Three Nude Beaches... with Vasco Q
- LIAM C.
- Apr 17, 2016
- 2 min read
Vasco Q met us at our hotel in Lisbon, the lovely My Story Hotel Rossio, and then drove us down to Beach 19, Lisbon's best known gay beach, also including a nude beach. We were shooting in January, and even though it was positively balmy to me (from England) and to my assistant Andriy (from Ukraine), 22 degrees C was still too cold to get the Portuguese onto the beach. So we had the place to ourselves, apart from a few occasional joggers and dog-walkers. Unfortunately, Vasco didn't want to strip for the camera, but he promised that if I returned to Lisbon in summer, he'd take me to Beach 19 and go bare.
(By the way, there's also a wooded cruising ground near the car park that I did see a few guys wandering into. It seems that January isn't too cold for outdoor cruising!)
The day reminded me of the first time I went to a nude beach. It was way back when I was 20 and it was to San Francisco's Baker Beach. Neither me or my boyfriend were committed to stripping off - we just wanted to check the place out. It was an unseasonably hot winter Saturday and the beach was teeming with people. Honestly, the crowds kinda freaked me out, especially all the children. It's not that I thought there was something inappropriate about it, but children are curious and they tend to stare. And I hate being the centre of attention for any aged audience. So we stayed clothed, the only two lads on the whole beach with our swimmers on.
It was many years later 'til I arrived again at a nude beach. But this time I had no idea I was going to a nude beach until I arrived. Back when I was living in Warsaw a couple years ago, my friend Tom invited me and my mate Paweł to the beach. The word "nude" or "nagi" didn't feature in the conversation. When we got there, we joined a group of Tom's friends who'd arrived earlier. Both, totally cute and totally naked, were laying on a patch of sand. We took a spot next to them, and not wanting to be the centres of attention for not being naked, Paweł and I took it all off... but the whole time we were there we never flipped onto our backs. Only our bums ever were exposed. Embarrassing!
I'm pretty ashamed of myself to be honest. And I'm ready to truly bare all the next time I'm at a nude beach. I'm done with shyness.
Elska Boy: Vasco Q
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Photographer: Liam Campbell
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