Naked (32 page)

He’d lost me way back. How was the word
colony
spooky, but not
trailer
or even
nudist
for that matter?

“I can let you have the front bedroom of the double-wide; that’s not booked yet.”

Front bedroom suggested the evidence of a back bedroom, which, I was told, would be rented out separately. “You could have
one roommate or maybe it’ll be a couple. They might stay for a night or two or maybe they’ll spend the whole week. Don’t worry,
though, you won’t get lonely.”

I was still wrestling with the idea of a trailer, and when he introduced the possibility of a roommate, my vision blurred.
A roommate at a nudist trailer park. The combination of those elements presented a staggering tableau, made all the more incomprehensible
when I heard the man shoulder the phone and raise his voice to shout, “Mom! Hey, Mom, where’s the weekly price list for the
two-bedroom rental trailer?”

This person was not only standing around naked in broad daylight, he was doing it with his mother. I heard a screen door slam,
followed by the wary voice of a woman shouting, “Hold your hollering, loudmouth. Looking for the weekly price sheet? You’re
probably sitting on it, just like the last time. See, I told you so! Phew, somebody needs a shower.”

I made my reservation and planned to arrive in one week.

***

I called the nudist park again today and a woman answered. When asked if they provide sheets and pillows, she said, “Yes,
but no towels. You’ll have to bring your own towels because we can’t be doing that. Bedding yes, towels no.”

I asked if the trailer’s kitchen was equipped, and she replied, “Kind of.”

Seeing as I would be there for a week, I was hoping she might elaborate.

“Well, it kind of has some things but not some others.”

“Does it kind of have a stove and refrigerator?”

“Oh, sure,” the woman said. She seemed busy with something else and spoke lazily, not wanting to talk but not wanting to get
off the phone either. “There’s a sink up there and probably some pans and so forth, but definitely no towels, you’ll have
to pack your own because we can’t be running back and forth like that. We haven’t got the time for that kind of thing.”

I told her I understood perfectly.

“A lot of folks think we keep a nice fluffy stack of towels out by the pool for their own private use, but we don’t do that.
Not here we don’t. Not anymore. Towels are personal things, and you’ll have to bring your own.”

I truly had gotten the message.

“Course sometimes a person might come in for the day and leave their towel behind by accident, but we put that into the lost-and-found
box in case they come back looking for it. You can’t use those towels because they’re not clean and they don’t belong to you.
That somebody might come back one day to claim their towel, and it wouldn’t do for them to walk in here and find you using
it without their permission. It wouldn’t be right. If it was lotion, I might say, ‘Go ahead and use it; I’ll do your back,’
but not towels, no way. You’ll have to bring your own.”

I underlined the world
towels
on my list of things to pack and placed question marks beside everything else.

I arrived at the nudist park early this afternoon, the cabdriver pulling up to the clubhouse in a light rain. He’d been very
nervous on the ride over. “I’m not here to judge,” he’d said. “Hell, I give rides to all kinds of people, even drunks. Whatever
floats your boat, partner.” Something about me seemed to make him uncomfortable, and I frequently caught him studying me in
the rearview mirror with a look that said, “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

I collected my bags and entered a low, clapboard building where five fully dressed senior citizens sat hugging themselves
against the cold and watching the local news on a color television set bolted to a high shelf. On the screen a weatherman
pointed to a map studded with frowning suns, his arm positioned as though he were drawing a heavy curtain. The inhabitants
of the room leaned forward in their chairs, biting the ridges of their clenched fists and groaning when confronted with the
words
cold front.
They booed the weatherman. They cursed him and then they pounded on the tabletops, much like prisoners unhappy with their
food. The room was filled with the rhythmic thuds of protest when I set down my suitcase and approached the front desk.

“He did this!” An elderly man pointed his crooked finger in my direction. “Brought this nastiness with him down from the lakes!”

“You from the lakes?” the woman behind the counter asked. The corners of her mouth hung so low, they grazed the line of her
jaw. She narrowed her eyes upon my suitcase as if expecting it might bluster across the floor, packed as it was with storm
clouds and unseasonable winds.

