Fringe Florida: Travels Among Mud Boggers, Furries, Ufologists, Nudists, and Other Lovers of Unconventional Lifestyles (46 page)

bands around his wrists and ankles tries his best to dance, his bent

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arms slightly moving at waist level, feet shuffling side to side. No one

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gives him a second glance.

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On a platform nearby, a woman in a semblance of a dress glides

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around a stripper pole skillfully enough to make me suspect she’s an

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off-duty Mons Venus dancer. A bare-bottom brunette joins her, and

they slither together around the pole like two snakes mating.

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Although the degree of skin would only be allowed at a nudist resort,

the people, high-energy music, and upscale surroundings are no dif-

ferent than at a nightclub you expect to find in Miami, Las Vegas, or

Berlin, but not in semi-rural Pasco County.

Angye coaxes me to talk to an older couple she knows sitting by the

dance floor. The gray-haired man is fully clothed while his petite wife

works a stripper look. She’s wearing a platinum bob wig with bangs,

a lacy white push-up bra, string (literally) bikini bottoms, and 7-inch

silver platform heels.

As I hover by their table contemplating what to say, he looks over. I

smile, but before I can introduce myself, he turns away. They stoically

sip their drinks and continue watching the erotic moves on the dance

floor.

I tap him on the shoulder.

“I’m a friend of Angye’s,” I tell him, hoping this will signal that I’m

not trying to hit on them.

“She’s a good friend to have,” he says flatly and turns away.

Then it hits me that using Angye’s name wasn’t the best calling card

for an interview in this environment. She is, after all, a swinger.

I last spotted Angye kissing her date. They’ve now disappeared.

James and I retreat to a table on the balcony. A young sunburned

couple dressed as if they were at a beach bar, plop down at the next

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table. They’ve been at Caliente all week, escaping the snow and ice of

Minnesota. They aren’t nudists and say they would have never visited

the resort if not for Brett’s dad, who upon retiring revealed himself,

literally and figuratively, as a nudist. “Everyone in the family was kind

of shocked when he told us he’d bought a condo and was moving to a

Florida nudist community.”

Brett came to terms with his dad becoming a nudist after coming

down for a visit. “Once I saw it, I could kind of get it. I mean, it’s really

nice. Now we come down twice a year, spring and fall, and hardly leave.

There’s no need to. Everything is right here, pools, restaurants, bars.”

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Are they swingers? “No, no, no. But there’s plenty of it going on

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though. All you have to do is go over there,” he says tilting his head

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toward the upper-level conversation pool, site of the earlier scissoring

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flash.

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We pass the unofficial swinging pool on our exit. People are paired

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up, but there’s no way to know who is making out with their own

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mate and who is with someone else’s. Plus, as learned at Swingfest, by

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some definitions, couples don’t have to swap mates to be considered

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swingers. Merely having sex in the presence of another couple may

classify as a soft swap.

Outside the resort, our Honda sits all alone in the distance, facing

an outer 6-foot wall. Light poles and various shaped rooftops on the

other side indicate another neighborhood. We wonder aloud what it

would be like living next door to a nudist community. Wouldn’t it be a

little bewildering? We stand on a bump of grass and stretch to see over

the fence. It looks like any other fancy RV park with paver drives and

a small lake. Then a naked gray-haired man steps out of a trailer with a

beer. We’re peering into another nudist community. Only in Florida.

When in Pasco

After the erotic environment of the nightclub, James is reticent to re-

turn to Caliente for the Bare Buns Bikers party but is not about going

to let me go alone. To get the full picture of Caliente, it seems impera-

tive to experience it in the full light of day. I know from prior experi-

ence at Paradise Lakes that the scene is likely to be more like Scaryoke,

sans the bare-breast bumping. Totally nude people around a pool are

less intimidating than ones in butt strings hanging upside down from

stripper poles. But the nudity has to be unanimous. A few dressed peo-

proof

ple standing around can seem really creepy in a crowd of naked bodies.

Which brings us back to our original dilemma: Can we go au naturel

in crowd of strangers?

The tension is punctured as we near the resort on Saturday morn-

ing. Less than a mile from Caliente’s gate, I stop nervously chattering

long enough to notice the AC/DC song playing on the radio. “I’ve got

big balls! . . . And he’s got big balls! And she’s got big balls!”

Funny and disconcerting at the same time.

At the resort, the music is lighter. A live band plays Tom Petty’s

“American Girl.”

Once again there are hardly any nude or clothed people walking

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around inside the clubhouse. The view quickly changes as the back bal-

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cony overlooks a valley of flesh. Naked men and women are spread

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on most every lounge chair. Herds of them mingle by the pools. Oth-

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ers play water volleyball, swim, and dance. We have landed on Planet

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Nude.

Beyond the pools, the Bare Buns Bikers have a shaded booth, and

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motorcycles fill the adjacent lot. The bikes’ chrome gleams in the sun

like a beacon. Oddly this seems a spot of sanity. To get there means

walking the gauntlet of several hundred naked people in lounge chairs.

In jeans shorts and a T-shirt over my bathing suit, I suddenly feel far

too clothed. James looks like he wants to run for the car.

People look at us with amusement. One man points as he whispers

to another. How many of them are bikers and how many are regulars

and vacationers is hard to tell since everyone is nude.

I can only assume that those working the biker booth are Bare Buns

Bikers. They aren’t just clothed, they also are selling clothing. They have

an assortment of T-shirts, all colors and sizes, with the same design on

the back: the rear view of a nude couple riding their motorcycles into

the sunset.

