Nudity was considered taboo throughout my youth, plus the boreal weather in New England offered few occasions for such a freedom. The naked people available to a young boy were to be found in National Geographic. That illustrious magazine displayed photos of Amazonian tribeswomen with saggy breasts and African nymphettes with pointed nipples. Looking at men without clothing were considered perverse and parents warned their children about strange men, since perverts haunted the Blue Hills south of Boston by such perverts. My older brother, best friend, and myself steered clear of areas frequented by queers.
Adam had been shamed by his nakedness after eating the apple offered by Eve. His innocence hd been lost forever taught the nuns of Our Lady of the Foothills. I recalled having bathed with my sisters and brothers. There we six of us. None of us had ever felt Adam’s humiliation in the shared tub, for nudity was innocent up to a certain age.
My father banned our communal baths when my older brother hit 9.
I was 8.
The year was 1961.
That summer my older brother and I were sent to a Boy Scout camp in New Hampshire. Our troop had it’s own camp site. We slept in tents. Showers were open stalls. My older brother and I washed in the lake. We weren’t getting naked for anyone.
One afternoon after our merit badge course of hiking I hurried to the outhouse to take a dump. I dropped my pants and sat of the wooden throne. The latrine stunk of shit. Our fecal matter dropped five feet into a seething pit of slime. I held my breath doing a # 2. I had good lungs. After wiping my ass I waddled from the crapper with my trousers at my ankles.
A scout from Lowell had a camera in his hands. He snapped a shoot of my exit. I shouted for him to give me the film, but he ran into the woods. I told no one about is invasion of my privacy and hunted for the puerile pornographer for days. I never found him and for the rest of 1961 I worried that my photo with my pants down would appear in the Boston Globe.
It didn’t hit the front page in 1962, 1963, or any of the following years.
My hangup about nudity disappeared in my teens. I skinny-dipped at the Quincy Quarries and stripped naked to lie in my backyard on summer nights to pray for the extraterrestrials to rescue me from the suburbs. I dreamed of stripping off my clothing with a girl. I had seen stroke books. Nudity was a thrill, but none of my girlfriends in high school went all the way. That pleasure occurred at the age of 18 and I’ve never suffered Adam’s shame in my adult life.
Still my one nude photo curbed any voyeurism in me. The idea of sending someone a naughty picture remains abhorrent. My sense of propriety forever scarred by a childhood incident. Somewhere in Boston a man has a picture of me with my pants down. I hope it gives him pleasure.
My inhibition jaundiced my opinion of public figure emailing naked photos of themselves to women they meet on the Internet.
Several years ago a state politician had been outted by a GOP website whose webmaster had a legal dispute with the New Jersey lawmaker. The Democrat had been contacted by a woman who had asked for photos. The idiot had sent them from his Blackberry and the angry webmaster posted them online. His fellow Democrats called for s resignation, remarking that nudity wasn’t a crime, but that e man had shown little common sense in a state where corruption is a god-given right to the people’s representatives.
Nudity is political death to the right-minded New Jerseyians.
The episode echoed the earlier scandal of NY congressman Anthony Weiner. His Twitter account was hacked by a website and his naked photos scorched the Internet. He denied the photos were of him, going so far as to say that he could not recognize the body as his own.
Getting caught in a lie is political death, but only if the voters don’t believe the lie.
I understand these politicians’ dilemma, but my hackles are buzzing with the suspicion that both these men were removed from office thanks to the hacking tactics of the Rupert Murdoch empire. If it was happening in the UK, then sure as a boy scout shits in a crapper, then minions of the Murdoch organization were committing the same crime here.
It’s not like anyone is dragging a well-known congressional majority leader out of the closet.
Homosexuality isn’t a crime.
Neither is nudity.
What is questionable is how this GOP stalwart amassed $34 million on a senator’s yearly salary of $180,000 during a 20 year stint in the Senate.
He musts be good with numbers