Happy National Nude Recreation Week! (from '11)

A game of 8 ball played between two naked men is still called 8 ball.

That’s just one of the things I learned during the month it took me to exhaustively research my just-posted msnbc.com story heralding National Nude Recreation Week.

It’s an evergreen kind of story I’m going to relentlessly pitch each and every year until I find a publication that’ll agree to headline it, “Hams Across America!”

I found talking to nudists over the phone is a lot like talking to fundamentalist Christians in that both are reluctant to admit any of their members might enjoy sex.

It’s an understandable reaction from starchy fundamentalists. They’ve been taught ever since Adam sex means trouble. It might explain their ardor for immaculate conception.

A deity waving a magic wand -- Bibidi! Bobidi! Boo! -- just seems so much tidier than the nuts and bolts of biological sex -- and I’m not speaking metaphorically when I’m referring to hardware. Many popular genital piercings historically involve actual bolts.

As for nuts, well, maybe I’m speaking a bit metaphorically.

The nudists went out of their way to differentiate themselves from swingers and swappers and, really, anyone that enjoyed sex.

Rules at a typical nudist resort are explicit: They don’t want anyone’s magic wands waving around.

Rules stipulate if a naked man finds himself becoming aroused he needs to cover himself with a towel, lay down on his stomach or depart the premises.

The only thing today’s nudists are interested in raising is awareness.

Almost every nudist I interviewed asked me if I were one of them. I had to say, sorry, no. I don’t share their beliefs, their values, and I wouldn’t begin to speculate on what kind of secret handshakes nudists exchange.

It was a lie.

You see, I do consider myself a nudist.

Well, let’s say I’m a situational nudist.

I’m naked whenever I think I can get away with it.

I guess in that way I’m like Bugs Bunny. He’d start out every episode naked and perfectly at peace. But as the world came crashing in on him, he’d don costumes like opera gowns or doctor’s scrubs depending on what bone-headed choices Elmer Fudd made at the time.

I’m like that. I’ve slept naked since college and still wake up everyday in the buff. I can’t recall now what motivated the choice. I wish I could say it involved dusk-to-dawn passions, but I don’t think that was it.

More than likely it involved the over-consumption of Ouzo, a powerful Greek liquor that imparted the unusual side effect of me scattering my clothes all over Athens, Ohio.

But nudity seemed to suit me or, more accurately, it seemed to birthday suit me.

I was soon naked in my dorm room, in the halls, in the laundry room and once on a dare through the length of the packed dining hall at Ohio University’s South Green in just 1 minute and 12 seconds breaking a record that had stood for 3 years.

And I was rarely near a body of water when my naked body wasn’t frolicking in the water. I loved to skinny dip.

Times change. Now the only time I’m naked is in the dark with my wife.

The main reasons I’m rarely ever naked anymore is, of course, my daughters.

Children are where I draw the line regarding nudity -- and I draw it thick in broad strokes from my hips to just above the knees.

Yet nudism still has its appeal. It sounds contradictory, but having to wear pants bums me out.

This was never more apparent than last month when we enjoyed three days at a private residence on the banks of the Chesapeake.

The magnificent house and pool were a nudist paradise, at least for the girls who enjoyed their first skinny dip. And I now have pictures that’ll refute anyone who dares call my wife a prude.

And there I was, a veteran nudist unable to shuck my preposterous baggy swimsuit.

I wondered in frustration if I’ll ever get to enjoy a real skinny dip again.

Of course, according to the obesity charts prepared by the Centers for Disease Control, the point may be moot.

I’d have to drop about 20 pounds to even qualify as a skinny dipper.

RRS: National Nude Recreation Week!

Next week begins National Nude Recreation Week. Here’s an ’11 primer so none of you get caught with your pants down.

A game of 8 ball played between two naked men is still called 8 ball.

That’s just one of the things I learned during the month it took me to exhaustively research my just-posted msnbc.com story heralding National Nude Recreation Week.

It’s an evergreen kind of story I’m going to relentlessly pitch each and every year until I find a publication that’ll agree to headline it, “Hams Across America!”

I found talking to nudists over the phone is a lot like talking to fundamentalist Christians in that both are reluctant to admit any of their members might enjoy sex.

It’s an understandable reaction from starchy fundamentalists. They’ve been taught ever since Adam sex means trouble. It might explain their ardor for immaculate conception.

A deity waving a magic wand -- Bibidi! Bobidi! Boo! -- just seems so much tidier than the nuts and bolts of biological sex -- and I’m not speaking metaphorically when I’m referring to hardware. Many popular genital piercings historically involve actual bolts.

As for nuts, well, maybe I’m speaking a bit metaphorically.

The nudists went out of their way to differentiate themselves from swingers and swappers and, really, anyone that enjoyed sex.

Rules at a typical nudist resort are explicit: They don’t want anyone’s magic wands waving around.

