The People of Eden

Eden was advertised as a “family-friendly” nudist park, which seemed a bit oxymoronic to me. Then again, the highways leading to the park were littered with billboards urging us to repent and visit JesusIsAlive.com, followed by signs commanding us to EXIT NOW FOR LION’S DEN ADULT SUPERSTORE. I wondered what the clientele looked like in these puritan towns. Maybe you could buy anal beads that doubled as a rosary.

“The whole concept is weird to me,” Tess said, as she scrolled through the park’s website, while opening her second bag of grapes.

“Yeah, but they’re like, everywhere in Europe.”

“Europe is different,” She argued as a grape sailed effortlessly from her hand into her mouth. “Less pervy.”

Tess had studied abroad in Madrid our junior year and came back as the resident expert on all things European. We could hardly go to the grocery store without being reminded of her superiority. “Omigod, in Madrid there was this, like, amazing ham, jamon iberico…” It could be exhausting at times, but mostly, I felt bad for her. Tess was more exciting than anyone in our town would ever be. She was destined to live a life that people would write stories about, whereas most of the people of Murfreesboro, Tennessee were destined to get married, have a few kids, and die while riding their tractors one last time. Her moxie made her a bit of a marvel and the perfect companion for my endeavor.

“Oh shit, I think this is the turn.”

Panicked, I slammed on the brakes and took a hard left. My old Suzuki groaned as we careened into the muddy parking lot and came to a screeching halt.

I glanced over at Tess. Unphased, she tossed another grape into the air, but this time it bounced off her nose and came dangerously close to falling into the crevice between her seat and the console. Characteristically, she caught it just in time.

“Fuckin’ A.”

_______

The park was nestled deep in the Smoky Mountains. Spring had just arrived, breathing life back into the hills. Blooming magnolias lined the parking lot, giving the air a lemony sweet smell. It was as idyllic as its name. The parking lot was surprisingly full, but that was the only sign of human life. The silence was unsettling.

“I swear to God, Nat, if we get Human Centipede-d—”

“Ew, God! Why would you even—”

“I’m just saying.”

As we trudged through the muddy lot, I kept my eyes peeled for any loose nudists, but I couldn’t see beyond the neat line of rust-colored yurts. Tess spotted ours and punched in the code we’d been sent. We’d booked the honeymoon yurt, mostly for the private jacuzzi and champagne, but also because it was closest to the parking lot in case things actually started to get a little Human Centipedey.

At the time, it seemed smart and also kinda hilarious. But like everything on this trip, what had started as a joke had quickly become a journey outside the farthest reaches of my comfort zone.

The whole scheme started one Friday night when Tess had come over to help me address the box of save the dates that had been sitting in my hall closet for a month. Half a bottle of Jose Cuervo later, I blurted it out. I never threw up when I drank, but I frequently vomited some secret, which was often messier and more difficult to clean up. No one holds your hair either.

“I needta tell you a thing,” I mumbled.

“What thing?”

“I never...I’ve never seen one.” My hand flew to cover my mouth, as if I were trying to imprison the words that had already escaped.

The admission wouldn’t have been so difficult if I hadn’t regaled my friends with stories of my nonexistent sexual exploits. I wanted those stories to be true. There were plenty of opportunities, but I never felt good about following through. When things started to intensify, I’d make up an excuse and bolt. And then I met Dan.

Dan was very upfront about abstinence. He wasn’t just a “wait til marriage” guy. He was a card-carrying, purity-ring-wearing, president of the chastity club kind of guy. That never bothered me until I was staring at the two carat promise that his dick, which I’d never seen, would be the only dick for me for the rest of my life.

“So Sam?”

Sam had been the subject of my “first time” story. He was a cute, curly-haired comp-sci nerd who lived on the floor above me in my freshman dorm. Unbeknownst to most people, Sam was also very gay. I’d spend hours, sometimes nights even, in his room, but we just got high and played Mario Kart.

The first time I came back from Sam’s, Tess and our bevy of friends were drinking themselves into oblivion in our dorm room.

