“Then it isn’t adults only?”
“Oh no. It’s all family-oriented. We’ve got about a hundred homes, with babies through great-grandparents. Ourselves, we’ve got two teen kids, almost 18-year-old twins, a boy and a girl that we left at home this time.”
“And you left them alone?”
“Yeah, they’re good kids, I guess they’re actually legal adults now although I have a hard time thinking of them as other than kids, but they’re old enough to take care of themselves. We’re not worried, but besides, the neighbors would step up if they did something silly. But we don’t really have to worry about any big parties or anything while we’re gone. Living in a nude community, everyone knows everyone else and what everyone else is doing, and we just don’t get outsiders very often. It’s amazing how much we normally hide with clothing and doors. We’ve got a lot of really good neighbors too; everyone takes care of everyone else.”
“Teenage kids? And they don’t mind being naked?”
“They actually prefer it. They come home from school and they’re stripping off even before they get in the door. On Fridays, they get undressed and probably won’t put anything on until it’s time to head to school again on Monday.”
“Not me!” I chimed in. “I don’t think I could have done that as a teenager. All I had to do was think” about tits and I got a hard-on.
“Yeah?” Alice questioned. “Why?”
I laughed, “I was a walking hard-on from junior high on. You don’t have that problem with your… um, son?” She shrugged.
“He’s seen naked tits his entire life. He’s seen other kids developing, they’ve seen him developing. So, seeing naked boobs or naked girls, for him, isn’t that arousing at all — it’s all perfectly natural.”
“He sees naked girls and doesn’t get aroused? I asked, uncertain if that was even possible for me.
She laughed. “He’s gotten an erection in public a few times, but he generally handles it pretty well. He knows it’s not considered polite to walk around that way, so if he’s outdoors at the pool or somewhere, he just covers himself with a towel until he’s able to take care of it and is more under control. At home, if someone is around, we encourage him to go to his room and take care of it or cover himself. But really, it doesn’t happen all that often.”
“It would have with me,” I said, shaking my head. “Every time I was around a girl that I liked I’d start getting an erection, or even just throughout the day without any reason at all. It seemed like I was always horny as a teen.”
“And how much of that was because you weren’t naked? Or that she wasn’t?”
“What?” I responded, not understanding what she was getting at. I’d just admitted I had a hard time not getting an erection around a pretty girl when they were clothed, and she was insinuating that this was because I wasn’t naked, or because she wasn’t naked? What kind of backward logic was this?
“Nudity and sex are two different things. But, when we hide our bodies, when we make sex all about getting naked, well — then sex and nudity become synonymous. But when everyone is naked, when everything is out in the open, suddenly the allure of a naked body is not such a big deal. Once you take the stigma away, it’s easy to teach and tell your kids about life.”
“So, they’re… playing with their friends, and they’re all naked when they do?” She nodded. “And how many get pregnant?”
“None.”
“None?” I didn’t want to believe it. Teenagers running around together, naked, and they weren’t having sex?” “I uhm, have a hard time believing they can be surrounded by temptation and not… um, partaking.”
“Well, let me put it this way. How old were you the first time you drove a car?” It seemed to be a complete change of subject but, befuddled, I answered.
“I was 15 and a half — the first day I could, I got my learner’s permit.” She nodded.
“And how old were you the first time you got in a car?”
“Where are you going with this?” I asked, shaking my head. “I’ve got no idea — I guess when I was born, I probably went home from the hospital in a car.”
“Exactly. So, for 15 some years, you watched and learned and got rides from others, but never yourself got behind the wheel of a car?”
“No. Not while it was running, I wasn’t allowed.” Again, she shrugged her shoulders, looking at me like I was somewhat dense.
“You could have, but you didn’t. You probably sat in the driver’s seat and turned the steering wheel back and forth like all kids do — but you didn’t try and drive a car until then. I’ll bet you knew where the car keys were, you’d seen your mother and father and others driving, and probably could have disobeyed and figured it out, right?”
“I guess.”
“So, for our kids, sex is like that. We’ve told them about it, taught them about it, they’ve seen it, they could… except they’ve been told that legally they can’t have sex until they’re 18.”
“And they don’t?”
“They don’t.” She confirmed. “See the thing is, a lot of underage sex is kids trying to find out what they know is being hidden from them. Remove the ‘hiding’ and suddenly the need to do what they’re not supposed to is gone.”
“So, they have no boyfriends or girlfriends?”
“Oh no, they’re kids with all the same ideas that others have.”
“Allison,” Ted spoke aloud and laughed. I looked back and forth between the two of them, not understanding.
“It’s a neighbor girl that… Jerry likes.”
“Jerry’s our son,” Ted clarified. “He’s kinda sweet on her and she seems to be a bit infatuated with him. At least she spends a lot of time with him.”
“Dating?”
“Ah,” Alice now added, “not exactly. We encourage group dating rather than one-on-one. He asked her to his Junior Ball last year, Oh My God, she had this dress… Wow, she was beautiful. But usually, they do things in a group and discourage being secluded. Bowling, swimming, games — all the things that teens normally do, although they all prefer to be naked rather than going into the outside world and putting clothes on.”
“Wow. It’s certainly a different world than I grew up in.”
Something she’d said suddenly clicked. “You said, you’ve told your kids all about sex, and they’ve seen it… ” I just repeated what she’d said, not quite phrasing it as a question.
Alice looked over to Ted, obviously passing the question to him. Ted shrugged. “It happens. It’s not like we’re flaunting our sexuality at them,” he said, his hand reaching over to Alice’s shoulder, “but both of our kids, at different times, have seen us having sex.”
“Wow.”
“We’ve taught them that sex is no different than pooping or eating,” Alice stated. A look at Ted made me think that she was gauging how much to tell us, and then she continued, “Everyone does it, it’s just that normally couples do it in private. And we’ve also reiterated time and again that they cannot legally participate in sex until they’re 18. Just like driving a car, when that magic time comes around, then they can. And it’s not just us — the entire community has taught the kids the same. Maybe it’s that they’re all being taught the same, that it’s being reinforced all the time, but we’ve never had an unwanted pregnancy.”