The birthday suits provided in this post are those of the naked-ass florals you see blooming and showing off below. All other male nudity will be found in the links provided throughout the following post. My naked body is not ready for its close-up, Mr. DeMille, and quite frankly I’m not in a particularly exhibitionist mood – save that for the fall when there’s a bite in the air.
On this birthday, I rose for work early, but before signing on to the computer, before brewing a cup of tea, and before opening any birthday cards, I padded quietly out to the backyard and sat beside the garden. A hummingbird had caught my eye, bouncing about the salvia, and as I approached it flitted off to the nearby dogwood tree, where it perched and looked down at me, perhaps annoyingly wondering why I had disturbed its breakfast. I sat still and silently, hoping it would return, but eventually it flew away.
After a while, a few finches alighted on the cup plant, my stillness indicating safety, my quiet indicating no overt threat. They chirped and set the bright yellow flowers swaying gently in the air. Higher overhead, a blue jay soared to the evergreens across the street, while a cardinal just barely its presence known with some rustling on the edge of the roof.
And so begins my 48th year on earth – in stillness, on a shadowless and slightly-overcast morning, attended to by birds and flowers, and feeling the grounding pull of the earth beneath me. It is its own sort of meditation, a reverence and honoring of the land to which we will all one day return. Nearby, healthy bushes of rosemary and sage are ripe and ready for the harvest – they will become part of some white bean dip, or be boiled in butter lending flavor to a lovely piece of sea bass wrapped in prosciutto, and they will become part of me – the land offering its part of sustenance, and knowing that one day I will be back as part of the land, my body rotted out or burned to ashes and given once more to the earth, ready for the minerals and broken-down components of my physical being to become just another stage of the cycle. We are all a part of this great ensemble. On with previous birthday suit posts to lift the spirits…
Last year, I staged the traditional birthday suit post with some Boston boudoir shots that served to set #47 in naked motion. Later that night, this moody post was accompanied by all the skinny-dipping glory a proper birthday provides. It was a quieter affair, as these latter-day birthdays tend to inspire.
In 2021, Lizzo provided the impetus to let my ass hang out in this birthday suit post. As many birthdays do, talk turned a bit more contemplative later on in the posting day.
The first pandemic birthday suit post hit as I hit #45, and 2020’s celebration was as shitty as to be expected in such a time. Thank God for vintage birthday suit shots reminding me that we were all young once.
A rather different birthday suit was worn in 2019, to many a reader’s delight and fury. That year we celebrated in Boston, which is, I think, the last time we were in Boston for a birthday.
For 2017 and 2018, summer breaks from blogging meant no birthday posts went up, but in looking through the archives it appeared there was this summer skinny-dipping post in honor of nightswimming, so there you go.
Turning to Chapter 41 in 2016, a 41st birthday-suited butt-boy post went something like this. (Along with some birthday suit mayhem for good measure.)
That brings us to the fabled 40th birthday of 2015, well, not so much fabled since the shit actually went down. On the eve before, a bit of Madonna’s ‘Rebel Heart’ set the scene for all the naked madness which was about to unfold. Hey, 40 calls for something magnificently awful, but I opted for a more meaningful few days in Boston with Andy. This dinner at Douzo was lovely, this secret garden was enchanting, this brunch was epic, this Judy Garland suite was grand, this trip under the sea was joyous, this booty peek was cheeky, this Tom Ford gift was fabulous, this birthday suit remains a favorite, this beauty is a reminder of the preferred state of solitude that 40 invoked, and this ending was a happy one.
The year 2014 formed the last one of my 30’s, so we did it up in high NYC style. #39 felt like a purgatorial place, and purgatory is definitely how I feel about New York sometimes, but this trip went so well I’m surprised I haven’t returned for another one – maybe in 2024, ten years from when this fun adventure went down, we’ll come back. Until then, this birthday bubble bath for posteriority.
Things were simpler a decade ago, as this birthday suit post from 2013 illustrates. It was the year we went to The Mount, Edith Warthon’s Berkshires retreat, a glorious place to spend a day of contemplation. The innermost rooms of the mind are best glimpsed from the vantage point of one’s birthday. The outermost rooms were pretty glorious too. And the flowers… all those glorious flowers.
For my 37th birthday in 2012, a magical trip to Provincetown began in fun and fine form. Boston was the jumping off point, with a dinner and a birthday menu and this shucked-up moment. Upon entering Provincetown, all the magic came flooding back. Another travesty is that we haven’t been back to this beauty since that trip. Part of the reason is that it went so swimmingly well I don’t know how we would ever match it again. A brush with the Edies alone made it indelibly memorable. We are due to return again.
2011 found me waxing nostalgic in this post, along with this memory of my childhood bestie.
All the other birthday posts from the life of this blog, 2003 until 2010, have been excised in a rare moment of wisdom and ruthless editing. You’re so very welcome.
