Tasteful Nudes: ...and Other Misguided Attempts at Personal Growth and Validation (2 page)

The occasional brush with fate or some romantic date’s poor judgment aside, I still wanted more in the nudity department. Then as luck would have it, I was asked to cover a “clothing-optional dinner” by a now-defunct radio program.

“We couldn’t talk anyone on our staff or even someone not on our staff into doing it,” they told me. “Then your name came up.”

“I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” I said, remaining perfectly calm.

As an inquisitive and occasionally hard-hitting journalist, I felt obligated to accept. The fact that I’d be hanging out with a bunch of totally naked people and actually getting paid for it made me feel like I was creating my own destiny. It was as if I had been working toward this moment my whole life.

The group behind these clothing-optional dinners held events every few months, usually in some restaurant with a spare banquet room, an open-minded waitstaff, and—presumably—chairs that wipe down easily. But the stars magically aligned and the dinner I planned to drop in on would be taking place on a small cruise ship that would sexily wend its way around New York City’s sexy surrounding waters as sexy naked people enjoyed what would undoubtedly be one sexy, sexy meal. My great-grandfather was a sea captain,
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so it was almost as if my past and present had joined forces to give me what would undoubtedly be one of the greatest and most important nights of my life. I was born to be on that boat, dammit.

It was a rainy evening as I hopped in a cab headed for the water with John, a tech guy the radio show sent along with me to record everything the naked people and I said, and my friend Lucy, who was coming along both for emotional support and in hopes that this naked cruise was going to be every bit as awesome as I kept telling her it would be.

“Everyone on the boat is going to be fully nude and just kind of free, y’know?” I told her excitedly. “There’s also supposed to be a very nice buffet.”

“I’m sorry,” Lucy said. “It just doesn’t sound like my kind of thing.”

“Please, I really need this.”

“Fine, but you owe me one.”

“You got it!”

I figured if things didn’t go as planned, at least I’d be on a boat with a good friend, which is always nice. Also, to be honest, whether I took my clothes off or not, I didn’t feel secure enough in my masculinity to go out there with just another dude.

The naked boat was setting sail from Sheepshead Bay, an area of Brooklyn that looks like it was once the stomping grounds of sailors, convicts, and whores but is now a port of call for sexy, sexy people with both a taste for adventure and a distaste for clothes, which is to say, people I totally could not wait to hang out with. I was certain the boat was going to be teeming with open-minded, uninhibited, and totally butt-naked superfoxes and maybe a handful of dudes with their junk out that I would just have to accept as part of the deal.

As our cab pulled up to the docks, it wasn’t hard to spot the naked party boat. It was practically radiating good times. Even from far away I could see large swatches of flesh passing sexily by the boat’s windows.

“Come to us, Dave, you succulent man,” I swore I heard them call from the distance. “We’re waaaaiting.…” My expectations, however, were dealt their first blow as soon as we got a little closer and myopia was no longer on my side. There, awaiting our arrival in the boat’s entryway, was Ron, the event organizer and—to his credit—the brains behind the operation. Pale, freckled, and fiftyish, Ron wore only glasses and had a build not unlike a lopsided baked potato with four toothpicks shoved into it. One gut picked up just below where the first one left off and, well, I was determined not to investigate any further south after that.

“Whatever, I’m not here to look at dudes anyway,” I thought.

“Welcome,” Ron said with a firm yet slightly-too-long handshake. “I’m so happy you’ve decided to cover our little event here!”

“It’s my pleasure,” I said before immediately questioning that statement.

“Wonderful,” Ron said. “Now climb aboard, we’ll be setting sail just as soon as everyone gets situated.”

As I quickly learned, in Ron’s vocabulary “situated” meant “pantsless.” At this point, I was starting to think maybe this would be like the movie
Eyes Wide Shut
where all the men were old and flabby, but all the women were still scorching hot for some reason. But that delusion was shattered only seconds later as Ron led me to the main dining area of the boat. There I was greeted by about thirty absolutely nude men and women in their forties and fifties, a shameless sea of pasty flab, cellulite, and slowly graying pubic hair.

“Usually we have a bigger group,” Ron explained, “but the rain has kept a lot of folks away.”

