The lake wasn’t all that far, but it still took twenty minutes to get there. With each step, I looked more and more forward to cleanliness. A body coated in cow pie mud was not the way I pictured our first kiss, which I had not given up on. I peeked at my watch. We still had time to make it happen. Didn’t we?
In the distance, we saw hundreds of Woodstockers had had the same idea. It was hard to tell who was male and who was female. They looked like androgynous stick figures wading in the water.
Fifty yards out, their bodies came into focus. I caught myself before gasping out loud. We were entering a nudist colony.
Sweat sprang from my pores. My chest caved in to my ribs. I heard myself clearing my throat. Because I was on the brink of heart failure. Would I be expected to strip offmyclothes? Would Livy? WouldLeon? I considered turning around and hauling back to sit with Dave. But that meant I’d look like the biggest goody-goody on planet earth. The only choice I had was to keep putting one foot in front of the other toward the colony.
Even though I had the feeling of jumping out of an airplane, I held my head high, marching on like nothing was wrong. Like it was just another day in the deliciously free, cool, hippie life of Suzannah Withers.You cannot stare,I told myself.You must act unfazed. Especially in front of Leon.I didn’t want him thinking me any more naive than he already did.
Forty yards away, I spotted people bent over, rinsing their clothes.
At thirty yards out, I saw three girls, naked as jaybirds, tiptoeing into the water, holding hands.
Twenty yards away, I spied Slim rearranging the crotch of his blue jeans.
Ten yards from the lake, Miss Olivia Foster—undaunted—broke away from our group and hustled toward the water. By the way she hurried, I expected her to take a racing dive into the lake. Instead, she halted at the water’s edge, removed her sandals, and dipped them up and down in the water. She then carried them over to a boulder where others had left their clothing.
Livy was somewhat hidden by reeds, but we could still see her unbuttoning her suede top. She let it slip from her shoulders, exposing her big beautiful bare breasts. I watched in shock as she shed her shorts. Surely she would leave on her pretty new panties. Nope, they came off too.
After a quick full-frontal wave to our group, Livy turned and paraded toward the lake with her muddy clothes in her hands, gifting us all with a view of her magnificent posterior. Tan lines streaked her back, one just above her bottom, and the other flaunted the line from her bikini top.
Like a parliament of great horned owls, we all just stood there stock still, watching naked Livy step into the lake. Someone handed her a bar of soap, which she proceeded to swab over every inch of her body. When done, she bent over—mooning everyone on the shoreline—then soaped down her clothes and rinsed them in the pond. Once her clothes were clean enough for her liking, she turned around to our group witha big smile, flapping her hand like a flag caught in a mighty wind. She then cast her clothing onto the rocky ledge, piece by piece.
Handsome Johnny stumbled in his haste to remove his own clothes. After ripping off his T-shirt lickety-split, he stepped out of his first pant leg at breakneck speed, leaving it inside out. The boy wore no underwear. While stepping out of the second pant leg, he tripped, landing on the ground like a big klutz. Twenty-four hours earlier, when I’d first met Johnny, never in a million years would I have dreamed that I would soon be eyeing his tally whacker,in broad daylight, or any tally whacker, for that matter. Yet there was Johnny’s, as virile and happy as the Apollo 11 rocket blasting to the moon.
“Let it all hang out, baby,” he shouted, bolting in after Livy. Slim followed. He had ripped off his clothes so fast I didn’t even see him do it. Miraculously, Leon didn’t follow, which left the two of us to sit in the second-most awkward moment of my life.
Now what?
Despite the boulder-size knot in my stomach, I smiled confidently at Leon like I was just fine. I peered over at our naked friends with the same confidence. I even waved. Until Woodstock, I had thoughtembarrassmentmeant the time I’d tripped and face-planted onstage in front of the whole school while accepting my dorky perfect-attendance award. But this weekend had redefinedembarrassment. The thought of people seeing me nude, in broad daylight, was as unimaginable as eating escargot. Truth was, I couldn’t imagine anyone seeing me nude. No one had since I was a little girl. Not even Mama. Or Livy. Or Penny. Modesty was the policy in the Withers family.
Leon and I just stood there, mute, looking from the pond, back to one another, and then back to the pond, and when our eyes met again, we burst into wild laughter. We carried on like we had earlier; only this time, it was not at my expense.
“Okay, Suzie Withers. I don’t see you stripping off your threads,” said Leon, with that intoxicating man-giggle of his. “But hey, feel freeif you want to. I promise not tostare.” He jutted bug eyes toward me, then tickled the skin between my jeans and top.
“Stop.” I brushed his hand away. “I’m not going to stare at anybody.”
“Bet ya can’t do it.”
“Bet ya I can. How much?”
“Five bucks.”
“Deal,” I said, reaching out to shake his hand. I stepped toward the lake, then quickly turned back around. “Are you going in naked?” I gave him an exaggerated stare, square in the face.
“There it is. Can you say it once more? Please?”
Cocking my head to the side, I said it. “Nekkid.”
Cocking his head to the other side, he said, “Good luck!”
“You’ll see,” I told him with a confident smile.
Leon laid a hand on my shoulder. “I don’t have a problem with nude bathing, but I’m more than happy to dip in my shorts. If it makes you feel better.”
The idea of Leon bathing in the nude came with a treasure trove of emotions: angst, excitement, titillation,euphoria. “Whatever works for you,” I said, feeling my cheeks flush and praying he didn’t notice.
He gave me a tantalizing grin, then pointed to a boulder, where the two of us sat down and removed our shoes.
