My writing life has not been going well of late. A book reviewer from the Pubby book-review exchange recently gave me a review with nothing but very positive words for the book Cissy Moonskipper’s Travels, and yet, he only gave it three stars out of five. It seems dishonest. Four stars mean you liked the book. Three is a tepid response. I would never give a three without explaining why I didn’t like the book. I prefer honest reviews to weaselly wording and tepid responses. I’d rather be told why it is not good enough flat out. I suppose, as someone who dabbles with being a nudist, I would prefer naked honesty.
Naked honesty to me is a metaphor. An important metaphor. It stands for not hiding anything, whether it is something embarrassing, something to be ashamed of, something to be proud of, or something you hide because society tells you that you must. Just like when you are standing in front of a crowd of people, some who know you, and some who don’t, and you are completely naked so that they can see everything. Warts, tattoos, scars where you burned yourself on purpose, bulges of fat, birthmarks… everything. That happens in real life in gym dressing rooms, public showers in campgrounds, and other situations like that that people who aren’t me take for granted as being innocent.
I use naked honesty in this blog a lot. Also in my novels, and in my artwork. As a survivor of a sexual assault when I was ten, committed by an older teenage boy, dealing with naked truth is a critical thing to me that I need to talk about. I found comfort and healing in contact and conversation with nudists. I was deprived of the ability to be comfortably naked from the age of ten to the age of 35. That deprivation interfered with being in the shower room with other boys during P.E. classes and after sports practice and competitions. It also interfered with my ability to befriend others and confidently talk to girls. I had to struggle to identify myself as a heterosexual male. I narrowly avoided meltdowns and anxiety attacks in numerous situations like those seemingly innocent ones I was just now describing. It made me a bit of a social outcast. And it definitely interfered with my love life until I was 38 and finally able to marry.
So, basically, I healed myself with explorations of nudity. I thought about it. I found ways to expose myself to it without risking any crimes or mortal sins. I associated to a limited degree with naked people. (I had a nudist roommate for a year in grad school. And a former girlfriend was a big help in that her sister lived in a clothing-optional apartment complex in Austin, Texas. I never was myself naked when she dragged me there. But I learned a lot about nudists from nudists there.) I began drawing nudes.
You may have noticed that my drawings of nudes tend to be either children or child-like young adults. I can assure you that they are never intended to be any sort of child pornography. They are innocent nudes. I never drew a child nude from a live model without clothing. I have done portraits of nude children from photographs, but only with parental consent forms somewhere in the process. Live nude models I have drawn were consenting adults posing in an art class, except for one case when the request was from the boyfriend and the young lady herself while she was doing the posing. That was awkward, but that boyfriend was my efficiency-apartment roommate who had previously explained to me about being a nudist. I never drew him, but he was naked most of the time within the apartment. I also drew nudes from photographs in nudist publications. I don’t draw genitals very often, and never in a way that is inviting the viewer to think “pornography.” I can draw adult nudes, and have done so, but it is less comfortable because of the sexual aspect and how it tugs at that old traumatic fear.
It is psychologically very freeing to be socially nude around other nudists who simply desire that same naked honesty from me that they are presenting me with. Nudists look at each other eye to eye rather than staring in ways that are only appropriate in certain more private situations. It is not about sex. And lewd behavior in public is always against the rules in the places and situations that nudists share together. After a while, seeing naked people around you seems perfectly normal.
There is also a downside. If you spend all your time dealing in naked honesty, you become overexposed… even if you never show off your own penis, and nobody ever seems to be paying attention to anything you write, draw, say, and do. Your deepest, darkest secrets are out there. Everything is exposed. If you read this far in this essay, you already know my darkest secret… being the victim of a sexual assault.
I worry that someone will read my work and put together who he was, this person who did a horrible thing to me and made me fear that he would kill me if I told anybody what he did to me. And his life ended a few years ago, and I was finally free to talk about it and begin to make peace with it… and forgive him. (not for him… I forgive him for me… I need to be able to get past it… and be naked without fearing what his ghost will do.) And I hope no one ever learns his name. I have forgiven him. And his family doesn’t deserve to have to know about this thing he did. As far as I know, I am his only victim. He has a good family, that I know don’t deserve to be linked to something he only made the mistake of doing once while he was alive. No matter how terrible that all may seem to you.
I am not a pedophile, even though I am a Democrat because of how I vote (and I won’t believe that Joe Biden is one either, no matter what they say on FOX News.) I am in no danger of becoming one (I was never one when I was a teacher with access to underage people who looked up to me, and I certainly can’t be one now as a retired teacher without even any grandchildren around me.) So, my obsession with nudism and innocent nudity really should not be a problem.