“I don’t know anything about any lakes.” There was a rising panic in my voice. “It was hot and sunny when I left New York
this morning, really, it was. It turned cold around Scranton, but I didn’t even get off the bus. It’s the truth, you can ask
the driver.” It was ridiculous to stand before a group of strangers denying my responsibility for the weather, but surrounded
by their stern accusatory faces, the charges seemed frighteningly plausible.

“Well, it’s supposed to clear by tomorrow afternoon, but if it doesn’t, I’ll know where to find you.” The woman pointed out
the window. “It’s that trailer there with the orange trim. Front bedroom, that’s what I’ve got you down for.”

“You mean the one with the rust-colored band?”

“You call it rust, I say it’s orange, but you get the idea. It’s the one with the picnic table in the front yard. Can we agree
that that
is
, in fact, a picnic table?”

Without meaning to, I seemed to have offended her.

“I painted that trim myself and the can distinctly identified it as ‘burnt orange.’ If it had said ‘rust’, I never would have
bought it. It only
looks
rusty under those clouds you brought. Sunny day comes, you’ll see that color for what it is. I’m sorry I can’t rush out there
and repaint it to suit your needs, but I’ve got other things to do, other duties.”

I asked where I might find the key to my trailer and heard a round of muffled laughter coming from the far corners of the
room.

“Key!” She acted as though I had requested a prayer rug or a life-sized statue of Buddha. “We don’t believe in locked doors,
not here we don’t. Maybe where you come from, people barricade themselves behind closed doors, but here we have no reason.”
She placed her elbows upon the counter-top and framed her face between her fists. “We don’t lock our doors because, unlike
certain other people, we have nothing to hide.”

The clubhouse was furnished with tables and chairs. Beside the front desk was a small kitchen, its serving window framed with
packages of freeze-dried beef and bags of potato chips. There was a grill, a deep fryer, and a menu board offering possible
choices for breakfast and lunch. This was clearly the snack bar, but where was the restaurant?

“Snack bar by day, restaurant at night,” the woman said. “But only on Saturdays, when nothing else is planned.”

Why hadn’t they told me this earlier? I’d been led to believe the restaurant was open every night. All I’d brought with me
was a salami and a box of crackers. What was I supposed to do, with no car?

“I can fry you up a hamburger if you want, but you’ll have to make up your mind. Snack bar closes at one P.M. on week-days
unless it’s good weather or a holiday, then we’re open until three-thirty. There’s a little restaurant on the road into town,
but they close at three.” She studied her watch for a moment. “If you start now, you can probably make it before they close,
but you really should have brought a car. A person needs a car for this kind of lifestyle. You need a car and plenty of towels.”

My only choice was to take a taxi into town and buy myself a week’s worth of groceries. Where might I find a pay phone?

“It’s out on the deck.” The woman waited until I reached the screen door to add, “But it doesn’t work. Storm knocked it out
last Thursday and hasn’t nobody come to fix it yet. We have a devil of a time getting repairmen out here. I guess our money’s
not good enough for them. Most things we just patch up ourselves, but not that phone. Tricky thing, a pay phone. I can let
you use my phone, but you’ll have to make it quick, I’m expecting a call.”

The taxi driver said he could pick me up in an hour, and I wondered what he might charge to drive me all the way back home.
This wasn’t what I had in mind at all. No key, no restaurant, just a handful of cranks moaning about the weather.

I walked up the gravel lane to my trailer, which had been sprayed with so much insecticide that it curled the hair in my nose.
Raisin-sized flies lay gasping on the countertops, their upturned legs signing the words “Get out of here, quick, while you
still have a chance.” I set down my suitcase and fled, trotting past the clubhouse to the soggy volleyball court. The same
pool I had seen in the brochure was now covered by a tarp, as was the hot tub. Even the flag was at half mast.

My trailer’s main room is paneled with artificial walnut planks, and the low, fiberglass tiled ceiling is stained with water
marks. A linoleum floor separates the kitchen area from the carpeted living room, which is furnished with a worn gold velvet
sofa and two matching easy chairs that face a low table bearing the scuff marks of a now absent television set. Two of the
walls are lined with windows, and the other supports a large, ornamental carpet picturing a family of polar bears occupying
an ice floe. My bedroom, like that of my potential roommate’s, is cell-like in both its size and simplicity, furnished with
only a bed and a small chest of drawers that easily accommodates the little I brought with me.

