Although as a psychiatrist, my husband is very much in tune with unconscious drives, hidden meanings, and deep-seated motivations, he is also a typical guy. And, typical guys want to go to nudist resorts. Not being any type of a guy myself, I had always informed him I would never, ever, EVER, not in a million . . . Oh, what’s the use? I had clearly lost any semblance of free will. Tim had, after all, convinced me to live in a bus for a year. So, I was the one who found the nudist RV park in California.
Yes, the very first time we “let it all hang out” was a bit daunting, but you know what? You have not lived until you’ve tried naked karaoke. The real fun of a nudist park though, is that everything is stripped down, so to speak. There’s no pretense, no posturing. You are just you – for everyone to see. It’s not the being nude that’s important, it’s the feeling that way. And this Spirited Woman discovered that it felt just great.
With everyone in the park walking around in their birthday suits (even the maintenance guy – although he also wore his tool belt), it was actually a bit odd getting dressed to leave the place when we went into town. In fact, our biggest fear became that we would simply forget to done our clothing, and be arrested at Safeway for public indecency. Even in the park there was an adjustment we hadn’t expected: One night, Tim started closing all the curtains in the bus. I wondered why – we’d been nude all the time, after all. He explained that he was about to start cooking and for his own safety needed to put on clothes. He didn’t want to offend anybody.
Being “exposed” all the time underscored the resolve that led to “the bus thing” in the first place: to do what was right for us (ie, taking a year off, part of it, as it turned out, naked) versus what was expected of us (continuing on our career paths, albeit fully clothed). And, isn’t that the very definition of a Spirited Woman?
Here is my video re-enactment of the nudist RV park (now, I have your attention!):
- Doreen Orion, www.QueenOfTheRoadTheBook.com
Doreen's book, QUEEN OF THE ROAD: The True Tale of 47 States, 22,000 Miles, 200 Shoes, 2 Cats, 1 Poodle, a Husband, and a Bus with a Will of Its Own was a Borders Featured Book Club Pick. She is a triple-boarded psychiatrist and award-winning author. Still, she considers her greatest accomplishment to be that her bus was featured as the centerfold of Bus Conversions Magazine, thus fulfilling a life-long ambition of becoming a Miss September.
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