Travels With Naked Girls - CHAPTER 7 - 8

Chapter 7

Stories

Roshelle was fond of stories, and she'd had some wild times in her life that provided several.

The weather at La Sabliere was warm and magnificent, and she enjoyed lying in the sunshine after lunch. Sometimes I would do photos of her; sometimes she would tell me stories.

She was raised in Melbourne, and at the age of 20 she'd found a job in a city nightclub. The owner liked her so well he put her in charge of the place.

After a year or two the pace got too strenuous, so she fled to Byron Bay for a quieter, more wholesome life. But she still liked to visit her friends back in Melbourne:

Well, here's how the story goes. I went to Melbourne last year for my five-year reunion, and I caught up with some girl friends I used to go out with ten years ago. One of them in particular, Sue was her name, we met up in the morning and she decided she would take me to her favourite hang-out, which was a strip bar in Kings Street. So at about eleven o'clock in the morning we're sitting in a strip bar drinking wine and Sue paid this lady about 20 dollars to do a lap dance on top of me, so she's lap dancing away, and I'm thinking to myself, God, this girl looks familiar, and she's looking at me, and she's thinking, you look familiar, and I think, ohh, I gave her her first job in the nightclub. And I say, gee, you've come a long way, and she said yeah yeah yeah and good to see you and everything. Sue decides she wants me to meet her boyfriend who's an undercover drug squad cop so she wants to take me to their headquarters at about two o'clock in the afternoon. We're pretty pissed so we rock up to the kind of incognito drug station and there just happens to be a raid going on as soon as we walk into the door and all these guys are grabbing their guns and they're charging out the door and we're swinging around and I meet the boy friend really quickly and I'm thinking, oh well this is all really exciting.   So then we organized with him to meet him at the Continental in Granville Street for dinner later on in that evening, so Sue and I go on our merry way, pretty tiddly, and about seven in the evening I've organized for an old girl friend Andrea too, who Sue and I used to hang out with, and Josh, who's a photographer friend of mine, and anyway Josh is doing a photo shoot in the nightclub section upstairs of the Continental Restaurant. So he came down to have a meal with us, and there's Josh sitting down opposite me, and there's Andrea on the left, and Sue sitting down between those two and then the drug undercover squad cop guy on the right. So we're all sitting there having this meal and getting a bit tiddly and Andrea leans across the table and says, "Oh Roshelle I've always been in love with you, in fact, I'd really like to make love to you" and I just sort of, you know, choked on my food because Andrea used to be kind of a straight-laced little number and I thought, "My God, no wonder I've left Melbourne and gone to Byron Bay" and as I'm sitting there, Sue goes "I'll join in, I'd like to do some of that," rah rah rah, and Josh goes, "I'll take the photos" and then the undercover drug cop turns around and says "And I'll supply the drugs." I thought, "I gotta get out of here," and there's this hand crawling up and down my leg, which is Andrea, doing the honky-tonkies under the table, and I'm thinking, "Shit, I've gotta go to the loo, I've gotta go to the loo, and ring Michael on the mobile and get the hell out of here." So then I trot off to the toilet, and they're all eager beaver to get on with the show and enjoy the evening and have their orgy drug whatever, drug session, so then I get into the toilet and I'm on the toilet and I'm chatting away with MIchael on the phone, "Michael, I've gotta get out of here, I've gotta get out of here, I've lost my mobile, I can't find my mobile," and Michael goes, "You idiot, you're on your mobile, you're talking to me." So I pull myself back together and trot back out to the table and wait patiently for Michael to come pick me up and say good-bye to my friends that I so gratefully had left five years ago, thank God, and that was my little story, my little reunion.   Ah-h-h. And here I am sitting in the south of France, enjoying myself, and they're all back in Melbourne, taking their drugs and hanging out in strip bars. (Laughs) How's that for a story?

All too soon our two weeks at La Sabliere were over. We headed up to Paris for a few days, and Roshelle and I saw as much of the city as we could.

