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A book about Mickey’s struggles with Naturism and Nudism? It is a possibility.

It would be a book about what silly Mickey thinks it all means. What nudism is. Why he wants to be one. Why he probably can’t in any meaningful way.

And it will contain Mickey’s many nude drawings and many, many silly thoughts about being naked.

Playing a piano recital completely naked is a nightmare some kids have when their piano teacher schedules their first recital. But it is something that is only a nightmare, not something a piano teacher would ever do in reality. Not require the piano student to perform nude, I mean. They will definitely schedule the recital and cause the nightmare.

The thing is, however, that the picture above is metaphorical, not literal. A performer on piano, or guitar, or doing stand-up comedy routines, or even teaching from the front of the classroom makes you feel exactly like that. You can’t do it by keeping even one square inch of yourself hidden away, concealed under clothing, lies, or misdirection. The contents of your inner heart has to be there on display.

I remember being naked in front of a classroom of mostly hostile and mostly illiterate eighth graders on the first day of classes in the Fall of 1981. I wasn’t literally naked. But they knew I didn’t speak or understand Spanish the way 85% of them did. They knew I was nervous and feeling awkward. They knew I didn’t know most of the truly terrible things they did to the poor teacher-lady who had tried to teach them English in that same classroom the year before. There were firecrackers under the desk, thumb tacks on the teachers’ chair, classroom fights, insults in Spanish and English directly to her face, classroom posters destroyed… they drove her out of the classroom screaming to the airport in San Antonio and out of teaching and the State of Texas probably for good. I had no armor, no experience, and only a few teacher tricks in my bag of… well, you know, tricks they had all seen already many times. I might as well have been literally naked.

I remember the advice I got in my college speech class about giving yourself confidence by imagining your audience was naked. But 25 thirteen-to-seventeen-year-olds, some with mustaches, some of the boys had mustaches too? Picturing them naked worked against me. They were scarier that way.

I never seriously entertained ideas of becoming a nudist back in my teaching days. I had to consider the morals clause in my endless string of one-year contracts. I had to consider my own post-traumatic fear of being naked after what happened to me at ten. But my encounters with nudists and nudist literature did get me wondering… did make me actually curious.

Like most Americans, I never thought of nudism as something for me, rather, a thing that could be tolerated about unusual people who lived in their heads too much and were often too much of an exhibitionist. But I did create nudist characters for some of my fantasy-comedy novels which I seriously began self-publishing after retiring as a teacher. Specifically, the Cobble Sisters and their family, based on twin girl students who claimed to be nudists in my classroom, though they may have been telling fictional stories themselves.

And then real nudists and naturists began finding my books and liking them. I became a part of the online Twitter-nudist community.

And while talking to a family psychotherapist, he suggested to me that I should deal with some of my problems by choosing one thing I was basically afraid to do, but might provide a thrill or other positive feelings. We talked about bungee jumping and sky diving, but those were out because of my health problems. And then he suggested I might profit from actually trying nudism.

One terrifying thing. A nudist website wanted someone to write a blog post for them about first-time visits to a nudist park or other nude venue. I applied for the job. They published my application piece and then asked me to follow through. I visited Bluebonnet Nudist Park on a Friday in July of 2017.

It was, in fact, one of the scariest things I have ever done on purpose. But once I was actually naked among other naked people, I really felt the power of my accomplishment. I overcame a childhood fear. I accomplished one scary thing. And it felt great. I would eventually do it again after the pandemic.

So, I am one of those unusual and somewhat crazy people now. My wife and children are mortified. I am driving away blog readers who think I must be nuts. And I feel good about it.

I am a burning candle,

Proof against the night.

The flame upon my wick,

Is good, but not real bright.

I’ve flickered in the darkness

For now, well, several years

Guiding children to the outhouse,

And allaying all their fears.

And the melting wax keeps running

From the wick now dripping slow,

And I keep on lighting darkness

Using every trick I know.

But no candle burns forever,

And my light is almost spent.

My light is just a flicker now,

And my wisdom, all now lent.

I confess that I have never been even remotely a lifelong nudist. I have been around them since the 1980s and have always had the secret urge to be one. But I was reared in a household dedicated to the wearing of clothes. My parents, my grandparents on both sides, and the community I grew up in looked upon those people who chose to live a nude life as hippies and generally crazy people.

The nudists I met, including two girlfriends who were willing to embrace the nudist lifestyle, were happy people. They didn’t care much about what other people thought about them. They enjoyed being naked, even in my presence, and the two girlfriends were both greatly amused by my embarrassment.

But what people thought about nudists, naturists, hippies, and people who were too happy was the main reason I didn’t become one in the 1980s. I was a school teacher. And my conduct and morals mattered to parents, especially white parents who were members of the Southern Baptist Church or the Southern Methodist Church. The Baptists officially disliked happiness unless you were wealthy. And Methodists are descended from a Puritan sect who frown at every instance of other people being happy in this life and not saving all smiles for everlasting harp-playing sessions in paradise. Teachers were meant to be dour, humorless, and good at discipline in their eyes. Never naked.

