Tassie’s midwinter nude swim exposes more than skin

Cold that isn’t cold. Cold that is so unlike anything your skin is used to that it feels like heat, feels like you are throwing yourself into a vat of soup, seaweed soup like I made that one time. Kelp soup. And even as you’re gasping to get some air in through the burning, you are thinking about how sharks feed at first light. How what lies below the water is forever a mystery. How you know nothing of the local currents and rips, and how a thousand naked bodies splashing out into the bay would be a great distraction from one person drowning.

You are thinking of all this when you stop running because the water has reached your waist and one step more would mean your tits are covered in the burning soup and your friend, who is a doctor, told you once that you shouldn’t submerge your chest if you have a heart condition. To be clear, you don’t know if you have a heart condition (although there are heart conditions aplenty in your family) but you stop and take a few deep, nervous breaths before you let the water upend you and you are gasping, water up to your chin, stroking out awkwardly like a cartoon of someone struggling not to drown.

You are wondering how far you should swim. You are wondering if it is too soon to turn back. Half an eye on a dark patch of weed that might turn out to be a shark. Half an eye on the beach where the boys are watching, lost among a crowd of anonymous faces. What never crosses your mind is the fact that you are naked, that all the other swimmers are naked, that you just stood on the beach naked among a thousand other naked bodies, shivering with adrenaline and perhaps a little bit from the cold.

Loading

What never crosses your mind is to compare yourself against the other bodies. All those other bodies, thinner, most of them, than yours, might have looked at you naked, judging you. But the cold that is like heat makes the idea of that impossible. In this kind of cold you are all reduced to the basic function of your organs. A heart that must continue to beat, blood that must continue to pump, fat that must continue to insulate you as best it can or else your fragile body might shut down and die from cold.

It is midwinter in Tasmania, the morning of the ­winter solstice, and the nude swim is something I have been dreaming about for the longest time.

We slept overnight in the campervan. It is hard to find a place to stay in Hobart. Parking on a regular city street is not an easy move. We wanted to be close to Sandy Bay because the swim was early. We’d be in the water at first light. There were people waiting to take the places of anyone who slept in or chickened out at the last minute. I knew that if we parked 20 minutes away, it would just be that one more barrier to entry, and I didn’t want any obstacles in my path.

At age 55, I’m not a morning person, not any more. There was a time years ago when I’d wake up happy, bright, sparking with so much energy to greet the day. But by the time of the solstice swim I had run down like a nearly flat battery. It usually took me more than one coffee to drag myself out of the house and I wasn’t at my best until almost midday.

It feels as if my queer comrades must also know the difficulties of living in a body or in desires that do not fit in with what society considers normal.

The boys could not be tempted to join me in the insanity of a dawn swim on the shortest day of winter. My husband Anthony was driving the van and my writer friend Steven Amsterdam had come down with us to Tasmania to work on his novel. The idea of ­taking my clothes off in front of a friend would usually bother me. I’d think that they might see me differently after I had been parading, fat and naked, in front of them. But Steven is gay, and that made it different. It isn’t about desire – the fact that Steven desires men does not exclude him from judging me – it is something else, something about queerness, the idea that queer people are “othered”. It feels as if my queer comrades must also know the difficulties of living in a body or in desires that do not fit in with what society considers normal.

I hadn’t had my coffee and it was too early to sort through it all. All I knew was that I felt comfortable around Steve, like I could stand beside him naked without judgment, which was just as well because that was exactly what I was about to do.

Although Steven and Anthony declined to get into the freezing water, they were happy enough to turn up as spectators, cheering me on and taking sneaky ­photos if they could.

I can’t do this without coffee. The check-in is just down the hill from where we have parked but the thought of trekking down without coffee is unfathomable. “There.” Steve points at a truck parked near the organisers’ marquee with a queue forming. Coffee and muffins. It’s too early for a muffin but the coffee goes down a treat.

“You could still sign up. I’m sure there will be some dropouts.” Anthony and Steve shake their heads, hugging their coffees close, inhaling the steam. They are dressed in puffy jackets, gloves, scarves, beanies. In a couple of minutes, I’ll be wearing nothing at all.

Your towel is your ticket to swim. I take my towel from the young woman at the desk. It won’t go all the way around me, of course. I look at people on TV and the movies, one neatly tucked towel wrapped around their chests and falling modestly down to their knees, another curled into a turban to contain their effortlessly manageable damp hair. I long for that with such force it sometimes knocks the legs out from beneath me. This time, I take the towel that is offered and remain standing, staring back over my shoulder at my warm crew, cradling their takeaway cups and waving.

I want and don’t want to do this in equal measure. I want to have done this. I want to be on the other side of doing this.

There are several changing rooms, makeshift structures without benches, where participants regardless of age or gender can stand to swap their clothes for a towel. No point hesitating. I find a spot and drop into an awkward squat to undo my Doc Martens.