“Are you sure it’s the rain?” I wanted to ask him.

To be fair, this wasn’t necessarily an unattractive bunch. They more served to illustrate the fact that most people should probably keep covered up at all times than, for example, the idea that ugly people simply can’t wait to drop their pants in a group setting. The exception, of course, were the half dozen gay men seated together in one corner, who were uniformly toned and tanned from head-to-toe. (As I understand it, most gay men receive a gym membership in the mail immediately after even grazing a male crotch other than their own for the first time, so this wasn’t a surprise, really.)

As I slowly made my way around the boat, I decided to take my shirt off in a show of solidarity. Pale, flabby, somehow skinny and fat at the same time, and with enough random patches of body hair to singlehandedly prove the theory of evolution, I’m not exactly headed for the cover of
Men’s Fitness
any time soon myself. Still, I was confident my looks (or lack thereof) would land me squarely between Ron and the table of gay guys, so I figured I might as well go for it.

“You’re not going to take off your pants?” Ron teased me.

“Baby steps, Ron,” I told him. “Baby steps.”

“Oh, come on, Dave,” he persisted. “Why not just see how you feel without them for a bit? For me.”

“What happened to the ‘optional’ part in ‘clothing optional’?” I wondered. He could have at least offered to buy me a drink or told me how nice my hair looked first. But, among other things, tonight was about acceptance, so Ron let the whole thing about me keeping my wedding tackle under wraps slide as he began to further explain what exactly I was in for once we pulled up anchor and headed out into the extra-friendly waters.

“There’s only one rule at our dinners,” Ron smiled. “No hot soup.”

He said that last part like it was the group’s official slogan. I wanted to suggest he get it printed up on T-shirts, but it seemed pointless. And as it turned out, there was another rule besides that one—everyone has to put a towel down on their chair before sitting, a courtesy that I’m guessing facilitates both sanitary table hopping and Ron getting his deposit back.

As Ron continued bringing me up to speed, I couldn’t help but notice he was one of those people who stands just a little too close to you when he’s talking, a detail greatly magnified by the fact that his senior vice president was flapping in the breeze as he spoke to me. Still, I had a job to do, so I held my ground and began asking the tough questions.

“What about erections?” I asked.

“What about them?” Ron replied.

“Well, are they frowned upon or … not at all?” I asked with a wink.

“It rarely happens,” he explained as if he were reading aloud from some member literature, “but if it does, we ask that the owner simply be discreet about it and excuse himself.”

“Good to know,” I said.

“But I think you’ll find this is a completely nonsexual environment,” Ron continued.

I couldn’t have agreed with him more, but I think my reasons were different than his.

A moment later, Ron’s wife, Elaine, walked over to join in the fun. Again, I have no doubt she was a perfectly attractive woman with clothes on, but au naturel she was just further proof of what I’ve been saying since the ’80s—no one should ever take their clothes off in front of another human unless there is either a medical emergency, the prospect of friction, or a significant amount of money changing hands. For starters, Elaine’s personal lawncare choices made her look almost like she was wearing a snow-covered ghillie suit.
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I’d go on but I’m kind of a gentleman.

“How are you enjoying yourself so far?” Elaine asked me.

“I’m just so … happy to be at sea,” I said, struggling for an answer.

“Yeah, it’s so nice and breezy,” she agreed.

With Elaine at his unencumbered side, Ron quickly turned to her for backup on how their group dinners were more about enjoying a nice meal with like-minded folks than checking out other people’s gender bits.

“The thing about our group is no one is going around looking at other people’s privates or anything like that,” Elaine said firmly. “It’s just not what we’re about.”

“Of course not, Elaine,” I agreed. “May I call you Elaine?”

“Sure. Anyway, one thing I always say to people about these dinners is that I’ve never had so many people look me directly in the eyes.”

I didn’t doubt it, but that just seemed to be about survival more than anything else. I had been on the boat for less than ten minutes and was already worried I’d need to be treated for post-traumatic stress disorder once I got back on dry land.

