You Takin' Pictures Bro?
May 10, 2010
"You taken' pictures bro?" the woman who camped out behind us said to the young guy in jams and a T-shirt. He was aiming his iPhone right at Deborah, who was topless, and the two fully nude girls lying on towels behind her.
"Huh?" he said, as if he didn't know what she could be talking about.
"You taken' pictures?"
"No," he said. "I'm just trying to get a signal on my phone."
"Bullshit," I muttered.
The guy sat down in the sand, next to his backpack, and tried to act unfazed and casual while everyone kept an eye on him. Fifteen minutes later, he left.
About an hour earlier, another young guy, wearing all black -- black shorts, a black T-shirt, and a black baseball cap -- had been sitting in the same spot, trying equally hard (no pun intended) to look casual while scoping out the nude women. At one point, visibly aroused through his swim trunks, he waded waist deep into the water to cool off. Both of these guys were in their twenties, good-looking and in shape, but neither was interested in going nude themselves, only in leering at the nude and topless women around them. Meanwhile, all the out-of-shape fifty, sixty, and seventy-year-old men cruised up and down the shoreline in flagrante delicto -- half of them leering as well, the other half more interested in being looked at themselves. One of them walked up to us and asked if we were interested in playing volleyball, the favored nudist activity featured on so many covers of old nudist magazines from the seventies.
We respectfully declined and watched him as he moved on to the two girls who had just arrived next to us. A couple of strippers, we imagined, though it was pure speculation. One of the girls was fully tanned, with pierced nipples and fuzzy sun-damaged tattoos. The other was totally white -- even whiter than me, if that's possible. Their whisky and cigarette voices were loud enough for us to hear that it was the white girl's first time at a nude beach. "You can fuckin' cross this right off your fuckin' bucket list," the tanned girl said.
We were at the far end of the clothing-optional beach, away from the community of leathery old-school nudists and the pasty, overweight misfits flying solo that had set up umbrellas, towels, and blankets in a thick encampment, with each subdivision flying a flag like some kind of Boy Scout jamboree. One particularly hip seventy-something dude with a long goatee arrived in a Day-Glo green outfit complete with a Day-Glo green fedora. He stripped off everything but the hat, revealing an impressively trim physique. "That hat is stylin'," I said. "I'm gonna go ask him where he got it."
"No you're not," said Deborah.
"You're right. But it is a cool hat."
People watching aside, we were there for two reasons. For one thing, Deborah likes to go topless at the beach, and having been scolded a few times for tossing aside her bikini top at the regular beach, we decided to avoid the conflict. And second, no screaming kids.
For the most part, the hardcore nudists kept to themselves, but occasionally, like the volleyball recruiter, someone would venture to the outskirts and chat up the outsiders. The volleyball guy was polite, though, and when we declined, he wished us a nice day and moved on. The drunk guy who came a minute later, gray pubes and a beer belly, was more aggressive. He offered us beers and tried to convince us to follow him to "where the party was."
"No thanks," we said. And with Deborah simply topless and me in a swimsuit, he didn't waste his energy. But when he spotted the two strippers, who were just arriving, he worked his best game.
He offered the girls some beer and said they should come to his camp. "Let us get settled," the tanned one said. “We just got here. Let us relax for a bit, then maybe.”
"Sure, sure," he said, sticking around to make small talk while they spread their towels out. And when they sat down, his wee-willy-winky was at eye level while he chatted them up."Everyone is jealous of your tan," he said.
I'm not sure who he meant by "everyone," since the girls had only just arrived, and the guy didn't have time to talk to anyone to find out who might have been jealous.
"And you," he said to the pale girl, "have you been here before?"
"No."
"Ever been to a nude beach before?"
"No."
"Oh well, you know what you gotta do then? You gotta go over there to where the sign is that says 'Warning beyond this point you may encounter nude bathers' and take your picture. I've got ten years’ worth of pictures of me by that sign. You got a camera?"
"No."
"I can get mine. C'mon."
"Maybe later."
The guy continued to talk about his nudist history, about the beaches he's gone to, about the friends he's made. The girls finally promised to find him later.
"Okay, fair enough."
"We'll see you around," they said.
"Oh, you know it."
