Denver Sunshine Club

The Denver Sunshine Club is a naturist community whose informal hospitality gives Dan Davis a place to stay when he arrives in 1970 with an implausible story and unfamiliar clothes. Its members’ distinctive code—casualness about nudity, restraint about private affairs, and a readiness to make the outsider explain himself—turns a potentially hostile encounter into a discreet welcome and helps Dan re-enter ordinary life.

Identity and Setting

John Sutton identifies the property as the grounds of the Denver Sunshine Club. He and his wife, Jenny Sutton, are nude when they encounter Dan, who is fully clothed in an outfit that seems out of place there. Yet the club’s perspective reverses the apparent awkwardness: John says that he and Jenny belong on the grounds as they are, while Dan does not, dressed or otherwise. Their exchange establishes the club as a setting with its own social expectations rather than simply a backdrop for Dan’s confusion.

The club’s customs make nudity unremarkable within its grounds. Dan, uneasy at first because he is dressed while the Suttons are not, asks whether removing his clothes would simplify matters. The prospect does not trouble him, although he has not previously visited a bare-skin camp and sees little point in such places; his experience at beaches in Santa Barbara and Laguna Beach had made sense to him because there clothing was unnecessary. John agrees that undressing would simplify things. The scene presents adaptation as a practical choice, not as a test of character or a demand that Dan explain himself.

Welcome and Local Customs

Dan cannot give the Suttons a clear account of how he arrived. He says that sudden dizzy spells have overtaken him, that he does not know where he is, and that he last remembers being in Denver the previous evening at the New Brown Palace. John remains unconvinced by the explanation and considers taking him back to the clubhouse, where other members would naturally be curious. Jenny, however, holds John back from cross-examining their guest. Their different responses—John’s suspicion and Jenny’s intervention—show how the club’s welcome is enacted through particular people, not just a general atmosphere.

John proposes a simple way to make Dan’s presence intelligible to the other members: Jenny is to circulate the word that a guest from California is expected, with Los Angeles as the stated origin. The club does not require a surname; John explains that members do not use last names unless someone offers one. The arrangement lets Dan be introduced on terms he can sustain, while the Suttons manage the practical problem of his conspicuous costume by fetching an overnight bag to conceal it. Hospitality here is social as well as material: a story, a name, and a bag are enough to ease a stranger into the group without a demand for a fuller account.

Discretion and Practical Assistance

The members prove friendly but notably uninterested in Dan’s personal affairs. He later reflects that they were less nosy than any group he had known and that he had never met people more discreet or polite. He subsequently learns that this restraint is standard good manners in a skin club. The club’s privacy is therefore not presented as Dan’s special privilege alone; it is a customary form of conduct that allows a guest with a doubtful story to remain among the members without continual interrogation.

The Suttons stay until Monday morning, and Dan stays with them. John and Jenny have their own cabin, while Dan sleeps on a cot in the clubhouse dormitory, where the night is uncomfortably cold. The next morning John supplies him with a shirt and blue jeans. Dan’s own clothes are wrapped around the gold he has recovered and placed in the trunk of John’s Jaguar Imperator. A borrowed change of clothes and the overnight shelter turn the club’s welcome into concrete assistance, while the gold remains protected inside the discarded outfit.

The Gold and the Club’s Trust

Dan’s gold has a precise first-encounter date: when John asks about it, Dan says the earliest date on which he saw it was May 3, 1970. John understands that Dan found it in the mountains. That detail situates their dealings in the material problem of the gold’s origin and value, even though Dan’s account of his arrival remains uncertain.

By Tuesday, Dan has a little money. He never sees the gold again, but over the following weeks John turns over its exact mint value as bullion, less the standard fees charged by licensed gold buyers. John supplies vouchers from gold buyers, does not deduct payment for his own services, and does not offer to explain the details of the transactions. Dan takes the documentation and the money as evidence of fair dealing. The trust involved is practical rather than sentimental: John converts a concealed and otherwise unusable asset into funds, while the vouchers make the value traceable without exposing Dan to a drawn-out inquiry.

Narrative Function

The Denver Sunshine Club appears during Dan’s disorientation, when he does not know how he got to the place or where he is. Its members cannot solve that central mystery, but their customs give him a way to live with it: they accept a limited introduction, give him a bed and clothes, and treat his private story as private. The club’s unusual dress code briefly makes Dan feel that he is the one out of order; within the group, however, ordinary expectations are inverted, and his difference is managed through humor and accommodation.

The episode also links the club to a decisive material transition. Dan arrives with gold and a story he cannot convincingly explain; he leaves with modest funds produced through John’s careful dealings and the freedom to move onward. The club’s importance lies less in changing Dan’s past than in helping him navigate its immediate consequences. Its discretion protects his privacy, and its ordinary acts of hospitality give him a foothold at a moment when his account of himself cannot.