Chapter 1: The Runaway

Three weeks before, our parents took a trip as a family to Las Vegas with just my two adult sisters and me, the youngest of the three. I’m standing before what I call a closet, or a hole in the wall that barely fits my body and my clothes at the same time, and I’m making decisions that feel like life-or-death.

Out of the scraps of fabric in the tiny apartment that I split rent on near the university. I own about three wearable dresses, two decent pairs of jeans, and several faded t-shirts. One pair of shoes that doesn’t hurt my feet. When I choose to wear one, the one bra that’s held together by hope and a safety pin. Panties that I bought in a five-pack two years ago and have been rotating like a carousel of shame. Living on the college scraps of money only goes so far and shows me what poverty looks like when you are not poor.

This is what poverty looks like when you’re not poor. This is the gap between “I can afford groceries” and “I can afford dignity.” I live in that gap. I’ve made it my home. On the table is the measuring cup that is blue. The Cheerios inside it are stale. The water stain on the ceiling above the kitchen table looks exactly like the shape of Florida.

That stain has been watching me now for three years, two months, and eleven days. I’ve never reported it. I’ve never tried to fix it. I’ve let it grow, watched it spread, given it a name, Florida, because naming things makes them less threatening. Florida doesn’t judge me. Florida doesn’t ask why I’m eating stale cereal at 10 PM on a Tuesday. Florida just sits there, brown and vaguely peninsula-shaped, being the only constant in my life.

Here’s what no one in my family knows, not the parents, not the sisters: I have been waiting for an excuse like this trip to Vegas for three years, two months, and eleven days. Not that I’m counting. I’m counting. I’ve been counting every single day since the Bodily Autonomy and Expression Act narrowly passed federally.

Let me back up. You’re going to need context, and I’m not the kind of narrator who doles it out in trickles. I’m the kind who dumps the whole bucket on the floor and dares you to stand in it, which only makes everyone in the family uncomfortable.

The Bodily Autonomy and Expression Act was passed into Federal law; it has been contested by nearly everyone who has a heartbeat. In short, it strikes the stick in the heart of the control of those who are in the business of policing the bodies, the female bodies. Nevada’s legal jurisdiction is one of nineteen states that have recognized and adopted it as policy. In states like Nevada, the short version of the federal law in states like Nevada, public nudity was no longer automatically considered indecent exposure. The state of Nevada states that if the context was non-commercial, non-sexual, and the person was in a place where they had a legal right to be. For example, public places such as parks, public sidewalks, and common gathering places. In the research, I found it legal to be fully naked inside the airports, through security, on the entire flight, to arrive at the destination. Though several of the airlines are still in a heated legal fight in court.

For everyone who has read the longer version will know it is boring. The long version involves seventy-three pages of legislative compromise, a Supreme Court challenge that went 5-4, and a lot of op-eds from men named things like Bartholomew who wrote sentences like “What’s next, jogging without trousers?” I read all seventy-three pages. I read the dissents. I read the Bartholomews. I did this at night, in bed, on my phone, while my roommate slept three feet away and dreamed about whatever normal people dream about.

Here’s what I concluded: the law was a start in the effort of policing the body, but the laws don’t change how people look at you. The laws just change what they can do about it in protecting their narrow version of the world around them. Ever since the moment it was signed by the President, I have been wanting to test that. Over the past years, there have been those who challenged it in practice with various amounts of resistance. I knew what I was up against, and I wanted to stand somewhere in public wearing nothing to see what would happen.

I wasn’t doing this for a photoshoot, not for a dare, especially since I wasn’t doing this for a social media stunt that would get me fifteen minutes and a podcast deal. I wanted to do it because I was tired. Tired of the arithmetic every woman learns by age twelve, regardless of their culture or where they live on this earth. The calculation of how much skin is too much? How much is too little? How much will make others around you debate that I was asking for it? How much will make her think I’m desperate?

I wanted to stop doing math with my body in the amount of fabric needed, and began dressing comfortably. In the sense of the term, dressing comfortably comes down to complying. So, I waited for the right place, time, and the right excuse. Then the father texted during the week of the university’s spring midterms about a Vegas vacation to cover the last days of the week into the extended weekend in April, and I thought: Vegas. A city built on people taking their clothes off for money. I’ll do it for free. That’s the protest.

