Nudist Cruise

by Hailey McPherson

  After I finished running, I was going to put my running clothes back on, but then I thought about it.

  “Why?” I asked myself. “They’re wet and I’m mostly dry.”

  The ocean breeze was air drying me the entire time I was running, but I still wanted to take a shower. Not taking a shower after a jog is just wrong. I was learning how to be clothing optional, but bathing will always be required.

  “I’m not going to walk all the way down to the cabin sweaty and naked,” I told myself.

  There were showers near the swimming pool one deck below the sports deck. They were for rinsing yourself off, not for taking a shower, but they were better than nothing. A quick poolside rinse could get me clean enough to go down to the cabin and take a real shower.

  I walked down to the pool deck and took a naked shower right there in front of absolutely nobody. The pool deck was just as empty as the sports deck.

  When I turned the shower off, I thought it was broken. I turned the water all the way down, but I was still getting wet.

  “What’s wrong with this thing?” I asked myself.

  I could not possibly turn the knob down any more than it already was. Superman could not turn it more. It was as off as it could ever be, but I could still feel the water.

  It took me a second to realize that it was raining. It was the rainy season in China, but it never rained while the ship was there. It was always very sunny and hot, or at least partially cloudy and hot.

  It was not at all the rainy season in Vietnam or Thailand, so I assumed that it would not rain during this trip. Since it never rained on our cruise in China, I never expected it to rain at any other time.

  It was a very light rain and nothing like the full thunderstorms we get in Hong Kong in June. Since it started raining while I was under the shower, I never noticed. I wondered what would happen if it rained all day. This was the last day of the cruise and it was a naked day. Would the nudists like swimming and sunbathing in the rain? There are more than enough things to do inside the ship, but nudists prefer to be outdoors.

  I was already naked and taking a shower anyway, so I walked around the deck in the rain. Being on a giant cruise ship was interesting enough, but here I was walking around the deck completely naked and I was singing and dancing in the rain. I was not actually dancing, and my singing was mostly under my breath, but it was a movie moment nonetheless. Gene Kelly never got naked onscreen, but I think he could forgive me under the circumstances.

  The worst thing about getting caught in unexpected rain is usually getting your clothes and whatever you are carrying wet. When you are not wearing any clothes, the rain does not hurt anything at all. Instead of an adult rushing to hide under some kind of covering, I was like a child playing in the rain. Children naturally have the right attitude when it comes to nudity, dancing and rain. We forget too much when we grow up.

  When the rain stopped, I looked up to the sky.

  “Is that it?” I asked the fading clouds. I could not tell what kind of day it was going to be, but I could see that my little rain shower was over.

  I got a fresh towel from one of the cabinets of fresh towels that seemed to be all over the ship. I was about to dry myself off, but then decided to let nature do it. I walked across the pool deck naked and wet, holding my wet running clothes and a dry towel.

  “If Liam could see me now,” I said to myself.

  Liam has always had two great dreams in life. One is to be a rich and famous musician. The other is to somehow convince me to be naked more often. There have been many times in our relationship when he tried to get me naked in inappropriate places. He has always been a big fan of public nudity.

  “I wouldn’t look at other girls naked if you’d walk around naked,” he has told me more than once.

  Walking across the pool deck naked seemed completely normal at the time. It probably helped that there was no one else there.

  On the way to the stairs, I saw one of the guys who work at the snack bar near the swimming pool. He was smiling as I walked closer to him. There was nothing strange about that. Everyone who works on a cruise ship is required to be nice to passengers at all times.

  When I was only a few feet away from him, he nodded his head and said, “Nice”.

  I was suddenly very aware of how naked I was. I wrapped the towel around my body and walked back to my cabin covered.

  When I went inside my cabin, Liam was still asleep and I took a proper shower. In the shower, I thought about the crewman on the pool deck. The way he looked at me was highly inappropriate. This ship was chartered by a nudist organization and they expected their people to be treated like any other passengers. No one was there to be ogled by some guy who works at a snack bar.

  The ship had a whole list of people you could complain to if you had any complaints. There was even an officer whose job was to handle complaints about the crew. I knew that if I told Helena, she would be on my side.

  Then I thought about it from the snack guy’s point of view. He was in his early twenties and worked on a cruise ship with sexually frustrated people from all over the world. It was not the best social environment. Helena already told me all about that. Now there was a nudist cruise and this guy was surrounded by a bunch of naked people. He probably had erections under his snack bar uniform for half the cruise.

  As a member of the crew, he was told before the cruise started in no uncertain terms to treat the nudists just like every other passenger. Helena said they had a whole lecture about how much nudists hate orgies and it was not anything like that and anyone on the crew caught even trying to get some action from any of the passengers would be fired on the spot.

  So this snack bar guy probably spent the last six days trying to hide his arousal and going back to his tiny cabin after work and rubbing one out. Liam is about the same age as this guy, so I have some experience with boys still trying to become men.

