The Project Gutenberg eBook of Naked holiday
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Naked holiday
Author: Robert Silverberg
Illustrator: Harold W. McCauley
Release date: August 12, 2026 [eBook #79351]
Language: English
Original publication: San Diego, CA: Nightstand Books, 1960
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79351
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NAKED HOLIDAY ***
NAKED HOLIDAY
By DON ELLIOTT
AN ORIGINAL NIGHTSTAND BOOK
_NAKED HOLIDAY_
COPYRIGHT 1960, NIGHTSTAND BOOKS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_Too Many Women_ ...
that was the trouble at the Sunland Health Colony. Too many women with
too much to show, and too anxious to give it away. So Al Fieldston--who
had come to the sunbather's camp for peace and quiet and time to write
a novel--found himself sinking deeper, ever deeper, into a morass of
sexual intrigue. The one girl he loved, grew cold and distant at his
touch; but the others ... Bonnie, Sandra, Harriet, Naomi ... all of
them made no pretense. They wanted him to love them: one wanted raw
sex, another wanted to be brutally beaten, still another used him like
a tool. But they were all beautiful, filled with--
... _Insatiable Hungers_
_CHAPTER ONE_
It was a beautiful morning. Sunlight streamed cheerily through the
front windows of my little cabin. I felt like a million dollars. I
threw off the light covers, sprang to the window, opened the draperies
to let all that glorious sunshine in.
There was a naked girl walking around outside.
For just half a second I thought I was still asleep. She was a blonde
goddess, a tall, glowing girl who seemed to give off a radiance of her
own. Long gleaming blonde hair hung down to her shoulders, but the back
of her neck was the only part of her body that was covered in any way.
She had golden-brown skin--acres of it--and it was all showing.
I stood at the window, drinking in the sight. Her breasts were two
big deep bowls, high and round and firm-looking, and tanned the same
color as the rest of her body. Little dark reddish-brown nipples jutted
up delightfully. Below her breasts, her body swept in a tapering,
sensuously-rounded drop to the wide hips. Her buttocks were full but
athletically muscular, her thighs flawless, her legs twin delights. And
she was a genuine blonde, no doubt about it.
The best part of it all was that this wasn't any dream. The girl
outside my cabin was as real as I was. Her name was Joanie Baker, and
she was one of the members of the Sunland Health Colony, which I had
come to the night before. I had met her last night. It had been a
fairly chilly night, and she had been wearing a sweater then. That's
all--just a sweater. It covered her down to her navel, and, let me tell
you, the effect was plenty startling to see her switching her bare
buttocks around so casually.
Well, now it was the next morning, and she wasn't even wearing the
sweater. I was glad to see that the upper half of her body matched the
lower. If anything, she was even easier on the eyes from the waist up
than from the hips down, with those two big tip-tilted bosoms of hers
bare to the morning sun.
I didn't bother to go into the adjoining room to wake my buddy Jack. I
stepped out on the front porch.
I was stark naked. It was my debut in the nudist world.
I felt a little bit like a man in a nightmare. You know, here's this
lovely girl waiting for you to pick her up and take her to a flick, and
when you show up at her parents' home to get her you turn out to be
stark naked in front of everybody.
Except this wasn't her parents' home. And she was stark naked too.
I took a quick glance at myself before I stepped outside. I didn't want
anything embarrassing to be going on.
I stood there in the warm morning sun with every inch of me showing,
and I fought the temptation to turn and run back inside.
"Morning," I said hesitantly.
Joanie looked up and smiled. "Hi! I was just about to go in and wake
you up for breakfast. How'd you sleep last night?"
"Fine," I said. I tried to keep my eyes above her chin, but it was a
losing proposition. They kept drifting downward as if drawn by magnets
to those two fleshy globes of hers.
"Think you can make it to the mess hall by yourself?" she asked.
"Newcomers sometimes need a while to learn how to find their way
around."
"I'm kind of doubtful," I said. "It's down the road, and turn a
little--" I shrugged. "You'd better show us. Hold on and I'll wake Jack
up."
"Right. Hurry it up, now. We don't want to be late for breakfast," she
said cheerily.
I went back into the two-bedroom cabin and pushed open the door of the
room that belonged to my buddy Jack Meehan. Meehan was sound asleep
with the covers dragged up over his head. I shook him.
He opened one eye uncertainly. "Huh? Whaz-zis--"
"Time to get up," I said loudly. "Breakfast time."
"Go 'way."
"Wake up, you dope! Joanie Baker's outside waiting to show us how to
get to the mess hall."
"Don't give a damn if she's the Queen of England," Jack mumbled. "What
time is it, anyway?"
I looked at my watch, the only thing I was wearing. "Half past seven."
He shuddered and pulled the covers up over his head. "Christ almighty!
Come back in two hours, man!"
Putting my hands on my hips, I stared down at him, debating what to
do. After a moment I walked to the window and looked out. Joanie was
waiting outside, sitting cross-legged in an Indian squat on the grass.
"Well?" she asked.
"He won't wake up."
"Tell him he'll miss breakfast if he doesn't get a move on," she
called. "This isn't any country club, you know."
I shook my head. "I know him, Joanie. When he says he won't wake up,
he _won't_."
"Maybe I can fix him," she said.
She rose to her feet, coming up out of that squatting position in a
single athletic bound. I gasped at the play of muscles up her flanks
and sides as she got up. I began to get the idea that this girl
would be a veritable wildcat in bed, with her calendar-girl body and
her sinews of steel. That is, if she went to bed with anybody. I had
heard stories that some of these nudists simply didn't believe in sex.
Constant exposure dulls their interest, or something.
Joanie came trotting up onto the porch, her breasts going
jounce-jounce-jounce with each step. She bounded right past me and
headed for Jack's room.
"Don't go in there!" I called. "He isn't--_dressed_," I finished,
turning the last word into an idiotic mumble as I realized how foolish
I was being at the moment.
I followed her in. She was leaning over Jack, and her breasts were
dangling forward until they weren't any more than six inches from the
tip of his nose, except that his eyes were screwed tight shut and he
didn't know what he was missing.
"Mr. Meehan," she said softly.
Jack didn't stir.
"It's time to get up, Jack," she said.
Not a flicker.
With a single quick gesture she grabbed hold of the quilt on Jack's
bed and yanked it off. Meehan was mother-naked, curled up in the bed,
and as the cool morning air hit him all at once he let out a yelp and
opened his eyes.
A moment later, when what he was seeing registered, he let out another
yelp. For here was this statuesque blonde standing over him in a
school-teacherish way, her arms on her hips, her legs slightly spread,
her bare breasts going up and down rapidly with every breath she took.
It was one hell of a way for a man to wake up in the morning, and for
a second I thought Meehan would have a stroke. He turned red all over
and nearly reached for the coverlet. But Joanie saw the motion and she
shook her head.
"You don't need to cover yourself here, Mr. Meehan. Remember? Our
bodies are the work of God. We have no reason to hide them."
He nodded. "Sure. I forgot. Reflex, you know." He couldn't take his
eyes off those big breasts. Neither could I. They weren't cow-like,
mind you. They looked almost like the kind of breasts you see on marble
statues in the museum--big and firm, and pointing straight out and up,
instead of hanging way down and swinging from side to side.
Joanie said softly, "Let's get up now, Mr. Meehan. It's breakfast time."
"Yeah. Yeah."
Jack foggily groped his way toward the john and closed the door behind
him. I heard the water running in there. I stood around and looked
blithe and unconcerned, which I wasn't. Joanie had her back to me,
and I was running my eyetracks up and down that tanned back and those
lovely curving rear cheeks.
A few moments later Jack came out, with his face washed, his hair
combed, and his wristwatch wound. We were all ready for breakfast.
"Let's go," Joanie said.
We left the cabin--no need to lock any doors in the Sunland Health
Colony--and started down the road to the mess hall.
At this point I think I ought to hold things up and give you some idea
of who I am and how I happened to be strolling down that road in the
buff on that particular morning.
My name is Al Fieldston. I'm thirty-four years old. For the past five
years I had been working for an advertising agency. Not Madison Avenue,
but the next best thing--a Wacker Drive firm, Chicago. Give me the
middle west any day. Over those five years I had worked up the scale
from an underpaid trainee to an overpaid copywriter. At the present
time I was drawing $14,000 a year, which is not terribly much by the
standards of some agencies, but which was plenty for a bachelor like
me with relatively simple tastes. Besides, there were frequent raises,
and all you had to do to survive at our firm was to smile nicely and
turn your work in on time. It wasn't the cutthroat sort of operation
that some advertising agencies are. It was a nice, friendly place,
easy-going and relaxed--which might possibly explain why our billings
weren't all they could have been.
To cover briefly the twenty-nine years before my donning of the gray
flannel suit: running backwards, it looks like this--two and a half
years on the editorial staff of a reactionary Chicago daily paper, two
years spent unwillingly in the grasp of the United States Army, one
year spent as chief-cook-and-bottle-washer for an Illinois country
weekly, one year spent obtaining a Master's degree in Journalism at
Columbia University, four years going to college at Northwestern.
Before that comes high school, puberty, grade school, and all the
rest, going back to birth in Chicago (South Side) slightly more than a
third of a century ago.
So much for past history.
Now, how did I happen to be waking up in a nudist colony with a
big-busted blonde parading around in the raw outside my window?
It isn't because I'm a crank or a nature faddist or anything like that.
I'm not. I don't mix wheat germ and blackstrap molasses into anything
I eat. Nor am I morbidly anxious to see bare bodies of either sex.
Masculine nudity has never fascinated me, while in thirty-four years of
bachelorhood (minus seventeen months of marriage that I forgot to tell
you about above--they happened while I was working for that Chicago
newspaper) I've acquired a reasonably good knowledge of the outward
anatomy of the feminine body. I'm well aware that some have more than
others, but that the basic parts are pretty much the same from one
to the next. So it wasn't merely to ogle a lot of bare bosoms and
delectable pink buttocks that I came away to the Sunland Health Colony.
No, it was a combination of several other factors. Prime among them
was the matter of my advertising agency being the easy-going sort, as
I said. You certainly know that every copywriter on Wacker Drive--and
Madison too, of course--thinks privately that he might have been a
novelist, if only things had worked out a little differently. Perhaps
one out of five of these would-be novelists actually has a particular
novel all plotted out, ready to be written "as soon as the pressure
eases off a little." And maybe one out of eight of this latter group
actually gets around to writing all or most of that projected novel,
some day.
Well, I was a member of that one-out-of-five category that had a novel
all plotted out. I wanted to move on to the one-out-of-eight that
actually gets the damned book written.
It was about this time that I found out about our leave-of-absence
plan. In keeping with the relaxed atmosphere of our shop, a scheme
exists to permit copywriters and such people to go off by themselves
for a while and work on any private creative projects they may have.
The deal is that you can have up to ninety days, three solid months.
Without pay, of course, but you can't have everything. All you had to
do was talk to the right man.
I talked. I came out of the VP's office with permission to take the
months of June, July, and August off, provided my desk was clear when
I left. The first three weeks of that period would be considered my
vacation for the year, and I would be paid for them. The subsequent
weeks, up to a total of nine, could be taken without pay. When I
returned to the agency, I would slip right back into my slot without
suffering any disadvantages.
There was a risk, of course. There was always the possibility that
some bright boy from below might shove his way into the accounts I was
handling, while I wasn't around to defend myself. But I had to take
that chance. I had to risk getting scragged while I was away. I figured
ours wasn't the throat-cutting kind of place, and, anyway, I had a
couple of good friends who I could probably trust to look out for my
interests while I was gone.
The next step was to find a place to go.
Staying in Chicago to write the book was out of the question. For one
thing, _nobody_ stays in Chicago in the summertime if he can arrange to
be somewhere else. For another, I knew that if I spent the summer close
to my telephone I would never get a page written. There would be calls
from the office, calls from old friends, calls from old enemies, shows
to see, girls to make, etc., etc., etc. I had to get out of town.
Where to?
At this point Jack Meehan came to my aid. Jack was a buddy of mine
from my Northwestern days. These days he earns a living--to put it
mildly--by writing journalistic-type articles for the big slicks.
