Stripped Down to the Moment

Summer 2018

We decided on Couples Sans Souci in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. It has an entire nude section, complete with its own pool, beach, and bar, like a little nudist colony hiding inside of a regular Jamaican resort. This was where Jack wanted to spend every possible moment of our week away from our children. This is where Jack envisioned me walking from the beach to the grill for lunch, completely nude, everyone’s eyes on my body. Sure, we could spend some time reading, Jack acquiesced, but we would also party with people in the pool.

You know, other nude people.

I’d agreed to this trip knowing this, but I decided not to overthink it. I’d done the naked thing before, so what the hell. I wanted to make Jack happy, so I decided to throw myself into the deep end of the pool. Perhaps literally, if it came to that.

Upon arriving at the resort, I suddenly felt shy, which pissed me off. Some part of my subconscious decided that this feeling was Jack’s fault, and I felt the ugly part of me attempting to emerge. Stubborn, sullen. I attempted to overcompensate for my insecurities with excuses. I stalled — we need sunscreen, we should get weed from the porter. Perhaps unpack and get food? An hour passed, and Jack was about to burst from impatience.

The old Eliza would’ve dug in her heels, who knows why. She would’ve used her intellectual advantage over Jack to escalate the bickering into a full-fledged fight until she got her way, which wouldn’t have satisfied her, not really.

But I wasn’t the old Eliza anymore. I didn’t have it all figured out, far from it, but I’d done enough inversions and taken enough tokes to see myself from a new angle. I knew who I wanted to be — better.
I relented. It was just a body. And Jack was just excited. Put it in perspective, Lizzie.

We were only about five feet beyond the entrance when Jack stopped in the middle of the path and said, “Okay, let’s take off our clothes.”

I resisted the urge to snap at him. He’s just excited. “Let’s get a chair,” I pushed. I wanted to act natural. Like I do this all the time.

True, I’d skinny dipped before. But I’d been shrouded in water, and the other nude beaches had been sparsely populated. Sunset Beach was bumping. Naked people were everywhere — milling about the bar, reading on lounge chairs, playing pool volleyball. The sea of skin was accentuated with sunglasses, hats, and sandals, all of which somehow made everyone look even more nude.

No one stared as we stripped down, but still, I paid attention to how I took my clothes off. Not too fast, not too slow.

I was acutely aware of how much my body had changed over the years. Pudgy in junior high, slimmer in high school, and toned in college. Four babies puffed up my midsection, but miraculously without stretch marks. I’d reached an acceptance of the middle-aged good-enough, but then I figured out the sugar thing — as in, don’t eat it — and suddenly I had actual ankles for the first time in my adult life. I wasn’t puffy anymore; my baby face had melted away to reveal a jawline and cheekbones. Yoga toned me, too, but it also taught me about posture, grace, and practicing gratitude. Aging is inevitable; I wanted to enjoy this body while I had it.

I didn’t feel any qualms about loving my body in front of Jack — he loved it when I felt sexy in my skin. But in front of others? I didn’t want to be vain. Was it arrogant to walk around with my head held high? Was I an attention whore? Was it more admirable to feel shame in my own skin? I felt a paradoxical pull to tone down the parts that I liked best, all while feeling extra self conscious of the parts that I felt were flaws.
I didn’t want people to stare at me. But I wanted them to think I looked good.

Boobs are no big deal, I reassured myself as I untied my bikini top. I’d shown the public my boobs aplenty in my 72 cumulative months of breastfeeding. And now, they weren’t anything of note, barely B-cups. I’ve come to appreciate their compact size. They match the rest of me.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I may wear a size Petite XS in dresses, but I stick to those dresses because it’s hard to find petite pants that fit around my hips. I started worrying about my booty as I approached my bottoms. Was my ass too white? Did my crack go up too high? Were the cheeks too jiggly? Jack constantly assures me that my butt is superb, but I literally can’t quite see it.

And still, my ass wasn’t the worst of my worries. I had genitals that I was putting on display. I reminded myself that I wasn’t going spread-eagle or anything. Still, the people at this pool would see that I’d gotten all of my hair laser-removed except for that trim triangle of dark hair on the top of my vulva. Such a slut. People might even see how my labia minora protrudes ever so slightly from my labia majora — another thing Jack loves, but another insecurity of mine.

I was out of time to dwell on any of this, so I forced myself to detach from those bothersome worries. So off my bottoms went, and onto the lounge chair I plopped.