Kimberly, who’s working the booth, helps me choose one. She’s slim

and wearing a T-shirt and short wrap. She’s been riding a motorcycle

for fifteen years and has been in the club since it formed about five

years ago. She’s a breast cancer survivor and is eager to tell me about

her motorcycle, which she’s had painted pink and white in honor of the

cause.

Hidden between the booth and bike trailer, Trudy, a plump woman

in a one-piece and sarong sits puffing a cigarette. She hasn’t mustered

the courage to strip, she says between quick draws. Meanwhile her hus-

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band has no such qualms. He’s out mingling in the bare crowd.

“We’re working on her,” Kimberly says. “She’s slowly coming out of

her shell.”

“I did take my top off at the birthday party,” Trudy says defensively.

“Briefly,” Kimberly concedes.

Bare Buns got its start at the naturist Lake Como and still holds

an annual event there. One member managing the cash box says they

never, emphasizing “never,” have events at the Riverboat campground,

where the Butt Naked Bikers have an annual party.

It’s clear that the Bare Buns Bikers are not to be confused with the

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Butt Naked Bikers, the weenie snatchers. This crowd appears tamer

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and much better groomed. No wires dangling hotdogs are in sight. Not

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even a nude on a motorcycle, at least not yet.

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Kimberly directs me to the club owner, B.G., who’s circulating among

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the crowd, and suggests we check out the bikes. Bikers are immensely

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proud of their rides, so we take a look.

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It’s blazing hot in the open grass field. More than fifty motorcy-

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cles of all sizes and makes are lined up in rows, their glossy paint jobs

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looking spit-shined. There are cruisers with fringe hanging from the

handlebars, Japanese street racers, even an antique Harley from the

1940s. But nothing like the outrageous choppers and airbrushed trikes

at Bike Week.

Kimberly’s Harley with flames of pink on the tank is one of the more

distinctive. Now nude, she agrees to pose for a photo. She pulls her

shirt back on and places a small towel on the bike seat, not just because

it is scorching hot. Towels are a hygienic necessity for nudists because

no one wants to place their bare bottom down where someone else’s

has been. Sitting without one is considered very poor form.

B.G. shows up, having gotten word that a journalist wants to talk.

She doesn’t really look like a biker chick, but then again, she’s topless

with only a blue sarong tied around her waist and a folded yellow head-

band around her thick, wavy brown hair. I recognize her from the club’s

website that shows photos from her recent nudist cruise to Alaska, a

rather absurd notion. Why would someone take a naked cruise to a

place of snow and icebergs?

I don’t get the chance to ask.

B.G. has little time to talk amidst overseeing the event, but she

clearly enjoys sharing that the club has grown from one hundred mem-

bers to around five thousand since she acquired it four years before.

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“It’s the largest nude biker group in the U.S.” she says. She lives in Bo-

nita Springs in southwest Florida, but the club has chapters all over

America and one in Amsterdam. “We’ve had 162 events,” she adds.

She bristles when I ask if there are 1%ers in Bare Buns and emphati-

cally says no. She goes on to caution me about bringing up such a casual

inquiry to other bikers because of the stigma attached to what most

consider outlaw clubs. She says she doesn’t even like to call Bare Buns

a “club.” It’s an “organization.” She points out that 1%er clubs won’t al-

low their members to be in another club. “Besides,” she rightly points

out, “they can’t be nude anyway because they always have to wear their

vests.”

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Obviously bikers can’t legally ride naked on public roads, as a

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drunken one roaring up I-95 found out in 2009. So the opportunities

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for Bare Buns bikers to ride in the buff are pretty limited. “We’ve had

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a few rides through national parks since there’s no law against being

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nude on federal land. And some ride through a [nudist] community

when we’re having an event.”

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Mostly, the Bare Buns bunch rides together clothed and strips down

afterward to party. “We are nudists who like to ride motorcycles,” B.G.

says as we make our way back toward the pool. “Show me one biker who

doesn’t like to get naked. You won’t find many.”

She disappears into the crowd of oiled bodies who are downing alco-

hol like it’s ice water.

James looks like he has heartburn. Clearly he’s not enjoying himself.

“It’s the same feeling I had at the swinger convention,” he confesses,

plopping down on a stool at the far side of the tiki bar, a refuge from

the nude. “I’ll be OK once I take a break.”

Our backs are to the lake, and the nude crowd is comfortably dis-

tanced by the bar. Shade and a slight breeze do little to combat the

abnormally hot March day. A rock band, whose members appear to be

the only other clothed people besides ourselves and the Bare Buns ven-

dors, plays a Lynyrd Skynyrd tune. A Budweiser seems to ease James’s

mood, or at least makes him tolerant. It doesn’t go far enough though

for him to jump in the pool. “I’m not going to strip,” he says firmly, as if

I’m asking if he wants to jump off a ten-story building. “You can if you

feel you have to.”

Honestly, with a little encouragement, I could. The clear pool water

looks inviting. Unlike at the nightclub the weekend before, there are

no sexual overtones in the crowd. Despite being naked, people aren’t

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checking one another out. No one is grabbing an ass, rubbing oil on

breasts, or kissing. And there’s definitely no humping like we saw at

the swinger pool scene in Miami. If only for a day in this environment,

I could be comfortable dropping my top. Shedding my bottoms, how-

ever, is another issue. It’s not because I’m worried about exposing flab;

although few women here are obese, most couldn’t be swimsuit mod-

els. And it’s not so much because I think people will be staring at my

crotch. I’ve learned that nudists spend more time looking each other in

the eye than do clothed people. It’s more an ingrained sense of vulner-

ability, something I’m not sure I can shed.

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As I look out over the vast crowd of flesh, hearing their laughter and

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seeing the ease with which they bare their bodies, I envy their bravery

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to defy social conventions, their fortitude to unleash their free spirit.