Another quality page linked to Jim's
Pen is Central!
Another quality page linked to Jim's
Pen is Central!
Why I'm Naked NowHi! I'm Jim, and I'm naked now. Why aren't you?
OK, OK--some of you are. Fine! But the rest of you?
The rest of you are sitting there in front of your computer, feeling guilty at some level about your body--probably about the fact that you're here on this page, reading this. You're excited at some level; maybe you even have an erection. If you like "bears," you're already looking at my picture, checking out my beard, wondering if there's a photo of me showing my furry body somewhere on this site. (Keep looking!) If not, you're wondering where all the smoother, thinner naked guys are. (Keep looking!)
But if you calm down, take a deep breath, and think along with me, you'll understand why I'm naked now--and why you should be naked, too.
I used to hate my furry body. I like smooth, thin guys. I think they're incredibly sexy. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a hairy, round guy. "He's not sexy," I thought--and there wasn't much I could do about that (alleged) fact.
Then I met Scott, who suggested that I grow a beard. I did. At the very next GNI Gathering of Gay Male Naturists, I suddenly discovered that I was popular! Well, not one of the most popular guys there, but every day someone stopped me, like clockwork, and asked to take my photo. "You're such a perfect bear!", they would say. "My boyfriend is going to love this!"
That's the first reason:
Have you ever been to a gay dance club and seen perfectly handsome men dance until they're sweating buckets, but never, ever dared even to take their shirt off? Lack of body acceptance is the reason. They're scared that if they take their shirt off, someone will see their chest and decide that it's not muscular enough, or too hairy, or too hairless, or that there are some stray hairs growing on the shoulders. They fear rejection. How sad!
Have you ever been to a gay nude beach and wondered why so many of the gay guys strip down to little tiny bathing suits but don't go nude? Lack of body acceptance is the reason. They're scared that if they take their suit off, someone will see that their pen is is nowhere near 12 inches long, or is too thin, or has a big head, or something. Mostly, they worry that their friends will put them down. Again, they fear rejection. How sad!
Accept your body for what it is. Find someone who likes your body just the way it is. Will such people be less common than the ones who are looking for the perfect stud you're trying to appear to be? Sure. Those people are probably immature and silly. Even if they're not, there are so many things which have to work out for you and him to become boyfriends that something else would have prevented you from riding off into the sunset with him, anyway. Do you really want to misrepresent your body, get a guy into bed as a result, and then (once he sees you naked) have to beg for a mercy fuck?
Whatever you have, flaunt it. Enjoy the fact that someone will be attracted to you just for your body. (Hey, until they strike up a conversation they don't have anything else to go on, right? Don't put yourself in the position of being a guy with a big dick who hates size queens.) Let them see you as you really are; then you'll be sure that they're attracted to the real you--with a real personality, and real values.
That's the second reason:
Nowadays we're so used to hearing about "values" from the religious rightwingers that we gay men often shy away from discussing them. We react against those bad, sometimes evil values and act as if we think that all values are equal, or that we shouldn't have values.
Hogwash! Our values are better than their values. Be proud of your values. Stand up for them. It's taken you years of thought and anguish to get to where you could accept being gay, right? They wanted you to stay closeted and ashamed. They wanted you to feel guilty about the fact that you loved men, wanted to undress with them, wanted to play with all those parts of the body that they covered up and very nearly denied. How dare they. How dare they!!
Every August, when I join 700 other naked gay men at the GNI Gathering, this wonderful feeling of release and relaxation washes over me. That's because I realize, as if for the first time, that I am here in a community of men who love men and who love being naked. They share my values. They let me look at their dicks without embarrassment. They let me hug them, pen is to pen is, without thinking that that means that we're coming on to each other. They give me the visual gift of their nakedness, as I give them mine, and neither of us worries too much about which of us gets the better end of the bargain.
I feel incredibly relaxed--and high!--because I don't have to worry about whether my naked gay brothers think I'm shameful to be naked. I don't have to explain myself to anyone. If I were to ask them, I'd discover that they share my belief that the human body, including the tush and the pen is and the balls, are best presented to the world uncovered, unadorned, and as natural as can be. But I don't have to ask them, because by being naked themselves they are living their values and showing them for the rest of the world to see.
My values say: Those parts of the body are important. They matter. People want to look at them. I want people to look at them, just as I want them to look at my face. Every time I put on clothes that cover my crotch, I'm denying this important part of myself. I am pretending that these parts of the body don't matter. That's not true: they do matter. And my values tell me not to lie.
Clothes help us tell little lies about our bodies--lies which, in my case, damaged my self-esteem in ways I'm still figuring out. If you think that clothes are comfortable, then you're telling little lies, too. (I'll admit that some clothes are less uncomfortable than others. I'll admit that sometimes cloth protects us from sunburn, cold seats, and splinters. So carry a towel and some sunscreen!)
I mentioned the "high" I feel at the Gathering. That's the
next reason:
It just feels good being naked!! You don't have to hitch up your pants. (For us round-shaped bears, this is a constant hassle.) You don't have to adjust your belt. No marks are left on your body from things that are tight. The wind cools you perfectly, all over. The sun warms every square inch.
