| Well, I'm finally spending more time at work again and less time out in the
sun, so I guess it's time to report on this year's Gatherings while the
cherished memories continue to glow.. Here's the report from June...
Thanks to an unnamed fellow DECcie from the Landover office who recognized my
name from this notesfile, I don't have to write much, because I can just enter
the article written about the first Gathering from the June 24th edition of the
Washington Post. Imagine my shock at having my nude body recognized by a fellow
employee from a picture on the front page of the Style section!! I almost had
a heart attack thinking that my name and the fact that I worked at Digital
was under a picture of my naked buns, and wondering whether I had broken some
PR rule at DEC, but thankfully that wasn't something I had to deal with... And
when I finally received the article in the mail, I was delighted to realize
that my buns were left out as well (can't get into too much trouble from a
picture of my naked back and ponytail ;-) And when I was interviewed for
Philadelphia TV, they were only allowed to film my naked face so I think I'm
safe with my PR status.
Anyway, it was a terrific time, lots of media coverage, and excellent weather,
except for the last day which is when I finally had time to sit in the sun :-(
The site was not as nice as last year, but the activities and the people more
than made up for it. It was great to see Molly and Stan again (lost to DEC's
rightsizing efforts) and to participate with three others from DEC. We were
from New England but on The Naturist Society (TNS) team as opposed to the NENA
team because of the mix of friendly people in TNS - and the BEST kids! - from
all over. Other naturist groups competing included the American Sunbathing
Association, Tri-State Metro Naturists, Tri-State Sun Club, the Skinny Dippers,
the DC Bares, and the NOAFFS (non-affiliated). TNS was the team that set out
NOT to win the Olym-pick events based on skill and ability, but on CONGENIALITY,
and I'm proud to say winning that trophy was the greatest moment I experienced!
To have had a chance to be part of such an open-hearted experience and meet so
many fine people in the process is indescribable!!!
There was only one official Eastern Gathering this year, (the
mini-gathering Aug 23-25th at Empire Haven in the Finger Lakes region
did not have any teams or Olym-pick events), but the second gathering
had the same friendliness and spirit of this gathering. I'll enter
more on that in another note, meantime, here's the article from the
Post.. (it's long..) I can't make you want to go next year, but I can
tell you it's an event I'll schedule all other events around!!
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HUFF! PUFF! IN THE BUFF!
In the Maryland Countryside, Nudists Gather for Their Olym-picks
{Copied without permission}
Paul Hendrickson, Washington Post Staff Writer
Darlington, Md.
What's a couple hundred naked bodies running around with tennis rackets and
volleyballs and ping pong paddles in the God-gorgeous June greenery of upper
Harford County?
Nothing to it. Snapola assignment.
"Think of it as counter-programming," the editor had said, pitching the idea and
then flitting off with her curve of smile.
"You mean like 'Wallflower at the Orgy?' the reporter had ground out below his
breath.
Actully, interviewing somebody in the glistening nude, collecting quotes from
the Coppertone stitchless, isn't so hugely different from interviewing someone
who's standing in front of you zippered head-to-toe -- say an uptight pol or a
holy woman in her convent. You still have to write and listen at the same time.
You still have to be figuring out the next question even as you're asking this
one. Okay, okay. It may be a tad harder keeping eye contact.
They billed it as the 1991 Naturist Eastern Gathering & Olym-pick Games. It was
flesh on the hoof, it was the glory of sport as the Greeks used to do it. It
ran four days and closed yesterday. It was the 11th annual East Coast summer
buff frolic, though it was only the second time a so-called (and not very
serious) Olympic games had become part of the official program. They were
hoping for a thousand attendees. Last year they held it in the Poconos. This
year you'd have thought Boris Yeltsin was going to show up minus pants, given
the amount of inrushing media. It must have had something to do with the
proximity (two hours) to Washington.
