Naked at Lunch by Mark Haskell Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

that caused people to squint and look away.
    I swam a little. I read a book. I watched a youngish woman with a flower tattooed on her butt walk to the bar and fetch a couple of drinks. I was enjoying nonsexual social nudism at a bona fide nudist resort. The AANR calls membership in its organization a “passport to fun,” which seems a bit of a stretch. It’s not that it wasn’t fun, but it really wasn’t that different from any other Palm Springs resort I’d been to. The main difference was that the prohibition against “the appearance of overt sexual behavior” seemed to give a strained Kabuki stateliness to people’s demeanor. In other words, they were trying so hard to be nonsexual that there was a formality, a stiff decorum, to the way people carried themselves. Even at the active pool there wasn’t much activity. It seemed weird to me. Typically you get a bunch of people around a pool in swimsuits and they’ll flirt and gawk and do cannonballs off the diving board, but there was a playfulness to typical poolside behavior that was missing here. Maybe it was because it was an older crowd, or maybe it was the tension created by trying to be nonsexual when everyone is naked. Typically humans get naked for sex, but in a setting where everyone is naked and even the appearance of sexual interest is strictly forbidden, it’s easy to see why people start to act strangely prim.
    Historian Paul Fussell, in an essay titled “Taking It All Off in the Balkans,” writes, “Naturists agree that, given the cascades of sexual stimuli poured over us by contemporary civilization, at stated times and places a little contrived, conscious sexlessness is good for you.” 12
    “Conscious sexlessness” sounds about as much fun as a juice cleanse.
    After a couple of hours of lounging and scrupulous non-gawking, I got hungry and wandered into the restaurant for lunch.
    The restaurant was crowded, every table full except for one by the bar. I sat down on my towel and surveyed the room. There were dozens of naked people sitting at tables eating lunch. Following proper nudist etiquette, they kept towels between the furniture and their bodies. Compared with the morgue-like tranquillity of the swimming pool, everyone in the restaurant was positively chatty. Conversations would spill from one table to the next and people would jump up to greet friends or stand at another person’s table chatting away. I would’ve been somewhat uncomfortable to have someone’s penis that close to my french fries, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone else. In fact the restaurant scene was livelier than your typical Palm Springs lunch joint. Maybe this social nudism thing is a passport to fun.
    The waiter, who like all the other employees at the resort was fully clothed, handed me a menu. I watched him walk off and deliver a couple of cheeseburgers to a table. Is being a waiter at a nudist resort the weirdest job in the career of a food service professional? Or is it just another day at the office? Did they train you not to stare at the guests’ genitals? And how could you not? I had a lot of questions.
    I ordered a veggie burger and an iced tea, and just as I was about to ask him what it was like to work around all these naked people, his boss appeared. I could tell right away that she was the owner of the resort. She carried herself like someone who was in charge, only instead of a briefcase and business suit she was topless, a sarong jauntily tied around her waist. Her sunglasses were jammed on top of her head holding her blond hair off her face and she looked younger than most of the guests I’d seen. She seemed smart and friendly, a hands-on kind of boss—in a distinctly nonsexual way—one of those proactive managers who was making sure everything was running smoothly and all the guests were happy.
    I felt for the waiter. How weird would it be to stand there and listen to your employer give you instructions while you desperately tried not to