Naked at Lunch (16 page)

I hit the wine store, where I had gotten into a lively conversation with the owner the day before. He had recommended a particularly good local wine—a Picpoul de Pinet from Beauvignac—so I asked him to recommend a rosé from the area. Perhaps it was because we had established a rapport, or maybe because he just recognized a good customer when he saw one, but he and his wife did not call me a pig; they laughed and snapped a photo. And no, you can’t see it. You probably don’t want to.

There’s a refreshing honesty to shopping naked. In the textile world, people always check each other out, imagining what the other person might look like naked—don’t be coy, you know you do—but when you can clearly see the breasts of the woman next to you or the penis of the man standing behind you—in fact, when all around you are bare breasts and dangling penises and buttocks and bodies—well, a lot of the puerile fantasy that is commonplace in our society just disappears.

Maybe it was the quality of the produce available in the market, maybe it was the excellent recommendations of the wine merchant or the smell wafting from the shop that was making a gargantuan paella, maybe it was just being in a crowd of naked people going about their everyday business, but I have to admit that shopping in the nude was kind of fun. People were friendlier than they usually are in grocery stores. Nobody got upset when the line was slow. For the most part everyone was smiling. I didn’t feel nearly as awkward as I’d feared. Even when I spilled olives all over the counter. Ultimately, attempting to speak French was more embarrassing than being naked.

That night I stood on my balcony and looked out over Heliopolis. I was drinking the excellent local rosé—Château Haut Fabrègues—and taking in the sweep of the architecture as a cool breeze blew in from the Mediterranean. People were out on their terraces drinking wine, smoking cigarettes, and generally doing what I was doing, hanging out and enjoying the night air. I noticed a naked man having drinks with a couple of nude women on a balcony below mine. None of this is unusual at Cap d’Agde. Naked people have dinner parties all the time here. But I was surprised when the man stood up and stuck his penis in the mouth of a blond woman who had been sitting to his right. Although I couldn’t see exactly what was happening, her head movements made what I would call a “bobbing” motion. This went on for a few moments and then the man turned and offered his penis to the woman who’d been sitting on his left. She graciously accepted and sucked on him while the blonde spanked him. I decided it would be creepy if I stood there and watched for too long, although there were several other people out on their balconies and they seemed to have noticed it too, so I went inside and refilled my wineglass.

Apparently these kinds of swingers’ dinner parties are a common occurrence at Cap d’Agde. At least according to Ross Velton, author of the
The Naked Truth about Cap d’Agde
, who writes, “Nowhere on Earth will you feel so at home expressing your perversions and acting out your fantasies.”
⁴²
Which helps explain the fetish wear that I saw at night and the penis jewelry that some men wore on the beach during the day. Yes, you read that right. A significant percentage of the men here wear rings or what looked like little gold bracelets clamped around their penises.
Shaftlets?
There seems to be no sexual preference designation attached to the wearing of penile decoration, it’s just something the cool nudists are into. Of course genital jewelry is forbidden by the official rules. But that doesn’t stop people from wearing it and, seriously, can you imagine the security guard asking someone to remove his penis ring? Or worse, take out a piercing? But this flaunting of the anti-genital-jewelry rule upsets naturists—as you’ll recall the Fellowship of the Naked Trust only made exceptions for eyeglasses and dentures—who are trying to force the swingers out of Cap d’Agde.

Without being overly dramatic, what’s happening in Cap d’Agde is a clash between two distinct camps of nakedness. You have the naturists, the philosophical descendants of the Durville brothers, who believe in health, fresh air, exercise, and vegetarianism, versus the horny hedonists who fall more in the Émile Armand camp.

It didn’t start out this way; the swinging happened incrementally. Originally, Cap d’Agde was a place where naturists and their families could have a nude beach experience without fear of arrest from authorities or exploitation by perverts. But anytime you have a place where everyone is walking around naked, well, you know voyeurs and swingers are not going to be far behind. The swingers took over a section of the beach and the dunes that ran behind it, and by the mid-1980s, it was common to see couples masturbating on the beach as well as more exotic threesomes, blow jobs, group sex, and even the occasional consensual gang bang.

