I love it when my parents are out.
The situation sucks. All of my friends flew half-way across the world to go to college and I ended up at the one a five minute drive from our house. They have a guaranteed residency program for all of the freshmen and sophomores, which sounds really nice until you’re excluded because you have a permanent residency too close because your dad teaches there and your mom runs the college gym. While all of my high school friends are all off living in Paris smoking cigarettes and eating baguettes off their porch and all of my college friends are having ragers in their dorm rooms, I’m still living at home with my parents. Everyone else gets to have this big life-changing experience where they’re finally in the world by themselves and I’m here, doing CS problem sets in my childhood bedroom while my parents roast carrots for dinner.
It’s not like I don’t like my parents. I love them, and they certainly recognize my need for more independence. It’s not like they’re up my ass all the time, but we still do live in the same house and I still do have to be cognizant of them. I always said that when I went to college I would be one of those hippy nudists who sits in the quad naked while looking up at the beautiful sky, but it’s a little hard to do that when my parents are always there. There when I’m at school, there when I’m home.
But when they’re out? Those lucky days when my dad has a conference to go to and my mom is on a weekend trip with her gym buddies and I know for a fact that I’m going to be alone? The minute everyone’s out the door, I strip nude.
I don’t know what it is about it. It’s definitely not sexual. Sure, I like being naked with my boyfriend, but he’s not here (he’s a five minute drive away). I’m not taking photos, I’m not texting him that I’m naked, I’m not erect and about to burst all over the living room couch. There’s nothing sexual about it.
I’m not sure when the impulse in me started. I spent as much time as I could as a teen naked in my room, but that didn’t add up to much when there was always laundry to put away or desert to be called to. It really just amounted to sleeping naked, which was nice except for when the fire alarm started acting up. I guess I just like being naked, same as you might like the color red. It feels freeing and exciting yet so natural, I like not having clothes that weigh me down, whatever. I like it because I like it.
So whenever my parents are out, I sit at the couch by the window and peek through the blinds to make sure they’re really gone. I give it a minute to make sure they don’t come in to get their keys and then I give in another 10 in case a bunch of boulders collapse onto the route out of town, all the while I’m shaking in excitement. Once I finally feel like they’re out, I strip it all off.
I’m sitting naked in the living room right now. It’s so awesome – how often do you get to be naked in the living room? I sit in my excitement for a second, just enjoying the feeling of the couch against my butt. I rub my thighs together and take in the feeling of fur against fur, I lounge with my arms on the back of the couch and my legs spread, I get up and go make a swiss cheese and mayo sandwich and eat it naked in the kitchen. It’s really the small things.
I know I could go and do my discrete structures problem set, and being naked would definitely make that more fun, but I don’t want to waste the opportunity. My parents are gone until mid-afternoon tomorrow and I have no social engagements to get to and my boyfriend is knee-deep in a history essay due tonight at 11:59. There is no time like now to enjoy being naked.
I stand at the glass door and look outside. Our house is a little bit off the road so there’s no chance anyone would see me unless they’re determined to look, and at that point I would let them. Take as big a look as you want.
It’s a warm day in the middle of winter, maybe 50 degrees. The kind you can wear shorts in. Big pacific northwest trees field separate our lot from the rest of the world and there’s a gray sky above. I stand there pressed against the glass with my tail wagging, trying to find the will to go outside. Eventually I have to force the door open and thrust myself out of the house so I’ll do it.
I walk the stone path through the backyard, bare paws against the rock, my full body out in the light breeze of the day. It’s the kind of weather that dulls everything in that gray-green Pacific Northwest way, but I couldn’t feel further from that. It’s exhilarating and lovely and so normal. I don’t know why everyone isn’t doing this.
Eventually, once I’ve looped around enough times, I set my sights higher. Another place I spent a lot of time as a teenager was up on the roof along the tops of the trees. I go back inside and climb out onto the first floor roof from the window in my room, then shimmy up onto the second floor. The tiling scrapes against my fur but I don’t mind it. The friction helps keep me in place as I find where I want to sit.
In front of me, trees forever. I can see Mount Hood poking out between the trees. I wave it hello.
Up here, in the nude, it all sort of just fades away. I’m not thinking about my friends or my boyfriend or my parents, about college, about what’s expected of me. Everything below is gone.