I could feel my wife at my shoulder as I focused on the grinning, bearded man coming towards me. This was Peter Bentley. He was somewhere in is mid-30’s, White Jamaican who was born and raised in Jamaica. He was not very tall, but it seems the mountain living kept him in rather good physical condition. That you could tell that mainly because he had no clothes on! He was a devoted nudist by inclination.

Maybe we were staring but for some reason it seemed he felt the need to explain. “I hope it doesn’t bother you that I don’t wear clothes around the place” and went on “I am getting over this nasty rash and the air helps it to heal”. The fact he had no clothes on did not bother us as we frequented a nude beach in Santa Barbara California where we lived. “No, not at all”, we chimed together. But I was a little concerned about somehow catching that rash.

Peter pointed to my bauxite covered pants and asked, “How did that happen?” Where upon Frank and Peter digressed into a patwa back and forth that neither my wife nor I understood a word except for the laughs which were in perfect English. “Well, you better get a shower right away as they lock off the water up here at 9:00pm”, said Peter pointing towards the side of the house. “And, you can set your tent up there”, indicating a spot on that same side of the house. My wife said she would put up the tent while I showered. Gus, from the verandah offered to help her so they carried the backpacks over to the camp site.

The water was ice cold and the mountain air not that much warmer as I tried to make a quick but thorough removal of the sticky red soil from my body. My wife was sitting on the stoop outside the shower area talking with Peter as she had completed setting up the small two-person pup tent. I think I should explain at this juncture that I was a rather conservative, Corporate Accountant for a Fortune 500 company who wore a suit and tie much of the time and my wife was the adventurous, outgoing half of our dynamic duo.

She was getting the lay of the land, the whaagwans and the inside scoop to which I occasionally cringed at her directness while I was standing under the water pipe listening. I was more uptight about sharing and asking questions with someone I had just met. My opinion of Peter was that even though he was a Naturist, Naturalist, and an Environmentalist, he was also a Capitalist. It seemed that everything he asked us if we wanted cost a dollar. We dubbed him “the one-dollar man”.

As I was toweling off and slipping into a pair of shorts, t shirt and sandals, Peter asked my wife, “Would you guys like a drink?” “Yes”, she said. “One Dollar each?”, he replied. “Okay”, she said. He showed her a bottle of rum he distilled himself and went over to a tree in the yard and picked a pink grapefruit before returning to the kitchen to mix a drink. “Want a smoke?”, came from the kitchen. “Okay”, I said walking over to the stoop. “One Dollar each?” Okay, now I got the drill. “Thanks”, I said.

Settling down to a smoke for me and a drink for the two of us, my wife asked, “What do you guys do for excitement?”