I share this story because I want to get it out of my head – one of the purposes of these blog posts. I also share it because it makes me laugh, while feeling a little nauseous every time I go back to the moment I heard it. Poor Mirabelle. She’s a friend on FB, but we haven’t seen one another for over thirty years, and, in case you’re wondering, Mirabelle is not her real name. She was, and I am sure still is, way, way too nice to out her by name here; even if we haven’t spoken in thirty years, she remains in my memory as a gracious, kind, gentle presence, in fact – one of the reasons I liked her so much was that her energy was decidedly different from mine…I can be kind, I can be gracious and even gentle – but those are not the first words any person of sense would use when describing our heroine.
Mirabelle grew up in the Bay area, and her parents were well-off, upper middle-class hippies or if not hippies, let’s say they were hippie adjacent, open to lots of experiences, and as their child, Mirabelle went – some might say was dragged – along. One of those experiences, which is what I want to get out of my head, came about because her parental units were nudists. Every summer for a week or two the family went to a nudist colony somewhere in northern California. This experience was traumatic for Mirabelle, who would not have chosen on her own at any time, to go nude in public; this was especially true when she was entering and going through puberty when, wearing a bathing suit, she would spend hours under a tree isolated from the general hubbub of the nudist colony with a book and whatever she had prepared for her lunch.
Of course, I was fascinated by the thought of this gentle spirit being made to go through adolescence amidst a group of older people, adults – naked as jay-birds and proud of it. Fine for them but – what the fuck were her parents thinking? Wasn’t there anywhere else she could have gone? Where were her grandparents? Were they there, too?! I never found out, probably because even talking about this period of her life in brief, Mirabelle went into paroxysms of red-faced embarrassment, and it seemed unkind (see, see, I can be kind) to press her.
She did tell me about one of the worst days for her, and that’s stuck in my head because the visual imagery was and is, well, striking? Unforgettable? Both, definitely both. And, lest we forget, nauseating. She had gone with her towel and toiletries, bathing suit clad, to take a shower and do her morning routine. Leaving the communal – divided by gender, I assure you – showers, Mirabelle was confronted by a much older, rather tall man (she was 12 or 13 at the time), wearing glasses but nothing else, smoking a cigar with his huge belly and equally large ‘junk’ hanging out, including testes that she described as hanging down halfway to his hairy knees, softball (pun intended?) sized. She froze there for a moment, until, head down, clutching her toiletries and covering towel to her chest, she did a bee-line to anywhere not there, her heart pounding and head exploding.
I think, but I don’t remember exactly, that not long after this she told her parents she was done with the nudist camp, that if they didn’t remove her from that place she would run away or, maybe, complain to the authorities? That last doesn’t sound like Mirabelle, but can you feel it, and for her? All these years later, I still can. That was, and of this fact I am sure, her last stay at the camp. Phew.
