Frank Downey - Naked In School

Yes, folks, that’s right-I’ve decided to do my own take on the famous "Naked In School" series.

The inspiration, of course, goes to all those fine folks that have contributed to the Naked In School saga-especially Karen Wagner, who started it all, and Peregrinef, who wrote Beth and Carl’s stories, my favorites in the series.

I’m picking up where they left off, but not really.

Y’see, the tales have built on themselves, and there’s a number of them. I like some of what’s been done, but not all of it, and wanted to have my own take on the thing. Plus, if I went right in line with the original stories, there’d be a problem with timeline-does mine come after everything that’s been posted, or does it happen after Beth and Carl’s stories but before the others, or what.

So, what I did, is I moved it. The original concept is intact, but I moved it to a different school. What I figured is, if something like The Program came into being in the type of world that Karen Wagner introduced, it’d have to start up in otherschools, right? My tale takes place at Westport High, a school in a city about 50 miles away from Central. The success of The Program has caused other neighboring school systems to implement it. My tale takes place about 10 years after Karen initiated The Program at Central. The program has been implemented for two years at Westport, and it has notgone particularly well. My story takes place at the beginning of the school year of the third year of the program-a last-ditch effort to see if Westport can make it work as well as Central had. Jared and Amanda, two Juniors, are picked to start the program that year.

As is my wont, this is, despite the random debauchery so common to the Naked In School stories, a rather sweet little tale.

I’m trying something a little different in howI tell the story, though-it’s going to be told in first-person from bothJared and Amanda’s POV. I’m dividing it up into "parts"-which is either going to be a day (Part One-Monday) or a part of a day (Part Six-Wednesday Evening). Inside the parts, I’ll have chapters-and each chapter heading will tell you who’s POV that chapter is being written from. I reallywant to do it this way, and I’m going to do my damndest to make sure it’s not too confusing-but having both characters’ POV is the crux of the story, and I didn’t want to do it as two separate stories (as Peregrinef did for his), and third-person seemed inadequate.

Hope you like it,

Frank

PS: Anyone wanting to read the rest of the Naked In School series, my buddy Gary has thoughtfully archived all the rest of the tales. You can find the rest of them here:

http://www.asstr.org/~gary/naked/Naked.htm

The rest of mywritings can be found here:

http://www.asstr.org/~Frank_Downey/

I knew it. I just knew it. The minute they called me down to the office that Monday morning, I knew what was up. I was getting sucked into The Program.

The Program? Oh, that’s this thing we have here at Westport High. Its full name is the Naked In School Program. Yup, those of us "lucky" enough to be chosen to go into the program have to be naked, completely, in school, for a full week. We also get the chance to go through all kinds of shame and humiliation. This is designed, you see, to "teach respect" and to "foster the students’ confidence." Yeah. Right.

Maybe I shouldn’t say that-because it apparently hasworked that way at Central High. That’s where this whole thing started. That’s a school about 50 miles away from here, and they’ve been doing it for about ten years. Apparently, over there, it hastaught respect, and hasfostered confidence. Maybe they just have a better class of student over there, or something-because it hasn’t worked here.

This would be the third year we tried it. It was the beginning of the third week in school, and they don’t do it the first two weeks, so I’d be one of the first this year. Oh joy. They’ve tried it, the first two years, on just the Juniors and Seniors, so this would be the first year my class was eligible (I’m a Junior this year). They’re doing it in all four grades this time, hoping that would help. And I understand they’ve made a few other changes as well.

Because, as I said, the first two years haven’t been good. One of the problems has been that parents can "opt out" of their kids taking part-and it seemed all the kids that weren’topted out were the geeks, the loners, the outcasts. Kids that get humiliated to beginwith. Having thembe the ones going through The Program seemed to be just another road to their humiliation. There was a lot of harassment, a lot of teasing, and rumors of at least one attempted rape. I do know that two girls that went through it had to be hospitalized afterwards. You’d think the administration would get the hint. Nope-they just keep hearing all these glowing reports from Central, and keep buying into it. But nobody was learning "respect" and I don’t think being harassed and assaulted is going to help your confidence any.

Which brings me to myproblem-who else was buying into those glowing reports from Central. Namely, my parents. They were all worried about my confidence, so they volunteered me. Over my strenuous objections, I might add. They didn’t listen. Unfortunately, one of the kids that went through it last year that was one of the few to have a goodexperience was my older sister’s best friend. My parents knew that, too. "It’ll help your confidence. You’re too shy." Blah blah blah.

Look, I’m nota geek, not really-by that, I mean I don’t get harassed. I’m not in the popular clique, but I have my group of friends, and I get along with just about everyone. I don’t get picked on, and most people like me well enough. I get good grades, but I’m not known as a "brain". I’m an ordinary guy with a fair-to-middling social life. No serious complaints, really.

But my parents are convinced I’m scared of girls.

There’s some truth to that-I’ll get back to that later-but what I’m trying to figure out is how, exactly, parading nude in front of the entire student body is supposed to cure me of being scared of the female half of that student body. Nobody’s explained thatleap of logic to my satisfaction yet.

Anyhow-I’m scared of girls to a point, but what I really am is scared of girl. Singular. As in one particular. I’ve had a crush on the same girl since seventh grade. I’m scared to talk to her. Because she iswildly popular-probably the best-liked kid in the class. Plus she’s beautiful, smart, and very sweet. I’ve had it bad for a long time. My parents don’t know that, of course-they think my complete and utter failure to garner a date everis due to some paralysis over the whole female species. Well, it’s not, not really. I have friends that are girls. I can talk to them. It’s just romantic entanglements scare me-and that’s all bound up with this onegirl.

And, very shortly, if I don’t miss my guess, that one girl is going to see…me…NAKED.

Shit. Shit shit shit shit.

There are days when I hate my parents.

Anyhow, there was no getting out of it. I trudged to the principal’s office, resigned to my fate. I turned the knob, opened the door, and stepped in. And just about swallowed my tongue. Because Mr. Tilling, the principal, was behind his desk…and sitting across from him…shit shit SHIT…was Amanda Frazier.