Naked Party (1)

My freshman year of college I was in a co-ed dorm. There were two girls who were roommates upstairs, who were both in a music class I was taking, about Beethoven. One of them, Marisha, emailed me one day out of the blue and said she'd been thinking about asking me to go to a film festival with her. But the festival was already over or something. We didn't go, and I ended up dating the other one.

I liked her. But then she started getting a lot of attention from other guys and wanted to have an "open" relationship. It was pretty clear that this meant she wanted to screw a muscular dude down the hall. He had a huge red beard and kept picking her up over his shoulder whenever he saw her. Anyway, seemed like a bad deal. I said we should just break up and we did.

Meanwhile, there was a rumor going around all year that one of the off-campus houses had a secret party where everyone got naked. It always sounded like bullshit to me -- like alligators in the sewer. Then one day one of my friends stopped by my room and asked me if I wanted to go. He reached into his pocket and produced a tiny paper doll with removable clothing, and a note that said each article of paper clothing was a ticket that entitled the bearer to admission. He gave me the pants and told me he didn't know who to invite. Then he gave me a sleeve and said I could bring someone if I wanted to.

Please understand I was so completely clueless that it never occurred to me for one second that inviting a girl would be sketchy. The only thing that saved me was dumb blind luck: I was sitting in the hallway with a bunch of other kids one night. We were probably drunk. And before I had the chance to say anything stupid, somebody started asking people if they would really go to the naked party if a) it existed and b) they were invited. All the guys said yes. Some girls said no, and I think the obvious gender divide might have pissed Marisha off. Or maybe she had other reasons, who knows. In any case, she was the first girl to say she would go.

"Come on!" she said "How often do you get invited to naked parties? I would feel like a coward if I said no."

"You want an invitation?" I said.