Yes, I know that
every
kid is a nudist. But I really was one. Like, officially. As in, card
carrying member of the ASA (American Sunbathing Association.) As in going
to special places--nudist camps, or if would want to make them sound
really creepy and culty,
nudist colonies--which were created for no other reason than so people could walk around naked.
This
was the Shameful Secret of my childhood, like having an alcoholic
mother who hit or an uncle who touched you in the areas where the
bathing suit covers. No one was to know. As you may recall, I grew up in
the 1970s, the time of hippies, macrame owls and mushroom decor, but I grew up
in 1970s
Georgia, a place of macrame owls, etc..., but also a
very conservative, uptight place. It was a place where every white
family had a "nigro" maid named something like Mavis, vegetarians were
suspect and you sure as fuck weren't supposed to be something as whack
as a nudist.
Nudism, then as probably now, was
considered to be something weird, at the very least, and at the worse,
probably sexual. Not sexual in a particularly nameable way but
just...wrong. Naked=sex, end of story.
The reality,
which would become apparent to anyone who spent 2 minutes
at a nudist camp, is that they are about a sexual as any average RV
park. Picture the folks in line at your Target store. Now picture them
naked. Now picture them naked and running for a tennis ball, their own
balls flopping in the wind. Feeling sexy? Exactly.
Every
nice weekend in the summer, my dad would load up the car with camping
equipment and we'd be off to a campground in nearby Florida. It
was run by a sweet old man named Uncle Sammy who was also, incongruently, incredibly racist. And, if
you must know, he had rather large testicles that were kind of a blueish
hue.
My two sisters and I hated going. HATED it. And
it wasn't because of our unfortunate kid's eye view of Uncle Sammy's
literally blue balls. Being nudists was the thing that made us
different. Made us weird. Made us wrong. "How was your weekend?" our
neighbor Mrs. P would leeringly ask me when we got back. "Did
y'all go
camping?" She knew what she meant and I knew what she
meant, but both of us were loathe to acknowledge it. "Yes," I would
admit, mumbling. "Oh, reeeeeeally?" she would smirk triumphantly.
It
was this sort of insinuating attitude about nudism that was what was so
shameful about it to us. The actual nudism was no big deal. Really.
People
find this really hard to believe. Even today, if I mention it to
someone--I mean, people who know I write this blog, friends who know me
well--they get that Mrs. P look on their faces. It's a mixture
of judgey, sort of aroused, completely intrigued, yet put off at the
same time.
"It's like a KOA, but everyone's naked," I
say, lamely. They never believe me and press for more details. Because
surely--surely!--there's more to it than that. But really that's it.
Here's what people do at a nudist camp: swim, play old-school sports
like horseshoes, ping pong or pool, sit around and play cards, sit in
saunas or whirlpools, lie out in the sun, eat dinner and so on. All of
this is done naked. Or naked but wearing the appropriate gear like
tennis shoes. (If the idea of a bunch of your average Appleby's customers walking around
naked isn't non-sexual enough, seeing those same folk naked but for a
pair of socks and tennis shoes should do the trick.)
BTW,
if you were wondering, the cliche about nudists and volleyball is
totally true. Nudists love their volleyball--love it! Every camp has a
court, no exceptions. Another nudist thing is the Importance of Towels.
Nudists have an inordinate faith in the power of towels as all-purpose
protectant. Every nudist carries a towel so that can put it between
their sweaty naked ass and whatever surface they put said ass upon. The
towel, you see, magically protects everyone from...well everything. I'm
not sure why no one considers the "towel flipping factor," that is, once
you re-use the towel, can you really be sure you're putting the butt
side on your butt? Nonetheless, it seems to work. I don't know the
science behind it, but to my knowledge, nudists don't suffer from any
greater incident of butt-transmitted disease.
Because
everyone is naked there probably are some things I've seen that most
people haven't seen. I have seen flaccid penises covered in tanning oil
(it was the 70s, remember). I have seen very obese men walking around
naked, their genitalia tiny and cowering under the massive flap of their
bellies. I have seen boobs hanging down to stomach level, all kinds of
scars, varicose veins, sunburned boobs, flat wrinkly bums, prodigious
bushes (70s, ditto), and balls that hang down nearly to knee level. I
have seen women walking around with a tampon string hanging out their
wangs (the accepted nudist procedure, by the way, is for a menstruating
woman to don a pair of underpants. Why they couldn't just tuck the
string inside and try to "pass" as a non-menstruating woman remains
unexplained to me. Perhaps many women of the day still had the whole
belt and pad apparatus?)
What I did not see includes:
orgies, sex of any kind, an erect penis. (As a child, I read a
Q&A pamphlet for new nudists featuring naked cartoon "Love
is..." looking folks. For the question "What if I get, you know, aroused?" naked
cartoon man was advised to take a quick jump in the pool.)
