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 ï>¿Pride Goeth Before Destruction byLuckyLizLondonÂ(C)

   I can admit it now.  I'm a senior in college and realize that in high
school I was an insufferable bitch.  All my life I'd been told what a
beautiful girl I was, and I let it go to my head.  By my senior year I was
not only the prettiest girl in my high school but was noticeably
full-breasted.  I was inordinately proud of that, too.  I was the head
cheerleader and lorded it over my 'inferiors.' I was also the worst of
body-shamers.  If you were flat-chested or spotty-faced or even a few
pounds either side of ideal, you really didn't want to see me coming. 
Maybe I should have paid closer attention to my childhood religious
indoctrination.  Much later, a line from Proverbs came back to me: "Pride
goeth before destruction and an haughty spirit before a fall." I didn't
deserve what happened to me, but I can understand now why it did.

   Several days before our first home football game, one of the other
cheerleaders, Anita, probably the smartest student in the school and an
ardent feminist (if a cheerleader can even be such a thing), came up with a
truly outrageous idea after practice.

   "You know what we should do?" she said.

   "No, Anita, tell us," I replied, rolling my eyes.

   "When we run out of the tunnel to lead the team onto the field, we
should run out naked."

   Her suggestion was met with stares of shocked astonishment.  I finally
said, "And how would that help to publicize the latest bug up your ass?"
(Anita was a fleet admiral in the social justice wars.)

   "I'm serious.  Think about it.  Nowhere in the world has this ever been
done before."

   "And for good reason," one of the other girls said.

   "Do they have high school football in Kazakstan?" another asked.

   Anita, starting to work up a head of steam, said, "Football, soccer,
whatever.  That's not the point.  This would get worldwide press coverage.
We'd get so many requests for interviews that we wouldn't even have time
for school.  Which we would probably be kicked out of, anyway.  When they
interview us, we could explain that we were protesting the horrendous
treatment of women over the millennia.  And we could make this a bold
statement for women's body freedom and female empowerment.  A real blow for
women's rights."

   "More like a naked bimblow for for women's rights, don't you mean?" said
April Tucker.

   Anita," I said, "there are so many holes in this idiotic plan.  First of
all, we wouldn't even make it out of the tunnel.  As soon as we started to
undress, security would be all over us."

   "Sarah, I know how to do this." She looked around at all the girls and
said again, "I know how to do this.  If I can convince you how this can be
done, will you all agree to do it?"

   Everyone laughed at her, and most expressed serious reservations about
getting naked in public, but then someone said, "Okay, sure, we'll do it.
But only if you really can convince us that it would work."

   Well, she shouldn't have said that.  Anita smiled and said, "Okay,
listen up.  Speed is of the essence here.  We gotta get out to midfield
with enough time to jump up and down and wave our arms around before
security hustles us off the field.  We won't be taking our pom-pons out
there with us.  You'll understand why later.  The first thing we do is go
out and get new sneakers about four sizes too large.  Also, we don't wear
any underwear or socks.  The sneakers won't be unwieldy enough to prevent
us from carefully shuffling to the front of the tunnel, but when we bolt
onto the field, we'll run right out of them with our first step.  And
there's no way you can run any faster on grass than barefoot."

   "What about the uniforms?"

   "I'm getting to that.  The night before the game we make an unnoticeable
but radical alteration.  We cut along the center in the front of the
uniform from top to bottom (in straight lines, please).  Then we lay the
front of the uniform open and sew a three-inch strip of cloth, the same
material, color and length as the uniform, along one side of the cut,
sewing it on that one side only.  When we put on the uniforms, we make sure
that the strip of cloth is flat and overlapping both sides of the cut so
that no skin shows.  If noticed at all, it will just look like some kind of
pleat and withstand any scrutiny short of an autopsy."

   "Anita," April said, "if we actually do this, there probably will be
some autopsies." Anita ignored her.

