We discovered that women wore regulation "tank suits.

" Day
after day 80-90 nude lads
in an individual swim class would tussle and push, shove, and kid around by the pool
and race, play water polo, and appreciate "free play" in the warm water.
It was the same story through the rest of public schools through the
12th grade, in an intermediate swimming class and senior lifesaving class I took
at the University of Michigan, and during free swims in the men's pools at
Harvard and Princeton. During an intramural swim meet, attended only by men,
in which I participated with my undergraduate college dormitory, some of the
Guys, including me, swam the races naked. In the pool at the Michigan Men's Union,
swimming was usually nude. The same was accurate at YMCA pools of the period. At
many pools guys were required to swim bare; at others swimsuits were discretionary.
All that changed when physical education became coeducational and fit
facilities at YMCAs and YWCAs, on faculty and university campuses, and in public
schools were opened to both men and women. With coeducation nude recreation
ended. Now one paper reports that lads, who in my generation were needed
to take group showers after every gym class, now infrequently shower together. Even
football players seemingly wear their uniforms home after a game rather than
undress and shower in front of teammates. Another newspaper reports that boys'
Contribution on swim teams has declined because of their objection to wearing
brief Speedo swim suits. Men's swimsuits have become big baggy pants that hang
dripping and hefty about the body like some penalty exacted for an unnamed
crime.
But I carry in me the imprint of 20 years or more of naked swimming. I liked it.
I liked the feeling of the water on my body, the feeling of independence floating
unencumbered in the swell. I've always resented swimsuits, uncomfortable, wet,
cold, uncomfortable.
When we moved to Oakland 30 years ago, our family loved Stinson Beach in Marin
County, a huge, sandy strand. We liked to trek along Nudist Portal Launch Ask A Nudist &
Have A Radio Interview from the north end
to the south. At the south end are lots of huge stone blocking the pathway, but
it was possible to clamber in, about, and over the rocks and onto a stone-strewn
smaller plage only to the south. And at low tide one could walk even further to
the south, around a rugged cliff jutting out into the ocean. One day during a
Especially low tide I followed that route around the cliff and found myself at
the end of a small cove with its own sandy strand nestled against the stone. It
was filled with nude sunbathers. I 'd found "Red Rock," one of
California's celebrated "free" or "clothes optional" beaches. Men and women of all
ages, from young adults to graying retirees--singles, couples, families,
Buddies--and a few kids, were sunning themselves, playing frisbee, joining
in card games, reading, splashing in the surf. They were jammed much closer in
this small cove than the sunbathers at Stinson Beach, but they seemed more like
a community of individuals appreciating one another's company than the isolated families

or friendship groups set apart on their distant towels at Stinson.

I felt out of place there in my suit, so I thought, "Well, here goes nothing,"
and I whipped off my suit, stuck it in a hole in the rocky cliff, and loved
some time naked in the sun, surf, and sand before re-suiting and rejoining my
family up on what I learned afterwards to call the "cloth" strand. I initially felt
excitement, but neither arousal nor humiliation or shame, and, as I got used
to being in the open nude among heaps of other nude beach people, I felt joyful,
Agreeable, peaceful. I loved the feel of the sunlight, atmosphere, and surf unimpeded
against my body.
With that experience I decided I wanted to learn more about these folks and
this encounter. I started to return to Red Rock Beach and soon after learned--it
must have been in the yearly nude beach edition of The San Francisco
Defender--where other such clothing-optional beaches were located and visited
them too. I joined The Naturist Society and, for a time, belonged to the
American Sunbathing Association, now renamed the American Association for Nude
Recreation and read their journals. I discovered and subscribed to Naturist Life
International, released by a demanding and somewhat conservative Catholic
layperson, who has established As our class wound to a close, we could hear Astarius's
booming voice starting the opening ceremony. There was a collective thought of joining them
all while we were still naked, but we decided to shelve that part of Evolvefest's evolution for
next year. While there was space for this at Evolvefest, nakedness was for the most part
contained to the "Naked City" campground hosted by FKK and my naked yoga class.
Astarius shared with me that at one point in the festival he encountered a group of young
people around a campfire who were sharing ritual and story. He joined them, bemused that a
few of them were "in the holy buff" and were quite amenable to spontaneous ritual, song,
dancing and celebration. in rural Vermont, where he and his wife
raise (and homeschool) their five children almost completely without clothing. There
are two naturist resorts in the immediate San Francisco bay area, Lupin Naturist
Club, off of highway 17 between San Jose and Santa Cruz, and Sequoians Clothes
Free Club, at the end of Cull Canyon Road just north of Castro Valley, and I
have seen both.
What I 've discovered is a
congenial, wholesome, hospitable, altogether "standard"
group of individuals who are like all other people except that they've
grown to be comfortable, to thrive, and to favor dispensing with clothing when
the setting enables it--in their houses, on clothing optional beaches and remote