Well, I still can’t believe it, but I went ahead and did it. Did what you ask? Especially did what that makes me put the word idiot in the title you ask, after reflecting for a moment? Well, I did tell you I agreed to write for a naturist website about the first time visiting a nudist park. And, well… as nervous and as fearful and as willing to run and hide somewhere that the idea made me, especially with my splotchy-spotted psoriasis skin, I went.
Yes, the nearby nudist park is called Bluebonnet. It is located between Decatur and Alvord, Texas. I had to call ahead and make an arrangement to be met at the gate and escorted in to the office to sign up for a day visit. I had to call at least a day ahead of time. I debated with myself for hours before I dialed that number. Actually, once I took the step of calling in, it seemed all down hill from there. My feet just sorta took me there, aided by my little car of course. If you have read about my crazy adventures in nudity on this blog, you know that I have been around nudists and naturists before. But I was never the one willing to be naked in the presence of others before, especially not people I didn’t already know as well as I know family members. Stark naked in front of people! And some of them are female!!!
The front gate suggests I am entering a different world!
My knees felt like jelly as I reached the gate. But there was no reason to turn around and go an hour and a half back home without at least trying. So I called and they opened the gate.
The lady office manager was from the Philippines just like my wife. She was easy to talk to and made me feel comfortable as we talked about my visit. We were both wearing clothes at that point, not a hard thing at all to accomplish. So I paid a reasonable price and was given the run down on expected behaviors and rules. This wasn’t some madhouse orgy site or such nonsense as that. It was actually a family-oriented naturist club. They expect you to act like any other camper in any other campground, just acting that way with no clothes on.
Here’s a picture of the two swimming pools by the clubhouse to prove I actually went in. Didn’t think I could actually do it, did you? I didn’t have to worry about the no-pictures of other guests rule because it was 104 degrees Fahrenheit on Friday when I visited. No sensible people were out naked in the sun. In all I only met three other nudists, the office manager and two gentlemen who weren’t much younger than me. Everybody was pleasant and very encouraging. No mention was made of my spotty old carcass, not even by me. That kind of thing apparently never comes up. They did all encourage me to enjoy the club and come back often enough to become a member. I actually found being naked to be quite pleasant. I hiked in the woods where it was shady. I sat by the pool in the shade, and eventually swam. I think I promised you before I would never inflict a picture of my naked spotted old carcass on you. And I will hold myself to that promise now… even if I didn’t make that promise before. I will, however, use a cartoon of brand new nudist Mickey to give you an idea of the nightmares you could be having if I didn’t keep that promise.
So now I can write my naturist blog and tell other nudists all about my first time as a nudist at Bluebonnet Naturist Resort in Texas. And the craziest thing of all is, I am actually beginning to think about going back and doing it again. What is wrong with me?
Catch a Falling Star 
Imaginary Friends
When you know someone has an imaginary friend, something like Elwood’s six-foot invisible rabbit called Harvey, don’t you immediately think that person is crazy? I do. But I have imaginary people as friends. I think most writers do. So am I crazy? Probably. But hopefully it is a good kind of crazy.
It began with imaginary friends from books. The Cat in the Hat was my friend. Jim Hawkins was my friend, as was Mowgli and all the members of the Swiss Family Robinson. They entered my dreams and my daydreams. I told them my troubles the same way I listened to theirs through their stories.
I began to have imaginary friends that came from my own imagination too.
I used to tell my mere human friends about my friend Davalon from outer space. I told them that he was real and secretly visited me at night to talk about being able to learn about humans on earth by walking around invisibly and watching them. I got so involved with these stories that my sixth grade class began saying, “Michael is from Mars.”
When I was a teenager, I began having conversations with a faun. His name was Radasha. He was a creature from Greek Myth, a sensual Dionysian creature who, in his child body, was both younger than me and way older than me. I didn’t realize until much later in life that he was the result of my repressed memories of a childhood sexual assault that I was the victim of. I could talk to him about my fear of nakedness. I could tell him about my blossoming interests in naked girls and their bodies. I could talk to him about all the things I was somehow too terrified to talk to my male friends about, even though none of them had the same reluctance to discuss sex. Ra was imaginary. But he helped me heal.
Then the story-telling seriously began. I used Davalon as one of the main characters in my novel Catch a Falling Star. I created Torrie Brownfield, the baby werewolf to express the feelings I had as a boy about being a monster and secretly terrible and deformed. Torrie is a normal boy with a condition called hypertrichosis. I am working on The Baby Werewolf now. And then there’s lovely Valerie Clarke. She is the main character of Snow Babies which is a finished novel, edited and proofread and ready to publish. It is I book I will have to find another way to publish since the recent death of PDMI Publishing. She is not a me-character, based on my own thoughts and feelings. She is based on former classmates and students who told me things that express the sadness and isolation of growing up female. So she is even more imaginary than my other characters.
They become real people to me. They have their own point of view. They talk to me and I learn things from them. But they are imaginary. So am I crazy? Yes… as a loon. And happy as Elwood P. Dowd to be that way.
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