On Nudity, Thongs and One Unique Cock (not necessarily in that order)

Posted after returning from Mayreau because I had no internet access.

Saturday, 4th July, 2009

It’s 5:15am and I am wide awake. The gods must be crazy.

I’m in Mayreau on the usual family escape from SVG carnival. Don’t worry, I’m not going to give you a tedious blow by blow of this little vacation from the Vincentian metropolis (hah) like I did last year. The way I look at it, if you’ve read last year’s account (which is tedious to the extreme) then it’s probably given you a fair idea as to what’s happening this time around as well. There’s only so much to do on Mayreau.

The roosters have been crowing for about fifteen minutes. One of them seems to have a poultry speech impediment. Instead of going “cock-a-doodle-do” like all his counterparts, he’s going “cuh-caaaaaw-cuh” repeatedly. He’s the loudest of the lot by far, so either he’s proud of his accent or he doesn’t realize that he isn’t talking normal. Maybe he’s speaking a Mayreau dialect. Perhaps he’s originally from one of the French islands. Who knows. He’s the “one unique cock” mentioned in this post’s title, so you can drag your mind out of that gutter you degenerate perv!

Anyway, perhaps as a result of the cacophony of the early morning cocks, I am lying in bed musing on nudity. The nude. The state of being naked and unclothed. Don’t ask me why I’m thinking of this; I can only assume that it’s because I am rarely awake at this unrealistic hour and my brain is rebelling by floating into inappropriate territories.

I like being naked. I’m not ashamed to admit that, for me, being naked is natural and comfortable. I don’t get the whole naked taboo that society has placed on us. We are born naked (unless there’s been some freakish accident during conception and you were born in a top hat and tails, or a cocktail dress – in which case, I’d like to see a photo of the birth please). Technically, clothing exists to provide protection from the elements (and perhaps also from the occasional hungry, hungry caterpillar). Throughout the years, however, the more “civilized” we’ve become, the more cloth we’ve needed to cover our bits and pieces. Society judges the propriety of its denizens based on how much skin is covered, and in what areas.

Remember when showing a bit of neck, shoulder or ankle was considered risqué? Well ok, maybe none of us do, because none of us lived in Victorian England. Similarly, I’m fairly certain that none of us (immortals notwithstanding) remember the original purpose of a wimple. My point is that the pillars of civilization have always prided themselves on the unnecessary lengths of cloth that they’ve managed to drape over their cohorts. And all for the sake of respectability and decorum.

Look at toddlers – not babies who cannot walk or talk, but the ones between the ages of one and five, the ones who have awareness and complex thought processes. These little people generally love being naked. They’ll run around all day peeing on the floor if you let them (please note, I am not advocating mass peeing on floors – this is just a figure of speech). At some point, however, they get it in their heads that naked = bad. At first, they’ll do subversive things like lifting their skirts to show you their panties (in order to prove that they’re no longer wearing diapers). They might strip because they “feel too hot”. In some cases (quite often in fact) they’ll escape from a bath or shower and run smack dab into the midst of the people you’ve invited for dinner screaming, “I’m naked! I’m naked! Yay! Look at me!”

Small children prefer to be naked, that’s the bottom line. And it doesn’t ever concern them that they are, indeed, naked unless an adult points it out to them. From the time Lila learned to talk, she’d always remark on my habit of not wearing a shirt when at home. “No sirt for you, Uncle Wivee?” Little did she know that two minutes before her parents knocked on my door I was stone, stark naked. I never wear clothes when I’m at home. Unless, of course, the company I am in demands it. Sometimes the company that I’m in actually demands that I remove my clothes, but that’s neither here nor there in this current discussion.

My family was always very open about this sort of thing. Growing up, I saw my parents naked constantly. It was no big deal. They’ve become a bit more conservative in their attitude to being au naturel since they hit somewhere around forty, but they’re still really comfortable with their states of undress. As am I. Granted, I’m not going to wander around Kingstown in my birthday suit, but I don’t see why I can’t.

