watering holes

I like to wander in and through data sometimes. It’s like a digital skinny-dipping session.

To show you how much my mind is going, I couldn’t come up with “skinny dipping,” although it was a very common term growing up in the country. Lots of people did it, or so they claimed. I never did. Too vivid an imagination, I guess. I always envisioned everything turning into some teenage orgy all asses and elbows and neighbors with flashlights and pregnancies and repentance and girls going to nun factories and boys to boot camp (none of which happened); or night sea creatures no bigger than four- or five-foot eels or water moccasins snatching innocent feet, wrapping around legs, performing colonoscopies, boys crying for help, girls giggling, dead bodies found the following day, sleepless nights, and prolonged silences followed by memorizing books from Tibet, shaving all body hair, and moving to LA to sell flowers at the airport (none of which, to my knowledge, happened). No, nothing good could come from skinny dipping.

To grasp the term within my present mind again (and all the horrors of yesteryear), I googled “swimming nude night.” There it was up top. But also lurking at about 3d, I learned that Hibiscus Coast Sun Club has such fun events as nude volleyball, nude swimming, and nude pizza.

Nude pizza. D’ja’ever get hot cheese or sauce on a body part? Why for a split second would I expose my ankle spanker to hot food? Makes no sense. And think about it – we’re all sitting around here naked, “hey, nice tits,” “yeah, you said that ten times already,” sex has got to crop into it somewhere. So how do we build up sexual tension? With pizza? Tomato sauce? WTF, that’s gross! Although I can just hear the naturalists – “It isn’t sex, you pervert, it’s all about freedom” – freedom, my ass, Nat-boy, you’re either gay or pounding as many women as you can (for real or through your right hand alone in your bed at night).

Oh, I get it! Maybe the pizza is like a designed “turn off” thingey. Like a decompression chamber. You fear getting bobo scalded with hot cheese, she drips sauce and looks like instant menstruation. I get it. OK, makes sense.

So I back the URL away from the calendar of events to the HBSC homepage. I’ve got this picture in my head of teenage-years venues: lakes with beaches, moonlight shimmering on rippling water, dark woods with defined paths. Man, was I wrong. This pic is not a joke. Just go to the link above.

WTF? Your “nude swimming” nights are in rather close quarters, eh Nat-boy? So Nat-girl rips one and everyone giggles? You with your quick wit and care-to-wind attitude add, “Somebody had pizza!”

Go to the “About Us” page. It reads, in part, “There are bush walks and glow worms at night.” I think its code. Perverts. Put your pants on. No, animals are not nude – they got body hair. You don’t. Get dressed. Your mother know you’re doing this? That’s her over there? Oh, gross. “Ma’am, excuse me, you should be ashamed of yourself … OMG! Lady! You’re an octogenarian – matching nipple and clit rings?!? I’m gonna throw up.”

How’d I get on this topic? Let me backtrack in my mind … ah, somehow or another I was City-Data.com for Lutherville-Timonium, MD. I found it to be an odd name and was curious. Must be a merger of two towns, but, c’mon, no one could come up with a better name than stitching together the old ones like some Bride of Frankenstein?

So anyway, the map was a bit misleading on scale. Seemed to be further away from Baltimore than it actually is. Quite close, actually. Towson right there. Lots of higher ed. Older population. Maybe a nice bedroom community. Then to my initial shock and horror, I see this entry:

Likely homosexual households (counted as self-reported same-sex unmarried-partner households). Lesbian couples: 0.4% of all households; Gay men: 0.2% of all households.

I was struck because the first thing I thought of was Nazis and Communists and lions and tigers and bears, oh no! The word “likely” really threw me. Felt like “round up the usual suspects.” Had I wandered onto some secret webpage being used by deep-cover algore types who preach tolerance and inclusion by day but target for torture and assassination social nonconformists by night? I had to test my theory. First, in Lutherville-Timonium, MD, having twice as many dykes as stick-boys just didn’t ring true; also, collectively 0.6% on a population of 15,814 is 95 “alternative people.” Ninety-five sounds made up – afterall, being the paranoid social defect that I am, it is not lost upon me that Interstate 95 is amazingly close to the target area. Maybe Lu-Tim is just flying under the RADAR of the Social Deviance Police. Let’s go to a place we know is replete with gay men and see if the SDP has it in its sights …

San Francisco: Lesbians, 0.7%; Gay men, 2.0%. Now that’s funny! I knew more gay men in SF than the 2.0%, and I never even went to the bath houses! Well, except that one time … to pick up a friend … I don’t mean “pick up” like that … gee, it’s not like I’m gay or anything like that … he needed a ride, a-hole, that’s all … IN MY CAR! A RIDE IN MY CAR! … well, yeah, I stayed for a while … NO! I did NOT lay down in a little room with a jar of Vaseline next to me! … well, yeah, I saw the glory holes – NO! I did not! This conversation is OVER!