clothing optional

in 1998 i went to the michigan womyn's music festival. i was more likely then than i am now to use words like "womyn". now i think words like that are not much more than invitations to be interpreted and treated like a parody of ourselves. i have a hard enough time distinguishing between my actual self and my many characters, so i have to try to keep things as simple as possible and if that means conventional spellings, so be it. the festival itself was one of the defining moments of my life. it was amazing! and weird. under the category of amazing: music under the stars every night, vegetarian food every day, freedom to determine whether or not to wear clothing from moment to moment. too warm? take off your shirt! still warm, take it all off! and then go to meetings and sessions like that. intimidated by your own nudity? stop by a body paint tent and "cover up". for every meal i could each chick peas and tahini. when i was hurt or sick i could go visit people who could make me better. these people resided in a tent which was referred to as "the womb". i know. even then i had a hard time with that. whatever. i went to concerts every night: indigo girls (of course), sweet honey in the rock... readings from her then forthcoming book by alice walker...drum circles outside my tent every night to help me fall asleep. ~and group showers~ that was a bit of an adjustment. it was one thing to walk around half-naked all day encountering hundreds of women wearing only breasts and sarongs. eventually, that kind of thing becomes very normal. after all, i have breasts, i know what they look like, there was no major adjustment to make. standing next to those same women while they chatted and washed their vaginas is another thing entirely. people have shower routines. i have a shower routine that is the same every single day ( surprised?) and it is fairly standard, accomplishing all of the things that need to be accomplished. but this routine is quite personal and private and it requires quite a nerve to perfom said routine for dozens of strangers standing either next to you or in a line waiting to perform their own soapy act. the line may have been the most uncomfortable part of the whole process. picture it if you will. there are 20 shower heads sticking out of poles with crossbars. hundreds of women need to use them so there is a sizable line. when standing in a line, it is customary to face in the direction of the desired goal or location. it would be awkward to direct one's attention elsewhere. if we all did this, how would we ever know when it was our turn? so given that we really need to face the group shower in order to wait for the group shower, it was really nothing more than an audience of 300. think on that for a moment. for whom is this more uncomfortable? glance around, gaze off in wonderland, it doesn't matter. at some point you must stop yourself and realize "i am standing here surrounded by naked people and i am watching 20 of them wash themselves. and soon they will all be doing the same to me."
~moving on. there were meetings for every kind of life experience you can imagine at the MWMF. 12 step programs for EVERYTHING! meetings for people in the adoption triad, political movements, y2k discussion groups, writing groups, religious groups, music groups. yes indeed the MWMF has something for everywoman. i was there for a week and would have stayed for the rest of my life. until i learned what "the womb" considered emergency medical treatment. as we were packing up our tents and bags on the last morning i stepped on something sticking out of the ground and tore the skin off of my heel. it was freaking disgusting and nasty and painful. every time i looked at it or thought about it i would start to pass out a little. my friends determined that, while we were all quite content to survive a week of naked wooded bliss without having to revisit the womb, my foot probably needed some attention. so i hobbled to the womb. this was a difficult time for me. for the first time in my life i had to suspend my strong belief in medicinal items such as pain killers and anti-biotics. i had to believe in the potential healing powers of nude strangers with plants. i felt as though i was going to bleed to death from my heel and i was not doing well with this situation. i got to the womb and the wombmaster? (i have no idea who she was, but that is a fun term and i like to make stuff up) says to me: "oooh, yeah, that hurts quite a bit, i'll bet." she was speaking to me as though i were five, but in retrospect i may have invited that. i sobbed: "uh-huh, it hurts bad!" (read in child-like pathetic injured voice) "we'll get you something to make that better, okay?" "o. kay." now even though i am five years old in this moment, i am fully expecting some kind of cleansing solution that will burn like a mo fo because that's how you know it's working! i also thought that there might be some tylenol in my near future. also, because i was practically hyperventilating as a result of my complete lack of ability to handle broken skin on my body, the wombmaster said: "we'll give you something to help calm you down too." wow. i thought. fun! i have been to doctors in buildings before who have given me things to calm down and those things are FUN! a few minutes later the wombmaster returned with some raw cotton and what i am quite sure was witch hazel. she also had some kind of ointment but i didn't ask for a name. i assumed it was aloe and i was comfortable with that. and to help me calm down? camomile tea. i tried to play nice, but i had my doubts. really? i am having a freaking panic attack because i have a big skin flap on the back of my foot that won't stop bleeding and dried flowers in water is going to make me better? it didn't, but i wanted to be a good sport in granola lesbo land, so i pretended that it was the most effective medicine i had ever tried. i guess i should just be thankful that the ointment was covered in actual gauze rather than a leaf tied to my foot with hemp.
at the womyn's music festival there are a lot of lesbians. and it seems a fair number of ftm trans women. apparently the only requirement for attendance is that one was born female and at the time of attendance is still biologically female. i am not sure this is the rule, but there was strong evidence to suggest it. (how much more information do you want?) this meant a lot of facial hair. and a lot of very butchy women. i mention this only because after a week of knowing that every single person i was seeing was female, regardless of features suggesting otherwise, the brain flips a switch. i love butchy women. i think they're hot. and it was fun for me to watch for the butchiest of the butchy. eventually, of course, i had to leave and for weeks after i left i remember looking at every person i encountered as if s/he was female. i could have come across grizzly adams and i would have tried to find features that suggested womanhood. it was weird. and it was common. one day i was walking through a public building with one of the women with whom i attended the festival. i glanced at hairy men and said, "okay, i have to talk about this, i keep trying to make a woman out of every person i see." she started laughing hysterically, knowingly. she'd been doing the same thing for weeks. for the record, you can make anyone into a woman if you set your mind to it. and it's a fun game.