Grandpa’s Nude Day: Past & Present

The Philips land, the homestead my great grandfather had settled a hundred years earlier, had been eight miles away, halfway between my father’s modest house and the University town of Kilmer farther to the west. My father, the Manager of the University’s Maintenance Department, travelled the fifteen miles to Kilmer every work day.

I eventually graduated high school, then I went to New York City, for premed at Columbia and then on to their Medical School, and what I thought then would be a future spent anywhere but in the sleepy town of Kilmer deep in the Adirondacks.

But things happen! I’d spent a few of my university days summers working with old Doc McNeil in Kilmer, a man who ran a general practice in town as well as being under contract as the M.D. for the University. So when he suddenly died during the last months of my residency I was the first person they contacted.

My mom had happened to get sick that spring and I’d just broken up with a girl from Boston I’d thought I might marry. Six plus years in New York City had somehow dulled the glamour of the world’s greatest city.

And so, surprising even myself, on the spur of the moment I’d accepted the University’s offer. I’d taken their offer of the large house that housed a modern medical clinic on the ground floor and the fifteen hundred feet of living space above. A house that sat almost majestically on the edge of the verdant campus. I’d settled in Kilmer, a town with a population of some three thousand locals that was augmented during school term by the twenty-two hundred students that arrived each fall from all over the country.

And I’d never regretted the decision! So when duty called, even if it meant removing my hands from my granddaughter’s cute tush, I answered the call. Besides, Amanda loved the idea of a trip to the office she’d one day occupy.

Paola and Amanda on the Examination Table

Paola was about twenty, a Summer School student from Italy, here to learn English for six weeks, a dark skinned beauty whose curves seemed to explode from the bright shorts and tank top she was wearing that day. Both of her knees were bleeding, one arm had an angry looking scrape and her cheek had a nasty gash. She was limping and when she turned to sit on my examination table I saw that her pink shorts had a large tear at her right hip. She was a mess. A bicycle fall!

But when she gave me a shy smile and said ‘ciao doctore’ I almost melted. She was gorgeous. Ripe! Youth!

Amanda helped me remove Paola’s top and skirt. Her bra, a frilly, lace trimmed, semi see through piece of material that was severely under engineered for the weight it had to support, had splotches of blood marring its embroidered European design.

“It cost thirty Euros,” the young beauty complained in her delightfully accented English as she examined it, then, without being bidden to, reached behind her back and unclasped the small clip that was all that had been restraining the two magnificent globes that were unleashed and which spilled out in a cascade of flesh.

I’m sure that Paola heard the gulp that I tried to swallow before it escaped, and also caught the un-doctorly, lustful look that flashed momentarily in my eyes. Her shy smile carried a knowing sexuality that confirmed that she was a girl who’d been getting looks like this for years. And enjoying them.

“Will it be okay doctore?” she asked as turned slightly to the right, exposing the side of her left breast, a breast she cupped and lifted, revealing a small scrape that ran just from the edge of her dark aureole down the side of the large, firm , upright orb. Her nipple, a large, dark nub, arching upward and erect, seemed to be ready for takeoff from the aureole it rose from.

Even after more than thirty years of examining patients I wasn’t able to hold back the second small gasp. She smiled shyly. She knew!

Ultimately my granddaughter and I washed her scrapes, disinfected them, put three stitches in her chin and then bandaged her various wounds before we let her go thirty minutes later. I even applied a small Band-Aid to her magnificent breast. My medical professionalism only just prevented me from giving it a ‘get better’ kiss.

I told her I expected her back in a week. A quick kiss on my cheek, a squeeze, a “thank you doctore”, and she was gone.

“Now I know why you took this job,” Amanda accused with a wry smile after our patient had left.

“What?” I asked with a grin. But the truth was, it was examinations like the one I’d just performed, that had kept me happy in Kilmer for some thirty-five years.

“Ohhhhhhhhhh doctooooooorrrrrrrreeeeee!” my granddaughter cooed as she arched her back and pushed her breasts out. Perhaps not Paolian breasts but as I was about to discover they had their own allure.

“There are fringe benefits to every job my dear,” I answered smugly. “Just wait until you have some of our fine male athletes up on your examining table, their firm, muscular bodies bared before you, their youthful excitement at being treated by the beautiful, blond doctor oh so painfully evident.”