  The way he looked at me was inappropriate in a passenger/crew situation, but I was completely naked and there was no one else around. You can’t expect a young man living in a sardine can with very few sexual outlets to see a naked young woman and not notice. I was not there to be stared at, but if the situation was reversed and I was working while a handsome naked man walked by, I would look at him. I would never say, “Yo, how you doin?”, but I would definitely notice him.

  Then it occurred to me that this snack bar guy probably pictured me naked the next time he masturbated. Throughout this cruise, the nudists had been telling me all the positive things about nudism and I had been trying to think of the negative things. Strange guys masturbating to a mental image of you naked has to be one of the negatives.

  Then I thought about how stupid that was. Men, especially younger men, can masturbate to just about anything. They can picture you naked even if you are wearing a suit of armor. As a performer, I’m always up on stage with men looking at me. I am never naked, but how many of those men fantasize about me? There is no way to know.

  There is also no way to control that sort of thing. People are going to fantasize about whatever they want. You can’t stop it and I don’t think anyone should ever be able to. Too many people already try to control too much of our lives. Our thoughts are the one thing left that nobody can ever take away from us.

  Then I started to think about what I wanted for breakfast.

  Most of the ship was already awake and going about their day by the time Liam woke up. True to his pledge to spend the day naked, he did not put on any clothes when we went out to breakfast.

  I did. Only I was less concerned about being seen naked than I was about eating naked. It just seems like you should wear clothes whenever you are eating. I don’t really know why. I did not care that other passengers were eating naked. I just knew that I should be dressed while I was eating. I would never cook naked either.

  After breakfast, Liam and I took a walk on the promenade deck. Once again, I was the only person wearing clothes.

  “You can get
naked, you know,” Liam told me.

  “I know,” I said. “And I will later. I just ate.”

  I’m not sure what just having eaten has anything to do with it, but I was still not ready to be completely naked in the middle of the day on a ship full of people. I was just getting used to being naked when there was no one else around, and being naked at night felt more acceptable for some reason.

  Liam, on the other hand, was perfectly comfortable walking around with nothing on except sandals on his feet. It was amazing to me.

  It seems to me that the biggest obstacle for women to get naked is that none of us are completely satisfied with our bodies. We all want bigger breasts, smaller breasts, smaller thighs, smaller butts, bigger butts, more of this, less of that. The most beautiful women in the world complain about some perceived flaw that no one else ever notices.

  I always wanted a smaller ballerina’s body. Liam says he likes my body better, and he does. I would have smaller breasts if I had the body I want, and Liam would not like that at all.

  “The bigger the better,” he says.

  For a dancer, bigger is definitely not better. You will never see a world class ballerina with 38DDs.

  I would have thought that safety would be another concern to women on a naked cruise, but this ship seemed like the safest environment you could get. I was scared when I walked on deck alone in the middle of the night, but my concerns were about nudity. They had nothing to do with security. I never felt that I was in any danger, except in danger of being seen.

  Men also come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, but they seem a lot less worried about it than women. I know that is not entirely true. Men are just as insecure about their bodies, if not more so. They just don’t talk about it as much. Women will freely admit if they want a bigger or smaller body part. You will never hear a guy say in public that his penis is too small. If anything, most men are in denial about their parts. They all seem to think that one inch equals a mile. Maybe that is why they think they are better at reading maps.

  Liam has never had the best body in the world. He has always been too skinny and when he is walking around naked, it is obvious why he will never be a porn star. But he did not seem to have any problem showing everyone everything on the cruise.

  Nudists will tell you that it is not about showing off perfect bodies. Accepting your body and all of its imperfections is very important to them. I think that is a great idea, but if I am naked in front of just one person, I’m going to be very aware of everything wrong with mine. If I am naked in front of 2,000 people, I can picture a giant magnifying glass highlighting every little thing I don’t like.

  Does that mean Liam got into the nudist philosophy more than I did? No. He is simply more of an exhibitionist than I am. Any nudist will tell you that what they do and how they live has absolutely nothing to do with exhibitionism. Liam would also love to be in an orgy, and that is a major negative in the nudist world.

  Liam wanted me to get naked and this was our last day on the ship. After this, we would be in Bangkok and you can’t walk around naked there, as far as I know. We went back to our cabin so I could put away my clothes and be like everyone else.

  “It will be ok,” Liam told me. “Nothing’s going to happen. You said yourself, these nudists are all very friendly. They don’t judge, they’re nice and they’d all love it if you joined the fun.”

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have sex?” I asked him, trying to delay the inevitable.

  “Screw the nudists,” Liam said.

  After we rested, Liam went to the tiny bathroom.

  “Are you ready to go?” he called out to me while he was relieving himself with the door open, even though he knows I prefer that he keep the door closed.

  “Go where?” I asked, sprawled out on the surprisingly comfortable bed.

  “Out,” he answered. “Out on the ship. Outside.”

