Hey, Miss Bassgirl
A punk bassist’s unexpected journey into the world of naturism
Editor’s note:
This story was originally published in the anthology Beneath Healing Skies and is reprinted here with permission. The typical licensing fee for this story’s publication here was paid forward to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) by request of the author in support of their lifesaving work by.
Hey, Miss Bassgirl is a work of fiction and is being published as part of Stories, Planet Nude’s new platform for original naturist fiction and narrative writing.
All four of us in the band acknowledged that the experience had been good for us. So, it had been the wrong audience for the material we played. The crowd were all, except a few young kids, much older than us. We had been playing Punk Rock to a crowd that had mainly grown up on Cliff and the Shadows, like my Mum. However, they had invited us to play, and we needed a gig of some sort.
It was our first public performance. I am not sure how we had landed it. We had been rehearsing for months and felt it was time for us to get out there, to play before an adoring crowd. One of the guys must have mentioned it to someone. It has to have been one of the guys, I’m the only girl in the band, and I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. So ‘he’ had mentioned it to somebody, and they had passed the news on. Eventually, the news must have reached Flatlands Sun Club, because their Secretary had phoned asking if we would play this gig.
We had been desperately nervous about the gig. Playing in front of an audience. Our first public performance. An audience of mainly naked people. It had been a daunting prospect, but we were all pleased we had accepted the challenge. I couldn’t imagine the crowd at the Hole in The Ground Club being more intimidating, and they were all hard-core punk rockers! All we had to do was imagine them naked! Just so long as they weren’t imagining me naked.
One of the younger women from the naturist club had chatted to us while the amps and drum kit were loaded onto the barrow and wheeled to the gate, ready to be loaded into John’s big brother’s van and driven away. Like all the other people we had encountered, she had been friendly. Naked and friendly. She had invited us to stay on for the rest of the afternoon. “Unless you want to go in the pool” she had explained, “There is no need to get nude!”
The boys had laughed and said ‘no thanks’. I was rather glad they had made that decision. I might have been a member of the band, but I was still the butt of a lot of teasing. I got it, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
I suppose I could blame my parents. They were the ones who called me Philomena. I mean, who in their right mind gives a girl a name like that nowadays? Half the kids in my infants school couldn’t pronounce it; “Phil” or “Philly” was as close as they could get. Then their older siblings turned Philly into Filly and I became Horsie.
“Gee-up, Horsie!” was bad enough, until I tried the other end of my name, ‘Meana’. “Meaner than what?”
I gave up and went back to being Filly and started eating like a horse. Nobody would have ever paid attention to Fatty Filly except …
Except I developed faster and more fully than most of the other girls in the class. The boys had certainly noticed. It became almost a rite of passage for the boys to grab me by the boob. Which turned into a tale about how I had let them ‘cop a feel.’ Free Feel Filly’ or ‘Free Effs’ the second of which turned into even worse teasing.
I put on more weight to discourage the increasingly nasty attention I was getting.
Through all this the one thing that had kept me sane was music. I love music. I sang in the school choir. I played the cello in the orchestra. I wanted to play the violin, but they said my fingers were too fat! Besides, the cello meant I could hide in the back row.
One afternoon, during sixth form, I had walked into the school music room where Kenny and a couple of other guys were trying out a bass player for their group. The guy was useless, and I said so. “OK, you do better!” they challenged. I picked up the double bass that was in the corner of the room and left the guy with a bass guitar speechless before walking out.
Two years later I was in the music shop, looking for sheet music, when I saw Kenny pinning up a notice. I wandered, all casual like, over and peered over his shoulder. “Still looking for a bass player then Kenny?”
“Filly?” I had decided that being ‘Fat Fil’ wasn’t going to get me promoted at work and wasn’t doing me any favours in the dating game. I had managed to shed a few inches everywhere except around the hips.
“Yes, Kenny, it is me. Still trying to get that band off the ground then?”
“A different band, none of the guys from school wanted to get into the new wave music.”
“What, the punk stuff?”
“Do you fancy the gig then? I remember you being pretty good.”
That is how I came to be playing the bass guitar in ‘K-Nup’ as we called ourselves. The rest of the band, John and Terry were enthusiastic but far from great musicians: Terry could count to four and chew gum while bashing around a drum kit. John shouted and screamed abuse with the best of them. Kenny and I supplied the music. I loved rehearsing. Even the jokes about the ‘big-bottomed bass’ parts were good-natured. Not that … I mean, I had lost a lot of weight and I planned to stand right at the back and hide behind my bass and the microphone stand. We had already discovered that our shouting and spitting vocalist needed a bit of support in holding a tune.
