I arrived at my favorite Skunk River swimming hole to find a blue beach towel and a blue man’s button-down shirt neatly folded on the sand. Their owner was not in sight. I of course was curious, but without any lower garments cast off on the bank, there was no evidence that I’d found a fellow skinny-dipper.
But where was he? It looked like he had come to swim, and the deepest part of the river was right there, but he had gone somewhere else.
I padded quietly on the sand downstream. When the river curved, I saw a young man in blue swim trunks farther downstream, standing in knee-deep water, gazing away from me. Possibly he was doing what I sometimes do—scoping out the area to see if there was anyone around who might object to skinny-dippers.
But if not, he was at least there to swim and splash in the water. Even if he kept his swimsuit on, I thought a lone male who was also swimming probably wouldn’t mind if I skinny-dipped—he had no wife or girlfriend to protect from the sight of another man’s body and no buddies who might wonder about him if he failed to protest against male nudity.
So without attracting his attention, I silently returned to the deep section of the river, stripped down, and eased myself in.
I was doing laps across the river when he waded back up to the swimming hole. I did the backstroke part of the time so that nothing was hidden. We exchanged pleasantries about how the water felt good on a day like this, but there were no comments about my state of undress.
He kept his swimsuit on as he switched from wading to actual swimming. So there the two of us were, happily enjoying mixed use without conflict.
After a while I got out and laid out on my towel for the sun to dry me off. He stayed in the water.
A little later I looked up and saw his trunks hanging on a log that jutted out over the water. Unlike me, he was careful that nothing below his waist rose above the waterline. But when he reached for his trunks, I could see that he had an erection. He put his trunks back on under water.
He spread out his towel next to mine. We chatted a bit about nothing of importance.
In other circumstances I might have mentioned that drying off bare in the sun was a pleasurable part of the whole skinny-dipping experience for me. But he probably had his trunks on to hide his erection, and I didn’t want to embarrass him by letting him know that I’d seen it. So once more we enjoyed mixed use of the beach, one clothed and one naked.
Perhaps this was the first time he had swum with nothing on, and my example converted him. Or another possibility that I just now thought of while writing this, maybe he had come there planning to skinny-dip, and if no one else was around he might not have bothered to slip his trunks off and on underwater. In the first case I had set an example for him by showing him that such a thing was possible, and right here in Iowa, not just on the coasts. In the other case I may have cramped his style by preventing him from feeling free enough to sunbathe with nothing on. But at least I still showed by example that men don’t always have to get erections at nude beaches.
We didn’t exchange any background information or talk about skinny-dipping experiences at all. But I bet that wasn’t the last time he enjoyed it.