Naked in the City

Naked in the City

Check out my brazenness. I have just been standing completely naked surrounded by a whole load of naked men!! And if that’s got you choking into your cornflakes, let me just point out that I did get a helping hand from my two young girlfriends Lisa and Daria who do this kind of thing all the time! They encouraged me so I followed. But – here’s the thing – I did actually pluck up the courage to follow…..

It was a snowy February and we were having a girly weekend of wellness down in the Allgäu. With snow shoe-ing, cross-country ski-ing and general pampering  a sauna was

now inevitable, and as the girls’ excitement for this event increased and their insistence that I would love it mounted,  I was caught up in their enthusiasm. Yes! This was my first time in a sauna and before you exclaim, dear reader,

“Oh! Is that all!”

let me put this into some kind of perspective for you:

I am a Middle Aged Woman. I am an English Middle Aged Woman. We don’t ‘do’ nudity. And I haven’t had sex for five years. And that was with my late partner who I had remained strictly loyal to since the age of 19. I had literally never even kissed another man other than him in a relationship that lasted for nearly 30 years. So the whole naked man, naked woman ‘body thing’ had become a bit of an issue for me.

Fortunately, it was an issue my dear friends had lost no time in helping me with. I had been taken to gay bars by my friend Suzi so that I could practise physical nearness and eye contact

(“You’re a very sociable person Sarah but the minute you get near an eligible guy you freeze to the spot like a rabbit in headlights”).

I’d been taken to the English Garden at the height of summer by Charlotte

(“Now if we sit near this tree and you ‘read’ on your stomach you can check out what different penises look like relatively subtly – you got shades?”)

and I’d been invited to a barbecue on the River Isar where, as I was munching on my sausages, the sight of one naked man bending over to pump up his bike was almost too much to bear.  Yup! if ever a woman needed to get back in touch with her body, Munich was most definitely the place to do it.

So here I was, at the sauna about to take the biggest step so far towards becoming a complete woman again.

The area before the sauna was stunning – dark brown marble stone with tasteful lighting and steaming showers. Smells that immediately changed the way I felt inside. I entered the area in a robe, then, copying Daria, whipped it off – just like that!

And nobody looked, or pointed or, actually, took any notice whatsoever. The cabin was hot. Finnish hot, and to begin with, the heat hit me right in the chest. I adjusted my breathing and before long, it didn’t bother me at all. I was glad I had a big towel to lie on. I carefully avoided looking at people’s bits to begin with and just sat myself down, arranging the towel. I guess the dim lighting helped. I did it easily enough.

And then, because I had the towel, I decided to lie down on my back – the first in the Sauna to do so. I arranged everything carefully – I knew what I wanted to do. Then – I just lay back. With my eyes closed, head supported and feet up slightly, I just breathed. And quite suddenly, it was wonderful to be naked. Just like that! My body felt completely open, exposed and – here’s the thing – beautiful. If everyone in there had been looking at me I wouldn’t have minded because I felt the most sexually alive I have felt since I was in my 20s. And I don’t mean horny sexy – I didn’t want to have sex.

I just felt sexual for the first time in years. To me, there is a very clear distinction between getting aroused and being able to become aroused. You can’t have the former without the latter and since I had had neither for so long just re-discovering one of these sensations was a major life moment. I had assumed my days of feeling like this were over. With my head back, arms loose by my side, feet crossed but thighs pushing as far forward as I dared, I felt completely and utterly relaxed. Daria was the first to get out and I joined her a bit later, naked in the shower, surrounded by naked men with big schlongs (as Charlotte would have called them).

You have no idea how relieved I feel to finally feel confident, assured and at ease with my body. Result.

Sarah Halliday

February 2013