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Chapter 2

Thoughts of Tom’s experience last year in Munich—was it only a year ago?—ran through his mind. “Yeah, almost the same thing happened to me in Munich last August... We were living there ‘cause Dad got a promotion and we had to move to Germany...”

He became lost in thought as the memories of that time formed in his mind.

Duncan’s bank had promoted him to a director’s position, assigning him to manage the bank’s European Union Common Market financial planning activities. This required him to move to Germany; their Munich offices coordinated most of those activities for northern Europe. After the year’s assignment was complete, Duncan would assume his new management position in London, working in the bank’s Common Market division handling the bank’s financial activities in all of Europe, as well as the bank’s activities related to the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the E.U.

Tom had become an avid bicyclist after several years of riding with his dad and his brother Andrew and had continued to keep his brother company on Andrew’s morning runs. Lynette, wanting to share in everything her step-brother did, also had begun bicycling and running with him and thus, soon after they had settled into their Munich rental—the bank had arranged a one-year rental of a house in the Hasenbergl district of north Munich, convenient to the school that the three children would attend—the step-siblings began taking extended bicycle rides in the city.

On a warm day in late August, a week before classes at their school were to begin, Tom and Lynette decided to bicycle out to Feldmochinger See Park, a city park with a large lake located about five miles from their home. They took a light blanket to sit on and packed lunches. Then they set out on their bike ride.

After arriving at the park, they found a scenic spot and spread out their blanket. The spot they had chosen was on a lawn overlooking the lake. While watching boaters on the lake, joggers passing by, and kids playing on the lawn, they ate their lunches. After an hour of relaxing in the warm sun, they decided to pack up so that they could ride around the lake and explore the park.

When they rode around to the lake’s southern shore, Tom pointed to a sign which had an arrow pointing in the direction they were traveling.

“Look, Lynnie, it says we’re headed to ‘FKK-Bereich,’ what’s that? I don’t remember that word bereich.”

“I know bereich, it means ‘area,’ but not what those initials are,” she responded.

They topped a small rise and looked up ahead. Tom suddenly felt faint and, quickly stopping, he almost fell off his bike. Lynette looked at him in alarm; she saw that his face had turned pale.

“Oh shit,” he breathed as he tried to quell his rising panic. “There’s naked people there!”

Tom sees a nudist gathering at the Munich FKK area of the park

He turned the bike around and tried to cycle away, but was too unsteady to continue to ride, so he got off and ran with it, wheeling it along the path back over the rise of the little slope, away from the grassy beach area. Lynette followed him, very concerned.

“Tom? You okay?” she called.

He stopped a hundred yards up the path and sank to the ground as Lynette came up to him. She jumped off her bike and threw her arms around Tom. He was pale and breathing hard.

“Tom, does that naked stuff still scare you?” she asked softly. “Like when you were little?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Oh, Lynnie, why does that happen to me?” he asked plaintively. “It’s like I can’t breathe—I get dizzy and feel all tight in my chest.”

“It’s scary for you, I guess,” she said. “Your face has no color at all.” She touched his forehead. “And it’s clammy. Wait. I have an idea.”

She pulled a small towel out of her saddlebag and biked back to the lake where she got it wet. Then she returned to Tom and rolled the towel up into a compress to place on his forehead.

“Oh god, thanks,” he breathed. “That feels so good, sis.”

“Let’s rest here for a few minutes and then do you think you can ride home?”

“Yeah... seeing that was a shock... wasn’t expecting anything like that...” he shuddered.

Lynette giggled. “Well, I thought it was so cool... all those guys and their things just hanging out and jiggling... wow...”

“Oh god, please, Lynnie, don’t do that to me,” Tom pleaded. “I’m gonna ask Mom why seeing naked people still bothers me.”

“Maybe ‘cause it was unexpected?” Lynette ventured.

Tom just shrugged. After a while he felt steady enough to ride and they left for home.

Duncan and Angela were home when the kids rode up. Tom was wearing a haggard expression and Duncan noticed.

“What’s wrong, Tom?” he asked. “Everything okay? You didn’t get hurt, did you?”

“No, Dad. But there were naked people in the park when we went riding around the lake. I got that panicked feeling when I saw them.”

Lynette broke in, “His face went all white and he got too weak to ride.”

“Lynnie got me a wet towel and put it on my face,” Tom said proudly. “That really helped.”

Angela nodded. “That was exactly the right thing to do, Lynette. Good for you.”

She blushed and nodded. Then she said, “Oh, maybe you know... just before we came to the naked people area, there was a sign, it said... um... FFK Bereich, I think. Do you know what the abbreviation is? Bereich means ‘area,’ I know.”

Angela chuckled. “Oh dear. Duncan, remember the brochures we got when you got your Munich assignment? One of them was about the public parks. One big park here is the Englischer Garten, the English Garden ...”

“Why ‘English Garden,’ Mom?” Lynette asked.

