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.