   "Then we sew the front back together but at only three points, top,
middle and bottom.  A single stitch at each point.  And remember not to
make any sudden moves until it's actually time to do so.  Now, when we're
all set in the tunnel, and we get the word to go, we drop our pom-poms,
grab a handful of material on either side of the center, give a sharp tug,
letting our arms momentarily extend behind us and run like hell.  We're
losing the pom-poms because they could interfere both with our hands
grabbing the uniform material and the sleeves sliding freely off over our
hands.  We'll go from being appropriately attired for cheerleading to
running completely naked to midfield before anyone can blink.  As the
players peel off to head to the sideline, the only remaining attraction on
the field will be ten naked women in front of 35,000 cheering fans."

   (We played all our home games at the local college's stadium, and as
defending conference champions in football-crazy Florida, we could expect
an overflow crowd.) When Anita finished unveiling her plan, we sat in
stunned silence.  Probably, all of us were trying to find reasons that it
wouldn't work.  No one did.  Anita looked around at everyone and said,
"Well?"

   I really didn't want to do this but knew I would have go along if
everyone else acquiesced.  If I alone refused, they'd give me no end of
grief for being a prude.  And I'm not a prude.  But I'm no exhibitionist,
either.  I was sure that someone would object and was worried and puzzled
when no one did.  So I ended up going through all the preparations with a
growing sense of dread, and Friday night found me at the head of the tunnel
with butterflies the size of pterodactyls fluttering in my stomach.  When
the team manager yelled for everyone to go, we dropped our pom-poms, easily
tore off our uniforms and ran right out of our shoes as I lead them in a
mad, naked dash for midfield.

   When I reached midfield and turned to face our sideline, bouncing about
and waving my arms in the air, I looked over at the other cheerleaders who
had trailed me onto the field and got the nastiest shock anyone could
imagine.  Every one of them was wearing her uniform and gaily waving her
pom-poms.  I froze.  I stood like a statue as the other girls frolicked
around me, not smiling out at the crowd but focusing their disdainful
smiles on me.  In doing so they probably convinced everyone that this was
my idea alone.  And they were only indicating their support for my bold
public nudity, making me even more the center of attention (if that were
possible).

   I had never gone into actual shock before, but I think this was
definitely it.  It was like stalling your car on the railroad tracks with a
train coming, being unable to unbuckle your seatbelt and looking out your
window to see the headlight of a speeding locomotive about 10 feet from
your car.  You just know that you are going to die.  Anita had even come up
with a legitimate reason for us (me) to drop the pom-poms and lose the
shoes.  And because I dislike any kind of jewelry, I was as perfectly naked
as I could be.

   The only one.

   Despite an almost irresistible impulse to cover myself and race off the
field, I was paralyzed with fear and too numb to move.  It was one thing to
have uneasily agreed to participate in this madness with nine other
cheerleaders, but finding myself the only one naked in the middle of the
field and in front of a roaring capacity crowd was a nightmare.

   My mind was racing at light speed.  So many things flashed through it:
My ostensible friends who had pulled off a brilliant but vicious prank. 
From start to finish, each one had played her role flawlessly, with Anita
clearly the mastermind.  Their feigned reluctance before pretending to
agree with Anita's scheme.  The detailed plans that were meant for me
alone. Their understanding of my personality, knowing that if they all
agreed to go along, I was constitutionally incapable of refusing.  My pride
would force me to join them rather than be taunted as a prude.  They had
worked it all out beautifully, and I hated each and every one of them with
every fiber of my being.  Still, I realized I couldn't run off the field.
My excruciating embarrassment would be evident to everyone.  They would all
know that I had been pranked somehow and suspect that I was suffering this
breathtaking humiliation at the hands of my fellow cheerleaders.  It was
better to be thought a blatant exhibitionist than a pathetic loser whose
peers despised her enough to do such a thing to her.  And I would never
give the other girls the sheer pleasure of seeing me cringing in
embarrassment as I scuttled off the field with one arm over my breasts and
a hand over my vulva.  They had set me a monkey trap, using my own pride as
the bait, and I couldn't release that bait and free myself.