Jack had pulled off his suit and had gotten settled in about ten seconds flat. His cock rested between his pale thighs, oblivious to shame. Jack isn’t the type of person who cares about what others think of him.
He saw me looking and burst into a smile. “We’re here!” he proclaimed, loudly. He took my hand and kissed it. “Thank you, Lizzie. I love you.” Jack expresses admiration and appreciation quite easily. He admits when he’s wrong and is quick to apologize when it’s warranted. He’s both happy and pragmatic. He’s the yin to my yang.

I had a hard time being myself in public. I’m the polite one. The quiet one. The pleasant one. The people-pleaser. Is it any wonder that I became a homebody? I could only be myself around Jack and the kids. Around everyone else, I suppressed it all, and it wasn’t serving me well.

Our gazes had drifted to the ocean, and Jack let them linger there for all of about one minute. Then he grabbed my hand again and said, “Let’s go get a drink.”

Part of me started to grumble, claiming to be annoyed that I had just sat down, but really? I was just nervous. Get over yourself, woman.

Walking across the sand, I felt the breeze on my labia with each stride. My nips pointed forward. I decided to stand up straighter.

We stood out, looking much younger than our thirty-six years. The mostly middle-aged crowd looked, but didn’t gawk. In return, neither did I. We were all on equal footing, after all. Naked, by choice, as a means of relaxing and having fun. It was certainly more comfortable than walking around in a wet bathing suit.

In fact, there was something about the absence of swimwear that made everyone look a bit better. Once my eyes adjusted to the skin, I came to the conclusion that birthday suits are far more flattering than bathing suits. Sure, you see some saggy boobs and flaccid dicks and wild pubic hair. But most people’s bodies are just that — bodies. Ho hum.

Moments in, I felt better than fine. I felt completely natural.

And just like that, I did it. I got over myself. Something changed in me there, on a nude beach in the tropics. I was doing something, even as I really did nothing at all. I had finally slowed down enough to feel what it was to be a mere human inside a body, surrounded by other mere humans. I was flawed, yes, but could I give myself grace so that I could enjoy my time on Earth? Why not embrace all of life, all of my good fortune, all of me?

I would come to remember this resort as a glimpse of my heaven, where we didn’t need to put on costumes to define us. Where we didn’t feel shame for the bodies that we’d been born with, nor ogled over the bodies of others. Where a lack of violence stunted any feelings of vulnerability. People were less pretentious than you’d expect them to be at an all-inclusive in the Caribbean. It was survival of the kindest, not the fittest. We were all here for a good time.

I rewired my brain to be flattered, rather than annoyed, by Jack’s eagerness and excitement over showing me off. I appreciated meeting people who had been stripped down to their raw, most real selves.
Practicing nudism was indeed a paradox between humility and ego. It was no big deal — it was just a body — but fuck it, I was gonna own it. I felt more confident than ever, and it tipped me an inch towards extroverted.

I was suddenly interested in other people, and I was curious what had brought them here. I wanted to talk, to connect, to laugh. I wanted to party. I felt something childlike in me returning, and I yearned to play.
But they were putting away pool volleyball for the night, so I’d have to wait for that. Instead, Jack and I kicked off a Fuckfest that would continue to this very day.

I hadn’t felt this aroused in years, perhaps ever. Was it my newfound confidence? Was it that I finally had the opportunity to concurrently relax and play like a child, but without my children? Was I high, not only on the local ganja, but on life? Perhaps it was because I had finally stopped giving a shit about what others thought of me, and started thinking about what I thought about me.

That week, I didn’t care what the reason was. I wanted pleasure; I wanted to give it and receive it.  I wanted to be with Jack, to adopt his lease on life, to revel in his role in mine. I wanted Jack’s body intertwined with mine, morning, afternoon, and again at night.

Picture the amazing sex that I described in the montage sequence, but this time on a doublewide lounger on a cliffside terrace overlooking the Caribbean ocean. Maybe somebody saw us. If so, I didn’t care. I was too busy transcending my body. It felt like I’d finally found a long lost part of myself. It felt like I had finally figured it all out.

No, I hadn’t, but perhaps I sensed that I was on the precipice of something big. Something that others might have seen in me, but that I hadn’t seen in myself. Something that I had suppressed out of shame and societal standards. I was feeling cocky, but really I hadn’t a clue. I mean, who would’ve thought that nude beaches were teeming with swingers?