Nudism Update

It has been now approximately one year since I first stumbled upon my first nude event and nearly 10 months since my first became active in DC. Having just gotten home from Key West, I thought this would be a good time to reflect on how my views, understanding and general feelings have evolved over this past year.

As the BF and I sat on the couch and reflected on our vacation we also thought of our other getaways that we've had this year. Now I should say that we've always enjoyed our vacations even in prior years, but this year's vacations seemed to be especially enjoyable to us both.

The answer is really nothing new. It's the warmth of the people. You can stand in a regular bar and maybe the average person might talk to 2 or 3 or so people that they didn't already know. But if that same person was naked in the same bar surrounded with other naked men, he'd likely meet 20 to 30. Perhaps nudism just doesn't attract people that want to hide. Perhaps we just can't take ourselves quite too seriously as we stand there in our nakedness looking positively silly. If you can, try to recall having fun and playing when your an 8 year old kid. Remember the silliness and yet the absolute, true and simple fun that could come from almost anywhere at anytime. Somehow I believe that being naked kind of causes to regress into this state, but totally in a good way. It's just plain fun... well... and sexy, but I guess that's where the the 8 y/o analogy falls apart.

I find that most of us long for a sense of connectedness and a feeling of belonging. We want to be able to simply "be" while still being accepted and not judged. The irony of course is that the very things that we do to achieve these ends are those things that isolate us most. For example, to be accepted we try to be cool. Of course, this immediately alienates anyone that isn't as cool as we are. And even in the circles that have bought into our engineered coolness, there is the stress of maintaining appearances such that we hide behind our cool clothing/hair/lingo/etc. Nudism is not magic, but makes it easier to dispense with such things.

On occasion people have asked me if I am a nudist. I have trouble answering this not because I care what they think about it, but because the word seems to mean so much to so many. I mean, I don't have a political agenda. I don't necessarily think its practical for our society to completely dispense with clothing. And yet I do love being naked. I love being with others that are naked. Although I accept that we will forever live in a clothed society, I believe that our culture could benefit from a little more of the body-acceptance that nudism promotes. Oh yeah... and it's just simply fun.

Does that make me a nudist?