naked man

(Daily Mail runs very short story of a man jailed for two months who can’t be released because he refuses to wear clothes. He is kept away from other inmates in a bare cell)

He gets up one day and he thinks ‘I just can’t take it anymore - my clothes don’t fit, I’m tired of the feeling of them. Look at them, they’re ugly - they aren’t mine. I bought them in a shop where there were many others just the same. There must be thousands of people walking around right now in these clothes - just like me, exactly my height, my weight, my shoe size - only tiny variations. The cloth chaffs around my joints, its so difficult to put them together. Choose between colours and styles, minute differences of tone and shade, length and balance. Its such an effort to keep them all clean, all tidy - to maintain myself. To look normal, to be decent, to hide those tender areas, those little secrets, those intimate details. The surfaces and parameters of my physical existence. The cloth all woven - thread over thread, covering up all tiny holes, all leaks, all flows of air and scents and feel of something living, something breathing, somewhere in there, past the weaving and the nets. And such a thunder of background noise, rustles and scratches and rubbings and creaky stretching, but never ripping unless you have failed in the endless battle of the maintenance of what you wear and who you are. I kinda like my skin. I like the tones and shades, its softness and its harshness, bushes, whorls and scrolls. In fact I want to be seen this way, this is my style, my statement - better than the best tailor, better than anyone else. I want them to look and see it all. It makes me feel good, I am free of past restrictions and tight school uniform collars, I am a Scandanavian, rolling in the snow. I am super super human.’