Spirits

By Michael Jesse

Chapter 6

When he got home from church camp, Johnny put his mind to the best way to get his film developed. He had heard of people getting in trouble for taking pictures that contained nudity or even people in their underwear, but he didn't have anything like that. He just had hand-written words, but one of those words was “naked” -- underlined three times. What if the guy developing his film noticed that and read other parts of the journal? Johnny didn't know what else was in it, but they would surely be able to tell that it was a girl's journal and that he had photographed every page -- most likely without the girl's permission. Could he get in trouble for that? Maybe Millie had her name on one of the pages, and they would contact her to ask about it?

Johnny recalled seeing people in movies developing their own film in a bathtub and hanging the prints to dry on a clothesline under a faint red light. He could go to the library and learn how to do that, but no, that would take too long, and besides, this was color film, which would be more complicated, and what if he messed it up and the film was ruined? He decided he had to take his chances with a drug store, but not one that his mother shopped at. He walked to another neighborhood that had its own cluster of stores. He filled out the form on the envelope, choosing the largest print size -- 5 by 7. It was more expensive, but Johnny would pay every dollar he had if this would only work out. He almost prayed that it would, but decided that was probably a bad idea. God knew everything, but there was no point in calling His attention to it.

A week later, on the pickup date stamped on his receipt, Johnny eagerly went back to the drug store. He did not go directly to the counter but first strolled around trying to decide if any of the men he saw shopping might be an undercover detective. Finally, he went to the photo counter and submitted his ticket. The clerk took the ticket and disappeared into a back room, and was gone for what seemed like a long time. Maybe he was on the phone with the police? Then the sales clerk returned with four envelopes and simply took Johnny's money and told him to have a nice day.

Outside again, Johnny put at least a block between himself and the store and then found a park bench in the shade and opened the packets. He flipped through the prints in each of the four packets, pleased to see that he'd gotten several really good portraits of Millie smiling right at the lens, at him, with such love . . . the same love, he knew, she had for everyone else on earth. At least he had these.

When he got to the prints of the journal, he was exhilarated to find that most of them were readable. His plan had worked! Johnny ran home and went straight up to his room, where he first spread out the portraits of Millie on his desk, overlapping some of them to cover up Steve. Then he began to read.

My counselor suggested I start a journal and try to write in it what I am feeling, whether I am feeling happy or sad. So here goes. I am Millie Jenkins. I am 18 and going to college in the Fall. I am a senior at West Brayton High (Go Tygers!). I have two sisters and a brother, I have a boyfriend, and I am a born-again Christian.

I do my best to live a Christian life, but I know my best isn't always good enough. I go to church, am preserving my virginity for marriage, and I try to be kind to everyone. I don’t always succeed, of course, and my mother sometimes lectures me about the sin of vanity. I have an outgoing personality, am popular in school, and I happen to have the kind of face and body that people consider attractive. I can't help what I look like, but Mom says I try too hard to be the center of attention. That may be true, but I am a middle child, and growing up, I remember feeling jealous that she always seemed focused on my oldest and youngest siblings. I would sing and dance and do silly things to get her attention, and sometimes I would earn a smile or a laugh, but other times she would just shake her head dismissively and say, “ Millie, you’re always putting on a show.”

After that introduction, the next several pages were filled with rambling stories about girls and boys at her school and who was dating whom, and who did what funny thing when the teacher's back was turned. Then there was a page with just a few lines on it in the center, but in handwriting so small Johnny could not read it on his 5x7 print.

In another entry, she talked about Steve -- and Johnny was encouraged to note that much of what she wrote about him was negative. He was the quarterback on the football team and seemed to be the most popular guy at her school. Johnny went to a different school and was not popular at all. He had a few friends that he sat with at lunch and sometimes walked home with after school until their paths diverged. Although he would have liked to have seen her at his own school every day, Johnny thought it was probably for the best that they went to two different schools because she would not see how much of a nobody he was at his own school.

He stayed up half the night reading Millie's journal, or at least those portions that he could make out. He disciplined himself to read it in chronological order and not skip ahead to the “naked” part, but finally he reached it.

The weather has been so hot and dry lately, but today it finally rained. I ran out in it and frolicked until. Mom made me come in and dry off, and change into dry clothes. I don't know why. Did she think I was going to catch pneumonia when it's almost 90 degrees out? I did what she told me, but I knew what I was going to do later. After we all went to bed, I lay there so wide awake, feeling like I would never need to sleep again, and watching the rain outside my window, hoping it would not stop before I had my opportunity.

I waited until past 1 a.m. and then i slipped silently like a ghost out of my room and along the upstairs hallway, past my sisters' door and my brother's door and my parents' door and then without making the tiniest sound down the carpeted stairway and through the dark downstairs into the kitchen. I flipped off the back porch light and stepped outside. i was only wearing my nightie with nothing underneath and I took that off and tossed it on the wicker chair. Then i ran outside naked in the rain and felt the raindrops hitting my skin. i rolled in the grass and then lay on my back and i felt the raindrops everywhere on my body. It was the best kind of rain — steady and gentle with no wind or lightning. I don't know how long I was outside, but eventually I went back to the porch. I have done this before (several times), and usually i slip my nightie back on while i’m on the porch and then go inside. But this time i was all wet, so i just held it by a strap while i cracked the door open and tiptoed inside hoping nobody came down for a snack. The coast was clear so i dashed up the stairs and down the hall to my room and now I sit at my desk still naked with blades of grass stuck to my wet skin, my butt slippery against the wooden chair and drips of rainwater rolling down my skin and falling from my hair onto the pages of this book.

