Skinny Dip

It's a pretty well known expression, to skinny dip. But folks tend to look at me as if I'd said that I used to rob banks. It's not like I invented it. John Quincy Adams and Theodore Roosevelt were famous skinny dippers. The Woodcraft Indians-- precursors to Boy Scouts-- made it mandatory. And at YMCAs in the 1960's-- prior to admitting women-- one could only swim nude because the lint from the woolen swimsuits clogged the pool drains. Plenty of fine art and perfectly fine movies, ("Oklahoma!", "A Room with a View", and the notorious, "Jaws") suggest that skinny dipping has been a matter of course for eons. It's just another option in the cannon of simple summer pleasures along with hiking and fishing, just slightly more exciting.

My yen for skinny dipping was embedded in me during my youth. My Mom and aunt had a kid swap that went on for years. When it was our turn for me and my sisters to go to our cousin's house for the weekend, we knew that skinny-dipping would be one of the activities, in addition to receiving dead-legs and Indian rope burns.

My three boy cousins lived in a house on what you might call a very attractive piece of land, out where the suburbs slow to a country crawl. They had a donkey named, Penelope; a big red barn; and a huge, gated, olympic-sized in-ground swimming pool about fifty paces up the green, grassy hill from their house. During the day, the six of us wore our suits. But at night, after a meal of Jersey corn, burgers and ice cream, it was skinny dippin' time.

We tromped up the hill, towels in hand. Uncle Doug turned on the pool lights so that the water glowed a vivid, almost nuclear shade of turquoise green. Little piles of wrinkling clothes dotted the cement patio at the shallow end of the pool as cicadas and fireflies punctuated the warm night air. My cousins were always the first ones in, cannon-balling near us to squeals and laughter. I'm sure we complained about how cold the water was before finally diving off the long, bendy, unregulated diving board. But I'm also certain I never had a regret once I hit the water.

We played a game called Pee Wee-- twenty years before Mr. Herman would adopt the same moniker-- wherein a tiny, toothpick-sized, black stick was placed at the bottom of the pool by a volunteer diver. Everyone else lined the pool's edge, standing out of the water, dripping, waiting and watching in great anticipation for it to surface. When the first person to catch sight of the teeny stick jumped in to grab it, the rest of us jumped in and splashed like banshees hoping to foil the spotter. This fierce, maniacal splashing ensued until whomever finally grabbed it signaled his or her victory by shouting, "PEE WEE!" The prize was the chance to dive down and place it on the bottom for the next round.

We played Pee Wee for what seemed like hours under the starry sky then wrapped ourselves up in towels and minced back to the house like mini geisha. Happy and exhausted, it was time to get ready for bed. Our summer tradition lasted until me and my older boy cousin became what our parents probably decided was "too old" to skinny dip in front of each other. The next summer we all went up to the pool after dinner in our bathing suits and that was that. Skinny dipping was over. But we still played Pee Wee.

Later on, spending weeks every summer at the Jersey Shore, I fell in with other game, out-doorsey teens who thought nothing of stripping down for a quick swim after dancing at a party for hours had coated us in a thin veneer of beer and sweat. We'd all grown up together like brothers and sister so our late night skinny dips never led to anything except for maybe a game of even later night ping-pong in someone's garage.

Under a moonless sky, and with the girls standing about thirty feet from the boys, our imaginations had to work harder than our beating hearts-- if we bothered to go there at all. Details were rarely factored in to our dip and most times even our silhouettes were amorphous blobs. Full moons were a different story, however, and on those nights the girls with the darkest tans appeared to be wearing white bikinis. Sometimes the moon's klieg light lit a blinding path right towards our merry band of swimmers and so we stood even further apart. We looked straight ahead while light conversation covered pretty much any topic except that we were all standing naked near each other. Anyone who had to leave his or her glasses on the sand, like me, could relax a little easier in blurry, blithe disregard.

Some had a challenging time relaxing for other reasons. When skinny dipping is done in a lake or ocean, as opposed to a pool, there's the added wild card of sharing your quiet swim with a kabillion or so aquatic neighbors. Who knows what lurks nearby? Unfortunately, we do. So a skinny dip can become an exercise in overcoming. Will I step on a crab or be eaten by a shark? (Thank you, Peter Benchley) Will my little pile of clothes still be where I left them? Can I enjoy this experience without working myself up into a paranoid froth?

I always seemed to conveniently forget about the challenges that faced me after my swim; getting my wet, sandy feet back into my jeans. Then, peddling home, I tried not to think about the two giant wet spots that had appeared on my shirt, or the lumps that my underwear and bra made stuffed into the back pockets of my damp jeans. Yes, I had to rinse off in the shower before I climbed into bed, but for me, this labor of love was worth it.

Recently skinny dipping came up in two separate conversations and both times folks were taken aback. (I was equally shocked that they had never skinny dipped.) I explained that it wasn't like I was going to Foodtown naked. It's simply an impulsive nod to our fishier selves; a slippery swim in the moonlight, not so much sexy as it is racy. Not illegal, just a bit lawless. For as hokey as it sounds, skinny dipping is a feeling of freedom like no other; a singular experience that can't be approximated in a hot tub or outside shower-- and I loves me an outside shower. It needs no equipment, no reservations or forethought. It's refreshing, a little daring, and something else to do on a hot summer night so that the day never has to end.