Family Ties

Who was it?”

I took a deep breath and blinked to clear my eyes. I sank to my bed, and Christy sat next to me. I showed her the notepad and she read the name.

“Gunny? Was he a Marine?”

“Yeah. Friend of my father’s. My mom said it was a heart attack.”

“I’m so sorry, Paul. When’s the funeral?” She read from the pad again.

“What do we need to do?”

I shook my head to clear my thoughts. “My dad’s on a trip and doesn’t know if he’ll make it back to Atlanta in time. So I told my mom I’d pick her up on Friday.”

“Okay. Are we driving?”

“No, flying. The funeral’s in South Carolina.”

“Oh. Okay. When do we leave?”

“Leave? We? What’re you talking about? You don’t have to go.”

She smiled. “Of course I do. I’m your girlfriend.”

“But… you didn’t even know him.”

We sat in silence for a long time.

I felt a profound sense of relief that Christy would be with me, but then I realized what that meant: I’d have to tell her about camp, sooner rather than later.

I put off the talk about camp with Christy until the night before we were supposed to leave, when I finally ran out of time and excuses. We were hanging out in her studio, where she was curled up on her favorite beanbag with her sketchbook. I was sitting on the couch with my current book, although I hadn’t actually been reading for a while. Instead, I’d been going back and forth about what to tell her.

“Hey, we need to talk.”

She gave me a startled, anxious look, and I realized what I must have sounded like.

“Whoa, lemme try that again. Everything’s fine. But I need to tell you something about tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry ’bout that. Poor choice of words. And I’m supposed to be good with ’em, right?”

“Normally you are. But not this time.”

“No kidding. Next time I’ll rehearse my opening a little more.”

“Yeah. It’s what I do. I go through a conversation in my head and figure out what I want to say. Like I did before I met your dad. I was pretty sure

we’d have the ‘what’re your intentions…?’ talk, so I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I probably should’ve done that tonight. In hindsight, I guess I was…”

“You’re chattering.”

“I am not. Well, not really. I’m explaining.”

“Okay, fine. You’re right. I was chattering. See? I told you… you’re changing me as much as I’m changing you. But I’m still doing it, aren’t I?”

She nodded. She was a lot more patient and relaxed once she realized we weren’t about to have a breakup talk.

“Okay…” I drew a deep breath. “Let’s try this again. Here goes. I need to tell you something about tomorrow and give you an excuse if you want to back out.”

“Excuse? Back out? Now you’re starting to worry me again.”

“It’s nothing to worry about, but… well… it’s something about me that you need to know. I hadn’t planned to tell you this soon, but Gunny’s funeral kinda changes things.”

“Okay,” she said slowly.

“Have you ever wondered why I became a figure model in the first place?

Why I wasn’t embarrassed to be nude in front of so many people?”

“And why I don’t have any hang-ups if you see me nude around the house?”

She blushed and looked down. “I kinda like that part.”

“Well, that’s good,” I said, “’cause there’s more to it than just being a closet exhibitionist.”

“Um… you’re not really in the closet about it.”

“True,” I chuckled. “There’s still more to it, though.” I took another deep breath and steeled myself for what I was about to say next. I’d told Trip and Wren and Sara, and probably others I couldn’t recall, but none of them had been quite like Christy.

“I’m… a nudist,” I said at last.

“No, I mean, like, officially. My whole family.”

She frowned, but with uncertainty instead of disapproval.

“We don’t have membership cards or anything, but… well… we’re nudists.”

“When you say ‘nudist,’ what exactly do you mean?”

“We go to a nudist camp. Where everyone’s nude all the time. Meals, games, swimming, volleyball, hiking, you name it.”

“All with no clothes?”

“All of it. All the time. No clothes.”

“Wow. Okay. That isn’t what I was expecting.”

“Yeah, sorry. I really wanted to work up to it, but…” I shrugged. “If you still want to go with me to Gunny’s funeral, you kinda need to know.”

Her eyes flared. “Why?”

“We’re staying there. At the camp. They have motel rooms. And… um…

it’s a nudist camp.”

“You mentioned that.”

“We can probably get a real motel room, but… I don’t know where. I mean, I do, but… the camp’s kind of in the middle of nowhere. For obvious reasons. So the closest motel is near town. It’s a pretty seedy-looking place, though, if you ask me. Susan owns a real hotel by the interstate, but it’s even farther away.