“Yuck!” But we were both smiling.

“Alright my dear little grand niece, now it’s your turn.”

“My turn for what?”

“When was the last time you said you’d had a full physical?”

“I’m a doctor,” she answered, delaying but not rejecting my offer. During our talk the night before she’d admitted she hadn’t had a real physical in over two years. She’d admitted it in a shy, almost embarrassed way. I hadn’t followed it up at the time.

As for me I hadn’t given Amanda a physical since she was twelve. My daughter and her husband had moved away that year and even though they spent most of their summers at Philips Creek (she and her siblings and her mom anyway) the start of Amanda’s passage through puberty had led them to a new doctor in their new city.

“It’s been awhile,” my granddaughter admitted as she sat facing me on the examination table. There was that hint of nervousness that a male doctor so often hears in a female patient’s voice as she prepares to disrobe. Knowing what she might be feeling, I turned away, her file in my hand, a file that I’d last entered any data into some nine years earlier.

“Why?” I challenged, “You know better, you’re a doctor for crying out loud.”

“He made me feel uncomfortable,” Amanda said to my back. I turned back to see her pushing her shorts down her thighs. Her top had already been removed.

“Here, I’ll hang them,” I offered as I took the shorts from her fingers and grabbed the top. “Your doctor?”

“It was over two years ago. The young doctor at the university. He wasn’t trying to ... but I could feel it... that he was excited ... and with my legs in the stirrups I felt so vulnerable...” Amanda unclasped her bra as she talked. A second later her panties, soft white and pale blue striped cotton panties, joined her matching bra on the table. Unlike Paola who’d shaved her mound clean, Amanda’s sex was hidden by a perfect triangle of blond curls.

“Didn’t you say something?” You’re training to be a doctor, you should have, was left unsaid but understood by her.

“He was good looking ... I was--” She saw that I understood. She’d been excited. A not uncommon occurrence for a female patient while lying on a doctor’s table.

“Well, you’ve certainly grown some,” I said as I motioned Amanda towards the scale. Always tall and lithe, even perhaps skinny as a teen, she was now, at twenty-one, a woman. A beautiful mature woman.

“I haven’t grown as much as Paola,” she complained as she cupped her hands under her breasts. It was said in that teenage girl’s manner, pretending one thing while really hoping to invite a compliment.

I laughed. They may have been smaller than the Italians but my granddaughter’s breasts were perfect! “Yes, I think Paola’s were blessed by the Pope,” I answered with a leer as I measured her height.

“You’re terrible,” she accused.

Her nipples, puffy nipples that rose from small circles of light pink, hardened as I used a tape to measure her various dimensions. I noted down the figures for her chest, her waist and her hips, numbers that just confirmed her hourglass shape.

“You do examine your breasts regularly?” I asked as I used callipers to measure the fat on her underarms, her thighs and her stomach. It wasn’t necessary for someone as fit as Amanda but it was important to establish a baseline for subsequent examinations in the years to come.

She nodded yes as I let her back to the examination table, then, knowing the routine, she lay back as my right hand moved onto her breast. I did the examination quickly, professionally. But we were both nervous, both excited. I wrote a few notes on her examination chart.

It’s very strange for a man, a doctor, to sit between his granddaughters bare legs, her sex open before him. I’ve learned in my thirty some years of doctoring that there’s a level of sexual excitement, of arousal, of fear, in every woman who lies on the back on my examination table, a prisoner to the stirrups that hold her in place.

And while we’ve been trained to ignore it, to instead perform every act and touch in a cold, almost robotic manner, every doctor, somewhere in their psyche, is likewise excited. Who silently thrills to the power of male dominance that course through them. And of course most women can somehow sense their doctor’s arousal.

Women who all their lives have been taught to cover themselves from the eyes of men are forced to lie open before a stranger in this annual or biannual ritual of genital examination. And while I’d say I’ve tried over the years to be the most professional of doctors with my patients, and while I insist that my nurse is always present during these examinations, I’ve still felt the skin of a thousand patients tremble, quiver under my touch. And heard their voices waver and even crack as they attempt to ask their questions while I’m probing with my instruments inside them.

And I’ve enjoyed feeling that quiver of excitement, enjoyed hearing the thin echo of fear in their voices.

