Promiscuous Mixed Bathing

Wow. It's really getting hot. Summer is upon us. Gone are the springy, refreshing days of weeks past and now we are in the throes of the languid summer afternoon. Time, to be sure, to cool off down at the old swimmin' hole.

In shifts. An hour apart.

In many Nazirene households, it was impermissible to go swimming, unless of course, you were with persons of the same sex. Girls were allowed to feel the cooling waters of Grand Lake St. Marys at times other than their baptism, only if they were properly attired.

Unlike the harlots that clutter the streets of Hollywood, California like styrofoam packing peanuts on the Post Office floor, a woman of true holiness would never wear an actual bathing suit. On the contrary. The only proper dress for such occasions is in fact, a dress.

For years, there was a folkloric prohibition against "promiscuous mixed bathing", promulgated in some or other version of the Manual. My knowledge of our faithful sisters dog paddling in their polyester frocks is thus second hand. I totally, however, embrace its veracity. If I were prone to wicked imaginations, my mind's eye would conjure images of holiness chicks floating about the lake on pontoons fashioned from their gathered skirts.

Sadly, I am not apt to envision women swimming in any manner, and think that perhaps the moratorium on intersex aquatics was something most of my fellow Naza-queers found fabulous!

Were I to conceive of such a scene, I immediately go to images of those Morman offshoot sects. It was strange when I saw the pictures of polygamist compounds and their women in home-fashioned togs, I felt an embarrassing affinity to them. Their separatist ways and tacky Victorian vestments seemed to me decidedly Nazirene.

What made me think of this thing, this day? France has declared the burqas of extreme Islam to be unacceptable - and recommends the outlaw of the full-swaddled fashion. "In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity," stated French President Sarkozy.

Where the hell were the French when those poor Nazirene girls were soaked to their corsets in pond water, necklines shielding them from even the romotest chance of sunburn? Damn the frogs, you can never really count on them, can you.

Now. Wait an hour then the boys can get in the pool.