Thank You For Coming to My TED Talk

For over a decade now I have been hosting clothing-optional events in my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, and touring my clothing-optional body image workshop, Bare As You Dare, across North America: from sex toy stores to coffee shops, from BDSM conventions to Ivy League universities. 

Many years ago, I presented Bare As You Dare in Providence Rhode Island. The room was packed, it was standing room only and event organizers had to post someone at the door to tell late arrivals that we were already beyond capacity. A woman who couldn’t get in listened to the entire presentation from outside. When I was done, she approached me to say how impressed she was and suggested that I turn the workshop into a TEDx Talk. 

Three applications, two rejections, and a global pandemic later, I was invited to audition for TEDx St. Louis. 

Auditions were in April of 2023 at The Missouri History Museum [the same day I was hosting my clothing-optional poetry reading, Smokin’ Word]. Since the topic of my talk was the psychological benefits of social nudity, I had planned to strip down to my underwear during the audition. I had assumed it would just be me and the folks from TEDx St. Louis in a little room, but when I arrived I discovered all the potential speakers would be auditioning together in the same theatre where the TEDx event would ultimately be held. The stage was all black with a TEDx banner and the famous red circle rug. To say it was intimidating would be an understatement. Some of the potential speakers had brought their kids with them and since no one knew what I was planning, I either chickened out or erred on the side of caution. When it was my turn to take the stage, I took off my shirt but left my shorts on. Even with that, you could feel the energy shift in the room when my shirt came off. 

About two minutes into my three-minute pitch, I looked at a stone-faced audience and I said, “I can tell you’re not on board with this, and that’s okay!” I was pretty sure I had bombed. My only regret was not inviting someone along to film my audition because I was certain that standing in the red circle that day, stripped to the waist, was as close as I was ever gonna get to giving a TEDx Talk. 

Seven months went by. Nothing. 

Then in November, I got the word that I had been accepted! 

My first meeting with the TEDx St. Louis people was in January of 2024. As a professional naked person, my first question when I’m booked to do a speaking gig is often, “So… how much clothing do I have to wear?” 

The response from the TEDx folks was something to the effect of, “Well… if you want to be naked, we have to clear it with the national TED organization [lovingly referred to as Big TED], and the History Museum, and then we have to look at the expense of having an editor digitally cover your genitals before the video goes online…” 

“Uh… wow, I was just thinking of doing it in my underwear.” 

“Oh! Underwear! Yeah, that’s fine. We don’t even have to get permission for underwear.” 

One of my TEDx-appointed mentors, Marcus said, “To wear anything more than underwear would be a betrayal of your message.” 

I thought, “Wow! These people get me!” They understood what I was trying to do and supported it. 

Over the next five months, I wrote five different versions of my talk and rehearsed it just about every day, sometimes multiple times a day. I must have practiced my speech out loud or in my head at least 150 times. 

And then, after five months of preparation, it was almost show day. At the dress rehearsal the night before I’d worn a pair of bike shorts that came to about my mid-thigh. I wore boxer briefs underneath them because I thought the additional waistband would help hold up the transmitter for the wireless microphone I’d be wearing, and it would also save the soundman from having to stare down my ass crack while I was getting mic’d up. After dress rehearsal, the wardrobe consultant from TEDx St. Louis informed me that the boxer briefs under my shorts were creating visible panty lines. They had to go. We’d figure out a way to keep the microphone transmitter from pulling my shorts down and the soundman would just have to deal with it. 

On the day of the show, I was fully clothed with my bike shorts on under my jeans, hanging out in the green room with the rest of the speakers when Elaine from TEDx St. Louis asked if she could speak to me alone. We went just outside the green room and she said, “David, your shorts are too long. You’re too covered up. It’s undercutting your message. Do you have anything smaller?” They wanted me to be MORE naked! 

I changed into the Speedo briefs I had brought with me just in case. I was told that even in a Speedo, I wouldn’t be the MOST naked speaker in TEDx St. Louis history, that title would still belong to burlesque performer, Lola van Ella. I took this as a personal challenge, dug into my bag, and produced a jockstrap, “Well, I also have this.” 

So we decided the jockstrap was the way to go. My initial goal had been to spare the sound guy from having to look down the crack of my ass, and now I had no choice but to flaunt my bare ass to everyone backstage. While the wardrobe consultant was tightening the waistband of my jock with safety pins to make sure it didn’t fall off, she said, “I’m doing the most amount of work on the guy with the least amount of clothes.” 

I wish I’d had someone backstage with me to document the behind the scene because it must have looked hilarious: the almost naked guy being led through physical and vocal warm-ups with all the fully dressed speakers, and doing power poses and dancing to Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” in the dressing room, ass out. 

Then it was time to go on stage. It felt like my whole speech was over in a matter of seconds: Five months of preparation for a ten-minute performance. 

Public speaking and public nudity are among most people’s biggest fears. My love for combining the two has taken me to some strange places. My work has been covered in newspapers and books. It got me on CNN. I once gave a 90-minute naked presentation to an audience of Ivy League students at Dartmouth. But this shit right here may be the highlight of my career as an ambassador of social nudity and professional naked person.