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 black 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 Davey 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 Davey’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.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
