Fringe Florida: Travels Among Mud Boggers, Furries, Ufologists, Nudists, and Other Lovers of Unconventional Lifestyles (43 page)

ment group is successful, seniors will be able to check into a naturist

assisted-living facility when the time comes.

I visited two Pasco nudist resorts, the Riverboat Nudist Campground

and Paradise Lakes Resort, on separate assignments for an alternative

newspaper more than a decade ago, another lifetime.

Since then, three other upscale nudist communities have taken resi-

dence along the now paved road that leads to Riverboat. The shoul-

ders are professionally landscaped with green lawns and stately palms.

Stucco homes are protected from prying eyes by sweeping 6-foot walls.

Then abruptly, the manicured scenery gives way to the native gangly

proof

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Despite its name, the only watercraft you’ll find at the Riverboat Nudist RV Resort

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and Campground is a derelict sailboat listing in a small pond. Photo by author.

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pines and oaks. Pavement turns into a bumpy gravel road. A weath-

ered sign at the end announces the Riverboat Campground entrance

through a battered wood fence. Some things don’t appear to have

changed.

There’s no one in sight, and only one motorcycle is parked outside a

travel trailer that looks like it hasn’t been moved since Reconstruction.

Not promising. A man wearing only an all-over tan approaches with a

clipboard in his hand. He’s in his sixties with salt-and-pepper hair, and

sags in and around all the natural places.

“Are you part of the swinger group?” he asks.

“No,” James shoots back.

He looks at us with a raised eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

Turns out there are so many nude biker events going on this week-

end that Riverboat owner Richard “Hiker” LaRiviere canceled the Butt

Naked Biker Bash. Even a campground resident who is president of an-

other nude biker club was lured away to a competing nude biker event

in Orlando, Hiker says with a sigh.

He booked two swingers groups for the night instead, but it’s early

and no one has yet shown, he explains. “There’s going to be a potluck

dinner. Everybody brings a dish.” He’s referring to food, not partners,

and shows us around a bit.

proof

“Then we’ll have a foam party. We’ve got a machine by the stage,”

Hiker says, pointing to a covered pavilion with strobe lights and a mir-

rored disco ball hanging from the ceiling. The campground doesn’t

have a liquor license so alcohol is BYOB, he explains, continuing our

quick tour of the recreation area, which is about the size of a school

lunchroom.

Following a strange nude man around outdoors is a little bewilder-

ing. Since I don’t want to stare at his bare ass, I scan the surroundings,

which aren’t much safer. An older, plump, naked couple suns by the

small pool; a man inside the game room leans over the pool table to

make a corner shot, giving full view of his droopy genitals.

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Straight on, I look only at Hiker’s face, ever conscious of not letting

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my eyes drift downward.

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It’s true what nudists say about not wearing clothing: You can’t tell

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what a naked person does for a living or how much money they have.

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Clothes are a uniform that allow us to stereotype one another at first

glance.

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Nevertheless, given the fact that Hiker lives in a trailer back in

the woods, getting as close to nature as Adam and Eve, I assume he’s

kind of dropped out of society, that he spends most of his time lazing

around the tiny, rustic campground and hosting just enough events to

allow him that luxury.

However, I am wrong. Hiker has ambitions and interests far beyond

running Riverboat. He proudly hands me his business card, which re-

veals he’s a videographer, a filmmaker, and the founder of the Florida

Museum of Motion Picture and Television.

His films aren’t porn, although a few of his short art flicks do include

nude bodies, sometimes that of his adult daughter, XZanthia. It’s a

rather free-spirited family bond.

XZanthia and other amateur actors, screenwriters, and cameramen

work in his production company called Never Nominated Pictures. His

studio is in a large metal building at Riverboat, but what’s more sur-

prising is what he houses in the other side of the building—more than

thirty-five thousand pieces of movie and television memorabilia. His

movie-camera collection alone holds the Guinness World Record. Then

he has costumes worn by legendary actress Bette Davis and modern-

day
King
Kong
starlet Naomi Watts; props from
Cleopatra
and
Gangs
of
New
York
, along with spotlights, kid’s projectors, and much more. All

the collectibles are to be part of the Museum of Motion Picture and

proof

Television, which he founded but has yet to find a home for outside the

nudist campground.

After selling himself as an auteur, Hiker seems weary of us. We’re

clearly neither nudists nor swingers. He aims to pass us off to XZan-

thia, who he says handles all the marketing. We’re welcome to look

around while he finds her.

The park’s been upgraded since my last visit and has a funkier edge.

Along with the new covered stage and dance floor, amateur impres-

sionistic paintings rest on tables and along the base of the wall in the

community room, giving the suggestion of an artist studio. Mosaics of

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broken tiles in pathways and half-melted candles around a weathered

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furniture area send out a hippie vibe. But then a handful of new white

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mobile homes with tiny bay windows kill any whimsy. It still, of course,

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has a heap of backwoods Florida—the murky pond remains covered

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with lily pads, a broken-down sailboat listing at its edge.

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XZanthia walks up wearing a short T-shirt and bikini bottoms. A

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shapely thirty-year-old with long, black dreadlocks and tattoos from

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ankle to neck, she looks like someone you’d be more likely to see at

2

Nevada’s Burning Man experimental-art gathering than at a nudist

campground in the middle of Pasco County. She leads us to the office

to talk while she readies for an Ybor City art walk.

