I thought, just for the record, I should explain how I came to join Tribe.net. You see, I was Googling another topic when I came across a thread from the ! Naked Sun tribe. It was about sleeping in the buff and at what age people started to do it. I thought it was a pretty interesting discussion, so I decided I'd put in my two cents. Well, to post an entry, I discovered I had to join Tribe.net. No problem. I'd been on Tribe.net before and thought it was interesting, but I hadn't felt compelled to join. Now I did, since ! Naked Sun seemed to be a group of people with whom I had something in common -- a love of simple, non-sexual, not particularly exhibitionistic, nudity. So I joined Tribe.net and then I tried to join ! Naked Sun. No dice. Because I didn't have any friends on Tribe.net, the moderator wouldn't let me join. Thus the title of his posting. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Joseph Heller's novel, or the movie made from it, I have attached a link to the Wikipedia article here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22. In this case, the Catch-22 is that I can't join ! Naked Sun until I have more online friends, but the reason I want to join ! Naked Sun was to make online friends. None of my "meat-space" friends are in any way computer oriented. When it comes to computers, they range from being able to produce competent spreadsheets and word processing documents to "How do you turn this thing on?" I'm pretty sure none of them has ever had a web page and most have probably never even read a blog, much less had one. Also, none of them are naturists, although some have a vague knowledge that I like to go to nude beaches. So, I've been searching other groups to join in the hope that I can make other friends online and that, eventually, the mod of ! Naked Sun will let me in.

One of the things I truly dislike about nudist clubs is their exclusivity. Since I was a single male when started enjoying outdoor nudity, most clubs were off-limits to me. It wasn't a big deal to me, since I prefer beaches and forests anyway, but like anything else, I rather resented being told I wasn't welcome, even if I didn't really want to come in, because of my status, not because of anything I had done or said. Maybe being African American made me even more sensitive to this; I don't know. But now that I've been on Tribe.net for a few days and had some time to think about it, I'm beginning to wonder if I really want to be part of ! Naked Sun. If the mod is going to treat it as an exclusive club (don't get me wrong - it's his tribe and he has every right to run it his way), I'm not sure that's something I want to be part of. They have interesting discussions, but is it worth it if they're held behind closed doors? Yes, I am bummed that I couldn't join the discussion that interested me in Tribe.net in the first place and I'm writing this to vent my frustration. But I'm also thinking out loud. We'll see how this all works out...