Johnny read the passage three times before he was able to move on. Most of the rest of the journal -- those pages that he could read -- were not about nudity, but ordinary things happening in her life. A lot of it was about boys she liked or what some girl said about another girl in school. She wrote about church and about camp and about some of the kids. Johnny hoped she would mention him at least once, but she never did.

The topic of nudity came up a few more times -- the next one about halfway through the volume.

I was at the dentist's office a while ago, sitting in the waiting room flipping through a Newsweek magazine, and there was an article about the trend of “streaking” on college campuses. This is when students sprint across campus completely naked except for their sneakers. There were even pictures. This resonated with me because I have gone streaking in my backyard (but I’m not sure that counts as streaking if no one sees you). I hope the streaking craze is still happening when I go to college next year because I want to do that!

But the part that REALLY got my attention was that one of the girls in the article wasn't just a streaker but more of a nudist who goes constantly nude in her dorm, and there was a photo of her standing in a group at a dorm party. All the other girls had clothes on, but she was naked, and the article said she was known as “the naked girl” of her dorm.

I was staring at that photo, imagining myself in her place, when I suddenly heard my name being called and I felt as if I had been caught doing something and I dropped the magazine, and I ran into the office, and when I came out again afterwards I was too embarrassed to go try to find the magazine again because now other people were sitting there. But ever since that day, I have been fixated on that idea — that when i go to college, i could just casually go naked walking down the hallways to the bathroom, or studying at a table in the common room, or going to a dorm party. Thinking of that is thrilling to me because i know it is possible, because the girl in the magazine does it, and I doubt she is the only one in the country. And heck, there are probably places in Europe where a girl like that could just walk down the street naked -- maybe even go about her daily life that way. I picture her shopping at those bustling outdoor bazaars or sitting at an elegant restaurant on a date with a gentleman who is wearing a suit. It is a big world, so that probably happens somewhere. Maybe I will visit such a place one day. Hmmm, I wonder if travel agents ever get that request.

If my mother were to read this — which she promised the counselor she would not do, so that I would be free to honestly express my thoughts — she would probably tell me it’s a sin to even imagine such things. But I don't think so. After all, Adam and Eve were naked, and that was supposedly a good thing because they were pure then, so you would think that going naked would be something people would sort of aspire to do if they got close enough to God again. We picture people in Heaven walking around in white robes, but maybe they would be just naked for the same reason that Adam and Eve were naked!!

Millie used a lot of exclamation points. Sometimes, she dotted each “i” with a circle and doodled flowers in her margins, but other times her frenzied cursive spared no time for ornamentation. Another reference to nudity came a few pages later.

I was on the girls' basketball team this year, and I noticed an interesting thing about how different girls feel about their own bodies. In gym class, lots of girls are too shy to even shower, or if they do, they wrap up in their towels until they are at their lockers. On the basketball team, everyone showers (because you get pretty sweaty playing basketball), and most of the girls are quite comfortable being seen naked by each other. So after we showered, we would be lined up at the mirrors, drying our hair and putting on makeup. Some girls would wrap towels around themselves, but at least half the girls would either wrap the towel around their waist or just be standing there completely naked. I will let you guess which one I always was.

Because of my long hair, the other girls would be dressed and leaving before I was done, but I liked that because they would all say goodbye as they passed, some of them pausing for a brief chat -- and there I was still naked while they were fully dressed. There are two girls in particular who would get done quickly because they have short hair, but after they were dressed, they'd tend to hang around in the locker room, chatting and joking around with me as I stood there brushing out my crazy hair. I would be looking at myself in the mirror and also seeing them standing next to me as we talked, and a little fantasy played out involuntarily in my mind in which the three of us were in a college dorm getting ready for a party -- to which, of course, I would be going nude because that is what I always did.

There was apparently more to that story, but Millie's handwriting at this point became too small for him to read in the photo.

Johnny fell asleep at his desk that night and woke to the sound of the garbage truck. When he raised his head from the desk in the gray light of dawn, a photo was stuck to his cheek, and he peeled it off, hoping it was not damaged. In that particular photo, Millie's hair was covering the string straps of her summer dress, and the way her arms were positioned, she could have been nude if he covered the lower part of the frame. Johnny got out his scissors and carefully trimmed the photo so that it showed only her bare skin. He found an unused sketchbook, opened it to a blank middle page, and pasted in the picture of Millie. Under it, he carefully wrote, "Adventures of a Nudist College Girl," followed by a story about a red-haired girl who is going off to all-girl college, and when she fills out the roommate-matchup questionnaire, she includes a note that she is a nudist. So when she arrives at college, everyone already knows this about her -- and they are very supportive.

Jack had the top down on the convertible, headed back into town, but he did not take the same route because he had another stop to make before going back to the Essex. Along the way, he stopped at a Burger Chef drive-through for a couple of cheeseburgers, fries and a Coke. It was just past noon when he drove through the gates of Summit Hill Cemetery. It took a while for him to get his bearings, but he remembered a key landmark -- an ornate mausoleum at the top of the hill. From there, he could find his mother's grave and his grandmother's. He sat on the grass in front of their tombstones and finished his meal with them.