The Skinny on Dipping

Growing up in a small town you search for ways to amuse yourself. So,when confronted with the idea of spending yet another night sitting in the gas station parking lot, one can’t be blamed for searching for more creative ways to spend a warm summer evening. It just so happened that years before my parents, in a fit of building that included a new driveway and an addition to our two-story colonial, built a beautiful in-ground pool/hot tub combo. The shallow end was around 3 ½ feet deep and the deep end sunk to the impenetrable depth of 5 feet. At the time, I questioned my parents’ wisdom. “But it won’t have a diving board or water slide,” I ignorantly protested, having no idea that by benefit of having a shallow deep end I would have some very memorable nights. However, the pool merely played host to the real star of the backyard: the hot tub.

It was a 5×5 square, with tiered seating and separated from the pool by a 9” wide tiled partition. It didn’t have any bubbles to speak of but it did feature four jets from which spouted blisteringly hot water. Many a day was spent backed up to one of the jets, feeling the hot water pour over my lower back. As I grew older and began to sweat profusely at the slightest hint of heat- a wonderful trait I carry to this day – the idea of sitting in a pool of practically boiling water started to become less appealing.Luckily, being the inventive sort, I worked out a great system for balancing the pool’s icy extreme with the hot tub’s scorching heat: I would kneel in the pool and submerge my hands in the hot tub. Much like my habit of driving in winter with the window down and the heat on, this method kept me in a relatively comfortable temperature range.

But,of course, I’m not writing of my fascinating experiments in human thermodynamic regulation; I am writing about how my parents’ desire to give my family a wholesome water-bound playground turned into anything but.

It all started at a local beach late one summer evening. I believe the official name of the beach was East Wharf -named for a dilapidated stone pier that hasn’t seen a boat tie up in probably fifty years- but everyone referred to it as the Gazebo Beach.The gazebo was and is a model of architectural blandness, although nobody seemed to care. It was lit by ugly yellow light that gave it the appearance of a grimy truck stop off some nowhere road in the deep south. However, that sickly yellow light drew us in like so many insects (which it also drew in). By us I mean a bored pack of seventeen, eighteen and nineteen year-olds looking for something -anything – to do.

Most of our nights were spent congregating somewhere, waiting for something else to happen. Whether it was one of the town beaches, somebody’s basement, or the above-mentioned gas station, we all seemed to be waiting for word of a great party that would never come. This particular night, a posse of perhaps eight of us – girls and boys – sat and smoked cigarettes in the gazebo, safe from the judgmental eyes of our parents. Someone (I forget who exactly) proposed the idea of going swimming. Now here was a novel idea that had escaped us in the few years we had become accustomed to sitting at the beach at night. Swimming! Of course! The plan was flawless and, seeing as how nobody objected, we all stripped down to our underwear and waded into the freezing, somewhat disgusting water of Long Island Sound.

I believe it was Lauren Mueller who first proposed getting naked. I say ?I believe” because I forget who it was and, knowing her to often propose similar plans – let’s all get in our underwear and have a dance party! – she’s the safest bet. Either way,the idea struck me as particularly brilliant for numerous reasons, not least of which was the very good chance that I would be seeing a few attractive girls naked, one of whom, Vanessa, I had a healthy crush on. Plus, skinny dipping feels absolutely incredible.

The amendment to the swimming proposal passed with flying colors and with alarming quickness – quite alarming, actually, as if we’d all been waiting for this for years – bras and boxers and panties were flung to shore. I was hopelessly shrunken, in the Castanzian sense, but this was my chance to see my naked friends and so help me god, no tiny penis was going to keep me from the chance to glimpse Vanessa’s breasts. We swam around for perhaps ten minutes, laughing and splashing, before the cold water became too much for our bodies and we timidly hauled ourselves to shore. While pulling on my wet underwear a light went off in my brain: why don’t we do this every night?

I called my friend Keith and told him about my adventures at the beach. He was interested for the same reason I was: naked girls. Keith was two years older than me and, in all respects, a very nice guy. He had returned home from his second year of college, at the time, and I had just finished high school. We’d been friends for years at that point and he was my go-to buddy for practically everything. He wasn’t the best looking man to walk the earth – then again, neither was I – but he was cool in a way that’s hard to pinpoint. In high school he worked at the bank and took his job very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that the bank had entrusted him with being the sole evening employee and closing up every weeknight at the ripe old age of sixteen. In that respect, he was like a father; always responsible, always making decisions, always taking charge of situations. At home, his actual father had moved out and, in his absence, Keith assumed that role for his family. However,at twenty, he hadn’t exhausted his teenage wild side, which I imagine is another reason he so enthusiastically endorsed my plan; he hadn’t been able to be a teenager at home for a few years and by that second summer back from college, he was ready.

