The Nude Life

After being nudists for over a decade, and living the nude life at home and with friends in an active nudist club for all of those years, it seems that one’s perception of what is ‘normal’ takes a dramatic twist.

For example, how many times have you been greeted warmly by a smiling nude woman, with a sincere hug and “air kiss,” the moment after walking into her house? When is the last time you stood inches away from a half-dozen naked folks of all ages, shapes and sizes, yakking away while you yourself and all of them are just as naked as can be, and having a great time with no sense of self-consciousness or discomfort? How much time do you spend sitting among a group of nude folks in a bubbly hot tub, with steam and warm water invigorating a chilly winter night, with no thought at all that anything is the slightest bit out of the ordinary? Have you spent a night playing BINGO at a nudist resort in a room filled with 100 other folks who couldn’t care less what you are or aren’t wearing? Have you stood in front of 1,200 strangers on the stage of a cruise ship, nude, performing in the passenger talent show during a nude cruise — and had a standing ovation?

Each of those situations, and many, many more, are part and parcel of the nude life for us, and have been for a long time. All our best friends are folks we see most often when they have not a stitch on, and we’re just as comfortable and at ease with them and with ourselves when we’re all nude as any other group of good friends would be sitting at a TGI Friday’s fully dressed.

Is this ‘normal?’

Is it sensible / rational / acceptable for adults to accept others as friends / fellow humans in their natural state, without the contrivances and artificiality that textiles confer upon us when we’re dressed?

Those of us who live and love the nude life would argue strongly that it is — if not “normal” in the common sense of the word — that it is something that humans are very adaptable to, and in fact, are more suited toward.

Standing among a group of good friends and discussing matters great and small, nude, is something that is very intoxicating about the nude life. Relaxing in summer’s heat in Nature’s own couture among your fellow skinnydippers, or spending a cool evening in a warm a steamy hot tub with a group of other carefree nudist friends — all of these are experiences that have become second-nature to us after all these years and which we would not like to live without in the future.

In a few hours, it will be 2008!

Thousands of nudists all across the USA will be celebrating the coming of the new year nude, as we will be doing with 50 or so of our closest nudist friends at our club’s annual New Year’s Eve Party.  I can assure you there is no more pleasant and more fun way to spend the New Year’s Eve night that hanging out and partying with people who never forgot how to relax and have fun, which is what nudists have found.

It’s hard to remember what we ever did on NYE night before we became nudists. Dull evenings with a small group of (clothed) friends, semi-forced together for the night so as not to have to spend it alone at home. Or, worse yet, crammed into a dim hotel ballroom with hundreds of stuffy strangers, listening to a terrible band and jostling elbow-to-elbow on an overcrowded dance floor — and trying not to notice all the sad looks on the faces of the hotel staff who are required to work on a night they’d much rather be home with their families.

Partying nude with fun-loving, friendly, unpretentious folks certainly beats all of that by a wide margin. Best of all, there’s no need to try to shoehorn yourself into a suit or dress for the night!

Whatever you’re doing for NYE tonight, we hope it is a good one, and we wish all the readers of The Nude Life Blog a healthy, happy and nude 2008!

And be sure to check out The Nude Life Forum, where other nudists from around the world are checking in with their New Year’s Eve plans, and share some of your own!

Tell anyone else that you plan to move to a nudist resort to live clothesfree full-time, and they’d most likely react with disbelief and shock, and you’d have a lot more explaining to do before you’d be able to continue to count them among your friends. Tell the same thing to one of your nudist friends, and they not only understand, they respond with good-natured envy at the wonderful days awaiting you.

Nudists understand, on a very comfortable and familiar level, what’s important and valuable to other nudists, and so sharing dreams, plans and experiences of the nude life with our nudist friends is very easy to do. The same things that they have found wonderful and life-changing about nudism are the things that we all discuss whenever we’re together. Last night’s gathering of many of our nudist friends at a small party hosted by one couple was a perfect example. Someone inquired about the progress we’re making on our retirement plans, which include moving to Florida and living at least the better part of the year at Cypress Cove. Sharing details like that with any non-nudist friends or co-workers is out of the question, of course, so we have to keep things vague when asked the same things by others. But we can speak freely with our nudist friends, since they share a common love for the freedom and friendships that nudism has brought to our lives.

This is probably the same kind of “kindred spirit” camaraderie that all sorts of other self-similar groups offer to their members, whether it’s Alcoholics Anonymous, scrapbookers or model railroad enthusiasts. It is very reassuring to know that we are not “alone,” and that many, many other nice, sensible, friendly, level-headed people share our love of this simple way of life.

Have you had similar conversations about nudism that you can’t discuss with non-nudists? Share your experiences and learn from other nudists from all over the world in The Nude Life Forum!

Our local nudist club has themed parties and events throughout the year, with nearly every weekend offering another opportunity for nude relaxation and fun with lots of great nudist friends. During the cooler winter months when necessity forces us indoors for the season, we often schedule themed parties that have a potential for “costume nudity” where we can add to the fun by “dressing up” to fit the theme of the party. Halloween is the obvious example, but we also have themed parties for Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Christmas, and several others, where quite a few folks go out of their way to put on more (or more often, quite a bit less!) of a costume to fit the theme.

As has been mentioned earlier, nobody knows how to dress up more than nudists. But even at our annual Halloween “Un-Costume” party, which features some of the most inventive and hilarious Halloween costumes you can imagine, several attendees decided not to bother with any costume at all, and simply enjoyed the evening nude. Nude is always in fashion and always acceptable at our club’s parties, and dispensing with a costume no matter what the theme of the party is an excellent — and often-employed — option.

It is such a pleasure to not have to worry about not only what to wear, but that you needn’t wear anything at all to be perfectly in style among your fellow nudists. Non-nudists will never know the sublime comfort that comes from simply disrobing and being among friends, nude and unashamed, enjoying life and friendship without the pretension and complications and artificiality that is part of the textile world.

Nude is always an option among nudists. We found the same thing on all of the many great nude cruises we have enjoyed over the years. We’d spend the evenings at sea enjoying the ship, the casino, the shows in the show lounge, the cocktail lounges and dance clubs, in whatever state of dress or undress suited our mood — with hundreds of other nude cruisers alongside us — and no one paying the slightest mind to what, if anything, anyone was wearing. Naturally, nude was always in style aboard the nude cruises, and we along many of our shipmates took full advantage of that luxury by being nude as much as possible during the cruise.

This weekend offers another themed party in our club, and we are probably going to go “the nude route” this time since we haven’t had the time to gather and organize a proper “costume” for the theme. We expect to have a wonderful time — and that all of our fellow guests will quickly join us by ditching their costumes as the party goes on. Although nude is always an option at the start of the party, we’ve yet to attend one where everyone didn’t wind up nude by the end of the party! That is, after all, the one great advantage of attending a nudist party!

What’s your preference for a nudist party with friends? Nude, costumed or clothed? Discuss and share your experiences with other nudists from around the world 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.