Skinny Dipping

It wasn’t until I was 27 that I went skinny dipping.

Out in the Bay of Dragons in North Vietnam, my head swimming from Bia Hanoi and cheap rice wine, I finally took my clothes off in front of people I wasn’t about to have sex with.

And we plunged into the dark, star-speckled water, and I was free.

It still took another three years before I had the nerve to show myself to anybody.

I had been holding myself back, fretting about what people would think of me, laying my thoughts bare to the world; worrying what other people would think about what I think.

And whether I would measure up to everyone else writing out there.

But you know what?

Just like that balmy night on Monkey Island, as soon as I took my clothes off, I stopped caring.

It was the easiest, most natural thing in the world.

Whatever it is that you’re hiding inside you, put it out there.

You were born that way.