Yes, it finally happened. After dodging the proverbial bullet for three decades, it finally hit me: the most embarrassing thing that can happen to a nudist.
I’ve hated clothes since I was a kid. Shoes, socks, underwear (shudder): stick to me like leeches. By age twelve, I was stripping down to my bare skin the moment the family was out of the house. But I was always ready should my parents or siblings arrive unexpectedly, my pajama shorts stashed within reach and my senses attuned to the sound of the car door slamming shut in our driveway. I often dreamed of fessing up to them, “Mom, Dad, I am giving up clothes, so get used to seeing a lot of my penis and butt crack.” That never happened, but I toyed with the idea, hoping to ease them into it. Once, I dared to sit in front of my AMIGA 500 computer with my bedroom door unlocked, not bothering with my clothes as my father took his daily siesta. As he came in to check on me, the shocked look on his face made me want to curl up and die. During my college days, I returned from the pool sans bathing suit, but my mother’s horrified, Evangelical reaction dashed my dreams of a clothes-free lifestyle.
Sometimes, I think, my risk-taking was part of my desire for acceptance. My father owned and operated a pizza shop, and the wooded lake behind the building made for some ideal, Naked & Afraid-esque adventures. Admittedly, for a young boy like me to be running around the woods, naked and alone, I was asking to get kidnapped or worse. At the very least, some random guy might have taken off with my clothes. I’d return to a restaurant full of startled customers, shocked employees, and a family ready to disown me, wearing nothing but a pizza box, palm fronds, and in much need of therapy.
Eventually, I found the courage to “come out” to the world, and it was not long before I started traipsing naked in front of everybody I knew. My friends, cousins, and even my siblings got accustomed to seeing the real me, and by 2012, I started posting nude selfies on Facebook and Twitter (until I went to Facebook jail). Our neighbors, whose second-story windows look down on our pool, see more of me than my doctors, but they have yet to complain, and I couldn’t care less whether they’re watching me, taking photos, or producing a film. We all have the same things between our thighs, I realized, whether it’s a penis or a vagina, and it’s a silly thing to hide it.
After 48 years on planet Earth, I figured my days of shame were far behind me, but feelings of embarrassment come from without. Shame is a learned behavior. Toddlers don’t feel shame until their parents admonish them for chucking their diapers. Amazon tribes never thought to cover themselves until Christian missionaries thrust the idea upon them. So when my mother BURST through the door to catch me in the buff, I sure was feeling it.
My mother is an aging widow nearing her nineties. While she vaguely remembers my nudist escapades, they have largely fizzled from her mind, a mind fastly failing due to early onset dementia. But here’s the rub: she has long assumed my nudism a thing of the past, something my Muslim wife would never have accepted, something she never imagined was part of my daily routine. Surely, if she discovered the real me hanging out at home with the kids, she’d drop dead on the spot. I mean, this was the same woman who wept after learning about my visits to Paradise Lakes (if she were to cry now, I’d understand, now that the resort has turned into a swinger hangout).
There are a million and one things that had to go wrong for this to happen, but like Murphy teaches us time and again, what can go wrong will go wrong. My wife and I always lock our doors, except when we take our dog, Mocha, out for a stroll. I usually tag along for the ride, but I was busy painting miniatures for my upcoming D&D game. Mom rarely drives anymore, owing to her failing eyesight and the fact that she gets lost in her own neighborhood. So, the chances she’d suddenly appear in my house unannounced were basically zero. Or so I thought.
So there I was, intensely focused on a tiny paintbrush as thick as three of my hairs, trying to detail a one-inch samurai’s armor, with my two daughters beside me, one painting another samurai, the other a ninja, when out of nowhere, I hear my mom’s bellowing voice: “Hey, I just came by to—!” I’d been dreading this scenario since childhood, dreading it for thirty-five years, and now it was happening, and my heart checked out for a bit.
If my wife hadn’t taken the stupid dog out, my mom wouldn’t have been able to open the door. If my mom ever bothered to knock, I might have had the chance to throw on a towel. If I’d been in my office, where I usually sit, or any other room, I might have hidden myself or found some silly excuse, “Just got outta the shower!” But no, she caught me front and center, painting toys with the kids in my bare butt! All I could think to do was bark, complain about her never respecting my privacy, as I hastily, awkwardly threw a blanket around my waist. I heard her say something along the lines of “in front of the kids . . .” which destroyed me. Then she rushed out of the house, embarrassed, without saying goodbye, making me feel awful.
I didn’t sleep much that night. How in the Hell was I going to explain my clothes-free lifestyle to my eighty-five-year-old mother? This was a woman who often compared me to Jesus. I was a saint in her eyes, and I couldn’t stand to think how I might’ve sullied that image. Well, as it turns out, I didn’t have to worry, because my mom never brought it up and neither did I. Maybe her dementia had something to do with it, or perhaps she just figured, “what the hell . . .” My girls suffered second-hand embarrassment, but forgot the whole thing by the time the samurai were painted. As for my Muslim wife?
“You were naked?”
As it turns out, I wear clothes on occasion. “Yes, honey, I was naked. You really don’t remember?”
“Not really. I thought you were dressed.”
And I have to admit, that is the best thing she could have told me, that my nakedness had become so routine, so mundane, she hadn’t even noticed. It’s the very thing I’ve dreamed of since childhood. And isn’t that what we all want? To live our authentic selves? My wife and kids laughed it off, and the whole embarrassing ordeal was soon forgotten. Further proof that naked shame is an illusion, that we need not ever hide our bodies, even when it comes to conservative mothers.
Being and Nakedness 
We need to remember that our parents were the hot-to-go good time youth during the year we were born. There are no virgin mothers. Our 80 year old parents have been there and done that.
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My mother really was a virgin before marriage; she grew up in a very strict, village community in Sparta, Greece, in the 1930s. Of course, she birthed four children, but the idea of casual nudity was abhorrent to her. She sent me to a private Baptist school for eight years, where we were forced into long-sleeve, button down shirts, slacks, and ties — No wonder I hate clothing! Not surprisingly, all those good, Christian boys grew up to become total pervs. Becoming a naturist has given me much more respect for myself and women.
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