   But security?  Where was security?  We (as it turns out only I) had
relied on them to seize us and escort us off the field.  But none of them
came for me.  It was only later that I learned why.  Ms.  Carroll, our
principal, was down on the sideline to greet the team when they ran out and
was standing very near the head of security.  When he started to signal his
men to charge onto the field, she stopped him, and he waved them back.  He
turned to her, incredulous, and said, "What?  Why don't you want her off
the field?"

   "Look at her," Ms.  Carroll said.  "She's terrified.  I'm not sure
what's going on out there, but it's not going according to plan.  This is
definitely not what she expected.  She'll be punished, of course.  She'll
be expelled from school, but she'll easily get her GED and go on with her
life.  She thought this would all be over by now, but I'm going to tack on
a little extra punishment that will stay with her every day for the rest of
her life.  I know her.  She's so obstinate and vain that she would never
admit that someone got the better of her, but, clearly, someone really,
really did.  And another thing.  Her punishment will be something that she
absolutely brought on herself.  Leave her out there for the rest of the
game."

   "The whole game?"

   "Until the final whistle.  If we're lucky there'll be four or five
overtimes."

   When the cheerleaders finished jumping around and headed to the
sideline, I was jolted from my paralyzing reverie and began to lope after
them.  The idea of being left out there alone was too much to bear.  When
we reached the sideline, every one of them, unlike on the field, totally
ignored my nudity, not even deigning to gloat (I was sure that would come
later).  They acted as if nothing were remotely out of the ordinary, and I
wasn't about to give them the satisfaction of broaching the subject myself.
They were, as usual, briskly efficient.  We were adept at making a neat
pyramid, and they saw to it that we did so at every opportunity, naturally
hoisting their naked head cheerleader to the top, where I'd balance, arms
outstretched, for a full minute.  They were doing their best to add to my
embarrassment, but I refused to crack.  Periodically, I looked over at
various security guys, but they just stared back at me.  It was only when I
looked at Ms.  Carroll and saw the smug look on her face that I began to
understand what was going on.  The girls must have been immeasurably
delighted that I was not being removed from the field.  It gave them so
much more time and so many more opportunities to torment me.

   As the game progressed, we were winning with ease, but as halftime
approached, I recalled with stinging dismay that we would be returning to
midfield for about 20 minutes of fairly suggestive dance routines.  We were
the halftime show.  This meant that the field crew would be wheeling out
the moveable stage.  We had used it on several occasions over the past
three years when we danced at halftime.  It was about 12 feet tall, 12 feet
wide and 30 feet long.  It had stair steps on either end and a red velvet
skirt to hide the wheels and scaffolding underneath.  It looked like some
giant, mutant high school cafeteria table.  We used the stage for two
reasons.  It gave us a better surface for executing dance steps (the field
could get pretty chewed up by halftime), and it elevated our visibility. 
And I was going to be up there dancing naked.

   When the half ended, I steeled myself.  If I could just get through
this, the worst would be over.  The second half should be much like the
first with maybe a couple of extra pyramids thrown in.  As we ran out onto
the field toward the stage, I reached it first, bounced up the steps and
skipped to the center, acutely aware that my breasts were going ahead and
dancing without me.  As I once again stopped and turned to face our
sideline, I glanced over and saw that the rest of them hadn't even broken
stride.  They had all run right past the stairs and on to the opposite
sideline, stopping there and spinning around to look at me.  I should have
known that they weren't done with me yet, and when I had seen them
whispering together before halftime, I should have suspected that they were
plotting yet another humiliation.