In his book, Velton goes into great detail about the etiquette of swingers and libertines in Cap d’Agde, describing spouse-swapping dinner parties and giving advice on finding a couple who want to swing with a single man: “when a husband, knowing you are in hot pursuit, pulls up his wife’s skirts and slaps her buttocks, you know your presence is not unwelcome.”

Naturists were alarmed at seeing their resort overrun by libertines and a crackdown of sorts began in the 2000s. Now signs are posted on the beach warning that it is illegal to engage in lewd behavior, and park rangers patrol the area giving citations—I refuse to say “stiff fine”—to any man who is caught sporting an erection. This renewed commitment to keeping the beach family friendly didn’t stop people from swinging, it just forced them indoors, and now there are more swingers’ clubs and even a hotel dedicated to “the lifestyle.” And of course what happens in your apartment is your business, even if everybody can see you from their balconies.

Pressure from the naturists intensified when, in April 2008, two swingers’ clubs—Glamour, a
boîte échangiste
or wife-swapping club, and the Palme Ré, an orgy club—were firebombed by naturist “hardliners.” And later in September of that year another
boîte échangiste
, the Tantra club, was destroyed by a suspicious fire. Police suspected it was the work of naturist “fundamentalists” with a grudge against the libertines.
⁴³

The resort seems equally split between libertines and naturists, and from what I can see, it seems like they manage to coexist. During the day, the naturists have the run of the place—except for the sunbathing swingers and their genital jewelry—and in the evening, especially around midnight, the swingers and fetishists come out and head to the clubs.

I didn’t see any lewd behavior or pick up on any butt-slapping cues when I was at the beach. For me it was just a crowded slab of sand with thousands of naked bodies getting their melanoma on in the broiling sun. Did I mention I don’t sunbathe?

For those who’d had enough UV radiation, there were beach clubs behind high fences that required cover charges. I had seen footage of the antics at these clubs on a website dedicated to the swinger side of Cap d’Agde. The pictures showed a
mousse
party, which involves couples and threesomes and foursomes getting freaky while a bubble machine spews soap foam all over their bodies. That they were pumping French rap at bowel-quaking volume made it somehow less irresistible.

It is a strange experience being in places like Vera Playa and Cap d’Agde. Not because of the nudity or swinging, but because as a man traveling alone I am looked at with suspicion. Most of the people who come to nudist resorts are couples. Although I was mostly greeted with a smile if I smiled at them or made small talk while we waited in line at the bakery, occasionally I was greeted with a look that seemed to indicate they thought I was a dangerous deviant. The language barrier didn’t help either. To the people who gave me that look, I want to assure you that I have no interest in having sex with you or your wife or you
and
your wife.
Please
. That is the last thing I want to do. I’m here to learn what I can about the culture of nudism and naturism. I don’t want to get spanked on my balcony, even though there’s nothing wrong with it if you do. But the conversation never gets that far. As Velton writes, “The nice guy who has come to the Cap to sample its famed open-mindedness and tolerance may feel rejected by many simply because he is alone.”

Which sounds way sadder than it actually is.

One night I walked over to the area with most of the swingers’ clubs and watched the fetish fashion show. Why wouldn’t you squeeze your sunburned body into a pair of leather short shorts and a studded leather bra before you strapped on your seven-inch stiletto heels and went clonking across the parking lot to the club? Or that latex dress? Who am I to judge? The most popular look for women seemed to be the dress with the neckline that plunged to their crotch. At that point can it even be called a neckline? Perhaps “plunging pubic line” doesn’t have the necessary cachet
.
I recognize that these are people on vacation in a sexy swinging nudist resort and they’re just having fun. And, really, why shouldn’t they? The only truly disturbing news I have to report is that the ankle-length man skirt is a bona fide fad. I saw it on a half dozen men. Some were leather, others a kind of heavy canvas. It seems the ankle-length man skirt must be worn with heavy motorcycle boots, although I could see it working with Roman sandals. The female companions of these men in skirts were always dressed as characters: Catholic schoolgirl, French maid, anime femme fatale
.

