Much of what I will talk about is the story that appeared in Time Magazine which also made the federal government “close up” the beach. I will talk about one item the reporters either never learned about or wouldn’t report in a “family” magazine. What the magazine did talk about was the new “trend” towards nudism in the US. This was in 1975. Things haven’t changed much in the last thirty years. If you want to practice nudity you can do it easily in resorts and camp grounds all over the country but mostly in the warmer states. In the northeast there are still plenty of places to go during the summer when they are open. The few camp grounds I’ve gone to welcome women like me anytime in any numbers. Today this is also true for men most places if you come as individuals. If you show up in couples or balanced mixed groups your party is even more welcome than single women. There was a time when men by themselves were usually not allowed to enter most nudist camps unless they were card carrying ASA members.

I actually have only gone to several nudist camps or resorts, two in New England and two in Florida. They’re ok, a little serious for my taste. I prefer the more free atmosphere of the “Free” beaches. Anyway, I was practically raised on one. My parents rented a cottage near the beach in Wellfleet, Massachusetts from the year I was three until my father died in 1995. Then my mother contined renting the same cottage the same week and still does. We used to live near NYC, then moved to Ohio. I went to college back east, and stayed in the area. My mother and I, and now my new step father rent it for two weeks these days. For them it’s either a long drive or an airplane flight, for me a short drive from NYC.

The cost is not cheap but hardly an issue. I could afford it by myself, but my mother still insists on paying the bill. But most days, my mother no longer walks down to one of the places where people spend the day sunbathing nude in small groups. It’s usually about a mile from the public access to where the nudists are, and this sometimes acts as a filter for people who would otherwise participate. My step father is 58, which doesn’t seem old. But then, he didn’t grow up as a nudist either.

The result is, these days, my mother doesn’t come with me, but I always make the trek if I go to the beach at all. Sometimes I don’t even bother wearing my bikini to the beach, just a sundress, or shorts which I take off when I get to the proper place. I only need a towel, not a bathing suit. What I know about Truro before 1975 is third hand, but from several different sources. Primarily I heard this from my mother who heard it from other people while sitting on the beach watching me make sandcastles.

According to Time Magazine the spot then called Truro Beach was a place where around two thousand nudists would go on a good weekend beach day in the middle of the summer. During the middle of the week, there might be as few as three or four hundred. Unfortuantely Time Magazine also described exactly where this beach was, though until the issue hit the stands most non-nudists had never heard of Truro Beach. Truro yes, a town on Cape Cod almost out to the tip. But going there didn’t mean you’d accidently stumble on nudists inspite of the large numbers because these hundreds or thousands either walked 1.25 miles south from Balston Beach in Truro or 1.25 miles north from Neucomb Hollow in Wellfleet.

And you couldn’t even get into either of those public beaches without a town parking sticker. The spot on the beach was actually almost exactly on the Wellfleet – Truro border. There is a sixty foot high sand clift next to the beach that’s eroding away to the West at an average of three feet a year. In thirty years the clift edge has moved west ninety feet. It drops all this sand temporarily on the beach. But the ocean quickly takes it away, so the beach is moving West at the same rate. This massive erotion is not man made. It was happening before Henry Hudson discovered the place in the 16th century, even before the Pilgrims came. Cape Cod is one of the fastest naturally changing pieces of property on the face of the earth.

All that just to tell you there used to be, in 1975, a dirt road along the clift edge which is no longer there. After Time Magazine spilled the beans, the next weekend there were an estimated eight to ten thousand spectators lining the ridge, mostly guys who’d driven down from Boston to gawk, but were too shy to go down and join the nudists. I suppose the nudists didn’t care. I wouldn’t. Two thouand or ten makes little difference. The problem was these ten thousand guys came in five thousand now illegally parked cars. Truro and Wellfleet had about two tow trucks each. The chances of your car being one of the dozen towed was miniscule. And these cars were blocking the roads for about two miles, all the way back to the Mid Cape Highway.

The locals, who had always tolerated, even supported the nudist beach which had been there since the 30’s, were pissed. The fire department pointed out that a truck couldn’t move anywhere in half the entire town. The feds came in and did the only thing possible, chased out the nudist because they were the reason the gawkers were there. The gawkers themselves couldn’t be touched. Like their illegally parked cars, there were too many of them. The fact that the nudists were now gone was widely publicized and the gawkers eventually stopped coming to look for them.

