Monday: Brain Reboot

My name is Aaron, I'm sixteen years old, and for some reason I'm having serious trouble with at the moment, I've just handed over my clothes, all of them, to my head teacher, in front of a crowd of my peers. Worst than that (if possible) is the fact that it is early December, and because I live in the south of England, it's freezing out here.

I wasn't in the day the leaflets were given out, I was on an art study trip, on my own, but having been signed out by my teacher. A whole day in the BrightonBoothMuseum drawing bones, quiet and deserted. I like quiet and deserted. So being here, in the middle of the crowd of eleven to sixteen year olds, all of them staring at my naked body, is just about one of my worst nightmares. The Head hands me a pamphlet, the bell goes for the start of registration and I bolt to the boys bathroom on the second floor. All the form rooms are on the ground floor, or out in the languages block, so the upper floor is deserted for the next ten minutes or so.

Condensed, the pamphlet reads something like this; No clothes, apart from shoes or socks, which I've handily left with all my other clothes, for a whole week. No privacy, compliancy with other students requests, and the most annoying of all, the fact that I, in my nude state, can be used as a teaching aid by any of my teachers. Suddenly I'm very glad that this term I have physics in my science rotation, not biology, and I am looking forward to our teacher going off on one of his football related tangents. What I am most confused about is the fact that students have to be volunteered by either themselves or their parents for this act of humiliation. Public nudity. And I can't believe that my parents have done this to me, it's blatantly not fair. Sending me to see that bloody shrink is one thing, but this? The Program proclaims that it's supposed to make students more self certain. All I'm certain of is that my distaste for my parents has grown into full blown hatred. I'm glad that my phone was in my bag, rather than in my jeans pocket. I speed dial my mother.

"Yes dear?"

"You bitch!"

And I slam down the phone. The end of registration bell goes and I can hear people flowing through the school. For a while I lean back against the wall and consider the idea of staying in here all day. What can the school actually do to stop me? They can't, by law, actually touch me, even if I am breaking the rules. It is at this point that Christian, my best friend since we were both in our first year here, arrives looking out of breath. He has obviously run all the way from our form room at the other end of the building while everyone else goes to class.

"Jesus Aaron," he stops, pushes a hand through his overly unruly brown hair, and walks towards me a little, "Are you alright?"

"I'm pissed off, if that's what you mean."

"I was late in today," Chris starts to explain his confusion while he begins to rifle through his bag, "Mrs. Roe told everyone that you'd been accepted to the whole Naked in School Program, you could kinda tell she wasn't very happy about the idea. Oh, here." Chris hands me my English note book, which I lent him to help him with his homework, and then a plain black bandana.

"No clothes Christian."

My best friend gives me this huge grin, steps forward and ties the material around my neck, cowboy style.

"I got it from an accessories store, that makes it jewellery. I'm afraid it won't keep you very warm."

"Plenty warm," I say as Christian steps away from me. He frowns a bit, as if just realising that I'm naked, a being this close to another guy who is completely nude is a bit odd, even if we have seen each other naked before.

"C'mon man, we're supposed to be in English already."

English with Neil Gill is far more like a discussion than a lesson. He's my favourite teacher of all. He yells at us for being late, sits Chris down and asks me to come up to the front. In hushed tones he asks me if I mind sitting up front for a bit. I shrug, grab a stool, and wince when the cold plastic hits my bare arse. Christian chucks me over his spare jumper, for which I am very grateful as I spread it over the chair, annoyingly it means that tonight I'll have to leave the sanctuary of my room to get it washed for him. Damn. Everyone sits up and stares, or looks at me out of the corner of their eyes, wanting to stare.

Mr. Gill promptly announces that today we will be working on our creative writing and descriptive skills, and tells everyone, including me, to describe me and their reactions to me being there. And apart from that, the lessons go on as normal. Justin gets yelled at for making noise, Debz is told, for the hundredth time, not to doodle new tattoo designs all over her work and we all complain that the room is too cold. Far too cold.

And despite Chris's huggable looking jumper on my seat, the cold is making me have the same sort of reaction I'd get if I walked into a cold shower. And my shrinkage does not go un-noticed. A few of the girls in the front row titter, Debz is making worrying sketches that from this angle look to be my genitals with various painful looking piercings, and Darren coughs something that has some derogatory words mixed up in it. I shiver, fold my arms, and wish that my face wasn't the only thing warm. I shake my head, still shivering a bit, we've always sworn it's colder inside this classroom than it is outdoors, and hide from the class behind my hair. Nothing in the pamphlet said I couldn't do that.

English turns straight into maths, so I say goodbye to Chris and realise quite how far it is from my English room to my maths room, across the quadrangle, past the library and up the stairs in the main building. Suddenly it seems like a really long way. Everyone stares. Everyone. I know the Naked in School thing started in the US, and while I'm not one hundred percent sure how their school system works, I'm sure the victims over there didn't have groups of eleven year old girls giggling at them. I'm only glad that the raised eyebrows I've gotten from every bloke so far confirms what Chris has told me all along. I'm quite well hung. Of course without underwear, the weight of that particular part of my anatomy puts a whole new swing in my step. One I'm not really keen on.

