First visit to a nudie beach

I spent the day at Gay Head on Martha's Vineyard, where there were a bazillion naked people; all but two were men. I've seen the hugest scrotum EVER and the tiniest package so scrunched up that it looked like one pin prick could make it explode.

I took a looooooong walk all the way down the beach, enveloped in complete solitude, carefully averting my eyes whenever I passed a naked person in my path. When I got about 5 feet from one of them he yelled out, "Was that you I saw running down the beach earlier?"

Huh whhaaaaa?

Some naked dude talking to moi?

I turned around and indeed my gaze met his and I stammered, "Well, I ran for about 2 minutes over there until it got too rocky, so you might have caught me in my 2 moments of glory." Then he caught up to me and admitted that I was quite far away at the time, so he wasn't sure it was me.

Then me and naked dude took a nice stroll together, getting acquainted.

He asked me where I was from. And what I did. And how long I would be on the vineyard.

I asked him the same.

We each answered our questions, him all naked and stuff and me all bikini'd, and then he reached his towel. Turns out I was in the next alcove over.

I've decided that if he were straight and I was even remotely interested, and we ended up getting married, it would have been a GREAT story about how we met. He totally naked, me politely averting my eyes, all that magic happening on the beach at Gay Head.

Actually, the thought I had while sitting in my fold-up chair, watching naked man after naked man walk past my towel, was "WOW. THIS IS DISGUSTING."

Seriously.

I have seen only a handful of naked men in my lifetime. And by the time I get to see them naked and walking around, we have moved blissfully into the stage in our relationship that makes me sigh, "Huh. We're at the walk- around- naked- stage of our relationship. How nice for us."

But today I was able to quintuple the number of men I've seen naked within the first five minutes on the beach.

And after about an hour I decided: "Umyeah, I don't really like the nude beach thing."

And I don't.

There are images I will never be able to erase from my memory. The bleach blonde dude who wore nothing but sunglasses and a shell necklace. The pregnant-looking british guy who had a bulbous tummy and floppy hat. The hairy dude that wore an iPod in an armband and strode by on a mission.

Whyyyyyyy must I now have these people etched into my brain AND this blog?

I've clearly been traumatized, yet I can't blame them at all. I put myself there, and I watched each and every one of them as they were walking by in all their splendid naked glory. And, yes. The first place I looked was THEIR PENIS.

And also yes, I PASSED A JUDGMENT on each and every one of them.

At first I didn't realize I was judging them -- I thought I was in it for the waves and scenery -- until one of them walked by and I RECOGNIZED HIM BECAUSE HE HAD THE SMALLEST PENIS I'VE EVER SEEN. To my credit, the second time I saw him I thought he seemed familiar simply because he was badly in need of a haircut and he walked with a hunch. But then I glanced at his hoo-ha and remembered with breathtaking clarity... oh yeah! This guy has the smallest teeny-weenie I've ever seen!

The ironic part of this whole judgmental thing is that I am truly in the "size doesn't matter" camp. At least in my experience. It really, really doesn't.

But -- especially in HIS case -- I think it really, really would. And there he was, fwipping it around the beach amongst all the other men who were able to give us a true FLOP -- and he just didn't care enough to cover it up. There you have it.

Go, Tiny Dude. Go. Fwip to your heart's content.

But as I was saying. Being around a million naked men (where were the women?? I could have handled the women!) made me realize that I need me some more intimacy with my nudity.

There's something brilliant about it, really. The first time you see someone walking around naked. I haven't seen it all that many times, but each time I have, it's always been accompanied by a certain feeling that WE have reached a certain INTIMACY that you don't reach with anyone, including TOTAL STRANGERS.

But there they were! Sunglasses, penises and all! And I didn't even know their names!

It felt wrong.

I remembered when I was 6 years old and was dying to see a penis. I all but begged my father to show me his. I was so insanely curious that I pretended my room was an infirmary, specializing in penal injury. Just in case he ever needed it. And he STILL didn't let me see it.

I had to wait until I was in 9th grade, when I was able to borrow a porno movie from my geeky lunch crowd, and watched it for 5 minutes every day before I was afraid my parents would come home and catch me. Even still, the penises were not three dimensional and walking five feet away from me. Somehow, I was okay with that.

Fast forward seventeen years, and there I was. Today. 30 and a half and just trying to get a tan on a beach in Martha's Vineyard. Surrounded by penii. Penii and scotums and sunglasses and iPods. Had I known at age 6 what was in store for me at 30, I probably would have just waited.