My granddaughter is a doctor. She is being trained as I had been. She understood what I was doing, why I was doing it, and why it was important. And yet, as my hands moved to adjust her thighs, I felt that telltale trembling coursing up and down her inner thigh. And smelt her excitement. And noticed her wetness.

Her vagina was open.

And my cock was rock hard.

And yet, as both our bodies were betraying us, we talked, professional observations going back and forth:

“When was your last period?
“How sexually active have you been?
“How many partners?
“Have you performed Oral sex on your partner?
“Are you on birth control pills?
“Does your partner always wear a condom?
“Anal sex?

She was frank in discussing her sexuality, her training letting her answer more freely than would a normal patient. But as she told her great uncle about how often she engaged in sex, she still wasn’t able to control the tell tale blush that appeared in her cheeks. Nor quell the hardness of her nipples.

I slowly examined her vulva, this examination of a woman’s external genitalia that often gives the patient the time to relax somewhat before the actual penetration of her vagina. This looking for warts or ulcers or scars or swelling only a prelude to the invasive speculum that was to follow.

“Have you had a Pap smear lately?
“You haven’t, why not?
“Any problems with your period?

I slowly brought the speculum, a prewarmed and lubricated speculum, towards Amanda’s groin. I saw her acknowledgement of the instrument in her eyes, knew that she’d let me know if I caused her any pain or if there was a problem. But even with her being a Doctor I noticed the involuntary tightening of her vaginal muscles, the attempt at rejection, as I carefully slid the instrument inside her. I talked softly to her as I widened the probes jaws. Her breathing was different when I shone my light up deep inside her redness.

Then, after I’d removed the instrument from her vagina, my fingers, I used two in my granddaughter’s case, slipped slowly inside Amanda as I continued to ask my questions. Her sleeve, moist and open allowed my fingers total access as they probed towards her ovaries. “Okay?” I asked, looking up after hearing a slight gasp from Amanda. My other hand probed across her abdomen.

“Uh huh,” she whispered in a little girls voice.

It was over quickly. But five minutes later, with my granddaughter dressed and sitting across the desk from me, I could still feel the lingering effects of my erection.

An erection that, of itself, hadn’t been either good or bad, perverted or sick, it had simply been. My penis couldn’t have cared less that it was related to the person in question. That’s not how pricks were designed!

*****

“I’m meeting him there tomorrow.”

“Todd?” Amanda nodded yes. We were sitting on the couch in front of the fire again, wine glasses in hand, later that night . We were sitting a little farther apart than we had been the night before, the afternoon’s medical examination seemingly had demanded that a larger physical distance be kept between us.

“Meeting him where?”

“Ausable Chasm.”

“Huh! Why are you going there?”

“You have to promise me not to tell anyone.”

“What? Tell no one you went to Ausable Chasm? How come?”

“Promise.” Almost an order. But there’s a suppressed giggle behind it.

“But...” I had no idea why a visit to one of the North Country’s biggest tourist attractions would ever warrant being a secret.

“Promise!” And so I did. My answer, after a suspicious examination of my face by my young descendant, checking perhaps to see any sign of untrustworthiness, prompted her to start talking.

“You probably have never heard of this before...” she began hesitantly. “But it is held every year ... around the world ... it’s called World Nude Day...”

“World Nude Day?” I’m laughing as the words escape my mouth, interrupting her.

“It’s a new thing,” Amanda quickly interjected. She was blushing.

“You and Todd are going to wander around Ausable Chasm naked?” She can hear the incredulousness in my voice.

“Everyone’s doing it. It’s a statement ... a statement about--”

“You’re just making this up to tease your old Great Uncle aren’t you?” I accuse.

“I am not!”

“You’re really going to go to Ausable Chasm and parade around naked?”

“I’ll be painted.”

“Painted?”

“On certain parts.” I don’t try to hold back the laughter that spills from my lips. “It’s not funny,” she insists.

I teased her for the next twenty minutes but all the time I was doing it I was also aware of the feelings of jealousy that were coursing through my brain. Lucky fucking Todd I muttered to myself. And I was also remembering a Nude Day celebration forty-two years earlier. Finally, just before midnight my beautiful grandfather announced that she was tired and that it was time to hit the hay.

“Yes,” I agreed as we both rose from the couch. “Night ... love you,” I whispered in Amanda’s ear as I gave her a quick goodnight hug.

