Excerpt from Naked at the Helm: Independence and Intimacy in the Second Half of Life by Suzanne Spector, published August 2022 by She Writes Press.
Spring 1978
“Tonight’s the night. We’re going to Plato’s Retreat,” my boyfriend, Syd, announced when I arrived at his apartment one Friday night.
“Oh, no,” I said, “I can’t go to Plato’s tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Look how I’m dressed—all preppy.” I was wearing my favorite school director garb of gray flannel pants and gray cashmere turtleneck sweater under a dark green double-breasted Anne Klein blazer.
Syd was my second post-Myles boyfriend, after Charlie. When I’d returned from the nude beach in Spain nine months earlier, Syd had introduced me to the nude beach in Kismet, a town on Fire Island for over-forty singles, and we’d spent the rest of the summer weekends out there together. He was the same body type as Myles, my father, and the majority of Jewish men of my generation and earlier: no more than five foot eight or nine, receding hairline, tending toward middle-age paunchiness in the midsection. Syd owned a successful wholesale business, was legally separated from his wife, and was very attentive to his young daughter and son. When he took me and my daughters out to celebrate my forty-second birthday in January, the thought had crossed my mind that he might be a potential second husband—a nice, bright, balding Jewish man, but this time, one who liked sex.
On this night, he pulled back from his welcoming hug and laughed. “It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing. Clothes-off is a condition of being there.”
I gulped. “You’re right, of course. Okay, but I’ll need some help to get up the courage to walk through the door.”
Syd was into sexual adventuring, not drugs, and really only shared a joint, pill, or sniff with me to help me overcome my inhibitions to play.
“Don’t worry. We’re well supplied. What do you want now? Pot, coke, or a quaalude? I’ll take the rest with us.”
“Can we do drugs openly there?”
“I don’t know, but we’ll find out. It sounds like quite a scene. I’ll be fun.”
We’d read about Plato’s Retreat: a nude sex club in the basement of a hotel on the Upper West Side. The article Syd showed me said Plato’s had swimming pools, a disco, a café, lounges, and a large pillow room with a mirrored ceiling.
It was probably only a one-minute walk from the entrance to the locker room, but—ever my mother’s daughter— I immediately focused in on the fashion, in this case, how the women were wearing their skimpy white towels. There seemed to be three choices: wrapped around and tucked in near the armpit to cover the breasts down to the top of the thighs like I tucked my larger towel at home; wrapped and tucked around the waist, leaving the breasts bare; or tossed around the neck to casually fall over the nipples. I opted for the second choice, covering up my less-than-flat tummy. Syd tried wrapping his towel around his waist too, but the beginnings of a potbelly got in the way and the towel fell right off. He nonchalantly picked it up and tossed it over his shoulder.
I thought Syd was the adventurous leader in our play, but years later, he told me he wouldn’t have had the courage without my hand to hold as we stretched the boundaries during our experiences together.
We passed a small swimming pool, and Syd suggested, “Let’s go in. We can have it all to ourselves.”
We enjoyed a lap or two of nude swimming, then started fooling around with each other, first in the pool, then stretched out on the edge. All of a sudden, Syd stopped caressing me. I sat up on my elbow and asked, “What’s up? Why did you stop?”
Syd whispered, “Over there. See the bleachers. People are sitting there watching us.”
Without hesitation, I replied, “I’m so glad I’m here and we’re the ones having the fun, not there, just sitting in the dark watching.” I leaned in and kissed him, surprised to realize that I was turned on by the discovery that people were watching. I didn’t know I had an exhibitionist in me.
I was delighted to be in the parade, rather than watching it pass me by. And I wondered, Where will it take me?
Naked at the Helm is available from Amazon and Bookshop.