Against Naturism

I realise it’s not all salad sandwiches at pinewood picnics, endless volleyball. I’ve heard the argument that talk of shame and how our forebears thought their bodies dirty; how we've all got one. Seen one, seen ’em all. But it’s not for me, beneath my double load of Calvinist and voyeuristic tendencies. For me, I have to see the clothes come off: the way a button’s thumbed through cotton cloth - a winning move in some exotic game with no set rules but countless permutations - or how a summer dress falls to the floor with momentary mass and with a plash that stirs us briefly as we ply our passion; a hand pushed through the coldness of a zip, three fingertips that follow down the spine to where a clasp is neatly spun undone amidkiss, by prime legerdemain and who cares that it happens once in four and never, never on the first undressing, it must be better than a foreskin snagged on gorse thorns or a cold, fat nipple jammed in the scissor drawer, the bounty and the blessing, the mystery of nakedness reduced till on a par with go-go palaces where goosebumped, grinding strippers strut their stuff in the birthday clothes of backstreet empresses, down on a par with the oncologist who gropes for lumps, the night-morgue man who clips his nails amongst the naked, bin-bagged stiffs. So, stranger, what I want to say is this: if you’re to join me in a little sinning (and this is my place up here on the right), please understand I’d value some reluctance, a cold-feet shiver, as in the beginning when Eve discovered modesty and slipped in and out of something comfortable. For there are many ways to skin a cat, but ours is human nature - things come off so rarely. Come in. Let me take your coat.