Rules stipulate if a naked man finds himself becoming aroused he needs to cover himself with a towel, lay down on his stomach or depart the premises.

The only thing today’s nudists are interested in raising is awareness.

Almost every nudist I interviewed asked me if I were one of them. I had to say, sorry, no. I don’t share their beliefs, their values, and I wouldn’t begin to speculate on what kind of secret handshakes nudists exchange.

It was a lie.

You see, I do consider myself a nudist.

Well, let’s say I’m a situational nudist.

I’m naked whenever I think I can get away with it.

I guess in that way I’m like Bugs Bunny. He’d start out every episode naked and perfectly at peace. But as the world came crashing in on him, he’d don costumes like opera gowns or doctor’s scrubs depending on what bone-headed choices Elmer Fudd made at the time.

I’m like that. I’ve slept naked since college and still wake up everyday in the buff. I can’t recall now what motivated the choice. I wish I could say it involved dusk-to-dawn passions, but I don’t think that was it.

More than likely it involved the over-consumption of Ouzo, a powerful Greek liquor that imparted the unusual side effect of me scattering my clothes all over Athens, Ohio.

But nudity seemed to suit me or, more accurately, it seemed to birthday suit me.

I was soon naked in my dorm room, in the halls, in the laundry room and once on a dare through the length of the packed dining hall at Ohio University’s South Green in just 1 minute and 12 seconds breaking a record that had stood for 3 years.

And I was rarely near a body of water when my naked body wasn’t frolicking in the water. I loved to skinny dip.

Times change. Now the only time I’m naked is in the dark with my wife.

The main reasons I’m rarely ever naked anymore is, of course, my daughters.

Children are where I draw the line regarding nudity -- and I draw it thick in broad strokes from my hips to just above the knees.

Yet nudism still has its appeal. It sounds contradictory, but having to wear pants bums me out.

This was never more apparent than last month when we enjoyed three days at a private residence on the banks of the Chesapeake.

The magnificent house and pool were a nudist paradise, at least for the girls who enjoyed their first skinny dip. And I now have pictures that’ll refute anyone who dares call my wife a prude.

And there I was, a veteran nudist unable to shuck my preposterous baggy swimsuit.

I wondered in frustration if I’ll ever get to enjoy a real skinny dip again.

Of course, according to the obesity charts prepared by the Centers for Disease Control, the point may be moot.

I’d have to drop about 20 pounds to even qualify as a skinny dipper.

Randy Travis & the perils of driving while naked

News that Randy Travis was arrested for driving drunk and naked had one reporter wondering if “he’s hit bottom,” an interesting turn of phrase about a man ready for a good spanking.

It had me thinking, man, there’s something I’ve never done.

And I’m talking about the driving naked bit.

In fact, there’s more. It turns out the country singer -- and I’m a big fan -- tried to buy cigarettes naked.

That’s something else I never dreamed of doing. Don’t you need pockets for that sort of thing?

At the minimum, he’d be holding keys, a wallet, a lighter and probably a smart phone. Even people like me who often consider pants a nuisance have to admit pockets add a certain utility to daily life.

I have some great memories of being naked in a car, but none of them involve driving solo to fetch groceries.

Or I should say “nekkid,” the difference being, according to the late great Southern humorist Lewis Grizzard, that “naked is being without clothes; nekked is being without clothes and up to something.”

The best of it was in high school some 30 years ago. Me and my friends were avid skinny dippers.

We weren’t the most popular kids, but we always managed to find a few young pretty girls reckless enough about their reputations to want to hop a fence with us and sneak into someone’s backyard pool for a little illicit fun.

Some of the happiest times of my life involve being a proud father. Some of the others involve trespassing naked in the backyards of vacationing strangers.

Cruel age can steal my wits, my mobility and all my earthly possessions, but I hope it never robs me of my memories of what happened during those adolescent romps. I’ll be a happy old man, a happy, dirty old man.

So as you can surmise I bring a sympathetic point of view to Travis’s escapades.

But I’m having trouble understanding what kind of fun you’d have driving around Texas nude and looking for smokes.

I try to put myself in his shoes. Understand a strict constructionist would say for him to be truly naked, he wouldn’t even be wearing shoes.

Not me. I think sensible footwear is a necessary part of doing many fun things in the nude, other than the obvious ones that are done nude and mostly horizontal.

I can see myself walking into a Texas mini-mart nude, maybe on a dare, but I can’t see myself walking fully-clothed but barefoot across the gum and butt-studded parking lot of one. I have sensitive feet.

Then there’s this: Travis threatened the arresting officers saying he would “shoot to kill.”

Was he packin’?

Again, a pocket would have probably enhanced the threat. Either he was wearing an unreported holster or else he was using his finger gun, which would make it one of the world’s most entertaining dash-cam videos ever.

Anyone remember my stories last summer about National Nude Recreation Week?

