Nudity and Nature

After many years of reflection, I've finally decided to share a coming-of-age experience from my own youth. Really, it describes in as much detail as I can muster, the time I lost my virginity and how powerful an experience it was. Now, more than that, it describes an important lesson I learned that has influenced my perspective on many matters throughout my life. You'll see. Confession:

I grew up as an only child with a single mother, in a decade that was famously rife with exploration and rebellion. She was no exception - having escaped earlier to California in order to live a life that was free and unfettered. That often meant I was left to myself, raised by the hippie elders of a New Age community, which had its pros and cons. Life was different then, and communities such as ours offered a life far different than what most people would experience. I was soon old enough to be independent, interested in girls and music, and we grew further apart.

When I was 18, I went off to a local college and had the usual freshman year experience. Nowadays, 18 and 19 year olds are beginning to have their first sexual experiences, but I came from a more innocent era. There was no internet pornography, no explicit late night television - just a couple "girlie magazines" that we snuck peeks at as kids. As newly minted adults, we were brimming with curiosity and sexual feelings, but there was no outlet, and no good frame of reference for what it would be like to explore them.

When summer came and classes ended, my mother decided to go on a drug-fueled road trip, touring the country with a man and his band. Having nowhere to go, I enrolled myself in a local wilderness adventure program to pass the time until classes resumed. The program was more or less an extension of the summer camp many kids attended when they were younger, but for young adult hippies. We sang songs of peace, we swam, we learned how to do crafty things with stuff that grew in nature.

We lived in a few little cabins, piled into flimsy bunk beds, except for the times we learned outdoor camping skills. The guys lived on one side of the woods, the girls on the other, integrating each day to do the usual activities. I assume this was to keep our out-of-control hormones in check. But halfway through the summer it took a startling twist that I'll never forget. I can't imagine this ever happening today, mind you, but it was at a time and a place where we were surrounded by communes and free love.

One day we were all called by our program instructor, Gary, to my cabin for a morning group meeting. We congregated on the floor and across the bunks, chatting excitedly, and wondering what we would be on the agenda for the day. Gary got our attention and began speaking cryptically about how it was time, now that we had all become adults, that we go through a rite of passage and learn more about ourselves, about girls, what kind of new responsibilities we had, and so forth. After a long-winded speech, he finally got to the point.

"Tomorrow morning, we will wake up at the usual time. But before you get out of bed, you will remove and neatly fold your clothes, and then line up in front of your bunks. I will lead everyone back here to this cabin for our morning meeting." There was silence, and we were all dumbfounded.

"You mean, naked?" someone asked.

"Yes, like when we skinny dipped," Gary replied. This was in reference to the fact that a week prior the guys had been taken to a pond to go swimming, and were required to go skinny dipping as an exercise in courage and overcoming any shyness in the group. Shyness that I, for example, had in spades.

Then someone added, "Are the girls doing this too?" There were snickers.

Gary added, "Yes, they'll also be doing the same exercise with Carol." Carol was the girls' own instructor. "And after our morning meetings, they'll be led over to the guys' camp where we'll discuss the activities for the day." Immediately the questions started firing. Did he mean we were going to see the girls naked? Would they see us naked? Gary did his best to calm us down and explain.

He said it was a trust exercise, and that it was important that we understood the differences between males and females. He talked about how certain things were taboo, but should not be. He asked us what we knew about girls' bodies - and then filled in the gaps, describing how as adults their breasts had fully formed. He talked about their vaginas, contrasting them with our penises, and how they had grown pubic hair just like us. Of course most of us knew all this, but we was covering all the bases, in lieu of the proper sex education we may or may not have ever had.

He went on to describe how we all have different kinds of bodies, with different shapes and sizes, and that it was important that we be comfortable and respectful around members of both the equal and opposite sex, no matter what we each looked like. He said that we should understand the distinction between nudity of sexual and nonsexual natures. He also spoke at length about how we would be severely reprimanded if we made any of the girls uncomfortable or touched them in a way they didn't want. An important message to be sure, but a daunting reminder of how we were hoping to finally "get laid" soon, and were entirely unprepared for this.

