Happy New Year! In a change of gear from
Caroline's Naked Ride
and
Naked Student Tales
(the first four of which are now out), here is a lighter offering I've been working on. K.
Β© 2016 by Kelsey d'Eligny.
All rights reserved.
A man I met once on nude a beach north of San Francisco told me I reminded him of his daughter. It seemed a genuinely friendly remark and not a come-on line, so I asked him how long he'd been coming to that beach, which I'd only just discovered. He said it was a long story.
"I've got all day," I said. He smiled and began to tell me, and we ended up talking for hours about how things used to be different ...
* * *
Back in the early 1980s, the hippies were long gone and the unabashed millennials were not a gleam in their parents' eyes. Good cameras were clunky, noisy contraptions seldom seen at the beach. In those days, those who stripped bare at the beach did so confident that no one would see them but their immediate neighbours on the sand. It meant something else to be naked on the beach from what it might have meant a generation before or what it might mean today.
It was a different time, when public figures and respectable people did not have children out of wedlock and sex was not much mentioned in polite company. San Francisco was not at all a socially conservative place, and it was surrounded by a number of predominantly gay nude beaches, but there were still more that catered to a straight crowd -- individuals, couples and families. Children played in the sand and couples walked calmly into the water, safe from any thoughts that their photographs might be instantly published around the globe.
Edward had recently discovered this lovely, sandy beach north of the city in Marin County on a visit with some buddies to the adjoining, larger 'textile' beach. He saw people gathered in the distance across some rocks and went on his own to investigate. When he was greeted with the sight of several dozen beachgoers, stark naked, Edward stared in amazement. He sat on the sand, unnoticed by the predominantly young, frolicking crowd, but after ten minutes he felt awkward being the only one in a bathing suit.
His heart raced and his cheeks flushed as he cautiously undid the tie of his trunks. Then, still sitting, he inched them down and off. He burned with self-consciousness for a few minutes, but eventually he noticed that still no one paid him any attention. Then, a couple not much older than he came up out of the water and walked to their towels. As they strode past him, they both said, 'Hi' in a friendly manner, and he nervously reciprocated.
"How's the water?" he asked, noticing the droplets all over the naked woman's body.
"Cold, but fine. You should go in for a dip," she said, continuing on their way. Edward could not remember ever being greeted or having even so short a conversation with a stranger on a 'normal' beach. He realised at once that this place was special.
He did indeed go in for a dip in the bracing water and then stretched out on the sand. He had exchanged friendly greetings with several more naked people and grown completely comfortable by the time his friends wondered where he was and came to look for him an hour later. They laughed when they saw him and thought he was crazy, but Edward had already decided by then that he would return to this beach.
After his second visit, he no longer even brought his swimsuit with him. He had got to know several of the regulars by sight and was beginning to be recognized himself. He was now accustomed to chatting casually with others, and the tanned and fit naked women were not aloof and wary like their counterparts on 'textile' beaches. He was careful not to stare, but he could not help stealing fleeting glances at the parts that would have been covered by a bikini and vaguely making out what lay behind the standard growth of bush. He felt guilty looking, but he had never had such a chance to see women naked. In those days, that opportunity was usually only presented in certain magazines or strip clubs.
He and his buddies had tried out of curiosity to get into a strip club once, but they were not yet twenty-one and were turned away. The place looked very seedy and unpleasant in any event. The beach, though, seemed like paradise.
* * *