I saw my Venezuelan neighbours the other night at a poetry reading. We’ve never actually met, but I know they’re Venezuelan because of gossip and because I overheard them speaking Spanish at the Venezuelan embassy. They kept staring at me, whispering and laughing. I can only assume that they’ve been spying on me drifting around my flat without any clothes on and suddenly realized who I was. But you see, it really doesn’t matter to me. Except for a very few unfortunate cases, don’t we all have penises, vaginas, breasts and buttocks (not all on the same person obviously)?

We were having this discussion the other day on twitter, and one of my friends made the following observation (which was later echoed by several other people): “I associate being naked with sex. Hence, when I am naked for reasons other than sex, I get confused and disoriented”. Is this why people are so uncomfortable with nudity? Is it because it makes them (unconsciously) think of carnal pleasures and generalized ravishment? Why? Surely there’s an innocence and purity to nudity rather than something libidinous. The naked body has inspired art because of the beauty of it’s lines, the subtleties of skin colour and the exposure of self that it engenders. Not because it makes us think of boinking. Although I suppose, for adolescents and most men, that’s an optional extra.

Then, of course, there’s the idea that partial nudity is sexier than full nudity. The hint of things to come I suppose. The cake before we’ve licked off all the icing, so to speak. There’s a reason the word “dishabille” is so intriguing. So people have come up with all kinds of ways to cover themselves partially and in a sexy manner.

Apropos of the above, I don’t get thongs. The whole concept of shoving a piece of cloth up my ass and leaving it there all day long is something I find singularly unappealing. Whale tails should stay on whales. They are not sexy. If you are in the habit of wearing your thong whale tail style then you just look plain stupid.

I’ll admit that I’ve flirted with thongs. Well, with one thong at any rate. A friend of mine once gave me a box of “goodies” for Christmas. This little crate o’ sex contained an assortment of confections and apparatus all intended to fuel the pleasures of the flesh. Within the confines of this toothsome Pandora’s box were two articles of clothing – both thongs. I wore the leopard print one once. Well ok, I wore it twice: once because I thought I’d try it out in a sexy situation, and once because I’d not done my laundry and had no other clean underwear. The “sexy” time became an evening of fun and games (not in itself undesirable) and the lack of laundry day was just plain uncomfortable and idiotic. I felt like a white trash ho out trawling for johns. Not a pleasant feeling for a man. I cannot speak for the fairer sex.

The other thong in my little pleasure chest was a… erm… let’s just say that I called it my equine underwear. Sometimes I called it Dobby. It was a horse. It was a horse that went “neigh”. It was a fluffy horse, with googlie eyes, that fit like a sheath (with a string going up the butt crack for support) and went “neigh” every time you pressed its nose. And its nose was in a very sensitive spot. I think the majority of my male friends have tried this on at some point or other. Over their pants I mean. It’s not like we all had a little male bonding session focusing on my horse thong.

How would one wear such a thong any way? Surely the nose would press up against your jeans causing your crotch to neigh at inopportune times? Is one supposed to wear it in such a manner as to reveal it festively while surprising one’s wife/girlfriend/partner/boyfriend/lover/sporadic love buddy/favourite coworker/classroom full of students/doctor? Is it a Halloween costume gone awry? I have never figured this out. Dobby seems to have gone missing sometime over the past few years and my moving house twice. I suppose you could say that he’s gone to the glue factory.

I have no satisfactory way of ending this blog post. There’s no real conclusion to be drawn. So I shall end with a poem; one of my favourites:

The Naked and the Nude

For me, the naked and the nude
(By lexicographers construed
As synonyms that should express
The same deficiency of dress
Or shelter) stand as wide apart
As love from lies, or truth from art.

Lovers without reproach will gaze
On bodies naked and ablaze;
The Hippocratic eye will see
In nakedness, anatomy;
And naked shines the Goddess when
She mounts her lion among men.

The nude are bold, the nude are sly
To hold each treasonable eye.
While draping by a showman’s trick
Their dishabille in rhetoric,
They grin a mock-religious grin
Of scorn at those of naked skin.

The naked, therefore, who compete
Against the nude may know defeat;
Yet when they both together tread
The briary pastures of the dead,
By Gorgons with long whips pursued,
How naked go the sometime nude!

Robert Graves (1895-1985)