Nicole Brodeur / Times staff columnist
Naked-sushi arguments full of holes

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Seattle is now an equal-opportunity objectification city.

Not only can you eat sushi off naked women at the Bonzai restaurant every Saturday night — now you can eat it off naked men, too!

Happy? Are all things feeling equal? Can we stop fretting and fuming over what other people want to do with their own bodies and start wondering why Iraqi teenagers are killing our soldiers? Or how our kids are going to get a decent education when administrators who have never brushed chalk off their hands pull in six-figure salaries?

My hat is off to Dan Savage and his band of rabble-rousers at The Stranger. (I know ... Life's funny, isn't it?)

In an effort to stick a pin in the balloon of righteous bluster over sushi served on willing female torsos, Savage recruited two men to strip to their boxers, get wrapped in plastic, and stretch out across two tables at Bonzai on Friday night.

The men were then covered with Top Pot doughnuts for a crowd of about 100 happy-hour types, who sipped drinks and took way too long deciding between crullers or pink with sprinkles.

It went so well that the bar manager asked the men to do Naked Sushi. Both agreed.

"What's not to like?" asked one of the men, Michael Bertrand, 24. "I got to be myself in my underwear, I got a lot of free drinks and I was having a good time with my friends."

Savage chided the "clench-butts" who, by protesting Naked Sushi, made a political issue out of a publicity stunt.

I'm with him, but I also see where protesters are coming from. In these days of sweatshops, Gary Ridgway and Crystal Brame, there is ample evidence that women are victimized by men who seek control, cash and some kind of sick power.

But there also is control and power in women doing exactly what they want, whether it's bellying up to the bar or bellying up on the bar.

The rest of us have a choice, too, to either go down to Bonzai and eat sushi off people, or stay home and eat Piecora's pizza off plates.

The tricky part is determining whether this is a battle worth fighting — or if it is a battle at all.

If the woman is manacled to the bar against her will, then sign me up. Cut her loose first, then let me at the person who put her there.

That doesn't seem to be the case here.

"If a girl wants to be a table for 20 minutes, then that's what she wants to do," Bertrand said. "And no one can argue with that."

When he's not naked, Bertrand works in a U District shoe store and plays guitar in a band called Good Looks the Playboy, named for a character in a Mesopotamian folktale.

Sounds great, Michael. But what'd your mom say?

"She's very proud of me," Bertrand said. "My whole family is really free-spirited and doesn't really care about what other people think of us.

"I didn't feel cheap or anything."

The only downside was having the duct tape ripped off his nipples when his shift as a shelf was over.

"They bought me a shot," he said. "That helped."

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists .

She likes her snacks on crackers.

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