Naked at Lunch (36 page)

“The year was 1989. My husband and I were scheduled to take a scuba diving trip on a live-aboard dive boat in Belize. It was a long-awaited trip for me, an overworked and underpaid bank officer with high blood pressure. My husband was also stressed and we were both desperately in need of a getaway. When he got word from a county court judge that one of his clients was due to be deposed on the day we were scheduled to leave on our trip, he made a quick call to the boat operator and was told that we could still catch the boat in Belize the following week; however, it was chartered by a group of nudists.”

This news didn’t go over well.

“I was so angry that he would even suggest this sort of thing that I tossed the literature he handed me into the trash. Later that evening when I was cleaning up the dinner dishes, I saw the brochures in the trash can. I lifted the small brochure out of the trash. I was taken by the woman on the cover. No beachcombing Barbie here, but rather a fortysomething woman talking about social nudism, how it had changed her life. She spoke of body acceptance, of letting go of her preconceived notions on public nudity and our society’s unrealistic ideal of beauty and perfection. Intrigued, I flipped through the pages and saw more ‘real’ women in different stages of life . . . As I read their stories I found myself relaxing a bit.”

I was curious if she’d ever tried skinny-dipping before she got this brochure.

“I first did it on a dare when I was thirteen years old. It was at Janie McFarland’s sleepover party in her backyard pool. I remember how good it felt! And skinny-dipping was something I enjoyed from time to time . . . after dark . . . in the privacy of our backyard pool.”

So she and her husband decided to roll the dice and booked the trip.

“‘What the heck,’ I thought. ‘If the people are too weird, if all the nakedness is just unbearable, we’ll scuba dive and then retreat to our cabin and read.’”

This accidental vacation led her to a life-changing epiphany.

“Our experience over the next seven days, of vacationing sans clothing, was so positive and the people so extraordinary that I felt that I would never be quite the same again. And the more we talked to others on board, the more it became apparent that trips like this were few and far between. Mainstream travel opportunities were simply not available to the nudist world.”

An entrepreneurial nudist was born. The rest, as they say, is history.

“It didn’t happen overnight and it took some planning and a lot of good luck, but the bottom line (pun intended) here is that I happily and openly quit my day job and started a tour production company designed to cater to nudists looking for mainstream travel opportunities. Bare Necessities Tour and Travel, Inc., was born in September 1990 with the filing of corporate papers. Since that time I have been living my best life, doing what I love the most, traveling with like-minded people and building a community.”

It’s the community part of the Bare Necessities experience that surprised me. There’s what I can only call a friendly vibe among the passengers, like you’re part of a secret club. I asked Nancy how she felt about creating this kind of experience.

“You know, I feel a tremendous sense of satisfaction. Not that I did it alone by any stretch. It grew more organically than that. As extraordinary as my story may seem, it would not be so were it not for the people I have met along the way. Nudists, or those who choose to travel where clothing is not a priority or necessity, seem to be more laid-back, have a better sense of self, and are simply more friendly, compassionate, and easy to get to know. And having no clothes on is a real equalizer. It’s difficult to recognize the soccer mom from the Fortune 500 CEO . . . and no one cares. And isn’t that what a vacation is for? To get away, enjoy the company of others, and come home relaxed, stress-free, and happy.”

By almost any measure, Bare Necessities has been a success. I have to admit I’m impressed by the sheer gumption of a young woman who not only decided she wanted to spend her time nude—which, if you think about it, would lead some people to have her committed—but who actually quit her job and made it happen. I asked Nancy if there was a secret to her success, just in case someday I find myself having a life-changing epiphany. Her answer revealed that blend of modesty and no-nonsense-ness that is typically Texan. “There is no secret, really. If you are in the hospitality/service industry, be hospitable and provide a service.”

