BARELY RELAXED

I am on a short vacation with my wife. Nothing too extensive in these COVID-ravaged times. Just a hundred or so miles away in a nearby city, taking time far enough away from home to escape, without the need to hop on an airliner or cruise ship.

I’m taking the opportunity to course correct on some things that have kind gotten away from me in the daily hustle. I’ve cut back on drinking and slowly added a few carbs back in - my wife and I have been Keto since January 1st. My morning exercise routine has been sporadic lately, so that too has been revived. 

(I’m having a bit of a challenge working out here in the hotel because the suite, with a separate bedroom and really nice bathroom, features the questionable design decision of frosted glass window panels in all the interior doors. Looks great, but even a hint of light is accented, meaning if anyone’s trying to get some sleep the lights of anyone who is awake in the rest of the suite are a distraction.) 

My morning exercise routine consists of a half hour of dancing to music videos, moving my arms, legs, ass and torso to firm up the various muscle groups. It hails back to the time, in my late teens and early twenties, when I was a competitive dancer and in generally terrific physical condition. I’m blessed with enough muscle memory that makes it an easier way to regain fitness quickly.

Unfortunately, those layers of recurrent muscle - the tone of which are coming along quite nicely - are still covered with 30 years of stubborn fat which is proving a challenge to show the door. I have around 40 pounds I still want to drop, though I'm down 50 from my high, and it’s created a real weird physiology of having solid muscle tone covered by significant soft and spongy fat. Not super attractive because it makes me kind of “lumpy.”

I do my exercises right after I get out of bed. I sleep naked and remain that way until I'm done exercising. I’ve found it frees me up movement-wise, and also psychologically improves my mental state and acceptance of my current physical condition. It’s very liberating. 

(I’ve discussed being uncomfortable with having a fat body, despite years of having one, and how that impacts my self-esteem. Use the search at the top right of this page and look up “physical.”)

Today, and for the last three days, when I was done exercising I flopped onto the hotel room’s couch (towel between me and the fabric), closed my eyes and just lay on my back, head on a pillow and legs akimbo as I wind down. It feels really, really good and I stay that way for another half hour or so appreciating how pleasant it feels to be in a warm dark room, eyes closed with only the hushed sound of the room’s a/c as noise. 

It’s not often in our buttoned-up puritanical culture that we can feel comfortable that way. Too many people saying it’s unseemly or inappropriate to be uninhibitedly naked, even if you’re alone. But I’ve found in the dark cocoon of the early morning it’s a safe spot, it’s a way to let yourself just be comfortable in your own skin. Even if later in the day body horror swoops in, let yourself just be relaxed in your own for an hour or so, it’s remarkably exhilarating.

And I’ve realized over the years, in a way that is reinforced every day, that I’m probably at my most relaxed when I’m naked in bed, laying on the couch, or suntanning out in the back yard. Eyes closed. Nobody’s there to judge. Nobody’s going to see. There’s no sexual titillation and no sense of guilt. Just simple pleasure.

It’s an odd revelation simply because - as many-time readers will recognize - I don’t identify as either a nudist or a naturist. To me it’s just innocent and empowering to be naked as a way to completely let go. 

(A lot of people will initially be self-conscious doing this, and I get that. Let yourself go. Concentrate on the music and just moving with it, ignoring your nudity. Once you’ve done it a number of times and learned to go with it, it’s really easy to do. Closing your eyes is an essential part of this, as it naturally relaxes the mind.) 

At the moment, as I’m typing this message, I have a t-shirt, socks and underwear on. At home, even when I’m alone, there isn’t the compulsion to strip off and run around naked. But when it’s time to relax, to truly, honestly, close my eyes and wind down, I’m more relaxed undressed than dressed.

(A few regular readers will probably be amused that I think of this as a revelation. It’s not the comfort with being naked that I find surprising, I’ve been unbothered with both medical and non-medical nudity for years. It’s that I’ve discovered the degree to which my mind calms and my body un-tenses is enhanced, I’m more calm and serene when relaxing naked than I am when relaxing clothed.)(And yes, I recognize that I'm somewhat of an exhibitionist, but if no one's around is it exhibitionism or simply being comfortable?)

It occurrs to me that this might have its origins in loving to take baths when I was a kid. My most relaxed moments were in the bathtub letting the water wash over me. I'd be in so long that the water usually was getting cold by the time I got out. I don’t take baths very often as an adult - I shower daily - but I love lounging around in the hot tub. Much the same thing as a bath if you think about it. 

