Maybe you’ve seen this poster at some point:
When I was in college, many years ago, I bought myself this poster and hung it on my dorm room wall because I thought it was hilarious. I agree that we all need more exposure to art, but perhaps we shouldn’t be exposing ourselves to art in a literal sense.
Turns out, though, that the guy in the famous poster isn’t really “flashing” the statue. Here is a YouTube clip of him from two years ago explaining how he ended up on this poster: Expose yourself to art
While I’ve never been flashed by a lone, trench coat-wearing sicko, I have been flashed by a mob of naked guys, and that’s an image I’ve never forgotten even though it happened about 37 years ago. Let me explain.
When I was a senior in high school, I was dating a sophomore in college, and one Saturday in late fall, I was in Lincoln visiting him at UNL. It either was snowing or had snowed the previous night — I don’t recall which, but snow was involved because that was the trigger for the event.
He and I were standing on the corner of Vine Street and North 16th, awaiting the light to change. Nowadays, there are stop signs, but in 1985 there was still a stoplight on that intersection. To our left was the Delta Upsilon fraternity, and we were facing east.
Suddenly, there was a terrific roar of male voices to my left. I turned to see what the commotion was and found myself almost engulfed in a steady stream of naked young men pouring out of the front door of Delta Upsilon, across the lawn in front of it, and down 16th Street right in front of me.
They were all naked. Buck-ass naked. If I remember correctly, they might have been wearing shoes, but I wasn’t really focused on their feet.
They ran past us and down the street. Apparently, they were going to make a loop and come back to their fraternity, but once the last naked guy moved past us, my boyfriend hustled me out there so fast I barely had time to resist. Naturally, I kept craning my neck to see their naked buttocks bouncing down the street away from me for as long as I could, but soon they were out of sight.
There I was a senior in high school, in utter disbelief about what I’d just witnessed. My boyfriend was sulky and pissy because I’d seen about forty guys naked in the span of a few minutes, but he finally told me that it was a ritual for that fraternity to streak after the first snow fall.
How fortuitous for me that I happened to be standing on that corner at the exact moment those guys exited their fraternity for their yearly streak-fest!
The following year, I was a freshman at UNL, and I lived in a dorm that was only a block from that fraternity, but even though I tried to catch them in the act after the first snowfall, I missed it. I missed it the following year, too, despite still residing in that same dorm. The next two years, I lived off campus, so I wasn’t nearby at all after the first snowfall.
I don’t know when that fraternity suspended their snowfall streaking, but man, oh man, I’m happy I was there to witness it at least once.
In reality, though, men running with their willies bouncing everywhere isn’t really all that sexy. It’s actually quite comical. The view from the backside, though, well, that’s a different story.
Thanks for reading. Share with anyone you know who might enjoy a laugh. The following short story about a flasher is for paid subscribers only, so please consider becoming one — it’s only 6 dollars a month or 60 for a year, which gets you two free months.
Tammy Marshall
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