Slowly, a plan started to form: have girls over to go swimming in my pool, get naked (we weren’t the most in-depth planners). And thus was born the Madison Moon Club. Madison, the name of the town; moon, because the skinny dipping was to take place at night; club, because that’s what you calla group of people who get together for a common activity, silly.

Now,getting girls naked in a pool is a tricky procedure, especially the first time. That’s why, for our inaugural meeting, we opted for safe bets: Vanessa and Lauren (a different Lauren, though equally ready to do anything). We invited them under the guise of “swimming…just,like, hanging out.” That kind of thing works when you’ve just graduated high school with these people and that ?we’ll be friends forever” spirit still courses through your veins. The girls arrived and we all slid into the hot tub. After five minutes I was cooked through and jumped in the pool. Keith and the girls followed and the stage was set for the first meeting of the Madison Moon Club to commence. “Hey,” I said quietly, as to not wake my parents sleeping upstairs, “I think I’m going to go skinny dipping.”

“Really?” asked Vanessa.

“Yeah,I just think it feels better. It was fun at the beach, I’m going to do it.” And with that, off came my bathing suit. Keith, as we had discussed, followed suit. Lauren, always ready for something fun,decided to join in and that left Vanessa, the most reluctant participant, the sole clothed swimmer in the pool. Bending to peer pressure, she stripped off her bikini and the great experiment began.

The pool was perfect for it. Since the hot tub was attached, one could effortlessly switch back and forth. The shallow deep end meant that the whole pool could be utilized, and ensured that nobody could swim beneath you to grab an illicit glance at your more sensitive areas.

In the months following Keith and I hosted bi-weekly skinny dips with a revolving cast of participants: There was Nora and her boyfriend,Steve, Chris, our largest friend who, to his credit, didn’t seem to care about stripping down in front of girls, Allie and Annie, who between them must have had a combined breast weight of forty pounds,Diane, my ex, Kate, my current, Jordan, the perky brunette who everyone had a crush on, Dori and Pam, two girls from a town over who we knew through Keith’s band, the Laurens and, of course, Vanessa. There were certainly more. Girls and boys who are now lost to memory, sadly.

There was a slightly fatalistic overtone to the whole endeavor. That this was our last chance to do crazy things with our young bodies and we had better do it while there was still time. We were a bunch of teens teetering on the precipice of adulthood and, by god, we were going to act crazy before we could no longer hide our actions behind a wall of youthful recklessness. The nudity continued out of the pool too, as we took to streaking various fields in the town for no other reason than we liked seeing each other naked. However, as much as we enjoyed sprinting nude around soccer fields, the pool was always home base.

Keith and I established one fundamental ground rule to make sure the Madison Moon Club would thrive: It was never to become sexual. Even though at heart the whole thing was practically bursting with pent up sexuality,it was important to keep it as platonic as possible to ensure that everyone was comfortable. I recall pushing Nora around on a raft while she talked about her relationship troubles – classic girl /friend-zoned boy conversation – all while her vagina sat no more than two feet from my face, her breasts, no more than four. Most importantly though, by keeping sex out of it, we kept it fun and ensured that our little experiment would not be tainted by jealousy.

Plus,I had a girlfriend at the time who not only kept me well-satisfied in the sex department, but allowed me carte blanche in my skinny dipping precisely because we kept it so friendly.

That summer, as all summers do, ended seemingly as quickly as it had come. The Madison Moon Club disbanded and we all went off to our separate colleges. I remember telling my new college friends about the Club. “Dude, so did you just fuck, like, every girl or what?” asked my new friend, Tim.

“No, it wasn’t like that,” I told him.

“You’re insane,” came his reply. For Tim, who would end up becoming my college equivalent of Keith, the thought of being around a naked girl and not sleeping with her was unfathomable. He was cut from a different cloth than me; a much more attractive cloth, that is.

And just as suddenly as it had began I found myself packing up my freshman dormroom, saying goodbye to all my new friends, and returning to my quiet,little Connecticut town for the summer. I decided that bartender was the only suitable job for a nineteen year-old college student home for the summer and I conned my way into a job at the best bar for miles around: Frankie’s. The bar was a few towns away but featured a huge outdoor bar on a deck built over the restaurant. You know that job your buddy had in high school that made you seethe with jealousy as you flipped burgers at McDonalds? That was this job and, as if it weren’t sweet enough already, Frankie’s had the reputation for hiring almost exclusively pretty girls (myself and three other male bartenders were the exception in a staff of about twenty-five).

