Additions for 2023 and more for 2025 and 2026.
2022 I’ve started this project and these are the first images to be posted. I’ve said loads about my own body in my other page Skin Capture Exposure. I’m an enthusiastic naturist, but not one of those that wants to get naked in Tesco or in a cafe, or in a club. I like to dress up and often that is in clothes that is across the traditional gender divide – I am genderqueer, fuck that pink or blue shit.
I’m going to cheat, for now at least, and say this project is my offering as a reflection of a part of my life at this point in time. Its far from the whole of it – that’d include my lovely partner, Titch, my sons, my family and friends – as well as the sea, trees, chips and Brussel Sprouts.
Sometimes I like to wear skirts – that should be an easy thing but often it isn’t. Doing so becomes a statement and whether or not it’s inviting comments, I certainly get lots of them. Getting comments is something that happens constantly when I wear skirts and it pretty much never happens when I wear anything else. Mostly the comments are positive but I’ve been shouted at a few times and called a “fucking pervert.”
Knowing that people who look like men but wear skirts are more likely to be attacked and abused on the street scares me and sometimes so much that I change my behaviour because of that threat. I try not to though, its not me that needs to change.
I had no interest in wearing skirts or in dressing-up when I was younger – I mainly wanted to look like a sort of cross between a hippy and a punk. My clothes of choice we mostly holes. It’s only in recent years that I’ve started to be happier with standing out more.
I’m no longer fussed about being seen naked, it’s just not part of me to be shy of my own nudity for my own sake. But, I recognise that many people just don’t want to see naked people about the place, so I keep it for the beach – oh, and to share across the whole of the internet…
Some for 2023
I’m going to gradually add photos – these were taken in June 2023 by my friend Pauline.
2025 – Photos
A few weeks ago I left my civil service job after more than 35 years.
I’ve always been a naked civil servant at heart – it seemed the right time to be naked in public ways again.
I’m also aware of how everyone in Ages feels a little exposed at first. So I didn’t want to go down the easy route of asking Titch to take the photos – I asked my excellent friend Jan. She takes great photos herself and she’s been in more of my photos than most people.
I’m not sure what else I can say about my body.
I’d still like to have been a bit taller, to not have had a cronky back etc etc but, as will always be, those things can’t happen.
My lesson is, as is for all of us – enjoy what we have. My thought that I might experience some embarrassment and, thereby gain awareness of how others feel, wasn’t to be. Instead, I felt absolutely, completely, unselfconscious being naked with Jan.
Tbh, it felt amazing to be able to show a sexual side of myself in a non sexual way.
It’s long been something I’ve puzzled over…
… whether it can ever completely not an issue to be naked, even in stockings and a short skirt, with someone who isn’t my partner – well, I’ve my answer, at least for me.
Being genderqueer has never been easy but the growing bigotry in the country has made it harder and more dangerous.
Jan’s wonderful garden was a safe and joyful place to get naked and to dress up – I’ve always wanted Ages to be about who we are, naked and dressed.
I wish everywhere was as safe and welcoming.
But, as always, grab your moments when you can – strip and bask in the sun.
Time goes so fast for me now that it’s a deep sadness that calls to me constantly… I don’t want to leave now, I want to turn back the clocks, to tell my 20 yo self to cherish the time, to clutch the freedom.
Bitter sweet – but what’d be the point of not enjoying the time I have just to spend it glum about the lack of time I have.
Get out there, love it.
2026 – Photos
60 – I spotted a gap in the years in the project and I’m just the right age.
I asked Jan to take the photos – she’s an absolute star and v good with a camera. I often wonder how my subjects feel as I observe them. Honestly, these days it doesn’t bother me at all to be naked and to be observed. And, woo, it’s so good to be naked in woods – I’m nearly a sea creature now, but I come from the woods, it’s good to be a woodland creature. I’m now plotting more naked time in woods and countryside.
Bodies – mine isn’t doing too badly generally but for a pretty tiresome auto immunity condition that likes to cause inflammation in my eyes, bowels and joints and, more recently is probably behind some extreme, and very unwelcome, fatigue. But I’ve started going to the gym to keep fitter and to boost my active testosterone levels to keep my pecker up.
I’ve recently posted about how we look at cunts and whether we can just look at them in a non-sexual way. I observed that we penis owners don’t really have the option of hiding our bits, junk, meat and 2 veg (etc) by standing with our legs together – from the front we are exposed, always. I don’t feel the need to show photos of cocks so much – we see them often enough, often too much.
I imagine though that most penis owners will primarily be concerned with how theirs might look in the photos. I understand that, the same paranoias apply to me, I’m not immune to the grim body images pressures that apply to all of us. But I suppose I am less fussed by that now than I was – dicks are as they are.
What do I see when I see me in photos – probably what stands out is that the ‘me’ in my mind has the jaw and mouth shape that I had decades ago before I smashed my face into the ground hard and fast. So the wonky jaw in photos always looks wrong to me but, for everyone else, that is exactly what I look like.. I need to get over it.
I’ve written lots about how age, as referred to in almost everything we say about it, is far more a social construction than a reference to the numbers of years we’ve been alive. I’m sticking to that view and that it’s nearly always an unhealthy way to understand people. But, yep, the years themselves are not irrelevant and especially when those remaining pass so horribly quickly and there’s not many left – and that’s if we’re lucky.
I’m finding it extremely hard to be positive about my own time left, not the now or the shorter and shorter, near future – it is the middlish future that feels bleak. My existential pain is nightmarish and intense at times .. my horror of my future often spoils my joy of the now and I have to tell myself to shut up and let myself sleep. I’d willingly pay to have that fearful part of my mind cut out and made into a burger to feed to someone who deserves it.. Farage or Trump. And unlike many people, I’m not able or willing to fall back into the past and live on nostalgia; my memory is patchy and vague but also I’m finding nostalgia increasingly unpleasant.
However, the now is really good TBF – I’m So lucky with my amazing partner (that joyful, clever, funny, arty, loving Titch beastie) and my small family and my splendid friends – and the sea, sky, and the dirt – the trees and leaves.
I re-read these words and then looked again at the photos and I see that I need to be in the now more, a now that is more naked or in a tutu and a now that is finding a Tussock Moth catapillar… woo.
Join in by contacting me via my contacts page.