{my comments here.. Media was only permitted to interview/film/shoot those that
had consented in advance. There were so many because we invited them all so
that we could get some positive publicity for a very healthy look at a
Naturist event. Now back to your regularly scheduled newspaper article..}
SKIN GAMES IN RURAL MARYLAND! FILM AT 11!
There were deadly serious TV types pushing microphones into the faces of unclad
4- and 5-year-olds asking, "So Derek, tell me, how does it feel to be here with
your mommy and daddy at a nude convention?"
A film crew turned up from Germany. The Germans seem to know a lot about this
business of baring all.
They came, that is the naturists themselves, with their campers and RV's and
tents. There were babies and old ladies. There were whole extended families.
There were leathery-bunned elderly men in rubber clogs and bashed Budweiser hats
and apple-white legs. There were creamy-skinned young women in wire-rim
glasses. (Truthfully, handsome youthful bodies of, say, collegiate age were at
a premium.) Some wore t-shirts emblazoned with "Paddle Naked" and "Nudity is
Natural" and "Skinny Dippers Have Less Stress". Some had on sunglasses and
nothing else made by man. Some had on nylon fanny packs with web waistbands --
a truly hilarious sight.
Hilarious, that is, for about 20 minutes. Then the whole thing begins to assume
the weirdest normality. Think of an erotic L.L.Bean catalogue and you sort of
have it.
In a funny way, there's something de-eroticizing about a field of fun-loving
unclothed bodies. It's hard to explain but it's almost as if it's a move
AGAINST sexuality.
Some had on sweatbands. Some had on Reeboks. Some had on "wrist wallets,"
which were ingenious wrap-around terry-lined things with zippered nylon pockets
for cash, keys, driver's license, pictures of the fam. These can be ordered, in
case you're interested, from Nude & Natural -- which is a leading national
sunbathing magazine -- for $6.50, including postage.
There were people who had nothing on but radios.
There was a 200 pound man who looked like Buffalo Bill Cody: huge white
untamed flowing hair and beard. "I'm a professional Santa Claus," he said.
You could squint and see him in a red suit come to think of it. There was a
far thinner man who in real life is a project director for the Federal
Emergency Management Agency. His name is George Brozowski. He had his
family along. He's from New York. Not your everyday government bureaucrat.
"Oh yes," he said, non-clothed though not nonplused. "I've got it on my FEMA
resume." He was sitting on a blanket along with the wife and the two
kiddies, all of them naked as backyard jaybirds. "I'm a project director
for a nuclear power plant in New York City. I've got nothing to hide."
This was a man speaking literally.
Nobody seemed to be taking the athletic events themselves too seriously.
Actually, some of the contests weren't so athletic. The idea, the organizers
said, was just to have some good clean fun under the scorching sun. There
were watermelon-eating contests, backgammon games, nude sky-diving, standing
broad jump, five legged races, situp marathons, body-painting sessions,
rowboating and sailboating and canoeing.
Uh, hold it a sec on the canoeing. Latter-day naturists don't really use the
word "canoeing." The term they use is "canuding." Why not call a thing what
it is? There was a canuding outfit down from Jersey called the Paddling Bares.
They love paddling in the buff above the Delaware Water Gap. Their leader's
name is Larry Pohl. In his other life Pohl fixes computers. He came to the
rolling pastoral splendors of Harford County with his quite naked wife,
Lillian, and his 6-year old Rebecca. The family that skins and canudes together
stays together.
"It's interesting," Larry Pohl said. The computer field and teaching seem to
attract a lot of Naturists. People who wear a tie when the tie really serves no
function -- unlike, say, a businessman, who has to wear a tie as part of his
appropriate highpowered attire. But a guy who goes into an office and fixes
computers is wearing one just because it's convention. So he comes home and
overcompensates. Well, that's my theory anyway."
Pohl paused. "Right now we're running [Paddling Bares] out of a post office
mailing box in Milltown, New Jersey. But the opportunities are wide open.
