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You might not think that Playalinda Beach, a spectacular pratfall, a chance meeting of someone from rec.nude and indoor/outdoor carpeting would have a common thread in the fabric of an otherwise normal Saturday at a nudist resort in Western Massachusetts. You'd be wrong.

(As usual, names are changed, confused, switched and mangled to protect the anonymity of those who might wish it. For people who have been present at the real events that inspire these stories, this can be confusing. After all, there is a limit to the uniqueness of names. If I say Jane did such and such, someone from our camp might think I am referring to a real Jane, and could be confused because they know darn well that not only didn't Jane do that, but that it was actually someone of a completely different gender named Bill. Further, some of these people are quite open about their nudity and wouldn't care if I published their telephone numbers here. So why mix things up? Just because it's easier than remembering who cares and who doesn't and I'd rather not make a mistake.)

For Linda and I, Saturday begins with a trip to the gym. Most of our neighbors are of the opinion that this probably indicates a certain lack of intelligence on our part. A few do recognize the value of exercise, but think that walking, riding a bike, or playing tennis or volleyball are more enjoyable methods of obtaining it. Perhaps so, but we prefer the gym, and that's where we were headed last Saturday morning. Though not without some attempt on my part to beg out of it.

The reason for my reluctance was that we had also decided that this day would be the day we would scrub our deck. I'm not sure just how old our deck is, but it has acquired the typical gray of weathered wood, and the slightly less visible green tint of mildew. The gray is attractive, and although the green represents the happy photosynthesis of millions of happy nudist camp plant cells, their presence also means that the deck gets slippery when wet, and Linda had decreed that this problem must be Dealt With. Linda's initial concept for this involved bleach, scrub brushes, and much crawling about on our knees, which is why I felt that going to the gym represented an unnecessary and perhaps even unwise expenditure of energy. As you might imagine, my opinions were accepted for review, duly considered and judged on their merits, and summarily rejected.

So we did go off for our usual body abuse ritual, but on the way back we stopped at a hardware store because we needed another bucket and another scrub brush. You can easily imagine my enthusiasm and mounting anticipation of the great pleasures to come. Who wants to spend time at a nudist camp relaxing in the sun when you could instead be on your knees breathing bleach fumes?

But the people at the hardware store suggested a different method. They have this product called Deck Wash, which they insisted was a much easier way to rid our deck of its lowly plant life. According to the directions, you can spray this stuff on, wait 10 minutes, and wash away all that weathered gray in addition to all the plants that had expected to produce many more generations of sun loving offspring before the deck rots away.

Linda was dubious. I really think that she likes to scrub, that there is a personal satisfaction she obtains from directly attacking the offensive dirt and mildew. On the other hand, she is hardly stupid, and is well aware that crawling about on our knees is apt to be painful. Still, she was not about to believe that a simple spray and wash would be the equivalent of enthusiastic scrubbing. Besides, this product comes in gallon cans, and we don't own a paint sprayer, and were not about to buy one just for this project.

"Can we put it on with a brush?", she asked. The sales person felt that would work. "Would it work better if we scrubbed it in a bit?", she queried. The sales person agreed that this certainly wouldn't hurt, and might even help loosen up the mildew. However, he suggested that due to the somewhat caustic nature of this material, we really wouldn't want to be in close physical contact with it, so he offered to sell us some long handled scrub brushes that would allow us to remain erect while applying it. He did mention that we needn't be too concerned about scrubbing all that vigorously, that the product really would work quite well all by itself, but Linda wanted to scrub, and she was bound and determined that we would scrub, so we bought the brushes, plus an extra gallon of the deck wash even though the salesman insisted that one gallon would be more than enough to rid our deck of all living things.

So we returned to camp. The weather wasn't great, overcast, threatening rain, so I didn't feel quite so cheated of my nudist rest and relaxation. Linda had another out of camp errand to run, so she went off yet again, and I set to work applying Deck Wash.

It's not bad work. It was a little cool right then, and certainly it was no great effort to spread this stuff on and scrub a bit. Because I knew Linda had left with some feelings of uncertainty as to how good a job I would do unsupervised, I made sure I did an extra thorough job. I scrubbed that deck in both directions, put on more Deck Wash, and scrubbed it again. After using up the first gallon, I opened up the second, and went back over the same planks yet again, scrubbing it in, this way and that way. That took less than an hour, and I then started washing it off, still scrubbing all the time. Linda returned as I was just about finished, and it started pouring rain anyway, so we decided to let the rain take care of any miniscule residue my repeated washings and scrubbings might have missed.

While the rain poured down, we moved over to our neighbor's deck because they had put down their awning and were enjoying daiquiris while watching me work. We brought over a jug of Mud Slide mix and the top of our blender, which fit nicely in the bottom of theirs, and thus we were able to continue mixing new batches of drinks without washing anything. The sound of blenders attracted a few more people, so Linda went back and brought out a plate of veggies and hummus. The presence of food attracted a few more people, so Linda offered to whip up some cheese and corn quesadillas, which everyone thought was just a great idea, and the daiquiris and mudslides kept flowing. The rain stopped, the sun peeked out a bit, and life was good.

It was right about here that June mentioned the problems at Playalinda beach. She and her husband have spent some vacations there, and she told us all about the sad legal circumstances. I had already read about that here on the net, but other people were not aware of it, and June was simply asking if everyone would be willing to contribute a dollar to help out.

Next (Playalinda Poster Boy Part II)