Chapter 10

“So when did the Program start in your school?” Gary asked when we got settled. He was the brother of one of Sam’s friends.

Jason (gonna assign the name arbitrarily here) answered. “Last fall. None of the other schools in the region have it yet. I guess we were the chosen lucky ones.”

He went on to tell how it got started—the typical way with a school assembly, the first group of unfortunates whose names had been picked was called up to the stage, they were made to publically strip starkers, and then had to spend the rest of the week naked. He told us some of the Program rules that had to be followed (a few rules differed slightly from those I had recalled from the Fairbanks Program pamphlet. For example, in his school the outreach part wasn’t mandatory but the relief sessions were and the teachers usually chose the pupil to give the relief). Theory: The national office was trying variations of some rules to see what worked best, and the affected schools were so far apart and isolated that no one would notice. Sounds like a good guess, anyway.

Another question was about how the kids reacted to being picked and Justin took that one.

“As you’d expect. Everything from resignation to complete denial. One girl just ran out of the school when her name was called on one of the Monday mornings—that’s when they start each Program week. I heard that she transferred to another school. Oh yeah. There’s a big legal fight going on about exemptions too—they aren’t giving any, even medical exemptions. Nobody’s gotten one, even a girl I know who’s in therapy for being raped was refused an exemption. So far she hasn’t been picked but she told me that she’d definitely refuse to participate like the religious kids do. But the legal fight that we have in our school is about getting a religious exemption.

“Our area’s got a large number of very conservative religious sects, both politically and socially conservative. Most of those girls wear these long-sleeve plain dresses that go down to the floor and even the guys dress in simple shirts and pants. You’ve heard of the Pennsylvania Dutch? Well, the word’s not actually ‘Dutch,’ it’s ‘Deitsch,’ meaning ‘German’; most of the original immigrants who settled there were from the area of Europe that’s now part of Germany and Holland. Maybe a third to half of the kids in our school are from these families and they’re vehemently opposed to the Program on moral and religious grounds. When the churches learned that the Program won’t allow for any religious exemptions, they sued the school and there are two court cases going on now. I remember from my soph civics class that the Supreme Court has ruled several times that religious freedom overrules all other freedoms and no law can be made which takes away the right to practice one’s religion freely.

“Jason,” he asked (hey! I guessed right!), “I remember freedom of press, assembly, and speech, but do you remember all of the personal freedoms that certain laws can restrict?”

Jason: “Let me think. Right, it’s those freedoms, bro, and they can be limited by laws that the Court found constitutional, if public welfare or national security can be affected. Also, let’s see ... yeah, property can be seized without judicial action in certain cases. That’s a fifth and fourteenth amendment violation. Umm...”

Justin: “I remember another. The right to own a firearm can be limited by law. Oh, and the right of personal freedom, guaranteed by the thirteenth amendment which abolished slavery, was violated by the involuntary draft laws passed to get manpower for the armed forces, but the draft law was upheld because the law benefits the nation.”

Jason: “Yeah, Good examples. But the Supreme Court’s rarely upheld a law which interferes with religious freedom. The only exception I can think of right now is the anti-bigamy law passed against the Mormons. So the conservative Christian kids in our school are refusing to participate and they’re also making a huge outcry about being forced to be bystanders in the sexual activities they have to watch, like relief sessions or Program demos in class. Also they really object to making boys use the girls’ locker room and bathrooms, and girls use the boys’, like the Program requires.

“So far, the courts have backed the religious groups but the Program headquarters appealed the decisions and are pushing back that it’s a federal program, not state, so state courts lack jurisdiction. It’s at an impasse now and the appeals court will need to decide, but since so many of the kids in school come from conservative religious families, that maybe half of the school refuse to participate when you count in the others who say they won’t do it.”

“Don’t they get forced?” That was, um, Sara.

