The Nude Life

Today we had a special treat.

A nudist friend of ours is also a Licensed Massage Therapist. We’ve known him for years, well before he earned his LMT certificate, and in fact we had massages from him while he was still an LMT student. We made an appointment with him today to come to our house and do a one-hour massage on each of us at our home — a special treat for me, but more of a necessity for my wife who is recovering from surgery and can benefit from the tissue stimulation.

With temperatures here in North Texas near 80F (26C), bright sunlight and no breeze to speak of, it was a perfect opportunity to take our massages outside, poolside, in the shade of the early afternoon sun dappling through the trees. We turned on some soothing music on the outdoor speakers, and set the water sprays in the pool gurgling in the background.

Our friend set up his massage table and we were soon ready for an hour of splendid pampering. Since all three of us are nudists, and since he is a trained and licensed professional, we agreed that there was no need for the silly and cumbersome ‘draping’ usually used by masseuses to cover their client’s more delicate areas, and so we had the luxury of enjoying the experience nude in the warm afternoon air.

It wasn’t our first nude massage, of course. We’ve had many over the years, and none better than at Club Orient in St. Martin, where massages are available from their expert staff on the magnificent beach there. Our last nude massages before today were on the nude cruise in February of 2007 aboard the Holland America Maasdam, which you can read about in The Nude Life Forum.

A nude massage is wonderfully relaxing, of course, but also a lot less hassle for the client and the therapist. No fussing with “drapes,” less laundry to do afterwards, and of course less stress for both parties as there is no concern about which bits are visible at what times. Each party can concentrate on their part of the experience fully, with no unnecessary textiles getting in between.

And needless to say, enjoying a nude massage outdoors on a warm fall day is one more exquisite benefit of being a nude telecommuter!

Last night was our club’s annual Halloween “Un-Costume” party. As always, we nudists put together the most amazing, most creative, most fun Halloween costumes of anyone you’d ever meet. The originality, the creativity, the range of things we nudists figure out to turn into costumes is just astonishing.Most people would think that ‘nudist’ and ‘costume party’ wouldn’t go together, but they’d be WRONG!

Since nudists don’t have any hang-ups about what parts of their body are showing, the spectrum of possibilities for what can be done with a costume — or lack of one! — is sooo much wider than for textile-compulsives who feel obliged to cover up arbitrary parts of their anatomy.Perhaps I will be able to post some photo samples of some of the more original costumes from last night (with the wearer’s permission, of course), but suffice it to say that they were amazing and fun. It’s one of the few nights of the year when we nudists actually look forward to ‘dressing up!’

Naturally, the costumes didn’t stay on all night. After the ballots were in for the costume contest categories (”Most with the Least,” “Best Couple,” “Most Original,” “Scariest,” etc.), the costumes mostly went back into the bag they arrived in, and the partiers spent the rest of a glorious mild and calm North Texas evening enjoying a spectacular hot tub and the company of their friendly fellow nudists.

Have you been to a nudist costume party? Do you have plans for a nudist Halloween costume theme? Share your experiences and ideas in The Nude Life Forum!

Having been a nudist in a large and active nudist club for more than a decade, it starts to get routine: the very first time you meet many of your new friends, they are nude. Attending their first party, they enter through the front door, meet the hosts, get some quick introductions, and then are dispatched to the ‘undressing room’ where they make that huge — but very simple — step of taking off all their clothes — and then they walk out to the pool or hot tub or the kitchen or the family room or wherever the rest of the group is congregating at the moment. And then, their big moment: they make their introductions to the rest of the assembled group, waving and smiling, totally nude and unashamed.

They must cetainly feel a little self-conscious, if they are “new” nudists. But if they are used to the the whole “being naked with a bunch of total strangers” thing, they seem and in fact are a whole lot more at ease. Everyone waves and smile back, and then go back to schmoozing or yakking or whatever they were doing the moment before these two new nude folks showed up. Very shortly thereafter, the noobies will be busy meeting and making friends with their new nudist pals.

If there is a quicker or more certain way to make friends, I am unaware of it. Being nude drops all barriers to meeting and chatting up new acquaintances. No telling how many of our current friends we have first said hello to while standing, floating, soaking or sitting around in the altogether. As we have written before, there’s a good chance we’d barely (excuse the pun) recognize many of them if we saw them dressed on the street — since we have spent much, much more of our time together nude.

The point? Nude doesn’t matter. As nudists, we accept each other immediately through our shared experience as being a part of the nude life. We recognize that being nude reveals the person and cloaks the pretentions and artificiality of the textile world. No doubt that we never would have met or made good friendships with so many of our nudist friends had we not met them through nudism. It’s the equalizer. The experience that brings us all together as humans.

How has nudism changed your perceptions of friends — or helped you meet new friends? Share your experiences in The Nude Life Forum.

The average working stiff slaves away for months at a time, eagerly awaiting those precious few days of vacation that are so eagerly anticipated. For us, the vast majority of those vacation weeks over the past 14 years (since we ‘officially’ became nudists) have been spent on nude vacations. Looking back over the years, it’s easier now to count up the non-nude vacations we’ve had in that time — they have indeed been the exception and not the rule.

Each of those weeks or days of nude vacationing were special, each one memorable, each one the ‘trip of a lifetime,’ as we have often said to ourselves during each of them. We have been very fortunate to have had so many wonderful experiences on so many nude vacations, and now it’s always our first thought when planning a getaway: can we go somewhere nude?

And what strikes us during each one, is that there are a few moments or a few hours that are so exquisite, so luxurious, so memorable, that they are the highlight of the trip and comprise the single most vibrant memory we’ll cherish of that particular journey:

• Dangling our feet in the surf at Half Moon Cay while enjoying that spectacular private island nude with our 1,200 shipmates on the M/S Maasdam
• Dancing and partying on the nude catamaran ‘booze cruise’ during a spectacular sunset in Cozumel
• SCUBA diving nude for a week in the sparkling Bahamas during a chartered “Buff Divers” group trip on a liveaboard dive ship
• Playing volleyball nude on deck with a dozen other happy nudists while at sea during a nude cruise, with the endless blue Caribbean all around

All of those and so many more incredible moments are the moments that make a whole year’s work worth the trouble, to be able to enjoy such freedom in beautiful surroundings and with lots of other fun-loving folks.

There really is nothing else like it.

Read the full 10-part report from the 1,200 passenger nude cruise on the M/S Maasdam in February, 2007 — and share your nude vacation memories — in The Nude Life Forum.

Would you like to share some of your nudist experiences here on The Nude Life blog? We’re interested in hearing from guest bloggers who would like to write about their nudist experiences and travels, along with observations about being a nudist.

If you’d like to be a guest blogger, or even a regular contributor here on The Nude Life, please e-mail us with a few short writing samples and a little bit of background about yourself. If you’ve got something to say and are halfway decent at writing, you could join us here on The Nude Life as a guest blogger or regular contributor.

Got something you’d like to ask other nudists, or a nudist topic you’d like to discuss? Check out The Nude Life Forum, where we have folks from all over the world sharing their experiences and ideas on The Nude Life.