You've seen his work in the _Post_, the _Digest_, and a lot of other
places, under a variety of names. In his thirty-odd years he's been
through three wives (he had already been divorced once before his
freshman year at college) and he was pulling in something like fifty
grand a year from his typewriter lately, which is fair dough in any
line.
It was the middle of May, two weeks before the beginning of my leave of
absence, and I still hadn't decided where I was going to go to write my
novel. And then Jack Meehan called. He made a habit of keeping in touch
with me, and generally I got a call from him every time he landed some
juicy assignment.
He had one this time. After we talked around for a few minutes, he
said, "You'll never guess what sort of story I'm about to start on
now."
"I know. _Life_ is going to smuggle you into King Saud's harem
disguised as a eunuch."
"Not quite, pal. Try again."
"You're going to play shortstop for a girl baseball team, and
illustrate your articles with juicy locker-room candids."
"Wrong again. I'm going to spend the summer in a nudist colony."
"You aren't serious!"
"Why the hell not? You think I'm inhibited, man?"
"What's the deal?" I asked.
It was a good one. One of the big magazines wanted him to do a
feature on Nudism. The idea was an unsensational piece, stressing
the individualistic character of the nudists, painting them as
staunch rugged spirits in the middle of a society of conformists. Any
illustrations would be strictly tame, because this was for a family
magazine. There was about three thousand bucks in the assignment for
Jack, which wouldn't be terribly little for a job that would take him
no more than a few weeks of researching.
But on top of that he had arranged an even better deal. Taking his
slick-mag outline to a hard-cover house, he got himself commissioned
to do a full-length expansion of the magazine article, complete with
some rather more revealing photos. The book people figured they
had a hot thing, and they wanted Jack to spend the whole summer in
the nudist camp, really getting to know the people on all sorts of
levels. The advance they had given him made me practically swallow my
bubble-gum. And they expected tremendous sales, television plugs and
interviews for Jack, nationwide publicity, and maybe even a magazine
condensation of the book after publication, thereby rounding out a neat
mag-to-book-to-mag double play.
"I've been shopping around for a place," Jack went on, "and I've got
a honey. She's around sixty miles out of Chicago, in pretty secluded
territory. I've talked the whole deal out with them and they've agreed
to let me stay for the whole summer. I can't mention any names, of
course, but it's otherwise okay with them about the article and the
book. I drove out there last week to have a look. It's a lot of little
cabins and some community buildings. Just like a camp for kids, get it,
only the kids are grown up and they don't wear any pants."
"You see any of the inmates?" I asked.
"Just a couple. There's only about nine or ten people there now. It
begins crowding up after the first of June, and by midsummer they have
around fifty."
"And the ones you saw were just wandering around in the altogether?"
"You guessed it, sonny." I could hear him chuckling over the wire. "I
saw a grand total of three nudists. There was an old gentleman of about
seventy, and a boy who looked like he was around five. It was sort of a
disappointment."
"You said there were _three_," I reminded him.
"Oh. Yeah," he said. "The third one was a girl. Twenty-three or so. Big
blonde with the nicest pair of knobs you ever want to dream about. I
guess she sort of slipped my mind."
"I'll bet she did."
"She's the friendly type, too. I passed her in the car on the road, and
she waved at me, and like I mean _wow_, man! Those big beautiful things
hanging under her chin like a couple of howitzers, and I damn near
drove into a tree when I saw her." He paused. "It sounds like a restful
way to spend a vacation. Swim and sun and read, and peck out a couple
lines a day on the typewriter. And when the summer's over I hand in my
copy and the publishers shower me with gold. Don't you wish you were a
writer, boy? A _real_ writer, I mean, not one of those Wacker wacks."
"Yeah," I said remotely. "Yeah, sure." An idea was springing to life
in my mind, full-blown and giving off radioactive emissions. "Tell me
something, Jack."
"Yeah?"
"You think this nudist camp might have room for a friend of yours?"
_CHAPTER TWO_
So that was how I got involved. Jack was a little surprised when I
popped the question, but after I explained about the leave-of-absence
deal and the novel I planned to write he got very enthusiastic and told
me he'd see what he could do for me.
An hour later, he called back.
"I just had a talk with the director of the colony," he told me. "He
says there's room for you, provided you pass the interview."
"Interview? What kind of interview?"
"Oh, nothing much," Jack said. "Just a sort of screening that they put
you through to make sure you aren't perverted or queer or anything.
They want nice healthy-minded people at their camp. They don't want
anyone going there out of evil impulses."
"I get it," I said. "Okay, when's the interview?"
"Are you free tomorrow night?"
"I suppose."
"Good. I'll meet you downtown for dinner and then I'll drive you out to
his place. He lives in Cicero."
We had a good dinner the next night, and by half past eight we were
speeding over to Cicero. The last place I expected to find the director
of a nudist camp living was the staid, ultra-conservative suburb of
Cicero, but you never can tell. Jack drove his shiny Mercedes 300-SL
as though it were an old Ford he had picked up on the junkheap and
souped up; he came within an ice of knocking dents in the little rocket
half a dozen times, but he didn't seem to let it bother him. I told
myself that if I owned a car that cost $13,000, I'd treat it with more
respect than Jack did. But then I figured that if I earned Jack's kind
of money maybe the price of the car wouldn't matter much to me either.
At any rate, a little while later we zeroed in on a quiet, suburban
street, and I found myself marching up to the front door of a
nice-looking stone-walled house about twenty-five years old. I don't
know what I was expecting to answer the door--somebody in the nude,
probably--and so I was just a bit startled when a pleasant-looking
woman of about forty, fully dressed, answered the bell.
She beamed at Jack. "Hello, Mr. Meehan. And this is your friend,
Mr.--ah--"
"Fieldston," I supplied. "Al Fieldston."
"Yes. Won't you both come in. Dr. Richards is on the telephone just at
the moment, but he'll be with you right away. I'm Mrs. Richards, Mr.
Fieldston. I like people to call me Elinor."
I nodded and smiled, and Jack and I went in. We were led into a
nicely-furnished place, the tables and chairs in modern decor but
having an agreeably _used_ look about them. There was an enormous
bookcase jam-packed, spreading over two entire walls. I sat down in an
armchair, Jack took the couch, and Elinor Richards beamed at us both.
A moment of awkward silence ensued. I was a little startled by three
framed photos hanging on the wall of an alcove. One of them showed
Elinor Richards, looking plump and bosomy, wearing absolutely nothing
at all. The second picture showed a tall, lean man that I took to be
Dr. Richards, and he was without a figleaf too. The third picture
was the killer, though. It showed a dark-haired girl in her teens
smiling sweetly into the camera. She was wearing the nicest pair of
mammary protruberances I had seen in a long while, but nothing else,
but _nothing_. It was the daughter of the house, I guessed. It seemed
an odd way to do things, leaving nude photos of the family hanging up
where casual visitors could get a look at the nubile daughter in the
altogether, as well as Dr. and Mrs.
I was still pondering this point when the girl herself appeared. She
was dressed, incidentally. She looked to be sixteen, maybe seventeen.
She was the willowy kind, but her sweater was tight and well-filled.
She was wearing a plaid skirt and bobby-sox. A regular teenager, I
figured. Automatically I glanced up at the wall, where I could view her
without the encumbrances of the sweater and skirt, and I turned red and
looked away guiltily. She saw me flick my eyes from the picture to the
real thing, but she didn't show any trace of embarrassment.
Elinor said, "This is my daughter Sandra. You've met Mr. Meehan, dear.
This is a friend of his, Mr. Al Fieldston."
"Hello," I said.
"Very pleased to meet you," she husked in a siren's voice, deep and
throaty. She looked straight into my eyes and I squirmed. Maybe she
was only sixteen, but she was pure concentrated sex. She was saying
_very-pleased-to-meet-you_ with her body as well as her lips, and let
me tell you, it's a discomforting thing to get that kind of greeting
from a teenager. It's something like picking up a piece of rope and
discovering it's really a high-voltage power line. I sizzled.
She floated across the room, giving me the full benefit of her figure
in profile, and another quick glance at the photo on the wall made it
evident that everything she was showing me was genuine. Sitting down
demurely, she crossed her legs and her skirt rode up above one knee.
That struck me as funny. Here was a teenage nudist, accustomed to
walking around completely bare-bottomed, but as long as she had clothes
on she was determined to pull little coquettish tricks with her sweater
and her skirt this way. Funny people, women are.
At that moment Dr. Richards appeared. In clothes, he looked extremely
dignified. He was a spare, lanky man somewhat past fifty, with thick
grey hair and a conservative taste in clothing. He smiled at me and
said, "Ah. Mr. Fieldston."
We had a couple of seconds of hand-shaking and greeting. Then Elinor
took orders for drinks, and while we were waiting for them Dr. Richards
began to fill me in on the Sunland Health Colony pitch.
The colony was fifteen years old, he said. It had been founded by some
philanthropic old codger from Valparaiso who had enjoyed sunbathing
himself, and who left a tract of land and a non-profit organization to
administer it. Dr. Richards--who mentioned that he was a professor of
math at one of the local universities--was the current director, the
top man of a board of five.
"My academic year ends early in June," he said. "I'll be going up there
then."
"With your whole family?"
"Of course. We're all devoted outdoors people. Sandra has been a nudist
since she was old enough to walk."
We got down to the important part of the interview. He wanted to know
all about me--what I did for a living, where I had been educated, on
and on and on. Mostly he was trying to find out about my motives for
wanting to go to his little skin-camp. I told him about the novel I
wanted to write, and how I wanted peace and quiet and fresh air while I
wrote it. He didn't exactly ask me about my sex life, but by skirting
around the subject he managed to get told that I was a reasonably
normal bachelor who wasn't likely to engage in obscene acts in the mess
hall or to creep around at night pinching the other colonists.
After about forty minutes of this sort of stuff he seemed to be
satisfied with my sincerity.
He said, "You must understand that we have certain rules that have to
be observed. If you think any of them are too harsh, say so now and
we'll have to consider your application withdrawn."
"What are they?"
"First," he said, "we don't permit the use of alcoholic beverages in
the colony. This is strictly enforced. You see, we can't run the risk
of being accused of sponsoring wild orgies, Mr. Fieldston. Beer is
available on request from the kitchen.
"Second, we prohibit unauthorized picture-taking. You can bring a
camera with you, but all film must be developed on the premises and
permission must be obtained from any person who happens to be in the
picture, or else the negative will be destroyed. Obviously we must
protect the privacy of our members."
"Obviously," I said.
"Third, you must obtain permission before bringing any outside guests
into the camp. This should be self-explanatory. We don't want our
grounds over-run with curiosity-seekers.
"Fourth, the matter of dress. We don't _require_ complete nudity. When
the weather is inclement, naturally, our people dress accordingly. As
for the rest of the time, we naturally prefer complete nudity, but no
one is forced to adhere to it. However, we do object to dressing in a
manner calculated to arouse erotic sensations--as, for example, a woman
wearing an extremely scanty bikini. And likewise, if you show a total
reluctance to remove your clothing at any time in public, we'll have to
assume that you have come among us as a _voyeur_, with the intention
of spying on us. We reserve the right to request your departure at any
time."
"I understand that," I said.
"All right, then. These are the chief conditions under which you'll
live. Such minor regulations as we have are posted in each cabin. The
fee is $40 a week, which includes lodgings, linens, and three meals a
day."
"That sounds extremely reasonable."
"We're not interested in profit, Mr. Fieldston," Dr. Richards said
piously. "Our only aim is to provide a place where those people free of
the shackling inhibitions of society may bare their bodies to God's own
sunlight. Do you find our company appealing?"
"I'm very anxious to enroll."
"Very well, then. Would you fill out this blank?"
He gave me a mimeographed questionnaire, and I went through it quickly,
checking off the boxes that asked whether I had ever had a venereal
disease, whether I had ever been convicted of a sexual offense, and
such. While I was filling out the form, I noticed that both Sandra and
her mother had quietly left the room. I was wondering why, and I found
out quickly enough.
Dr. Richards looked at the questionnaire and smiled. "There's only
one formality remaining. Would you please remove your clothes, Mr.
Fieldston?"
