NothingToDread.com

Ok, confession time. A couple of weeks ago I ended up in a self proclaimed world class topless cabaret and sports bar. Believe me when I say that I lost interest in strip joints, "gentlemen's clubs", etc, somewhere between BC Street and Le Petit Chateau. My disenchantment with live nude girls as a source of adult entertainment had more to do with a sense of "been there done that", than it did with my transition to the world of nudism. Blame the girls of BC Street, Calle Revolución, and Pahrump, Nevada (Pahrump is a story for another time).

In an earlier post, I mentioned that my experiences with prostitution are limited to less than a handful of youthful encounters. None of those encounters involved street prostitution. All except one took place south of the border in Tijuana, Mexico. Ok, there was that time that I found out what really takes place in those "Oriental" massage parlors, but that's a story for another time. By the time I visited that massage parlor, I had such a healthy fear of the things that I could catch that I didn't order from the a la carte menu.

Mother told me, yes, she told me I'd meet girls like you.
She also told me, "Stay away, you'll never know what you'll catch."

Rick Nielsen - Surrender

Nearly a quarter century has passed since my friends and I were forced to choose between spending the night on the street and sleeping in a Tijuana whorehouse. We chose the whorehouse. Despite the fact that that was not my first visit to such an establishment, my experience with prostitution is limited to less than a handful of youthful encounters.

In this funny Captain Morgan Rum commercial, two guys in need of a designated driver walk into a pizza joint and order a pizza delivered to their home so they can hitch a ride with the delivery driver.

The commercial reminds me of the time (Over twenty years ago) that my friends and I had to come up with an equally creative solution to a lack of available lodging in San Diego. I was undergoing training at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in 29 Palms, California. There wasn't much to do in 29 Palms, so weekends were spent anywhere but there. One weekend we decided to head down to San Diego where we planned to divide our time between drinking in Tijuana and sleeping in San Diego.

We arrived in San Diego and took a trolly to the San Ysidro border crossing. We spent the remainder of that day, and most of the evening, consuming large quantities of alcohol in some of Tijuana's finest dives. After a day of drinking and blanket shopping, we crossed back into the US and started looking for a hotel that didn't preface the word "vacancy" with a big fat "NO". We didn't have any luck. I don't remember the reason, but there didn't appear to be any vacancies in San Diego that weekend. Eventually, three of us headed back into Tijuana. Our luck wasn't any better there. We were left with two choices. We could sleep on the street, or try something creative. Our creative solution involved heading to a nearby brothel where we purchased all nighters with the local talent. I was so exhausted by the time the girl showed me to our cell that I got a lot more sleep than you would imagine possible in a Tijuana whorehouse.

The other day I was thinking about events in my pre nudist life that may have been a sign of my future entry into the clothing optional world. One event that comes to mind involved a secluded beach that my friends and I used to frequent when we were high school seniors. If the beach had a name, we never knew it. Instead we just called it F' Beach. Actually, the 'F' was followed by three other letters ending with a 'K', but F' Beach will do for now. The name had more to do with the breakneck climb down a San Pedro cliff than any activity on its rocky shore.

Despite an unimaginative name thought up by unimaginative teenagers, F' Beach was a little slice of heaven. The tide pools were rich with marine life including sea anemone, abalone, sea urchin, and crab. The ocean provided plenty of driftwood to fuel our bonfires. We even burned pieces of the Santa Monica Pier after a 1983 storm ripped it apart. Best of all, the treacherous climb down the hill to reach the beach ensured that nobody ever bothered us on what was virtually our own private beach.

F' Beach provided me with my first taste of social nudity. I don't remember who went first, but a couple of us decided that the absence of swimsuits didn't mean that we should get our street clothes wet if we chose to enter the water. Before long, nobody batted an eye at the sight of one of our party gingerly wading through the tide pools wearing nothing but a smile.

A couple of my friends from those days still tease me about the time I decided to return to our friend's Volkswagen bus parked roadside at the top of the cliff. I'd had a little too much beer and decided I wanted to be alone. Fortunately, one of the more responsible members of our group noticed that I was missing and asked if anybody knew where I went. When someone responded that I mentioned returning to the bus, he observed that my clothes were still on the beach. At that point, they looked up to see a pair of white butt cheeks slowly ascending the hillside. They frantically started pleading with me to return to the beach, and managed to talk me down before I reached the road and attracted unwanted attention from passing motorists.

It's interesting that a group of teenagers were able to set aside a virtually reflexive sense of homophobia and accept social nudity as a natural response to the environment. We weren't the most mature group, and we weren't always under the influence. Although some of us never shed their clothes, they never seemed to mind those of us who did.

A couple of nights ago I heard John Ziegler interview porn legend Ron Jeremy on Los Angeles radio station KFI 640. I didn't listen to very much of the interview, but it did make me think of my senior year in high school. Do I have your attention yet?

Here's a little history for you kids, not long ago "adult" theaters dotted the landscape. Long before Jenna did DVD, and even before VHS became the preferred media for porn, people actually went to theaters and watched porn on film. When I was a teenager The Pussycat Theater chain was synonymous with XXX action. I don't remember how the idea came to us, but one day my best friend and I hatched a brilliant plan to get into a Pussycat Theater just blocks from our high school. The plan was simplicity at its best, or so we thought.

I have a confession dear readers. I'm afraid to say that my friends and I were geeks in high school. We were more than just geeks; we were Navy Junior ROTC (NJROTC) geeks. The strange thing about NJROTC was that many of us enrolled because we were gym dodgers, but most of us went on to enlist in the military after graduation. I'm not sure what made us think that skipping PE in high school would prepare us for the military, but I myself entered USMC basic training less than a week after my high school graduation.

As part of the NJROTC curriculum, we were required to wear a modified naval officer's uniform to school on Fridays. That's where our brainstorm kicked in. My friend and I decided that we would ride our bikes to the local Pussycat Theater after school and lock them up well out of site of the box office. We would remove the NJROTC collar insignia from our uniforms and walk up to the box office looking like a couple of naval officers out for a good time. If all went well, two strapping young men in uniform would dazzle the box office girl and she wouldn't think twice about selling us a pair of tickets.

Surprisingly enough, things went pretty much as planned. We approached the box office, and the ticket seller, who wasn't fooled for a second, looked at us like a couple of jack offs before selling us a pair of tickets. After selling us the tickets, she told us to hurry up and get inside before anybody saw us. I suppose that if she gave us any thought at all, she probably thought that we belonged with the rest of the jack offs watching the movie inside.

Long before Ron Jeremy ever teased Tammy Faye about applying mascara to her false eyelashes, he stared in the first XXX movie my friend and I ever saw. The movie was called Mascara (1982). If I remember correctly, the storyline had something to do with a frigid female reporter who discovers herself while doing an "undercover" story about prostitution, but I could be mistaken. We found our seats, tried to ignore the unpleasant tacky nature of the floor, chased off a couple of guys who sat down behind us after we heard zipper noises, and proceeded to "enjoy" the film.

We dropped the uniform ruse, but visited the Pussycat a couple more times after that first visit. The one thing I remember clearly is that Rom Jeremy was in just about every movie we saw. Fortunately, the years have erased the image of a naked Ron Jeremy from my mind, but I still can't help but chuckle every time I see him on TV, or hear his voice on the radio.