Honey, could you get him a newsletter?" So saying, Lillian Pohl got up from
the grass. She looked to be about 35. She had on clogs and a Swiss army
knife. Her skin and teeth were quite white. She clogged on past the scribbling
scribe, a dressed man just trying to do his work. The little red knife was
dangling on a chain between her wriggly breasts. In a minute she came back
with her husband's newsletter. It had been drafted on a word processor. There
were announcements about the "October Fall Foliage Trip" and the "February
Mid-Winter Overnight." This last sent a terrible shiver down a coward's spine.
"We've got wonderful diversity here," said Mike Gesner, one of the organizers
of this year's do. Gesner, a physical specimen who had on a canary-yellow
sweatband, is the owner-operator of the Tri-State Sun Club in Broadway, NJ.
once worked at an auto parts store, but that was before his nude epiphany.
"Our group is about making friends and having fun," he said. "We're always
looking for ways to have more fun. If you look at the Greeks, they played
their Olympic games in the nude. So why not? Naturism is nudism of the
'90s. That's my line. You can use that. It's the best description, I think.
You see, historically nudists are people who liked to have clubs and
colonies. Well, naturists like clubs too. But naturists want beaches.
Naturists want rivers. The great outdoors. We want -- "
Mike Gesner, naturist, spread his arms as far outward as they could go.
He bared a huge grin. "We want FREEDOM." It was as if the word "Freedom" had
put the revolutionary fire of Thomas Paine in him. "I've been a skinny-dipper
all my life," he said. But as far as being in mixed company, social nudity,
you see, that's the difference, that separates you out. But when it happens,
it's like nothing else, it just feels so... natural." Gesner's nudity
revelation came 10 years ago in Jamaica, at a beach and club called Hedonism
Two. It took him to this strange other side and now there is no going back.
In Jersey he and his family go to a nude beach at Sandy Hook. Jersey seems
to be a hotbed of East Coast naturism.. Gesner cited a March poll from a
cable television enterprise that claims one in every three Americans has
skinnydipped in mixed company and loved it. He said there are about
"60,000 to 70,000 card-carrying naturists nationwide. The largest organization
is the American Sunbathing Association, which will hold its National Nude
Weekend on July 13-14. Carl Frey came this year. He's from Umatilla, Fla. He's
66. There are 66-year olds who look far worse without clothes. He's been a
nudist his whole life. "Came in this way," he said, howling at the line.
Frey said he usually cuts his grass in Florida without clothes and that his
neighbors just drive by and shake their heads. What's the matter, they uptight
or something?
Frey acted as a media liaison at this year's event. In that guise, he wore
black trunks and clogs for part of the weekend. "The reason I wear clothes
when I'm accompanying the media," he said, and there seemed something
mournfully apologetic in it, "is because maybe I'd be escorting a female
reporter. And we don't know beforehand if she'd be offended."
At 3 p.m. Friday there was a massage demonstration by "The Stroking
Community." Four or five people working at once on one thoroughly willing
body. At 4 p.m. there was a seminar titled "Nude Public Relations."
In the evenings, there were naturist videos, talent shows, campfire singalongs.
You could think of it all as one large 4-H camp.
In fact, camping is mostly what this property is about. The naturists
leased this year's convention site from Harry Leff and his wife. The formal
name is the Picnic Place, and it's 170 acres of playing fields and pools and
lakes and tennis courts and old splintery wooden cabins. It's not far from
the Susquehanna River; it's 15 minutes from the Havre de Grace exit on I-95.
It's a couple miles outside the snoozing farm hamlet of Darlington, but it's
very private. There's only one road in. Somebody was checking credentials at
the gate all weekend. Cars and vans were pulling in from Connecticut, Rhode
Island, New York, D.C.
Hany Leff watched some of this past weekend's activities from atop a
cherry-red Honda Fourtrax all-terrain vehicle. He had clothes on. He had on
an I-ate-the-canary grin.
"It's interesting," he said. "Six years ago I was a clinical psychologist
practicing in Miami. My wife's father died. He had this family property. So
we came on up here. Now we run this summer camp. When we're not having this
bunch, we'll have kids, 6 to 16, just normal healthy American kids."