I frowned. "Right here?"
"Please. You'll notice that my wife and daughter have left the room. We
understand that exposure is a matter of some difficulty the first time,
especially when other people are fully dressed around you. So we spare
you the sometimes embarrassing necessity of having to disrobe in front
of fully clothed strangers of the opposite sex. But I must ask you to
remove your clothes now."
"All right. But why?"
"For--ah--esthetic reasons, Mr. Fieldston. We try to avoid
unpleasantness in our colony. If your body should be seriously scarred
or deformed in a way that would make you repugnant to our more
sensitive members, I'm afraid I would have to reject you."
Shrugging, I peeled out of my clothes. The livingroom door was ajar,
and I glanced uneasily at it, half expecting Sandra or her mother
to come strolling back in after I had peeled all the way down. They
didn't--but I was almost certain I saw Sandra peek around the edge of
the door momentarily.
In a few seconds my clothes were neatly deposited on the couch, and I
was turning in a slow circle in front of Dr. Richards, feeling mildly
silly. But I knew I had nothing to worry about. I don't have any scars
or deformities or anything like that, and I've kept myself in pretty
fair trim over the years. So after I had completed one full turn,
Dr. Richards told me I was accepted for membership, and could put my
clothes back on.
When I left there that night, I was a full-fledged member of
the Sunland Health Colony for that summer. Jack and I were
sharing the same cabin. On the way out, Sandra gave me another
how-about-a-roll-in-the-hay? look, and I felt myself starting to fog up.
As I buckled myself into Jack's car I said, "Fill me in on that Sandra
item. You know how old she is?"
"Sixteen last month," he said impassively.
"Did she give you eyes like that when you had your interview, Jack?"
"Yep."
"She's really built, too. Did you see that picture of her in the raw,
up in that alcove? She's got a pair of knobs that really catch your
eye."
"Yep."
The monosyllable kick he was on was beginning to bug me. I said, "Hell,
man, it's too bad she's jailbait. If she means those glances she throws
around--"
"She does."
"You think she's been around?"
"I _know_ she has, man," Jack said flatly.
"You _know_?"
"Not me personally. But I hear things from others. The guy who told
me about this place warned me about her. Watch out for the director's
nympho daughter, he said. It seems she's been laying for the membership
since she turned fourteen."
"What do her parents say?"
"They don't say a damn thing. Either they don't know or else they think
it's terribly modern for her to be rolling in the underbrush."
I nibbled my lip, thinking of that eight-by-ten nude print,
unretouched, hanging on the wall. Then I thought of the eighteen-year
gap in our ages, and I felt ashamed of myself.
Jack dropped me off at my place, and I started right in making lists.
For the next ten days, I was busy doing all the things you have to get
done before you can go away for a couple of months. You know--pay the
gas and electric bills, arrange to have newspaper delivery stopped,
tell the post office where to forward first-class mail, give the
one-day-a-week housekeeper her vacation money and tell her not to
bother coming in for a while, and so on. At the same time I was busy at
the office, getting things wrapped up on time.
By the first of June I was ready. I had severed all my ties with the
outside world. The phone was shut off, the windows were shuttered, my
suitcase was packed. I didn't take very much. Some socks, a sweater,
a couple of changes of underwear, a shirt or two, and three reams of
typing paper. You didn't need swimsuits or neckties if you were going
to a nudist colony for the summer.
At half past five that evening Jack stopped by with the Mercedes. We
crammed my one suitcase and my portable typewriter aboard and took off.
We put away a couple of steaks at a restaurant ten miles up the road,
and then headed out toward the Sunland Health Colony.
We got just a little bit lost. Just a little. The colony was on a dirt
road that branched off a country road that stemmed from a big highway,
and we missed a couple of turns and found ourselves practically in
Wisconsin before Jack decided we weren't heading the right way. We dug
out the roadmaps and retraced our path, Jack goosing the car up to 80
to make up for lost time.
It kept getting darker and darker, until by half past eight it was
pitch-black, and I had panicky visions of us wandering around back
roads all night. But just before nine Jack muttered, "This looks
familiar"--the first words he had spoken in half an hour--and he swung
the car off the road and straight at what seemed to me to be the trunk
of a tree.
It wasn't, though. There was a little bit of a path leading into the
woods, and a chain strung across the path. A hand lettered sign nailed
against one of the trees informed us, PRIVATE ROAD. DO NOT ENTER. HONK
HORN FOR ATTENDANT.
Jack honked, good and loud, and the yap of that horn must have been
audible all the way up to the St. Lawrence Seaway. We waited two or
three minutes.
"Maybe they didn't hear me," Jack said.
"It's a nudist colony, not a retreat for deaf mutes," I told him. "Just
be patient."
A couple of moments later, we saw a lantern making its way toward
us out of the woods. A slabjawed man of about forty became visible,
approaching us. He was wearing a yellow rain-slicker, but he had
buttoned it hastily and I could see he wasn't wearing much underneath
it.
"Yes?" he said.
"We're new guests," Jack said. "Jack Meehan and Al Fieldston. Dr.
Richards knows about us."
He nodded and pulled a fraying index card out of a pocket of the
slicker. Consulting it by lantern-light, he decided we were okay.
"Meehan ... Fieldston. Yeah. Just a minute, now."
He unwrapped the chain that blocked the entrance to the little path.
Then, walking in front of us and guiding us with the lantern, he led us
inside.
The Mercedes inched ahead, over what must have been three quarters of
a mile of winding, weed-infested dirt road. Jack travelled at about
eight miles an hour, and the Mercedes seemed practically insulted to be
going so slowly. At length we came to another chain stretched across
the road. This time the sign accompanying it said, SUNLAND HEALTH
COLONY--WELCOME!
Our taciturn guide removed the chain, and we passed between what looked
like the one break in a high, gloomy wall, into the camp itself.
Over to our right we saw a building of sorts, well lit, and we could
make out people moving within. They seemed to be dancing. We heard
music. Our guide said, "You fellows are in Cabin Nine, down near the
lake. Drive your car over to the Social Hall and I'll get you Miss
Baker. She'll take you down to the cabin."
Obediently, we drove across the broad lawn and pulled up outside the
Social Hall. Our man went inside. We walked up on the porch and I saw
the most fantastic sight I had ever beheld.
There were about a dozen people in the building, and they were
square-dancing. Men and women, and their ages seemed to range from ten
to seventy, with a heavy concentration in the thirties. Two or three
more--including the caller--were as naked as the day they came into the
world. The rest were partially clad, and I mean _partially_. A couple
of the women were wearing sweaters only, and another had on a pair
of trousers. One of the men had a shirt, another a hat and a pair of
socks. Quite a sight.
Quite.
They took as much notice of us as though we were two spiders crawling
on the wall. We stood there, waiting for the dance to end, watching
them bounce gaily around with various parts of their anatomies flapping
up and down. For the first time I began to have real misgivings about
my choice of a summer retreat.
"There's the blonde I saw," Jack whispered, nudging me.
I saw and gulped. She was one of the women wearing only a sweater. As
I mentioned before, it covered her down to about the navel, leaving
all the rest bare. I stared at the exposed beauty of her, at the firm
flanks and the trim buttocks and all the rest, and somehow none of this
seemed real to me. But there she was, what looked like two eye-popping
breasts going up and down with each swing of her hips, under her
sweater.
The dance ended, finally, and our friend with the lantern went over and
whispered something to her. She nodded and came across the dance floor
toward us, smiling amiably.
Perhaps you've never had the experience of having a glorious looking
blonde about five feet ten come striding toward you, naked from the
navel down. Let me tell you, it's a stunner, especially when she's a
total stranger. She came up to us and thrust out her hand.
"Hi," she said. "I'm Joanie Baker. Glad to meet you fellows. Which one
of you is which?"
"I'm Jack Meehan," Jack said. "I was here as a visitor a month or so
back--"
"That's right. I remember. And so you must be Al Fieldston. Glad to
know you, Al."
"A pleasure," I mumbled, trying desperately to keep my eyes above the
hem of her sweater. I didn't want to be thrown out right at the start
for lascivious ogling, or something like that.
But she turned around and stepped back into the hall, while we remained
sheepishly on the threshold. My eyes came to rest on her shapely rear.
The night air was chilly, but I felt sweat dribblets running down my
body.
She clapped her hands and said, "Attention, everybody. I want you to
meet our two new members. Jack Meehan and Al Fieldston." She pointed
to each of us in turn. "No use introducing you to everyone tonight,
fellows. Suppose I take you down to your cabin and you can get settled
right away?"
"Fine," we said in chorus.
So she walked in front of the car, leading us to our cabin, while
Jack's headlights nicely illuminated her buttocks. It's a pleasure
to watch the muscles in an athletic woman's rear as she walks, and I
didn't ever remember having had such a thorough opportunity. She led us
down a narrow road for perhaps two hundred yards, and then we turned
left into a little clearing where some other cars were parked.
"Leave your car here, fellows. The cabin isn't very far."
My eyes were getting accustomed to the darkness, and I saw a string of
fairly widely-spaced cabins running down the side of a gently sloping
hill. At the bottom of the hill were trees fencing the area in.
As we walked, she pointed out some of the geography. "The lake's right
down there behind those trees," she said. "The tennis courts are over
there ... the baseball diamond ... the handball court...." In the dark,
we couldn't see a thing, but we nodded anyway.
We stopped in front of the ninth cabin in the row. Joanie went in and
turned on the lights, and we carried our luggage in. It consisted of
two fair-sized bedrooms with narrow beds, and an adjoining head shared
by both us. Simple and rustic, but agreeable.
She said, "The dance will be going on for about another half hour or
so, till ten o'clock. That's when our organized activities usually end.
Breakfast's at half past seven, and if you're not in the mess hall by
eight you won't get served."
"Suppose we can't find our way up front again by ourselves?"
She grinned. "I'll stop by in the morning and get you," she said. "Any
problems now?"
"Not yet," I said.
_CHAPTER THREE_
It was just after ten by the time Jack and I were finished installing
ourselves in Cabin Nine of the Sunland Health Colony. A few people
were straggling back from the dance now. We saw them going into other
cabins, turning on the lights.
"We might as well sack out," Jack suggested.
"Might as well," I agreed. "Time to meet everybody in the morning."
We exchanged uneasy glances. I figured he was probably thinking the
same thing I was--that he wanted a good night's sleep before he would
feel much like walking nude into a square dance.
Washing up, we headed for our individual bedrooms. I lay awake for a
while, thinking of Joanie Baker's buttocks, thinking of the nude photo
of Sandra Richards I had seen. Then I told myself annoyedly that I had
come up here to write a novel, not to spend my time chasing quail.
Besides, Dr. Richards had warned me that any actions which violated the
rules of decency or caused embarrassment to other members were likely
to result in expulsion. I didn't know exactly how closely the decency
of the colony was safeguarded, but I was willing to bet that a couple
caught necking anywhere but behind the closed doors of a cabin would
get the heave-ho instanter.
After a while I fell asleep, even though it was at least three hours
before my normal bedtime. The night passed quickly. The next thing I
knew, the sunlight was streaming in, awakening me, and I was going to
the window and looking out at the busty beauty of Joanie Baker, this
time unencumbered by the sweater.
You'll remember my describing how with some difficulty we got Meehan
awake, and how the three of us started up front for breakfast. It was
weird, walking along with this radiant blonde between us, and all
three of us bare as the day we came into the world. Joanie walked
pretty close to us, and once or twice we collided a little bit and the
round fullness of her breast grazed my side. Touching her flesh, in my
present super-sensitive state, was like touching a hot iron. I pulled
away instinctively every time she brushed me.
It was a glorious morning. Birds were chirping, the sun was warm
already, and the air was as fresh and as tangy as new wine. And I had
to admit there was something refreshing about getting your clothes off,
_all_ your clothes, and letting the air get to your skin.
We emerged from the path and I got my first good look at the area we
had seen only vaguely the night before. Joanie once again pointed
everything out. The social hall was off to the right. Over to the
left was the kitchen and mess hall, and further to left was an oddly
humpbacked building that housed the colony library, music room, and
crafts shop. Straight ahead was what I had taken to be a wall in the
dark, but it was merely a solid row of hedges about ten feet high,
broken in the middle for an entrance. I could see the dirt road winding
off into the woods that lay beyond.