My favourite spot is the Luxembourg Gardens, so we spent an afternoon there. I remember I left Roshelle briefly, sunning herself, because I wanted to do photos of a statue in a shady corner of the park. I was only gone ten minutes, but when I returned Roshelle was nearly frantic.

It seems a gallant but over-persistant Frenchman had been pursuing her with compliments and invitations. She couldn't get rid of him.

"Don't ever leave me alone again, Charles. These Frenchies are over the top!"

Naturally I was glad to accede to her request. It was a lesson to me, however, in what the life of a really beautiful woman must be like.

I got lots of lessons about beautiful girls in those days. Another came from Deya and her roommates.

Deya was a free spirit who answered another ad I ran for models. She was a striking girl of Spanish descent. I did several shoots with her and her housemates Esperanza and Rose.

Once they all got covered with thick black mud at the ti-tree lake, and then scored patterns in the mud with fingernails. They ran around and danced wildly like forest spirits. This became a segment in Body Love Mud Art.

Another time we went to the beach, and they splashed and rolled in the waves, and then Rose, the swiftest and most beautiful of the three, ran along the beach. She looked lovely and free. This became a segment in an exercise video called Sensual Health 2.

One day Deya and I were at the ti-tree lake alone, and we got to talking about video shoots. She wanted to do something different, she said. Something dramatic and exciting. She looked up, and saw Mt Warning in the distance.

"Why not climb Mt Warning in the nude?" she said.

Mt. Warning is the core of a huge extinct volcano which created the landscape all around Byron Bay. The lava flows had resulted in many huge cliffs and deep valleys behind the town. The centre of the volcano was a peak, Mt. Warning, which formed as the lava slowly cooled under the ash after the volcano stopped erupting. Over millions of years since then, the ash had eroded and washed away, leaving this steep peak.

In a sense, Mt. Warning had created the hippie nature of the area. Those hidden valleys had lots of spaces for hippies to live, in shacks surrounded by rain forest. You could grow your own crops and live cheaply in the delightful warm climate of the area.

The steep slopes of Mt Warning have never been logged, preserved as a national park of huge rainforest trees. There is a track to the top, a climb of about three hours.

Climbing Mt Warning seemed a wonderful idea, and scary. Would anybody object? Would we get into trouble? Is anybody really bothered about people going naked in public anymore?

We decided to find out.

So there I was, in the cool morning of 3 December 1996, waiting in my van outside the girls' house in Byron Bay, waiting for them to emerge and start our great adventure. I had no idea what would happen.

The trail up Mt Warning begins in a parking lot at about 3000 ft. The peak is about 4300 ft, and the trail winds up around the mountain for about three miles.

I had Deya drive with the other two girls in my trusty van, Matilda Mitsubishi, into the parking lot. She got out and opened the van door and let Rose and Esperanza out. The three girls took off all their clothes and tossed them in the van, and locked it up and gave me the keys.

The girls strolled completely naked across the lot and up the trail. Almost immediately they met two young couples. What would happen now? I wondered, nervously keeping my eye on the viewfinder as the camera recorded.

The two couples were delighted. They all chatted happily.

"We thought we would really spin some people out!" Deya remarked, as the couples admired them.

It was a good beginning for our naked adventure.

I carefully videoed the girls as they climbed. I would walk ahead a ways, and then they would walk or run or dance their way up the trail to me, chatting or singing. Rose, a really beautiful naturally blond girl with a great figure, was especially good at dancing and singing. She was lovely to watch.

They met a young backpacker with a harmonica, who was on his way down after camping overnight on the peak. He played a tune for them while they danced.

We met lots of people as we went along, and they often chatted with the girls. I worried a bit that the camera might be a distraction, but nobody seemed to mind.

"Pay no attention to the man behind the camera!" I thought, and to my agreeable surprise they did.

Nobody was bothered by the nakedness of the girls. I did overhear one lady murmer to her companion, "Do you realize those poor girls are going to walk all the way to the top of the mountain with no shoes?"   That was the only concern that we encountered in the whole trip.