Fast forward eight years when my parents started renting a cottage in Wellfleet taking along their three year old daughter, me. Every one knew the nudist beach was gone. My parents had not even heard of it. But once everyone “knew” that, the feds stopped chasing away the few people trying to take off their bathing suits on a private deserted stretch of beach. In the eighties and since, the numbers at the old site rarely go above a hundred. There are no gawkers. The dirt road disappeared in the late seventies, and gawkers would have to trek over a mile. Some who heard the rumors came to look and became nudists. It’s actually very nice. But I never had to make the choice. I grew up being a nudist because once my parents discovered the place they always walked the extra mile when they went to the beach.

So that’s why I’m a nudist, a very casual one at that. There are times when nudity is erotic, fortunately. But just knowing people have seen my naked fanny and pubes, hundreds, thousands of people over the course of twenty years means nothing. Exhibitionism to me means spreading my thighs and showing off the insides of my pussy lips, or performaning coitus in front of an audience. I fantasize about doing these things. But basically I’m a prude in real life who doesn’t do anal, only has one boyfriend, one lover, who was a virgin through high school.

Yet it wouldn’t bother me in the least playing the lead female role in Equus, where the girl gets undressed and walks around on stage for about a half hour in front of the whole audience and in professional productions does nothing to hide her crotch from view. Of course the guy is also walking around with his dick hanging out much of this time as well. I think she’s on stage longer than he is. I saw a college version once where the girl wore white underclothes. The part calls for the girl to be naked so we had to pretend she was. The college student who played the guy was still completely naked. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the girl’s choice to screw the part up. This was just the idea of the school administration.

I wonder if this explains anything about me? I hope you enjoyed my bit of related history. All the stuff about Truro Beach is true as far as I know. I’ve seen some of the articles that appeared in the papers. But here’s one story I’ve only heard third hand, though again several times. In the late seventies there was a local radio DJ who was a womanizer. But if you’re well known there are plenty of girls interested in being “womanized”. And this idea really tintillated some of those gals back in the early seventies. The man let it generally be known that he would be available on Sundays, at some particular time, I’d guess about one in the afternoon. In the middle of the nudist beach! And there were always about ten girls volunteering. I suppose he picked the one he wanted. If you were not the prettiest girl there you could feel good about getting up the courage, but still didn’t have to let yourself get fucked with two thousand people, or at least the ones close enough, watching.

By the way, you often don’t find anyone at the old spot sunbathing naked on even on a nice day. They can be there, but because the particular spot is known historically, people often congregate in other remote stretches instead. The nudists usually know were everyone’s going to be. And if they don’t find the big group they start their own spot somewhere. I’ve run a ten mile stretch of beach on a nice day and discovered maybe twenty couples who want to be left alone, and maybe three larger groups who welcome other nudists. All you usually have to do to be welcomed is stop and take off your bathing suit. None of these people park themselves close enough to the public accesses to bother anyone not interested in nudity. Well, so much for now,

Love and Kisses, Cathy

Dear readers: Another unerotic item about me. Like my characters Mark Lane, and Sunrise, I am interested in long distance hiking, though my only major hike was a ten day, one hundred mile one in Southern Vermont last year. In addition to actually meeting the real “Sunrise” in a shelter one night and becoming inspired, I also had the privellege a few years earlier of having a boyfriend who’d hiked the AT in college. Eventhough we were no longer an item by then, this man was still the one who’d inspired me to do the hundred mile hike. Then I met Sunrise and she inspired me to try next April to hike the entire Appalachian Trail. It’s 2200 miles from Georgia to Maine. Wish me luck! Cathy

Chapter 3, when I write it, will include some funny episodes that happened in 1997, the summer after I graduated from High School. My mother took me to Europe for a High School graduation present. But being nudists, you can imagine where we went. American nudists have an inferiority complex. We know the real action is in Europe. Ile du Levant was our first stop, the famous nudist island that’s been operating since the 30’s and even through WW2. The episode about the young French girl whose boyfriends wouldn’t strip is so good I’m putting it in straight in the bio and also using it as a background incident in my next story.

Our second stop was Muenchen (Munich to Americans). The city was everything I expected. In nice weather a girl can walk down a city street naked and not get arrested. On special occassions like near the Isar river or during Fashing (their Mardi Gras) or perhaps Octoberfest it sometimes happens. There are two places I saw where hundreds of people traditionaly sunbathe naked in good weather and the dozen “Bad”s scattered around the city operate all year. My mother and I tried our flashing skills in all three settings.