A true story, from 1995, edited to 750 words.
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My wife and I visited Horseshoe Lake in Canada's Jasper Park on a hot August day. In middle afternoon, no cars were in the parking spot; the short trail wasn't well-trafficked. After sightseeing all day, the walk made us even hotter.
The trail emerged cliff-top about 10 metres above blue water. Deep clear water invited jumping straight in. Because we had been camping throughout the Western USA, Canada, and Alaska for three months, and had oft-bathed outdoors in streams and lakes, stripping seemed natural.
In contrast to the hot air, the water was cold. As I swam around, my wife took several nice photos from afar of me skinny-dipping in the picturesque lake.
I heard the commotion first, 20 Japanese honeymoon couples, all 40 carrying cameras. First instinct was to head towards my clothes, so I swam to shore. The honeymooners followed.
Cliffs surrounded much of the lake, I'm not a great swimmer, so I'd no other option but the landable bank. Exiting the water was awkward, but the worst part of being completely naked was navigating the pine-needled trail barefoot.
The embarrassment of being caught naked is potentially twofold. There's the shame of one's own body on display, but I always worried more about shocking the other, or having them be embarrassed by my predicament.
These honeymooners were not embarrassed.
They laughed playfully, not at me, but with each other, as their camera continuously clicked.
When right in the middle of the pack, one asked in good English if I would pose next to his wife. The humour was obvious. So, to be a sport, I stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the middle of their traveling party as he—and others—photographed his young bride with a naked stranger.
Two others took their turn.
The fourth husband, perhaps conscious of photo-framing, asked me and his wife to step away from the troupe, so he could get the photo-perfect lake as sole backdrop.
The dynamic changed. Photographing one's wife standing next to a naked stranger surrounded by people is one thing; without the throng it's another.
Husband five must have realized this. He asked his wife to scoot closer so that our shoulders touched. As things do in such gatherings, escalation eschewed.