…

Bare Necessities isn’t the only nude cruise provider on the high seas. There are other companies plying the waters, with names like Dream Pleasure Tours, Castaways Travel, and Travel Buff. In case a boat full of naked people just isn’t exciting or unusual enough, some of these cruises are for swingers and boast of a “hotter” environment than you might find on a typical nude cruise. Although the swinging is, apparently, not without rules and conditions. Castaways posted a warning on its website that stated: “Public sex is NOT permitted nor condoned.”

All this freedom and friendship and food doesn’t come cheap. My stateroom, priced on the low end of a variety of options, came to over $3,000 for the seven-day trip, or roughly $500 a day. More if you calculate our alcohol consumption. But that’s only a couple hundred dollars more than you’d pay for the same itinerary on a textile cruise.

There were other ports of call on the cruise: we took a ride down something called the Jamaican Bobsled and drank Red Stripe beer in Ocho Rios; toured the Cayman Islands Public Library—all the proof you need that I am a nerd —and drank Caybrew lager in George Town; strolled along a forest trail on a small island off the coast of Honduras and then quenched our thirst with a Salva Vida beer. Perhaps you see a pattern emerging. None of these activities involved nudity and, if I’m being honest, it was a relief to put on some clothes and venture out into the world. But for those travelers who wanted to stay anti-textile, there were nude excursions available at each port of call for anyone who wanted to pay for them. Although at the beach in Honduras, the nudists from the ship stripped and skinny-dipped and no one said anything, even though it was supposedly against the rules. I think for the locals, pragmatism trumped any moral misgivings they might’ve had, and having happy tourists eating and drinking on their beach was more profitable than turning them away just because they weren’t wearing clothes.

I was especially proud of my research assistant. She managed to put her initial reluctance and discomfort at being naked in public aside. And ultimately I think she was surprised to discover that she actually enjoyed herself. Her tentative forays around the boat grew bolder and she started to get the hang of being a nudist, and by the end of the trip she was sporting a sarong and walking topless in a 5k cancer charity walk-a-thon around the decks with hundreds of other naked men and women.

Because she is so friendly, we suddenly had people asking us if we’d put a deposit on the Big Nude Boat cruise for next year, or if we were going on the one after that, the cruise called “le Carnaval del Caribe” that would celebrate Mardi Gras in Guadeloupe. Surprisingly, or at least it was surprising to me, most of the people we talked to had already put deposits down on these cruises. At the time I felt as if we’d been accepted into the nude cruiser community, but with hindsight I think it might have more to do with people enjoying my wife’s company.

…

Late one evening, my research assistant turned and chinged her wineglass against mine. She looked at me and said, “This is nice.”

We were sitting on the private balcony outside our stateroom drinking a bottle of wine and looking at the lights of the southern coast of Cuba twinkle in the dark as the ship plowed through the night. It was cool and breezy, but not cold, so we sat on our towels in the nude and felt the air whip around our bodies. It was an amazingly pleasant feeling, almost as nice as swimming in the water in the Bahamas. I’d gotten used to seeing naked people everywhere and I’d gotten somewhat more accustomed to being naked with all these naked people. I can’t deny that the combination of a crisp Sancerre, balmy Caribbean breezes, a clear and starlit night, the Cuban coast, and my alluring and naked research assistant weren’t situational factors influencing my thinking. But was I a nudist? Had I reached some kind of hedonistic tipping point?

********
Not her real name.

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I did not assign her this task.

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Pro Tip: I took a tour of the ship’s kitchen and was talking to the executive chef about where the crew eats. He told me they had their own kitchen and their own Indonesian chefs. I asked if I could have the crew food in the main dining hall and, to his credit, he hooked us up with a fantastic Indonesian meal. Thanks, Chef Martin!

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No idea what a bow thrust is, but it must be important because it’s mentioned in all the press materials about the ship.

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Photographer Jack Gescheidt talked about his TreeSpirit project and presented beautiful photographs of nude people climbing trees.

