Chapter 2

Thoughts of Tom’s experience last year in Munich—was it only a year ago?—ran through his mind. “Yeah, almost the same thing happened to me in Munich last August ... We were living there ‘cause Dad got a promotion and we had to move to Germany... ”

He became lost in thought as the memories of that time formed in his mind.

Duncan’s bank had promoted him to a director’s position, assigning him to manage the bank’s European Union Common Market financial planning activities. This required him to move to Germany; their Munich offices coordinated most of those activities for northern Europe. After the year’s assignment was complete, Duncan would assume his new management position in London, working in the bank’s Common Market division handling the bank’s financial activities in all of Europe, as well as the bank’s activities related to the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the E.U.

Tom had become an avid bicyclist after several years of riding with his dad and his brother Andrew and had continued to keep his brother company on Andrew’s morning runs. Lynette, wanting to share in everything her step-brother did, also had begun bicycling and running with him and thus, soon after they had settled into their Munich rental—the bank had arranged a one-year rental of a house in the Hasenbergl district of north Munich, convenient to the school that the three children would attend—the step-siblings began taking extended bicycle rides in the city.

On a warm day in late August, a week before classes at their school were to begin, Tom and Lynette decided to bicycle out to Feldmochinger See Park, a city park with a large lake located about five miles from their home. They took a light blanket to sit on and packed lunches. Then they set out on their bike ride.

After arriving at the park, they found a scenic spot and spread out their blanket. The spot they had chosen was on a lawn overlooking the lake. While watching boaters on the lake, joggers passing by, and kids playing on the lawn, they ate their lunches. After an hour of relaxing in the warm sun, they decided to pack up so that they could ride around the lake and explore the park.

When they rode around to the lake’s southern shore, Tom pointed to a sign which had an arrow pointing in the direction they were traveling.

“Look, Lynnie, it says we’re headed to ‘FKK-Bereich,’ what’s that? I don’t remember that word bereich.”

“I know bereich, it means ‘area,’ but not what those initials are,” she responded.

They topped a small rise and looked up ahead. Tom suddenly felt faint and, quickly stopping, he almost fell off his bike. Lynette looked at him in alarm; she saw that his face had turned pale.

“Oh shit,” he breathed as he tried to quell his rising panic. “There’s naked people there!”

He turned the bike around and tried to cycle away, but was too unsteady to continue to ride, so he got off and ran with it, wheeling it along the path back over the rise of the little slope, away from the grassy beach area. Lynette followed him, very concerned.

“Tom? You okay?” she called.

He stopped a hundred yards up the path and sank to the ground as Lynette came up to him. She jumped off her bike and threw her arms around Tom. He was pale and breathing hard.

“Tom, does that naked stuff still scare you?” she asked softly. “Like when you were little?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Oh, Lynnie, why does that happen to me?” he asked plaintively. “It’s like I can’t breathe—I get dizzy and feel all tight in my chest.”

“It’s scary for you, I guess,” she said. “Your face has no color at all.” She touched his forehead. “And it’s clammy. Wait. I have an idea.”

She pulled a small towel out of her saddlebag and biked back to the lake where she got it wet. Then she returned to Tom and rolled the towel up into a compress to place on his forehead.

“Oh god, thanks,” he breathed. “That feels so good, sis.”

“Let’s rest here for a few minutes and then do you think you can ride home?”

“Yeah ... seeing that was a shock ... wasn’t expecting anything like that...” he shuddered.

Lynette giggled. “Well, I thought it was so cool ... all those guys and their things just hanging out and jiggling ... wow...”

“Oh god, please, Lynnie, don’t do that to me,” Tom pleaded. “I’m gonna ask Mom why seeing naked people still bothers me.”

“Maybe ‘cause it was unexpected?” Lynette ventured.

Tom just shrugged. After a while he felt steady enough to ride and they left for home.

Duncan and Angela were home when the kids rode up. Tom was wearing a haggard expression and Duncan noticed.

