Yarns Without Threads 

In retrospect it seems now that we went to Oaxaca simply to find a doctor for Laura who had fallen ill. ...

It was a sad end to what had been an interesting day, to say the least, the culmination of what might be termed our oceanic experiences. We had spent the day in Zipolite, getting wasted. The name, Zipolite, means something to do with Death. It's a strip of beach a mile long. There are no hotels, just a few palapas offering beer, shade, and, if you are staying the night, a place to hang your hammock. It is possible to buy grass there and we had done so the day before, missing the last bus to Puerto Angel and walking back along the dirt road in the moonlit darkness. As far as I could make out it was never not a full moon in this part of the world. The grass was terribly strong and everyone in Zipolite was high the whole time. Naked too. To call it a nudist beach, however, is to dress it up in too many words. People say they feel naked without a favourite item of clothing. Here, so to speak, they felt naked without nothing on. The effect of this, as far as I could make out, was the opposite of what allegedly occurs in nudist camps: the de-eroticisation of nakedness. In Zipolite we were horny as rabbits all day. We had sex on the brain. Primitive, hair-pulling sex. Clothesless sex, naked sex. Also, like all women, Laura is completely at ease without her clothes, and felt quite at home naked on the beach at Zipolite. I couldn't get used to it. I am not really comfortable in shorts, let alone swimming trunks, let alone naked. And despite all the sun worship in his writing it is difficult to imagine Lawrence being happy without his clothes on. Easier to think of him trussed up in his tweed jacket, not wanting anyone to see his scrawny chest, clothing his embarrassment by sneering about the philosopher in his swimming costume: 'Poor Bertie Russell! He's all disembodied mind!' Or - as in a photograph of Lawrence and Huxley - drawing his knees up to his chest, wrapping his hands around his knees so that his sleeves become a blanket, hiding the thin trunk the arms are joined to.

...

It would have been okay, I thought, if I had been here six or seven years ago when I was pumping iron, but now my nudity seemed to reveal the narrow shoulders which my swimming trunks contrived somehow to conceal. My swimming trunks padded out my shoulders. If I felt uncomfortable with no clothes on, however, I felt even more uncomfortable in my swimming trunks because they chafed somewhat so that I was actually more comfortable with no clothes on. Lying down was okay but when I stood up on my Bambi legs, naked, the idea of wearing chafing swimming trunks, even swimming trunks that chafed my skinny legs terribly, seemed preferable to standing there naked, skinny shoulders revealed for all the world to see. It was like this, being stoned at Zipolite: it was very good grass but you could easily find yourself drawn into a whirlpool of anxiety. ...

The ocean. Now that I was facing it I became conscious again of the motorway roar and crash of tide. Big thoughts were in order. The waves were huge: blue-white walls rearing up and pounding the beach. A couple of perfect Germans walked along the damp sand at the water's edge, a man and woman, naked, both with the same broad-shoulder-length hair, holding hands, taking it in turns to pull on a joint. It was paradise in a way, Zipolite: Anarcho-Eden-on-sea. ...