“Let me find that brochure...” She went to the desk, took out a folder, and flipped through the brochures in it. “Ah, here it is. Let’s see. Oh, it’s the biggest urban park in the world... wow, it even has a surfing area. Look, surfers can ride a big wave on a river there. Okay, ‘English’ because it wasn’t laid out like a formal French garden but more in the landscape style of English parks. Ah. Here’s what I thought I remembered seeing. Lots of German parks are popular with nudists. That’s what I recalled reading; I read that all the German parks have nudist areas. So, Lynette, those initials are actually ‘FKK’ and stand for ‘Freikörperkultur’; it means ‘free body culture,’ and it’s the German term for nudism or naturism.”

Lynette was wide-eyed as she listened; then she asked, “You mean, people like to just go around naked?”

Angela smiled. “It’s true. Most people in Europe are very tolerant of public nudity. Lots of parks and many beaches have nudist areas. In fact, according to this flyer, here in Munich, it looks like there’s maybe a half dozen public areas where nudity is allowed. Parks mostly, but we’ll look into where the areas are so Tom can avoid them and doesn’t get another shock, okay?”

“But why Tom reacts that way, we still don’t know,” Duncan remarked. “His doc said he might outgrow it, so maybe as you get older, son, it’ll get better.”

“I sure hope,” Tom grumbled. “Feeling like that just sucks...”

~~~~

When school in Munich began, Tom learned that pupils were required to shower after physical education classes. Unable to undress with the other boys and shower with them, he simply skipped showering—he even skipped being in the locker room when the showers were being used—but his skipping them was quickly noticed by the teachers.

“Mr Armstrong?” a teacher called one day as Tom was heading out of the gym, intending to dress and get out of the locker room before the boys began showering. Tom went over to the teacher.

“We’ve noticed you don’t shower. We expect that all of you pupils will shower after physical activity. Now get in there and take one!” he ordered.

Tom acted like he was going into the locker room, but instead slipped out of the main gym door. He circled around to the boys’ locker room door to the hall and went in. He couldn’t see the showers from his locker, but still, there were some boys undressing... Averting his eyes, he got to his locker, opened it, took out his clothes, and ran out to the hall. Using a boys’ rest room down the hall, he changed back into his school uniform.

At his next gym class, the teacher was waiting for him.

“You’re still not showering,” the teacher told him. “When the class is over, I’m going to take you into the locker room and watch to make sure you shower.”

So a few minutes before the class ended, Tom slipped away unnoticed and changed back to his school clothes in the nearby boys’ room. Later that day he was called to the headmaster’s office. The gym teacher was waiting there.

“Mr Armstrong,” the headmaster said, “Mr Gronile tells me you cut gym class.”

“Sir, I was there; I just left a minute or so early to change.”

“Young man, leaving early is still a cut. Why did you leave early?”

“Mr Gronile told me he was gonna bring me into the lockers and make me shower. I can’t do that.”

The headmaster looked sharply at Tom. “And just why can’t you? What’s wrong with showering with the other boys? Next time, Mr Gronile will make sure that you go in with him.”

“NO! I just can’t do it. I get panicky,” Tom gasped, now beginning to feel that awful constricting band starting to squeeze his chest. He had already begun to turn pale and now, his legs rubbery, he stumbled, dropping into a nearby chair.

Both teachers jumped with alarm. “Are you okay?” Mr Gronile cried as he saw Tom turn white-faced and begin to fold into himself.

Tom leaned over and took a number of deep, shuddering breaths. His color began to return.

“It’s passing now,” Tom said weakly. “I can’t stand to see naked people. I panic. I can’t help it.”

The two adults exchanged glances.

“Hmmm... Mr Gronile, what do you recommend?” the headmaster asked.

“Tom needs to see the nurse,” he answered. “Then the counselor. With his parents.”

“And gym class?”

“Well... maybe it’s an excuse for now... but wait, we have a swimming requirement that...”

“Oh, no! I can’t do swimming!” Tom exclaimed.

Both adults’ heads swung around to look at him.

“I almost drowned. I will NOT go in the pool to swim, EVER!” he said emphatically. “I almost died.” he softly said.

“Yes, definitely the counselor,” the headmaster agreed.

~~~~

Tom’s parents met with the counselor a few days later and they explained to her a little of Tom’s history and his prior psychological assessments. After some discussion about his P.E. class expectations and swimming, they agreed to have a psychiatrist speak to Tom. Soon they had set up an appointment and had copies of his medical records sent from Canada. Tom’s parents told the psychiatrist that Tom had been exempted from swimming in Canada based on his doctor’s recommendation, and his gym teachers had never insisted that Tom shower after classes.

After Tom had several appointments with the psychiatrist, the doctor met with Duncan and Angela.

“I agree with his prior therapist, both in diagnosis and in attempting any treatment. I agree that he’s still too young for cognitive behavioral therapy, as his former therapist noted in his record. So I’ll be recommending to the school that Tom not be forced to shower. Tom’s gymnophobia continues to be extremely severe and extends to seeing nudity as well as the threat of his experiencing personal nudity. With a reaction so severe, I believe that forcing him to do something which his body so strongly rejects could cause some completely unstable behavior in addition to precipitating a panic attack. I will urgently recommend to the school that they not put Tom in that situation. I’ll also recommend against requiring swimming. I’ll ask that the school place these recommendations into Tom’s permanent school records.”