"Hungry?" Joanie asked.
"Starved," I said.
"Me too," Jack chimed in.
We entered the mess hall. I felt a giddy moment of vertigo as,
mother-naked, I stepped inside. A single long table ran the length of
the room, and about fifteen people were eating. Those parts of their
bodies that were visible above the table were absolutely bare. Two
waitresses were making the rounds with trays. They were pretty little
things, a brunette about eighteen and a redhead perhaps a year or two
older, and they, too, were peeled. The redhead came paddling by, on
her way back to the kitchen with an empty tray, and she gave me a shy
little smile. I jerked my head around and watched her adorable pink
backside vanishing kitchenwards.
We sat down. I took the first empty seat in the row, Meehan sat down at
my left, and Joanie went around to sit facing us on the other side of
the table, with her breasts trained on us like cannon. I felt dazed, so
dazed that I looked straight ahead, at Joanie, and not at any of the
other people at the table.
There was a frosty moment of silence.
Then I became aware of a pair of breasts jutting over my left shoulder,
practically poking into my ear. I looked around and saw that the
agreeably constructed pear-shaped mammaries belonged to the brunette
waitress, who was waiting to take my order for breakfast.
I had a sudden dizzying impulse to reach around and pat the brunette's
buttocks affectionately. It would have been a catastrophe. I restrained
myself with an effort. But the girl was _so_ goddam cute--say,
37-25-35, slim but busty, and downright pinchable.
She said, "Good morning. My name's Lorraine, and I'm your waitress this
morning. I hope you had a good night's rest."
"Yeah--yeah, sure," Meehan said.
"That's fine," Lorraine beamed. "You're Mr. Jack Meehan, is that it?"
She turned to me again. "And you're Mr. Al Fieldston. What would you
like to have this morning? We have choice of orange juice or half
grapefruit, flapjacks, bacon and eggs, sausages--"
She reeled off a few more items, and then we halted her and ordered.
After she had taken Joanie's order too she bounced off into the
kitchen. Her rear end had a delectable wiggle when she walked.
I said to Joanie, "Even the employees are nudists around here, eh?"
"Well, they aren't really employees," Joanie said. "Our staff people
are generally folks who want to join the colony but who can't afford
the fee. Students and that sort. If Dr. Richards likes them, he gives
them staff jobs in exchange for room and board." She laughed. "We
couldn't very well have people on the staff who weren't sympathetic to
our ideals, you understand. It would quite ruin the atmosphere here."
"Quite," I agreed.
Lorraine returned, jiggling pleasantly, bringing with her two orange
juices and a grapefruit for Joanie. I gulped the juice down in a couple
of swallows. With something inside me, I felt a little bolder, and
started to look up-table at my fellow nudists.
At my immediate right sat a woman, who, out of embarrassment, I had
been studiously ignoring. I turned to look at her now, and she smiled
and said, "I hope you enjoy your stay here, Mr. Fieldston."
"Ah--thank you," I said. I looked helplessly at Joanie for an
introduction. Joanie caught the hint and said, "Fellows, this is Bonnie
Carter, one of the real old-timers at Sunland."
Bonnie laughed coldly. "Oh, I'm not such an old-timer, really," she
said with a poisonous glance at Joanie. "This is only my sixth summer
here. You've been here more than ten years, haven't you, Joanie?"
It was Joanie's turn to look piqued. But she flashed a smile and said,
"Eleven, dear. I was only a child when I first was brought here."
It was hard to get much of a glimpse of Bonnie without seeming to be
staring, but I managed to turn quickly around and grab a fast eyeful.
She was about thirty-five, and evidently just poised on the borderline
between the end of youthful beauty and the beginning of middle age.
By which I mean that she still had a good figure, but her breasts had
developed a bit of a sag and there was slightly too much loose flesh
in the vicinity of her throat. She was completely naked, sitting
with her legs crossed. Her dark hair was cut short in a stylish way.
Her face had a lean, intense look about it, the eyes just a trifle
too bulging. It was a hyperthyroid kind of look, if you know what I
mean--high-strung. She was wearing a wedding band.
Without much ado, she began to tell me that she was divorced, that she
had a five-year-old son in nursery school somewhere, and that she had
found that only in the nude was she a _person_. "Taking your clothes
off gives you a wonderfully _free_ attitude, don't you think, Mr.
Fieldston? As though all the strangling bonds of our society are just
swept right away."
"Exactly," I ventured.
"May I ask what profession you're in, Mr. Fieldston?"
I gave her a bleak smile. "I'm an advertising man, Mrs. Carter. But I'm
here on a leave-of-absence from my agency. I plan to write a novel this
summer."
"Oh, how wonderful!" she gushed. "You're actually escaping from the
bondage of _money_ and striking a blow for the freedom of your soul.
Magnificent!"
While this was going on, Meehan was busily conversing with Joanie,
and I was mildly miffed that he should be making time with the blonde
while I was locked in conversation with the Carter female. Not that
Bonnie didn't appeal to me on the baser levels too, but she wasn't
anywhere near the knockout Joanie was. Besides, I had met all too many
of Bonnie's kind at cocktail parties in the past, and I had hoped to
escape from them here.
After a few minutes I managed to widen the circle of my acquaintances
by getting introduced first to the middle-aged man sitting next to
Joanie across the table--his name was Norman Keyes and he was a retired
businessman, he said--and then to the fiftyish woman with the 60-inch
bust sitting up the table from Bonnie. After ten minutes in the mess
hall, the idea of nudity had grown a good deal less startling now that
the shock element was wearing off. I was still fascinated by the way
the big bowls of Joanie's breasts held themselves up without dangling,
and the trim buttocks of the two waitresses sent blushful thoughts
through my mind every time the girls wiggled by.
People were beginning to stroll out of the mess hall now. I asked
Joanie what the day's program was like.
"Oh, we have no formal program," she said. "Everything's strictly on a
voluntary basis. Any organized activity depends on who's interested in
what."
"What sort of thing do you have?"
"Well," she said, "Don Riemann conducts a calisthenics course every
morning after breakfast. And there are usually a couple of the men
interested in playing basketball or baseball or something, and when
there are enough for teams we organize games. And there's swimming, or
boating, or crafts, or you could go to the music room--we have a big
library of classical stuff--or you could just lie around on the grass
and relax."
"Or work on your novel," Meehan reminded me.
I nodded. "But I can't work on it round the clock," I said. "What about
evenings?"
Joanie shrugged, and the shrug did pretty things to her bosom.
"Everything is arranged by the members. Last night we had a square
dance, because Norm Keyes was here and he's a good caller. Sometimes
we have a Folksong night, or a game of twenty questions, or even a
talent show. And a few of us like to drive into town once in a while
and see a movie."
"You put clothes on then," I said anxiously.
Joanie smiled. "Naturally. The people in the town have very strict
laws."
I finished my coffee and stood up, realizing as I did so that I was
shamelessly exposing myself after having been chastely hidden under the
tabletop all during the meal. I fought back the impulse to break and
run. _Get used to this nudist stuff, boy. Lose your inhibitions. Make
yourself at one with the cosmos._
We left the mess hall. Joanie excused herself and Meehan and I started
to stroll back to our cabin. En route, we came upon a group of gyrating
figures that looked for a moment like a bunch of the damned, straight
out of Dante. But after a moment I realized it was only Don Riemann's
calisthenics group having its daily session.
Riemann was a burly, bronzed, gym-teacher type, around thirty, and he
was having the time of his life, bare to the skin in front of about
eight parishioners likewise peeled, shouting instructions for the next
contortion. I stood by in amazement. The group of exercise-lovers
included Bonnie Carter, Norman Keyes, Bess Olin (the sixty-inch-bust
grandma type) and five others I didn't know, all but one of them
obviously over twenty-one. The exception was a girl of around twelve
that I had noticed before. She was a little slip of a thing, with
meager little bumps where her breasts were going to be in a couple of
years. I felt embarrassed and uncomfortable watching her gyrating and
stooping with the rest.
"Doesn't that make you sick?" I asked Meehan.
"What? Calisthenics? Damn right it does."
"No, I mean the little girl. Running around naked with everybody else."
"You mean little Lolita there?" Jack laughed. "Don't let your Victorian
ways show through, Al. That's the right way to do it--get a kid into
this thing young, before she's all full of inhibitions and stuff.
What's the use of raising girls so they faint dead away the first time
they see a naked man?"
"I guess you're right," I admitted. "But I suppose I'm a puritan at
heart."
We walked on. I told myself that it was a good and pure thing for girls
of twelve to belong to nudist colonies. So far there didn't seem to be
any little boys of thirteen on the premises, at any rate. It was still
early in the season. I realized that this vacation was going to be a
valuable experience for me. It was teaching me already how, despite
all my pretenses of being an emancipated bachelor on the make, I was
still able to be shocked. It's easy to talk a good game about how the
pretenses and cockeyed inhibitions of society ought to be thrown in the
ashcan. But it's one thing to use that line on a girl you're trying to
lure into bed, and another thing altogether when you see a place like
this where the inhibitions and pretenses _are_ thrown into the ashcan.
We returned to our cabin and made the beds. There wasn't any maid
service around here; once a week you got a change of linen, but that
was it. By the time we had finished getting the place in order, it
was still only half past eight. The chores were done, and an enormous
expanse of daytime stretched out in front of us.
We stepped out onto the porch. I heard giggling, and saw our waitress,
Lorraine, come sprinting down the hill toward the lake, followed
closely by a long, lean, dark-complected customer I had never seen
before. Both of them were in the raw, of course. It looked like a
scene from an ancient Greek vase--Nymph Pursued by Satyr. Lorraine
was running pretty fast, and those lovely little knobs of hers were
bobbling up and down in a way that made my blood course a little faster.
She waved to us, gaily, as she flashed past.
"Where to?" I yelled.
"The lake! Come on along!"
I looked at Meehan and we shrugged and joined the wild dash. We all
plunged down through the opening in the trees and emerged in a level
area that ran gently to the water's edge. A rickety-looking dock
extended out about forty feet, and boats were tethered to it. We came
to a halt, panting and giggling. Lorraine's virginal-looking young
breasts were pumping wildly up and down, and sweatbeads glistened all
over her.
Between gasps she said, "Want you to meet--Nick Riccio, the assistant
chef--Nick--Al Fieldston--Jack Meehan--"
While Lorraine caught her breath, Jack and I shook hands with Riccio.
He was about six three and couldn't have weighed more than 170--one of
those lean Italians whose muscles are long and flat, like a racer's.
He seemed friendly enough, but there was something faintly sinister
about him, I thought. Probably my imagination. At the time I was
growing up in Chicago, _Italian_ was synonymous with _gangster_, and I
guess I had never really managed to rid myself of that stereotype. A
bad way to judge people, I told myself.
We capered out onto the dock. There was a diving board at the very end,
and Lorraine scampered up on it and took off into space. There are
few more stirring sights in all the world than watching a beauty of
eighteen or nineteen do a swan dive in the nude. She seemed to float
into the water, making a flawless arc through her breasts and buttocks.
She bobbed up immediately, laughing, beckoning us in.
I didn't feel like risking the diving board. I jumped in from the
dockside, while Riccio executed a neat jackknife, and Meehan followed
with a degrading bellywhop. We splashed around in the cold, clear water
for a while. The calisthenics group had broken up, and most of them,
too, came down to join us for a swim. By the time an hour had gone by,
the water around the dock was crowded, and you could see breasts and
buttocks and arms and legs come flailing up to the surface from time to
time like disembodied parts.
The horseplay was getting pretty rough and frenzied, and I had lost
whatever inhibitions I might have had earlier. I lost one inhibition
too many and made a mistake.
Actually it was an accident, to begin with. We were splashing about,
and there was water in my eyes and I couldn't see, and while I was
trying to get my bearings someone collided with me. I reached out
involuntarily and my hand came in contact with flesh.
Firm, springy, round flesh.