Many huge rainforest trees stand along the trail, and I asked the girls to see if they could encircle one with their outstretched arms together. They could just about make it. It made a great video shot.

One tree had heavy vines along the side of it, and Deya, ever the most adventurous, climbed up it. At another, I had Rose walk up to a tree and then face the camera and stretch her lovely body as high as she could in front of it. Another great shot.

Esperanza sang a song about Dionysus and his "evil evil ways" in the forest. She pretended to be a butterfly and fluttered up the trail toward me.

Near the top the trail becomes so steep that there is a chain to help pull yourself up. I got good high angle and low angle shots as the girls struggled up it.

At the top, the girls continued to be natural and relaxed as they chatted with three young men they met at the lookout. I did a lot of shots of them, and the views. Your could see all the way to Byron Bay.

A wind came up, and the girls stood and basked in it, for it was a hot day. One woman commented that the girls were dressed appropriately for the weather.

As the wind got stronger, the girls fluttered and waved their arms in it, and danced on the lookout platform. When I edited the videdo, I found a piece of triumphant music, and cut the girls' gestures to it. It made a great ending.

It was a triumphant day. We had discovered that people really don't mind nakedness in public. The laws against it were purposeless and absurd.

I put this shoot at the start of a new video called, appropriately enough, Naked Celebrations.

Esperanza walked naked all the way down the mountain too. She would have nothing to do with clothes.

A few days after, one of the young men from the top of the mountain found Rose in the streets of Byron. He was English, and he had been planning to end his visit to the Byron Bay area the day after he climbed Mt Warning. But when he met naked Rose on the mountain, he stayed on, and roamed the streets hoping to meet her. They fell in love, and were together for a long time.

I was quite nervous at the start of this climb, but I learned that the laws against public nudity are obsolete. Humanity grew up in the twentieth century, and these nineteenth century laws are silly and worthless.

I also learned that girls feel trapped by nineteenth century ideas about being demure, passive, and hidden. Girls today want to break out of such restrictions. They want to be free, uninhibited, and exhibitionistic. They know they are beautiful, and they want the freedom to show it. Well, anyway, some girls do.

In fact, the three had a fourth house mate, Jasmine, who missed the walk because she was away in Sydney, and felt quite left out. She wanted to go out and be naked in public too. Something even more exhibitionistic than Mt. Warning.

That's how we came to make Naked Sydney.

Naked Sydney was lots of fun. Rose went along too, which was very pleasing. The two girls went naked in city lanes and parks and beaches. They rented a tandem bicycle and went riding on a park road, a wild ride that produced some really great video. They even took me for a row on a river in Sydney's huge Royal National Park.

I sat in the boat on the beautiful natural river, being rowed along by two beautiful naked girls and making video of them, and couldn't help but think, this was a good way to make a living.

Naked Sydney also taught me the value of good luck in making video. While I was in Sydney, somebody organized a Nude Naked Nightsurfing contest on Bondi Beach, a frolic to celebrated the Sydney Festival. Two really stunning girls, as well as a dozen hot guys, showed up for the contest, and I got lots of great footage to end my video.

Often, when you're making video, things go haywire, but sometimes a beautiful chance drops right into your lap. Just keep trying; never give up.

Certainly the two nude beach rallies at Byron Bay were an example of great luck for me. Some police constable cracked down on random naked bathing, which was very common in Byron Bay at that time. The result was two rallies in protest at the fines, one on April 20, 1997, and the other on Australia Day, January 26, 1998.

You can see these rallies at the end of Naked Celebrations and Nude Beaches of Australia, respectively. I've always been proud of these shoots too. They showed me how nakedness goes along with being free and happy.

They were also at the beginning of my frolics with Kai. Kai gave me the longest of my travels with girls. And these travels too, like the ones with Roshelle, gave me many new lessons to learn.

Chapter 8

I called them lessons anyway. They were actually drug sessions.