“Oooooh, someone looks a little flushed” Simone smirked. I glanced in my mirror and examined the light red rash creeping up my neck. I didn’t know whether it was the weed or having just lost the Peach Beach race, but it definitely wasn’t sex. “I swear, after I hooked up with Alex, my face was red for like an hour.”

Tess chimed in, “Mm those ten seconds were really that intense?” The room erupted with drunken laughter as Simone playfully punched Tess’s arm. Their focus eventually turned back to me and I was met with a sea of expectant eyes. None of my friends were virgin-shamers by any means, but there was a sort of unspoken admiration for the girls who knew what they wanted and got it. Girls who had sex were interesting and...adult. I didn’t feel like I was either of those things, but I desperately wanted to be.

So I launched into a story pulled directly from one of the nights I’d found myself in a Reddit rabbit hole after Googling “what sex feel like girls.” According to JoBroHo98, it sounded incredibly underwhelming and painful and bloody. They cooed. “It’ll get better!” “Just takes practice.” “S’never good the first time.” “I read this thing in Cosmo that -- I’ll just send it to you.”

It was like a switch had flipped. I might not have changed, but it seemed like everything around me did. I was suddenly Natalie Lindell, International Woman of Mystery. Stories about Sam became stories about Max, which became stories about James, which became stories about guys I met on Tinder, which became stories about guys back home. And then I met Dan.

Instead of ridiculing me, Tess placed her hand on my shoulder and gently asked, “Do you wanna do something about it?” The nudist bit happened by chance. While standing in the grocery store checkout lane, I perused an article in Harper’s Bazaar: “Millennials Flock to California Naturist Resorts.” I couldn’t fly to California, but, as the article noted, there’s at least one nudist park in every state. And anyone and everyone was welcome.

“C’mon, it’ll be a fun...bachelorette thing,” I pleaded with Tess.

“Fun bachelorette things don’t involve communal nudity, Natalie!”

Turns out sometimes they do.

_____

Our yurt was filled with rose petals and entirely too many flameless candles. Tinted uplights gave the room a rosy color and soft jazz playing from some unseen speaker. The towels had been crudely shaped to resemble swans. As close as Tess and I were, I couldn’t help but feel a little uncomfortable. She didn’t seem to mind, though.

“If I had a hotel, I’d have divorce suites,” she mused as she fell back onto the bed, sending rose petals into the air. I began hunting for the source of the soft jazz.

“I think the whole point of divorce is that you don’t wanna be in a room with that person anymore,” I said, pulling back a curtain to reveal a small CD player. With the push of a button we were freed from the never-ending loop of sexy saxophone solos.

“I mean, yeah, divorces can get nasty,” she paused, “I want at least three.” This was wholly unsurprising, but made me laugh nonetheless.

“So, do we strip, or…”

Suddenly, Tess stilled.

“Don’t move.” Her eyes locked on something behind my head. “Okay, actually do move. But don’t panic.” Incredibly reassuring. As I crept towards Tess, I heard a thin coo somewhere. Before I could take another step, Tess let out a shriek that shook the walls and a feathered mass swept over my head and up onto a beam. Its beady eyes narrowed like a jungle cat carefully calculating its attack. Coo. “Get it the fuck out of here!”

In second grade, we visited a sanctuary for birds of prey. We pressed our faces against a glass enclosure and watched as a tawny barn owl caught a mouse by just listening for its heartbeat. Now, as my heart beat was steadily growing, I wondered if the owl was listening.

“Door.” We threw it open expecting the owl to gracefully glide through. It didn't budge.

I crept back in and grabbed a decorative fishing pole. "Hold it open." As I reached the pole towards the beam, the soft sound of a pan flute drifted over the hill. The bird's snowy head turned towards the door as it silently flew from the beam, out into the sky. The movement had been so quick, so quiet that Tess didn't notice it had left until she spotted it near a tree.

"Holy hell," she exhaled, closing the door behind her.

“So, do we strip, or…”

__________

We began undressing in awkward silence. I regretted turning the music off. Bit by bit, I stripped down to the blue polka-dotted llama socks my Dad had given me a Christmas or two ago. As I got older, we both agreed that we never knew what to get each other for the holidays, so now we just exchanged novelty socks. Now all my pairs had Van Gogh paintings or flowers or small jumping llamas wearing Santa hats.

