NAKED TO THE COLD SEA by Peter Nolan Smith

In the early 70s
We stood on Nauset's nude beach
Hilde and me
The two of us
Hippies not yet punks.
A thick ledge of wet seaweed
Covered the high tide mark.
Off with our clothes
We lay on the cool green algae
Our bare bodies sinking beneath the sludge
Comforted by the endless ocean
The two us silent
Seagulls squatted at the high tide mark
Never within arm's reach
We stand as one
We make love
Hippie love
Young love
After we rise
Like seals from the seal
Naked to the elements
Wiping the seaweed
Off each other
Free
We both laugh
Skin blue-green as the cold Atlantic
Eyes meet
Understand
We all come from the sea
The two of us run into the ocean
Water
Embraced by Neptune
Cold as ice
Clean as ice
Forever young for now
Hippies not yet punks
1972

Naked On Nauset Beach - 1972 - HIlde Me and the Atlantic

In the early 70s
Below the ridege of dune
Hilde and me
Stood on Nauset's nude beach
The two of us
Me 20 lean and young
She eighteen blonde skin more burnt than tanned
Hippies not yet punks__
A thick ledge of wet seaweed
Covered the high tide mark.
Off with our clothes
We lay on the cool green algae
Our bare bodies sinking beneath the sludge
Comforted by the endless ocean
The two us silent
Seagulls squatted at the high tide mark
Never within arm's reach
We lay down to be one
To make love
Hippie love
Young love___
After we rise
Like seals from the seal
Naked to the elements
Wiping the seaweed
Off each other
Free
We both laugh
Skin blue-green as the cold Atlantic__
Eyes meet
Understand
We all come from the sea__
The two of us run into the ocean
Water
To be embraced by Neptune
The waves
Cold as ice
Cold as the once immortal Glacier
Rising over the continental shelf
Over a mile high
Gone today
Gone for thousands of years
Melted into the Ocean
Its green expanse
Clean as melted ice__
Hilde and me
Forever young for now
Hippies not yet punks
1972

Birthday Suit Swimming - 2009

Man and woman are emerged naked from their mothers. Nudity is our natural state. Adam and Eve roamed through the Garden of Eden without any Gucci grape leaves covering their genitalia. despite this biblical precedent New York retains several laws on the penal code banning public nakedness. Most were written to prevent the spread of pornography, however law § 245.01 against exposure of a person's private parts. Friday night I protested this odious restriction by skinny-dipping at the dumpsters pool along the Gowanus Canal.

It was late. The full moon was hidden by clouds. Our host Jocko Weyland green-lighted my nakedness and I climbed onto the deck with my female accomplice. Shelley was wearing a bathing suit and expressed no need to bare her flesh to the four elements on a summer night. The glimmer of silver moonlight bathed the transformed parking lot and I stripped off my jeans and shirt. I was commando on the underwear front.

The swimmers in the pools laughed, as I approached the water. Fifty-seven year-old naked men are funny, especially since my hands were cupped over my genitalia to avoid any embarrassment about the size of my penis. I leaped in the water. It was cold. Not as cold as the air, but my cock shriveled to a cashew. The other bathers veered away from me, until my accomplice joined me. Shelley was young. Twenty-two. A fellow poet. The companion of a female tends to lessen the collective disdain for naked old men. I kept my distance. Room for the Holy Ghost. I was no longer a pervert.

Only cold and I climbed from the dumpster filled with water to dressed in my clothing. No one had really saw my member and I was glad. I'm definitely bigger than Michelangelo's DAVID.

At least after I'm shaken off the cold.

I only believe in indecent exposure in the bedroom.

Both alone and with my wife.

Free As The Breeze - 2016

The Soviet Premier Khrushchev famously declared in 1956 that the USSR would bury American Imperialism.

Actually he said, "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side.", but the Western press liked 'we will bury you' better.

