DINNER WITH A STRANGER

DINNER WITH A NUDIST

The Prospector
2400 East 7th St.
Long Beach, CA


If you walked past him on the street or saw him in a mattress store, you probably wouldn’t notice him. But if you boated past him a mile off the pacific shoreline (apparently that’s the unspoken rule) or happened to stumble onto one of California’s “special beaches,” you’d see him and all of his droopy, middle-aged glory.

This is Michael. He’s a nudist…Amongst other things.

There’s a reason Michael’s favorite joint, The Prospector, is a Long Beach icon. Ironically, maybe, it’s not very hard to unearth. Outside, it’s exactly what you’d expect a restaurant called The Prospector to look like-A John Wayne wet dream. Every inch of brick and mortar is covered in pictures of lonely cowboys out on the range, with no one to keep them company but their trusty steeds. Inside, a dozen or so toothless regulars are tethered to the bar. Their heads hang inches above draft specials, while other drunks toss darts or suck on each other’s faces in the dark corners.


This place is a proper dive…ie- there isn’t a hipster in sight.

As our eyes slowly adjusted to the dark room and darker element, we saw a sign that said “DINING ROOM” and headed for it. We entered a room of fake wood paneling covered in animal heads and anything to do with the cavalry. We spotted our guests, sitting at a lopsided table surrounded by four mismatched chairs, eating from a complimentary dish of chilled relish and veggies. They were almost fully clothed!

As we walked up, we caught the tail end of a conversation that even my imagination isn’t wondrous enough to conceive. Michael’s stern-faced wife looked him dead in the eyes and said…

“I want the coffins out of my living room, Michael!”

Their attention then turned to us and we introduced ourselves to Michael and his wife, Lorraine. We proceeded to sit down and pry.

We soon find out that Michael is somewhat of an investor. A coffin investor. He currently has six coffins lying around the house, accruing value and pissing off Lorraine. His most prized piece is the oversized casket, custom ordered by a Samoan family to fit their 580-pound uncle, sitting in her entryway. And, just when we were about to find out how the hell he acquired all these caskets, our waitress arrived.

She’s a 70-year-old with a red-dye-job-fading-pink-livin’-on-two-packs-of-Pall Malls-a –day-since-she-was-7 type gal. Tapping her pencil on a pad, we hurried to decide, asking Michael about his favorites. He told us he used to come here for the frog legs, before he met Lorraine. So with no help from him, we turned to the waitress, who’d apparently never heard this question in her life.

To avoid the follow up glare, we ordered two of the Tuesday night specials.

And before she even left, a bus boy delivered our first course: “The Prospector’s Famous Soup.” We’re still not sure what kind it was, or where this fame aspired from, but we can tell you that it had some corn in it. And it may or may not have had a celery element.

After two bland slurps (that’s what she said), we got back to finding out how he got a hold of all them caskets.

Turns out, Michael is a mechanic at a cemetery. What does this entail, you may wonder? Well, apparently over 100 pieces of machinery. Yep, he fixes the limos, the golf carts, the hearse, the plows, the ovens, casket hinges, toilets…anything to do with anything in the cemetery.

The weirdest experience had to do with a family moving out of state, who wanted to take their loved one with them. You know, I can understand uprooting an Oak tree your kids planted 20 years back, but uprooting crazy Aunt June? Anyways, they can. Michael assisted, taking a blowtorch to the rusted shut casket to help get her out. Yep. This is actually legal. If you’re the head of someone’s estate, you are in control of everything, including their rotting corpse.

Oh, and I got the answer to the question you’re dying to know but you’d never ask…

“The bodies are like jelly. Jelly mixed with bones. And it stinks near awful!”

Oddly enough, the “freshies” (buried in the last 3 yrs) are usually still recognizable due to embalming, but much longer and you get the “jellies”. And because it’s illegal to transport the bodies in caskets, already buried (wtf?) Michael scoops up the “jelly” into a plastic bag and hands it over.

I looked down at our second course, a standard dinner salad of ice berg lettuce, topped with shredded carrots and 3 cherry tomatoes, and pushed it aside as the Italian dressing turned into the jelly of an aging cadaver. With no visible rust or rot, I’m guessing the salad probably tasted fine. You can be the judge, though.

We noticed the effects of the dinner conversation and changed gears, asking the couple about their craving for nudity. Michael told us he was born with it while Lorraine told us she’d been tricked into it. Apparently, Michael took Lorraine for a weekend vacation, which was coincidentally on the same beach his nudist club frequents. He conveniently left that tiny detail out.

Since then, Michael has been able to get her out of her clothes and into nudity. Together they even formed AANRF: The American Association for Natural Family Recreation. (Click to see what our diners look like naked) And rest assured, Michael isn’t just a member, he’s the President.

AANRF is a nudist club made up of 6 families and one teenager (well, sort of). She’s still begging mom to sign the permission slip. The club takes Michael’s boat out and visits clothing-optional resorts around the Botox-required state of California. Their most frequented spot is Deer Park Resort, where Michael swears they serve the best spaghetti he’s ever tasted. And speaking of food, our entrees arrived, clothed in deep fried goodness.

The Chicken Fried Steak at $8.99 was down right dirty and delicious, just the way it should be. The steak wasn’t tender but it wasn’t tough. The mashed potatoes where whipped with just the right amount of cream and butter: A LOT. The side of green beans where straight out of can, as they should have been. The gravy, poured over the entire plate of southern goodness, tasted like it came from the skillet you’re Granny spent the last 70 years seasoning. It was rich in fat and flavor.


It also came with a basket of garlic toast. The thick white bread was toasted to perfection with every bite bringing you a tablespoon of garlicky butter that melted in your mouth and warmed our hearts…in more ways than one, I’m sure.





The filet mignon, on the other hand, was just plain scary. At first cut, it looked normal but as oxygen took its toll and the temperature dropped, it took on a grayish hue. But hey, you pay $12.99 for a steak, you get something with grey flesh that’s pronounced fill-it mig-non by your waitress. That’s science.

We definitely didn’t have any trouble making quick work of the fries, though. They were hand-cut, perfectly-salted steak fries, with the ideal ratio of crispy to soggy. Skins still showing, just the way God intended. Right, Michael?

Michael wasn’t as interested in his chicken fried steak as he was in telling us about all of society’s hang-ups and the laws keeping him from getting nice and naked.

“They got a prop about lettin’ gays marry, but nothing’s on the ballot about gettin’ nude.”

However, knowing the laws means knowing loopholes. And Michael’s a regular Cochran of nudey pursuits.

His favorite, and somehow totally lawful, way of flying his flag is to roll through the McDonalds drive-thru butt ass naked for a hamburger. Although, he says, he’d prefer to shame the drive-thru of a White Castle, if they had any out here. He even told us that sometimes, when the WC craving gets the best of him, he’ll take a very thin burger patty, fry it on onions and spread a little strained beef baby food on top. Apparently, it’s almost identical to a slider. But again, you be the judge.

As dinner came to a close, Michael couldn’t help but plug his newest endeavor. He has taken his pension for nudity into the more acceptable medium of photography and released it onto the worldwide web. Click to see more of Michael originals, most of them featuring naked women holding skulls. Are they real skulls? We may never know.

We’ll leave you, just the way that Michael left us, by saying, “Being naked ain’t so wrong. Don’t knock it ‘til you try it.” And, as I sit here writing this conclusion without the burden of pants, I can’t help but apply Michael’s words of wisdom to the moral of this story:

Eating at a dive bar ain’t so wrong either. Don’t knock it ‘til you try it or you may end up eating your words.