In hopes of confronting my fears concerning public nudity, I took a full-nude, fat-assed lap around a locker room crowded with senior citizens last night. I made the circuit slowly, wishing everyone a warm and hearty “Merry Christmas” (or “Happy Holidays,” if they looked suspiciously un-Christian), and acting as though I didn’t care in the slightest that my business was flopping all around just inches from their old, exhausted faces. I didn’t go so far as to shake anyone’s hand, or pat anyone on the shoulder, as I’d planned to do when I first dropped my pants and headed out, but I’m confident those barriers will fall away as well, as I become more and more comfortable with my body. (I’ve decided not to follow politics anymore, and instead just to focus all of my attention on coming to love and accept my body.) By the end of January, I hope not only to be holding full, meaningful conversations in the nude, but conducting comprehensive self-exams for testicular cancer while stretched out along one of the narrow wooden benches in the locker room.

While my lack of clothing didn’t seem to upset anyone in the locker room, that, unfortunately, wasn’t the case once, having finished my nude rounds, I slipped into my new exercise outfit. You see, I chose to wear a new shirt that my mother-in-law had gotten me, and people seemed to think that it was quite funny. (The shirt says, “The Rockford Files” on the front of it.) No one came right out and asked me about it, but lots of people stared, and I could tell that a few were making comments behind my back… And, yes, it made me wish that I were naked.

As for the shirt, I asked Linette why she thought that her mom had gotten it for me, since I’d never mentioned the Rockford Files, or, for that matter, James Garner, to her. Linette looked at me like I was an idiot, pointed to the shirt, and said, “It has a phone on it.”

I’m still puzzling over that one.