Hold the Dressing

The rest of the guests blew in, three late-twenties women, a masseuse and two teachers, who stripped in front of the door and plopped down on the couches and floor. And a 30-ish Asian guy, who announced his recent victory on Pants Off Dance Off, a program on the Fuse Network that TV Guide called “the dumbest show on television.” Contestants have three minutes to strip while dancing in a three-foot-square box. We watched the episode clip. He is indeed very talented at stripping in a three-foot-square box. I relaxed. When other naked people are calm, you're calm.

My earlier theory that moving is a pivotal part of nudity is all wrong. Moving while naked is a pain in the ass. It’s hard to get off a low couch while adhering to society’s Keep Your Legs Closed Always rule. But I made it to the dining room table, and dinner proceeded much like any other--chitchat about work, discussion of how cool it is to win $200 for three minutes of stripping in a box. There was no sexual vibe. Through three courses of Indian food, I found that my need to check out men’s packages had passed in its entirety, and that skin is just another set of clothes. People carry themselves differently when naked; it’s more authentic. You can read who people are at a glance. I imagined the heavily makeup’ed fashionistas of my Upper East Side neighborhood melting down under these conditions, their coiffed facades broken, their personalities unable to function in the harsh light of reality. There’s something very real about naked dinner.

New York City is one of the worst places on earth to be a nudist. The exposure laws are strict, and there’s one nude beach for eight million residents. Richard says he leads trips because he has the money, and because otherwise people would never learn how comfortable naturism is. There’s no sex involved on his part.

His dinner guests seemed free, getting a dopamine high off the rarity of what we were doing. I was not high. My hand hurt because I could not stop gripping my towel. I sat on it, or held it in my hand, or carried it around the apartment, clutching it like child’s security blanket. As long as I held it, everything would be okay. Couldn’t. Let. Go.

Also. Couldn’t. Eat. There are two types of people: those who look better dressed (Gwyneth Paltrow), and those who look better naked (Pamela Anderson), and one of the former was sitting directly across from me, a thin bank teller who was quite foxy clothed. But naked, she was thin and somehow unappetizing, and for reasons I can’t articulate, looking at her breasts six inches from the bread, I lost my appetite. I felt guilty about this.

After dessert, people lounged on the couches for a while, then pulled on their clothes in the entryway. I’ll save you suspense: I did not become a card-carrying nudist. I politely declined Richard’s invitation for a trip a sunny resort somewhere down south, and happily escaped to the bathroom, because getting dressed is a private activity.

Never was I so excited to see my bra.

Arianne Cohen's work has appeared in The New York Times, O, New York, Marie Claire, Popular Science, Fast Company, Nerve.com and the New York Times Magazine, among others. She is author of the upcoming The Tall Book: A Celebration of Life from On High (Bloomsbury, June 2009), the definitive book about the tall life. She was, at one point, one half the country’s tallest couple with her 7’2” partner. You can stalk her via ariannecohen.com.