Which brings us back to the gig. “It’s a gig innit and even if we are rubbish, who is going to say to their mates, ‘We saw K-Nup at a nudie colony and they were crap’, even if we are!” Terry, who acted as the band’s (non) intellectual, decided. “We are on to a no-lose one here!”
I was going to be hiding at the back, in a corner, behind my bass guitar, besides, who was going to be looking at me with all those naked bodies around the place?
That morning I had dressed in my black outfit. Black, it was a deliberate choice, camouflage to help me hide in corners. I loaded my bass and amp into John’s brother’s van and climbed in with the guys. The others were all dressed to be forgotten too. There were a lot of nervous jokes and twitches as we pulled up at the nudist club gates.
“Get your equipment unloaded here. You can’t take the van in, we don’t have enough parking space inside,” the old boy who met us announced. “There are a couple of barrows you can use to take that stuff to the stage area.”
“Not a problem mate. I have work to do today,” John’s brother responded. “I’ll be back at six to pick you up. Be careful not to get your bits burnt!” Then turning to me he added, “I’ll bring some aftersun in case you need it, love!”
‘Two chances, mate, fat and none.’ I thought but until my gear and I were home safely, I wasn’t going to tell him.
As I said earlier, the gig wasn’t a great success. The wrong audience, but we had learnt a lot from the day. For example, we would need a new van driver. John, the singer, had lost his bottle in front of the crowd. I had found mine after a fashion, add singer to bass player; so much for hiding in the background.
The crowd remained polite enough, they clapped at the end of each song and refrained from booing. Then that woman made a point of coming over and talking to me as we were packing up. At first I found it a little unsettling talking to a naked woman. I mean, apart from shouted comments in the swimming pool changing rooms, it isn’t something I do every day. “Have you got any talc? I forgot mine ... Thanks” was about the longest conversation I have ever had with a naked woman.
This lady seemed genuinely interested in me and asked lots of questions. After a few minutes I forgot about her being naked and I was telling her all sorts of private stuff. I even told her how impressed I had been, seeing all the different women here. There were ladies with wrinkles, rolls and scars, all enjoying themselves, not giving a shit about other people seeing them without clothes. None of that dressing to impress or to minimise and not being worried about their shape and imperfections. As she put it, “None of us are perfect.”
That thought was going around in my head for the rest of the day. She was an ordinary-looking woman. Not the sort of beauty that stops people in their tracks. She was pretty enough, a little bit thick around the waist, dark not blonde. Apart from her Welsh accent, I doubted whether I would even recognise her if we were to meet in a supermarket queue. How come she has the confidence to come up to a complete stranger and hold a conversation, while I hide from girls I had been to school with?
Did it have anything to do … I fell asleep with that question going around in my head.
I hadn’t slept well when I woke up early Sunday morning. Dreams, all sorts of dreams. None that could be called nightmares, but I could remember that they had been unsettling. Naked people had been a bit of a theme. I lay there, the sun streaming through the weave of my curtains. The sounds of the rest of the family moving around in the Sunday ritual. I must have dozed off, an image of me arriving at work naked and being greeted by my colleagues, “Looking good, Phil!” “Filly, I love the new look!”
By the time I had washed, put on my face, dressed, and got downstairs for breakfast, I had a plan. All I had to do was get on my bike and put it into action.
“Where are you going, Philly-me-gal?” Dad was pottering around in the garden as I dragged my bike out of the shed.
“I’m going to look for my guitar strap, Dad. I left it somewhere yesterday.” I wasn’t going to tell him where I was going.
“You’d better find it, Sweetheart. It cost your Gran a lot of money!” I knew that I hadn’t expected her to buy me a hand-tooled leather guitar strap when she asked what I wanted for Christmas.
“There are only a few places it can be, Dad.” Rolled up in the case alongside my bass for instance. “That is why I want to check them out before someone else does.” Two quick scoots and I was pedalling away.
I have lived all my life in this part of town but I never knew there was a nudist club – I’d been warned not to call it a colony – just a couple of miles away. It was nearly five miles according to the gadget I had got for my thirteenth birthday. It had seemed shorter in the van.
I pressed the intercom button on the gate. I was going through with this, I wasn’t cycling ten miles for nothing. I could tell my leg muscles were going to make me pay tomorrow, so I might as well complete my quest.
“Hi, yes, erm.” A good response to the simple greeting. Try again! “Yes, my name is Filly, I was here yesterday, a part of the band. I think I left something here.” My sanity perhaps, then nothing ventured and, well I had escaped unscathed yesterday.
