we boys still appear to be boys. Of course, other puberty yardsticks such as genital size, height and muscle development were still there, but the difference between the youngest and oldest cadets and the difference in penis size between cadets of the same ages were minor ... Even the drill instructors adopted the hairless look—as examples. I guess it works because the upperclassmen are firm but polite with us lower life forms in the junior classes.

Harmony was a novelty, at first, but then she wasn't. In uniform, Harmony looked just like one of the boys. She even sounded like one of the boys—many of us still had high-pitched boy voices. And when Harmony was naked, so was I. I guess we were a matched set: Miss Krystal's pets.

Every week I wrote a letter home, a home I didn't remember. One in four letters was addressed to my sister. Another 25% was addressed to my mother. Half went to Father. Sometimes Mrs. Giovanni would help me write on a topic. I was becoming quite creative. I kept a copy of the old letters on file. Had to: I didn't receive a single reply.

Academics were easy for me and I wound up tutoring other cadets. Athletics included Drill and Ceremonies and I had to plug myself into a squad. Good thing that the US Army reformed its drill manual just before World War Two. The older drill mandated squads of eight men. The new drill manual permitted squads of any size, and platoons could have three or four squads. Trivial in modern warfare, but it was a big deal forty years ago, back at the end of the Thirties. Drill was simpler, too. Normally we cadets practiced D&C without drill rifles, but the upper classmen did drill under arms. Oh, yes—due to the fact that so many of us boys were still growing, a 24-inch Mackie marching step had been adopted instead of the regulation 30-inch step. Mackie was a military school and marching was part of being a soldier. We did far more physical training than drill and ceremonies and PT included calisthenics while in formation. Naked, of course.