   Gasping at this new, even greater shock, I wheeled to face them.  Now,
for the first time, they began to openly celebrate their humiliating
victory over me.  They stood on that sideline, laughing so hard that they
had to hold one another up, jeering, mocking, pointing at me and clapping
their hands exuberantly.  This was exceeding their wildest expectations. 
What should have been an exquisite but short-lived prank had, thanks to my
boundless pride and Ms.  Carroll's unexpected collusion, turned into a
festival of humiliation, and it wasn't even halfway over yet.  It killed me
to imagine what they were saying to one another about me as they looked on,
exulting in my total nudity and reveling in my equally total humiliation.
My bladder gave way, unleashing a stream of pee that I thought would never
end.  I wondered how far up in the stands that could be seen.

   Then they cupped their hands around their mouths and began shouting at
me:

   "Hey, Sarah!  How does it feel?"

   "Sarah!  You're gonna strip the varnish off the stage!"

   "Everyone is staring at your titties!"

   "And your bush!"

   "Sarah!  Turn around so we can see your ass!"

   "Touch yourself!"

   "Is this making you wet?"

   "Spread your legs!"

   "Sarah!  Dance naked for us!"

   Even worse, the crowd now knew exactly what was happening.  By
continuing to run past the stairs and leaving me standing atop a raised
platform, naked and alone, and by their jubilant reaction on the sideline,
the other girls had made it clear that they had orchestrated everything. 
They had set me up and tricked me into all of this.  The crowd was now in
on the joke.  And the laughter began.  A subdued tittering at first, it
quickly exploded into gales of laughter, cascading over me like a torrent
of ridicule.  There are no words, at least none in my lexicon, that can
describe the feeling of having thousands of people not only gawking at my
helplessly nude body, but also laughing uproariously at me.  Laughing at
the dim, clueless bimbo who had somehow let herself become a publicly
humiliated naked fool.

   I stood stock-still in my abject nakedness, hands at my sides and balled
into fists, glaring at the other cheerleaders with malevolent defiance but
burning with shame.  They all really hated me, and that hatred had bloomed
and blossomed into the most fun that they had ever had.  Solely at the
expense of my conspicuous nudity.  I was too shocked and angry then to see
anything from their point of view, but I guess that if there were one girl
in your high school that you really loathed, who was a lot better-looking
than you and proud of it, who treated you with contempt every single day,
and if you had figured out a way to trick her into standing on a little
stage at midfield during a big football game, naked, trembling and
crushingly humiliated, and if she was so afraid of acknowledging her
victimhood that she couldn't even cover herself and run away, and, best of
all, if you were right there on the sideline to savor every sweet second of
her agony, well, you would have gone for that in heartbeat, wouldn't you?

   What a treat that must have been for them, seeing the girl who had for
so long bullied and belittled them standing naked on that stage, hundreds
of lights powerfully illuminating her motionless body, with unfathomable
humiliation and impotent rage boiling off it like so much steam.  It had to
be the thrill of a lifetime for them.  There was no way that anyone else on
earth could have ever felt more exposed and vulnerable than I did at that
moment.  I despised them for their exhilaration, and I just knew that they
would be telling this story forever:

   "Hey, did I ever tell you about this stuck-up bitch we went to high
school with?  Her name was Sarah Flanagan, and you're not gonna believe
what we did to her.  Actually, what we tricked her into doing to herself.
Wait, you gotta see the videos of this. . . ." I didn't think I'd be
attending any high school reunions.

   After the band mercifully struck up the song for the first of the dance
routines, there was only one thing I could do.  Ignoring the other girls, I
launched into the first dance, which called tor a lot of hip swinging and
pelvic thrusting.  All the songs did.  I danced my ass off for twenty
minutes, trying to avoid the puddle of my own piss, but I have no idea how
well or poorly I danced.  It was, by far, the hardest thing that I'd ever
done, probably the hardest thing that I'll ever do.  My legs were rubbery,
and I was hyperventilating so badly that I felt faint.  About halfway
through the dances, I began to hallucinate or disassociate or something. 
And that made it worse.  I was suddenly seeing myself as if I were among
the spectators, seated way up in stands.  And down there on a stage in the
middle of an otherwise empty field, surrounded by the fully packed stands,
was this voluptuous, naked girl.  And she was dancing.  Her hips were
gyrating provocatively, her breasts bouncing hypnotically and her thick,
black patch of pubic hair was so dark in contrast to her pale skin that it
became a focal point, like a vulva out there dancing on it's own.  I was
flooded with a sense of shame and disgrace so profound that it nearly
staggered me.