As Tom reflected on his recollections of his year in Munich, he drifted off into an uneasy nap on the nurse’s cot.

~~~~

Angela picked up Tom from the school nurse’s office and was able to get an emergency appointment with a psychological crisis center therapist that afternoon. She had obtained a note from the school nurse which contained her physical findings and observations, so the psychologist was able to get the physician on call to order a prescription for a strong anti-anxiety medication and an antidepressant. The doctor warned them that the anxiety medication’s full effect might take two or perhaps three days to build up and at least a week or two for the antidepressant to become effective.

On Tuesday, Tom returned to school. Lynette wanted to arrive early and rode her bike but Tom was too unsteady to ride after starting the drugs; they made him dizzy and unable to concentrate. Angela dropped Tom off, but he asked her to let him out on the opposite side of the building from where the Program pupils would be undressing. The weather was still warm enough that Program pupils would do this outside; when it was inclement or too cold, the head teacher’s instructions had mentioned that the school commons area was to be used.

Tom had decided that he would wait until the final bell was about to ring before he’d venture into the halls, so he stayed near the school’s side door and slipped into home room just as the bell rang. He was relieved to see that there wasn’t anyone naked in his home room.

Lynette looked at him and mouthed, “Are you okay?”

He just shrugged in response.

During home room, Tom and Lynette were summoned to the counselor.

“I was unable to see you last Friday,” she told them. “There are several forms that your parents haven’t completed.” She gave them two envelopes. “Please return these to the office tomorrow. Now let me review your classes from Germany and be sure you’re caught up with our curriculum here. You both have identical records. Were you always in the same classes?”

“Yes, miss.” ... “Yes, ma’am, we were.”

She went over their schedules and finally dismissed them to their first class as the end-of-period bell rang.

When Tom and Lynette arrived at their first-period class, they saw an unhappy naked boy and girl standing in the front of the room. Tom whirled around and stumbled out with Lynette running after him. She followed him into the boys’ bathroom—she figured that with the Program running now, Program girls were supposed to use the boys’ rooms anyway, so what the hell; she could be in there too.

“I can’t do it, Lynnie, I just can’t,” Tom moaned as she held him as he held a wad of wet paper towels on his forehead. “The pills aren’t really helping me. I feel so wiped out, really dizzy. Not like myself. But I still began to panic when I saw them.”

“Probably ‘cause the pills haven’t really kicked in yet,” she replied. “Let’s see the nurse in case there are side effects, you know, what Mom said the pharmacy told her to watch for.”

“Okay.”

The nurse checked Tom over and proclaimed him okay, she thought that he was simply zoned out on his body’s adapting to the medications. Then she inquired about Tom’s sleep the prior night.

“Terrible,” he answered. “I had all kinds of nightmares. Kept waking me.”

The nurse recommended that Tom go home and get some sleep, so she called Angela who came to the school again and picked her son up. Soon after they returned home and while Tom was napping, Angela got a call from the school. The head teacher had heard about Tom and wanted to know how he was doing.

“Well, let me say, Dr Taylor, not well, not well at all. Isn’t there any way you can put him in classes without naked kids? He can’t tolerate seeing nudity and he’s had that problem since he was little.”

“Mrs Armstrong, there aren’t any such classes this week and besides, every week there’s a different Program group taking different classes,” he responded. “The nurse told me that she recommended that Tom get medication to help.”

“Yes, he’s taking them. And he’s walking around like a robot. I’m sure that that stuff is doing nothing to help his learning and little to control his panicking,” Angela retorted angrily.

“Hmmm, perhaps when his body gets used to the drugs...”

Angela made an annoyed sound. “Not likely. The doc told us that there was a very good chance that they wouldn’t help at all. He said that they would only blunt his panic response, not eliminate it. But I’m also really concerned because I’ve been told that the anti-anxiety med he’s taking is really addictive, and can have some possibly nasty side-effects, so I won’t keep him on it too long and of course we’re back to his panicking again. Listen, there must be a way to help Tom avoid this situation. Let me fill you in a little on what happened to him in the past so you have a better idea of how long he’s had this problem. Do you have a couple of minutes?”

Taylor told her to continue.

Angela began, “We first learned about Tom’s affliction—he has a serious phobia about seeing nudity and his personally experiencing even partial nudity. It was quite severe even when Tom was about 10 or 11 years old; that’s when my husband and I noticed a few problems which really concerned us. When we began noticing his aversion to being less than fully dressed, among other things we had seen, we had a psychologist evaluate him and that’s when we learned about the full extent of his problem; he was diagnosed with a known phobia.”

Angela thought back to the events in Tom’s past and began to relate a quick summary of his history to Taylor.

“Briefly, here’s what happened when Tom was in grade school. We couldn’t get him to be shirtless anywhere, like at the beach or even in the doctor’s office. And we saw him panic when we tried to have him take a shower in a male facility at a water park. His doctors told us that this was a phobia which couldn’t be treated until we knew its cause or until he was an adult and old enough to try the usual therapy methods.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs Armstrong,” Taylor began to respond, and Angela’s memories returned to when she was dealing with Tom’s developing phobia.

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