Flavor of the Week: Never Mind the Bollocks

The asymmetry of my nuts remains a minor issue in my life, one that hardly ever crosses my mind.

But it did one recent Saturday, when I attended a Young Nudist and Naturists of America (YNNA) loft party in the Financial District.

If my nuts were trees growing from my taint, my right nut might be a chestnut, but my left nut would be a redwood.

My left one sags nearly halfway to my knee. It plunges far beneath its counterpart. My dick, which is of average length, doesn’t even approach its nadir. Furthermore, purple veins entangle the vas deferens. A doctor once told me I was shooting blanks on that side. The whole drooping mass of nut and veins seems to bulge thicker and hang deeper with every passing year.

Before attending the Naked Booze ‘n’ Schmooze, I associated nudism mostly with my parents’ generation. The nudists of my imagination were flabby, overtanned and elderly. Statistics supported the later facet of this picture, at least. As recently came to light in a Wall Street Journal article, American nudists are an aging demographic. The YNNA is one of several youth groups around the nation that have sprung up in reaction to that trend, hoping to entice young people to get back into public nudity.

I met the group’s founder, Jordan Blum, at the door. He’s 34 years old—and was clothed. He’d rented a hip apartment in the Financial District for the event. A dancing pole stood in the bedroom. The two pillows on the bed said “Fuck” and “Sleep,” respectively, and a photo in the hallway showed someone posing with Hugh Hefner and three bimbos. It was early. Four others milled around, only one of them naked when I arrived.

I stripped and ate some hors d’oeuvres.

I asked one of the two young women watching the door—both clothed—if it had been a long time since she’d been naked in public. She said, actually, she’d never been naked in public. She had just responded to a Craigslist ad for a party greeter. “The pay was good,” she explained. She and her companion left after all the guests arrived.

Blum’s girlfriend, Felicity, wandered the premises in nothing but a waist bag, which she wore because, of course, nudists don’t have pockets.

“Bathing suits are uncomfortable, and what’s the point?” Felicity said. She told me she grew up at Rock Lodge, a 69-yearold nudist club in New Jersey, with her three siblings, at least one of whom was ridiculed at school for being a nudist. None of her siblings are into nudism anymore. She also said she doesn’t have many friends who are into it either. “All of my girlfriends are too insecure about their bodies,” she said.

Guests included a married man from Long Island who said that his parents disapproved. There were at least two Russians. There was a comely woman of color with a pert ass. One bohemian from Bushwick, aged 49, called himself Gymnos Alithiea, supposedly “the naked truth” in Greek. He told me that he had two Facebook personae, one clothed and one naked (which have been flagged on the site for inappropriate content).

I spent the evening scouring crotches for a nut comparable to mine, hoping to be redeemed. I saw a wide variety of anatomical styles. A muscular 40-year-old had a cock the size of a toilet paper tube.

One fat guy’s penis was so short that it was invisible, retracted into his scrotum. I wondered how he pissed. Labia varied, as well. The woman of color kept a wellgroomed clamshell. Several older women sported sagging ax wounds within thick pubic forests.

As Blum reported later, 60 people attended the Booze ‘n’ Schmooze, although according to my count, there didn’t seem to be more than 40 there at any one time. He reported proudly that the average age was 29, and 40 percent of the guests were women.

“You have no idea how difficult it is to put together a gathering with this range of ages and genders,” Blum explained. YNNA had held a couple previous parties. For each, Blum invited twice as many women as men. Still, he always ended up with more men than women. One desirable woman could attract 10 undesirable men, but one undesirable man could repel 10 desirable women. Nudism not only failed to transcend that age-old problem, it seemed to exacerbate it.

The nudists lounged briefly on the rooftop porch, and I joined them. I was cold, and when I shivered, an old nudist told me: “You must not be a real nudist yet.”

Though hundreds of apartments and offices hung over us, I didn’t notice anyone looking at us.

But I looked down at my ugly nuts.

It occurred to me that not only was the demographic of nudism aging, I, too, was aging. Nudism is about body acceptance. But I discovered that—although those around me bared their deteriorating bodies in defiance of the sagging truth—I only accept youth and beauty. Sagging nuts are neither.