A woman's breast. Not too big, not too small. Just a neat handful, with
a stiff little nipple thrusting into my palm. It was all an accident,
but a nice one. I opened my eyes and realized that Lorraine had backed
right into me, and I had grabbed her breast and was holding on to keep
from going under. There she was, with her buttocks flattened up against
me and my arm around her and my left hand cupping her breast, all of
this going on just below the surface. For the first time since I had
peeled off my clothes, I felt my masculinity asserting itself, and I
was glad I was under water.
We maintained the pleasant contact for a moment, and I guess if nobody
else had been around we would have gone right ahead all the way. But
then Lorraine seemed to come to her senses.
"Sorry," she cried, and swam away.
I trod water for a moment, trying to get back to normal. I was forming
all sorts of interesting plans concerning the lithe brunette.
But all of a sudden, Nick Riccio popped up out of nowhere next to me.
He looked blazing mad.
"I saw that, wiseguy," he muttered in a low voice, and there was
nothing stereotyped about him now. He _was_ sinister.
"Huh?"
"Don't play dumb, pal. I saw the whole thing, the way you groped
Lorraine."
I smiled, I hoped appeasingly. "Hell, you've got the wrong idea. She
bumped into me and I grabbed her to keep from going under."
"You grabbed her a nice long time. Just don't do it again, pal. I'll
forgive you because you're new here. But Lorraine isn't free for grabs."
He turned and swam away. Suddenly I had lost all interest in swimming.
I found the ladder and hauled myself up on the dock.
Looking down, I saw the turmoil going on. I also saw Riccio and
Lorraine far out near the boundary buoy, and he looked meaner than
ever. Bonnie Carter waved to me. I ignored her. Meehan spotted me, and
came out of the water.
"You look upset," he said.
I nodded. "Make a note not to fool around with that Lorraine item," I
said. "I just grabbed her, and Riccio let me know she was his private
property."
"He looks like a tough customer."
"He is. Hell, it was an _accident_, Jack."
"Yeah," he said. "I know all about it."
"Now listen, Jack--"
"Can it. You through swimming?"
"For now," I said.
"Me too. Let's go get some sunshine."
_CHAPTER FOUR_
We legged it up the hill to our cabin. Meehan spread a blanket in front
on the grass and sprawled out on it. I decided I was going to get a
fast start on my book. I dragged a table out of the cabin, set it up
front, and got out my typewriter and some blank paper. Meehan was half
asleep, but he grinned at me and said, "You going to write your book?"
"I'm not going to wait till next Christmas," I told him.
I rolled a sheet of paper into the typewriter and stared at the
keyboard. Now that I was actually right on the brink of beginning, I
felt a sudden queasy sensation in my stomach. I had been _talking_
about doing the book for years and years. Now I was finally calling my
own bluff. I didn't have any more excuses.
_How the hell do you begin?_ I wondered.
I typed out CHAPTER ONE and stared at the page. I was thinking that
there were two or three hundred pages after this one, and all of them
had to be written one word at a time. Sixty, seventy thousand words,
at least. I shuddered at the thought of filling all those nice blank
sheets of paper with words. It seemed like a staggering task to write
an entire consecutive novel in one big piece.
I lit up a cigarette and scowled at the typewriter for maybe ten
minutes. People kept walking past, and I kept looking up at them.
Joanie went by two or three times, and the redhaired waitress, and
Lorraine and Riccio, and practically everybody else. All of them saw
I was trying to work, and kept far away. Personal privacy was a big
thing at Sunland, evidently. But the mere fact that so many provocative
bosoms and backsides were passing in front of me all the time proved to
be distracting. Meehan was sprawled out on his stomach, watching the
passing parade out of half-closed eyes.
After a long silence he said, "Al?"
"Mmm?"
"You aren't typing much."
"I'm thinking," I said, wishing he would shut up.
But he didn't. "I'm thinking too," he said, "About Joanie Baker. What
do you think of her?"
"She's a knockout," I said, looking up sourly. "She's stacked and she's
got a fabulous body. Did you need my opinion that badly?"
"Just wondering," he said. "Think she's a virgin?"
"How the hell would _I_ know?"
"You've seen enough."
I shrugged. "She looks like the healthy uninhibited kind. She probably
wouldn't mind a nice healthy lay every now and then. You understand?"
"Aren't you?" he shot back.
"Jack, I'm trying to work--"
"Just let me get my point across. I say she won't put out."
"Why don't you go try finding out?"
"I will, man. But the prognosis isn't favorable. I say she's a dyke,
Al."
I goggled at him. "Her? Why, she's so goddam normal she's sick! If
that girl's a lesbian then so am I."
Jack laughed. "You like to sleep with girls, don't you? Well, so does
she."
"How can you tell?"
"Just a trained instinct of mine," Jack said. "She's like a girl scout
who never grew up, get me? And you know what sort of stuff goes on in
girl-scout camp--"
"All right, all right. So she's a dyke. Will you let me get some work
done, now?" I grumbled.
He clammed up, and I went back to staring at the blank sheet in the
typewriter. The thought of Joanie Baker being lesbian bothered me. It
didn't seem right that a girl with such marvelous breasts, with those
wide hips and strong loins, should be queer. She was built to love,
I told myself. Having her ought to be like making love to a surging
river. I pictured myself lying beside her, her muscular body rippling,
her sinews tensing with passion, and shook my head. Jack had a sort of
instinct about such things, but this time I doubted him. Nothing in
Joanie's behavior had been anything but apple-pie normal. Maybe she
was a virgin, maybe she just didn't have any use for sex at all, but I
couldn't see her as lesbian or anything.
I managed to stop thinking about her. I tried to concentrate on the
book.
After five more minutes I realized that my mistake was in trying to
begin the thing just like that, right off the bat. Writing a book was a
big job, especially the first time you tried it. You had to work up to
it in slow easy stages.
Instead of starting to write the book, the thing to do was to write
an outline of the plot. Four or five pages, nothing very elaborate.
Then, I told myself, I'd take the outline and work it over, expanding
it, filling in the background and the characters, until I had around
twenty pages written. Then I could block the outline off into chapters
and begin the book. It was a lot easier to think in terms of a bunch
of twelve or fifteen-page chapters than it was to keep the whole plot
together in my mind.
So I started to tap out the outline.
It came pretty easily. After all, I had been carrying the book around
in my head for a few years. It was set in an advertising agency
background, because that was what I knew best, but I didn't figure the
book to be autobiographical in any way. My hero was a hard-driving
louse, who would claw his way to the top of the agency only to learn
when he got there that fame and fortune and $100,000 a year wasn't all
there was to life, and that now that he had reached the top he had to
admit that he was a pretty hollow sort of person who had sacrificed
himself for a goal that wasn't worth the sacrifice.
Nothing profound and Joycean, you see. But I figured it was a good
honest theme, and I could back it up with plenty of authentic
background detail and characters. It was a story I understood, and a
story I wanted to tell, and a story I would feel better for having
told. What the hell, it wouldn't be art, but at least it would be a
sincere effort, and I might even make a few bucks out of it besides. I
wasn't worried about that part of it. As I said, I earned enough dough
to keep me happy without needing a six-figure sale to Hollywood. Not
that I would object to one, mind you.
So I sat there tapping out the words, one after another. I became
oblivious to the world around me. I knew it was getting hot, and I was
dripping in my own sweat, but I didn't mind that. I kept going until
I had five and a half pages of outline typed out, and I felt pretty
exhausted, and I stopped and looked up.
Bonnie Carter was standing right in front of me, stark naked, smiling.
I snapped out of the dream-world of my book and back to reality. The
snap was so sudden that I didn't have time to adjust to the special
sort of reality I had been living in all day, and it struck me with a
jolt that I was sitting here typing away with nothing on and everything
hanging out visibly. Automatically I clamped my knees tight together
in embarrassment. Then I relaxed, remembering where I was and that
concealment didn't matter here.
"I've been standing here for fifteen minutes," Bonnie said. "You were
so absorbed in your work you didn't notice me, Mr. Fieldston."
I managed a foolish smile. I really hadn't known she was there. I
looked at her, and just then she looked closer to thirty than forty.
She had been swimming, and her body still gleamed moistly, and when
she stood with her shoulders straight there was hardly any sag to her
bosom. Her legs were thin and good to look at, and all in all she
seemed attractive right then, even though she had been one hell of a
drag at the breakfast table. The only thing that bothered me about her
was the slightly popeyed look she had, the hyperthyroid bit.
Somewhere a gong sounded. "Lunchtime," I heard Joanie Baker yell
distantly. I looked at my watch and was surprised to see that it was
quarter to twelve. I had spent the whole morning on my miserable few
pages.
Meehan scrambled to his feet and said, "Coming up front, Al?"
"Couple of minutes," I said. "I want to read over what I've written.
Don't wait for me."
"I'll save you a place," he said.
He ambled off. I smiled at Bonnie and, picking up the typewriter and
the package of typewriter paper, went into the cabin. I was standing by
my bed, reading the first couple of paragraphs of the outline, when I
heard the cabin door open and close again.
"I told you not to wait for me, Jack!" I called without looking up.
"My name isn't Jack," Bonnie said softly.
She came into the bedroom, naked, and closed the door. She slipped the
door-hook through the eye. She looked flushed and more youthful than
ever.
I was surprised and almost a little annoyed. There were supposed to be
rules about knocking before you went into someone else's cabin. And you
weren't supposed to set up situations like this, either.
I don't know what I would have said--something impolite, maybe--but
suddenly my body took a hand in the situation without consulting me.
Up till now, there had always been a group of at least three, and the
social frame had acted as an inhibitor. But now here I was locked into
a bedroom with a strange and rather good-looking woman, and both of
us were naked. My natural masculine reaction occurred. Bonnie saw me
getting excited, and she moved toward me, and suddenly I wasn't annoyed
any more.
"It's going to be a marvelous novel, Al," she breathed huskily. "I
can tell. I watched how hard you were working. I'd like to read your
manuscript, if you wouldn't mind."
"It isn't really a manuscript yet," I said awkwardly. "I was just
working on the outline--"
And then she came another step closer to me, and all discussion of
manuscript-reading came to an end. She pressed herself up against me,
and I gasped with pleasure--it had been a respectably long time since
I last had had a woman--and my arms went around her, sliding down her
back to the full, quivering flesh of her buttocks, and then I brought
my hands up to cup the heaviness of her breasts. Her nipples rose
stiffly into my palms like two live things moving of their own free
will. Her mouth approached mine; for a moment I stared deep into her
hyperthyroid eyes, reading the hunger for a man, _any_ man, and then my
lips were against hers and my eyes were shut tight and my tongue was
exploring the inside of her mouth.
Still clasped in a tight embrace, we tumbled down onto my narrow bed.
She was panting and gasping now, and she had a wild look about her. Her
breasts leaped and jiggled with each motion she made. I wanted to slow
things up a little, to bring them along a little more subtly. But she
wasn't in the mood for subtlety. She pulled at me and cried out, "Take
me, Al, take me!" and I did.
She gave a convulsive quiver all over her body, while I gritted my
teeth and tried to stay cool, and the tips of her fingers dug painfully
into the knotted muscles of my back. And she quivered again and again
and again, every quiver a tremor of pure delight for her, and then
finally I couldn't hold out any longer.
My heart was thundering. I propped myself up on my elbows and looked
down at her. Her eyes were open, and they still had the hyperthyroid
look. But the irises had changed color, it seemed--from blue to a
smoky green--and she had lost the tense, neurotic look she had worn at
breakfast time.
She smiled at me. "What time is it?" she asked coolly.
I've been asked many things after a bout of _amour_, but never in such
a matter-of-fact tone of voice. I looked at my watch. "Five after
twelve," I said. The whole thing had taken no more than ten or fifteen
minutes. It had seemed endless, but you never can be very sure of
time-perception at times like that.
She said, "We'd better get up. It would be a shame to miss lunch."
"I suppose it would," I said, a little sourly.
I pried myself loose from her and went into the john to tidy myself up.
When I came out, Bonnie was sitting up, rearranging her coiffeur.
She smiled again. "I did it four times, darling," she reported
blandly, as though telling me about her boy's latest report card.
