The Ten Minutes Before You Take Your Clothes Off

I want to talk about the ten minutes. Not the afternoon that follows, when the sun has warmed your shoulders and you've stopped noticing your own body entirely. The ten minutes before.

I've done those ten minutes in a gravel car park, in a changing hut with a door that squeaked, and once in my own living room with the curtains not quite closed. They never feel the same twice, but they all have the same shape: a bag of sensible things, a hand hovering over a latch, and a brain quietly drafting reasons to leave.

The first time I went to a naturist beach, I sat in the car and listened to the engine tick as it cooled. Towel. Water. Sunscreen. Hat. I'd checked the tide, the weather, the parking rules. In every practical sense I was ready. I still sat there for twelve minutes, maybe longer, working up the nerve to open a door.

Nobody tells you that the hardest part happens fully clothed.

The car park, specifically

There was a wooden gate with a hand-painted sign, and a path of crushed shells that made noise underfoot, which I hated, because it announced me. An older man in a sun hat came the other way carrying a folding chair under one arm. He nodded and said good afternoon and kept walking. A woman on the sand was reading a paperback. Behind her, two people were talking about a broken boiler.

That was the whole scene. Nobody turned around. Nobody had a clipboard. The sea made the ordinary sound the sea makes.

I remember being annoyed at how normal it was, after all that.

What I was actually afraid of

It wasn't being seen naked. I'd like to claim that, because it sounds braver, but it isn't true. It was more specific and much smaller than that: I was afraid of being the one who didn't belong. The one who got it wrong. Who held the towel the wrong way, sat too close, said something that marked them as new.

My head offered a list in those twelve minutes. Wrong body. Wrong age. Wrong towel. Too pale, too soft, too self-conscious. It's a long list when you give it room, and every item on it is a way of asking the same question — will I be laughed at?

For the record: nobody laughed. Not that day, not since.

The anticlimax is the gift

I walked down to the sand, found a spot well away from everyone, laid out my towel, sat, and felt ridiculous for about ninety seconds. Then the wind got in, and the sun, and somewhere behind me a radio was playing something forgettable. I stopped monitoring myself. It took maybe a quarter of an hour.

That is the part I can't gift to anyone, no matter how carefully I write it. The anticlimax has to happen to you. You can be told the room is friendly. You can't be told how quickly the room stops being a room and becomes a Tuesday afternoon at the beach.

Etiquette is just kindness with slightly odd rules

If you're going anywhere social, the practical things are worth knowing, because they're what let everyone relax.

Sit on your own towel, always. Bring one bigger than you think you need. Carry it even if you're only walking to the water — it's useful, and it gives your hands something to do, which sounds silly until you've stood on a beach wondering where to put them.

Say hello, but don't stare. Same rules as a train carriage, really. Ask before you photograph anything or anyone. Most places ask you not to have a phone out at all, and honestly, that's a relief once you get used to it.

Keep a little distance. Keep conversation light. Take your rubbish home. And check the rules of wherever you're going, because clubs differ: some are quiet, some are family-oriented, some are clothing-optional rather than nude, some have specific days set aside for first-timers. A phone call beforehand costs you nothing and eases the twelve minutes considerably.

If someone makes you uncomfortable, tell a member of staff. That's not a fuss. That's the whole point of having a community.

The body stuff doesn't resolve in an afternoon

I want to be honest here, because I think the honesty is more useful than encouragement.

My first naked afternoon did not fix my body image. It didn't give me a revelation or a sudden fondness for my stomach. What it did was quieter: it put me in a place where every body was unremarkable, and after a few months of that, my internal catalogue of what a body is supposed to look like quietly widened. Scars, softness, grey hair, a mastectomy scar in the sun, someone's pale back covered in freckles. Ordinary, in the way that a crowd in a swimming pool is ordinary.

Change happened slowly, and mostly in hindsight. I can't point to the moment. I only know I stopped needing to hold the towel up, and one day I noticed I hadn't thought about my body in an hour.

Going home is the strange part

Driving back with the windows down, still smelling of salt, I felt calmer than I had in weeks, and had nothing sensible to do with that feeling. On Monday, at work, in actual clothes, I couldn't explain to anyone why I was in a good mood. There's no shorthand for it. You come back with an ease you can't hand to someone else.

The next time, the twelve minutes were six. Then four. Then the ten minutes became just a bit of admin: parking, paying, finding the path.

If you're still sitting in the car

Go on a quiet weekday first. Read the rules twice. Bring more water than you think. Bring a friend if it helps, though a friend brings a conversation and sometimes it's easier alone. Choose somewhere small rather than somewhere famous, because a small club will notice a new face and be kind about it.

The nervous ten minutes will probably still happen. All I can tell you is that they are not a sign that you're doing something wrong. They're just the price of deciding. You open the door, you walk down the shells, and the afternoon takes over from there.

Thank you for being here, and for reading this far. If you have a first-time story — or a ten-minutes-in-the-car-park story — I'd like to hear it. There's a kind place for you in the comments, and a much longer archive of writing on the site.

Nakedwill — nudity as authenticity.