Starting in college, and for years after, I used to waste a lot of water by lying in the bathtub for a good half hour or more, letting the shower run as I closed my eyes and let the water do its thing. 

Obviously I did this late at night when demand for the facilities was at a minimum.

(One particular girlfriend loved to shower with me. We’d sneak into the men’s bathroom late at night for some fun, which was anything but relaxing. That’s a story for another time.)

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A few other odds and ends. In a week or so I’ll turn 61. 

Shocking to realize I'm actually "old" by society's standards, but I really do think it’s as much a state of mind as physical age. I am, at 61 years old, healthier and more active than I was one and two decades ago. 

In fact, just got bloodwork done for the new doctor and the vast majority of the report is green. I have some high LDL that needs to be addressed (this is new and probably the result of the Keto diet), a stubbornly high A1C (blood sugar - which according to the report is well-controlled despite being red), and a couple of other red categories more than likely related to my bum left kidney. The rest of my tests got solidly green marks. 

My physical, as I noted in the last column, has been rescheduled to March and I’m planning on losing ten or more pounds by the time that rolls around. The point is that despite the chronological years, my mental years and overall physicality are younger than they were a couple of decades ago.

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At some point in 2022 I’m going to re-visit my boyhood hobby of hiking through the nearby mountains and woods. I was a Boy Scout and our troop’s leader was a real outdoorsman. The fact he also introduced us to skinny dipping and group nudity raises my eyebrow these days, but to be honest other than inadvertently triggering my exhibitionist side - by letting us boys run around freely naked when we were camping or in his back yard pool -  he never did anything inappropriate that I can recall. However this was the early ‘70s before our cultural paranoias really went crazy. 

I unquestioningly sympathize with true victims of abuse, which is unacceptable on any level, but I think the baby got thrown out with the bathwater when it became taboo for kids to skinny dip and run around naked. Not so much a tribal ritual as it was a key element of socializing and understanding that all nudity isn't about sex, and that just being naked can be a lot of fun. 

As boys, we swam naked in the scoutmaster's back yard  pool, and if we ran across ponds or steams during our hikes the custom was go naked for those too. Generally one or more of the other kids’ dads were along and nothing untoward happened. (It was just what guys did, and I really feel sorry that so many kids these days are raised in fear instead of innocent pleasure.) And, I found out swimming naked and laying out to dry off is one of life’s purest joys.

I never went to Summer Camp, so the scouting adventures fulfilled that same adventurous time away from family for me. I developed a real tendency for unabashed nudity even then - I was around 10 and brand new to the troop when the leader plus one of the kid's dads and roughly eight boys hiked up into the nearby mountains and found a great pond for swimming. It was my first time skinny dipping with a larger group, with my only previous experience being in my cousins’ above-ground pool. My aunt and uncle let the three of us - all boys - cavort around naked on a few occasions when my parents dropped me off for boy time. I don’t have a brother, and my parents thought this was a healthy way to give me that sort of a brotherly relationship. (If my sisters or parents or other people were around swimsuits were mandatory, of course.)

Scouting introduced me to group nudity, and that it was okay to be naked around others. It was treated as just another part of being a boy. 

On different scouting trip we had stopped for a swim and lunch next to a good-sized creek. One of the other kids accidentally dropped a part of his sandwich into the stream. It washed down the creek, too far out of reach to be easily retrieved and the kid was perfectly happy letting it go. The scoutmaster wasn’t as happy and sternly told the kid he had to get the sandwich. 

Paradise Lost?

We’d already been swimming and were taking a break to eat lunch. I was sitting around in my tighty whities watching this as the kid got more upset. I was around 12, I think. The kid, maybe 9, started crying. The scoutmaster was holding firm, so I dropped my skivvies, said I’d get it, and made my way across the stream - around two feet deep and ten feet across I’d guess. I crawled up on the steep far bank and made my way down to where the sandwich lay bobbing in a side eddy and scooped it up. 

I looked around and realized I was standing bare-ass naked in front of around eight kids and our scoutmaster watching me, so I held up the sandwich like a prize. Being a group of goof-offs they all cheered. As I picked my way back down the slope and across the creek I strongly remember thinking "this is kinda cool." More than any single other event, I think this was the planted seed for my eventual comfort with being naked around other people.

So more pieces of the puzzle as to who I’m becoming as a 61 year old Old Fart.

All of which is my usual early-morning mental wandering. Amazing how train-of-thought thinking goes when you’re still on your first cup of coffee.