I learned a lot about nudie fun and much of it stayed with me. For instance: a game of 8 Ball played between two naked men is still called 8 Ball.

I also learned that nudists like to say they’re most comfortable in their own skin.

So, given my personal and professional experience, I know a thing or two about public nudity.

None of R.T.’s episode strikes me as recreational fun.

As I said, I’m a big fan. He was king of Nashville in the late 1980s when I was a young reporter there.

He raised eyebrows in 1991 when at 32 he married his manager, Lib Hatcher, a woman who was 16 years his senior. The pair divorced in 2010.

The speculation may be rash of me, but I believe Travis might be what I call a “slomosexual,” a person who devotes his or her life to the self-proclaimed virtues of public heterosexuality before finally coming to grips with their true sexual identity.

I suspect Travis’s troubles stem from a fear his mostly conservative fans will turn on him if he’s honest about what’s bothering him.

I suggest he seek advice from Elton John, another popular entertainer who in the mid-1980s participated in a sham marriage that lasted just a bit longer than “Benny and The Jets.”

It saddens me when someone like Travis, who’s made so many people, can’t find happiness himself.

Let’s hope with this he has hit bottom, so to speak.

And that a man who’s now enduring ridicule for being naked will find a way to finally be comfortable in his own skin.

Happy National Nude Recreation Week!

A game of 8 ball played between two naked men is still called 8 ball.

That’s just one of the things I learned during the month it took me to exhaustively research my just-posted msnbc.com story heralding National Nude Recreation Week.

It’s an evergreen kind of story I’m going to relentlessly pitch each and every year until I find a publication that’ll agree to headline it, “Hams Across America!”

I found talking to nudists over the phone is a lot like talking to fundamentalist Christians in that both are reluctant to admit any of their members might enjoy sex.

It’s an understandable reaction from starchy fundamentalists. They’ve been taught ever since Adam sex means trouble. It might explain their ardor for immaculate conception.

A deity waving a magic wand -- Bibidi! Bobidi! Boo! -- just seems so much tidier than the nuts and bolts of biological sex -- and I’m not speaking metaphorically when I’m referring to hardware. Many popular genital piercings historically involve actual bolts.

As for nuts, well, maybe I’m speaking a bit metaphorically.

The nudists went out of their way to differentiate themselves from swingers and swappers and, really, anyone that enjoyed sex.

Rules at a typical nudist resort are explicit: They don’t want anyone’s magic wands waving around.

Rules stipulate if a naked man finds himself becoming aroused he needs to cover himself with a towel, lay down on his stomach or depart the premises.

The only thing today’s nudists are interested in raising is awareness.

Almost every nudist I interviewed asked me if I were one of them. I had to say, sorry, no. I don’t share their beliefs, their values, and I wouldn’t begin to speculate on what kind of secret handshakes nudists exchange.

It was a lie.

You see, I do consider myself a nudist.

Well, let’s say I’m a situational nudist.

I’m naked whenever I think I can get away with it.

I guess in that way I’m like Bugs Bunny. He’d start out every episode naked and perfectly at peace. But as the world came crashing in on him, he’d don costumes like opera gowns or doctor’s scrubs depending on what bone-headed choices Elmer Fudd made at the time.

I’m like that. I’ve slept naked since college and still wake up everyday in the buff. I can’t recall now what motivated the choice. I wish I could say it involved dusk-to-dawn passions, but I don’t think that was it.

More than likely it involved the over-consumption of Ouzo, a powerful Greek liquor that imparted the unusual side effect of me scattering my clothes all over Athens, Ohio.

But nudity seemed to suit me or, more accurately, it seemed to birthday suit me.

I was soon naked in my dorm room, in the halls, in the laundry room and once on a dare through the length of the packed dining hall at Ohio University’s South Green in just 1 minute and 12 seconds breaking a record that had stood for 3 years.

And I was rarely near a body of water when my naked body wasn’t frolicking in the water. I loved to skinny dip.

Times change. Now the only time I’m naked is in the dark with my wife.

The main reasons I’m rarely ever naked anymore is, of course, my daughters.

Children are where I draw the line regarding nudity -- and I draw it thick in broad strokes from my hips to just above the knees.

Yet nudism still has its appeal. It sounds contradictory, but having to wear pants bums me out.

This was never more apparent than last month when we enjoyed three days at a private residence on the banks of the Chesapeake.

The magnificent house and pool were a nudist paradise, at least for the girls who enjoyed their first skinny dip. And I now have pictures that’ll refute anyone who dares call my wife a prude.

And there I was, a veteran nudist unable to shuck my preposterous baggy swimsuit.

I wondered in frustration if I’ll ever get to enjoy a real skinny dip again.

Of course, according to the obesity charts prepared by the Centers for Disease Control, the point may be moot.

I’d have to drop about 20 pounds to even qualify as a skinny dipper.