Once my conversation with Ron and Elaine ran, ahem, bare, I decided to make my way to the bar. Normally I try to avoid drinking on the job but I felt like I had plenty of excuses this time, so I ordered myself a beer. The bartender, an employee of the cruise line, evidently looking to join in the fun, was working shirtless tonight. Acknowledging each other’s pants, we gave a “there but for the grace of God go I” look to each other before I turned around to do some sexy mingling.

By this time, Lucy, who had wandered off on her own shortly after we came aboard in order to let me wear my journalist hat, was already deep in conversation with a handful of naked people at a nearby table. The fact that she remained fully clothed must have rendered her exotic in their eyes as they were showering her with attention. As soon as I walked over to join them, however, they grew quiet. Thanks to Ron, word that I was a reporter had already made its way around the boat and no one was too eager to be outed as a practicing nudist by me, the guy with a notepad and completely fastened pants.

“People at my job wouldn’t understand,” a mustachioed man with a dangling earring explained to me.

“Really? That’s strange,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic. “So you’re not exactly crazy about wearing pants—big deal.”

“That’s what I think,” he agreed.

“Some men you just can’t reach,” I told him, shaking my head.

There was a reporter and photographer from
The New York Times
on the boat, too, but they seemed to be taking in the proceedings from afar, as if they were at the zoo, not getting right into the pen like I was. I suppose in that way, I was a bit more threatening. Plus, with the exception of the gay guys, I had the closest thing to a six-pack going on the entire starboard side, which wasn’t saying a whole lot, but it must have been a little intimidating under the circumstances.

“Are you okay?” I whispered to Lucy as I tried to blend in with her and her new friends.

“Yeah, these people are really nice,” she whispered back. “Really weird, but nice.”

“Pretty strong words coming from the only person on this boat with all her clothes on,” I said while pulling up a chair.

No sooner did I get settled in with Lucy and the naked people than Ron rang the dinner bell. Across from the bar was a banquet table covered in heaping trays of food. It turns out naked people eat pretty much the same stuff that clothed people do: salad, string beans, salmon, bowtie pasta, and a beef dish of some sort. The difference, however, was that in this scenario people’s junk dangled just inches from the hot plates and Bunsen burners. I would have thought the situation called for a pud guard of sorts, but clearly this gang didn’t have hang-ups like l did. I cringed as I watched a man’s leaky faucet come dangerously close to plunging into a bowl of honey mustard vinaigrette.

“Sir, uh—” I said to him.

“Yes?”

“Never mind.”

Suddenly, my hunger trumped any other issues I might have had at the moment, so I powered through, skipping the salad yet filling my plate to the edge like the hearty fourth generation seaman I am.

Settling in back at a table with the naked people, I attempted to get their stories. A fairly equal mix of men and women, some wore facial hair, some not, some wore pubic hair, some not. It was a good start, but I wanted to learn more.

“So, what brings you guys here tonight?” I asked. “Are you all nudists looking to mix things up with a little boating? Or is it maybe the other way around?”

Despite my sincere interest, most of them kept quiet and the ones that were willing to speak with me did so as if they had just taken a media training seminar for people who hate clothes.

“This isn’t about sex, this is about being together in our natural state,” a man with hair on his chest and nowhere else told me as the rest of the naked people nodded in agreement. I decided to take them at their word, mostly because I was whatever the opposite of horny is at that point, and it wasn’t hard to agree that this night had absolutely, positively nothing to do with sex. Still, their answer didn’t exactly explain why an attendee who introduced himself as “the Wolf” got dressed only from the waist up once a cool sea breeze rolled in.

“What’s with the sweatshirt?” I asked.

“I’m cold,” the Wolf said.

“Are you cold just from the waist up then or…?” I persisted.

“No. I’m cold all over.”

“Why no pants then?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I just don’t know.”

“So it really is all about having your beef thermometer out then, right?” I asked the Wolf as professionally as I knew how.

It felt like an “a-ha!” moment to me, but the Wolf just continued to dodge the question. That didn’t stop me from getting at least a few answers out of him, though. Apparently the Wolf first got into nudism after seeing a sign for nude camping grounds while he was out for a drive one day. Wasting no time, he pulled over and joined in the fun. Even more impressive was the fact that this was the Wolf’s first time at one of these “clothing optional” dinners and he had come alone.