Naked at Lunch
Naked
at
Lunch
A Reluctant Nudist’s Adventures
in the Clothing-Optional World
Mark Haskell Smith
Grove Press
New York
Copyright © 2015 by Mark Haskell Smith
Jacket design by Dog and Pony, Amsterdam
Jacket photograph © Diana Faust
Author photograph by Maarten van der Zwaard
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or
[email protected]
.
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 978-0-8021-2351-0
eISBN 978-0-8021-9178-6
Grove Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
For David L. Ulin and Tod Goldberg
You’re born naked and the rest is drag.
—RuPaul
Contents
A Very Brief History of Early Nonsexual Social Nudism
I Left My Cock Ring in San Francisco
The Rise of Nudist Clubs in America
The Naked European Walking Tour
There’s a Reason Florida Is Shaped Like a Penis
I’m on a Boat
“
W
e are safely away and you can now enjoy a . . .”
There was a pause, as if the cruise director was having trouble choosing what, exactly, he should call what was about to happen. Finally he said, “. . . a carefree environment.”
The announcement was still reverberating through the ship when the scrotum airing began in earnest; shorts and shirts dropped to the ground and penises dangled in the South Florida sun. Permission had been granted. Now buttocks could swing from side to side without restriction, and breasts—finally released from the prison of blouse and brassiere—burst into the open, to be caressed by soft tropical breezes. We were on a boat. One thousand eight hundred and sixty-six nudists living the “anti-textile” dream.
Not that some of them weren’t almost nude before the cruise director gave the all clear. Many were in various states of undress, itching to toss their clothes aside. A skeletal man in his eighties wandered around the ship wearing only a fluorescent thong, his loose skin draped around his bones in cascades that looked like freckled frosting, and a gigantic, barrel-chested man—he looked like he’d eaten an actual barrel—lumbered around the lido deck on an industrial-strength cane wearing only a loincloth. A few people soaked in Jacuzzis, surreptitiously slipping out of their swimsuits, while the less rebellious sat by the pool, looking somewhat forlorn, waiting for the green light. These were nudists, after all. And they had paid big bucks to frolic in the buff. When the all clear was sounded, they didn’t hesitate.
I had never been on a cruise ship before—I’d never even been interested in being on a cruise ship—but this wasn’t just any cruise, this was the Big Nude Boat, a special charter offered by Bare Necessities, the premier “nakation”
*
travel agency. Not only that, the cruise was on board the
Nieuw Amsterdam
, one of the Holland America Line’s more luxurious ships, which meant this wasn’t a backwoods RV-park nudist resort or Hippie Hollow down by the lake; this was the deluxe version of nonsexual social nude recreation. Meaning nudism. Or naturism. Depending on who you ask. There are several theories floating around about which word means what—historically speaking there are some actual distinctions—but the reality was that I was on a boat with almost two thousand people who weren’t wearing clothes.
I am fascinated by subcultures: the Dead Heads and Juggalos who’ve built unique cultures out of following their favorite bands as they tour the country, the amateur mechanical engineers who build robots in their garages, the home brewers who experiment with beer in their kitchens, and the foodies who eat at illegal restaurants in people’s homes. People do strange things. They collect stamps and watch trains, they dress their pets to look like famous characters from movies, they dress themselves to look like anime characters, they go to conventions in woodland animal costumes and have group sex in “plushie piles.” All of these activities have their own culture, a network of people who speak a specific kind of lingo that outsiders don’t understand. I’m especially fascinated by subcultures that are deemed morally suspect or quasi-legal: the people who pursue their passion even if it means possible imprisonment or stigmatization by society. I can’t help it. I like the true believers. The fanatics.
My first nonfiction book was about the culture of cannabis connoisseurs and the underground botanists who source heirloom varietals of marijuana from all over the world. Cannabis culture has a rich history filled with colorful characters. These are men and women who defy oppressive antidrug laws and good-naturedly don’t give a fuck about societal norms. It wasn’t much of a leap for me to become intrigued by the world of nudism. Or as my wife said, “First you’re stoned all the time and now you’re going to be naked? Why can’t you write a book about cheese? You like cheese.”
The loudspeaker on the ship crackled to life and the cruise director added a caveat: “I would like to remind you that you must wear a cover-up in the dining areas.”
Which didn’t really keep anyone from being naked in the dining areas. Or in the bars. Or anywhere for that matter. They were naked on deck and in the screening room, the library, the casino, and the buffet line. Nudists crowded around the piano bar and requested songs by Elton John and Billy Joel. The large theater where stage shows were presented was filled with naked men and women. They were in the elevators, walking down the corridors, playing Ping-Pong, lifting weights in the gym, and guzzling cocktails by the pool.
In the fitness center someone asked the ship’s in-house yoga teacher if people had to wear clothes in the yoga classes. The teacher gave her a curious look and then, as the true reality of the question sunk in—what I can only imagine was the image of a roomful of naked people doing down dog flashing through her head—her face bloomed in panic and she said, “Oh yeah. In the class. Clothes. You have to wear clothes.”
But other than the yoga class, everywhere you looked, testicles and breasts hung low and pendulous, swaying side to side as the boat rocked in the open ocean; billows of bulbous flesh spilling off torsos, flowing earthward like the goop inside a lava lamp. The entire human body presented in all its natural nature was unavoidably on display.
I was sitting at what was called the Ocean Bar that first evening when I overheard a man, a silver-haired smoothy, complain loudly that there were too many old people on the cruise.
**
“I’m guessing the median age is sixty-five,” he said. He was sixty-two.
When old people complain that there are too many old people, then you really know there are too many old people.
Most of the passengers were retirees and most of them were American. Which is to say that there were a lot of overweight people strutting around in their birthday suits. That they did so unself-consciously, without any hint of the neurotic body obsession that has created generations of diet-obsessed, bulimic, anorexic, or just plain miserable people, was something that I found almost inspirational. They weren’t ashamed of their bodies, they seemed to accept themselves and one another for who they are and what they were, and, best of all, they had fun doing it.
Not all of them were retired. I met a Harvard professor, a radiologist, a tool salesman, and a couple of people serving in the armed forces. There were pharmaceutical sales reps, retail clerks, photographers, scientists, doctors, corporate executives, teachers, lawyers, paralegals, and people who really didn’t want to talk about work while they were on vacation.
And of course not everyone was fat and saggy. There was a large LGBT contingent who were on the healthy end of the body mass index, and there were some actual bona fide young people, trim and tattooed men and women in their twenties who clung together as if the naked retirees were harbingers of some sort of terrifying apocalypse. The naked twentysomethings gazed at the naked seventysomethings as if they could suddenly see the future, like a portal had opened in the time-space continuum and revealed a dystopian world where gravity and a sedentary lifestyle conspired to make everyone expand and sag. It was heartbreakingly inevitable. Perhaps this glimpse into the abyss explained some of the uninhibited alcohol consumption among the younger set.
The guests on the nude cruise were predominantly Caucasian, although there were a few South Asians, East Asians, and African Americans in the clothes-free contingent. They came from all over. Some were trying to escape the polar vortex that was bringing freezing wind and record snowfalls to cities like Chicago, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Boston; others were from warm climates like Tampa, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Diego; nudists from Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas represented the heartland. There were foreign nudists too: Canadians from Toronto and Quebec, and real outliers, people from far-flung countries like Finland, Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands. All these people, coming all this way, for the express purpose of standing around on the lido deck of a cruise ship and letting it all hang out.