Up until then, I myself had minimal little exposure to these topics, but much to be interested in. Sex education wasn't particularly robust at that time, and I was apparently about to dive into the matter head first. However, if I had any excitement at all, it was virtually drowned out by a tide of fear and panic rising within me. Sure, I wanted to see the girls naked. But the idea of being completely exposed in front of them was absolutely terrifying, to the point where I was shaking.

The wilderness program was already sexually frustrating. We were constantly crushing on the girls, trying to figure out if they went to the same college as us, who their friends were, and how we were going to court them. All the guys must have wanted to masturbate in order to deal with those feelings, but privacy was limited when you shared a room with many other guys. There was even a running joke that if you were in the bathroom too long, you must be masturbating, and would be heavily teased about it when you came out. It's funny now, but at the time I was afraid to go #2 simply because I didn't want my friends to make fun of me for doing a certain something else!

Needless to say, the day went by very slowly and you could cut the tension with a knife. While no one dared to talk about what would transpire the next day, it was clearly on everyone's mind. The girls looked as nervous as we were, if not more. They barely made eye contact with us. I could only imagine what went through their minds when Carol brought them all together in their own cabin, and told them all about our bodies and what our penises looked like, and how afraid they must have been to realize that they would be wearing no clothing in front of us. A handful of them were afraid to even be seen in a swimsuit in front of a guy, never mind being seen completely naked by one.

I remember watching the girls that day doing a mundane task, like weaving grass, and thinking, "Tomorrow they'll be doing this with no clothes on." Eventually I got so exhausted with my own anxiety that I started forcing myself to think sexual thoughts just to replace the frightening ones. Naturally this meant having completely unrealistic, childish fantasies about how the girls would see me naked, and be so enamored with my powerful muscles (I was actually scrawny) and my huge member (at 19 it still had a couple of years growth to go), that they felt compelled to have wild, passionate sex with me in turns, around a campfire. As ridiculous as this was, it helped partially ward off the feeling of being sick to my stomach with nervousness.

Finally night came, and it was a bit like Christmas Eve. Only instead of being unable to sleep due to excitement, we all laid there in our bunk beds frozen in terror. I kept thinking about the following morning when I would wake up and have it dawn on me that I was supposed to get undressed, climb down to the floor, and accept my cruel fate. Eventually I thought, "What if I get an erection? I can't let the girls see my penis erect! How do I prevent that from happening?" This thought raced through my mind over and over; I obsessed about it. I felt angry with Gary that he didn't mention this and tell us how to stop it from happening. The possibility of this embarrassment was very likely on the minds of all the guys that night. Nevertheless, in time I somehow fell asleep.

Morning came, as Gary stroll in to rouse us from our sleep. No more than a few seconds passed before the terror struck. This was it. It was about to happen. I would either survive the day, or crumble and die, which seemed the preferred option at the moment. Normally there would be a flurry of activity, with many of us jumping down off our bunks and talking excitedly. This morning could not be more different. No one was out of bed yet. No one wanted to be the first to climb down naked in front of everyone else. I don't know who braved it first, but the process eventually started.

I threw the old brown sheet off to the side of my bed and then pulled my t-shirt off. Then I carefully slid off my underwear, so that I was completely nude on my bed. I looked over the corner of my mattress, and saw a handful of guys standing about naked, laughing. It felt weird to be naked in the bunk bed. It felt weird to be naked anywhere except the nearby showers. This was entirely a new sensation.