   When the last song ended, I somehow pulled myself together, dashing down
the steps and back to our sideline with forced jauntiness.  I actually felt
a little bit triumphant over getting through this until it hit me again
like a sledgehammer -"you just essentially did a 20-minute naked table
dance in front of 35,000 people, including pretty much the whole town and
everyone you know.

   The difference between a brief instance of public nudity with nine
accomplices and a couple of hours of individual public nudity, especially
in a setting like this, is beyond human comprehension.  There must have
been thousands of phones and video cameras there, and every one was trained
on me, most of them surely zooming in and out, capturing every facial
expression, zeroing in on my breasts and my vulva and my ass, and
preserving a permanent record of my naked, dancing body for posterity.  And
eternity.  And every image of me was certain to be posted on multiple porn
sites by the next morning.  It was no consolation that it had to have been
the most popular halftime show ever.  (Except among the concessionaires.  I
heard later that they were pretty pissed at me.  They sold, like, one hot
dog and one Coke during the whole halftime.)

   As I had hoped, the second half was much like the first until, with a
few minutes left in the game, Anita blew it.  She looked at me after one
cheer and said brightly, "Sarah!  You were brilliant at halftime!  Looking
at your naked body was such a special treat for every one of us," she
gushed, sweeping her arm to indicate the overflowing stands.  "I can only
imagine what a turn-on that must have been for you, showing off your
impressive titties with their cute, pink nipples and your tight, curvy ass
and your furry little pussy to sooo many people.  I can't wait to see the
videos.  Like everyone else, I've been scoping out every inch of your
unadorned body.  You're not wearing any jewelry.  And no sneakers?  That's
odd for a cheerleader.  I guess when you decide to get naked, you don't
fuck around.  Tell me, what's it like being so publicly, totally . . . 
naked?  Have you always been an exhibitionist, and are you going to be
doing this for all the home games?  I really do envy you.  You looked like
you were having the time of your life out there."

   I completely lost it.  After holding it together for so long, I went
crazy with rage.  I lunged at her, but the other girls grabbed me before I
could get at her and hoisted me off the ground above their heads.  Some
pulled my arms away from my body, and some grasped me by the ankles and
spread my legs as wide as they would go.  The tallest girls positioned
themselves under my ass and pushed it upward so that my vulva would be as
prominently exposed and displayed as possible.  This couldn't have been
planned.  This was the instinctive cruelty of the mob.  They carried me
right up to the front of the stands and began to slowly parade me all the
way around the stadium like a sacrificial offering to the crowd, remaining
close to the stands and always keeping my open legs facing them.  I had
thought that nothing could be more humiliating than dancing naked in front
of thousands of people, but this was something else again.  I thought I was
going to have a heart attack.  All that had gone before was, after all,
'just' nudity and with some distance between me and all the observers, but
now, with my legs held so widely open, the fans, at least those in the
lower rows, could see my hooded clitoris and labia and vagina.  After
toughing it out this far, I began to sob uncontrollably.

   I was ruined.  And broken.

