Tom's Life Bits

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===== My Foreign-Exchange Family, the Nudists =====

//Dasha Tolstikova for The Wall Street journal//

WHEN I WAS 16, I went to 
Berlin—West Berlin, since at that time a wall still divided the city—to live for 
three months with a family on an exchange program. They were a nice bunch, the 
mother a teacher, the father an engineer, a pretty and exuberant daughter who'd 
recently stayed with my family in Toronto and their son, who was a year or two 
older than I was. All the family members were also, as it turned out, very 
active members of a group called the Freikörperkultur, or FKK, which translates 
as "Free Body Culture." In other words, a nudist club.

I hadn't expected this when I signed up for a German cultural exchange through 
my high school; somehow I hadn't been aware I might have to get naked in public. 
In fact I knew shamefully little about my host country. Yet nudism, as far as I 
know, is fairly mainstream in Germany to this day (and not, as it is here, the 
province of hippies and public radio humorists).

The nudist outings were going to be pretty much mandatory, my hosts explained to 
me—much like speaking the language or eating the food. The family felt strongly 
that, to properly explore their native ways, I needed to join in the nudist 
activities. If I closed my mind to nudism, I'd prove myself closed to the wonder 
of life itself. While there would be no punishment if I refused to participate, 
they implied that such a lapse of courage on my part would signal a deep moral 
failure—possibly a spiritual one.

At 16, I was more resilient and easygoing than I am now. After a few hours of 
confusion and mild alarm, I shrugged my shoulders, suppressed my panic and 
acquiesced.

“It was a little odd to be naked in front of the teenage son, whom I'd only met 
days before.” The good news was that the nudity was mostly a weekend gig. We 
drove to the "Free Body Culture" property, which involved a body of fresh water, 
expanses of bedraggled grass richly festooned with goose and duck droppings and 
a few stunted trees. We passed through the change rooms, where we divested 
ourselves of our clothes and left them in unlocked lockers. And then among the 
shrubs, hundreds of free bodies spread out, picnicking and sunning. I came to 
understand that a German nudist, in 1984, loved little more than to work on his 
or her tan.

There was a code of eye contact: You didn't ogle people below the neck when you 
talked to them. You kept your eyes fixed firmly on their faces. But of course 
you looked later, when you thought no one was paying attention. I remember 
noticing old and middle-aged bodies and feeling sorry for their owners: how 
tragic to be so saggy, bulgy and wrinkly. How strange to be apparently proud of 
the condition, rather than mortified by it.

It was a little odd to be naked in the company of the teenage son, whom I'd only 
met days before. But he was so casual and good-natured that I almost forgot how 
freakish it would have been to blithely disrobe among the boys I knew back home.

My main complaint about the sunbathing afternoons proved not to be self-
consciousness. It was simple boredom. I wondered what these people were doing, 
sitting around naked, chitchatting now and then. Were they waiting for something 
to happen?

I was definitely waiting for something, especially when I felt a chill breeze 
sweep up from the water. I was waiting to be allowed to put my clothes back on. 
The tan-giving sun was all very well; actual comfort was far better. "I'm cold," 
I plaintively expressed, more than once, but each time my obvious constitutional 
weakness was met with strict disapproval.

It wasn't all sunbathing and small talk. We also swam naked—I remember an actual 
swim meet—and played basketball. The basketball was the worst.

We wore nothing but sneakers. No brassieres, no jockstraps. There was flopping, 
and there was pain. There was the sight of nude people, bouncing and swinging 
above bulky white athletic shoes. Could this be the wonder my German family had 
talked about, the beauty of the unclad human form? Was this jiggling, dangling 
dance with a large, orange ball indeed our highest, purest identity?

I tried to open my mind as I jumped and flopped. I'd jam it open if I could. 
Open, O Mind! Open right now! I'll prise you open with a clawhammer!

And yet, in the end, the Germans were absolutely right. The Free Body Culture 
gave me a gift I might never have received had I refused to play along. It left 
me with an acute sense of the absurd—one I still cherish—to be there among my 
fellow apes, awkward and less than half-willing, aiming and missing, leaping, 
landing and wincing.

—Ms. Millet is the author of 10 novels, including "Magnificence," a National 
Book Critics Circle Award finalist.

A version of this article appeared March 2, 2013, on page D8 in the U.S. edition 
of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: My Foreign-Exchange Family, the 
Nudists.

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