“Probably want shoes, right?” Tess asked from the other side of the yurt. I woefully examined my muddied sneakers. They were the only shoes I packed, thinking that the nudity part also applied to my feet. But she was right; the terrain outside didn’t seem very foot-friendly. So I stepped into my sneakers, somehow feeling more naked than before.

Christ, am I really gonna do this?

We turned to face each other on the count of three. I’d never seen Tess naked, but we were close enough that it wasn’t all that uncomfortable. There had been plenty of nights that ended with me holding her hair while she vomited into a roadside garbage can. It built trust.

“Dude, your tits look great,” Tess’s nonchalance dissolved any would-be tension and instantly made me feel less awkward. After engaging in a long, drawn-out body compliment competition, we decided to brave the outside.

“I think there’s a badminton court,” I said as I closed the yurt’s wooden door behind me.

“Let’s check it out,” she turned to look back at me before adding, “I think your shoe’s loose.” Sure enough, my left lace had come undone. As I bent down to tie it, the tiny leaping llamas grinned up at me sadistically.

_______

As we walked, I realized the yurts were situated atop a hill overlooking an expansive field. The grass ran to meet the shoreline of a small lake, dotted with silvery canoes and paddle boards. Aside from the obvious, the resort seemed fairly normal. There was a large swimming pool, a bar, a picnic area, and badminton courts.

We made our way down the slope and began maneuvering through the crowd. Men and women casually lounged, talking and laughing. One party had struck up an intense badminton game. Two older women sprawled out on towels in the open space. I looked around in awe. They were all just themselves. Nothing to hide.

I couldn’t recall which man I caught sight of first because it wasn’t...memorable. I can't remember which guy I saw first. I was waiting for an aha, lightbulb moment that never really came. It was kinda like being surrounded by giant squids (that’s being very generous). But I mean, something I’d only ever seen on TV was suddenly everywhere I looked, just hanging out, totally unbothered.

It was honestly the least interesting thing about Eden.

Tess ran to the bar for drinks and I saved us a spot near the badminton court. The two older women who had been sunbathing were now killing a team of muscular young men. Margaritas in hand, Tess plopped down beside me, sending ripples across her skin.

“I gotta say, this is...kinda amazing.” She licked the salt off the rim of her cup.

“Feels like another dimension.”

“Feels like fucking Narnia.”

I lied back for a moment, taking in the clear blue sky above us.

“You good, Nat?”

“Yeah. Yeah, just thinking.”

We went through a couple of margaritas sitting at that spot. I finished a book that had been sitting on my shelf for weeks while Tess sketched. She pulled out her small, black book and began etching the lines of Eden, memorializing it. A light breeze carried the scent of the magnolia trees through the field, tickling my skin.

We watched the pair of women dominate match after match, before one of them yelled over, “Hey! We need two more!” This, of course, led to our complete annihilation. Over the course of the game, we learned our opponents’ names were Janet and Lisa. Though their wrinkles gave away their age, they were as spritely as any twenty year olds. It was clear they’d been friends for years. They hurled jokes back and forth, teasing each other in the way only old friends could. Tess and I barely made it through a rally without bursting into laughter. After we admitted defeat, they offered to buy us a conciliatory cocktail. It didn’t take long for Tess and I to realize just how fascinating Janet and Lisa’s lives were.

“Any more wild travel stories?” I probed.

“Well, there was that one time in ‘88 when we were backpacking through Spain-”

Tess lit up, “Wait, the Camino de Santiago?”

“Yes! That’s the one!” Janet exclaimed.

“We met these Swiss boys and before we knew it, we were on a train back with them!”

“And the mountains—”

“Oh my God, the mountains...”

“Simply unbelievable.”

“Boys didn’t last long, but they did get us jobs at a small little restaurant.”

“Which was really great, for a while, but -”

“But Fritz proposed to Janet and ruined the whole thing.”

“It wasn't all his fault—”

“Mostly his fault—”

“How'd you know?” I blurted out. Janet looked at me quizzically.

“What's that?”

“How'd you know that you didn't wanna marry him?”

Janet looked up to the stars as she contemplated my question.