But it wasn’t just a protest. It was a promise. A promise I made to myself in the dark of my Tempe apartment, staring at the Florida-shaped water stain, knowing that if I didn’t do this now, I would spend the rest of my life doing math. The arithmetic. The calculation of whether I was allowed to exist in the body I was given.

I made a vow. A real one. The kind you whisper to yourself when no one’s listening because you’re afraid of how ridiculous it sounds, as I wrote it down in the notes on the phone. The self-binding pledge from the second the non-smoking light in the overhead is turned off after departure until the moment the non-smoking light is turned on upon arrival back to Phoenix Skyharbor, not a single stitch of fabric will be worn over the skin. I will not cover for the family, not for the hotel, not for the authorities, not for anyone. The pledge to be free of all fabric every second of the trip from the beginning to the end without apology, I will not cover up, and I will not run.

I said it out loud. In the dark. To the water stain. To the measuring cup. To the ghost of my roommate, who will likely not come back until the end of the semester for finals. That night, I said something else to myself that I didn’t fully understand until later in the trip. I told myself, if I break this promise, if I put on a single piece of fabric before arriving back in Phoenix, I will never forgive myself. That I will have to spend the rest of my life knowing that I was too scared to be who I really am.

I made the vow binding by making the consequences worse than the act itself. Unlike other promises that are made, there are no legal or social consequences binding that promise in terms. The personal ones, the kind that kept you up at night, staring at a water stain, wondering who you could have been if you’d just been brave enough to try.

I didn’t tell anyone. Not my roommate (who wasn’t there anyway). Not my therapist (I didn’t have one; I had a journal and a wine problem that I called “a hobby”). Not my sister Sienna, who would have spent the intervening weeks trying to talk me out of it, and who would have used words like “think about the brand” as if my body was a product she was co-signing.

I told myself I wasn’t planning anything. I was just ... gathering information.

Here’s what gathering information looked like:

Night one: I searched “public nudity Las Vegas resort policies” and found a forum post from a woman named DesertRose44 who said she’d been asked to leave the pool at the Bellagio even though the law was on her side. She didn’t fight it. She just put her clothes back on, went to her room, and cried. I bookmarked the page. I made a note: Don’t be DesertRose44.

Night two: I searched “Bodily Autonomy Act enforcement Nevada” and found a PDF from the state attorney general’s office. The language was so dry it could have been used to put out a fire. I read it twice. I highlighted three passages on my phone. Then I deleted the highlights because I was afraid someone would see them.

Night three: I searched “Las Vegas nude activist” and found a woman named Mara who’d been arrested in 2022, before the law passed, and had spent a weekend in jail. She was forty-seven. She had gray hair and a smile that looked like it had won arguments. I sent her a DM. She never replied.

Night four: I searched “Oasis Horizon Resort controversies” and found a thread about the hotel’s connection to a man named Vincent Moretti, a developer with ties to the Strip’s shadier elements. The thread was deleted within hours. I took screenshots anyway.

Night five: I searched “Showgirls Las Vegas 1988” and found a grainy photo of a woman who looked exactly like my mother.

That was the night I realized I wasn’t just gathering information about nudity. I was gathering information about secrets. About the things my family had buried. About the past that was about to resurface.

I didn’t sleep that night. I lay in bed, staring at Florida, and I thought about my mother’s hands, those short-nailed, gold-band-wearing hands, and I wondered what else they’d done besides change my diapers and sign my permission slips.

I wondered if she’d ever been as scared as I was.

I wondered if she’d ever been as brave.

Three weeks until Vegas. Three weeks to prepare. Three weeks to figure out how to tell my family that I wasn’t coming home the same person who left.

I whispered it to Florida. Just to the ceiling. Just to the water stain that had become my confessor.

“I’m going to do something they’ll never have the nerve to copy.”

Florida didn’t respond. Florida never does. But somehow, that silence was exactly what I needed.

