Column:

Proclaiming the naked truth

By Ryan Beck

Published April 25, 2008

I see plenty of naked people. I’m okay with seeing naked people when I am expecting to see naked people. When I go to the Rec Center, I expect to see a strange, naked old man; I’m fine with that. When I get out of the shower, I expect to see myself naked. If one day I don’t see that, it either means I didn’t shower or my dangle has gone missing. I don’t have a problem with my regular naked sightings, but, recently, naked instances have been catching me off guard with my pants around my ankles — pun intended.

It was a nice, warm day. I had a delicious five-dollar foot-long sandwich and planned on finishing the last 6 inches on my way to class. When you walk around campus with food, especially around lunchtime, people do not make eye contact with you. They only look at your sandwich. Even attractive women were looking at my sandwich but were immediately turned off when they saw it was not a turkey and cheese on white. I don’t know what it is about good-looking women, but they really like turkey and cheese. Anyhow, I was finishing up my sandwich as I made it to the door of my classroom building.

I needed to wash up before class; I had spicy brown mustard all over my hands, face and shirt, which is not ideal body conditions for learning. I proceeded to the bathroom. The heavy door creaked as I fought to get it open. As I poked my head into the room, I was hit with a thick smell of deodorant spray combined with spicy brown mustard juice. My nose cringed and my eyes tried to look through the hazy water vapor that covered the room. I tried to make out my path to the sink. The room was silent and eerie.

My first step was cool and calm until I noticed something very peculiar. At my feet lay a sock. “Who lost their sock?” I wondered. I took another step, still shrouded in mist, and I reached forward to find the sink. With my head down I became aware of a trail of clothes, like the Reese’s peanut butter candies in E.T. However, this was no trail made of candy, but a form of candy was waiting for my gaze at the end of the trail. As the mist cleared and standing at the end of the line of clothes was that form of candy: Man Candy.

Not my favorite kind of candy in the least.

A very large black man who weighed at least about 200 pounds stood before me. As I said, my head was down, so naturally I noticed the man from the toes on up. He covered himself with only a small white towel, maybe a normal-sized man’s bath towel. But to this man it was not enough cloth for even his hands.

Now I am standing face to head with an enormous man, in a misty room, covered in spicy brown mustard. If he was Man Candy, then I feared that I might become his Sweet Tart. Our eyes finally met, and I found myself at the sink. Being covered in mustard was the least of my worries, I was just fortunate that I did not pee in pants at the shock of seeing a big naked man two minutes before my class.

With my face and hands clean, I left the bathroom.

Nakedness caught me off-guard. Just because there is a shower somewhere doesn’t mean you need to use it.

And that my friends, is the naked truth.

Love, Ryan Beck.