One day I won’t be able to do this. One day soon, I suspect, and I’ll have to find slip-on shoes that are easy to kick off with the toe of my other foot. I’ll have to abandon socks. Already my toenails are long and rough, since reaching them over my belly is a trial I can barely face. I am struck by a wave of bilious self-hatred but I swallow it down and pull off my boots and then, awkwardly, my socks. Tights, pants, coat, dress. And the towel fits if I hold it tight. There’s no room for a loop and tuck, and there is a gap showing a slash of flesh at my side. But there is nothing to be done about that.

I want and don’t want to do this in equal measure. I want to have done this. I want to be on the other side of doing this.

Finally, precariously entowelled, I look around for the first time. Bodies. Some of them clothed, some naked, some clutching towels and some in the process of ­undressing. I notice, now that it is too late, that I have chosen a spot among a group of men. The undressing ritual seems to have a gendered system after all, but one haphazardly organised by the nudists themselves.
In the corner, a cluster of women have chosen to stand together. I would have joined them if I had bothered to check the crowd first. It’s how I do difficult things, quickly before I have time to reconsider. Otherwise, it’s too easy to back out.

The person next to me is a big mountain of a man with a footballer’s body. The kind of guy who might have ­bullied me at school: strapping, fit, white, straight and confident. I duck my head, intimidated. He takes off his shirt and his muscles are firm and clean. He undoes his pants, pushes them down and, in one swift movement, unclips his leg, then hops out of his boxers. Another lesson about making assumptions.

In fact, looking around the makeshift room I notice that although I am the fattest person here, I’m not the oldest. A woman in her 70s stands proudly towel-less with her breasts sagging on her rib cage. A pregnant woman lets her belly poke out from a gap in her towel. Old, fit men; young, not-so-fit men; someone with ambiguous genitals; a ­person with tattoos covering his entire body, curling up to his bald head. A smorgasbord of body types and personalities on full display. It is cold but the adrenaline is pumping so hard I can barely feel it.

We file out onto the beach. There are so many of us that it seems unlikely Anthony and Steve will find me, but when I search the crowd, there they are. Steve is taking photos on his phone, which I’m sure is against the rules but I give him a wave, posing. Anthony ­clutches his coffee, looking proud. It is light now, edging closer to dawn.

The organisers are waiting for the moment the sun pops over the horizon. We stand, shivering, nervous. The last thing I’m thinking of is my nakedness. Then the horn sounds and the towels are dropped and it is a sea of bodies racing into the suck and pull of the ocean. The man with one leg drops his crutches and hops along with the rest of us.

Waves of people. We run. The water splashes up to meet our knees. The sand sucks at our toes. The shock as it slaps my thighs, my waist, my breasts, and then I am unbalanced. I fall forward, my head is submerged for a second and when I bob to the surface, I’m burning. Not cold, but steaming, a lobster in a pot. When I get out I’ll be as red as one, too. I breaststroke out to where the rest of the pack are ­confidently swimming towards the shark net and everything is upside down. Cold is hot; people are thundering, naked, into the freezing water when usually they would be rugged up in a dozen layers and a down-filled coat.

I am a slow swimmer, I am falling behind, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve done it. I’m here. I was brave enough. There is no need to go all the way out to the shark net.

Some of the swimmers are making a race of it. Some have turned back to shore; a few have barely put their toes in the 11-degree water and still stand, clutching their towels at the water’s edge.

I am a slow swimmer, I am falling behind, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve done it. I’m here. I was brave enough.

I turn back for the shore, already longing for the ­coffee that awaits, the puffy down jacket, the bacon and eggs, and as I enter the shallows, gravity retrieves me. I stand; I drag myself back to the haphazard piles of towels. I pick one at random and shiver into it. I can feel all my skin, but I can’t identify the sensation. Not hot or cold, just … very present.

I wrap the towel around me and jump up and down, waving towards my lover and he waves back. I’m awake. It is midwinter, dawn, and I feel so very alive.

Back in the change room I struggle back into my tights. It is harder now that my skin is wet. I flop to the cold concrete to pull each leg up, knowing that getting back up to standing will be an awkward, ungainly struggle. There are only a few others here. Most of the swimmers are still in the water or laughing on the beach. I pull one sock on after the other. I struggle with shoelaces then heave myself up, rolling up to standing in an unsightly wobble.

Loading

The whole business of getting dressed again has spoilt the moment. I will have to walk back out into the world. Back in town no one will know what I have just done. People will once again look at me and judge.

Coffee. I need more coffee.

Out on the hill, Steve hands me another steaming cup. Anthony is still buzzing with his spectator’s joy and I grin. Yep. Very well done indeed.
I can’t tell them that all the adrenaline is already ­slipping away. I can’t tell them that it is all very well to share one buoyant moment with a group of strangers – a moment when I can let go of shame for an hour – but that it is the return to the everyday horror of it all that frightens me. It is the cafe we will stop at on the way back to the shack. It is the person at the pub staring at me sideways; running the gauntlet of billboards featuring ­gorgeous women; turning the TV on and knowing I am an alien because I do not appear there.

We clink coffee cups and toast the solstice. Midwinter swim. Who would have thought it? And no one will think it tomorrow, or the day after. We pile back into the van and drive back into the rest of our lives.

This is an edited extract from Fat Girl Dancing by Kris Kneen (Text Publishing, $35), out now.

To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.