Naked at Lunch

I
was sitting under a tree by a small lake in the Austrian Alps. The lake was nestled in a valley not far from the little town of Mandling, the surrounding hills crisscrossed by trails used for cross-country skiing in the winter and hiking in the summer. A shallow stream gurgled down the mountain, feeding into the lake. The sun was shining, birds were chirping in the trees, dragonflies were zipping low over the water, and the shore was littered with naked people lying in the sun or swimming quietly in the lake. It was about as pastoral a scene as pastoral gets: naked humans communing with nature, surrounded by the bucolic vibe of the sylvan. This is what the French naturist Durville brothers were talking about, what the health food fanatic from Stuttgart, Richard Ungewitter, saw as the salvation of humanity from the machine age. This was the escape from the urban that New Yorker Kurt Barthel aspired to, the hedonistic individualism of anarchist Émile Armand, the simple pleasure that left-wing beachgoer Lee Baxandall fought for. It was a stress-free, groovy slice of arcadian paradise.

I opened my backpack and took out a cheese sandwich wrapped in wax paper and a couple of fresh apricots. Richard Foley, free hiker extraordinaire and ringmaster of the Naked European Walking Tour, sat down next to me. Polly, Richard’s dog, trotted up with a stick in her mouth and flopped to the ground at our feet. The three of us sat there quietly for a while.

I finally broke the silence by thanking Richard for organizing the hike and for letting me come along and share what had turned out to be a challenging and profoundly enjoyable experience.

Richard unwrapped a sandwich and fed a little meat to Polly, and then turned to me and said, “After this book is done do you think you’ll be a naturist?”

It was a good question and one that I didn’t have an answer for at the time. I shrugged and said, “I don’t know.”

When I look back at all the people I’ve met and the experiences I’ve had in the course of writing this book, I’m struck by the realization that, well, society just doesn’t get it. The nudists and naturists I’ve met are not kinky freaks and weirdos, they’re not exhibitionists or voyeurs or pedophiles; for the most part they are friendly people who just want to enjoy the sensual pleasures that life has to offer, just like foodies and wine snobs, people who go to spas or concerts or sporting events, and people who stop and smell the roses—basically anyone who does something for the pure pleasure of it. Nudists enjoy the sensation of sun and wind and water on their bodies. And I would argue that unless one has some sort of debilitating skin condition, everyone enjoys these sensations. Nudists are just brave enough or honest enough to go all the way. So it begs the question: Is society punishing and stigmatizing nudists because it’s afraid of the pleasure they’re having? Is it that rich vein of Puritanism running through our psyche that says pleasure is bad? If that’s true, we, and I mean all of us, need to see a shrink.

It’s like some weird disconnect. If you look at celebrity gossip websites or magazines at the supermarket, it’s pretty obvious that American society has an obsession with scantily clad celebrities and their nipple slips and miniskirt upshots. We are entranced by the erotic transit of partially dressed celebrities walking the red carpet. And yet we can’t let someone go skinny-dipping without being offended. Maybe it’s some kind of self-shaming mechanism for the guilt we feel about ogling celebs. Are we that immature?

If so we need to grow the fuck up. Accept that humans are sexual animals, that we’re born with bodies, that we all look basically the same. Even the hottest young buck strutting on Black’s Beach has the same body as the seventy-five-year-old grandpa sunbathing on the Big Nude Boat; the only difference is time and, perhaps, the tolls taken by a sedentary lifestyle and a taste for fried food.

Society needs to come to terms with the fact that some of us like pleasurable pursuits. A person shouldn’t feel guilt or shame for being naked any more than someone should feel guilt or shame for enjoying a ripe peach. So what if people want to go skinny-dipping at the beach? If it really bothers you, maybe you need to take a long look at yourself and figure out
why
it bothers you. Just because you’re offended doesn’t give you the right to keep someone from enjoying their own body and the environment. Two things we all share. Two things that are free of charge.