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Gutter Balls

Adventures in naked bowling.

By Jared Klaus 

Tallmadge Lanes looks like any other bowling alley -- cheap wood veneers, a yellowed menu board of snacks, and blond wooden lanes shined to reflection.

The people here this afternoon look like any other bowlers. They're blue collar guys, secretaries, social workers, and professors.

Yet normality ends when the clock strikes 2 p.m. The owner locks the front door. Suddenly, jackets, jeans, T-shirts, and bras start hitting the floor. Everywhere you look there are penises, pubic hair, and bare behinds.

Welcome to nude bowling. It's not the Caligula image you have of nudists -- the requisite guys with porn mustaches and balls sprayed with Aqua Velva, playing volleyball, drinking schnapps, and goosing each other's wives. These are old gray guys with bellies and shrinkage, women with surgery scars and cellulite, replete with the faint tang of body odor and Lysol-sprayed shoes. In other words, it's just Sunday bowling -- au naturel.

"What happens when people are naked, you're on a level playing field," says Saragene, a medical claims clerk with a shirt that reads "You Say Bitch Like It's a Bad Thing."

She's one of about 200 members of Northcoast Naturists, the nudist club that's been gathering here twice a month for the last seven years. They also hold naked wine tastings, naked swims at a Rocky River fitness club, and, of course, "canuding" (that's nude canoeing) on the Tuscarawas River. The group even holds its monthly board meetings naked.

"When you get this bunch together, it's hard to keep 'em in their clothes," says Alan McIlwain, a wiry physicist from Case Western Reserve.

Many here were nudists back when their straight friends were wearing padded shoulders and power suits. Now, as they enter their golden years, this is just another adventure in a life spent touring nudist resorts around the country. They're not here to fulfill some perverse fantasy of bowling with their junk hanging out. They just like to bowl, so they had to find a place that let them do it naked.

One slender man attempts to look graceful, bringing the ball back and releasing it in an almost Da Vincian motion, holding his body in a Superman pose as the ball kisses the gutter, then comes back for a strike. Another man, pushing 300 pounds and wearing a knee-brace, heaves the ball like he's throwing a dog off a bridge.

"There's no model among us," says Nancy, the club president. "We're all regular people."

Saragene lets her body tell her life story -- scars on both breasts from cancer operations, another scar that forms a belt from hip to hip. Others here are similarly wounded. The soon-to-be grandmother lifts up her shirt, proudly showing herself off like a quilt. "You're either comfortable with who you are or you're not," she says.

Yet there's a reason why the owner has to lock the front door. Were a family to unwittingly walk in from the "textile" world (that's nudist lingo for wearing clothes), they might not find the confidence level so refreshing. Even Saragene's kids aren't so laissez-faire about Mom traipsing around in her birthday suit. "They're like, 'No! No! No! We don't want to hear about it,'" she says.

A quick look at all the gray hair and pendants inscribed with "Grandma" might lead you to believe the naturists are in a parallel universe, somewhere between midlife crises, menopause, and dementia. But then there's Jim, a handsome, 26-year-old telecommunications worker from Lake County.

He doesn't mind the absence of equally hot 26-year-old naturist women or, for that matter, the lack of any woman here too young to be his mother. He's just glad that since he joined the group last year, he doesn't have to settle for walking around nude in his bedroom at his parents' house. "I've never really liked wearing clothes," he says.

But his parents aren't so sold. Jim had the embarrassing experience recently of being caught by his mom and stepdad with a nudie magazine -- N, the national magazine for naturist living. He'd left it lying out on his bed.

"Right now I think the shock value is setting in," says Jim. "They were shocked that I would have the confidence to do it."

Terry, a 60-year-old social worker and mother of 12, wishes she could borrow some of that confidence right now. Her boyfriend brought her to her first nude swim last week. But now there's no water to hide under. She's not quite ready to take off her bottom yet, so she wears a little black skirt, tied loosely at the side. Her palms are sweaty, and she's getting goose bumps like a teenager at a high-school dance. "This is my first time. I'm a little nervous."

"Terry, you're up," one of the men says. She walks rigidly to the ball, gingerly rolls it down the lane, and gets a strike. "Ahhh!!!" she screams, her flesh bouncing up and down as she hops back to her new friends. "Did you see that? I knocked 'em all down!"

Suddenly the owner comes back on the microphone. It's 4:30 -- time to go textile again. This part of the day is a "real downer," says McIlwain. Everything is so much easier when you're naked -- there's no concern about privacy, and packing for vacations is a lot easier. "You're not worried about anyone seeing your jammies," he says.

Terry, decent now-- to the outside world -- is busy jotting down the phone numbers of her new friends. She learned how to bowl today, and she did it naked. But it wasn't so bad. "They're all looking at the bowling," she says. "They're not looking at the bodies."

To see a photo gallery from this story, go to http://slideshow.clevescene.com