“Me too,” she answered, then gave her great uncle a kiss on the lips before turning to go to her room.

I waited until she was halfway through her bedroom door before I stopped her with, “You know Amanda...”. When she turned, a questioning look on her face, I finished, “I celebrated my first World Nude Day forty two years ago.”

“Whaaaaaaaaat! Wait!” There’s a big smile on my face.

“You’re making that up, aren’t you?
“Where was it?
“With who?
“Are you lying?
“They didn’t have Nudists back then.
“Not up here anyway!
“If it was true why haven’t I ever heard the story before?”

The questions flooded out from my granddaughter’s lips. But she wasn’t going to get any explanations from her uncle this night. “I’ll tell you all about it when you get back,” I promised as I went into my room.

“Uuuuuncaaaaaaaaal Joe!” I heard complained through the closed door. I ignored her!

But later, as I lay awake in bed awaiting sleep, the memories of that far away day came flooding back...

THE PAST - June 11th 1968, Philips Creek, N.Y.

“A beer?” Susie offered as she flicked off the top of a Genesee Cream Ale bottle. I’d never had an alcoholic drink at home before and couldn’t stop my eyes from darting around the room to make sure no one was watching. And since we were alone of course no one was.

“We’re the only ones here you dodo,” my sister chastised, then brought the bottle to her lips and took a quick swig. “Haven’t you ever had a beer before?” I didn’t miss the sisterly disdain.

“Of course I have,” I answered that night long ago, my maleness offended at her tone. “Give me one,” I ordered. With a laugh she complied.

At twenty, Susie was two years older than me, and had come back to the North Country for a fleeting visit to her family after finishing her sophomore year at N.Y.U.

And the second she’d walked through the door of our family home, after an absence of nearly two years, I‘d been enthralled. First of all I almost didn’t recognise her. We all, my mom and dad, and sister Nancy and I, all struggled to control the gasps that exploded from our lips when she’d come through the front door. And she’d come a week early.

“You’re coming next week, not today,” mom protested as we all tried to get our minds around this new Susie that stood before us. Is this what all these hippies we keep hearing about look like we all wondered.

“Something came up, I have to be in Washington next weekend ... so I figured I’d just come up now.”

Unfortunately my parents and my sister had plans for the weekend, plans long made to visit mom’s sister’s family in Massachusetts. They had been packing the car when Susie had arrived. And if Susie hadn’t come a week early, or if mom hadn’t organized that weekend away, what happened between my sister and I probably never would have been.

“I’ll hang with Joey,” my sister said casually once the situation had been explained to her. “You guys will be back Monday won’t you? We’ll have most of next week together.”

“Monday night,” mom agreed. And so, on a Thursday night in early June nineteen sixty-eight I found myself alone with my sister. Once the others had gone Susie announced that we might as well spend the weekend at the old Philips farmhouse. That it’d be cool, that we could hang by the pool. Cool? Huh?

“But we’ll be alone up there,” I remembered complaining to her at the time. “Don’t you wanta see your friends while you’re here?”

She simply ignored me. Five minutes later, with two boxes of food and a duffel bag of my clothes thrown in the back of Dad’s old pickup, we were off. Susie did have me stop at Brucker’s Gas Station, reappearing two minutes later with a case of Genesee Beer. I didn’t say a word when she hopped back in the cab. Fifteen minutes later we were at the old homestead.

And that’s why I was sipping from a bottle of Genesee Cream Ale two hours later. Nervously sipping mind you. But it had been a great two hours. I was a country hick, totally enrapt, as I listened to my sister describe life in the outside world.

“Are you a virgin?” A question that came out of left field from Susie. We’d been discussing the Beatles two seconds before. Before that politics and the coming conventions. What kids in the big city were doing, wearing. I had a million questions.

With anyone else, or if I hadn’t already consumed five beers, I probably wouldn’t have answered the virgin question. But I had. I was an open book that night. I nodded yes.

“Nancy wrote me at school that you were going with that Poplin girl. She said she thought you were fucking.”

I’d never heard a girl say fuck before. And I knew my younger sister Nancy had never used the word either. I wanted to tell Susie that she shouldn’t use the word, that it wasn’t ladylike. But I didn’t. Instead I shook my head no.