Posted by Ian on August 9, 2005, 3:31 am, in reply to "The day I turned myself in (Part 2)" I got in the car and drove to the police station. I walked in, going to the receptionist in front. “I... uh... want to turn myself in... for a crime I’ve... committed.” She connected me up with an officer to deal with it. “All right now,” he was saying to me in a back room, after I had told him it was an act of indecent exposure, and after he had run my driver’s license through the computer, “could you tell me what happened?” I was looking at what I could see of the printout he was holding in front of him. I could see where it said “lewd conduct” from the charge a long time ago, where I had spent the time in jail. (That time it wasn’t even the girl who pressed charges. What happened was her mother overheard her and her friends in her room talking and giggling about it, and it was her mother who insisted on pressing the charges. The girl herself didn’t even want to, according to what the detective told me that time.) “I don’t usually break the law,” I told the police officer at the station. “I even obey the speed limits. My record is clean except for this, a few parking tickets and... another incident of the same nature.” “And what was it that took place this time?” “A girl was hitch-hiking, I picked her up... and I let her off where she wanted to get off, and—there was no physical contact, I didn’t touch her—I didn’t even speak rudely to her in any way... but... I, uh... as we were going along, my, uh... zipper was... uh... open.” He made a look on his face like this whole thing was pretty ridiculous. “That’s it?” “Yes. I’ve gone for therapy for this before, and I’ve meant to go for some more, but it’s difficult for me because of my job. Though sometimes I spend long periods of time here, my job often has me traveling a lot, and that makes it difficult to go to regular therapy sessions. I used to go to a group therapy class, except one time I had to travel, so I had to stop them.” “And you intend to begin again?” “Yes. There’s a new kind of therapy I heard about I’m thinking of trying. They put this rubber tube around your face with nozzles on it that stick up in your nose, then they show you some movies, and it measures your heartbeat and blood circulation, and when you get aroused over the wrong thing, it squirts some soap up your nose. It works physically—in conjunction with mental impulses. Hits straight at the subconscious. Better. More effective that way.” “Hmmm, interesting,” he said. “Sometimes...” I went on, “when something happens that hurts you because of what you’ve done... it kind of takes a load off of you, you know? Like you’ve gotten what you deserved for when you hurt somebody else? A catharsis... feeling better about yourself because you’ve suffered for it.” During the conversation, he asked me about my job, what I did for a living. “My main line of work, when I’m abroad, is as an archaeologist,” I replied, “though during the times while I’m here in the States, I just find temporary jobs, in between work assignments. I’m working towards something bigger and better, but right now I’m working with a new department store they’re opening up, installing rugs, shelves, displays and things.” “What country do you work in?” “The last few digs have been in India.” He was asking me things about my work when I’m there, and while I was telling him about it, he managed to work in the question, “And do you ever have a problem with this when you’re there?” “You mean with the other people in the group? There’s only like....” I stopped. “You must mean with the indigenous population there, right?” “Well, yes.” “Well, it’s a different situation there. The people over there think in different ways than in this country. India is a big conglomeration of lots of different cultures. It’s like a whole bunch of different countries all put together, in one political boundary. But the parts where I’ve been, there are some situations in daily life where nudity can be made to look like it’s just blending in with the way things naturally are. In most places over there, normally they’re pretty concerned about bodily modesty—more than in our country—but when it’s in religious contexts, like ritual bathing in public, there are some circumstances among some peoples where it can be acceptable. Kept in the right context, disguised as Hindu ritual, it doesn’t cause a conflict with their society, the way it does with ours. They have no way of knowing we’re not Hindu like they are, and that we don’t belong to one of those sects of Hinduism that require the ritual bathing to be done with the body in complete contact with the ethereal realm....” He rolled his eyes. I didn’t go on explaining any more of it to him, but in many of the rural areas over there, there are rivers and lakes with clean water in them, and when we would come across a group of girls washing clothes or doing their ritual bathing (usually with their saris on, but in some rural regions they go bare-breasted), we could also do, in their presence, the ritual bathing our supposed sect of Hinduism required. If we were in a place where we spoke their language and could strike up some conversation with them, we could explain to them about how we needed to be blindfolded while we walked into the water, because in our sect this was done to ritually symbolize the lack of enlightenment we used to have until we came to be purified, which was symbolized by going into the water and bathing. (What they didn’t know was that the cloth we used to blindfold ourselves with was translucent, and when it was next to our eyes, we could see through it. Interesting to watch where their eyes would go when they thought we couldn’t see them, covering their mouths with their hands and silently giggling.) Would they think we were nasty Americans or something? No, rather, they were probably surprised at how devoted we were to Hinduism. (More often we preferred doing it one at a time, though, separately, each one of us finding his own group of girls in the river or lake.) The officer asked me about other offenses I had committed. (It’s routine. When they have a man in custody for it, they like to be able to solve as many of the unsolved cases as they can.) He asked me if I had been at a certain beach and had committed any offenses there. “No,” I said. But I had been at another one a few miles away from it, in a secluded area. “There were several of us sunbathing naked,” I told him. “There were two girls there, but... they didn’t seem alarmed.” “No, they’re... usually not,” he mumbled. “Uh, have there been any incidents on the bike trails?” he asked, looking up from the files of case histories he was going through. “No...” I said, thinking back. “Oh... there WAS one case at that beach... by the bike trail.” “Could you tell me what happened?” “Well, it was about one o’clock in the morning; I was coming home late on my bicycle. It was almost pitch dark out, except for the light over the dressing rooms. There’s usually NOBODY in the park at that hour, let alone swimming. Well, I was whirring along on the pavement at a pretty good speed, and they must’ve heard me coming. Suddenly three girls came up out of the water, and they went running all the way into the women’s dressing room, holding their arms over their chests... and they were completely nekkid. They looked about high-school age. I thought, ‘Well, dang! If they can do it, I can do it too.’ So I went over and parked my bike, I went inside the men’s room and I started taking off all my clothes, and I came out and waited for them... just kind of hanging around... and finally they came out, all dressed and ready to leave... and I said, ‘Hi, girls’... and they laughed.” “I see.” He started flipping through the case histories. “Sixteen is legal age in this state,” I continued. “They couldn’t have been younger than 16. I was going around naked... but... no... they wouldn’t have called that one in—not when they were doing it too.” (Continued)
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Message modified by board administrator August 6, 2006, 3:45 am
(Originally posted February 7, 2001, 3:11 pm) 
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