   Until now all those people had thought that they were watching the
relatively harmless antics of some crazy exhibitionist, even if she had
been duped into her lonely nudity.  This was different.  At least some of
them could see from my desperate squirming and teary, terror-stricken face
that this was forced.  And unspeakably vulgar.  This was, in fact, sexual
assault.  Predictably, the men, the immature younger ones anyway, were
still roaring their approval and shouting out remarkably lewd comments. 
But some of the women, and those older men who probably had daughters or
granddaughters of their own, began to yell out things like, "Put her down!"
It was a distinct minority, though.  Most of them were no doubt thinking,
"This serves her right.  This is exactly what she deserves for putting on
such a shameless exhibition.  If the little whore wants us to see her naked
body, we may as well see all of it." About the time the girls completed a
full circuit of the field with me, the game ended, and the players, coaches
and other sideline personnel trotted off the field, but not one fan made a
move toward the exits.  The girls carried me back out to midfield,
unceremoniously dumped me on the ground and ran to the sideline where they
stood looking at me to see what would happen.

   I lay there face up, my legs still splayed, my hands covering my face
and my body heaving with sobs.  It took me a long time to understand what
happened next, just what the hell came over me.  I certainly wasn't horny.
What I was experiencing was whatever the exact opposite of sexual
excitement is.  I brought my right hand down between my legs and began to
masturbate.  Only it was nothing like real masturbation.  My vagina was as
dry as sandpaper when I painfully forced two fingers of my right hand
inside myself.  Even when I withdrew my fingers and began furiously rubbing
my clitoris, I felt nothing.  My nervous system, along with my brain, had
shut down.  After a few minutes, I ended up convincingly faking an orgasm,
throwing my head back, arching my hips skyward and screaming at the top of
my lungs.

   I read later that on occasion, when someone is humiliated and degraded
beyond the breaking point, they finally just snap and can even seek to
further their own degradation.  Even some rape victims can end up acting
out sexually in extremely self-destructive ways.  I'm pretty sure that's
what happened to me.  In fact, when I first saw the videos, I was stunned.
I had absolutely no recollection of touching myself like that.  I know in
my heart that I wasn't seeking sexual gratification.  I didn't come close
to having a real orgasm.  I was simply seeking the ultimate in public
humiliation.  Think about this: You have just watched videos of yourself,
lying on your back naked in the middle of a full football stadium and
masturbating frantically.  Picture yourself sitting there gaping at those
images, learning for the first time that you've done something
inconceivably lewd and humiliating.  Think that's a memory that's likely to
fade with time?

   Eventually, some sympathetic fan made his way onto the field, picked me
up in his arms and carried me to one of the sidelines.  (The fans booed
him.) He tried to talk to me, even tried to offer me his shirt, but I
didn't respond.  When I began to struggle in his arms like a restless cat,
he gently put me down, and I shakily ran toward one of the exits, left the
stadium and walked the two miles home in the nude.  I couldn't have cared
less about that.  A few times I was accosted by people who demanded to know
what was going on with me, but I just gestured at my naked body and said,
"This?  This is nothing." They'd find out all about it soon enough.

   I shouldn't have gone home to my parents' house, anyway.  By the time I
got there, everything I owned was piled on the front lawn.  They had
completely disowned me.  I had to walk another mile or so before I found a
girl who gave me some clothes, drove me back to my house, helped me collect
my stuff and put me up for the night.  As we were driving back to her
house, I realized that this girl, who was being so kind to me, was one of
those I had mercilessly body-shamed.  I began to cry again.

   Anyway, there were certainly repercussions.  I heard that I was expelled
from school (I wasn't about to go back there to find out).  I could have
returned the following year, but I really needed to leave the state, so I
opted for the GED and moved to California.  I got into a decent college and
have been working my way through school as a stripper.  I didn't want to
become a stripper; I only did it for the money for school.  It's boring and
means nothing to me.  Every time I hear a hundred guys howling for more, I
think, "This?  This is nothing."

