We can observe how undressing has an almost intoxicating effect on many children even in their later years, instead of making them feel ashamed. They laugh and jump about and slap themselves, while their mother, or whoever else may be there, reproves them and says: ‘Ugh! Shocking! You mustn’t ever do that!’ Children frequently manifest a desire to exhibit. One can scarcely pass through a country village in our part of the world without meeting some child of two or three who lifts up his little shirt in front of one— (Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 262-263)

When we look back at this unashamed period of childhood it seems to us a Paradise; and Paradise itself is no more than a group phantasy of the childhood of the individual. That is why mankind were naked in Paradise and were without shame in one another’s presence; till a moment arrived when shame and anxiety awoke, expulsion followed, and sexual life and the tasks of cultural activity began. But we can regain this Paradise every night in our dreams. I have already [p. 239] expressed a suspicion that impressions of earliest childhood (that is, from the prehistoric epoch until about the end of the third year of life) strive to achieve reproduction, from their very nature and irrespectively perhaps of their actual content, and that their repetition constitutes the fulfilment of a wish. Thus dreams of being naked are dreams of exhibiting.

The core of a dream of exhibiting lies in the figure of the dreamer himself (not as he was as a child but as he appears at the present time) and his inadequate clothing (which emerges indistinctly, whether owing to superimposed layers of innumerable later memories of being in undress or as a result of the censorship). Added to these are the figures of the people in whose presence the dreamer feels ashamed. I know of no instance in which the actual spectators of the infantile scene of exhibiting have appeared in the dream; a dream is scarcely ever a simple memory. Curiously enough, the people upon whom our sexual interest was directed in childhood are omitted in all the reproductions which occur in dreams, in hysteria and in obsessional neurosis. It is only in paranoia that these spectators reappear and, though they remain invisible, their presence is inferred with fanatical conviction. What takes their place in dreams—‘a lot of strangers’ who take no notice of the spectacle that is offered—is nothing more nor less than the wishful contrary of the single familiar individual before whom the dreamer exposed himself.

Third dream. I was in a school with a mostly white interior, but it felt more like a locker room this time, with glazed ceramic tiles everywhere. I walked through a narrow and crowded hall wearing a tight dress made of brown fabric, and nothing underneath. This is a dress I actually own, which I used to wear when camming with strangers on Omegle. It's very stretchy, made of cheap synthetic fabric, and doesn't feel very good to wear, but it makes me look very feminine. I bought it for autogynephilic purposes, I suppose. DS was sitting on the floor near me and was looking up at the space between my legs. He had an expression of disgust on his face. We didn’t make eye contact and the dream ended. I had been thinking about the fact that I had erroneously written “five winters ago” in the previous email, before falling asleep, so it probably set me up for this experience of shame. I wonder if my next dream will participate in this series of simple dreams consisting of a single character with whom I exist, and the interior of a school building. For the record, I find DS funny and puerile and maybe his sexual frankness, or multiple verbal references to his penis and body in that conversation made him a good presence for a dream, and it goes without saying that I'm not attracted to him, but he is somewhat attractive to me, at least in comparison to your other roommates, perhaps because he reminds me of the other DS I know. And I did think about how it would be to have sex with your roommates, fleetingly.

I don't doubt that the gesture of stripping is fundamentally infantile. Reminds me of wanting to seduce my dad as a little girl, and I could generalize this to a desire to be recognized as perfect and conceited in the way babies are, shameless and animal. I don't remember wanting my mom or needing her via my nudity, but isn't nudity like, an invitation to be bathed or cleaned or held close (for warmth)? Look at me, so bare and cold, hold me, and feed me. But since it's so warm and beautiful, I don't need you. I'm out here to play, and I want the animals to recognize my form and see me as a type, an exemplar, of the species of the animal that I am.