After his election in 1960 President Kennedy was upset by the USSR thinking America was soft and JFK called the American people to improve their health and fitness. His primary challenge was the 50-mile hike. The Marines could accomplish the feat in 20 hours. In February 1963 JFK and his brother walked the distance in the winter.

That following summer at Boy Scout camp in New Hampshire my older brother and I joined a troop of hikers on a 100 mile hike through the forests of the White Mountains. Our scout leaders drove the phalanx of 12-13 year-olds to finish the daily twenty-mile stages. We ran out of food on the second day and pillaged a cornfield for dinner. The 3rd day was a tortuous trudge on a path surrounded by miles of chopped tress. The sun was relentless and the leaders promised us a good swim at the end of the trail.

"Big Man Pond."

"Food and water."

We tramped with the food as first word for the right foot and water for our left.

Food and water built a mirage of Big Man Pond. The crystal clear lake was 30 miles across from shore to shore. Hot dogs and hamburgers were cooking on a BBQ with ice cream sodas to chase them down and a girls' camp was next to our camp site.

The reality came as a shock.

Big Man Pond was barely two hundred feet in length. One of the boys from South Boston threw a rock across it. The troop leader yelled at us.

"Stop your complaining, This pond is spring-fed. That's our water. The food will be here later. We've marched sixty miles in three days. It's time for a swim. You've earned it. Everyone strip off your clothes."

He led the way and was buck-naked with seconds. We joined him without protest.

"Everyone in formation. Now one quick jog around the pond and then in the water."

We followed the troop leader. Our penises bounced up and down. At the starting point he stopped and pointed to the pond.

"Into the water."

We were robots to his command.

It was the first time that I went skinny-dipping, but not the last.

Since that day I have swam naked on Cape Cod, at Watchic Pond, Riis Park in New York, and Black Beach in San Diego.

Nudity was frowned upon by most Americans.

Our Puritan roots deny the freedom of prurient behavior, because to my ancestors a body without clothing was too vulnerable to attack, however the Germans and Scandinavians have a long history of sun-worshipping due to their pagan history.

In 1982 I visited Sylt north of Hamburg. The beach was a center for FKK or Freikoerperkultur 'free body culture'. I stripped off my clothes and to allow the four elements of wind, earth, sun, and water to embrace my flesh. The other bathers bronzed their bodies like gods and goddesses. My friends and I were young. That day we felt immortal.

30 years later sunbathing au natural has fallen out of vogue according to the German FKK association. There are less Germans and more foreigners, who disapprove of the old tradition, plus the Germans of the 80s are in their 50s and 60s.

Our divinity has been devastated by our age. I no longer look at my reflection in the mirror. I prefer looking at my shadow, but last year I quit my job on 47th Street to regain my girlish figure. For the past three days I've been out on the basketball court shooting hoops. I walked around my apartment in the nude. One day and one day soon I'm going to check the mirror and see the shadow of that young man basking in the dying light of a North Sea sunset and say, "Naked as a jaybird."

The same way I came into this life.

Sylt, I'm coming your way.

Achtung, achtung.

The naked man cometh.

Nobody is burying me other than in the sand.

Naked As A Jaybird

Nudity was considered taboo throughout my youth, plus the boreal weather in New England offered few occasions for such a freedom. The naked people available to a young boy were to be found in National Geographic. That illustrious magazine displayed photos of Amazonian tribeswomen with saggy breasts and African nymphettes with pointed nipples. Looking at men without clothing were considered perverse and parents warned their children about strange men, since perverts haunted the Blue Hills south of Boston by such perverts. My older brother, best friend, and myself steered clear of areas frequented by queers.

Adam had been shamed by his nakedness after eating the apple offered by Eve. His innocence hd been lost forever taught the nuns of Our Lady of the Foothills. I recalled having bathe with my sisters and brothers. There we six of us. None of us had ever felt Adam's humiliation in the shared tub, for nudity was innocent up to a certain age.