“It...it was really just a gut feeling. But...love is tricky. We all want it, yeah? And they say that's all anyone wants - to be loved. But you need to be able to give it back, too. It balances the equation. Fritz loved me, but I...I loved that he loved me, you know? Didn't realize what was missing until he was on one knee.”

“With fireworks,” Lisa interjected.

“With fireworks.”

“May have caused a bit of an avalanche—”

“Okay, let's just—”

“We went to Europe not knowing exactly who we were or what we wanted, but hoping that the universe would figure it out for us. Mistake number one,” Lisa took a long drink of her cocktail. “Can't let the universe or anyone tell you who you are. You have to tell the universe who you are and hope it can deal with it.”

It hit me all at once. These women had lived. Really lived. Sure, I had stories, but none of them really belonged to me. They belonged to another Natalie. The interesting Natalie. The exciting Natalie. Which Natalie had agreed to marry Dan Daniels?

I pictured my life with him. Dan was planning on taking over his father’s dental practice, just down the road from our university. I pictured living there in a little house with our dogs and two kids running in the yard. The smell of chicken casserole wafting through the air. I felt sick.

Alcohol had never made me vomit, but I was sure something was going to come up. I ran to the bathroom and clutched the porcelain sink, staring down into the drain. The feeling slowly passed. I tilted my head up. It's difficult to meet your reflection when you don't know who it belongs to.

I imagined peeling the layers, one by one. Skin, muscles, bone—what was left?

_______

The morning brought a glaring headache and obnoxiously loud knocking. Dressed in her adult Elmo onesie, Tess stumbled groggily to the door and swung it open.

“Oh my God, what are you—”

I barely had time to sit up before Dan bounded through the door, fully nude. He made his way to the foot of the bed and threw his arms out like a psychotic Jesus.

“Is this what you want, Natalie?” I covered my eyes, grateful that he’d caught me while I was clothed.

“Jesus, Dan! What the hell are you doing?”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

We stood in an intense silence for a moment.

“Would you - would you put on some clothes?” I asked.

“They're in the car.” After some light interrogation, it was revealed that Tess’s boyfriend, Nick, also had an issue with drunken secret vomit. Tess crept out of the tent after tossing Dan a towel, which he eventually acquiesced to wearing

“Do you want a...chocolate or something?”

“I wanna know why you're at a fucking nudist colony, Nat.”

“Technically, it's a park—”

“It is a sex thing?” He asked innocently.

“No! God, no.”

“Then what?” I didn’t even know where to begin.

“I, um...I've been feeling for a while that…” Out of habit, I began fiddling with my ring. Dan flinched.

“Don't do that.”

Slowly, I pulled the ring from my finger and held it out.

“This doesn't...It doesn't belong to me.”

“Then who the fuck does it belong to, Nat?!”

“I don't know - I'm just not that person anymore. I don't know if I ever really—”

“What are you talking about?”

“I need time to figure myself out.”

Dan took a deep breath before pacing in front of the door.

“Natalie, I love you. I know you. I know that you love me.”

I had loved him once, I thought. But I wasn’t sure how I felt now.

“You've been really good to me, Dan, but—”

“So you're saying that you never loved me?”

I remembered Janet.

“I think I...loved that you loved me.”

He thought for a moment.

“Isn't that the same thing?”

________

We played one last round of badminton with Janet and Lisa before saying goodbye. Wasn't even a close game, but it got my mind off of things. We exchanged numbers and promises to keep in touch, meet sometime for drinks. It was actually a promise I wanted to keep.

Tess drove home so I could get the full cinematic moment of dramatically gazing out my window with Adele blasting in the background.

“You should stay at mine tonight,” Tess suggested.

Somehow on the way there, somehow I'd missed the giant billboard saying "HELL IS REAL." Luckily for the people who lived around there, Eden was real too. Plus, apparently the Pleasures Romance Boutique was having a BOGO sale. So the Puritans would probably be okay.

“Is there anything you feel like doing? Bar? Movie? Ice cream? Tequila? Dancing?”

Staring out the window at the winding roads, only one thing came to mind.

“Actually, yeah. Do you still have Mario Kart?”