Kai was a thoroughgoing rebel, having escaped to Byron Bay from a domineering father and a conventional family. She led a colourful life that was far different from anything I had experienced.

She lived in a one-room shack with a big porch and a small loft for sleeping in the hills behind Byron. It had an outside bathtub with a shower, and a pit toilet in a rickety A-frame structure that was small and hard to get into and always made me a bit nervous.

To get to her place, you had to wind your way up precipitous Wilson's Creek valley until you could park and then cross the creek (really a river) on a suspension bridge, of all things. The bridge was two hundred feet long and only three feet wide and it rocked madly unless you paced carefully.

Then you had to walk for ten minutes through dense vegetation, and if it was raining (as it generally was) you were leaping puddles most of the way. Just getting there, as they say, was half the fun.

Kai answered my ad for models near the end of 1996 (just about the time of the climb up Mt. Warning), along with her friend Elvira. Kai was beautiful, and Elvira's friends called her Olive Oil.

Elvira taught me the value of being broad-minded about models. I liked her a good deal. She probably wasn't going to sell any videos, but before long she brought along her two sisters, Sandy and Delik. Sandy was attractive and voluptuous, and Delik was beautiful and only fourteen.

Elvira was a good artist, and she body-painted her sisters in a long and wonderful session that you can see in Body Love Mud Art. It was a wild party, just one of many with Kai.

Kai's days were filled with a standard routine. First she would make a cup of tea, and then she would roll a joint. Rolling was a long process involving mixing the stuff with tobacco and then creating a cigarette out of two papers and bits of cardboard. Then she would listen to a bit of music and smoke it down and then it would be time for another cup of tea. All this was punctuated with visits from friends, and that was a life.

It was fun to visit her, because Kai was intelligent and interesting, and especially because she was a wide window into a life that I had only glimpsed in snatches til then.

We went to a Rainbow Serpent Festival, a camping and music festival in the hills, along with her current boy friend. Although she was unconventional in most respects, Kai was surprisingly conventional in her desire for romance. She tended to prefer burnt-out hippie types who were tall, thin, and handsome, and looked a bit like they had been left out hanging on the cross too long. She didn't get much happiness from them.

Somebody was selling marijuana brownies, and since I got left alone, I tried one, It was so good I tried another and another. I was lying in my van, and after awhile I noticed I was bumping up against the ceiling. I was floating, and I was glad I wasn't outside, because who knows how high I might have drifted before I noticed.

Other than that I remember the fantastic lights at the festival, and how people were still dancing as the sun came up. There were many sexy girls in skimpy clothing, and I did a lot of video until somebody chased me away.

Kai introduced me to MDMA, or ecstacy, a delightful substance which has been unfairly lumped in and banned along with dangerous drugs like cocaine and crystal meth. Nobody with any sense fools around with snow and ice, but many smart professionals relax with parties, dancing, and ecstacy.

Ecstacy is a delightful drug. It makes you feel exultant and happy, like Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, like anything is possible and the world is full of joy.

The only thing wrong with ecstacy is that you can't take it very often. It rapidly loses its potency. I've heard of people trying to stay high on ecstacy, taking one pill at the beginning of the month and needing ten pills to get the same high at the end of the month. And not really getting it either.

So no one could become addicted to ecstacy. It just wouldn't work.

In addition, ecstasy is very good at helping people get in touch with their true feelings. Psychiatrists and psychologists used to use ecstasy in their therapy. Hundreds of them showed up to defend the drug at hearings in the 1980's, but the Reagan government banned it anyway.

The people who oppose the use of ecstasy are just mean. It amazes me how many people in the world dedicate their whole lives to preventing other people's happiness.

I never really understood the concept of heaven until I took ecstacy. Heaven just seemed kind of boring, wandering around with nothing to do. But if they feel like that, it must be a joy forever.

The other great thing about ecstasy is you feel good the next day. Some of the rapture lingers. You feel a bit tired, which is natural after a day of strong enjoyment, but also calm and fulfilled.

