Uncle Mike: The Nudist Babysitter by C. Christine Fair

No crime or indiscretion was beyond the grasp of my ex-step-uncle, Mike. He was a rapscallion par excellence. Christmases frequently involved going up to the Kendallville jail to bail him out of some Christmas Eve criminal chicanery. He did it all. Alcohol. Drugs. Pot. Philandering. No female was too young or too old for his lechery. Uncle Mike was Nam-addlepated, as evidenced by his beliefs about what comprises appropriate decorum. He loomed large in his bellbottoms. Like his brother, my stepfather, he was indomitable at six feet four, sporting a scruffy and untamed afro. He was rangy with his ass-crack permanently affixed above the jeans that struggled to hug his slender hips. He perpetually smelled of his beloved weed. He lived life to the fullest. He was going to squeeze all from this life that he could. And for the most part, he succeeded.

Mike, because of these virtues, was the best babysitter. A frequenter of nudist beaches, he was unable to have his film developed at the local Walgreens because Walgreens didn’t develop nude pictures. So, he built a dark room in one of his closets and taught my little brother, Joe, and me how to develop film. We were eight and six years old, respectively. Mike would be smoking weed while we were in the darkroom, marveling at what Uncle Mike saw and photographed. We learned early on that nudists are never the people you actually want to see naked. If our efforts satisfied Uncle Mike—and they always did—he would let us feed hamburger to his two piranhas.

On another babysitting escapade, Uncle Mike enlisted us to suitably appoint his Shaggin’ Wagon. I was eleven by now, and Joe was nine. Uncle Mike had a brown van that he wanted to use to impress his ladies, or so he explained. With the wisdom of adulthood, “impress” is not the verb I would choose today. He had a reem of padding and faux leather, each and many clear, plastic rosettes with tiny nails. He taught us how to staple the padding to the sheets of plywood he somehow managed to attach to the sides and ceiling of the van. After we stapled the padding, we next applied the faux leather. Finally, in staggered rows, at regular intervals, we nailed the rosettes into the leather to create the puffy effect Uncle Mike sought. It was, I had hoped, a valuable life skill. I imagined myself suitably appointing my own Shaggin’ Wagon when I grew up. While my brother and I toiled, Uncle Mike reclined in a lawn chair, drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and smoking a joint while overseeing our labors.

And then came the pièce de résistance: the waterbed. Joe and I dutifully slogged the empty waterbed into the van and watched as Uncle Mike dragged the hose to the van and began filling what he called his “love pad.” Uncle Mike didn’t take much physics in school, and he didn’t appreciate how heavy waterbeds are when full. At some point, we watched in horror as the van collapsed upon its tires. Uncle Mike was so high he wasn’t even angry. But the Shaggin’ Wagon was not destined to have a waterbed…or suspension, it would appear.

On another occasion, my mother answered the phone. It was Uncle Mike. He was in a bad way. As a part of his nudist commitments, Uncle Mike did not wear undergarments. High as usual, he went to relieve himself in the loo at the community college where he was using his Vietnam-Era GI Bill purportedly to get a degree. In the bathroom, while attempting to zip his pants, his scrotum became stuck in the zipper. He needed Mom to pick him up. So, she loaded us into her not-so-trusty red Pinto and drove to the college. Uncle Mike sheepishly limped and grunted his way to the car with a book covering his exposed and injured ball sack. We then drove to the emergency room, where the bemused staff released his bruised and bloodied manly bits from the offending zipper.

One of my last memories of Uncle Mike came in the fall when I was twelve. One year later, Mom would divorce his brother, and he would no longer be my uncle. Once again, Mom got a call from the police. We all knew Uncle Mike had been up to some shenanigans because who else would occasion a call from the police? The police told us to bring some clothes for him, which we dutifully did. Mom didn’t even bother asking questions. Every manner of hijinks was in Uncle Mike’s performance envelope. When we arrived on the scene, the fireman explained that Uncle Mike had fallen asleep naked in bed while smoking a joint. He woke up to find his mattress on fire. There were no cell phones in 1983, so he ran outside, and in his stoned stupor, he didn’t even call the fire department before he left. As flames licked the outside of the apartment building, distressed neighbors called the fire department. When the firemen arrived, they found a stunned, stoned, and very naked Uncle Mike. All six feet four inches of naked Uncle Mike became the second most alarming attraction at the scene.

As the dust settled, we learned that Uncle Mike had no insurance, and he would have to face legal action from his landlord. It was unclear to me how or why, but Uncle Mike moved to Alaska to abscond from legal responsibility for burning down his apartment complex. The last I had heard of him before he died, he was living with his elderly father in an 18-wheeler trailer that he had converted into his home and electrified with a windmill. He and his dad occasionally hunted bears and other animals. I wondered about the kinds of folks one encounters in nudist colonies in Alaska.