  He came out of the bathroom.

  “Did you wash your hands?” I asked him.

  He went back into the bathroom.

  “Who says we’re going out?” I asked.

  “Why wouldn’t we?” he answered.

  He had a good point. If I only got him tired to keep from going out naked, it was very shortsighted of me. It would also be a terrible reason to get tired. Fortunately, we made each other tired because I don’t get tired nearly as much as I would like. I also knew that the easiest way to keep him in the cabin was to get naked. Now he wanted me to stay naked and go outside.

  I had been naked on the ship in bits and pieces. Usually I was either completely naked while no one or very few people were around, like those midnight walks on deck, or I was partially naked or naked but covered by mud or water when too many people were around.

  This was a day at sea, more or less, and everyone was on the ship. It turned into a beautiful summer day after the clouds faded away, so I knew that most of the passengers would be outdoors. There is no one place on the ship that can hold all 2,000 passengers, but I knew that if I walked around naked on this day, I would be seen by hundreds of people at a time.

  “In for a penny, in for a pound,” I heard Earl say in my head.

  “There’s no time like the present,” Edna added.

  I knew they were right. They were imaginary. I didn’t know where they were or what they were doing at that exact moment. But they were right.

  I grabbed my towel, and Liam and I walked out of the cabin naked as the day we were born. I did not even bring my sarong.

  Chapter 24: Bangkok

  We were in every other port early in the morning, or even in the middle of the night. We got into Bangkok after dinner. It was the end of the cruise, so I suppose it did not matter. The ship was not scheduled to sit there all day while passengers came and went like it did at every other port. It was there to unload us and take on new passengers for a new cruise the next day.

  Leaving the ship was like leaving a hotel. Everyone checked out and someone brought down the larger luggage for people who had any. Unlike a hotel, everyone checked out at the same time. It was just as chaotic as when we all checked in at the beginning of the cruise. The big difference was that everybody was refreshed and relaxed. Waiting in the long lines to get on the ship and start their vacation obviously stressed some people out. Everyone seemed calm while waiting to get off and go back to their lives.

  The big difference for me was that I was with my boyfriend. I went to the ship alone and did not know how I was going to find him or what to expect on the cruise. We left the ship together with reservations at a nice hotel and two days to do whatever we wanted to do. In Bangkok, there was no schedule to keep and we did not have to be back at the hotel at any particular time. It was never going to sail away without us.

  When I first went onto the ship, everything was unknown. I had no idea what it was going to be like and knew almost nothing about taking a cruise, nude or otherwise.

  For Bangkok, I had a better idea of what to expect. I looked up some information before I left Hong Kong, and Helena gave me a list of things to see and what I needed to know.

  The ship did not dock anywhere near Bangkok. It was actually a pretty long drive to get into the city. Fortunately, there were plenty of shuttle buses for everybody. One went directly to our hotel, so we did not have to worry about figuring out the public transportation system while carrying our luggage.

  We met up with Earl and Edna while we were waiting to leave. They were taking a different shuttle to the airport, so we said our goodbyes. We exchanged e-mail addresses and talked about getting together again someday. They are a great couple, but I don’t see us all hanging out a lot in the future. Liam thinks they are too old. I don’t.

  They are twice as old as Liam or I, but I don’t think that matters. What matters is that we do not really share the same interests. They like taking nudist vacations and visiting medical museums. Liam likes drinking too much if he is not working, and having sex as many times as possible before he collapse
s from exhaustion. I like exotic resorts with private swimming pools. I suppose you could combine all of those things, but that’s not going to happen.

  I don’t really know how long it took to get into Bangkok. Liam and I just talked to each other the entire way, rendering the passage of time useless. It was like the way we talk to each other online while he is in Mainland China and I am in Hong Kong, except that we were sitting right next to each other.

  They say the sign of a good relationship is the ability to be together without feeling the need to talk. That is probably true, but I like the fact that we can talk for two hours and not even notice how much time has passed.

  I knew the hotel would be nice because I was the one who booked it online. We decided to go for a better hotel because we did not want to spend a week on a giant five star cruise ship and then end our vacation at some dumpy little budget hotel. As it turns out, Bangkok hotels are not expensive. They have plenty of overpriced, trendy five star hotels, but they also have more than a few very nice hotels at reasonable prices. Our hotel in Bangkok would have cost at least twice as much in Rome.

  I was still surprised by how nice it was when we got there. It was a shiny white tower on the river, next to a bunch of other shiny white towers on the river. It had a restaurant on the top floor with 360 degree views of Bangkok and a very nice swimming pool and wet lounge area, where nudity was absolutely not allowed. I was torn between having to put clothes on while swimming or simply not swimming at all.

  We only had breakfast at the hotel once. It was good, but too expensive, especially when you consider that Bangkok has a wide variety of food all over the place at much lower prices. Liam does not like to wake up early enough for breakfast anyway.