by Peter Schmidtke / photo by Peter DiAntoni

An individual as independent as Mike Froemming knows he’s not going to please everyone.

As his dogs Pepper and Duke, a Field Spaniel-Cocker mix and a Black Lab Malamute, swish eagerly around the blue carpet of the entrance room, a tall, shirtless Froemming recalls how he found his current dogs. “They have actually fallen into my lap through a variety of circumstances,” 50-year-old Froemming says about the nine or ten dogs he has owned since he was sixteen. Duke came along eight or nine years ago by way of a former neighbor who found him as a stray, and he first met Pepper when he started walking him for an elderly neighbor.

Although he has had four dogs simultaneously, he seems to have his hands full now with just two. Pepper is a blur of hyperactivity, black curls flying everywhere, and Duke, the elder of the two dogs, barks cautiously before he jostles with Pepper.

“Duke only gets out around the block a little bit because of his age,” Froemming says, stroking the grayed muzzle of the 13-year-old.

With the dogs settling down around him in his easy-chair, a lean and tanned Froemming speaks candidly about being laid off in a recession: “It’s harder, but it’s always been difficult if you don’t have a bonafide skill.”

Before he was laid-off five months ago, Froemming worked for over two years at a warehouse in the New Berlin Industrial Park. He has also worked at other warehouses and as a dishwasher at the now-extinct Oriental Drug Store from 1986-95. Although he has not seen Brooke Maroldi’s documentary Death of a Corner Drugstore, Froemming does have a still photograph of himself from the film.

“If you watch it and see someone with long hair and a white apron on, that’s me.”

Since his job history is in food service and warehouse work, Froemming, who, when I talked with him, had run through 20 of his 39 weeks of unemployment pay, figures that’s where he will land his next job.

“But the best you can get is entry-level jobs for $8-10 per hour,” he says with palms outstretched. “How on earth are you supposed to have a savings account, pay medical expenses and 401(k), and have money to live on?”
In the meantime Froemming is taking computer classes and recently completed a forklift certification course. He is also volunteering up a storm.

Spurred on by his concern for low-income residents in Milwaukee, Froemming has donated his time to the St. Benedict’s meal program on 9th and State since 1994, and he’s worked his way into being a floor supervisor. He wipes and resets tables, refills pitchers, pours milk and coffee for the guests, and gets highchair seats for the children.

He started out giving his time to the center one to three nights a week, but now he’s at it every night they are open, Sunday through Friday.

“I kid people that I got hypnotized – now I say I must go six nights.”

Froemming admits that he used to be a little impatient with the guests while he was volunteering, which led to the staff at St. Benedict’s taking him aside and instructing him about the changes he would need to make.

“It requires a tremendous amount of diplomacy and patience—you have to know what to fuss over and what not to fuss over.”

Although he enjoys his time at St. Benedict’s, Froemming believes that it is his interest in social issues and naturism/nudity that most likely puts him at odds with more than a few Milwaukeeans in the for-profit world.

“At this point in my life, with the naturist/nudist thing, I care, but I don’t care,” he says, shifting in his seat to pet Duke. “If people are going to feed off their own insecurities, I can’t rewire their thinking.”

One misconception Froemming says that people of the clothed, or ‘textile’ community have about nudists is that they are exhibitionists and hedonists.
“We are not; we are very moral people – we just want to find a chunk of land that is secluded. We bring our munchies, our soda. We have people who bring their kids and their dogs.”

For the past ten years or so, Froemming has frequented Mazo Beach, the only legal nude beach in Wisconsin, about 30 minutes west of Madison. This summer he spent nearly every Saturday at the clothing-optional beach welcoming newcomers.

“We have a group of people who keep track of what’s going on, and we have our own code of ethics. There’s hand holding, but no French kissing, no sensual backrubs, nothing sexual.”

Until the early ’90s, Froemming went nude at Paradise Beach in Milwaukee. In 1991, he and several others were issued citations for indecent exposure. Froemming, with the aid of the Naturist Society based in Oshkosh, fought the citation and won. Despite the victory, he points out that people may no longer go nude at Paradise Beach, as it was later ruled to be private property.
What was the catalyst for Froemming’s desire to go clothes free?

He says it was a skinny dipping experience with friends at a private pond when he was 18 years old.

“If there had been women there I would have been a little nervous, but I immediately thought, ‘I want to do this again.’ It was like being engulfed by the water, caressed by it. It’s very stress relieving, and there’s no downside to it.”
Although his roommate, who is not a nudist, is tolerant of him going textile free in the apartment, Froemming says that he could not imagine doing so in an unfriendly environment.

“It clouds over my enjoyment of it when someone is uncomfortable.”

Riverwest Currents - Volume 2 - Issue 10 - October 2003