“In the beginning, kids were,” Justin replied. “The first day in the Program assembly, the principal was slick and didn’t pick any kids he knew were from a religious family. He picked kids who he and the Program rep figured would be too scared to refuse and they were mostly right. That was awful, watching what happened to those kids, being made to strip on the stage like that. After that first day, kids would be called to the assistant principal’s office to strip and there would be a couple of teachers there to force you. I saw what happened in the second week of the Program when I had to take an attendance report to the office. When I got there, I saw this naked girl huddled in a chair in a corner of the office and crying, trying to hide her tits, while one of the school counselors was crouched next to her and talking to her. It sounded like he was trying to get her to come out of the office and go to class, but she didn’t move while I was there waiting for the secretary to finish entering the report.

“We heard later from a guy who was in her group, that when they were told they were in the Program and had to strip, she began crying and wouldn’t undress, so the teachers stripped her. When the kids were told to go to class, she refused to leave the room so the teachers pulled her out to the outer office. That’s when she just slumped onto the floor there. Two of the girls got her onto one of the chairs there where she just curled up and that’s where I saw her maybe five or ten minutes later. They had to call her parents to come get her and I haven’t heard what happened to her after that.”

“I heard,” Jennifer said. “Yeah, she was in bad shape. She had been sexually abused by a relative when she was thirteen. She’s being home-schooled now.”

“Damn.” Sara shook her head. “That’s disgusting, being forced like that ... That’s what worries me, being forced. They showed this video in our school this spring, stuff showing the Program in schools. Creeped me out and now I have nightmares about what’ll happen in my school this fall.”

A number of other kids mentioned having bad dreams too. Hmm, I never did ... I think I didn’t, anyway; at least I don’t recall having any. Maybe that means that I felt secure that I’d be able to stop anything bad from happening? That I didn’t feel threatened by the Program? No, I certainly did feel threatened, but I acted to oppose that threat. Yeah, with my army. So maybe my helping to plan the Program opposition kept the bad dreams away. Oh yeah ... another idea. I kinda like to use my dream times to solve problems. I read about some famous scientists doing that so I looked for more about using dreams for planning and found that it’s real. It’s called “lucid dreaming” and there are tricks to do to learn how to do it. So maybe that’s why I don’t remember any bad dreams—I’m not letting them happen. Whatever ... crikey, I’m losing track of the conversation around me. Christie was asking a question.

“ ... and I hope those dreams stop; they’re making me really anxious. What happens in your school now with kids refusing?”

Jason replied. “If someone’s gonna refuse, they don’t go out when the cattle-call is announced; they just stay in their classroom. We’re talking about half the school who’re conservatives and they just don’t go. There are so many now—even some kids who aren’t from religious families are pretending they are, I think. And lots of the non-religious kids think that the situation is so unfair, that when school starts up again, no one will agree to strip.”

I got Jason’s attention. I’m too polite to just shout out (right?). “My high school in Fairbanks Alaska had the Program...”

Gasps. And comments: “Really?”... “Naked in the Arctic?”... “You guys must have some great metabolisms!”

“Ha. Very clever. No, they tried to start it but we stopped it COLD. And that’s not just a pun, either. That’s exactly what we did. Stopped ‘em cold. We literally froze ‘em out. We made the school buildings way too cold to wear anything less than a parka, didn’t we.”

A lot of laughter.

“But what I wanta say is that a lawyer got an injunction against our school, warning them that forcible stripping of the kids was a felony; it was sexual assault and battery. I’m sure those laws must be the same in every state. The teachers simply can’t touch you. The attorney said they can’t intimidate, threaten, or coerce you either. That’s still assault—making the person think he’ll be harmed in some way.”

There was plenty of ooohh’ing and aaahhh’ing at my revelation and Justin practically shouted, “YES! That’s so goddamned CRAZY! Emma, you’re a gem. Amazing!”

One of the guys, William, I think, asked, “There are lots of bad things happen that I heard of too, like teachers getting carried away, but did you see anything good happen? If the feds started this sucker, they must have thought there was some good in it.”

Justin replied, “Yeah, teachers do get carried away. Absolutely, that happens. But anything good? Shit. You see naked kids. Yeah, seeing naked kids is cool, right? Are you interested in seeing random naked chicks ... or guys? Hell, you got that right here; you can see all the nudity you could ever want. But, well, most of the kids in the Program look miserable, especially on the first couple of days. That’s not cool at all. But the one thing you see in school that we can’t do here is to jack off in public...”