But I honestly did learn a little about why nudists are happier than the rest of us from my girlfriend Ysandra and the nudists she stayed with on weekends in the Austin clothing-optional apartment complex where her sister lived.

Ysandra was the first person I was able to tell about being sexually assaulted as a child. She and her friends helped me see that nudism was good therapy for lingering feelings of self-loathing. It didn’t matter to them what anybody looked like naked. What you looked like was not what it was all about. Very few nudists looked like Rock Hudson or Marilyn Monroe. Lots of them looked like Fatty Arbuckle and Olive Oyl. A few looked more like soft sculptures made out of old pillows with toothpaste holding them together. All of them were confident enough in their own skin to laugh about what they looked like naked. And changing your body self-image is what digs you out of the hole of self-hatred that the trauma put you in.

.

And from the nudists I learned that sleeping in the nude left you more refreshed and energetic in the mornings than if you spent the night sweating under blankets wrapped in wool pajamas. Even in winter.

This, of course, is something my father always knew, but never taught me.

And I spent most of my alone time when I was single, naked in my apartment. From about seven at night until the alarm goes off at five in the morning, I got used to not wearing clothes.

Of course I got married. That cured the naked at night thing. Nudity was against her religion. But I adjusted.

And what it all comes down to is that nudists are happier than we are because sunshine fills your absorbant skinsuit with Vitamin D. Playing naked out doors, singing songs, talking to naked people, telling stories with humor about being naked embedded in them, it all fills your soul with good feelings that come from surrounding yourself with the goodness of life that Adam and Eve once had in the Garden of Eden before the fall.

So, now that I am retired from being a teacher, and my wife has finally accepted that I am a crazy old coot who may forget to wear clothes when her Kingdom Hall friends are around if she doesn’t cut me enough slack, I get to be a nudist sometimes. When she’s not around to see it, of course. And I am happier. I am on the other side of hating myself for what once was done to me. And I don’t care if I look like Fatty Arbuckle naked.

Sometimes the thing a humorist has to write about is not funny. Sometimes it is something you have to write about because hard experience tells you that nobody deserves to go through what you once went through, not even yourself. And if you can do even one little thing to spare somebody else the pain you know too well, you simply have to…

And if you are one of those people who needs to face this demon down, here’s where you go for help:

crisistextline.org

Go there now if that’s what you need from this confessional article. This article is for those who don’t already understand.

When we are discussing self-harm, we are not talking about suicide. Someone who self-harms may at some point attempt suicide, but that’s not why they are doing it. And, in fact, they may be doing it as a release that prevents suicide.

And self-harm isn’t just the cutting of arms, wrists, or ankles that is commonly talked about. It may also be burning yourself in some way. When I did this as a teenager, I burned my lower back and the backs of my calves on the heater floor grate. It may also be punching or hitting yourself. I still battle the urge to hit myself with a fist to the forehead or banging my head on the wall during arguments or when I am hugely frustrated.

And, yes, I am admitting in this article to having done this to myself. You may already know why I did this to myself, but I need to briefly explain once again. I was a victim of a childhood sexual assault. An older boy trapped me alone and out of sight, got my pants off, and tortured my private parts to give himself a perverse pleasure. He told me not to cry out in pain or call for help. He threatened to make it hurt worse if I did. And he implied that if I told anyone, he would kill me.

Trauma, of course, is usually the cause of the desire to give yourself pain. It happens because you feel numb and want to feel something, and feeling pain is not avoidable. Particularly the way I did it. I went through a long period of burying the memory within my mind, not allowing myself to remember what was done to me until it all came rushing back during college as a PTSD flashback. But I hated myself and felt guilty every time I had any pubescent sexual feelings, burning myself to make it go away. When my doctor asked where the burn scars came from, at 18 I couldn’t tell him. When my high school counselor asked me about the obscure notes I put in a friend’s locker, at 17 I couldn’t tell him. When the Methodist Minister asked me why I was asking so many odd questions as he was explaining the birds and bees to my confirmation class, at 13 I couldn’t tell him. I did gradually stop hurting myself before the age of 20, but not before I planned to commit suicide in the spring of my 17th year. And I was lucky that my friend Ron was willing to listen to me during what I intended to be my last phone call ever. And luckier still that he told me he thought I was a good guy. I never told him, and he didn’t realize it, but he was the one who talked me out of killing myself with a knife.

It was God’s will, I guess, that I survived.

And here are the things I have learned since, both as a sufferer of this condition, and as a teacher and parent of others who have gone through similar things.

1. If you are doing anything at all like this to yourself, PLEASE TELL SOMEBODY. FIND SOMEONE YOU TRUST AND TELL THEM ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE DOING!
2. If you know someone who you suspect might be engaging in this behavior, ask them about it, specifically and in detail. And make them understand you are fully willing to help them in any way you can. If they can prove that you were wrong about what you thought they were doing, that’s not embarrassing, that’s the best possible answer you can get.
3. Find professional help. Psychiatrists and therapists are much better educated about this than they were in 1974 when it almost ended me. Suicide hotlines save lives.
4. Suicide Hotline; call 988
5. Life is about love, not suffering. And no matter how you feel about yourself, you deserve love. You don’t deserve suffering.