Describing the scene at Cap d’Agde to my wife via Skype was an unusual experience, mostly because being in Cap d’Agde was, for me anyway, an unusual experience. As the sun was setting on the French Mediterranean, she was just waking up in Los Angeles, and the full-frontal sexcapades were just beginning to be expressed by the libertines. Yes, dear, I
can
see naked people having cocktails on their balcony and, well, maybe one of them has an erection, but you can’t really blame him because a naked woman in a mask is rubbing what looks like a silk scarf around his testicles. I believe her response was “Are you fucking kidding me?” These are not easy conversations to have with your wife. How do you explain what goes on at Cap d’Agde to someone who’s not there to see it? It sounds either unbelievably great or unbelievably horrific or completely believably cheesetastic. And it is kind of all those things rolled up into one anti-textile hootenanny. Fortunately for me, she is a generous person with a great sense of humor, so she just shook her head and chuckled.

I began my last day in the Cap with a classic European scene. I was sitting outside a French café, drinking
café crème
and eating a croissant. The sun warmed my sunblock-slathered skin, while a gentle breeze off the ocean kept me from getting too hot, too sunbathery. At the restaurant next door, waiters were blasting AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” while they set the tables for lunch. It could have been any seaside resort in France—the coffee was good, the croissant delicious—only at Cap d’Agde I had my
petit déjeuner
au naturel. Not only that, I was surrounded by nudists from all over Europe. One woman looked like a fashion model, emaciated and gorgeous; a brawny nudist strolled past, the words
LED ZEPPELIN
tattooed down his spine so that it looked like a vertical marquee;
a naked old man in a wheelchair was pushed past by his naked wife, who held a tiny dog on a leash; a few men smoked cigarettes and admired one another’s genital jewelry; couples tapped at their laptop keyboards using the café’s expensive Wi-Fi; and sitting right next to me was a professional sunbather, his body smooth and deeply chocolate brown, his shoulders mottled by places where the sun had annihilated his skin and it had fallen away, peeling off in ragged patches.

I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting to like Cap d’Agde, but I found myself having a certain affection for a place that is this weird. The variety of people and lifestyles and bodies and desires that are on display creates an anarchic vibe that makes a direct philosophical connection to Émile Armand’s hedonistic individualism. This kind of anarchy wouldn’t work without tolerance and mutual, if grudging, respect between the naturists and the swingers. People let their freak flags fly, and once they’re up the pole they are surprisingly freaky. Which makes it fun. They wear their weirdness well here in the Cap, even if it’s a fishnet diaper.

I’d been to two of the most famous nudist resorts in the world, but I knew there was more to nudism and naturism than sunbathing on
la playa
or shopping for wine
sans vêtements
. What about the German tradition of communing with the forest? What was it like to go “free hiking” in the Alps? To find out, I headed to Austria and the Naked European Walking Tour.

********
Tom of Finland is the pseudonym for Touko Laaksonen, a Finnish artist known for his fetish drawings of homosexual men.

********
Seriously, Europe, if I have to hear another crappy rendition of “Proud Mary” I might not come back.

The Naked European Walking Tour

I
t was too cold to hike naked. At least that’s how I felt. The sky was overcast and an icy breeze was coming off the mountain. The alpine blast mixed with the damp air in the valley and hung above the ground in a frosty mist. Even the cows munching on wildflowers in the field looked like they’d rather be in a nice warm barn. But the lack of sunshine and the chill in the air didn’t stop several of the hikers from stripping down to their boots and hats and hitting the trail, marching up the mountain in the scrotum-shrinking cold.