“Eeewww...” from several girls.

“ ... or get someone to help you get off... ‘cause the Program has that relief rule. Is seeing that crap good? You tell me.”

“Did you see that happen, Justin?” This from someone behind me.

“Damn. All the fuckin’ time, the teachers made the kids do it. Hey, I don’t wanna scare anyone, talking about this shit. Some of it is kinda intense. Some of you guys are in middle school—maybe this isn’t for you ... JoAnna, you look like you’re havin’ trouble with this crap. You okay?”

Two of the younger kids got up, JoAnna and Tracy.

JoAnna said, “My mom doesn’t want me to listen to talk about bad sex stuff in the Program. She said that if the kids talk about the Program, I have to leave. She wants to talk to me about it after she learns more.”

“And I think I should wait,” Tracy said. “I’m only eleven so the Program is far away and I don’t want to get bad dreams.”

The rest of the middle schoolers stayed, including Abi, who announced, “I vote to hear what you saw.”

Justin continued, “Okay, if you’re sure about this, then I’ll tell you about the first time I saw a relief session. It happened in the first class I was in that had a Program kid in it on the second day the Program was running. This guy came into the classroom and he was so hard that his dick was just drooling. Apparently some chick in the hall had begun stroking him but then she went away laughing, leaving him all wound up.

“The teacher told him that his hard-on showed that he needed relief so the teacher looked around the classroom to see who to pick. There were a lot of hands—man, I was surprised at that! I didn’t think that many girls would want to do that publically, but then I thought, well, it’s safe—they won’t get forced to go any further, it’s approved by the school—yeah, right?—and a good way for the girl to get some no-strings-attached practice. Isn’t that a win-win-win? Whatever. Anyway, the kid whispered to the teacher to please pick his girlfriend; he agreed to do it and picked her.

“And then she gave him a hand job that turned into a BJ.”

“Hey, what’s so intense about that?” Gary complained. “I’m gonna have that fuckin’ shit starting next month in my school and I need to know what to expect.”

Melody broke in, “They showed a Program video in our middle school this spring. I’m gonna be a frosh and that stuff in the video was just too gross for words. Sara said she saw a video like that and she’s in high school. Didn’t you see a video like that?”

“No, I’ll be a junior,” Gary answered. “They didn’t show us anything. Maybe when we start school they’ll show something. Anyway, Justin, what happened in that ... umm ... relief?”

“Okay guys, I’ll just lay it out for you, no holds barred. The relief kid had to sit in a chair at the front of the room and the girl came over to him and used the pre-cum oozing out of his cock’s piss-hole and smeared it over his knob. He was moaning as she stroked it, starting at the tip and going down to the base of his shaft and then going back up again, faster and faster.

“Then the whole class gasped when we saw her take his dick into her mouth and suck on it; then she took it out and went back to stroking it, then into her mouth again. Pretty soon he began groaning and bouncing his ass up off the chair and his face turned red hot and then he shot one jet of cum after another, the first went into her mouth, but a lot went all over her face when she couldn’t swallow fast enough.”

This time there was a whole chorus of “Eeeewww”s from almost every girl. Me too. In the face? Yuk.

Jennifer broke in. “Girls would get relief too. Once a guy licked a girl’s pussy in front of my class. In front of everyone. Not in private. I’d never do that. That crap happened in the first couple of weeks when things were just crazy but then kids started to rebel and by the end of the school year, not that many were doing the Program. But some kids did get off on doing it, literally, and did do that shit.”

“Hey Justin,” Christie called. “You said a chick was stroking that guy in the hall and ran away? What was that all about?”

