A Naked Old Man Asks Some Tough Questions

Early morning stretch. When I get up early it’s as though I own the world. The other two residences in the small compound are now occupied, which means my nudity on the deck will be severely restricted until they leave. Taking this photo was a risk, perhaps an unnecessary risk, when all is said and done.

This particular image made me reconsider what it is I am doing here. How did a shy, quiet, senior end up naked, almost in public? It is a question I wrestled with for the next two hours while wearing shorts on the patio, something I hadn’t done since we arrived here in Olon. A notice from Amazon, telling me that I had sold a paperback of my novel, It’s Complicated, served as the catalyst for my “remembering” how and why my life got this way.

I then went to my author’s dashboard at Amazon. Seeing the three novels, the three poetry books, and the three volume autobiography took me back in time. These books are a record of my journey as a man and as an author. Naturism became a pivotal centre of my healing journey. Seeing the titles, I decided to re-post them to my Facebook account which is limited to family and friends. All have seen these covers, most have likely read at least the first two books of my autobiography, and some have bought and read all nine of the books. I guess that you could say that I have no secrets. For a time, the first and second books of poetry were free for my family and friends to read at Smashwords. Hundreds of downloads later, I inexplicably removed them from Smashwords making them only available at Amazon as print-only books. Regardless of the visibility and access today, most saw the photos of me naked. Not only was my story known by all these people, so were my photos. I had a naturist blog site that was shared with family and friends as well.

Yet today, that is all changed. That old blog site is gone, replaced by a new one [better in my opinion] which few, if any, of my friends and family are aware even exists. My Jungian psychology blog also disappeared. That blog site had frequent themes that were uncomfortable in terms of the naked human psyche. The man who took a journey of healing which revolved around Jungian psychology, Buddhist meditation, and naturism has faded into the past. The books remain, but rarely mentioned, and those still talked about are the autobiographical books.  Is it about them, or is it about me, or … ?

I’m not a brave man, by any stretch of the imagination. Writing blog posts with my images, which are only viewed by a few handfuls of naturists, is not a brave act. In the big scheme of things, it is basically a non-event. So why do I get worked up about it, as if my world would come undone should others who are not in the naturist community, especially family and friends, get to know about this site? That worry has been eating within me for some time. It is the central reason for cropping my photos. The question, “what if my grandchildren or their friends see these posts?” screams at me though the physical books, including the Naked Poetry books are in their homes, unhidden. I don’t have the answers in spite of having all the facts.

I am not alone when it comes to being a solitary naturist or nudist. Almost every single one of us has a certain level of insecurity when it comes to being different from the others around us, whether they know and accept, or not. How do we continue to be fully present in the lives of all those people in our lives while hiding at the same time? How do we keep these people in our lives if we “let it all hang out”?

I hope you have some answers for this old man.