Jeff Mahoney is a longtime writer with the Hamilton Spectator and to have him tell me how much he enjoyed The Naked Truth was a heart-warming compliment. Yesterday, his article on the book ran in the paper and online and I was totally tickled by it. Here it is:
They tried and tried, through trickery and cajolery, but they couldn’t get Lisa naked. This was remarkable because “they” were her co-workers at Four Seasons in Flamborough and at the time — 1980 — it was a nudist resort owned by Hans and Lisa Stein.
Lisa took her tank top off one day swimming in the lake there, and co-workers Artie and Joe saw her from the waist up. But that was as close as they got. Halfway. Lisa Brandt — many here will remember her — has accomplished much. Long career in radio, stints on 680 NEWS and on CHML in Hamilton, where she had the morning show and hosted midday talk. She has taught and written books — her Celebrity Tantrums is an entertaining walk of dishonour through the blow-ups and meltdowns of the shamelessly famous and famously shameless. She writes a popular blog. No slouch.
But Lisa remembers few chapters of her life as vividly, with such clarity and farsightedness, as that formative summer at the Four Seasons. So much so that she turned it into fiction and pitched it to Key Porter about nine years ago. They took a pass.
“I put it aside, then I took the fictional elements out of it but I set it aside again,” says Lisa. “Then I read Hans and Lisa sold Four Seasons. It was no longer nudist.” More than that, what re-agitated the memories was the news that part of their reason for selling was the death of beloved son Michael in 2008, at the age of 52, of a heart attack. “That blew me down,” says Lisa, who had a real fondness for him. Michael hired her.
She read all this in a column I wrote in January about the change of the Four Seasons from nudist to “textile,” as they call it in the community. That pushed her to finish her story as an online memoir, The Naked Truth.
Spring 1980 was slipping into summer. Lisa, 18 and going off to college in September, still hadn’t found work. Then she saw the ad — “general help, nature resort.” It appealed to her mischievous, adventurous side. She didn’t actively plan to remain clothed but once she assumed her duties — waitress, cleaner, short order cook, general factotum — she never felt compelled to doff her togs. It wasn’t “her.”
“No one ever went a whole summer before,” says Lisa. “I was the resort curiosity. People were betting whether I’d break down, go nude. The impulse to conform is a
survival thing.”
Once while she showered, Artie and Joe stole her bathrobe and towels. They hid in a darkened room that they knew she’d walk into after the shower, planning to shout
“surprise” when she turned on the lights. But she found some used towels and foiled them.
Such incidents are recounted fondly and with a sprightly storyteller’s flair in The Naked Truth. For instance, a rich Manhattanite who vacationed at the resort offered to fly her
to New York City, where he hoped to squire her around. But, she writes, she was no one’s “trophy.” Another man offered her thousands of dollars to have a baby with him.
The stories (sexual encounters definitely were afoot back then at the camp) coalesce into an often raucous, always compassionate picture of life among the nudists, accented with piquant details (Joe and Lisa making a game of counting the circumcisions) and psychological insight (the men were often more amorous at the clothed dances, the departure from the norm being a source of excitement).
“You get used to the nudity,” she says. “There were all shapes and sizes.”
Even now, says Lisa, when people talk about their interesting summer jobs, she plays her trump card.
Do you remember Four Seasons?
Yes, I remember Four Seasons. I was convinced years ago to go to one of the Miss Nude World pageants along with my ex-husband (husband at the time) and a friend. The friend’s wife would not go. That was my one and only experience at the Four Seasons – we did not take off our clothes -and quite frankly I did not know where to look. LOL Read your experience with interest. Thanks.