My father banned our communal baths when my older brother hit 9. I was 8.

The year was 1961.

That summer my older brother and I were sent to a Boy Scout camp in New Hampshire. Our troop had it's own camp site. We slept in tents. Showers were open stalls. My older brother and I washed in the lake. We weren't getting naked for anyone.

One afternoon after our merit badge course of hiking I hurried to the outhouse to take a dump. I dropped my pants and sat of the wooden throne. The latrine stunk of shit. Our fecal matter dropped five feet into a seething pit of slime. I held my breath doing a # 2. I had good lungs. After wiping my ass I waddled from the crapper with my trousers at my ankles.

A scout from Lowell had a camera in his hands. He snapped a shoot of my exit. I shouted for him to give me the film, but he ran into the woods. I told no one about is invasion of my privacy and hunted for the puerile pornographer for days. I never found him and for the rest of 1961 I worried that my photo with my pants down would appear in the Boston Globe.

It didn't hit the front page in 1962, 1963, or any of the following years.

My hangup about nudity disappeared in my teens. I skinny-dipped at the Quincy Quarries and stripped naked to lie in my backyard on summer nights to pray for the extraterrestrials to rescue me from the suburbs. I dreamed of stripping off my clothing with a girl. I had seen stroke books. Nudity was a thrill, but none of my girlfriends in high school went all the way. That pleasure occurred at the age of 18 and I've never suffered Adam's shame in my adult life.

Still my one nude photo curbed any voyeurism in me. The idea of sending someone a naughty picture remains abhorrent. My sense of propriety forever scarred by a childhood incident. Somewhere in Boston a man has a picture of me with my pants down. I hope it gives him pleasure.

My inhibition jaundiced my opinion of public figure emailing naked photos of themselves to women they meet on the Internet.

Several years ago a state politician had been outted by a GOP website whose webmaster had a legal dispute with the New Jersey lawmaker. The Democrat had been contacted by a woman who had asked for photos. The idiot had sent them from his Blackberry and the angry webmaster posted them online. His fellow Democrats called for s resignation, remarking that nudity wasn't a crime, but that e man had shown little common sense in a state where corruption is a god-given right to the people's representatives.

Nudity is political death to the right-minded New Jerseyians.

The episode echoed the earlier scandal of NY congressman Anthony Weiner. His Twitter account was hacked by a website and his naked photos scorched the Internet. He denied the photos were of him, going so far as to say that he could not recognize the body as his own.

Getting caught in a lie is political death, but only if the voters don't believe the lie.

I understand these politicians' dilemma, but my hackles are buzzing with the suspicion that both these men were removed from office thanks to the hacking tactics of the Rupert Murdoch empire. If it was happening in the UK, then sure as a boy scout shits in a crapper, then minions of the Murdoch organization were committing the same crime here.

It's not like anyone is dragging a well-known congressional majority leader out of the closet.

Homosexuality isn't a crime.

Neither is nudity.

What is questionable is how this GOP stalwart amassed $34 million on a senator's yearly salary of $180,000 during a 20 year stint in the Senate.

He musts be good with numbers

Pierced Naked Cock

San Francisco has well deserved reputation for open sexuality and three years ago nudists colonized a Castro plaza to express the joy of nakedness, however residents have complained to the gay district supervisor not about the nudity, but how the cock rings worn by several men seem to perpetuate erections, for sexual arousal is against the rules. Supervisor Weiner was very prudish about the display of piercings. “People can have whatever view they want to have on public nudity in general. But to be walking around with a cock ring on or something similar is just not acceptable, responsible behavior. The whole purpose of a cock ring is to draw attention to that area." I don't live SF, but nudists are allowed on public transportation. Most of the images are of these men past their prime, so the idea of riding a 'cable car to the stars' with a hairy overweight tattooed brute with an eternal hard-on doesn't fit into my definition of an appealing tourist attraction, but then I'm a little pass my prime too.