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The kids were larking around in the bathroom tonight with no clothes on and as much as it was funny, I felt a little bit sad too, because it won't be long now before self-consciousness kicks in and such silliness will end. It's good that that will happen of course, because there comes a point where larking around in the nude stops being cute and starts to become an issue (unless you're in a play or on TV or something, in which case it's fine) but it's sad to realise that those innocent days will soon be gone.
Though having said that if they take ofter their father they will be comfortable with nudity for some years to come. I walked around the house naked until I was much too old to be doing that. I think I stopped when I was 28 years old.
I actually don't know how old I was when I finally gave up on my at-home-nudism, but I do remember thinking I was too old to be doing it and that maybe I should put some pants on when Aunty Jean was visiting. But I still didn't. Being nude at home (or if you're in play or on TV or something) is different than being nude elsewhere, but there is only a select audience. Aunty Jean is not in that audience.
Sometimes you spot the thing that will be happening for more or less the last time and sometimes you miss it. I doubt I will carry my daughter upstairs again and I don't remember the last time I did it. My son still wants to hold my hand on the way to school, but soon he won't. I won't get a chance to mark the last occasion. The kids may lark around in the nude in the bathroom before bed time again, but not many more times. Maybe I've managed to accidentally catch that one. But remembering nude children is not something you can really talk to people about any more. Even when it's entirely innocent and wholesome. The world is so fucked up. Can't a man in showbusiness write about naked children without it seeming weird?
OK fair enough.
So the man who was once possibly on the cusp of puberty and still unselfconscious enough to be a home-nude, now feels self-conscious about even writing about nudity.
Lack of self-awareness is surely worse than lack of self-consciousness, but no one's doing anything about that. It's easy to make people self-conscious rather than self aware.
I'm not saying it's great that I was possibly 12 years old and walking round my childhood home without a stitch on, but it certainly wasn't bad. No one cared.
Weirdly the only time it felt weird being naked in Excavating Rita was when the play hadn't really caught fire and I felt like myself rather than the character and then yes, I was self-conscious. And self-aware. Maybe the only time I've been both aware and conscious at the same time. I was a naked man, failing to pretend to be someone else on stage and feeling embarrassed about. Which is what I am all the time. But only in that moment did I realise.
