There was a time when I went to a gay clothing-optional campground and managed to accomplish something that, in retrospect, seems almost impressive: I kept every damn piece of clothing on.
This wasn’t because I had wandered in accidentally. I knew where we were going. I knew what “clothing optional” meant. There wasn’t a shocking moment at check-in when I discovered that homosexuals might be wandering around outdoors with their penises exposed. I had agreed to go.
And then I got completely wasted.
I found myself a lounge chair and planted my fully clothed ass on it while other men apparently possessed the supernatural ability to walk around without clothes and remain alive. I couldn’t do it.
Today, that memory makes me laugh because the image is objectively funny. Here I was at a gay clothing-optional campground, presumably surrounded by everything I’d spent years being told was carnal, dangerous and sinful, and my grand act of sexual liberation was getting drunk and lying down with my clothes on.
But I also have enormous compassion for that guy. He wasn’t prudish. He was terrified.
Desire Had Always Been Evidence
In the exgay world, we were taught that sexual desire was carnal and full of sin. The goal wasn’t merely to control what you did with desire. Spiritual maturity was supposed to eventually transform the desire itself. For gay men, that meant either reaching some blessed state where homosexual desire disappeared or redirecting sexuality toward heterosexual marriage. And if you couldn’t? Well, clearly there was still some rebellion lurking in there.
That does something to a person. Desire stops being a feeling and becomes evidence. Every attraction requires investigation. Every fantasy needs an explanation. Your own body becomes something you monitor because apparently it might testify against you at any moment.
Add to that the physical and sexual abuse I survived as a child and teenager, and ordinary body insecurity became body insecurity on steroids. No wonder I couldn’t take my clothes off. The remarkable thing isn’t that I was fully clothed at that campground. The remarkable thing is that I made it through the gate.
Then Came a Birthday Present
A couple of years later, Dan and I had my first threeway for my birthday. Yes, apparently some people get watches.
I was scared as all get out, but something different happened that time. Once things got revved up, I relaxed. And I enjoyed myself.
There wasn’t a lightning bolt. I didn’t suddenly become Randy, Patron Saint of Clothing-Optional Recreation. But something had shifted. Being naked didn’t destroy me. Being seen didn’t destroy me. Desire didn’t destroy me.
In fact, desire felt good.
Since then, the fear around being naked has probably disappeared by about 95 percent. These days, at clothing-optional events, I’m usually one of the first people naked. Quite the character arc.
And here’s something that might surprise the guy lying drunk on that lounge chair all those years ago: I like my body.
I have a dad bod, and I genuinely love that about myself. I’ve also lost more than 60 pounds, which has certainly changed how I move through the world. And, for the sake of journalistic accuracy, I should probably disclose that I possess certain attributes that are glorious.
I’ll leave it there.
Wanting Isn’t Lacking
Something else changed along the way: I stopped believing desire automatically meant something was wrong.
I can see an attractive man and enjoy seeing an attractive man. I can flirt. I can feel handsome and powerful. I can enjoy realizing someone finds me desirable without needing that person’s desire to validate me. And none of those things require a conclusion. Sometimes nothing happens, and that’s fine.
Because feeling desire feels good.
That’s such a ridiculously simple sentence, but it took me decades to be able to say it without immediately attaching a theological footnote. Desire doesn’t necessarily mean I need something. It doesn’t mean I’m unhappy or that something is missing. It doesn’t even mean I intend to do anything about it.
Sometimes another human being walks into the room and something inside you goes, Well, hello there.
That can be the entire story.
And Yes, I’m Married
Dan and I have talked deliberately about all of this throughout our relationship, and we still do. This isn’t a set of assumptions we made once and then filed away. We’ve had to communicate. We’ve had moments when things weren’t effortless. That’s part of being two actual human beings rather than characters in somebody else’s theory of marriage.
But there’s something underneath all of it that I trust deeply: we love each other. This month marks ten years together and five years married.
Some of the experiences we’ve shared with other people have become sources of tremendous joy for us. Sometimes half the fun is afterward—talking about what happened, laughing about it, comparing notes or remembering something together months or years later. Those experiences haven’t somehow diluted what belongs to us. They became part of what belongs to us.
I also don’t require every sexual experience to become emotional intimacy. Sometimes connection happens. Sometimes it doesn’t. I can have fun with another person without needing that encounter to become something deeper.
The deepest connection in my life is already waiting for me at home.
Maybe Freedom Isn’t What I Thought It Was
For a long time, I probably would have imagined sexual freedom as finally becoming the guy who could walk confidently through that campground naked. And apparently I did become that guy. Good for him.
But I don’t think that’s actually where the freedom happened.
If I could go back to that campground today, I wouldn’t walk up to that terrified, drunk, fully clothed version of myself and tell him to strip.
I wouldn’t tell him he needed to loosen up.
I wouldn’t tell him everyone else was naked, so he might as well get over himself.
And I definitely wouldn’t tell him this was some test he needed to pass before he could call himself liberated.
I’d sit down beside him.
I’d tell him he’s safe.
Then I’d tell him we could put the drink down and take a breath.
We don’t have to go anywhere near the play areas. We don’t have to take anything off. We don’t have to prove a damn thing.
Maybe we’ll just walk around the parking lot.
Then, if that feels okay, we’ll wander through some of the common areas.
We can enjoy being outside.
And if that’s all we do today, that’s enough.
Because freedom wasn’t finally getting naked.
Freedom was realizing I didn’t have to.
So I’d reach out my hand to that scared version of myself.
And we could just walk around together.
We wouldn’t even have to talk.
We could hold hands in silence.
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