I climbed down off my bunk and joined the group. Most of us were standing there petrified, a few were carrying on and goofing off. While they were in the minority, I was amazed at their apparent lack of nervousness. Soon, Gary returned, leading a single file line of guys from the other cabins, all as naked as us. Gary himself was naked now too. It didn't occur to me that the instructors would not be wearing any clothes. That meant we'd probably see Carol naked as well. As a program instructor, she must have been in her early 30s, which I determined would mean she'd have a beautiful, mature body that was exciting to think about.

Gary, on the other hand? Not so much. He stood at the front of the cabin to address us. He was as hairy as a bear, with a huge gut that partially hug over his groin, and I thought he looked like a troll. I was fascinated and grossed out by the fact that his testicles were so large and his penis looked like a fat, misshapen sausage. People our age were cruel. It didn't occur to me that one of the lessons I was about to learn from this very experience was how to not be judgmental, and accept our bodies as they are. But it was still early in the process, and this was all just a huge shock so far.

He gave us another speech, reminding us to treat each other, and the girls especially, with the respect they deserved. We were not to stare, and were told that we would spend the entire day in this state, doing all the things we'd normally do, just without clothes, and that we'd get used to it after some time. We'd just have to make it through today, and then tomorrow everything would be back to normal. He said that we'd be amazed at how differently we'd see each other, after having gone through an experience where we made ourselves so vulnerable. Of course none of this made much sense yet, and couldn't be expected to until we'd actually gone through such an experience, but he was doing his best to reassure and prepare us for what was undeniably a scary event.

After our meeting ended, we filed out of the cabin and were led to an area where we usually congregated on log benches around campfires. Today, however, we were told to line up shoulder to shoulder and wait. Gary explained that Carol would arrive shortly with the girls to join us. The waiting was excruciating. Everyone shifted about nervously. I could see some of the guys fidgeting between their legs, no doubt extremely self-conscious about their genitals. My heart was beating out of its chest. I so badly wanted to sit, just because I felt faint and dizzy.

Finally we noticed, in the distance, the girls being led to the guys' camp. I couldn't see much yet, but I could tell they were all fully nude like us. All disbelief I clung to about this being a big joke instantly vanished. Then I could clearly see Carol leading the group. It was my first time seeing a live nude woman in person.

Her body was perfect: tall, thin, with two large breasts and beautiful pink nipples. I was mesmerized at how they gently bobbed and swayed as she took each step, and instantly got the sense of how soft they were - something that was never as apparent in those girlie magazines. I gazed at her vagina, an opaque triangle of soft hair, shifting slightly as her legs moved. I remember how astonishing it was to me that her pubic hair was so dark, when the hair on her head was an brilliant mass of light brown curls showering down over her body. I felt I was in love.

No sooner had I taken in the sight of this woman, who might as well have been a goddess, did I begin seeing the nude bodies of all the girls that I had gotten to know so well. They began filing in, shoulder to shoulder, just like we were, such that all the guys were facing all the girls in one long line. Everyone had someone directly across from them, and there was an entire assortment of breasts, vaginas, and penises as far as the eye could see in both directions. It was overwhelming, exciting, terrifying. I could not believe I was seeing all these girls completely naked!

Sure enough, their chests were magnificent, although they were different sizes. They had beautiful pink nipples at the tip of their rounded, fully-blossomed "boobies" as we called them, which jiggled slightly as they moved just like Carol's. Even more amazing was the variety of "pussies" they had. You could see the vaginal lips on some of them, whereas on some they were harder to see. Some were a little puffy like lips on a face, some were just sharp, pink slits.

Back then pubic hair was more common than it is today (although that's coming back in fashion), so they were variously hairy. Some dark and thick, some like soft, gold thread. I knew how nervous they were to be seen naked, so I felt like I was spying on them. But I also watched their eyes, and I saw them looking at all our "cocks" with just as much fascination. No doubt most of them were seeing a guy's naked body in person for the first time as well.

