The Nude Life

A colleague at work was recounting a cruise they recently completed — a two-week Alaska itinerary as part of a ship repositioning for the winter months. They went on and on about how much better this cruise was than any other they had taken, because for the year prior to the cruise, they had ‘met’ other shipmates via Internet bulletin boards, and so by the time the embarked, they already felt like they had a dozen or more ‘friends’ on board with them.

She regaled us with tales of all the fun they had together with their new-found friends, who had been introduced to each other only online prior to boarding, but who felt like “old chums” since they had been in touch with each other for many months in advance. They had a ball, she told us, enjoying cocktail parties, shore excursions, dinner parties and more together — even a semi-risqué “pajama party” one night.

It was all we could do to appear envious. “Welcome to our world,” we thought. If she only knew…

In fact, she has no idea what we’re used to from our 10 nude cruise vacations. Each one seems better than the one before, because in fact many hundreds of the same friendly, fun-loving people are on the nude cruises year after year, and so we have literally spent weeks and weeks at sea with many of our nude cruising shipmates. Soon after embarking (or even while standing in the terminal house before embarkation), faces from cruises past are recognized and names and warm welcomes are exchanged…hugs aren’t hard to come by, either. We have spent so many wonderful times with so many of those nudist cruisers over the years that it really is like cruising with a shipload of your best friends.

My 10-part blog about our latest nude cruise in February of this year is online here (scroll to the middle of the listing for February, 2007) — and here’s one of our group photos from that cruise, taken at the bow of the ship with a few hundred of our nude cruising friends.

It really is true that once you try a nude cruise, you’ll never go back to textile cruises if you can help it. Literally everything is better about nude cruises. More on this subject in future posts — but for now, we’re glad our work friend got a taste of some of the fun that nudism brings to cruising — without even knowing it — and perhaps, if she’s lucky, someday she’ll know the full story!

Do you have a story about how nude recreation or the nude life has changed your perception of how the “other folks” live? Share it in The Nude Life Forum!

We call ourselves full-time nudists. But there’s full-time, and then there’s full-time. Right now, we are in the former category.
Meaning that we spend as much time as possible nude at home, with our nudist friends at weekend parties with our local club, asleep (of course!), and on as many vacations as we can manage to nudist resorts, nude cruises, and the like. Yet, we can’t live fully nude as we both still have jobs (for just another year), and have a circle of friends who aren’t nudists and don’t know that we are, and we don’t live in a nudist resort.

All of those things will be changing by this time next year (2008) if things go to plan. We aim to sell the house, quit our jobs, move to a nudist resort in Central Florida, and really become full-time nudists. Along the way, we’ll go ahead and spill the beans to our non-nudist friends — giving them either a lot to think about, a good laugh, or a totally astonished reaction — or maybe all three.

So this year is really our last living in the fully “textile world” of non-nudists, as we aim to join the ranks of the true full-time nudist world next year. We’ll be in good company, since we have already met so many great, friendly, interesting people along the way in our first 13 years or so of practicing social nudism.

We look forward to downsizing in a major way. We’ll get rid of about 95% of the clothes we own, of course, but also about 95% of the things we have spent 30 years accumulating in the way of furniture, gadgets, books, and an endless collection of knick-knacks, junk and the other effluvia of a typical American.

As we ease into it, both of us are excited. We’re ‘practicing’ as much as can be done by wearing nothing as much as possible when at home, and of course taking full advantage of the busy summer pool party schedule with our local club. If retirement as full-time nudists is only as much fun as we are having now being full-time home and social nudists while still working full-time and living in a textile community, we can’t wait to make the big move to “Full-Time Full-Time!“

It seems like 99% of the “nudist” blogs on the Internet are really trolling pages for swingers, single males and perverts who somehow think that using the word ‘nudist’ will attract the kind of people they want to connect with.

Well, we’re nudists, and none of that type of stuff is what nudism is about. So we thought there ought to be at least ONE blog on the Internet written by and about real nudists, who just enjoy the nudist lifestyle and all the wonderful benefits it offers.

About us: we have been active nudists for about 14 years. We are active in a large local nudist travel club called the Sunbirds, in the Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas region. We’re members of AANR, the nation’s largest and oldest nudist association.

We have been on 10 of the nude cruises sponsored by Bare Necessities Tour and Travel, as well as three “Buff Diving” nude SCUBA diving trips with the Buff Divers group (now defunct). All of that is in addition to more than 50 other vacations, trips and shorter getaways to local, national and international nudist destinations in the mainland US, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Hawaii.

At home, we’re nude nearly all the time during the warm summer months here in Dallas, and spend nearly every weekend nude outside by our pool or partying with our friends in the Sunbirds. We really enjoy the great fun and the wonderful friends we meet as nudists, and we really can’t imagine going back to a clothing-compulsive life.

Soon, we will be retiring and moving to a nudist resort in Florida to live for part of the year, as well as buying a big 5th Wheel RV and touring the country during the summer, seeing as much of the US (and as many of the country’s nudist resorts and nude beaches!) as possible.

So that’s a little about us. More to come soon, since summer is a busy time for nudists in Dallas and we have a lot to report on!

Stay real,

Full Time Nudists