I remember my first experiences with being naked had nothing to do with nudism, that’s for sure! Changing into or out of swim suit as a child, and particularly at my grandparents house, was always something I did alone. Why? I had no idea back then. As I got a little older I remember a couple of occasions when my brother and I changed in the same downstairs utility room, but I think that was because we were in a hurry to go somewhere else or when grandma was about to do laundry and wanted the suits for the wash.
Grandma never made a fuss about seeing our naked butts. Why would she? Finally I began understanding that nakedness was something special and there was apparently a reason people did not do it all over. This would have been my “awakening” to puberty, I suppose. Along this time there are a few vague memories of sitting around my grandparents house wrapped in only a towel, which was probably after swimming. There is one clear memory of my brother “streaking” through the house and out the back garage door. He came to a halt at the end of the garage, near the road, where a couple of neighbor girls were outside across the street washing a car! That occasion was a family event that was talked about for years, and neither the neighbors or the girls ever said anything to us. I am certain he was seen, but again, this was summer, we were visiting, and we were just kids!
If I had only knew then what I know now, I would have been “streaking” way more than my brother and probably would have invented a dozen ways to loose my swim trunks or forget them somewhere. Years later and several states away from my grandparents home, I remember skinny-dipping with my brother and a neighborhood friend named Mark. We were going fishing at a lake behind our apartments and got ridiculously hot and sweaty traipsing through the woods from one fishing spot to another.
Mark, being the oldest of the bunch, said he was going swimming. He went into the water and then threw his cut-off shorts out after a few moments. I think I went in second and did not want to walk home in soaking wet cut-offs, so I removed mine before going into the water. We all thought this was quite daring because of being in clear view of a local international airport’s runway. Anyone looking out the windows of a plane taxiing and turning around at the end of the runway would have had a pretty clear view of us boys. We had great fun that summer and there was nothing “inappropriate” about it. I also remember my mother and step-father once mentioning a possible visit to Virginia’s eastern shore, and asking both my brother and I if we would go to a nude beach with them. This never happened though.
It wasn’t until about ten years later that I was introduced to printed literature on nudism.