Jennifer answered, “I’ll tell this, okay?” Justin nodded. “Yeah, that’s the Program’s thing called ‘reasonable requests.’” She made finger quotes. “Kids can request the naked kids to do things, but they’re supposed to be quote reasonable unquote. The naked kid is supposed to decide what’s reasonable and the rules we got said oral sex, penetration into the body, any physical restraint, um ... that’s all I guess, aren’t reasonable and those requests can be refused. Posing requests are always allowed—the rules define them as quote reasonable unquote and kids can ask to fondle a Program kid too but then that gets into disputed areas. Like what kind of groping is reasonable.”

“What is reasonable?” Sara asked. “I’m not liking this at all.”

“From what I saw,” Jason said, “those kids need to decide it on the fly. Once I saw this guy just grab a girl’s tit and squeeze it. That hurt her. Doing that was against the rules, though. You’re supposed to ask; it’s called a ‘request.’” He made finger quotes.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Jennifer broke in. “The whole term I saw plenty of boys ask the Program girls to let them touch the girl’s boobs and they basically had to allow that, but the boys usually didn’t know what they were doing and were rough with them, like they were squeezing potato sacks or something. And lots of boys asked to touch girls’ pussies too. Every girl I saw refused that. Eeeww. Who knows where those fingers had been? The whole idea of those quote requests unquote gave me the creeps. And we saw the boys traveling in little packs to harass the girls with their requests too. We were told to be respectful to the Program kids; the Program was supposed to help us with our sexuality—that’s what I think the Program booklet said. Well, the requests only help the voyeurs and abusers.”

There was some chatter among the group over Jennifer’s comment, and Andrew leant over and whispered to me, “Is it okay to mention what you and I discussed last night? No personal details?”

I nodded. “I trust you.”

Andrew spoke up and the chatter stopped. “Emma and I had been talking about the effect on a teen of suddenly seeing lots of nudity after a lifetime of textile living. You all know that she’s new to this nudism life, don’t you. Emma also led the students’ resistance to the Program in her school; she hated the idea of the Program too, hated it so strongly that she went to war with her school over it. Some of you heard how she mobilized her army, didn’t you. Then before, William asked if there’s anything good in the Program. Justin mentioned one thing that might be a possibility: a safe place for a girl to try oral sex, but that’s so extreme an example that it melts my brain just thinking about it. And then Jennifer was talking about disrespect for the naked kids; how some boys get out of control when they see a naked girl. Emma had asked me a question last night, based on her first day’s experiences, that really got me thinking about how textile kids can react to seeing nude people and how I personally react.

“Just now, listening to all the talk about what you blokes saw in school where kids were forced to be nude and how the other kids reacted and treated the Program kids as objects for their entertainment, that rot is bollocks. It’s all so wrong. And I thought of how all of us kids here at the park view being nude together and how we treat each other with respect—that’s the opposite to what the Program does, isn’t it. Emma told me that her first experiences here surprised her and she thought her intro to nudism was brill; that other teens would benefit from doing this if the sex rot is lost out. Probably those spackheads who mauled the girls had zero experience with girls and just went crazy at the chance to grope a girl with no consequences. They never learnt respect, did they.

“But thinking about how we act with respect toward each other here, I can see a possible reason why those dumbnuts came up with the Program. Could their idea have been to ... erm ... normalize nudity among teens? After all, normalizing nudity is already happening in our general society, isn’t it. What if the Program was simply voluntary nudity and no sex, like here at the park? Ideas?”

Several kids had ideas about that. Many of them had to do with how such a thing could be set up and then run to avoid becoming as bad as the Program itself. But the idea did have general favor, because it could mean that many kids could be nude together; they wouldn’t be lone targets of opportunity for abuse; and could mutually support each other.

“Oi, you blokes, I remembered something,” Sam spoke up.

I was surprised; she generally kept quiet in our larger group discussions.

Sam went on. “What Andrew said, his mentioning of normalizing nudity reminded me of something I read in a book I found on my dad’s bookshelf. I remember something it said, how nudity isn’t remarkable if it’s common.”

“What book was that?” Andrew asked. “I think I read something like that in one of Dad’s books too.”

“Let’s see ... we don’t have our mobiles. Oh, the resort’s laptop’s over there. This’ll be quick.”

While she was Googling the book, we were all agreeing that any major changes in the Program would never happen, Then Sam called to us.