By the time I’d unpacked and put away my groceries, it was early evening and the rain had stopped. After staring at the spot
where the television used to be, I took a walk past the clubhouse and up into the park’s more established neighborhoods. These
were mobile homes that had been soundly grounded upon carefully manicured lots, many with built-on decks made of pine and
redwood. Some of the trailers had been sided to resemble log cabins, and others were fronted by shingled, A-framed entrance
halls. The homeowners’ names were displayed on wooden plaques along with slogans such as “Bare with us” or “Smile if you talk
naked!” Flowerbeds were marked with wooden cutouts of bare-bottomed pint-size children and silhouettes of shapely, naked women
were painted onto the doors of tool sheds and nailed like FOR SALE signs onto the trees. Most everyone seemed to have a golf
cart parked in the driveway, and these, too, were personalized with bumper stickers and hand-painted slogans. I passed a sign
reading SHEEP CROSSING 20 FEET and came across a trailer whose lawn played host to a flock of artificial sheep tended to by
an oversized, bonneted doll equipped with a crooked staff. Time had not been kind to the shepherdess, nor to her charges,
whose waterlogged wool was stained with the evidence of a long and unforgiving winter. Farther along the road these homes
gave way to tents and campers equipped with pop-up roofs and jury-rigged awnings made of plastic and fronted by mosquito netting.
The lack of space had forced both the kitchens and bathrooms outdoors, and the yards were home to outhouses and picnic tables
surrounded by coolers and grills that sat positioned beneath festive paper lanterns. A trailer door opened and a young woman
stepped out, leading a child who beat upon her legs with a wooden spoon. The woman was topless, and her breasts hung like
two kneesocks, each stuffed with a single orange. I knew when I signed up that I would encounter exposed breasts, but this
being my first pair, I reacted with alarm. She wore her hair in a neglected shag and scolded the child for a moment or two
before gathering him up in her arms and burying her sharp-featured face in his stomach. Topless. She was topless, walking
the streets of what amounted to her neighborhood. The boy howled with pleasure and then rapped her over the head with his
spoon.

“He’s at that age,” the woman said, and I nodded in agreement, pretending to recall the first time I had tweaked my mother’s
nipple while standing in the front yard of our trailer. I looked into her face, trying my hardest not to stare at her breasts.
“Well, all right,” I said, “OK then.”

On the way back to my trailer, I caught sight of various nudists through lit windows, washing dishes and enjoying a quiet
evening at home. Curtains wide open, doors unlocked, and there they were with their legs spread apart, chuckling along with
the situation comedies. A car came up the lane in my direction, driven by a shirtless man smoking a pipe. As he passed I glanced
down into the front seat and saw that he was naked. He raised his pipe in salute and proceeded down the road. Where, I wondered,
was he going? Was he driving in circles in order to blow off steam? Or did he plan to leave the grounds and take to the highway?

It took a few drinks before, drawing the curtains of my double-wide, I was able to remove my shirt and shoes. The table was
littered with beer cans by the time I finally stepped out of my briefs and started to prepare my dinner, trying hard to convince
myself that it’s natural to broil pork chops in the nude. As they sizzled away, I pretended that my room-mate had just arrived.
“You’re just in time,” I said, taking two plates from the overhead cabinet. “Have a seat, dinner will be ready in a couple
of minutes. Say, don’t mind those beer cans, I pulled them out of the neighbor’s trash thinking I’d carry them down to the
recycling bin the next time I head into town. Never touch the stuff myself, but then again, that’s just me, ‘the health nut.’
Let me give you a quick look around.” I was showing my invisible guest the back bedroom when the smoke alarm went off. The
searing, high-pitched squeal sent me into a panic, and before I had time to think about it, I was standing with the door open,
brandishing a dishcloth in an attempt to clear the air. Naked. I was drunk and naked for all the world to see. It was a sobering
thought that continued to haunt me as I sat down to my blackened dinner.