Maths is taught by a scarecrow of a woman, who has to be nearly eighty years old and sharp as a razor blade. She frowns disapprovingly at me, probably because I'm late, and gets on with it. People keep looking over their shoulders to get a glance of me, but nothing in the rules said I have to be happy about doing this and everyone gets glared at. I'd glare at them normally, I'm not the most social of people, I leave that up to Chris, who I swear has the whole school wrapped around his little finger.

Break finds me in the bathroom again, locked in a stall, while the head teacher bangs on the outer door that Chris and a couple of our other friends, Michael and Brett, are holding closed from the inside. Apparently I'm supposed to stay in public places of the school for my break and lunch slots.

"We are going to have to let him in," Chris says reasonably, "Or we're going to damage the door. They can actually sue us for that."

"Fine, let him in."

Mr. Johnson is someone I usually have respect for. He knows every single student in the school by name, greets us all from time to time. You'll never get through a whole week without him enquire after you, your studies, or a sibling of yours who'd attended the school previously. He was a good all round guy, but I was not going to be won on this account.

"Aaron, the rules state that you are only allowed three five-minute bathroom breaks per day. You've been in here ten minutes already."

"Sod the rules Sir. This isn't fair."

"Language, Aaron!"

"Sorry Sir."

"Be reasonable. It's only one step up from wandering around with no shirt on, and you're a good looking guy. The school board decided that it would be a good idea if the first candidate was a boy, just to help everyone ease into it."

"Why me?"

"Aaron, come out of there please. You know I'm not at liberty to discuss that with you."

"Yeah, yeah," I slide the bolt across and open the door, knowing that what he says makes sense, even if I don't want to do it, "Parent-teacher confidentiality. I'm not eighteen, more's the pity."

"Does that mean you'll play along?"

I look up at Johnson, he's a tall man, well over my six three, and it helps him to be respected by everyone.

"OK, but I'm not smiling."

"Not today. Break is almost over, go to class."

Double art. My favourite of all my lessons, and while I hate being nude, being nude in this class is hardly any problem. All I have to do is occupy most of the same poses our female life model did for us the week before. I don't get paid, but no one is allowed to talk to me. It's a lot different being drawn than being stared at, and I always figured it would be. As I know from last week it takes about four minutes for the average student to go from seeing a naked person to seeing an object they have to represent on the page. The looks I'm getting from my classmates are not hard intrusions, but soft caresses, accompanied by the sweeping sounds of pencil and charcoal on the thick paper. And the poses are relaxed, classical almost. And I get to delight in the fact, for the next two hours, that the art rooms are the warmest in the school.

Lunch, forty-five minutes of public humiliation. And I didn't bring lunch with me today, which means I either have to starve, or go into the cafeteria. I should explain that about ninety-five percent of students take their lunch in the over priced, under staffed cafeteria every single day. And there are about nine hundred kids in my school. And I'm not big on crowds.

Christian meets me outside the art block, looking a bit out of breath, but I'm so incredibly pleased that he's making the effort to stick by me. There's a reason that he been my friend for the last four years. He knows me too well. So we walk to the cafeteria and I discover the one and only benefit to being naked is that everyone is so desperate to look at me, scorn me, or talk to me, that the crowd kind of parts for us and we don't spend most of the lunch break queuing for our food. Cardboard looking bacon, chips, beans and what appears to be half a grilled tomato, but might be a lump of charcoal, and I make my way, skirting around the edge of the dinning hall, to an empty table at the back of the hall, which, along with the breakfast bar, is where the upper years hang out, away from the littler kids.

We aren't there very long before a whole group of girls from our year come over. I swear, if girls acted this wanton and blatant normally, no guy would ever have trouble getting laid. Katie is practically sitting in my lap, her hand stroking my arm, while Gemma is trying to get my attention from across the table by leaning over to steal a chip, her shirt un-buttoned so low I can actually see part over her candy pink striped bra. But the reaction that they're looking for, an obvious erection, doesn't happen

"What's the matter Aaron? You still cold?" Katie is so close I can feel her breath on my cheek, her breast touching my side.

"We'll warm you up," one of the other girls says, giggling.

A very pretty blonde girl, Laura I think, comes around the table and drapes her arms around me, chest pushed against my back, her fingers skimming my navel.

"Don't you like us Aaron?"

It's too much, I shrug her off sharply and get up fast, banging my knees painfully on the underside of the table. I don't even stop to grab my bag.

"Hey! Stop!"

I know I'm supposed to obey requests but I honestly couldn't care less at that moment and I make a dash for the door.

"Stop Aaron!"

I turn on one heel, the whole cafeteria is un-naturally quite, and everyone is looking at me.