When
teenage nudist kids start rebelling against their parents they do
so--seriously--by wearing clothes. Every nudist camp has kids in their
awkward years Fighting the Power by wearing a long t-shirt or--fuck
it!--even a full pants and shirt combo.
As I said, my sisters and I hated our nudist secret. It wasn't the actual nudism so
much because, in truth that was kind of fun. Not the naked part, which
we really didn't care one way or the other about, but going on
adventures-- running wild, exploring woods and creeks, water skiing,
climbing trees and getting to play grown-up games like pool. Nudist
camps are like a secret club. They are all over the country and--at
least at the time--you had to know where they were (invariably down a
long dirt road in the middle of nowhere), the secret code to unlock the
gate or who to ask for at the intercom when you pulled up. When we
pulled up to the gate at a new club, we'd ask for whoever--Dottie,
say--and Dottie would come to the gate, bronzed, wrinkled and wearing
only a terry cloth wrap around skirt. The Dotties always seemed to
smoke and had a vague white-trashiness about them. The Dotties always
had the nicest mobile home in the place, but
nudist camp nice, which is not really that nice.
For my sisters and I, it was the secret part that was so bad. We weren't supposed to tell
anyone about
it. Knowing that I had a thing about me that people couldn't know gave
me a sense of shame that took years to shake. I thought if anyone ever
knew this horrible nudist thing about me...well, that'd be about it. I,
seriously, didn't even tell my husband until we'd been married several
years. I still haven't told my children, or many of you guys. I don't
think either of my sisters have told their husbands. (uh, til now. Sorry!
Hope you enjoy your Big Talk tonight.)
It is not right
to make children keep secrets and, well, let's just say that perhaps the
situation could have been handled differently. Though I don't know how.
There really was no good way to present the whole nudist family idea to
my Georgia neighbors. And I still think there's something a little
weird about
needing to be naked in public, among other naked
people. Couldn't people be just be fine walking around naked in their
house without formalizing it, building camps, forming the ASA and whatnot?
Was there something sexual about it that I wasn't getting?
That
said, as an adult, I can see some of the advantages of the whole
nothing-to-hide aspect of it all. I recently went to a Korean spa with
my friend Janet. It was hardcore. Old Korean women were squatting down
by these sort of low faucets scrubbing the bejesus out of their nether
regions. (For a really long time too. They are either really really
clean or there must be some sort of pleasure in taking to your crotch
with a scrub brush that I'm not aware of.) Everyone was naked because
you had to be--sign on the door said so. As I soaked with Janet in the
hot tub (making, like, constant eye contact so I wouldn't appear to be
staring at her boobs in an unseemly manner*), I looked around.
Everyone
looked bad naked, and yet everyone looked good. That is to say, we all
looked human. Clothes give the illusion that other people have perfect
bodies and that, plus general media bombardment, etc... gives us the
idea that most everyone else looks fucking amazing. Of course we "know"
that's not true. We know models are genetic rarities, culled from
millions of others, and that they are strategically posed, photoshopped,
etc... But seeing these regular bodies made me really
know it,
in a deep way. The chick with the amazing boobs had a bit of a wide ass
going on. The trim woman was also a bit gaunt. It was incredibly
liberating to realize that we all looked...well, okay enough.
The
other day I had the experience of being on the other side of the naked
generational divide. I was pet sitting for friends who have a pool. I
invited my husband and two daughters over to swim. When they got there, I
shouted, "Woo! Let's go skinny dipping!" I peeled off my clothes and
dove into the pool. When I surfaced, my three family members were staring
at me in semi-horror. "Woo!" I said, again, defiantly. I swam around
briefly, to prove my point that they were missing out--big time--but it
was half-hearted. I felt foolish and suddenly way way too naked. Soon I
climbed out and grabbed my towel. I was half-embarrassed, half-hating their prudery.
Despite that, at 47, I
think I've pretty much come to peace with my supposedly sordid past. At
least enough that I feel fine telling you, Dear Internet Stranger, and
who knows who the hell you'll tell. The good part is that I don't really
care any more.
In an interesting coda to all this: My
nudist connection which had always been the Worst Thing of my Life also
turned out to be one of the best things. When I was looking for an idea to pitch to Rolling Stone, my dad told me that a local nudist camp
was hosting bands like Foreigner and Loverboy for a concert, a two-day
Nudestock festival. This, anyone could see, was comedy gold. My piece on
Nudestock (thank you to my RS editor, the amazing Jancee Dunn) was my
first national story.
So what have we learned here?
Here are your takeaways: Things are never all good or all bad, they just
are. Keeping secrets=bad. Some men have really really long balls.
Now you know the worst,
xoxoxox
* For the record, Janet has an incredible ass.
(Note: names, places, and such have been changed to protect the privacy of various pissed off family members)
(photo source)