   I could draw some small measure of satisfaction from the other
cheerleaders also getting expelled, especially since, up until that last,
ill-advised touch of cruelty, they could have totally gotten away with it.
They could have easily denied any prior knowledge of 'my' plans.  They
could have even told the truth.  That they never had any intention of
running naked onto the field, that Sarah had done it of her volition. 
Maybe they had joked around about something like that, but never in a
million years would it have occurred to them that one of us could have
taken it seriously, especially Sarah.  It really was a perfectly conceived
and executed prank because it required the victim to willingly, if
inadvertently, prank herself.  But after having it all play out so
successfully, they had gone one giant step too far, and that was their
undoing.  They were even charged with sexual assault.  I was asked to
testify against them but refused, not because I didn't want them to suffer,
but because I suspected that the trial would be both a grueling personal
ordeal and a public spectacle.  It was.  I had foolishly thought that
without my testimony the charges would be dropped, but as the D.A. 
patiently and pointedly explained to me, this offense was perpetrated in
public, and that by the time of the trial, it had probably been witnessed
by about 200 million people, some 35,000 of whom were actually present when
the crime was committed.  I was then subpoenaed as a material witness.

   And the trial went exactly as I had feared.  The defense had a field day
during my cross-examination, asserting that my masturbation proved that I
found this whole episode a delicious sexual adventure and that I even put
the other girls up to displaying my naked body to the crowd.  Hence, no
sexual assault.  It was all done with my consent.  He even tried to make me
admit that standing naked and peeing myself in front of everyone was
sexually arousing for me.

   Ironically, it was the most humiliating aspect of the trial that won the
D.A.'s case for her -"the videos.  Try to imagine sitting in a packed
courtroom, filled not only with local spectators but with representatives
of media outlets around the world (for some reason the Japanese seemed to
have sent every reporter in the country), and then reliving the experience
as you watched it on the large-screen TV on the courtroom wall.  The D.A.
outdid herself.  In addition to showing the entire video of me being
displayed to the crowd, she had spliced in close-ups of my tear-streaked
face shrieking in horror.  And if that weren't enough, to further
demonstrate the very source of that horror, there were numerous lingering
close-ups of my vulva.  During the defense, they showed all of the earlier
video: my running onto field naked, the pyramids, my 'featured' halftime
solo dance and, of course, the faked orgasm, all of which the D.A.  had
omitted.  The D.A.  objected on the grounds that those videos were
irrelevant to the assault, but the defense attorney claimed that the other
footage established my 'mindset' and was crucial in proving that everything
was consensual.  The judge overruled the D.A.  and allowed it all to be
shown.

   In the end, our video trumped their video, and the girls were convicted.
All of them received jail time, but it was only a slap on the wrist.  Each
of them served less than a year.  I've thought about that awful,
soul-destroying day ever since and relived it in countless nightmares,
constantly haunted by the inevitable 'what-ifs.' What if I had refused to
go along with such a dumbass idea in the first place?  What if the moment I
realized that they had tricked me into running out there naked by myself, I
had kept my wits about me, bowing deeply and strolling nonchalantly back to
the women's locker room, waving and and blowing kisses to the crowd.  I
could have owned it.  I would have still been expelled from school, but I
could have come back the next year as some kind of hero.  A school legend
instead of the certain recipient of unbearable derision and scorn.  What if
I hadn't overlooked the strongest clue of all -"the suspiciously tepid
resistance to Anita's scheme.  Most of those girls would have burned up in
a house fire before running outside naked.  (Except for Anita.  She would
run naked from Boston to Malibu for a noble enough cause.) What if Ms. 
Carroll hadn't thought up her special punishment on the fly?  But mainly,
what if I hadn't lost it and tried to attack Anita so close to the end of
my ordeal?

   What is so heartbreaking about all this is that if they hadn't assaulted
and degraded me, hadn't caused me to have some sort of psychotic break, I
think I could have eventually grown up and dealt with everything else. 
Maybe one day even attended a reunion, after all, and laughed at the old
videos of me running naked onto the field and of shaking my naked ass and
swinging around my unrestrained breasts at halftime.  I could have admitted
that I had fallen for an elaborate and deeply humiliating prank.  And, when
enough years had passed, even watched those videos nostalgically, thinking
or musing aloud, "Damn, that girl was hot." But after what those
cheerleaders ultimately did to me, none of that could have ever happened.