“OK, someone will be down to let you inside.” That was it, I was in. All I had to do was to wander around a bit and … and what? The door hinges squealed as a small door in the main gate was pulled open.
“All alone, love?” The middle-aged man looked around. “Bring your bike in for safety.” He helped me fit my cycle through the narrow opening and pointed to where I could prop it against a tree. It was the closest I had ever been to a naked man except, well you know.
“I think I left a guitar strap here yesterday. It is rather special, that is why I cycled over here first thing.”
“Well, nobody handed one in but I guess you know where you went. Come to the office when you have found it and someone will let you out.” That was it. I was alone in a nudist club. What next?
I started my ‘search’ by walking towards the area where the stage had stood. Only an area of flattened grass and a pile of scaffolding and planks gave any clue to yesterday’s event. I scuffled around a bit pretending to be looking for something rather than at the people emerging from tents and caravans and heading to the shower block. They were carrying towels and wash bags and nothing else. They would wave to couples going the other way, sometimes stopping to have a conversation.
Time to move on before someone spotted me staring. I followed my feet lost in…
“Hello!” I turned around, and saw a woman of Mum’s age sitting in a chair outside a caravan. “Do you fancy a cuppa? My husband has gone off with one of the work parties, and to be honest I’m a little bit lonely. Please say you will.” She pointed to a second canvas chair. “Bring that one over while I fetch a mug.”
I pulled the chair up to the table while she got to her feet and walking, very delicately, stepped into the caravan and fetched a mug from a cupboard. She returned holding herself erect, an arm across her abdomen. “I recently had a hysterectomy,” she explained, “I’m still supposed to be at home resting but I was going stir crazy. Help yourself to milk and sugar.” As I reached for the milk I caught sight of a red slash across her belly, where her pubic hair would normally be.
“The surgeon did a neat job of stitching me up,” she must have seen me looking. She arched back in her seat. “Do you think I should try to grow the hair back to cover the scar or keep trimming and show it off, a battle scar?”
“I don’t know, what does your husband say?” I was out of my very shallow depth.
“Howard? He keeps saying it is my body, my choice but … Well, it is my body and I think I might stay shaven for a while longer before I let him talk me into growing it back. We have to let men have these small victories … Oh my goodness! I don’t know your name. I am Harriet, Harri.”
“I am Filly short for Philomena.” Hold on Filly, you don’t give out your name that easily normally. Now, I was sharing it with a woman I had only known for a few minutes. Someone who had shown me her recent scar and discussed her personal grooming choices with me. My real name was small change in this transaction.
“So, what brings you here, Filly?”
“I was in the band that played yesterday, I might have left my guitar strap behind.” Well, I might have, that I hadn’t was immaterial, I might have so it wasn’t a lie.
“A little loud for my taste I’m afraid, I’m more of a Beatles fan myself.”
We had been chatting about music for an hour or more when Harrisuddenly announced, “I mustn’t keep you any longer. You must be dying to go for a swim or to carry on with your search. I think I need to have a lie-down; I still get very tired.”
She assured me she was fine and an hour on the bed would sort her out. “The pool is that way.” She pointed as she disappeared into the caravan. Lacking a reason to choose a different direction I went the way she had indicated.
The pool was surrounded by naked people and full of children. Laughing, shouting and sometimes screaming children, jumping and diving into the water and splashing each other. Naked children. I was the only person who had clothes on.
“Unless you want to go in the pool.” The words of the woman I spoke with yesterday came back to me. I would go and look somewhere else.
I found my feet drawn to a small stand of trees. It was getting warm. I needed to think. I suppose I had been expecting to be horrified and hurried off out of the club. It hadn’t happened. Now what?
First I was going to get comfortable. I slipped my feet out of my shoes. Bliss. I took off the cardigan I had put on early that morning and spread it under the tree and sat down in the dappled shade.
Feeling more relaxed, I mulled over what I had experienced so far. I had seen dozens of bodies, tall or short, thin or fat, young or old, male or female and they all looked remarkably similar. I had been befriended by a woman who was thinking about showing off her ‘battle’ scar to the world.
The sun had shifted and was getting stronger, I was getting hotter. “I suppose I could take off my jeans, I have coloured knickers on, they’ll look like bikini bottoms at a distance.’ I stood up, unfastened my belt, and the button on my jeans. I was looking around before undoing the zip when the stupidity of my actions struck me. I was in a nudist club’s grounds. Somewhere where I could be naked legally. Even if someone saw me, it would be unremarkable in this setting.
‘And face it, Gel, you are never going to have a chance to do it again.’ It wasn’t something I thought I’d hear my dad saying, even in my head. Then he claimed his motto was ‘It is better to regret doing than not doing!’ A philosopher, my dad.