“Found it! It’s in a book by Martha Nussbaum. She’s a philosopher of law and the book is Hiding from Humanity. It’s about the role of shame in people’s lives and social life and how the law treats it. The quote is, ‘Nudity quickly becomes unremarkable when generally practiced.’ Isn’t that exactly the point Andrew was making?”

“Blimey, thanks, sis,” Andrew praised her. “Yeah, now I recall that book too; it had this dreadful picture of an old naked woman on the cover. Shit, you read that whole thing? That book’s huge.”

“I read a lot of it. The cover’s why I picked it up,” she answered. “Then I started reading. I kept going because it seemed to have info about nudity and law and those parts were interesting. Hey, what did you blokes talk about while I was on the computer?”

“We were agreeing that the Program would be better without all of the sex shit you guys were talkin’ about but we know that it’d never change,” Randy said.

“Unfortunately,” Jennifer agreed. “And based on the limited number of school people that I saw who were involved with the Program, they all seemed perverted, how they enjoyed tormenting the kids.”

Justin broke in, “Probably because the Program itself is basically run by perverts. They all probably have a repressed sexuality or worse. But those in the school, they’ve been given all that power over the kids, and some of the teachers are as bad as any of them.”

William said to Justin, “Yeah, the bad teachers thing. That reminds me of something you said before. You mentioned you saw a teacher doing stuff...”

“Oh yeah,” Justin said. “The Program has this damned class demo rule. You’re forced to allow teachers to use you in classes as a model or teaching aid, even if you object to how humiliating it might be ... but according to Emma, we might get all that shit stopped ... thanks again, Emma. Anyway, you guys, how do you want this again? Censored or in detail?”

“How bad was it?” Sara asked nervously. “Was it really awful?”

Justin shrugged. “I thought it was terribly humiliating for the Program kids and felt bad for them.”

Jennifer spoke up. “Hey, if we tell you guys what it’s like, maybe you all will refuse like lots of kids at our school plan to do next term.”

Justin looked around. “Shall I tell the details?”

Most of the kids agreed, but reluctantly, so Justin began.

“Well then, here’s what happened in my biology class. It was an anatomy unit; we had a Program boy and girl in the class and the girl—she was a very shy kid—had the misfortune of being in the Program that week. The teacher told the girl to sit on his desk facing the class and lean back on it and she didn’t want to do it. So he pushed her onto the desk and leaned her back and told her to stay that way. Then he put her feet up onto the desk and spread her knees wide apart, exposing her pussy. The poor kid was really crying while he was posing her like that.

“I wanted to interfere, but we had been warned not to get involved with interrupting any class demos or we could get put on the Program for up to a month. Then he got the boy to copy her pose, lying back alongside her, and you could see all his junk just hanging out there exposed. The teacher handed out worksheets showing the male and female bodies that were totally blank in the crotch and we had to come up to the desk, two or three kids at a time, and sketch in the missing anatomical parts on our copies.

“He made the girl pull her lips open too and we had to draw the insides we could see there. For the boy, he told him to get a hard-on and we had to draw that too. The homework was to label everything on the worksheets. That was awful for them, and totally unnecessary. We could have done the same thing with a plastic model.

“Those kids were total wrecks after that class and the girl never came back to school after that. Maybe she’s being home schooled or went to a private school. They told us the Program was supposed to make us comfortable with our sexuality. I wonder how many kids become emotionally scarred, though.”

Everyone was listening with stupefied expressions. The story was almost unbelievable.

I heard a plaintive voice, “I don’t wanna do the Program...”

“Then don’t,” I said. “Refuse. Forcing you to get starkers is a felony.”

“But they won’t let us graduate,” from another.

“Lots of ways around that,” I answered. “I looked into all that rot. There’s a GED. Also, the colleges’ and unis’ admissions people are aware of what’s going on and will work with high schoolers who run into that kind of problem. At least that’s what I heard in Alaska. In Europe we have the international baccalaureate exam which can substitute sometimes for a secondary education completion. Maybe that’s like the GED. That’s not an easy exam, though.”

