In my freshman year at college, I met Fabian, a German man who would become a close friend and, later, my roommate sophomore year. He had an imposing figure, a chiseled jaw and sparkling blue eyes. It was hard not to notice him as he walked through Harvard Yard, in a tank-top and black running tights.

But he also happened to live in the same dorm and same floor as me, so we ran into each other often. He told me he was there on a full rowing scholarship. That after he’d won the European juniors championship, he’d taken time off to train for the Olympic rowing team. But now he was studying again.

He was very exotic, and not just to me. He wore black wire-rimmed glasses, and carried himself differently, a European intellectual. He was 24 at a time when we were all 19. A man amongst the teenagers. He was an elite athlete. He was also an artist, drawing and painting in his spare time.

I asked him who his favorite painter was, and he said “Max Beckmann.”

So I went to stand before the Beckmann self-portrait in the Harvard Art Museum, and was enchanted by the bold black lines, how they gave density and gravitas to even humble objects, like a bowl of fruit.

Fabian had a flinty personality, could be seen as cold and distant. Unlike friendly Americans, he took no pains to proactively reassure you or beam warmth to you. I think that fascinated people even more, because it felt like he was real.

We quickly became friends, and I’d always check if he was around before I headed to the dining hall.

Having grown up mostly in Taiwan, even American culture seemed new to me, not to mention European culture. That was even more remote, something I only read about in books.

I remember him showing me some photographs of his life back home. His father was an installation artist, and one artwork of his that Fabian showed me was called “carousel,” a huge swirling pile of chairs and other objects. The whole work was bigger than a bedroom.

The photo that had the hugest effect on me, though, was a very simple and innocent one. It was a vacation shot of Fabian seated shirtless at a table with his parents, drinking coffee in the sunlight.

There was so many stirring elements stacked into that picture, though.

First, just the fact of his sitting on a sunny patio next to a garden, presumably in a house in the woods, near a lake. I’d grown up in Taipei, with its five-story flyover highways and sooty concrete towers. My parents were too busy to take any extended family vacation. Summer vacations for me often meant sitting in our air-conditioned living room watching TV, or playing with my siblings, again in our air-conditioned apartment.

When my parents did take time off for a family vacation, they felt pressure to make every day count. In practice, this meant signing up for a guided tour, where we’d be driven to a new city every day, and taken to the most important monuments and museums. All their friends did the same thing. It was unheard of to just go to some rural destination and just be there.

Also, my parents had failed to establish a synergistic dialog with each other, so there was not much point to lingering over meals. My father’s scientific rationalism never quite met my Mom’s defining Christian faith. For them, talk was mostly about solving practical problems: raising the children, managing the business, and keeping up with news of the extended network of social contacts and family members. So for my siblings and me, meals often became something to be endured until we could be excused from the table and play amongst ourselves.

So the image of Fabian sitting with his parents enjoying nature, just enjoying each other’s company, seemed so romantic, like something out of a film.

And just as cinematic was that Fabian was shirtless in the photograph. His body was muscled as a Greek statue, graceful as he rested against the chair back, head leaning slightly forward towards the table and the coffee cup.

My family was rather traditional. I only saw my father shirtless at the swimming pool. I never saw my mother topless. For my mother I think the reason was doubly due to Christian prudishness and Chinese reserve. As for my father, it might have been a class marker that he observed unconsciously. The only men I saw shirtless in the city were menial laborers laying brick or hauling goods, that took off their shirts so their sweat could dry.

I myself also felt quite uncomfortable with nudity. I’d wear pajamas, tops and bottoms, in additional to my underwear when I slept. I remember thinking it was unfair that girls could wear swimsuits that covered their chests, but boys could not. One of the situations I dreaded as a teenager was having to play “skins” versus “shirts” basketball, and being stuck on the “skins” team and having to take off my shirt.

But here was Fabian, sitting shirtless while drinking coffee with his parents, and thinking nothing of it! He seemed to radiate a godlike ease and beauty.

I remember longing to go on such a vacation with him; I’d get to see his naked, muscular chest every morning.

Later, I would get to have this experience, when I moved to France with my boyfriend Frédéric. I slotted right into his established lifestyle, my eyes wide with marvel at how beautifully they lived. His family would spend two weeks every summer at their mediterranean villa. They laid on the beach in the sun for hours, talking, swimming, drinking mineral water and reading magazines. Many women were topless, and of course all the men were. I grew accustomed to walking into the beach restaurant shirtless for lunch, walking home up through the grapevines without a shirt, even preparing salads in the kitchen without a shirt.

But this was vacation, and back in Paris, I’d revert to my shirted ways.

Years later, I’d befriend Valentin and Guillaume, who were manly and athletic, into parkour and martial arts. They’d often come over and just take off their shirts, to do pull-ups or push-hands or bodywork. They were so unself-conscious. They’ve both said thanks to me, on repeated occasion. “It’s rare to find a place where I can feel so at ease and just hang out shirtless if I feel like it.”

I thought, as I admired their beautiful physiques… “what, you’re thanking me?”

Step by step I’ve come to be more comfortable with nudity, my own nudity.

My friends have helped me along this journey. Doug took me to Love Burn in Miami, where there were no showers, but we could go to Foamy Homies every day. This was a collective shower experience, complete with DJ sets and a juice bar. There we all stripped down and walked into a big transparent box where twenty people at a time could be hosed down with warm water (by facilitators on a catwalk above), then with foam, and finally rinsed off with warm water, all the while dancing. While I hurried to put on my swimsuit after the collective shower, most people just stood naked, letting their bodies dry in the sun, dancing to the music.

And then of course, the two recent experiences I’ve written about: going to the underground co-ed sauna where everyone’s naked for the first sauna; and spending a weekend camping at a radical Faery sanctuary, have made it so that, in the past few months alone, I’ve been naked more in public than I’ve been in all the previous years of my life combined.

Something’s shifted in me. I’m more willing to be seen. I think it must have something to do also with living in Merlins Place, this porous social experiment whose Burning-man inspired open-door policy means anyone might show up in our living room, day or night. I’d simply exhaust myself if I had to present a polished persona to every person who entered our space. So I’ve relaxed and allowed people to see more of me.

And this applies also to my being willing to be more open and vulnerable in my writing.

Guillaume, Ulysses, Maxime and Valentin