I didn't have any handy response to make. I just grinned foolishly. I
began to get the notion that this Bonnie was quite a character. _Quite._
We headed for the mess hall. Everyone else had long since gone up, and
the grounds and road lay empty and quiet in the noonday sun. Bonnie
said, "I hope you aren't shocked by my behavior."
"It's a pleasant way to be shocked," I said.
"I have an uncontrollable sex urge," she confided. "I had to have
a divorce because my husband couldn't satisfy me. I went to a
psychoanalyst to see if he could reduce my sex drive, but that ended in
a fiasco when I seduced him. I'm really not a healthy woman, Al."
"You're healthy enough."
"Yes, but it's not _right_. I'm shameless. This morning at breakfast
I knew I had to have you before the day was out. I could feel the
throbbing that had to be stilled, the fire that had to be quenched--"
I began to form a pretty clear picture of Bonnie Carter. She was a
spoiled, self-indulgent rich bitch with a hopped-up metabolism and an
insatiable hunger for men, which she apologized for afterwards. There
had been nothing very personal in her seduction of me. She felt a
throbbing, so she walked into my bedroom. Most likely a candle would
have served her just as well.
We reached the mess hall and walked in. A few people looked up at us as
we came in, but most of the colonists had the decency not to make a
fuss about the fact that Bonnie and I were arriving twenty minutes late
for lunch together.
I practically collided with Lorraine as she came out of the kitchen,
toting a tray. She carried the tray hugged up against her midsection
so that her breasts actually rested on it. It made a neat effect, as
though she were serving them for lunch. She smiled at me, but it was
a guilty smile, and she reddened. She blushed all the way down to the
tray.
I took a seat next to Meehan and Joanie. Bonnie found a seat at the far
end of the table. I was sitting next to Don Riemann, the calisthenics
lad, and we introduced ourselves. Lorraine came over and took my order
for lunch. She was polite but distant. I imagined Riccio had given her
a good talking-to.
I ate quickly, catching up with the others. After lunch, Joanie stood
up and made an announcement. "Attention, everybody. Don Riemann wants
me to tell you that he'll be conducting a class in advanced tumbling
this afternoon at two. Anybody who's interested, meet with Don at the
mats near the tennis court."
That little chore over, Joanie dismissed the group. I wandered outside
with Meehan. The moment we were alone, Jack said, "It took you a long
time to get to lunch today."
"Yeah. Didn't it?"
"I saw the Carter woman go back into the cabin, but I figured it wasn't
my business."
I chuckled. "She's a regular hellion. I can tell you that there's at
least one woman around this place who isn't a lesbian."
"Wild, huh?"
"The works. And all in fifteen minutes," I said.
Jack frowned. "She looks like the clinging type. You may be in for more
bother than you're bargaining for."
"I'm not bargaining for anything," I told him. "She's a nympho. When
she uses me up, she'll start on you. Be prepared, man. Like I mean,
_ready_."
"It's my motto," he grinned. "I'd much rather be chased by that Baker
girl, though."
"Queer or no?"
He shrugged. "I like a challenge."
"Speak of the devil," I muttered, as Joanie advanced on us from the
rear.
"Mr. Fieldston," she called. "Al! Could I talk to you for a
moment--alone?"
"With pleasure," I said.
Meehan gave me a curdled look of envy and walked away. Joanie headed
for the rear steps of the social hall. She sat down on the steps, in a
probably unintentionally provocative legs-wide position. My bout with
Bonnie, though, had left me better able to resist the unnerving impact
of Joanie's magnificently full-blown nakedness. I sat down next to her,
studying her deep breasts with academic interest.
She said, "I don't mean to pry into your personal affairs, Al.
But I couldn't help noticing today that you seem to be developing
an--ahem--interest in Bonnie Carter."
I fidgeted. "Well, not really. I mean, that is, Bonnie seems friendly
to me--"
Joanie flashed the girl-scout smile. "Around here we don't have to be
tied down with petty modesty, Al. Bonnie was seen going into your
cabin when the lunch-gong rang, and the two of you didn't show up
for fifteen minutes. I don't think I'm jumping to conclusions when I
assume--"
"You assume correctly," I said.
"Don't think I'm trying to meddle. I just want to warn you about
Bonnie, Al."
"Warn me?"
"She's an extremely sick woman."
"I can see that already."
"She's highly neurotic on the subject of sex. Dr. Richards keeps
considering asking her to leave the colony, but he's such a gentle man
he can't bear to hurt Bonnie. Besides, she's never offensive in public.
But I want you to know what you're getting mixed up with."
I nodded. "I could tell she wasn't normal. She practically raped me at
lunchtime."
"Each summer she picks out a man," Joanie said. "She can be very
demanding. If she gets any encouragement at all, she can be almost
intolerably possessive. She might keep you from working on your novel.
Now, for all I know Bonnie may be just the sort of woman you want. But
if she isn't I advise you to lay down the law to her right away, before
she begins to think she owns you." Joanie was still smiling cheerfully.
"You must think I'm a dreadful meddler. But I'm only interested in
protecting you from that--that bottomless pit of a woman."
It was an unfortunate metaphor, and it broke me up. Joanie started to
laugh too, even if she didn't see what was funny. I told her that I
appreciated the warning, and that I would do my best to disentangle
myself from Bonnie's clutches right away.
And then--unexpectedly--I reached out and put my hand on Joanie's thigh.
"Joanie--"
Deftly she removed the hand. "Sorry, Al. I think you're swell, but
please don't--"
I suspended my hand in midair, about to reach out for Joanie's swelling
breasts, and then my sanity returned. She was still smiling, but there
was a strange expression in her eyes, a steely expression of contempt
and loathing masked by surface friendliness.
I was rocked.
"I'm sorry," I said. "You're a very beautiful girl, Joanie. I got
carried away, I guess."
"I understand how it is. But I'm not--not available. I don't mind
displaying my body, but you mustn't assume that every nudist is
automatically--automatically--"
"Sure," I said, profoundly uncomfortable. "It was an accident. Forgive
me."
We parted friends. But I felt a tight band of anguish across my belly
as I walked alone back to the cabin. It was by way of being a hectic
day. And I had made two mistakes already. Life in the nudist colony was
not quite the uninhibited orgy some people might picture. If anything,
the absence of clothes made for a much more complicated system of
_mores_.
In the water this morning I had made an involuntary grab for the lovely
Lorraine, only to find out that she was spoken for. And just now I
had been within inches of caressing the most superb bosom God ever
fashioned, only to have a steel wall clang down. And--between the two
incidents--I had practically been raped by an attractive but somewhat
overripe and definitely whacky nympho. An odd sequence of events. I
thought longingly of Lorraine's pretty boobs, and of the Aphrodite that
was Joanie Baker. I couldn't have either of them. But I _could_ have
Bonnie Carter, and I didn't want her. It always seems to be that way.
Meehan was jotting down some notes when I came into the cabin. He
looked up.
"Well, Romeo? What was the pow-wow about?"
"Joanie wanted to warn me about the Carter female," I said. "Seems
Bonnie eats men alive. Joanie gave me the tip that I ought to break
things up in a hurry."
"Sounds like good advice."
"And then I made a pass," I said. "It was sort of an accident again.
Like I mean, here was her thigh, and there was my hand, and--"
I saw a cold glare of jealousy flicker in my pal's eyes. He said, "You
want every woman in the goddam place, don't you, Al?"
"This one's all yours," I said. "My hand got removed as if it were
a sprig of poison ivy. She told me she just wasn't available. Your
theory may be right after all, much as I hate to admit it." I sighed
wistfully. "But there's something wrong with the universe if she's
really queer.
"A body like that was built for love. With men, I mean."
"There ought to be a law."
_CHAPTER FIVE_
One thing became clear about Bonnie right away. She was a leech.
She left me alone for an hour after lunch. During that hour I had
time to read through the outline I had written and to pencil a lot of
suggestions and ideas in the margins. Then Bonnie came bouncing up to
the cabin, her breasts doing a jig with every step. She was waving a
tennis racquet around.
"How about a game?" she wanted to know.
"I'm not much of a tennis player," I told her lamely.
"That's all right. Neither am I. But it's such wonderful fun."
I heaved a sigh. It was a bright and sunny afternoon, and I figured I
had done all the work I was going to do on my book for the day. Two
hours with the typewriter before lunch had left me pretty winded. I was
going to have to get into shape slowly for writing the book.
So a game of tennis wouldn't be a bad idea. On the other hand, I was
uneasy about getting myself further involved with Bonnie. And on the
third hand, I had to admit that Bonnie was pretty good in the sack, and
I might have some further fun with her.
"I don't have a tennis racquet," I said.
"Oh, we can borrow one. I think Ernie Bryan has a racquet he could lend
you."
Shrugging, I let myself be led away. Ernie Bryan was one of the
colonists that I hadn't yet met formally, but he had been pointed out
to me. He was a family-style nudist, the father of the twelve-year-old
girl I had seen doing calisthenics earlier.
The Bryan cabin was Number Four. Bonnie knocked and the little
girl came out, flaunting her unformed breasts in my face without
embarrassment.
Bonnie said, "Janey, is your father home?"
"Uh-huh. Come on inside."
We went in. The Family Bryan was there. Ernie was a tall, strapping
fellow, around forty. He was hard at work repairing the electrical
wiring in the cabin, while his wife Reena held the stool for him.
Reena was a brunette of thirty-five, tanned all over and very nicely
built, with high small breasts and a prettily tapering _derriere_. The
remaining member of the Bryan family was Ernie Junior, who was five.
Of course, all of them were without a stitch of clothing.
Bonnie introduced me and borrowed the tennis racquet without much
palaver, and off we went to the tennis courts. I was impressed with
Ernie Bryan. It was one thing to be a nudist yourself; it was another
to bring your wife and your pre-adolescent daughter and your small son
to one of these places and let them run around in their skin too. It
took the courage of your convictions to let strangers look upon your
family's nakedness that way.
The tennis courts were down to the left of the waterfront area. There
were two clay courts, with a third one somewhat further away. The
isolated court was taken, I saw, and so was one of the two courts at
hand. We moved out onto the vacant court, and Bonnie opened a can of
balls and promptly let fly with a serve.
Now, I have played some pretty fair tennis in my life, but not
recently. So it was that my first wild swing in return sent the ball
flying far above Bonnie's head and over the wire fence for a home run.
Bonnie turned, watching the ball go bouncing out onto the basketball
court and come to rest there. The tennis court exit was on her side of
the net, so she shouted, "I'll get it!" and sprinted off.
While I was waiting for her to get the ball and return, I glanced at
the other court. The players there were the middle-aged man named
Norman Keyes, and the pretty young redheaded waitress whose name I did
not know. They seemed about an even match. Keyes obviously knew the
technique of the game, but he was short of leg and short of breath, and
so he was not particularly effective. The redhead, on the other hand,
barely knew which way to hold her racquet, but she was lithe and agile,
and her advantage of stamina cancelled out Keyes' advantage of skill
and fairly well evened things out.
One thing that you can discover virtually for the first time in a
nudist camp is the loveliness of the female musculature. A bathing suit
leaves only the arms and legs and shoulders of a girl exposed, thus
making it impossible for you to see the lovely way the muscles ripple
along a girl's back when she serves a tennis ball, or the way her
buttocks go tight when she bends to sock back a low one. Of course, the
girl has to be reasonably athletic to begin with. But if she is, the
sight of her rippling muscles adds an entire new dimension, a quite
unexpected one, to sex appeal.
I watched that redhead while waiting for Bonnie, and an idea took shape.
The redhead was far from unattractive. She was perhaps twenty years
old, and was about five feet in height, and was nicely built. Medium
breasts, narrow waist, nice hips, excellent legs. And those lovely
muscles rippling in her back and buttocks. What's more, she didn't seem
to be spoken for--Keyes didn't appear to have any proprietary rights on
her--and so I could assume she was available until I learned otherwise.
And, all things considered, I figured I would rather be mixed up with
a nice, healthy chick like the waitress than with a passionate but
whacked-up female like Bonnie. And the best way to get rid of Bonnie
was to transfer my affections visibly to some other female.
Fast. Before Bonnie got the idea she owned me.