In fact, Leff said, next week some kids of some powerful Washington people
will be up for a camping session, never knowing what was going on here
the week previous.
At one point in the weekend, a Southern States fuel truck pulled onto the
grounds. Maybe the driver thought he was delivering a tank of oil to just
any old summer camp. You should have seen his face. He seemed to be driving
VERY slow.
A man is shouting into a megaphone. He looks so inappropriate: He's dressed.
"Okay, time for the push-up event," he barks. "You must go all the way to the
ground and your arms must lock."
Three women line up. The one in the middle is buck. Buck that is, save for
her black espadrilles and glossy silver nails. She hasn't done a push-up yet
and she's breathing hard.
She's Marion Balavender, from South Orange. She's 54. She's a legal secretary
and an art model. She also writes. She's divorced. She's been into this scene
three years.
"Ladies take your marks," shouts the man with the megaphone. What is this,
the Indianapolis 500? Balavender is giving it the old college try. People are
rooting wildly. She's much older than her two competitors. Potty men all
around her are screaming, "You c'n do it, Marion, hey baby, hey baby,
attababy, Marion, you're beautiful, kid."
The judge blows the whistle. She's perspiring furiously. She looks blissful.
Her friend Bob Goldberg -- he's from Queens -- brings her a towel. The reporter
is edging in for a quote. Marion Balavender doesn't have what you'd call
a dynamite body by any known yardstick on the planet, but she has a dynamite
personality. Has the capacity to laugh at herself. "Practice?" she practically
hoots into your notebook. "Me, practice? You kidding? I haven't done a pushup
in 20 years. Course, I do try to stay in shape. I disco-dance. I do a lot of
walking."
"You were great, Marion," says Bob Goldberg. He's got on aviator shades
and puce deck shoes and a blue baseball cap emblazed with Tri-State Metro
Naturists. In real life he's a painter of buildings owned by the New York
Times. But this isn't real life.
Marion Balavender: "I feel much safer around nudists than I do around
straight people. I hate to use that word. Clothed people. I've never had a
nude man at one of these affairs come up and make a lewd remark to me.
Maybe a man will come up and flirt, and that's fine, and maybe something
will develop of it, maybe not. I mean, I would be insulted if a man didn't
find me attractive. But I don't go around naked to attract men. You see,
you're strong enough to show someone your whole body. Look at it this way. When
you're in a relationship with a clothed person, this is my experience anyway,
I always find a situation where a person is very curious to see what I look
like underneath. And I get what I would call the fresh pass. You know,
trying to touch me on the knee, or breast, or whatever. Here, they see my
whole body."
Bob Goldberg cuts in. "I think one of the things she's saying is that there's
no clothes consciousness or class consciousness -- you know, you don't feel
bad because somebody's got on a Giorgio or a Ralph Lauren."
"Exactly," says Balavender. "Clothing is sexier. That's what I want to
emphasize."
A little wicked smile. "Course, sometimes we have Funderwear Functions.
That's different. We may have some Frederick's of Hollywood stuff on.
Sparks fly."
"You betcha," says Goldberg. "Sometimes in winter we'll have dances at each
other's homes."
"I think I look sexier in a negligee because I can cover up my sins,"
Balavender says. "My stretch marks. My fat. I have nice legs, and I can
accentuate that. But here, it's all me. They look at it all. I'm not afraid.
You know, when I used to go out with a man before, and there would be
something between us, I used to think that something would have to come out
of this, that we would have to go to bed, or at least in some way follow the
thing out. But now I no longer feel this way. This is just freer. That's all
I can say."
"We hug each other in the nude, we dance in the nude," says Goldberg.
Maybe they'll dance, suggests the reporter.
"Wanna dance?" she says.
Marion Balavender and Bob Goldberg, two middle-aged naked people, are
gliding to unheard music on the browned-out grass of a rolling field in
Harford County, Md. In a funny way, it all seems so innocent. It almost
seems Victorian.
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