Some of them caught my gaze, and our eyes locked. We exchanged looks, as if we were each saying "Wow, I can't believe I'm seeing your... you-know-what." The moment this started happening, and I realized they were not not going to point at me with laughter and ridicule, I relaxed slightly. They were in the same boat, after all. I watched a girl that I had gotten to know well look me directly in the eyes, and then look down at my fully exposed penis. I looked down at it as well - I mean, really looked at it. The tight, round scrotum, the shaft, just starting to lengthen slightly in response to her interest, the distinctive head dangling down at the tip. I wondered what she was thinking about it, and I actually became proud of my body, because it was getting her attention and curiosity.

I then felt the forcibly suppressed sexual feelings break free inside me and I gazed at her own body with a hormone-fueled desire. I imagined gently squeezing her round breasts, running my fingers over her soft pubic hair, and then over the lips of her pussy, inserting them inside and finding it as warm and wet as I had heard it would be. I pretended that the next part of this exercise was to have us step forward toward each other, and begin touching and exploring each other's naked bodies. Alas, this was not part of the plan. In fact, I realize today that this was the point - having us just stand here, reacting as young adults would, forcing us to sort through and come to terms with feelings and desires that we had to learn to control and use appropriately.

With these thoughts unleashed, my fear about having an erection in front of the girls immediately kicked in, and I worked hard to keep those sexual feelings at bay. Almost all the guys were too nervous to get an erection, no matter how aroused they were by this experience. Apparently only two guys sprouted an erection. One was far down the line and I could not see, but I watched the girls across from him react. They turned red, whispered, and then giggled.

The other one was very close to where I was standing. I saw two girls across from him quickly notice something, and I looked over. I saw that his penis had begun swelling. It started to twitch and bob as it grew more and more aroused until it stuck straight out, and kept on going. I looked up at his face and he was staring at the ground, breathing heavily, deeply embarrassed, struggling to keep it together and make his hard-on go away. It was too late - he had a massive, swollen penis and he could do nothing about it except wait for it to subside, which happened about a minute later. The girls across from him didn't overreact, so I felt somewhat relieved on his behalf. They just exchanged brief smirks, and glanced back and forth between the poor guy's throbbing erection and his face.

I saw for the first time what might have been sexual curiosity and power in the girls - something normally reserved for us. It was thrilling. I wondered if any of them had ever privately felt sexual feelings for me. I closely watched each of the girls that I'd gotten to know personally, some of them becoming my friends. I recalled memories of various clothed activities I'd done with each, conversing with our innocent awkwardness, and then felt I now had a completely new perspective, seeing them vulnerable, beautiful, and free - their naked bodies no longer hidden from view and shrouded in mystery.

Another thing I noticed was a girl toward one end of the line. Her name was Sara. She was the most overweight person in our program, and was constantly being made fun of for it. She was clearly trying to hold in sobs, and this experience must have been very rough for her. She had the most massive, heavy breasts of any of the girls. You could barely see her vagina because of her large stomach. I felt bad that she was upset, and realized at that moment how I had reacted to seeing Gary naked, and felt bad for that too.

I found out later that Sara had been crying up a storm that morning. Refusing to undress when all the other girls were reluctantly taking off their clothes. Carol had raised her voice and demanded that she participate, explaining that it was an important experience that she would benefit from, and that there was nothing wrong with her body. Sara had her clothes removed and stood there defeated, covering herself in shame. Now, standing in line, she had barely begun to calm down. Deep down I hoped that she somehow knew that others felt bad to see her like this, and wanted her to be more comfortable in this situation. Strangely, I kept thinking of her throughout the day, maybe because it made me feel stronger myself for getting through this without breaking down entirely, but also because I knew she would get through it and come to terms with her own body.

I spotted Carol and Gary watching this entire event go down, proud of us for being mature adults courageously facing a difficult situation, their two bodies pressed together, arm in arm. I saw this nude young woman with a perfect physique making physical contact with a nude young man I previously thought of as a troll, and all of a sudden this didn't seem unusual - they were just man and woman, comfortable with their bodies as they were.