OBITUARY AND COMMENTARY by JIM W.

September 2006

ndrew Martinez died on May 18, 2006 -- apparently by suicide.

They say he was crazy, and apparently he was, at the end of his life, but that doesn't mean he wasn't a great man. They say Vincent van Gogh was crazy, and it seems that he was, but that doesn't mean he wasn't a great painter. Andrew was a great pioneer, not because he was perfectly sane or a perfect role model, but because he had ideas that were so compelling, and bravery that was so inspiring, that the question of his sanity just doesn't matter as we think about his contribution to history. It's time for us to put aside our quibbles with him about his tactics, about the things he did occasionally, rashly, which some thought helped to set back the naturist movement or which got him into trouble.

He's dead now, and won't be doing any of those troublesome things any more.

He didn't seem crazy or abrasive to me, back when I interviewed him in 1993. The fact that Andrew ended life apparently bedeviled by compulsions originating in some out-of-control parts of his brain is less important now than the fact that the rest of his brain was so inventive, so insightful, and so courageous. It wasn't that he liked to get naked in public; thousands do. It wasn't that he spoke truth to power; many people do. It was that he was willing to sacrifice his university career (and, eventually, his life) in order to do what he knew was important, harmless, and right.

id I see the signs of his illness? Well, some of them were there, but I didn't perceive them. I didn't realize at the time that the signs were signs. They were so well camouflaged by his political beliefs, only some of which I agreed with, that my natural tendency to give people the political benefit of the doubt kept me from paying close attention to the mental health aspects of what I saw.

I have no idea whether the mild intellectual aggressiveness I saw on the afternoon I interviewed him eventually metastisized into the physical aggression which landed Andrew in jail. I'll write about that mild aggressiveness at another time (see "How I Got the Interview"), along with how his courage influenced me personally. But right now I want to talk about Andrew's contribution to the world.

hat is it about simle nudity in public which grabs the attention of so many of us, and such a large proportion of the media? Andrew made national, then international headlines within weeks -- days, actually -- of the first time he went to class nude. Spencer Tunick makes headlines whenever he gets a bunch of naked people together for a simple photoshoot. And just a few weeks ago, in mid-summer 2006, a couple of teenagers in Brattleboro, Vermont interested in promoting their rock band suddenly shot to international attention just by hanging out naked a couple of times in a parking lot!

What is going on here? Why is it so easy to get so much publicity about simple nudity in public, performed by attractive (but not necessarily spectacularly attractive) members of the species?

The answer must be, in part, that many people really do believe, in their heart of hearts, that nude is natural and naked is OK. Or can be, under the right circumstances. Not many people admit this in public, under the glare of the media lights. But there is no other explanation.

What, after all, are the various ways you can get in the news on short notice? Wave a gun around in public... Get into a spectacular police pursuit... Make outrageous claims about famous people... Drive your Humvee onto the White House lawn...

... or take your clothes off in public. Even that won't get you into the news automatically, because lots of crazy people get naked every day. No, you have to take your clothes off in public, seem to be sane, and then have the nerve to imply that there's nothing wrong with it.

Yes, that's the ticket. Especially if you refuse to show respect for the rule that says that nudity is nasty, if you dare to suggest that you view our society's clothing rules with contempt rather than mere dislike, then suddenly all hell breaks loose.

ndrew's message was extremely simple: Be naked! Everyone can understand that message -- even little kids. Even people who disagree with the message can understand it instantly; it's tailor-made for a soundbite on the evening news and Page Three of a lot of newspapers. Andrew had a great deal to say, intellectually, about nudity (he majored in Rhetoric at Berkeley!), but he didn't need to say much of it to get across the basic idea. Action did the trick.

If the social forces that attacked him believed -- REALLY believed! -- that his nudity represented the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it, they would have clamped down on him much, much sooner and much more definitively. This they didn't do, which implies that they didn't really believe that his ideas were a danger to society. Even the strongest enemies of naturism don't really believe that Andrew's type of nudity is a deep, dark threat; if they did they would have been posting guards at rural swimming holes to prevent skinny-dipping, pastors would have been weighing in against the practice in countless sermons all over the country, and junk-mail fundraisers would have been launched long ago by religious foundations all over America.

udity is natural; even our enemies know that. Under the right circumstances, nudity is harmless; even our enemies have to agree with that. Andrew was brilliant, and brilliantly found a way to prove those propositions to the satisfaction of smart people everywhere. By risking (and losing) his college career he heightened the suspense and made a better story for the media, but that wouldn't have mattered if the underlying idea he stood for wasn't worthwhile.

As "The Naked Guy," Andrew affected hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of people. He affected me. My first foray into a couple of minutes of public nudity was right beside him, and it touched off a personal odyssey which resulted in my coming to terms with my lumpy middle-aged body as it was. That in turn allowed me to find an admirer who loved my body the way it was -- and my personality, too. We've been together for 3 years.

hank you, Andrew. Rest in peace. We loved you. Your family loved you. We barely knew you. We've learned from you. Your legacy lives on. Thank you so fuckin much!