It doesn't matter whether I'm writing about heterosexuality, homosexuality, solosexuality, indoors, outdoors—inevitably I'll come across cases of erotic display. I use that term—display, rather than exhibitionism—because it's considered a natural phenomenon among males of many species. In fact, some primates use the erect penis to indicate dominance as well as lust. Although our society considers the man who wants to show off his genitals deviant, the opposite is true: males of many species court their mates by exhibiting their engorged genitals.

It is a most successful technique, and not one learned from books but hard-wired into the genes. At age fifteen, when four of us boys were huddled in my basement talking about penis size, I never though twice about stripping to the skin to show mine off when all I had to do was unzip the fly. When the other boys, two years younger and too shy to undress, asked to play with it. That seemed the natural thing for them, having seen it, to want to do.

Such is not always the case, of course. Vera Palumbo was perfectly delighted to have me take out and play with her titties, but when I showed her my pride and joy, she screeched, "It's ugly" and ran from the basement. The fact that I ever went to bed with another woman is a testament to the hard-wiring of heterosexuality.

Another example of genital display as courtship ritual: One night I invited my friend Joe, who, like me is a naturist, to visit. He asked if he could bring two friends and urged me not to dress. The four of us sat in the family room overlooking the pond and chatted for perhaps half an hour while I lounged on the sofa. The conversation, as I recall, was about real estate.

Suddenly, Chuck, one of Joe's friends and a stranger to me, got up, walked across the room, sat next to me and fellated me to orgasm while Mike and Joe looked on. Following that unforgettable experience, I thanked Chuck and asked why he had done it. He said, "Well it was there, wasn't it?"

Erotic display is fun for reasons other than its instinctive courting value. In this particular sexually sick society, it's naughty to show the genitals to others, especially strangers. And what is forbidden, for reasons no one has satisfactorily explained, is very hot stuff. Thus, turning the light on in my room at the Westside Y in Manhattan and then standing naked by the window playing with my erect phallus while half a dozen guys in rooms across the courtyard watched led to one of the ten most mind-blowing orgasms of my life. So did driving naked along a country road at two a.m., stopping in the middle of an intersection, turning out the lights, getting out of the car and jerking off while sprawled across the hood. This was not actual but simulated display—I could certainly have seen the headlights long before any car approached close enough to see me. But the idea of being seen, of doing what is forbidden, was an overwhelming high.

I lived in the woods of Pennsylvania for twelve years with my wonderful wife, and for most of that time I never dressed. Sometimes for weeks on end, day and night, I lived as an animal, and even entertained friends and sometimes strangers nude. After a while I became unself-conscious, even unaware that I appeared different from others. The tax man came to find me building a garage nude. A neighbor discovered me splitting logs. When I apologized, he said, "You ain't got nothin' I ain't seen before." But within hours, the entire neighborhood knew that Harold Litten didn't wear clothes.

The results were twofold. First, for want of a better word, I became much more philosophical. I recognized the unity of all things, and the plight of my mortality that had troubled me from childhood ceased to be important. I actually wanted to be a part of nature in all that it entailed.

The second result was that I became body-centered. Until then, I saw myself primarily as a self-conscious brain living in a body. During those years in the woods, I gradually became an unself-conscious body possessing a brain. From that perspective, fundamentalist body-negativism seems ridiculous beyond words.

As I think back on it now, shoveling snow wearing nothing but boots, ice skating on the pond, building rock walls and chopping wood, picking wild elderberries and blackberries, swimming in the pond on those steamy summer days, hiking through briar patches with not a single scratch, always nude, I think the joy of even those experiences was somehow rooted in erotic display. Not that anyone ever saw me—at least as far as I know. But the animals did, just as I saw them. Nature did. The Other did. And it was this exposing myself at the very core of my nature, my genitals, to the universe that struck a cord, that hard-wired cord that I mentioned in the beginning that says, "I am born to display."

[Dr. Litten's two books, The Joy of Solo Sex (193 pages, paperback $12.95, U.S.) and More Joy...An Advanced Guide to Solo Sex (200 pages, $12.95, U.S.) are dedicated to increasing the pleasure of masturbation for male readers. (Book prices require extra for postage & handling) He also is a regular contributor to Celebrate The Self, the magazine of solo sex for men (bimonthly, $24.95 per year). All are available from Factor Press, P.O. Box 8888, Mobile, AL 36689-8888]