I looked around again, quickly dropped my jeans and pulled my top off, then dived onto my cardigan. Before I did a ‘John’ and lost my bottle, I wriggled out of my knickers and unhitched my bra.
The release. Taking off my bra at the end of the day was always an ‘Ahhh!’ moment. This was …
I stretched out on my clothing, closed my eyes and listened to the breeze in the leaves overhead, the birds singing and, Joni Mitchell was right, the hissing of summer lawns. I could feel the air stirring my intimate hair and the sun pricking my skin, all of my skin. I relaxed, unwinding right back to my childhood and …
“There you are!” I woke, startled by a voice, a woman’s voice. Before I could react a towel hit the turf next to me. “You don’t mind me joining you, I heard you were on the club grounds. I wanted to run an idea past you.” A naked blonde plonked herself on the towel.
Blonde, a little less pear-shaped than me, five maybe ten years older but still young-looking. I recognised her from somewhere, ‘Look that is Filly, I saw her naked at the cl …’ It wasn’t going to happen. My panic subsided.
“I’m Maggie, I was playing the keyboard for Justine, the singer, yesterday.”
“Oh, yes. I thought I recognised you. I’m Filly.” There I went again, giving out unsolicited information to naked strangers,
“You were playing bass and singing. Punk? is that the sort of music you are into?”
“Sort of, I was just thinking about Joni Mitchell, I play classical cello, sing in a choir and I discovered, after yesterday’s problem with our frontman, I enjoy performing.” I had only realised that truth in the past minute. However, that it was absolutely true, I knew to my core. On stage, in front of a crowd, I wasn’t Fat Filly, I was … I was Neana, singer and queen of the bass.
“Good, would you be interested in doing something different?”
“How do you mean different?”
“You as the bassist and lead vocalist, me on keys and backing vocals. I know a good drummer and lead guitarists are ten-a-penny. We can advertise, is the guy who was with ..”
“Kenny? No the punk thing was his idea.”
“No emotional entanglement?”
“No way, that’s not to say he wouldn’t use me to add another notch on his bedpost.” He had tried once or twice but I’d fended him off easily enough.
“Men!” Maggie grinned, “I wonder if we can find a girl guitarist.”
“I’d prefer a man.” That grin had worried me.
“Me too,” Maggie smirked, “don’t worry, I am thinking how different it would be, an all-girl lineup.”
“You mean the drummer is a girl too? I thought they were like hen’s teeth!”
“Yep, Debs is short and chunky but all woman!”
“What sort of material are you thinking of doing?” I wasn’t that concerned, I could see Maggie and I getting on like a house on fire.
“Stuff you’ve never heard. Lots of synths and organ stuff. I write a lot. And the clever thing is if we turn the volume down … we can do background music for dinner dances. Nice regular gigs before we hit the big time! I can get us The Club Christmas party, maybe Halloween if I get enough numbers sorted out in time!” Maggie was getting excited.
“Guitarists like playing loud.” I pointed out.
“True, maybe another keyboard player …” Maggie went quiet, her head and fingers moving to a silent melody. “Yes, that might be it!”
“Just one fly in the ointment.” I didn’t want to get all fired up only to discover an insurmountable obstacle in the way. “I am not a member of The Club.”
“I can get my husband to fix that, he’s on the committee.”
“And I’m not sure I want to be. I’m not a nudist.”
“Yesterday you weren’t the frontwoman of a punk band.” Maggie jumped to her feet. “Come on let’s go get a drink to toast the new band!”
She grabbed my hand and pulled me, totally willingly, to my feet. “My clothes …”
“…Will still be there when you come back!” She gave a gentle tug and we were heading for the clubhouse. “Don’t be surprised if you get one or two looks from men in particular. Few people have your presence.”
“Presents?” I slowed momentarily.
“Heads turning as you walk into a room, that sort of presence. It started to come out when you were on stage yesterday and I watched it grow as you became more confident in your skin while we were talking.”
“Then you’d better start referring to me by my stage name … Neana, Singer and Queen of The Bass.”
Maggie dragged the clubhouse door open and, in a loud voice, announced my arrival, “Ladies and Gentlemen put your hands together and give a big naked welcome to Neana, Queen of The Bass!
People turned towards us, someone shouted “Yay! Neana!!” Then the applause started as I walked into the room and I loved it! I had come a long way from dressing in black and hiding in the shadows to being Naked Neana, band frontwoman, in barely two days under the healing sky! 🪐
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Thanks for the kind words, Tim.
I love the Joni Mitchell homage.