How Naked Tennis Came To Be

To answer the two questions most asked about this blog: Yes, that photo really is me. No, I didn't photoshop a butt dimple in.

Even if you compulsively plan your life out like I tend to do, there's always some slight alteration in the plan. When I first moved to New York, coaching tennis seemed like a real possibility. Two years later, I am coaching tennis...just with my balls swaying in the wind.

After spending a few months post-graduation on a blow-up mattress in the living room of my mom's apartment, I moved into an dillapidated building with a friend in "East Williamsburg" (otherwise known to New Yorkers as the white part of Bushwick). Facing the realization that four years of my life was spent obtaining a degree that was essentially worthless in the real world, I found myself flat broke and struggling to pay even the smallest bills.

It didn't help matters that despite my Jewish upbringing, I've never been very good with managing money. I distinctly remember holding 40 dollars in my hand for almost an hour one day, debating whether to spend the money on the electric bill or marijuana. Three days later, my roomate came home to find a candlelight vigil in the apartment, as I furiously puffed away on a blunt that would put Snoop Dogg to shame.

My roomate and I were talking over a bottle of cheap wine one night when I told her how expensive tennis lessons were in the city. "Holy shit, can you imagine how much it would be if somebody taught naked," she drunkenly giggled.

This was the stupidest idea I had ever heard in my life, but was also ingenous.

I put an ad up on the adult gigs section of Craigslist (my only form of advertising to this day), asking if anybody had a private court in their backyard they would let me use in exchange for a percentage of my earnings. Within six hours, somebody with a grass court in their backyard in Northern Westchester responded, and arranged to meet with me.

To the shock of nobody, the guy was a fucking freak show. He was basically a carbon copy of the old pervert in Family Guy, but he had a court that I needed. I sat him down, handed him a gun, and told him he was going to earn his 25% by shooting someone in the unlikely event that a client tried to attack or rape me.

I then put up another ad on Craigslist, offering nude tennis lessons that weekend for $150 an hour. Four people showed up on Saturday. Four people showed up on Sunday. This continued on for about a month, until I earned enough to hold myself over for about three months, and by that point a big boy job was obtained.

Cue to 2010. I still think this concept is ingenous, and a recession is a perfectly appropriate time to exploit weird people with way too much money on their hands. Hence, the reopening of the nude tennis business. I have a court in East Hampton to teach on, have hired two naked ballgirls to cater to the straight male clientele, and am hoping to kick things off in April with a nude exhibition tennis match. So far, 12 lessons have already been signed for next month.

This probably isn't my life calling, but what the hell. It's a story, and that's all living in New York is, really.