My Nature Girls

An excerpt from My Nature Girls

When I recovered, I dressed in shorts and a loose resort-style shirt, and practiced my look of shock in the mirror. "Goodness, a nudist resort? I can’t believe it!"

We went out of the room and out to the lobby, finding nothing amiss (clothing was encouraged inside the buildings and required in the dining room). We ate breakfast in the dining room quite cheerily. Callie was positively glowing with excitement, her smooth skin browner than Lindsey’s from, presumably, more time spent outdoors.

It was only when we stepped back into the lobby that we saw our first anomaly: a middle-aged woman coming in from the beach, wearing nothing more than a sun-visor and clasping a beach towel to her chest, leaving her backside entirely bare.

When she passed, Lindsey said in a hushed tone of conspiracy, "She wasn’t wearing a bathing suit."

I feigned ignorance and slowly turned to see for myself, but just missed her rounding a corner. "She wasn’t," Callie agreed.

"Let’s go out to the beach," I suggested.

It was a long moment as our eyes adjusted to the bright light of the sun that we stood uncomprehending outside the hotel. There were only a few people close to the hotel, and most of them were clothed as I was; a few wore little more than towels. We walked slowly, gawking somewhat—particularly the girls—at the people in the distance, on the beach.

"Those people aren’t wearing any clothes at all," Callie said in amazement.

We went back in the lobby to talk about it. I explained to the girls that it must be a clothing-optional resort and that perhaps we should leave. I pretended to check indignantly with the front desk clerk about getting my money back, and then told the girls that I would have to suffer the loss—unless they wanted to stay. "There's nothing dirty going on, I suppose," I said. "They're just naturists." I put on my fatherly face. "But I don't want you to be uncomfortable."

They took one look at a group of naked teenage boys crossing by outside and decided that we shouldn’t waste the money for a vacation that was already paid for.