One Night in Hollis and the World’s Your Oyster

Stripping for a crowd of 30 freshmen at a Hollis birthday party last year, Nick, a sophomore, dressed to impress: a white wifebeater with the words “Porn Star,” jeans, and a “man thong,” all topped off with a pair of pink and white bunny ears. The Eliot resident—who asked to be referenced by his first name only to preserve a “pretense of anonymity”—didn’t stop at shedding his clothes that night, either. For the evening, he wasn’t Nick. He was Cuddles, the male stripper.

While freshmen, final club initiates, and semi-secret Sorrento Square publications making parodies of H Bomb pursue professional help (see “scrutiny”), Nick did the job himself.

Harvard students? Stripping? According to John Fitz, head of Bachelor Party Headquarters, it’s happened before. Fitz claims that his Boston-based strip club has employed numerous Harvard students, including several psychology concentrators. Who knows—maybe that girl you know in your Human Sexuality section is “studying” overtime....Fitz would not divulge names.

BEFORE HE BARED

At first glance, Nick himself may not seem the “stripper” type. His brown facial scruff, thick-rimmed glasses, and pensive nature better suggest philosophy than Chippendale’s. Yet as far back as he can remember, Nick has relished baring it all. “I don’t know how my parents screwed me up, but my youngest memories are mainly just being completely naked,” Nick says.

Once arriving at Harvard, Nick cultivated his bent for exhibitionism in the unlikeliest of social settings. “At our freshman study breaks, I dressed up a few times as ‘Bunny the Lifeguard’—bunny ears, a bikini top, and lifeguard thong,” he says of his days in Straus A. “I’d gotten the reputation of being that asshole.” Despite Nick’s offbeat choice of entryway attire, he received tacit encouragement from above. “As ashamed as my proctor [Zeev Ben-Schar] was of me,” he says, “I think he got a kick out of it.”

This entryway notoriety led to Nick’s first stripping gig later the following April, when Hollis resident Marisa Robillard ’07 turned 19.

“Marisa very clearly intimated that she wanted strippers for her party,” says Samantha M. Waters ’07, who lived in Hollis with the birthday girl. “Actual strippers would be very expensive, though.”

So the Hollis girls resorted to the next best thing. “Originally, it was supposed to be a number of guys from the [rugby] team,” says Waters. By showtime, however, only Nick and a scrummer—who did not return a request for comment—had volunteered to put their bodies on the line. “We just got all oiled up and went over there,” Nick says.

STRIPTEASE IN HOLLIS!

Friend and blockmate Blazej Kesy ’07 served as the boys’ personal bouncer, riling up the crowd of 20 girls and a smattering of rugby guys before the striptease began. “I pretty much just put on a leather jacket and went along for the show,” Kesy says. “Had there been a situation where some drunk and horny girl was attacking [them], though, I would have been there.”

Nick’s partner kept it basic in overalls and white briefs. Nick, of course, was in bunny ears. Both were “stone sober,” Nick says.

It didn’t stop them. “I sort of gave a half-lap dance, half-party strip,” Nick says. “Everyone seemed pretty into it. It wasn’t awkward at all.”

He did not elaborate on the difference between stripping and party-stripping, except that the latter apparently does not entail taking off all his clothes.

“I never got naked,” he says. “The thong was my limit.”

Waters was still into it. “We all thought it was pretty hysterical,” she says.

For their appreciation, Waters and company paid the entertainers in booze—“which was perfect,” Nick says, “because that’s what we would have spent the money on anyway.”

LA VIDA NAKED

Nick says the evening last spring was his first and only stripping experience, but it wasn’t the end of his public nudity. He’s an “avid fan” of Primal Scream—he ran last spring, chest painted in a Braveheart theme—and says he has regular “naked time” in his Eliot suite.

Nick’s roommates hold mixed opinions about his near-constant state of undress.

“I love it,” Kesy says. “We all provide each other with some kind of entertainment.”

Roommate Jean Sebastien Cagnioncle ’07, however, is not entertained. “No one ever wants to come back to our room,” he says.

Nick doesn’t mind. “People here get way too involved competing for grades and stuff,” he says. “If it takes something like taking your clothes off at a party to help you forget, then whatever.” But Nick’s balls have their limits. “The word ‘crucifixion’ comes to mind,” he says, imagining his parents’ reaction if they found out he had “party-stripped.”

Nick’s proctor, who no longer works for the University, was also unavailable for contact. Whether “Bunny the Lifeguard” played a role in his abrupt departure is still under investigation.