“But we had something else happen,” Jason said. “It wasn’t part of the Program. Justin and I escaped it, but it caught the sophomores and we think that it’s evil. It could be a problem if it goes to other schools.”

“If it’s not part of the Program, how would it get to other schools then?” I responded.

“We heard that the state curriculum committee was somehow involved so it could spread from there. You know how stupid ideas propagate.”

I laughed. “That I do. What was this stupid or evil thing?”

Jason shrugged. “The whole school was upset over this one class when we heard about it. When they began to run the Program, they also started a three-class unit in sophomore hygiene called Advanced Sex Ed. Thank God Justin and I were juniors ‘cause all the sophs had to take it. Kids were partnered and they arranged the sessions so there were equal boys and girls. There were two teachers for the class, a man and woman. We don’t know where they were from, but they weren’t on the regular staff. They were pretty young, so maybe they were student teachers.

“When the first group of kids came into the room when that unit began, the whole classroom floor was covered with mats and everyone was ordered to strip naked. I heard that caused chaos then, and half of the kids completely refused, so they were sent to the office, got detention, and were told they would fail the whole hygiene course.

“When the rest of the class got settled down—the kids who stayed did get naked—the teachers showed the class a video about sex and sexual response which had scenes of how to locate erogenous zones, sensual teasing and stripping, kissing, foreplay and masturbation, and ended with scenes showing blow jobs and pussy licking!

“The kids were told that in the second session, they would be doing the exercises that were in the video with their partners, starting with the basic ones, and by the third session, they were supposed to show that they could make their partners cum using oral sex!”

There was another chorus of “Eeeewww”s and a few groans.

Jason went on, “But then when I heard about what happened in that class in the second session, it just about blew my mind. When the kids who did show up for it, only eight guys did, when they got to the classroom, the teachers were naked! But with just boys there, the class just fell apart so that session just stopped there. You can just imagine that scene. I don’t think that the teachers dared to try to get the boys to partner. We heard that the same thing happened every time they tried running that sex ed unit—only a few wound up going, almost all boys, because lots of sophs, when they found out what the class was about, said that they would just cut the class when their group was scheduled.

“We heard that maybe three-quarters of the sophs, probably more, skipped it so they failed and they’re supposed to have to redo it this coming school year. Late this spring, the school announced they would be redesigning that class for the fall and they would be pulling boy-girl partners out of every gym class on their gym days instead of having a scheduled class. If they skipped it the first time, what’s the chance that they’ll do the class this year?

“So how can you stop that?” Jason demanded, looking at me.

“Bloody damn, that class is right out of Hayword’s booklet,” I muttered. Aloud, “That’s ... erm ... that class really is from the Program—it’s an add-on, actually. In Alaska, I had some ... call it inside info ... about various Program plans from when we got it stopped. The national office has a list of suggested add-ons ... well, they called them ‘enhancements’ ... that schools can include when they run the Program. One was like this sex-ed class. Another was to make the locker rooms, showers, and boys’ and girls’ loos into unisex areas...”

“Eeewww!”

“Yeah. My thought too. Another was naked cheerleading...”

The girls went “Eeewww!” but the boys looked thoughtful at that one.

“ ... naked gym classes...”

More “Eeewww”-ing at this.

“ ... and various health and hygiene class units, and the one you told us about looks like one of those. It’s part of the Program if the school wants to add it so that’s where it came from. There was more disgusting rot, too. You mentioned that only boys showed up at the second session and it fell apart? Well, guess what another Program ‘enhancement’ was. Learning about single-sex rot. Gay and lezzie sex.”

There were gasps from everyone and several cries of “No!” and “That’s bullshit!”

“It’s true; the Program Office has a suggestion that schools require classes to have a boy-boy and girl-girl sexual contact component as an optional enhancement. There are a number of single-sex public high schools in the country. How do you think that they’d be able to run the Program in those schools unless they had rules about requiring homosexual contact? It looks like your school didn’t go that far and those boys in the hygiene class weren’t required to partner with each other.”