Bonnie came back with the tennis ball and started to go into a serve
motion, but I was facing the wrong way, watching the neat way the
redhead's high pointed breasts lifted as she brought the racquet
around. Bonnie yelled out to me pretty annoyedly, and I returned my
attention to her.
We volleyed for five or ten minutes, and then I turned to the pair on
the other court and said, "Hey! How about a game of mixed doubles?"
Bonnie looked sour, but both Keyes and the redhead thought it was a
fine idea. Keyes was down at the far end of the court, Bonnie's end,
and so I maneuvered it that he and Bonnie would be partners, and the
redhead and I. She came jogging over--_bounce-bounce-bounce_ went the
bosom, and as she came close I realized that what I had thought was
a solid tan was actually a mass of extremely tight-packed freckles
covering her entire body. She even had freckles on her breasts.
"Hi," I said. "My name's Al Fieldston."
"Harriet Cross," she said. She leaned on her racquet and caught her
breath. She had been running around a lot in the game with Keyes,
and her freckled skin was glossy with sweat, and I saw shiny little
beadlets between her breasts.
Down at her end of the court, Bonnie was getting very very
bleak-looking. I guess she figured out what was going to happen, and
she didn't like it.
We volleyed back and forth for a while, getting the feel of a doubles
match, and then we volleyed for serve. One, two, three over the net,
and then Bonnie rammed one viciously past Harriet and they had the
serve.
Harriet was something of a weak link on our side, as was Keyes over
there. We began playing more and more seriously with each point. With
Keyes serving, they got up to 30-love; we caught them; they went ahead,
and finally took the first game.
They took the second game, too, and the third. But I got the hang of
serving in the fourth and surprised them all by slapping a bunch of
bullets down where they couldn't even reach them. We took the fifth
game, too, and now the set stood 2-3, and it was taking on the aspects
of a grudge match. Every time we made a point, I would pat Harriet
affectionately on the shoulder, or sometimes a little lower. Bonnie was
stewing. She knew she was being dumped in favor of the redhead.
In the sixth game something happened which might seem funny in the
retelling, but which does not seem funny to me because of the strange
consequences it was to have. The score stood at 30-all, Keyes was
serving, and we were desperately trying to pick up the next couple of
points and tie the set.
Harriet was playing in close to the net, and I was back near the
base-line. Bonnie dropped a soft lob right in the middle. I came
rushing in from the back of the court, determined to powder the ball
right down Keyes' throat and put us one up.
But just as I brought my racquet around in a vicious swing, Harriet
cut in front of me unexpectedly to take the ball. She banged it into
the net--and at the same instant, unable to check my swing, I sent my
racquet crashing with a loud _crack!_ right into what would have been
the seat of the redhead's pants, if she had happened to be wearing any
pants.
She dropped her racquet and let out a little gasp of surprise and pain,
and the force of the blow knocked her sprawling on her knees. There's
always something funny about a swat in the pants, but I knew I had
swung to kill, and I knew I had hurt her. As she kneeled there, I could
actually see the imprint of my strings on her freckled buttocks. Her
rear was up in the air facing me, and it looked like she'd been sitting
on a hot waffle-iron.
I rushed over to her and helped her to her feet and muttered
apologies, even though it had been mostly her fault. "Are you hurt?" I
asked.
She turned. There were tears in her eyes, but she was smiling. "I'll be
okay."
And I saw the expression on her face.
Remember the come-hither look that Sandra Richards gave me when I was
at her folks' house for my interview? This was the same look raised to
the fifth power. It was a sizzling look of pure desire. It was a look
of hungry longing. Harriet was asking me with her eyes to throw her
down on the rough clay and take her right there, on the spot.
It was one hell of a look.
I suppose my brain wasn't working too well, or I would have connected
the intensity of that look with the intensity of the wallop I had given
her. But I just didn't make the obvious connection, even when it was
staring me in the face.
Instead I gently stroked her buttocks a couple of times, soothingly.
The skin was like satin. I muttered some more apologies. By this time
Bonnie and Keyes were coming around the net, looking worried.
Harriet picked up her racquet, brushed the dirt off her knees and
the palms of her hands, and walked around a little bit. She wasn't
badly hurt. My racquet had nipped her in the best-padded part of her
body, and the only harm was the sudden stinging pain of impact. The
waffle-iron effect was fading, though her rear still had a reddened,
sore look about it.
She insisted she was okay, and we got the game going again. But the
look she had given me bothered me. I told myself I had better slow
down. This was only my first full day in the Sunland Health Colony, and
already I had made passes at two girls, been laid by a third, and now
was in the process of getting involved with a fourth. At this rate it
was going to be a strenuous three months.
I couldn't keep my mind on the game, and Bonnie and Keyes easily
polished us off for the final point and the set. They were all keen
on playing another set, but I begged off. Harriet, too, didn't seem
very enthusiastic. She was still sore in the rear, and wanted to dunk
herself in the lake.
She started off toward the water. I began to follow her. Bonnie caught
up with me. Now she looked a lot closer to forty than thirty.
"Let's play a game of singles," she said.
"I'd rather not. I'm not in shape for too much of this stuff."
"Besides which, you'd rather go swimming with Harriet than play tennis
with me."
"Bonnie, look--"
"I _am_ looking. I've seen you looking at that girl since we came down
here. I saw the way you patted her fanny after you hit her."
"You've got no right to be jealous," I told her. "Harriet's a fine
girl, and I like her."
"What about me?" It was practically a wail.
I didn't have to pretend to be annoyed. "We've had our little
interlude, Bonnie. What did you think it was--the beginning of a grand
romance?"
"We were so good together," she sobbed. The bulging eyes had the look
of defeat.
"It was grand, Bonnie. But I'm not here to get entangled with anybody.
I value my freedom. And I think it's best that I make things clear to
you right now. Our little episode at lunchtime is _not_ the prelude to
a long affair."
"But I want you so much, Al!"
"You see? I don't want to be wanted. Let's be sophisticated, Bonnie. We
can make love now and then, when we've got the craving. But let's not
try to monopolize each other, shall we? Let's be free agents. Will you
excuse me now? I'd like to go swimming."
I gave her Ernie Bryan's tennis racquet and left her standing there,
looking dumfounded. I trotted down to the water. Harriet was already
in, floating on her back. Nothing was above the water except her
breasts and toes and nose. I dove in and came up near her.
"How's the backside?" I asked.
"I'm going to be black and blue tomorrow. Everyone will ask questions."
"So tell them," I said. She laughed. We swam out to the deep water
together. We were bobbing out there, and suddenly she swam up against
me, pressing her body against mine in the water. The sharp points
of her breasts jabbed into my skin, and her legs wrapped themselves
around my body, and she took my hands and put them on her buttocks and
made me squeeze tight. Wrapped up like that, we sank below the water
and hovered just beneath the surface until we started running out of
breath. We separated and popped to the surface. She had a slit-eyed,
excited look about her. I suppose what she wanted was to have me make
love to her right there in the water. But the combination of the cold
water and the bout with Bonnie only a few hours earlier, plus the fact
that there were about a dozen swimmers less than a hundred yards away,
left me in a state of inability to gratify her desire on the spot.
We laughed and swam in to shore, and sprawled out, dripping wet, on
the grass near the basketball court. We talked for a while. She was
twenty-two, she said--which made her a couple of years older than she
looked--and she had just graduated from a nearby teacher's college. She
was going to start teaching in the fall, and this was her vacation. She
loved outdoor life, sports, camping, stuff like that.
"How'd you get interested in nudism?" I asked her.
She giggled. "I came here as a guest last year. A fellow I was dating
was a member, and he talked me into coming up. At first I was so
embarrassed I didn't know where to hide. But finally I got up enough
nerve to take my clothes off and come out of the cabin. And after half
an hour I discovered it doesn't really matter. I mean, we shouldn't
have inhibitions about nakedness."
"No, we shouldn't."
"So I was up here a couple of weeks and really got to love the life.
And this year I wanted to come back. I didn't have any money, so I
applied for a job as a waitress. It's only a few hours' work a day, and
all the rest of the time I'm free to use the facilities."
"What about the boyfriend?"
"Oh, I stopped seeing him a long time ago. He isn't a member of the
colony any more, either." She smiled coquettishly. "Now tell me about
yourself, Al."
So I told her, giving her the usual routine about the advertising
rat-race and how I had come up here seeking rustic simplicity as a
backdrop for writing my novel. She was impressed. We talked on and on,
and then all of a sudden it was five in the afternoon and she had to
hurry to the mess hall to get the tables set up for dinner.
I walked her part of the way back up front. She drew me off into a
little sheltered nook near the mess hall and we kissed quickly. It had
to be quick, because a public embrace violated the decency regulations
of the camp, and she could get fired if anyone caught her and
complained. But she thrust herself up against me, rubbing against me,
thrusting her breasts into my not unwilling hands. We kissed briefly
and then she was gone, running gracefully toward the mess hall like
some wood sprite, with her shimmering red hair bobbing in the air as
she ran.
I found that this time I had become somewhat aroused. I had to remain
in the nook for a couple of moments while my excitement subsided and I
became fit to go into public again.
I strolled back down the road that led from the mess hall to the
cabins. The air was growing cooler, and I was wondering whether or not
it would be necessary to dress for dinner.
I was just about to go back to my cabin when I heard a "Yoo-hoo, Al!"
cry, and saw Joanie Baker come jogging toward me. I waited, watching
the ever-fascinating action of her breasts as she ran.
She caught up. "I see you took my advice about Bonnie," she said.
"How do you know so fast?"
Joanie smiled. "Bonnie just complained to me about you. She said you
offended her by engaging in an indecent action with Harriet Cross on
the tennis court. If Bonnie's out to get your scalp so fast, it means
you must have told her off."
"I did," I said. "But what about this complaint?"
"Oh, we never take Bonnie's complaints seriously. We know it's always
a case of jealously. She says you were patting Harriet's bottom on the
tennis court. Dr. Richards feels that there shouldn't be any public
personal contact between the sexes here, and I agree with him. Were you
actually doing what Bonnie said you were?"
I grinned. "Bonnie didn't tell you the full story. Harriet and I were
playing mixed doubles and she got in the way of my racquet. I caught
her on the rear end so hard I knocked her down. I thought she was hurt,
and all I did was pick her up and pat her once or twice to take the
sting out."
"The way Bonnie had it, you were all set to rape the girl on the
court," Joanie said. "Well, naturally there won't be any action taken
against you. I wish Dr. Richards would bring himself to throw Bonnie
out. She causes more conflict around here every year, with her spites
and jealousies--"
"She's a sick woman," I said solemnly. "Dr. Richards is being kind to
her."
"Dr. Richards is kind to everybody. _Too_ kind. Well, thank goodness
he's coming up here tomorrow. I'm tired of being responsible for
everything around here." She smiled cheerfully. "Better bring a sweater
with you tonight at dinner time. It gets rather chilly here sometimes
in June."
"Thanks," I said.
But she was already gone, striding from me in her long-legged masculine
step. She looked like an Amazon, or a lady Viking, with her blonde hair
and her magnificent animal body. Once again, I sighed. It was cruel
and unusual torture for a girl as beautiful as Joanie to go striding
around the place with all her glorious skin exposed, and for her to be
as unapproachable as she was. _What a waste_, I thought. _What a lousy
waste of good womanflesh._
I headed back to my cabin to wait for the dinner gong.
_CHAPTER SIX_
Joanie was right about the weather. It was quite brisk by dinnertime.
Feeling somewhat foolish, I went up to the mess hall wearing a polo
shirt and nothing else. Joanie had donned her sweater again. A couple
of the thinner-blooded ones were more fully dressed. Nearly everyone
had something on, and generally the effect was a startling and
interesting one.
The program for that evening was, Joanie announced, Twenty Questions.
Everyone who was interested was to gather in the Social Hall about half
past seven.
I went over, but I didn't stay long. It's been a long time since party
games of that sort have held the slightest appeal for me. Not even the
interest added to the gathering by the semi-nudity of the players could
keep me from getting hopelessly bored. Bonnie was there, besides, and
she kept looking longingly in my direction, her expression alternating
between black hatred and hopeful pleading.