I now sit here at my computer, more spiritually and emotionally naked than I have ever been. It took three and a half breaks for crying and tears to write this post. But I had to do it. And I hope it helps.

As of today, I have posted at least one post every single day for two years. A 730-day streak.

Let’s put Mickey on trial for a minute. The question is something that ought to be considered. After all, the lead Paffooney is a picture inspired by William Blakes’s poem Tyger (hence the major misspelling in the picture) which is showing the tiger from the poem, and which is often considered a portrayal of the Devil, right before the tiger eats the child sitting in front of him. He knew somebody might see it that way. And he colored-penciled the thing that way anyway.

After all, we trusted him to teach our children for over 30 years. And if someone like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had seen how he taught them to read and write, the possibly-racist, definitely-narcissistic little fat man would be screaming, “Evil! There is evil in our classrooms!” After all, Mickey used books in the classroom where he was reading out loud that the Civil War really happened, and it was about slavery, and the Confederacy actually lost. And he read that to classes in Texas! In a book called The Glory Field, by Walter Dean Myers. A black author! Certainly a case of evil CRT (meaning Critical Race Theory, not Crazy Ron’s Theory.)

And that danged Mickey also used a book in the classroom that showed an innocent black man being put on trial for the rape of a white woman, which Atticus Finch proved he didn’t do, and then he almost got lynched and lost the case anyway, causing the black man to die for a crime he didn’t commit, thus making all Mickey’s white students feel unnecessary shame needlessly because of Mickey’s political woke agenda, which he apparently had before “woke” was even a thing. That was in a book called To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, which hasn’t been banned yet for some unknown reason and is written by a white woman.

How many awful things does Mickey have to do before we proclaim him hopelessly evil?

And you know this guy has embraced nudism after he retired from teaching. NUDISM! That means he likes to be naked. And not just when he’s alone (though mostly it is that.) He has gone to private nudist parks to be with other naked people.

And he’s constantly drawing and posting pictures of naked people. Sure he writes books about how being a nudist is calming and centering and helped him overcome childhood trauma. And he never practiced it while he was actively teaching so parents wouldn’t have to worry. And he doesn’t post naked photos of himself in front of us like many Twitter nudists enjoy doing. But he always thinks and writes about naked people. Well, maybe not always… but too much.

And liberal teachers who think like that are dangerous. It automatically makes him a groomer (and I’m not sure if I have it right, but a groomer isn’t just someone who uses curry combs on horses… is it?)

The point of it all is… if we look at Mickey’s record carefully enough, we are sure to find something that we can execute him for. And that should make the little fat man in white boots from Florida appropriately happy as he ascends to be the next Republican dictator of the United States. Evil will have been thwarted.

I have a certain mania about hoarding old toys. My toys. My children’s toys. Other toys like abandoned toys from Goodwill and ReSale stores and liquidation toys from the bargain bins in Walmart and Toys-R-Us.

You see, the dependence on the importance in my life of people who are not real began with my own perceptions when the lights first went on in my little attic. Yes, my parents and my grandparents were real people. And I sometimes admitted, when forced, that my little sister was too. But so was Tagger, my own stuffed toy tiger.

I definitely treated him as my best friend and greatest confidant. I told him my troubles, and he protected me from monsters in bed at night. He often was included when I played with my sisters and their dolls. He was wise and brave and caring, and he talked with a voice that sounded very much like mine. In fact, I often think he was such a part of me that, when I no longer needed him in bed with me to help me sleep, I internalized him and he became a part of me. He did not meet his physical end until my parents had to leave Iowa and move to Texas while I was in grad school. What my sister did with his physical form, I really never wanted her to tell me. The house had to be cleaned out, and stuffed toys from the attic did not fair well.

I had almost given up ever being married and having a family when, at the age of 37, I finally fell in love, and then had a family, first of two, and then of three by the end of 1995. On the day my oldest son was born, as the doctor had told me to go home and get some sleep, I went to Walmart and bought a toy tiger. He was not orange like my Tagger, but white. He was about the same size as Tagger, and significantly larger than my infant son. Truthfully, neither number one son or number two son actually played with him. They slept with him and used him as a pillow, but they never even gave him a name. It was my daughter, my youngest child, who took him over and made him into a her. She named her Baby Tiger, loved her, talked to her, carried her around everywhere, and miraculously never loved her to pieces to the point that we don’t still have her 24 years later. The photos of her prove the miracle.

I am not Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes fame. But I do understand the importance of toy tigers. They help to make you who you are. And while they are technically not real people, technically you could argue, “Yes, they are too real!” and argue it very loudly. Of course, people will think you are a crazy fool if you do. But I doubt that changes anybody’s mind about Mickey.