Some people might wonder, I suppose, if the drug has any long-term effects. Could it gradually erode your mind or do any other damage? Well, I guess we'll never know, will we, as long as the funkillers ban the drug and prevent any responsible research.

Kai and I had a party at the house of a friend named Marc. It was a marvellous house way back in the hills, with many small rooms decorated with hanging shawls, laser lights, glowing crystals, and icons.

Kai got into the party spirit right away, discarding her clothes for body decorations like ribbons and glitter. She danced on a table high above us, even hanging from the rafters. The glitter sparkled on her skin as she did a ceremonial dance with two knives not quite cutting her naked body.

She said she was amazed at the way men were turned on just by the sight of a naked woman's body, but she was happy that she could please men so completely and so well.

Marc got into the spirit of the evening, wrapping golden elastic cords around Kai's body so she gradually became a jaguar fiercely restrained with a golden leash. Kai was fond of exotic sensations, so Floyd whipped her smartly with the golden cords while she snarled in tingling satisfaction.

Meanwhile I was frantically following the action with the camera, and blithering like a moon-child with the effects of the drug. Ecstasy, like many drugs, makes some people babble continually and unconsciously during the first use. I was definitely a member of that club. The video was great, but the soundtrack needed to be almost totally reconstituted.

Kai enjoyed running a piece of furry cloth, which she called her sporran, all over her body. She also enjoyed the sensation of spinning in a swival chair, as I shot close-ups of her body and the swirling glitter on her skin.

She stroked herself in the warm shower, which she said was a good way to bring yourself up again. I was over the moon.

That went so well that we soon had another party. I rented Azura's house for the party. She was the model who did aromatherapy for Naked Lifestyles 1. She owned a classy A-frame building back in the hills called Mudita.

Another model named Uti came along.

Uti is everyone's dream of a blond Norwegian goddess. She glows like the sun. Uti is tall and trim-waisted, with wonderful curves.

Uti looks like a well-trained athlete, which she is, for she earns her living as a personal trainer. Having Uti train you must be quite an experience.

A friend suggested she model for me. She burst into my world, and I could see right away she was the one for my naked party. I had been looking for a star, and I found a supernova.

Handsome blond Lance came along too. We had wine and music and everything to make a party go. We put candles around everywhere. Kai even made some hanging candles in plastic bowls supported by chains.

Uti made a spectacular start to the party by taking off all her clothes for the camera. This was the first time I saw her naked, and I was dazzled. Then she bounced on the red exercise ball with a red boa wraped around her. I got down on the floor and shot from a low angle. She nearly bounced on my head!   But it made great video.

She danced naked among the candles to wild music. She loved to bounce up and down, and she danced wildly around one of the hanging candles, shaking her breasts toward the candle til they blew it out. Then she danced toward the camera, pushing her breasts out, showing them proudly.

Kai started stretching and arching her body, and Lance explored her with a furry hand puppet called Diblet. Then she discovered the tingling delight of drops of cold water from the shower, while I videoed her with light from a single candle.

Uti wrapped the gold glitter ribbon around her and did a dance with the sharp silver knives. The knives were exciting, for she ran the blades across her body, their blades indenting her skin. The blades even cut the ribbon at one point so it fell away from her body, somehow making her seem even more naked than before.

Both girls were great dancers. Kai loved dancing naked with long furry leggings, whipping a golden cord around her body.

Lance and Uti hugged and danced on either side of Kai, making a human sandwich of her. Uti caressed Lance's body with a candle, moving it here and there across his shining skin.

Lance took two candles and passed them over her body while the camera followed their golden light. The close-ups of curves of Uti's body made great video. You could see that Uti loved it too, being completey naked and exposed, and examined closely by the video eye.

Finally Kai and Lance lay down side by side, and Uti lay across them and rolled back and forth, rolling our party to a blissful end.

The footage was so good that I felt it deserved starting a new series of videos, which I called Free & Wild. Uti suggested the name. These party shoots are in Free & Wild 1: Party Naked.