But I know I have been focussing on it too much. Other writers have stopped following me on Facebook and Twitter once they discovered I was associated with nudists and nudism. I have gotten criticism on some of my novels because of nudity in the story and nudist characters. But that doesn’t really represent even half of my books. I do write about many other themes as well. Still, viewership by potential readers is down on WordPress since they removed ads from my blog for too much adult content. I need to focus on other things more to get a healthier balance.
But I still stand before you metaphorically naked. What you see is what I am. I say what I have to say in all honesty, naked honesty. I conceal no secrets from anyone that aren’t secrets that belong to someone else to tell. And it is freeing, this kind of truth. It makes you naked. But it feels right.
Prudes and Prejudices (Part 2)
Who is really qualified to judge people? The Bible says only God makes that judgement. But who tells us what God’s judgement actually is? Especially if Nietzsche is right about God being dead?
Prudes
Not long ago I posted a short-short story about me wanting to see girls get naked while we were kite flying, and then, by verbal tricks backfiring, I ended up being the only one flying the kite while naked. I look back on that story now with laughter about my own personal foibles. But if I am completely honest, the church ladies with gray hair, wagging fingers, and tongues that are even waggier… Well, I am glad that the ones I knew as a boy are all now dead and can’t possibly read that story and shame me all over again.
And I know that I draw an awful lot of pictures and write an awful lot of stories that involve naked children. As a survivor of a traumatic sexual assault when I was ten (a thing that happened after the kite story was already in the past) there is a level of discomfort over recognizing that trend in myself. Not because I became a sexual predator of children. I clearly did not. I still am determined to prevent such things from happening in any way I can, though in retirement I no longer have access to children to talk with to find out about bad things that may be happening in their lives.
I write stories in which there are kid characters who are naked at times. Sometimes because of curiosity and developing sexuality, sometimes because of growing up in a nudist household, sometimes in their dreams, taking baths, and many other normal functions where clothing is optional. In The Baby Werewolf novel, I included a character who was trying to exploit a young nudist girl to make child pornography. He was the kind of predator I have always resolved to be against, and the book is intended to make readers aware of that kind of dangerous person and recognize where the opportunities to avoid such people lie.
And some of the nude young characters I create like the two fairy girls depicted in the illustration from The Necromancer’s Apprentice merely represent the liberating feeling you can get from embracing your own nude self, a thing my attacker deprived me of during childhood through trauma and fear.
I, as an adult human being, fully accept readers’ rights to be critical of my work and make prudish judgements about my writing. I don’t like that one critic of The Baby Werewolf who said things about my work being creepy for the wrong reasons (it is a horror story after all) and suggesting that maybe I as the author am bad and villainous instead of feeling that way about the villain of the story. It was fiction, not my personal life story. The villain character is not me.
But prudes being prudish and judgmental can do more damage than just hurting an author’s feelings.
I have had two students that I know of who were transexual.
One was raised a boy because he was born with a penis, but in grade school was discovered to have a womb and ovaries. I didn’t know such a condition existed until I saw an episode of Marcus Welby MD in the 70’s about a young boy who had to transition because he was actually a girl. The child in my class was from a poor Hispanic family that didn’t understand the problem and couldn’t really afford to deal with it. The prudes, judgemental as always, were not kind. This he/she hermaphrodite was forced to grow up as a flamboyantly gay male even though he was capable of physically changing into a woman who could conceive a child. I followed his development for as long as I was able. I did spend one long and awkward evening talking to him/her about his/her crush on me. I could’ve gotten the prude finger-wag over that strange conference too, if anybody had bothered to care about that poor child. I certainly wasn’t going to kiss him, and I had to send him home at the end of that discussion because of what he/she wanted from me. I suspect there were other men who took advantage of him/her. But I wasn’t close enough to help him in any real way. And I lost touch soon after he/she left my class. Based on that bizarre discussion we had, I have no confidence at all that the poor child is still alive. Nobody seemed to care about this child That is the most tragic of things teachers sometimes have to deal with.
The other trans student I had in class for a year was a girl as far as she was concerned. It was not a question open for debate. She was quiet and a good student. She only had a couple of friends, but they were good friends and stood by her. At the time she was in my middle school class, she already had breasts thanks to hormone therapy. By now she has probably transitioned by surgical means. Her life was a lot easier than the boy with ovaries. But prudes in Texas abound and provide a lot of sour fruit.
I personally find it offensive that anyone would deny either of these two people the use of whatever restroom was comfortable for them.
What gives the typical prude the right to pass judgement on anyone else’s behavior? Prudes can cause repression of natural behaviors for the benefit for no one but themselves. I find prudishness to be reprehensible. But the rub is… being judgemental about that makes me a prude too.
I try never to be judgemental. I would much rather accept everyone for who they are, or who they think they are, than rely on what I think they are. And I do listen when others judge me. I have changed things in my books and drawings because of observations my others. And I take everything seriously… especially comedy.
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