Best Bizarro Let It All Hang Out

This city is getting to you. The towering buildings, the stained concrete, the constant drone of traffic—it’s becoming too confining. You strain to hear the birds sing over the sound of the morning garbage trucks. You daydream about wading in cool creeks while standing in the latte queue.

One weekend morning, you get in your car and head south on 99, unsure of your destination. Within minutes, you’ve left the heart of downtown and have a better view of the mountains beyond the city.

Eventually, the buildings disappear entirely and the earth spreads out in all its vegetative glory—fields of grass, acres of corn and roadsides dotted with sunflowers. You pull off the highway and drive through the back roads, looking for a place to spend the day.

The road dead-ends at an iron gate with “Laguna Del Sol” written in gold across it. A sign instructs visitors to register at the front office. As you angle the car into a parking place, you notice two things almost simultaneously. The first is that this place, with its green-and-gold hills, circling birds and almost total quiet, seems like a perfect setting to forget the stress of urbanity. The second is a brightly painted sign welcoming you to “Laguna Del Sol, Clothing Optional Resort.”

Uh oh.

Inside, you are greeted by friendly staff members who, you’re relieved to note, are wearing clothes. As you wait in line at the front desk, you glance around the gift shop (which is, ironically, full of clothing) and peruse a brochure.

The brochure espouses “the luxury of not having to dress” and lists the “range of active and leisure activities to be enjoyed in the nude,” including swimming, shuffleboard, horseshoes, tennis, volleyball, fishing and hiking.

You peer through the back door of the office and notice a beautiful lake with RVs and tents dotting the shore. Seemingly happy, definitely naked people are playing volleyball outside. Others are walking over the grassy hills like Adam and Eve before the fall.

Below you is a dance hall, complete with disco ball and nightclub booths. You imagine a naked stranger asking you to dance and start giggling like a seventh-grader in sex ed class.

“Hi,” he says helpfully. “Do you have any questions?”

“I just came for this,” you say lamely, holding up the brochure.

“Well, come again soon!” he says cheerfully as you back out the door.

As you drive home, you weigh the joys of sunbathing without tan lines against the image of dancing a jiggling, nightclub Watusi and decide that Laguna Del Sol is an adventure for another, braver day. Maybe this will be a day when you cease to care how you look, and realize that we are all beautiful just as we are—and a day when you remember to shave your legs before you leave the house.

8683 Rawhide Lane, Wilton. 687-6550. www.laguna delsol.com.