Ten Things I Have Done, And May Still Do, Naked

I was pulled through a long slash cut into my mother's belly.

I ran naked through a children's park in a thunderstorm, rushing ahead through pockets of black between brilliant flashes of pink lightning toward the cover of miniature train cars.

I opened a new jar of pickles in front of a mirror just to see what they were talking about in that episode of Seinfeld.

I swam in several lakes, a handful of swimming pools, and a river.

I sneaked out into the woods and stood in damp moss while moonlight blanched my back and shoulders silvery white so that I could lap up the wild fear of being discovered by wolves.

I shifted slowly in circles to my roommate's records, whose music came thinly up the staircase from where they played beneath a dulled needle downstairs.

I cooked in the buff quite often before an incident which involved my right nipple and the handle of a cast iron skillet while I was frying up some bacon one Saturday morning.

I lay along the rough curve of a concrete arch beneath a bridge at night with my arm held out to catch the glow of city lights as they bounced orange off black water.

I sat next to an open window on a sweltering August day, a piece of fruit in one hand and a damp cloth in the other, plotting my escape.

I sat in a makeshift tent in a basement tapping out thousands and thousands of words just like these from my perch on a chair that had cups of water under the legs to keep the bugs from climbing.

Do I Ever Feel Like I'm Skydiving Naked

When I started blogging back in August of 2003, I made the decision to do so under complete anonymity. I showed no photos of myself, I changed the names of everyone I mentioned, I did my best to hide my general location, and I did not use my real name to sign up for services anywhere. Googling my real name came up with little more than a wedding announcement.


(photo credit: the Palinode)

If photos like the one above from 2007 found their way online, they would send me into a panicked sweat. I worried that my employer and co-workers would find out about my online life. I worried that people from my past and my family would know. I worried that any connection between my online and offline lives would result in some kind of social and professional excommunication. I was an intensely private person suffering a heavy amount of personal shame who was slowly unfolding, following a path I couldn't not take, and the nakedness of being all of who I was out loud was nothing short of terrifying.

I have spent the last couple of years slowly coming out about my identity both online and in my real life. I've slipped my real name and location into the online spaces I inhabit, I've created a professional website using my own name, and I've gone so far as to include my online experience in my offline resume, but it wasn't until this last week that the final nail was hammered into my anonymity's coffin.

My parents watched my CBC television news segment this past week, and now the last stronghold of my anonymity has been breached.

My parents now know that I am a blogger.

(There's a doodle of me nude after the jump, which is why there's a jump, so click on the link below if you can handle nude doodles.)

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