Two Minutes to Join Them Naked

I was waving back at a naked family on a sailboat when I realised our beach stop might involve more than choosing somewhere to put our towels. We'd rented a small boat four days into our holiday, three longtime couples finally making it to beaches that were awkward to reach otherwise. Now we were arriving at Cala Trebaluger, where swimming without a suit clearly wasn't a bold announcement. I could see that perfectly well; whether I could casually do it beside our friends was another question.

There were about thirty people on the beach and several boats nearby, so this wasn't some secluded place we'd discovered for ourselves. The family who greeted us seemed as relaxed as everyone else, and I returned their wave rather more carefully than a wave requires. We'd known our friends for years, which should have made everything easier. Instead, I was discovering a small gap between being comfortable with people and being ready to take off my swimsuit in front of them.

One of our female friends looked toward the water and suggested we all swim naked. Not later, not at a quieter stop: here, together, as the next ordinary thing to do. “Shall we leave the swimsuits out of it?” she said. I was still working out whether my answering laugh meant yes when my boyfriend and our other female friend laughed too, with considerably less uncertainty.

They took their clothes off and headed into the water without waiting for the rest of us to agree. My boyfriend didn't even turn to check my expression, which was fortunate because it hadn't settled on one yet. Beside me, our two male friends looked equally surprised and suddenly less sure of themselves. We'd managed to arrange a boat rental between six people, but a straightforward swim had briefly defeated three of us.

Their first splashes made the distance between standing around and actually swimming look embarrassingly short. I wanted to be in there with them, not keep rehearsing how strange the first few steps might feel. I undressed, walked into the shallows, then leaned forward and pushed into a stroke, sending a small splash out beside me. Within two minutes of the suggestion, all six of us were in the water, including the friend who'd proposed it and the two men who'd hesitated beside me.

For the first few strokes I was still horribly aware that this was different, even though swimming itself hadn't changed at all. Then I turned toward my boyfriend and found him smiling at me from a little way off. “You coming this way?” he asked, and I swam toward him instead of standing there trying to compose a sensible answer. It was a relief to have something ordinary to do with my arms besides wonder where to put them.

The nerves faded in minutes, not through a big reassuring conversation but because we were all enjoying the same swim. I stopped checking how close the others were and started noticing how good the water felt. Our familiar group was still our familiar group; nobody had become difficult to talk to just because we'd left our clothes behind. There was a lovely closeness to being there together, especially after realising that my little pocket of panic hadn't lasted long enough to spoil anything.

For the rest of that week, we kept visiting beaches nude wherever it was appropriate, and the undressing stopped needing an announcement. I didn't have to repeat the first swim's negotiations with myself every time we reached the sand. By the end of the holiday it was comfortable, unremarkable, and simply how we were spending our beach days together. We'd rented the boat to make the beaches easier to reach; apparently I only needed two minutes to catch up once we got there.