What started out as Keith staying over a few nights quickly turned into Keith moving into my house for the summer. To this day, I don’t know why he did this, considering his own house was no more than ten miles away. But I was happy to have my best friend around so I didn’t question it.Needless to say, from the second that summer started we began to plan the triumphant return of the Madison Moon Club. This summer though,would be far different from the last. For the better too.

All the regulars were back in attendance, as well as few new faces. All said, the group didn’t change too drastically and everyone seemed happy to be back together again, naked in the hot tub or pool, discreetly appreciating each other’s genitals and openly appreciating each other’s company. Something was off though; everyone seemed a bit more anxious than the previous summer. Perhaps it was because many of us had sunk to new levels of depravity at college and the whole skinny dipping thing seemed too pedestrian all of a sudden. Luckily, Keith had turned twenty-one.

Between my bartending job – where I routinely encouraged my underage friends to come visit – and Keith’s well-timed birthday, we all spent that summer in a boozy haze, much like we had spent most of the previous school year. Last summer’s relative sobriety gave way to orgiastic drunkenness. Keith briefly became a certifiable alcoholic, beginning each day with a Bacardi and Coke.

As you can imagine, alcohol added an entirely new element to the Moon Club. Some of the joyful innocence that had kept it fun the previous summer morphed into joy of the puckish variety. The line was blurring,literally and figuratively, as we pushed the envelope of acceptable naked-with-friends behavior further. The outdoor shower at my house soon became part of the ritual, with four of us packing in at a time.Soon the ‘no touching’ clause that silently guided our behavior vanished when Vanessa smacked my ass in the shower. That led to a three way ass-smacking competition between myself, Vanessa and Lauren.Where we were once content to sit in the pool and talk, we now needed more. Although the nights often started out with friendly chatting,when the alcohol took hold we developed a series of ways to take better advantage of the fact that we were all naked, drunk, and single.

Besides the group showers we enjoyed games of chicken fighting – a pool game where girls sit atop boys’ shoulders and try to push each other over.This is an entirely new kind of fun when nude, as you can imagine.However, the game that most captured our imaginations was a modified version of truth or dare called simply, dare. Naked exercise was a particularly popular dare – naked foot race, naked push up, naked tag -but by the time we were really sauced, the dares had dropped any trappings of asexuality. Some of it was so depraved I won’t write it here – thusly I avoid creating a permanent record for my children to ask me about someday – but I will say that licking peanut butter off a female friend’s breast probably pushed things beyond the platonic boundary. There were still limits, though, and Keith was adept attesting them. I recall one dare – the one that crossed the line -involved “three tugs.” I’ll let you figure that one for yourself.

Still,shockingly, actual sex never really happened as the result of our games. Even though, by this point, we had become intimately acquainted with each other, we never became intimate. I would end up dating one veteran Moon Club member and, even though our first contact was one of those dares, we wouldn’t consummate the relationship until we were both back at school. As strange as it sounds and remembering that we were showering, ass-smacking, and licking each other, we still acted as if it were innocent fun. We were probably the closest group of non-orgy-attending friends in the world. It was wonderful.

That was the last summer the Madison Moon Club met. The following summer I stayed in New York City and came home rarely. I lived with my girlfriend – the one mentioned above – and I was deeply in love with her so I didn’t miss the depravity. I didn’t regret it either, though,as some people who live wildly before returning to Earth do. No,instead I looked, and look, back on it with a smile. Keith and I had engineered something so sublimely insane that nothing in my life since has even come close to touching just how absurd those two summers were. Even in college, where absurdity seems the order of the day,nothing compared. Even in my current post, where an office full of twenty-somethings routinely get up to the kind of thing that would get you fired from any other job, nothing comes close.

Keith called me a few months ago and announced he was getting married to his long-time girlfriend. Although I didn’t tell him, I was a bit sad.Even though it had been six years since the last time the Moon Club met, Keith’s impending nuptials snuffed out the last remaining hope that someday we’d do it all again. I suppose it’s for the better. In ever looked great without my clothes on, but I’m positively repulsive these days. Besides, my girlfriend probably wouldn’t be too keen on the whole enterprise (“Honey, you don’t understand; these girls are just my friends”). As one careens towards adulthood, he must accept that somethings are gone forever. True, but I’ll always remember the two summers when a group of bored kids got together, got naked and really – really- got to know each other. We didn’t change the world like our naked,hippie parents thought they could do in the 60’s, but we certainly taught each other how much fun that world could be.