Origin Story

How this website began and how it developed

It was 1995. I turned 33 years old that year. The Oklahoma City Bombing rocked the nation, O.J. Simpson was on trial, Windows 95 launched, and the World Wide Web was becoming a thing. The Internet had been around for a while, but was primarily used by universities and the military. Even hyper-text markup language existed, but it wasn’t until Netscape Navigator hit the scene that everyday people started discovering the web.

I was working as a programmer/analyst at Cornell University at the time, and HTML became all the rage. It was easy to learn, and you could do a lot with a little. I immediately wanted to make a website of my own, but I wasn’t sure what to do. Then a perfect storm of influences wound up leading me to create this website.

I had been out of the closet for a few years at that point. Previous to that I had always considered myself to be rather plain, but the feedback I was getting from the gay men I was meeting brought me to the realization that I had a good look. It was news to me, but I heard it consistently enough that I started to believe it.

It was around this time that I got myself into the gym and started developing my physique. When I was younger I was a string bean. I remained very slim, but I was now putting some meat on my bones. Because I was starting from scratch I added some visible bulk quickly, and since I had no body fat I had good definition.

I was also discovering a penchant for exhibitionism. I had always been a latent nudist, but now that I started traveling in gay circles I was becoming very bold in showing it off. I had no sense of modesty at all. The more I showed, the better feedback I got, so I fully embraced the “if you’ve got it, flaunt it” philosophy. All the attention boosted my self-esteem like nothing else.

These factors combined to send me on a journey I would never have predicted. My newfound sense of vanity prompted me to consider modeling, and the internet allowed me to search for opportunities. I found someone in Boston who invited me out to do a photo shoot. He was a young gay guy like me, and ran an internet company with his boyfriend.

I went out there and we spent a day taking photos that ranged from clothed fashion pics to explicit nude imagery. It was fun and very exciting for me. This was back in the days of film photography, so I couldn’t see what the photos looked like, but when I got home he sent me a proof sheet in the mail. I immediately scanned it and whipped up some web pages to display the images.

I wasn’t sure if I had the nerve to put myself out there, but my emerging exhibitionistic sensibilities prompted me to give it a try. The photographer kindly gave me some space on his web server, so I uploaded the images for the world to see. My presence on the internet had begun.

I wanted to take more pics, but digital photography hadn’t gone mainstream yet. The only thing I had available to me was a primitive webcam. I hooked it up to my Mac laptop and was able to capture images. They were quite tiny by later standards, and only 16 shades of gray, but it was a start.

I was housesitting for a friend who had a large room with recessed overhead lighting. One night I used tinfoil to black out every light but one. I took all my clothes off and stood directly underneath that one light in the otherwise dark room. The shadows that it cast were striking, and that little webcam was actually able to capture surprisingly textured black and white images. I made more web pages and added them to my site. It was beginning to take form.

Now that I had developed a knack for lighting I started taking more pics at a feverish pace. Because I was both photographer and model I could do a shoot whenever I wanted, and I was able to relax, take my time, and do pose after pose until I captured something that I thought was good. I picked out the best ones and started adding them.

I eventually discovered a site called menonthenet.com. It was a link farm that listed sites exhibiting photos of nude men. It was the one place online where gay guys could go to see explicit content. The internet was so new that commercial porn hadn’t even discovered it yet, so all of these were amateur sites. Most of it was pretty crass stuff, with guys spread-eagled on their bed or otherwise doing what we now call “dick pics.”

My work was very different. My use of lighting, my ability to strike a pose, and my critical eye allowed me to produce well-composed shots that had artistic merit. I submitted my site to menonthenet and they added a link. That was when my traffic exploded. I started getting hundreds of hits a day, every day.

I had an email link on my site, so viewers were able to contact me directly. Many of the comments I got were very positive. The people seeing my work could also tell the difference in the quality from the other stuff that was out there. But I also got some complaints that it was a bit too self-indulgent to just have all these pics of myself with no other content. To address this I started adding essays. I wasn’t sure what to write, so I just whipped up a brief biography, something about discovering my emerging self-image, and also my coming out story. It was still all about me, like my photography was, but that was where my inspiration was taking me.

After that something unexpected happened. I started getting emails from men who said that reading my stories helped them come to grips with their own journey. Many of them could relate to it, and it gave them comfort to know that they were not alone in their feelings. Some of them went so far as to say that it inspired them to come out as well. That had never been my intent, but it was immensely gratifying to know that I was having a positive influence on my audience.

A few years passed. I continued to get a lot of traffic, and I produced more photography and writing. There was no social media at the time, so a website like mine was something unique. What few other personal websites that existed didn’t have the depth and nuance that mine did. I got more and more emails from people who commented on my work and the effect that it had on them. I had a dedicated fan base that looked forward to my new releases. I was getting a taste of internet fame.

I eventually chose the name "Naked Simplicity" for the site. I got it from a story on This American Life about how a tornado blew all the feathers off a bunch of chickens but left them otherwise unharmed. The newspaper account described the birds as "walking about in all their naked simplicity." The term stuck with me, and described me and my life philosophy so well that I adopted it for my own.

By 1998 I broached into another medium. I had long been interested in video production, and I finally got access to the kind of equipment that allowed me to get serious about it. Because I had difficulty finding any collaborators, my work was generally by me and featured me. I often used my own naked body, but unlike my understated, moody photography, my video work was outrageous and in-your-face. I began to screen at gay/lesbian film festivals around the world, and cultivated an all new fan base.

I longed to add this content to my site, but video streaming was still a ways off. It wasn’t until 2005 that YouTube came online. By then I had built up a considerable body of work. I uploaded it all, but the explicit subject matter got each one promptly deleted. I received enough violations from that first batch of uploads that they banned me outright. I’m not sure if I was the very first user to get banned from YouTube, but I had to be among the first. I took it as a badge of honor. I then had to turn to porn sites that accepted amateur submissions. I didn’t consider my videos to be pornographic, but those were the only sites that would allow explicit content.

The contacts I was making from my website presented new travel opportunities, and attending film festivals took me on interesting adventures. I had gone from a quiet and sheltered life to being somewhat of a jetsetter. I was frequently recognized by people who knew my work. I began writing tales of my adventures, which gave me new content for the site. It was becoming my multi-media auto-biography that continued to grow as I produced more work and had more experiences.

As time wore on and the internet grew, I began to get drowned out by other content. I had gotten a lot of traffic for a lot of years, but it eventually tapered down to just a trickle, and then basically nothing. When social media took off, everyday people started amassing large audiences, gaining fame, and making money. I could have put myself out there and tried to get my audience back, but I decided not to. I felt like I’d been there and done that. I didn’t want to try to compete with all the people who were clawing for attention. I had beat them all to the punch back in the early days. I had been an influencer decades before the concept even existed, but rather than promote products and services I had simply been a role model for people who were trying to discover themselves.

I continued quietly adding content to my site in the background. I had basically no social media presence at all, and I didn’t really feel the need for it. My site continued to speak for itself. I figured that if anyone found it, they could explore everything that I had to offer. If they didn’t, then that was fine. It would always be there for the few people who did. That was enough for me.

Index | Next Essay -->