“I pretty much grew up here,” she says. “My parents divorced, and

I lived with my mom for a while in California. She sent me back here

when I was eleven because things were pretty crazy. It wasn’t a good

place for a kid.”

Makes you wonder how bad it could have been. Especially after she

admits that coming of age in a hippie nudist camp wasn’t always ideal.

“It was hard because my friends weren’t allowed to come over.” As she

developed curves she had to put up with greasy leers from some ques-

tionable park visitors. “There were creeps who would stare at me like .

. .” She makes googly eyes and hangs her tongue out like a dog. “I’d put

something on. That’s why I still wear bottoms sometimes by the pool.”

As an adult, XZanthia set out for the West, landing in Colorado,

where she ran an artist collective for several years. She came back to

the Riverboat with big dreams of transforming it into something simi-

lar, except with nudity allowed. “I want it be more talent- than vagina-

based,” she says.

To that end, she’s hosted nude drum circles and glow-in-the-dark

parties with go-go dancers in blue wigs, fur boots, and little else. She’s

proof

managed to make the cult classic
Rocky
Horror
Picture
Show
even more surreal by having young, nude actors interact with the projected film.

Imagine naked people doing the “Time Warp.”

She grabs me a flier from atop one of the cluttered office desks. It

has a large silhouette of a young woman with the word “Party” covering

her breasts and “Naked” covering her crotch. The X Bash is advertised

as a weekend party with seven bands, six DJs, a foam party, art ven-

dors, and performance artists. In small print along the bottom it says:

“Children are welcomed. This is a family event.”

I’m wondering if the name X Bash and even XZanthia’s name has

anything to do with the club drug Ecstasy, which is commonly referred

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to as
X
. XZanthia seems to read my thoughts. “There are no drugs al-

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lowed,” she says. “My people are family-oriented. Some of them have

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kids. I’m a health-food nut, a vegan. I don’t do drugs. I don’t even drink

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coffee.”

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“I want to make X Bash a Florida Burning Man,” she says. “People

can have themed campsites. I want people to be creative.”

032

It all sounds innocent, artistic, and fanciful with the idealism of

youth. Her enthusiasm is so intoxicating that I almost forget we were

asked if we were part of a swinger group upon arriving.

So how do her plans jive with the sex parties?

“I want to get away from all that. But hey, when swingers offer to

pay thousands of dollars, you can’t turn it down. It’s what makes the

money, pays the bills. Eventually I hope we can rent out enough artist

spaces so we won’t have to do that stuff.”

She stands up and crosses the room, pulling off her T-shirt as she

goes, revealing more than just the tattoo that spans her back. She faces

us as she picks up another shirt and tugs it down over her large, firm

breasts. I look at James, worried he may have passed out. He avoids eye

contact, fiddling with the hem of his shirt.

The Butt Naked Biker Bash being a bust, we head out, back to our

protective little womb in St. Petersburg. Although disappointed to miss

the hotdog-snatching contest, I’ll have an opportunity to mingle with

other nude bikers next month. The Bare Buns Bikers plan to party all

weekend at Caliente Tampa Resort, a more upscale nude environ. In

the meantime, nude Florida is worthy of closer inspection.

Naked in Nature

proof

Pasco County may have Florida’s largest concentration of nude resi-

dents, but it’s not the only public place in the state where you can walk

around in the buff without fear of arrest. In fact, there are twenty-

seven American Association for Nude Recreation (AANR) member

clubs in Florida, and that doesn’t include at least three that haven’t

joined the association. Some AANR clubs don’t have permanent gath-

ering places but instead hold occasional naked soirées at hotels. Then

there’s Florida’s one official nude beach—Haulover Beach in Miami.

On typical weekends, the quarter-mile stretch of Atlantic sand is so

crowded that nudists have to step over one another to find a place to

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spread their towels.

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Like most Florida lifestyles, nudism originally mushroomed in the

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state because of the year-round sunshine. Pretty hard to be a full-time

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nudist where it snows all winter. Pasco County is Grand Central for

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nudist resorts largely because laws are more lax. Businesses are allowed

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to sell alcohol around fully naked people. That distinction, however,

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didn’t initially fuel the growth of Pasco’s bare-all communal life. The

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early nudist communities were established when Pasco was truly in the

2

middle of nowhere and no one much cared what you did out there in

the sticks.

The Pasco Area Naturist Development Association, also known as

PANDAbare.org, by proxy has become the source for the area’s nudism

history. The group credits a Florida lawyer named Avery Weaver “Bru”

Brubacker with founding Pasco’s nudism community in the 1940s after

he was prescribed “nude time” by his doctor. Bru and his wife started

swimming naked in the Gulf of Mexico. Before long they invited friends

to join them for skinny dips along the isolated beaches of Gasparilla

and Honeymoon Islands. On one of those playful excursions, the crew

hatched a wild idea to build a full-time nudist resort. It would be the

first of its kind in the United States.

Bru and his wife bought land surrounding a lake in Pasco County

and opened the Florida Athletic and Health Association/Lake Como