The next morning, with no classes or scheduled work, I began my practice. Not the kind of practice you do in a mirror, striking poses and checking angles. The kind of practice that strips you bare, literally, and forces you to sit with discomfort until it becomes ordinary.

I took off my clothes at 8 AM and didn’t put them back on for forty-eight hours, which wouldn’t be just restricted to the apartment but the grounds of the complex. It stated in the lease that it was protected under federal jurisdiction as long as it was within the guidelines. While the first few hours were easy, they included the walk to the dumpster. I felt rebellious, powerful, like I was starring in my own indie film. Made coffee, prepared a meal, and did the electronic stuff like social media, emails, and other tasks. I stood by the open window and watched the Tempe morning traffic roll by, and I thought, Look at me, world. I’m doing it.

In the second hour, the novelty wore off. The air conditioning kicked on, and goosebumps erupted across my arms and thighs. The cold was sharp, invasive; it reminded me that my skin was a boundary, not a statement.

By hour six, I was uncomfortable in ways I hadn’t anticipated. The cheap fabric of my couch abraded the backs of my thighs. Every time I bent over to pick something up, I felt the strange, naked vulnerability of my lower back stretching. I realized I had never known the weight of being constantly exposed to the way the air itself becomes a pressure on your skin as I ventured out to the community mailbox.

By hour twelve, the sun had shifted, and a beam of light fell across the living room floor. I stepped into it deliberately, letting the warmth hit my stomach, my breasts, the inside of my thighs. It felt like a benediction. It felt like the first time I had ever truly felt sunlight.

I stayed naked through the night. I slept on the couch, no blanket. The first time I woke up, shivering, I nearly reached for the throw blanket on the armchair. My hand hovered over the fabric for a long moment. Then I pulled it back. I curled into a ball, hugging my knees to my chest, and forced myself to sleep without insulation.

The second night, I didn’t shiver. My body had adjusted. The cold was still there, but it was no longer a threat; it was just weather.

On the second morning, I looked at myself in the full-length mirror. I had stopped shaving a few months earlier, not as a statement, but out of laziness. Now I am grateful for it. The hair on my legs, under my arms, between my thighs, it was a reminder that this body was natural, not manufactured. I ran my hands over my ribs, the ones that stuck out slightly more on the right side. I touched the mole on my hip that my mother used to say looked like Australia. I traced the scar above my eyebrow from a bicycle accident when I was twelve.

This was my body. It wasn’t a statement. It wasn’t a protest. It wasn’t a political position. It was just the thing I lived in. But in less than six days, it was going to be seen, photographed, recorded, and documented with or without my consent. Standing before the mirror, at my reflection and whispering, “You’re not brave. You’re just tired.”

The reflection didn’t argue.

My phone buzzed. A text from Sienna.

Sienna Vasquez: Are you packed yet?

Chloe Vasquez: Yes.

Sienna Vasquez: What did you pack?

Chloe Vasquez: The usual.

Sienna Vasquez: Chloe.

Chloe Vasquez: Sienna.

Sienna Vasquez: Promise me you won’t be weird on this trip.

Chloe Vasquez: Define weird.

Sienna Vasquez: Promise me you won’t make it about you. For once. Can we have one family vacation that isn’t about whatever cause you’re currently dying on?

I stared at the phone. I thought about the journal entry I’d read the week before. The one who said I was selfish. The one that said love felt like a liability.

She wrote that. She meant it. She wasn’t wrong.

But she wasn’t right either.

Chloe Vasquez: I promise I’ll be myself.

Sienna Vasquez: That’s what I’m afraid of.

I put the phone down. I didn’t have a response to that.

Sienna’s apartment was a monument to things I would never understand.

The walk-in closet, I said walk-in, like it was a luxury, but it was bigger than my entire bedroom, which was organized by color. Whites, creams, and beiges on the left. Blush, coral, and magenta in the middle. Deep jewel tones on the right. Shoes in clear plastic boxes with labels: “Vacation,” “Work,” “Grief.”

I stopped at the Grief section.

What did Sienna have to grieve? She had money, followers, a boyfriend who posted about her on Valentine’s Day, a condo with a pool and a gym, and a concierge who remembered her name.