Our Maui travel plans hadn’t included a nude beach. The bohemian escapade happened by accident, when, after a stroll down Big Beach and nary a shell for my mother to collect, she asked which beach I liked best.

I decided to be honest. “Little Beach. Quaint and clothing optional.”

It was the spring of 1998, four years into the Clinton administration’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. At the time, my sexual orientation was subject to a similar self-imposed policy within my family.

I was 36, and for over 20 years I’d scrubbed gay life from our conversations — boyfriends, drag parties, the gay swim team, the law firm homophobia — all nonexistent. Even the two mentors lost to AIDS, a painful awakening to the fragility of life, omitted. I’d created a social distance I hated and now wanted to close with this vacation, pitched as a parent-son bonding experience — no siblings, the three of us, alone.

“Any shells?” my mother asked. Not the response I expected. We didn’t lead ascetic lives, but prudish attitudes had invaded our psyches. Body exploration was private; porn, proscribed; sex, kept secret. My inner teenager, that prone-to-shock kid, dangled visions of shells and fun lava pools. Her eyes lit up. “We should go tomorrow.”