I’ve made it a ritual to travel the 90 kilometres to a spa/resort in Germany’s Hochsauerland for their “lange Saunanacht” [long sauna night] on the first Saturday of every month, but I wasn’t able to the last two times because I was ill in February and a friend of mine invited me to a party on 1 March to celebrate his birthday. On 2 March I ended up going to a spa in the next town with two friends to “detox” from the night before and to make up for “lost clothesfree resort time”. While we were sitting in a whirlpool between sauna sessions the topic of doing another clothesfree DVD/BluRay night came up; we’d had a few over the past few years, but it had been a while since the last one.

As the other two had hosted the last two DVD nights and one of them had had us all over for a “nude Wii tournament” in November [I placed third, for those keeping score], I offered to host the DVD get-together at my place. In the following paragraphs I would like to recount some of the difficulties and positive experiences I had in my role as host. Maybe they’ll be helpful if you should ever decide to play host yourself.

Hiccup 1, the films: One would think the greatest difficulty in getting a group of eight people between the ages of 20 and 49 together for an at home naturist event would be setting a date; in our case it was pretty simple and most of the people I invited were able to come on the date I’d chosen. As it turns out, the greatest difficulty we had was trying to decide which films to watch! Some people wanted to watch action/thriller stuff, others wanted comedies, and two people were of the unwavering opinion that at a “naturist get-together” the films have to have a “naturist theme”. After 45 minutes of discussion and several rounds of “rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock” [Don’t ask.] we ended up watching one film from each genre.

Hiccup 2, the temperature: Although the winter here in Germany was rather mild this year, it seemed to be an almost futile task trying to get the temperature in the flat “just right” for everyone. I liken the experience to sitting in a room full of Mama Bears and Papa Bears as far as the temperature goes – just as often as it was too hot for some of them, it was too cold for other guests. I came to the conclusion that no matter how often I open the balcony door to let fresh, cool air in, there’s always going to be someone who says the place is “uncomfortably warm”. I considered tilting the door in at the top or leaving it slightly ajar, but, for those who haven’t been to Germany yet, let me tell you that Germans are extremely sensitive to any kind of air movement and will rain down a volley of objections of biblical proportions upon you [Es zieht! Mein Nacken! Mein Kreislauf! Þ There’s a draught! My neck! My poor circulation!] as soon as they notice the slightest hint of what most people would call a “refreshing breeze”.

Positive Experience 1: The chats between the films over healthy and not-so-healthy snacks, four delivered pizzas, and a variety of drinks were spectacular; the guests mingled well and the party, if you choose to call it that, continued long after the last film was done and everyone seemed to have a good time. Speaking only for myself, I have to say that those conversations were the highlight of the evening for me.

Positive Experience 2: Four of the eight guests stayed the night [I won’t allow guests to drink and drive] and we all had a clothesfree breakfast/brunch the next morning. The last guest got dressed and left around 2pm. It was a great way to finish off the gathering and I can confirm the old axiom is true that states people discuss different topics at different times of day: the breakfast talk was just as good as the conversations the night before, but the topics were completely different. It rounded out the experience quite nicely.

Curator’s note: if you have or plan to have a clothes free DVD night or other home clothes free gathering share it here