Somehow, you just know that this is good for you, physically. Do you suffer from jock itch? I can't guarantee that it'll go away if you run around naked for a week with us next August. But I bet it'll help. That nasty, devious fungus preys on your clothedness. It loves the dark, moist, warm places created when you pull your Calvin Klein briefs onto and up into your crotch, binding your balls, raising their temperature well above what Mother Nature designed them to have. That slimy fungus gets even happier when you add the extra layer of confinement we call "pants"; it calls its relatives and tells them to start breeding because nourishing sweat will soon be on its way. Yuck!
Have you ever run naked? Rollerbladed naked? Swum naked? Danced naked? Canoed naked? The human body was designed to exercise nude. That's how our hunter-gatherer ancestors exercised. They didn't need to buy any designer underfashions to get "support" for their balls. Phooey! Blecccch! Ridiculous! The ancient Greeks conducted the original Olympics completely in the nude. Threw the discus naked. Wrestled naked--if need be, grabbing each others' crotches naked! Their balls didn't ache for lack of "support" and yours won't either--once you let them swing free for a few weeks. Probably less.
There is nothing...
nothing...
... NOTHING like the feeling of dancing naked.
I said it before and I'll say it again: There is NOTHING like the feeling of dancing naked!!!!!! (To read testimony from several guys on this subject, check out my Men Dancing Naked page.) Every night at a Gathering, there's a nude disco. Imagine, if you will, this experience: a large dance hall, writhing with at least 200 naked men dancing to the beat of the music. There is nothing more amazing, nothing more tribal, nothing more inspiring than this. The naked disco itself is probably the single most addictive thing about the Gathering to most attendees. It doesn't matter if you're a professional improv dancer, a complete dance incompetent, or anything in between: the experience is astonishing! No drugs are permitted--and none are needed, because this is the highest high any human being dares to hope for in this world.
For us gay cowboy types, there's also naked two-stepping, line dancing, and even square dancing every night. I go to all of them!
Your body was designed to dance naked. Are you cold? OK, start dancing and get warmed up. Will you sweat? Yes and no. You'll sweat just enough to cool your body to the proper operating temperature as you dance; when you stop, the cool night air will feel much less chilling than it did before you got going. When dancing naked, I have never dripped even a single drop of sweat off my body, because my body's natural physiology was designed to work correctly under these conditions. Put on sweat pants? How silly! A jock strap? You've gotta be kidding!! A t-shirt? Never!
All those things prevent your body from sweating--glowing, actually--all over. When you see a jock at the gym wiping sweat from his brow, that's a sign that his body is trying too hard to cool him off. Because he's wearing clothes, the sweat his body produces under his clothes has the wrong effects. It dampens his shirt and his shorts. It doesn't evaporate properly. It over-chills him and under-cools him (tough to do, once you think about it). His body evaporates more sweat on the brow because it's desperately trying to rid itself of excess heat. How self-defeating. How pointless. How profitable for the athletic-wear companies!
Part of this dance "high," of course, is erotic. That's
another reason:
When you have sex, it feels good, right? To have your whole body touched. Available to your partner. To see your partner's naked body available to you.
Well, at a naked gathering guys don't walk around with erections all the time. (Sorry, you can put that thing away now >grin<.) But part of the physical sensation is a slight but important erotic charge that follows you all day, every day, as 700 other men share their delightful stimuli with you.
I don't care what "your type" is--you'll find it at the Gathering. Bears, boyz, hunks, trolls, older men, younger men, guys your age, twinkies, leather daddies, tops, bottoms--they're all there. All there for your watching pleasure!!! Just as you are there for their watching pleasure. Of course, it's not polite to stare. But unless you have the social skills of cement, you'll figure out how to fill your eyes with glances aplenty and no one need complain.
Do some guys score at the Gathering? Of course, just as they do at the bars. The same rules are in effect: don't scare the heterosexuals, do your lovemaking in private, and say thank you. Public sex is not permitted.
Heterosexual nudists sometimes seem to act as if sex and nudity have nothing to do with each other. Such craven bullshit! Every red-blooded man (not to mention red-blooded women) feels some sexual tension when the objects of his desire are available, naked, for his visual inspection. I'm very, very sorry, Your Holiness, Professor Dworkin, and Senator Helms, but I'm not going to feel guilty about that at all. Your anti-sexual values (oops, there's that word again!) have done enough damage already. I've tried your values on for size and they don't fit me. In fact, they don't fit any normal human being. Why don't you try mine on for a change? Come visit us this August and join the family.
And that, of course, is the final reason:
Well, maybe not a family, but a community. By definition, a community shares physical space and shares values. That's what we create for a week every August in the Pocono Mountains.
Come join us! Your first year, you'll knock yourself out trying to do too many things. Your second year you'll sleep a lot. Your third year you'll perform in the talent show (me? I'm the magician with nothing up his sleeve). And when the week is up, you won't want to leave.
Go home? You're nuts! Home is where my family and community are. When I leave the Gathering, I'm not going "home"--I'm going away. I'll be back home in...let's see now...about 51 weeks. When the next Gathering begins.
For me, my community of reference is the Gathering. There I break bread with my courageous, creative, caring, clever brothers: the ones I don't have to explain myself to, the ones I can relax with. Chat with. Play with. There I reinforce my values and repair my soul.
And you need to be there, too!
--Jim W.
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From
inception through 7 July 1997.
From 1 August 1997
to present.