Naked amidst the black flies

I’d been teasing my friends about which one of them was going to pose naked for my blog. “It’s a tradition,” I kept saying. We were staying in a camp owned by a family with a deep love of knick-knacks, so I knew we’d need to take an outdoor shot to get an uncluttered background.

We had rain off and on all weekend, and the weather was fairly cool. I did begin to wonder if I might have to employ bribes to get my friends naked. In warm weather, it’s easy to get a bunch of women to take off their clothes, but it’s a different story when they are wearing layers of fabric and raingear.

On Saturday’s hike, I kept throwing out subtle hints: “See that stone wall? That would look great with a naked woman sitting on top of it.”

We’d been talking about slang words for breasts, and how most of them had negative connotations. “I don’t like the words we have,” I said. “Boob, for instance. It doubles as an insult. And it’s not a pleasing sound.”

Every few minutes, as we walked along, someone would come up with a new word. “Tits? Ta-tas? Rack? Hooters? Jugs?” All the words we came up with seemed condescending, mocking breasts instead of celebrating them.

You’d think the conversation would just make everyone want to take off their shirts, but the wind was cool. And worse, the black flies were out. They kept following us in little swarms, moving from one woman to the other. My strategy was to walk close to a friend who smelled sweeter than I did and then dart quickly away, hoping the flies would stay with her and leave me alone.

At the end of the hike, we reached a little stream of cold water that ran through hostas. Tall Anonymous Woman (yes, I assured her that I would not reveal her true identity) bent down to stick her head in the waterfall. Then she turned to me: “Want your photograph?”

I barely had time to turn on my camera before she’d stripped off her clothes and climbed into the pool of icy cold water. “Wait, let me get a shot from the back,” I yelled, moving quickly. “I mean, your breasts look great, but I can see your face.”

“My legs are numb,” she said.

“Keep splashing yourself,” I said. “That looks cool.”

“I can go get you a towel,” Gorgeous Eyes said and sprinted off towards the cabin.

“How about some bug repellent?” Makes Bread said, still batting at the swarms of black flies.

Tall Anonymous Woman climbed out of the stream and shook her head like a wet animal would, running her fingers through her wet hair. “Get the shot?” she asked grinning.

She might be the bravest model I’ve had yet. She sat in icy cold water AND a swarm of black flies, naked. The things we do for friendship.



(Readers who want to know the history of the naked photo tradition can check it out here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.)