After the boys of Summer have gone.

September 28

The labor day weekend was the last big outdoor festival of the summer season at the Muir Grove Sun Academy.  The Season officially closed mid September.  That’s when most of the summer staff went back to school.  Many of the people who worked at the club during the busy summer months were college students, looking to try something different for the summer.  The pay wasn’t great, but each staff person was given a small cottage, free meals, and flexible time off from work during their time at the the club.  Most importantly, you had to be naked.  Staff at the club are required to work naked, sleep naked, eat naked.  When you arrive at the club to work for the summer, you put your clothes into a bag in the storage building and you don’t see clothes for three months.  There are some jobs where the staff need to put on aprons or protective gear, like working in the kitchen or trimming the pathways with a weed whacker, but for the most part, the staff are supposed to work naked whenever possible.  I can’t imagine being paid to be naked all summer.  I would work for free if I got to be naked the whole time.  I can’t wait till I’m old enough to to drive and I can’t wait to work at the club.

There are plenty of jobs at the club; work in the office, help maintain the grounds, service the pool and spa equipment, clean bathrooms and showers, work at the cafeteria or the restaurant, and service the different levels of hotel rooms at the club.

I really got to know Clay, a communications major at Northwestern University, and Andrew, a merchant marine academy student from Oakland.  Neither one of them had ever been to a naturist resort before coming to work for the summer, but they both fit right in and embraced the experience.  They mostly worked getting rooms ready for guests in the guest suites by the lake, but Clay also had an amazing knowledge of music and worked as the dj when there were dances and parties at the club.  

They were both really good guys, the kind you can trust your life with.  I even went on a half hour hike one day at the club with Clay, both of us completely naked, and I wasn’t scared, or concerned about him at all.  You are probably wondering, why me, a girl who wouldn’t even get in a car with any boy from my high school, would go off naked in the woods with some college boy who I hardly know.  I have gotten to know my LARPing troupe and feel safe around them, but I felt safest with boys from the club because they made the same promise that all guys make when they come to the club; the promise to respect all women, the promise to hold sacred that we are naked because we are being our true and honest selves, and to see that as a sexual thrill or lustful experience is a truly creepy and gross thing.  To visit the club on a quiet late September Sunday and to know all the young summer staff was gone was sort of sad.  I was looking forward to their return in the spring.