Sometimes we’re outdoors for hours at a time and no one comes over to us at all–not friendly people, not creepy ones, no one. (That’s when it feels the most like we’re truly in New York, where half a dozen nearly naked women attract no notice whatsoever. Delightful!)

But sometimes we just attract conversation like a magnet–or (blush) seek it out ourselves. At our last visit to the park, this woman came up to say she was from Portland, Oregon, and loved what we were doing. We made her day, she said. Could she and her friend from Belgium take a picture with us? Of course we said yes, though we were secretly disappointed that they both chose to keep their shirts on while they did so.

Then two guys from Argentina chatted with us (they, at least, went topless…but they’re guys, of course they went topless). Then a man came over and said he’d seen us in the park one day the summer before, and showed us a photo on his cell phone to prove it. What are the odds? A year later, and we happen to be there again, and so does he?

But perhaps the afternoon’s best moment came when we noticed two guys playing frisbee near us and one of our members decided she thought one of them was cute. Normally she might say hello, chat a bit, maybe even exchange phone numbers if things went well…but she couldn’t do that topless, could she?

Well, why not?  So off she went to say hello, bringing a friend along for moral support.  Judging by the smile on everyone’s face, we made their day, too.

If the rest of the afternoon was more conventional, it was no less fun, and probably a bit livelier fun for our brief (and pleasant) interactions with the folks around us. Before you ask what the difference is between these interactions and the ones we’ve complained about in previous posts, it’s very simple: these were friendly. Everyone was polite, good-natured, warm. No one just hovered and stared. In other words…normal, decent human interaction. Kind of easy isn’t it?