This story is a work of fiction. Some real places and institutions are mentioned or alluded to, but they are used fictitiously. Insofar as the author knows, no real person affiliated with any of those places or institutions has done anything akin to what is described in this story. Any similarities between any character in this story and any real person are coincidental and unintended. I encourage comments on this story, both favorable and unfavorable. Thank you for reading.
_______________________________________________________________
Carol Dwyer was wearing a sweater, heavy slacks, and boots as she sat in my living room late on a January afternoon. I had met Carol years ago when she handled the closing of my purchase of my house and some surrounding woodland outside of town. Back then, Carol had been a successful small-town lawyer married to a university professor with a young daughter. She had also been quite beautiful with shoulder length blonde hair and a face and figure that reminded me of Diana Rigg in the old Avengers re-runs.
Several circumstances had led me to retire from being a trial lawyer in a big city on one of the Great Lakes. I let a huge case to take over my life totally for a few years. That caused my wife to leave me. Not uncharacteristically though, her timing was bad. About a year after our divorce became final, the case settled for nine figures. I received a quarter of my firm's high eight figure fee. I had enough money to retire and live comfortably, but it had come at a great psychological cost. I needed to redo my life.
I moved to a small college town called Cambridge (I think consciously named after the famous English university city) roughly 200 miles from the city where I had practiced. The only things in Cambridge were a well-regarded, smaller, state university and the businesses that served its students, faculty, and staff. Instead of being ringed by malls and traffic-choked suburbs, Cambridge was surrounded by woods, lakes, and streams. While Cambridge was small, the university ensured that there was plenty going on.
My devotion to my lawsuit above all else had erased all bodily evidence that I had once been a college wrestler. I was determined to get back into some sort of shape. I ran the forest trails and kayaked the streams and lakes. My house in the woods outside of town had a full basement which I converted into a weight room.
Carol had learned from closing my purchase of my house that I was also a lawyer. She had called on me a few weeks' after I moved to Cambridge to recruit me for the local bar association. We hit it off and she often used me as a sounding board for questions that came up in her practice. I think I gave her good suggestions and, of course, my advice was free. Over time, I became friends with Carol and her husband Tom.
Now in her late forties, the woman sitting my living room that January afternoon was visibly older and heavier than the 30-year-old who had handled my closing. However, Carol was still a beautiful woman. She had gone through her own life crisis much more recently. Her daughter Kim, a theater and dance major, had gone to the university because of the substantial tuition discount she received as the child of a faculty member. In spring of Kim's freshman year, a blood vessel had burst in her father's brain. Tom died in the helicopter carrying him to the hospital.
Widowed and with her daughter out of the house (albeit living only a couple of miles away), Carol had needed something besides work to occupy her time. Influenced, I assume, by her daughter, Carol had joined a group rehabilitating the theater in the old high school building, which had been vacant for decades. That effort succeeded wonderfully, and Carol's group produced plays and staged other events in the theater. That was, in a way, why Carol had come to see me that afternoon.
"Will," Carol said, "you know Kim is a theater major?" I nodded. "She decided to produce and direct show as her senior project. Her professors are on board; in fact, one has agreed to help her. The show is a bit edgy I guess you'd say, so they don't want to do it on campus. There's some fear that one of those right-wingers in the state legislature might use that as ammunition to cut the university's budget. They want to use the old school theater. The city owns that now and you know how liberal the council is." Carol paused.
This was interesting, but I was missing something. "I hope it goes well for Kim," I said, "but how do I come into this?"
"Well," Carol said, "a part of the concept is to cast the show with people who are not trained actors. Kim wants a diverse cast instead of just using students. Given the nature of the show, they're concerned about who'd show up if they had open auditions, so they are casting the show by invitation.""
"So," I said with a chuckle, "you're recruiting me to be the token old white guy?"
Carol smiled. "I wouldn't say it that way but, yes, Kim asked me to ask you if you'd be in the show. You're very fit for your age; well, really, for any age. That's important for this show."
This was sounding odd. "What is the show that they're afraid to hold open auditions?" I asked.
"Have you ever heard of a show called Oh! Calcutta!" Carol replied. "It was very controversial when it opened in New York at the end of the 1960s."
"Is that the show where the cast comes onstage in the opening scene wearing robes and they take the robes off and stand onstage naked?" I asked. I had heard of Oh! Calcutta! I'd even seen it done by a touring company once many years before.
Carol looked slightly uncomfortable. "Yes," she said, "that's the show. It was really a series of skits. Some of them were quite juvenile at the time and others have not aged well. Kim and a couple of her friends have written several new skits that will replace many of the original ones while staying consistent with the concept of the show. The man who is credited with writing the show is dead. Kim reached out to the current copyright owner and got permission to stage her adaptation for six performances."
"I was in elementary school when that show opened, I think," I said. "If I recall correctly, the 'concept' was to show the cast off naked as much as possible."
Carol chuckled nervously. "Yeah, that's a fair summary of the concept from what I know," she replied.
"So," I said, "you're asking me to go naked onstage, where anyone can walk in and see me, with a bunch of naked strangers, for six performances and god knows how many rehearsals?"
Carol shifted in the chair. "Well," she said hesitantly, "not everyone onstage with you will be a stranger."