“What’s wrong, Tom?” he asked. “Everything okay? You didn’t get hurt, did you?”

“No, Dad. But there were naked people in the park when we went riding around the lake. I got that panicked feeling when I saw them.”

Lynette broke in, “His face went all white and he got too weak to ride.”

“Lynnie got me a wet towel and put it on my face,” Tom said proudly. “That really helped.”

Angela nodded. “That was exactly the right thing to do, Lynette. Good for you.”

She blushed and nodded. Then she said, “Oh, maybe you know ... just before we came to the naked people area, there was a sign, it said ... um... FFK Bereich, I think. Do you know what the abbreviation is? Bereich means ‘area,’ I know.”

Angela chuckled. “Oh dear. Duncan, remember the brochures we got when you got your Munich assignment? One of them was about the public parks. One big park here is the Englischer Garten, the English Garden...”

“Why ‘English Garden,’ Mom?” Lynette asked.

“Let me find that brochure...” She went to the desk, took out a folder, and flipped through the brochures in it. “Ah, here it is. Let’s see. Oh, it’s the biggest urban park in the world ... wow, it even has a surfing area. Look, surfers can ride a big wave on a river there. Okay, ‘English’ because it wasn’t laid out like a formal French garden but more in the landscape style of English parks. Ah. Here’s what I thought I remembered seeing. Lots of German parks are popular with nudists. That’s what I recalled reading; I read that all the German parks have nudist areas. So, Lynette, those initials are actually ‘FKK’ and stand for ‘Freikörperkultur’; it means ‘free body culture,’ and it’s the German term for nudism or naturism.”

Lynette was wide-eyed as she listened; then she asked, “You mean, people like to just go around naked?”

Angela smiled. “It’s true. Most people in Europe are very tolerant of public nudity. Lots of parks and many beaches have nudist areas. In fact, according to this flyer, here in Munich, it looks like there’s maybe a half dozen public areas where nudity is allowed. Parks mostly, but we’ll look into where the areas are so Tom can avoid them and doesn’t get another shock, okay?”

“But why Tom reacts that way, we still don’t know,” Duncan remarked. “His doc said he might outgrow it, so maybe as you get older, son, it’ll get better.”

“I sure hope,” Tom grumbled. “Feeling like that just sucks...”

When school in Munich began, Tom learned that pupils were required to shower after physical education classes. Unable to undress with the other boys and shower with them, he simply skipped showering—he even skipped being in the locker room when the showers were being used—but his skipping them was quickly noticed by the teachers.

“Mr Armstrong?” a teacher called one day as Tom was heading out of the gym, intending to dress and get out of the locker room before the boys began showering. Tom went over to the teacher.

“We’ve noticed you don’t shower. We expect that all of you pupils will shower after physical activity. Now get in there and take one!” he ordered.

Tom acted like he was going into the locker room, but instead slipped out of the main gym door. He circled around to the boys’ locker room door to the hall and went in. He couldn’t see the showers from his locker, but still, there were some boys undressing ... Averting his eyes, he got to his locker, opened it, took out his clothes, and ran out to the hall. Using a boys’ rest room down the hall, he changed back into his school uniform.

At his next gym class, the teacher was waiting for him.

“You’re still not showering,” the teacher told him. “When the class is over, I’m going to take you into the locker room and watch to make sure you shower.”

So a few minutes before the class ended, Tom slipped away unnoticed and changed back to his school clothes in the nearby boys’ room. Later that day he was called to the headmaster’s office. The gym teacher was waiting there.

“Mr Armstrong,” the headmaster said, “Mr Gronile tells me you cut gym class.”

“Sir, I was there; I just left a minute or so early to change.”

“Young man, leaving early is still a cut. Why did you leave early?”

“Mr Gronile told me he was gonna bring me into the lockers and make me shower. I can’t do that.”

The headmaster looked sharply at Tom. “And just why can’t you? What’s wrong with showering with the other boys? Next time, Mr Gronile will make sure that you go in with him.”