|
Troubled Nudists
Dramatic comparison of nudism in Germany and Malta...
In the Prendner See, 30 minutes drive north east of Berlin, I converted to nudism in its infantile innocence. Throughout my stint in Berlin I swam in the Prendner See again and again, not because baring all in this nude lake was kinky, but because the bathers were liberal without being pretentious, laid-back without being unintelligent, tranquil without being lazy. Then, back in Malta, I was ill prepared for foraying in the handful of unofficial nude beaches; perverts hounded me like foxes on a newborn calf.
In the Prendner See I felt self-conscious because of the white stripe across my buttocks and crotch. In Malta I felt self-conscious because people stared, either with disgusted scorn or with slobbering arousal.
The Predner See is a lake framed by conifer woodlands, reeds skirting the glazed water. In the pockets of off-white sand crammed the bathers, families with children, pensioners who spend the summer hunkered in a tent, young couples reading novels - everyone nude. Wearing a swimsuit is optional, and few people did, but they sure looked eccentric.
No one looks, no one cares; bathers stick to their patch, crowing in low voices so others would be left to nature's sounds. I watched a gull swoop and rise, a buzzard glide and crow, the water lapping the shore: these sounds were poignant in the absence of intrusive human disturbance, as though standing on a desolate mountaintop. If you closed your eyes you could forget that there were a hundred bathers within earshot.
And this is what struck me and lured me back: the natural and inner tranquility. The personal and political liberalism came through in the bathers' poise and gait, the way they hung themselves. A naked body is just a naked body; it's not something to gawk at, to giggle at, to be disgusted at, to be ashamed of; it's healthy yet imperfect, beautiful in spite of its imperfections.
By accepting our state of natural nakedness, the bathers in the Prendner See melted into the natural surroundings like people lost in meditation. In so doing it became second nature not to disturb the natural tranquillity, not to raise voices above the ripples of water riffling through the reeds. When I waded into the water, arms and legs kicking, I felt free (and naked) as a frog. Indeed, there is meaning in the modern term for nudism - naturism.
In Malta nudism is illegal. And nude swimming is furtive and paranoid, because a naked body equals kinkiness, aroused exhibitionism, perverted sexuality. There is one unofficial nude beach, a strip of sand beyond the main beach at Ghajn Tuffieha. No government has decided yet to clear off the nudists, perhaps because it is perceived like stray dogs' foster home: the cove where nudists can wallow in their sexual perversion. Elsewhere, swimmers take their clothes off in every stretch of deserted coast accessible to swimmers, deserted because it usually means a trek through scrubland.
Nudists search for tranquillity and a no-white-patches tan, but encounter the disturbed and frustrated sexuality of, well, perverts. Men, mostly married and middle-aged (carrying a fishing rod as an alibi to waver their wives' interrogation), haunt deserted coves. You look up the slope towards the bushes and see the glint of binoculars; the ones who get a sexual kick from exhibitionism come real close, half-screened by a bush, flashing boldly and hilariously, then masturbating in spasms of sexual blindness.
These men think naturists are exhibitionists who take their clothes off because they are kinky. Yet a naked body in the glare of the midday sun is anything but sexy: it's a furry, bulging, drooping, veiny, splotched, stooped, cellulite-ridden, crumpled and creased animal, without make-up and clothes to smoothen and gild the imperfections in subtle seduction.
If not pestered by the perverts, `naturists' are scorned by middle-aged women or families who find nudity offending. They catch your eye and tear their eyes away in pretended disgust, then keep glancing over, their gaze lingering. Occasionally one of them strides over and says, invariably in English because Maltese are considered too puritan to be nude, "We don't do that in this country," or, "Please dress up and respect our values."
Nudism equals sex, and sex is dirty - the puritan reasoning goes. A naked body is something you smell and grope in a dark bedroom, preferably under the sheets. Or else it's something that arouses you and you can't help but masturbate in feverish frenzy behind a bush. So the few times I ventured nude I had to be flanked by my girlfriend, because if I were alone I would be branded a pervert, like so many others.
Both reactions, the perverted and the puritan, are a thermometer reading on Malta's view of sexuality - reactions that are the outbursts of repressed sexuality.
© Victor Paul Borg
|
