| In the later part of the �70s, I decided to atone for my fund and forsook the good life for the Good Book. But after nine years of prudish perfection, I took a job as a deejay at an Austin-area radio station. I was met with temptation at every turn. I soon found out the only thing a Texas deejay finds more enjoyable than talking to thousands of people at a whack was standing naked in front of someone who was talking to thousands of whacking people, or whatever� I heard dozens of war stories about memorable moonings�who�s done what to whom and when. But it didn�t stop there. One day, in the middle of the half-hour Expanded news at 5, the program director stepped from behind the (a la) cart machine au natural, and without socks. OK, I�d been had, but it wasn�t enough for him. Sometimes daily he would sneak into the control room (after the office staff had gone home), hide behind the cart machine and surprise me. Like a big pink rooster with a mustache, he would strut and preen, grinning broadly under a large beaked nose. He was not at all scary. In fact, he reminded me of a large, naked Groucho Marx, but the cigar was in the wrong place. So I appealed to our short, New York-Jewish, kidney-depleted general manager with farts from hell. �I can�t fire him. He�s too good for the station,� he said, chopping air with stubby fingers while emitting another green gas cloud. Needing money, I remained at the control board. I enduring performances of Crotcho, who jumped out grinning with his cigar. I continued reading the news stories du jour or announcing the next country classic in as perky a voice as I could muster. Meanwhile, I called every station in the area to set up interviews. I was hired by a kindly program director of a major Austin station for an overnight shift. He not only knew Rick, but had had to fire him for strange behavior. Instead of compulsive stripping, he said Rick had been convinced we was being followed by the Mafia because his wife was �the illegitimate child of Howard Hughes.� He shut the door of his office and began to talk in a low voice. �Is he still taking lithium? he asked. The answer was the question. My most prestigious skinny-dip came at roughly the same time. There was a club near my apartment where many media and city hall employees met for drinks and meaningful chatter. Here I met the comely assistant district attorney. One evening he was trying to get his mind off of a breakup with his girl. After a drink or two, or maybe three, we kissed in the parking lot and I talked him into a skinny-dip in a creek located about four blocks away from the courthouse. Being the assistant D.A., he conducted himself with a certain protocol, not giving in completely to naked abandon. We swam and laughed and made up mock newspaper headlines to appear should the police find us. They didn�t, and last I heard he was high in the Texas judicial system. Life streaks on, and I met Mr. Right while shopping for career electronics. He was heel-clicking straight and narrow, but it didn�t take me long to bring him around to a lifestyle of freestyle aquatics. Liking a quiet environment, I moved to a predominately senior citizen complex. It sported two very quiet swimming pools, mostly empty because of the demographics. They were a haven from stress and soon became a setting for midnight trysts. We enjoyed passionate paddling while the elderly tenants slept, hearing aids on their night tables. The straight guy was transformed by the setting and a second adolescence emerged. Our marriage was consummated when, on our honeymoon, he joined me in a daytime dip in a frigid, spring-fed creek in late September. It was the beginning of a skinny-dipping pour deux. This year I was blessed with the feel of soft, fragrant Hawaiian wind, most with ocean mist, on my bare skin. Topless, I roamed a remote part of a rain forest and, likewise, stood on a black lava bluff and felt the spray of a crashing wave. The fantasy had come full circle. I only hope heaven is as good. I pray my future contains acreage and a tall fence. No matter how old, I will run naked in my secluded yard and skinny-dip in my landscaped pool�with no one to scoff. I will skip whenever possible. I will have grown-up size swings and a tree house. When I wear, I shall wear purple. |
| Like a big pink rooster with a mustache, he would strut and preen, grinning broadly under a large beaked nose. He was not at all scary. In fact, he reminded me of a large, naked Groucho Marx, but the cigar was in the wrong place. |