the naked man and Donald Duck orange juice

Multiple years ago, I was at a party. Not a crazy party with drugs and alcohol and such, but just a get-together among adult friends, hanging out, munching on snacks, listening to music, chatting and the like. The party was actually thrown by a friend of a friend who I'd met through another friend, so there were a lot of people at the party I didn't know.

At one point, I'd gotten up to mill around and wander over to the snack table to see what I could find to munch on. On the way there, I passed by a group of people sitting on and around a couch. One particular man caught my attention. He was sitting cross-legged on the couch, with a cushion over his lap. And nothing else. Now, I didn't stare, but it was hard not to notice when he obviously had no shirt on and no pants on. I couldn't tell if he was wearing underwear, but then, I wasn't looking that hard. It was also not a particularly warm time of year where people would be in shorts. I'd also remembered hearing stories from the friend that I'd met through another friend about this particular person who has part of said friend's other group of really good friends.

I had been told that he wasn't an exhibitionist or anything, but rather, that he just didn't like clothes. Sure, he adhered to clothes-wearing in the regular world, but at parties, he had a tendency to just take them off, and his friends pretty much just got used to it.

So I continued on to the snack table and was browsing around when I heard a voice next to me ask if I knew where the Donald Duck orange juice was. That in and of itself was a funny question because even back then, before my Disney-obsession days, I wondered how having Donald Duck on the label was supposed to be some kind of indication that it was good orange juice. Did Donald have some secret interest in orange juice that we never knew about? Were ducks in general experts on good-tasting orange juice?

But more than simply being asked about Donald Duck orange juice, it became even weirder when I realized that the person asking me about it was said naked man who was now standing next to me. I think I turned a tiny bit when I heard the voice but stopped when I realized who it was. No, I didn't look at him to make sure he was the naked one. I kind of recognized his face, and the fact that I could tell that he wasn't wearing a shirt was pretty much a dead giveaway since everyone else at the party had a shirt on.

Now, maybe it's just some weird quirk in me, but if I'm going to be having a conversation with a naked man, I generally prefer that he's someone I'm having an intimate relationship with. Talking to random naked men is not my thing.

I told him that I didn't know where the Donald Duck orange juice was, and he wandered off in search of said juice.

I did make it a point the rest of the night to not sit on the couch or be anywhere near the cushion he had used to cover himself. Ewwww.

Years later, I told the husband about naked man because we were going to a party that naked man might be attending. The husband never encountered naked man in a full state of undress. I think he might have seen him at a party or two without his shoes on and shirt partially unbuttoned, but that was pretty much it. We then happened to no longer go to the parties where naked man might be attending, not because of him, just by circumstance.

And then a few years after that, the husband and I were at some kind of one-night special screening at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. After everything was done, we were getting up to leave, and we had recognized a number of people in the audience since some of the same people tend to turn out for this sort of thing. I saw someone a couple aisles over who was leaving, and the guy looked really familiar but I couldn't place him. I pointed him out to the husband, and it was the husband who recognized him as naked man. How funny to see him at a screening for a Disney movie!


And as a coda to this whole story, we recently had a chance to visit the archives at The Walt Disney Studios, and in the lobby area that we could visit, there was a whole case full of products with Donald Duck's name and picture/face on them, since he was the Disney character who had originally been used to license a ton of products. Inside the case was a carton for Donald Duck orange juice. I laughed.