(1981), studying the sexual activities of Americans before AIDS. Did he find sex at Sunshine Park? I don’t know. I certainly did not.
Only once more did I ever return to any nudist colonies. In the late 1970s, I convinced my girlfriend and another couple to visit Camp Goodland. There was no nervousness but a major thunderstorm hit in midafternoon, and we had to pack it in after a short time at the pool. The place looked seedy, not as well-maintained as my first time there, and clearly not enough tennis players to warrant rebuilding the decaying tennis court. The black ants still ruled, the wood holding up the chicken wire enclosure was thoroughly rotten, and the torn net sagged so much no one was likely to double fault on a serve.
Twice I went nude swimming in ocean waters, once on Gay Head, a beautiful beach on Martha’s Vineyard, with my girlfriend and a black couple who got us an inexpensive week in a basement apartment of their friends in the hamlet of Oak Bluff, a historic black community. The four of us stripped off our bathing suits and enjoyed the beach and water all to ourselves. The other time was at a crowded nude beach on the Greek island of Mykonos.
6
Drowning Naked in Paradise
In 1979, at the age of forty-two, I went nude ocean swimming in what struck me as paradise. I was out of shape from insufficient exercise and had put on some weight, but not so much as to be embarrassed by my less than svelte figure.
Traveling alone from Paris to the Greek isles by train and boat, my French girlfriend, too busy to accompany me, I befriended three young Japanese tourists. Hiroshi was a worker at a car plant, and the two women, whose names I forgot, were on break from their studies in Paris. Although all three were very agreeable, when they chose to speak Japanese, I was lost. The women and I could converse in French, but Hiroshi knew only his native language.
Together the four of us took a boat from Athens’ port of Piraeus to the beautiful island of Mykonos, in the crystal clear Aegean Sea. Hiroshi and I slept in a clean, simple and inexpensive rooming house run by a woman who met our incoming boat, rather than seeking out an expensive hotel room. One day, the two young women went off on their own, and I persuaded Hiroshi to stick with me as I sought transportation to what was reportedly a famous nude beach. What he understood of what I was saying was never clear. All the English he knew came from a Japanese-English phrase book.
When the owner of a small motorboat took us to a nude beach the tourists called Paradise, Hiroshi was surprised to find buck naked people, and I was surprised to find only men. “Where are all the women?” I asked the skipper, who understood English. “Oh, I see two men, so I think they want the homosexual beach. There is another beach with men and women. My mistake. I take you there.”
Now on what tourists nicknamed Super Paradise, I saw luscious blonde nude women, Scandinavians taking off their string bikinis and getting full-body tans to take back to cold northern countries. All the men and women I saw were physically fit, no double stomachs or sagging breasts. I was too overcome by all this beauty to approach any one of them, as though each nude were a sculpture in the Louvre back in Paris, Venus de Milos, but with added arms, torso, and legs. In any case, there were two of us who, under other circumstances, might have asked two beauties to join us, risking rejection, but what was I to do with a shy friend who spoke only Japanese?
We found a spot for our towels, and Hiroshi seemed very puzzled now but did not know how to ask, “Where am I and why all the people with no clothes?” This would have been more than his phrase book could have handled. He sat on his towel staring at the sand, afraid to look up, or even to take his polo shirt off, much less his trunks. I signaled that I was going into the water, using improvised sign language, hands making swimming motions. He nodded and used the word that seems to be international, “okay.”
I swam out past the anchored yachts, enjoying the quiet lapping of clear water, only to discover that there was an undertow. As I tried to return to shore, I was silently, insistently, carried further away. Had I come to this idyllic, romantic island, to a beach called Super Paradise, only to drown? And completely naked? With a Japanese friend who did not even know my last name? And no lifeguards?
I felt the sharp edge of fear and thought of calling out to someone on a nearby yacht for help, but how would that work? “Help! Help! I’m drowning! So sorry to interrupt your cocktail hour. I hope you don’t mind having a naked man on your boat. Please excuse me for not being a beautiful young woman or a mermaid.”
My mind began working hard to calm me down. “Look, you’re a macho man, like that song from the Village People that Club Med likes to play at beach parties together with ‘Y.M.C.A.’ And you have Boy Scout swimming and lifesaving merit badges. Lifesaving passed at a YMCA, in the nude.”
I felt the pleasant softness of the water gently caressing me.
“Yeah?” I answered myself, “but I was in much better shape then.”
Floating on my back, gathering my strength, I appreciated the sun, high in the midday sky, warm and bright.
“Of course, but you still have the skills, like riding a bike.”
A few seagulls glided silently by. Calm began to conquer fear.
“Yeah, I do remember what I learned so many years ago: swim parallel to the beach, work your way slowly inward, float on your back to rest when you get tired. You’re okay. This is terrific exercise.”
The beach was now within reach, as if its closeness had been willed by my still-calm brain.
As I staggered onto the beach like a shipwreck survivor, dazed from the struggle and nearsighted without my glasses, I reached the blur that I recognized as Hiroshi. Looking in his phrase book, he asked, “Good time?”
Breathing hard, I could only say “Okay,” as I dropped onto my sandy towel. I closed my eyes to the sky, exhausted, but not too tired to imagine folding my arms around one of the gorgeous women, with no daylight between our bodies.
7
Amnesia through Age Five and Sitting Still
Strange for someone with an almost photographic memory for many people’s faces and events in a life that so far has carried me within striking distance of age eighty, octogenarian territory, but I have no memory at all of the first five years of my life. Oh sure, I was told about multiple events multiple times by my mother, and I looked at early photographs my father took before he stopped thinking I was cute and adorable, but the first thing I actually remember was the first day of kindergarten at the Ben Franklin Normal School far from our house. Betty Moser wet her pants and, in tears, was taken home by her mother. The rest of the year is a blank.
I do remember a few events of the first grade at the nearby Fifth Street Elementary School primarily because Miss Krauss, the only Jewish teacher, reported home to my mother that I had trouble sitting still. She had me sharpening large batches of pencils, and maybe this was the year when I was sent out to the very rudimentary, gravel-covered playground to pick up candy wrappers and other garbage, wielding a long stick with a nail on the end. I also remember being home in bed with the measles and Miss Krauss—her first name was Sarah—visiting me, maybe giving me a coloring book, but I’m not sure of that. Her visit struck me as an honor, my teacher coming to my house, the only time that ever happened, ever.
Second grade passed like a blur. I could recall only the teacher’s name, a Miss or Mrs. Gorey. I’m not even sure I got the name correct, and I don’t think I ever knew her first name. Most teachers did not give out their first names like that was some kind