I waited until she became a member of the panel, and took advantage of
the moment to slip out of the Social Hall. Bonnie couldn't very well
leave the game and follow me.
I stood on the back porch of the building for a moment, shivering
slightly in the evening breeze. Night had fallen, but the moon was out
and lit the place up somewhat. The sky was clear and dark, with sharp
stars glinting away. I was pleased to see a shooting star. You don't
see them much in the Chicago sky.
Meehan had disappeared right after supper with a girl named Margaret
something, a skittish and plump spinster just on the wrong side of
thirty. Meehan, a smart operator if there ever was one, had probably
spotted Margaret for an easy lay without complications, and was off
making hay with her at the moment. I knew he was really leching after
Joanie Baker--what man with two eyes in his head wouldn't be?--but
Jack was enough of a realist to know that Joanie wasn't likely to come
across. So he was off with Margaret. I thought for a few moments about
the _mores_ of the nudist camp. People were touchy, in some respects,
of course. But in others, I saw, sex was a lot freer and easier here,
as you might expect.
For one thing, the absence of clothes made a spontaneous act a lot
simpler. Ordinarily you can be with a girl and start petting a little
and getting her warmed up, but then you start digging down through
blouses and bras and skirts and slips and corsets and whatnot, and
by the time you finish getting the armor off she's had time for a
few second thoughts and you don't score. But that obstruction was no
problem here. Once you could get a girl interested in you here, all the
intervening barriers of cloth did not trouble you. You could get your
hand on her bare skin and start working her up, and then it was the
simplest thing in the world to make love to her before she had a chance
to think things over.
With that big barrier out of the way--clothes--life was a lot simpler.
A lot of girls will give you a "No" because they're afraid you'll find
out about the birthmark they've got on their hip, or because they don't
want you to find out they wear falsies. But there was nothing to hide
here. Modesty was no longer a drawback to making out.
On the other hand, you had to consider that constant exposure to nudity
took away a lot of novelty and suspense. On at least four occasions
in my life I had seduced women for the prime purpose of finding out
whether they looked as good without their clothes as with them. (In
three out of the four, they didn't.) That motive was absent here. You
didn't have to make a girl in order to find out whether the stuff in
her bra was real or rubber. All you had to do was take a look the next
time you met her.
And so--they told me--after a few weeks a naked girl becomes a boring
thing, and what really lights you up is one with clothes on. I was
willing to believe that. But so far I hadn't noticed myself growing
jaded. No doubt Joanie Baker would have looked fascinating fully
dressed, but she looked plenty good the way she was.
End of philosophical disquisition. There's nothing like making a
drastic change in your environment for setting yourself reflecting
about the basic matters of your personality. Such as your reactions to
naked women.
But right now I found myself wondering about Harriet.
The waitresses were supposed to help clean up the mess hall after
dinner. But that took only about forty minutes, and more than an hour
had gone by since the end of the meal. I wondered where she was. I
surprised myself by feeling a pang of jealousy, and I discovered that
I was beginning to think possessively of Harriet already. I wanted to
know where she was, and I was subconsciously annoyed at the idea of her
walking around naked.
I went into the mess hall. The lights were out in front, but I went
around back and into the kitchen. The scene in there was strange. A
potbellied man wearing only a chef's tall hat was bustling around
tidying things up. Nick Riccio, completely naked, was helping him.
Two fellows in polo shirts were scrubbing dishes, and Lorraine, the
brunette waitress, was helping them. She was naked. Everyone turned
around and looked rather coldly at me as I walked in.
I felt flustered. But I kept control and said, "I'm looking for
Harriet."
Lorraine said, "She just finished here. She went over to the Social
Hall to look for you."
Thanking her, I beat a quick retreat. I didn't want to be around
Riccio any more than I had to, after our little set-to in the morning.
I hurried back to the Social Hall, where Twenty Questions was still
going strong, and I found Harriet standing on the front porch, peering
in puzzledly. I tiptoed up behind her and slipped my hands over her
breasts.
She whirled. "Oh--Al!"
"Who did you think?"
"You mustn't do that. There are rules about intimate caresses in
public."
"Let's caress in private, then."
She grinned at me. Taking me by the hand, she led me away from the
Social Hall. We walked hand-in-hand past the mess hall and I found
myself on a road that was new to me.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"Staff quarters." She pointed ahead, to three or four cabins nestling
at the edge of the woods behind the mess hall. "That's pretty private.
Lorraine and I share a cabin. But she usually spends the night with
Nick at his place. That's where the cooks sleep, over there."
My heart was pounding. Back in the real world, when you want to go to
bed with a girl you have to wine her and dine her for a while, usually.
You have to take her to a couple of shows, and you have to feed her the
line about how the bomb may drop any week and why not grab some fun
while you can? Then, and only then, she lets you score. But that was
the real world. Here in the fantasy dreamland of the Sunland Health
Colony, the pretenses and conventions of society didn't seem to matter
so much. If you met a girl and she liked you, she took you off to her
cabin or she came to yours. And since neither of you had any clothing
on anyway, it was a perfectly expectable thing for matters to go on to
what they call completion.
We entered her cabin. It was built exactly like the one Meehan and I
shared. Harriet took me into her room and locked the door. She was
wearing a pair of shorts, and she took them off. She was naked now. I
wriggled out of my shirt.
I saw the look in her eyes again, the smouldering, sensuous look she
had given me on the tennis court. She flattened herself against me,
thrusting her knee between my thighs, while my hands squeezed the flesh
of her buttocks. I felt her small but finely shaped breasts going stiff
and hard, pressing against my chest.
Her tongue darted into my mouth and her knee brought me to a flaming
pitch of excitement and my hands went up from her buttocks and forced
themselves between our bodies, reaching upward until I was cupping her
breasts. They weren't big swinging breasts like Bonnie's, and they
weren't monumental statuesque ones like Joanie's. They were--well, they
filled my hands nicely, and I squeezed the stiff little berries at the
tips, and I heard Harriet gasp with delight and I told myself that the
Sunland Health Colony was the nearest thing to utopia on earth that had
yet been invented.
Then Harriet pulled herself away from me and while I stood blinking and
recovering from the intensity of the kiss she went to her dresser and
opened a drawer. When she turned around again she was holding--this is
God's own truth--a ping-pong paddle!
It was one just like the ones they had in the back of the Social Hall,
covered with a flat oval of red rubber raised up in little puckers. She
thrust the paddle into my hand and I stood there staring at it stupidly
while she whispered, "Hit me, Al! Hit me!"
I didn't get it at first. Call me stupid or something. But Harriet
pushed me down on the bed and dove across my knees, face down, with her
pretty little butt facing upward so I could still make out the imprint
my tennis racquet had left this afternoon.
And all of a sudden I understood Harriet a whole lot better.
I knew now why she had given me that look of pure three hundred proof
s-e-x after I had whammed her with my racquet.
She was a girl who _liked_ to be hurt.
That was the way she got her kicks.
All at once my image of her as a nice cleancut college girl who worked
at a nudist colony because she enjoyed the outdoor life went up in
smoke. I felt faintly queasy. I'm not really as puritanical as this
account is probably painting me, but still and all. I've always had
a preference for girls who went for the straight stuff instead of
sidelines and specialties.
I didn't have any choice, though. There I was with the ping-pong paddle
in my hand and a naked girl spread out across my lap with her backside
waiting to be paddled, and myself in a state of advanced excitement
anyway. So--feeling somewhat guilty about the whole thing--I lifted the
paddle and brought it down smartly across Harriet's tender rump.
She let out a squeal of delight. I saw the skin almost tingle. I
paddled her again, making a nice loud sound, and she kicked her legs
and began to pant hysterically, and I found myself getting into the
spirit of the thing myself. I brought the paddle down four or five more
times across her bare bottom, and every time the paddle landed she let
out another cry of mixed pleasure and pain. _Whack! Whack! Whack!_ And
Harriet getting hotter with each descent of the paddle across her bare
bottom.
She sat up suddenly, and her eyes were wild. She looked like she was
a madwoman. "Hit me," she moaned. "Slap me, punch me, bite me!" She
wriggled up until she was sitting on my lap, and in one sudden thrust
of her loins she imprisoned me with her body, and she pulled my head
to her bosom and shoved one of her breasts into my mouth and murmured,
"Bite me, bite me...."
I was carried away by it all. I took care not to break the skin, but
I gave her what she wanted. She moaned and bucked and whimpered, and
sweat bathed our bodies, and it went on and on, seemingly for hours.
She was really the wildest.
And then she was digging her nails into my back and moving with frantic
energy, and I felt the trip-hammer pounding in my loins and I let my
breath out in a long hoarse sigh and it was all over. I opened my eyes.
Harriet still sat astride me, but she looked completely exhausted.
She tumbled off, landing in a little heap on the floor. I picked her
up. She was limp, drained, through. I put her on the bed. She gave a
kittenish smile of contentment.
She said in a low voice, "Thanks, Al."
I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at my toes. It had been one
hell of a weird day. I had had a woman ask me what time it was two
minutes after making love to her, and now a girl had _thanked_ me for
giving her the sort of perverse thrills she craved. The ping-pong
paddle lay on the floor. I scowled at it.
Harriet opened her eyes. They were wet with tears, tears of mingled
pleasure and pain. I got up, found a pack of cigarettes on her
dresser, took one out and lit it up.
She said, "What's wrong, Al?"
I shrugged. "Nothing."
"You're upset."
"Maybe I am."
"I'm sorry, Al. I can't help myself. It's ... it's the way I am. I have
to be in pain or I can't enjoy it. I don't know why. But I need the
paddling. Otherwise it's no good for me." There was a pathetic quavery
note in her voice. I looked at her--twenty-two and already loused up
with some creepy kind of perversion--and I felt deep pity, and a bit of
disgust too.
"How long have you been this way?" I asked.
She shrugged. "I don't know. It was sort of an accident." She sprawled
out facing the wall. I saw the angry redness of her buttocks and felt
guilt for having contributed to her strange lust. In a low voice she
said, "I was eighteen the first time I slept with a boy. It was the
usual story--too much to drink, and a fellow with a fast line. Well,
at least it didn't hurt any. I didn't feel a thing. Not a thing. He
took my panties down and did it to me, and then when he was through
he zipped up his trousers and that was it. I was disappointed. I went
out with him a few more times and I let him do it again, and each time
it was the same thing. I didn't feel a thing. He told me I was just
nervous, that pretty soon I'd start enjoying it."
I puffed on my cigarette. I couldn't take my eyes off her reddened
buttocks.
She went on, "I guess I slept around a lot in the next couple of
years. Almost the same story. Frigid, that's what I was. And then I
met this guy. He was maybe thirty, and he had a lot of money, and he
took me to fancy places. He wanted to make love, and I figured it was
the least I could give him in return for all the money he was spending
on me. It didn't mean anything to me, you see, and if it made _him_
happy--well, we went to his place, and we got undressed, and we made
it. Nothing. Cold as a fish, like always. I broke down and spilled out
my whole long sad story. He listened to the whole thing and then all
of a sudden he slapped me, out of nowhere, right across my breasts. I
thought he was out of his mind. Then he turned me over his knee and
started spanking me. I kicked and screamed and tried to get loose, but
he held me tight, and then I felt something happening inside me. My
heart started racing and I felt hot all over and he took me in his arms
and we did it again and this time I felt it. So that's how it was. He
got through to me."
"And you're only satisfied when you get hurt?" I asked, fascinated and
appalled at the same time.
She nodded miserably. "Yes. He--stopped seeing me after a while. He
married someone else. I went with other fellows, and when I slept with
them nothing happened unless I could get them to smack me. Today--when
you hit me with the racquet--you came practically near blowing all my
fuses. I wanted you, Al. Right there on the tennis court. Only they
would have thrown us both out of here if we did anything like that."
I stubbed out my cigarette. "You poor kid."
She swung around to face me. "Al, what am I going to do? I want to be
normal! I don't want to bring men to my room and give them a ping-pong
paddle to use!"
"Have you been to a psychiatrist?"
"Yes. It didn't do any good." She began to sob. I went over to her and
slipped my arms around her, and she cried it all out.
A hell of a crazy place, I thought. Despite all Dr. Richards'
propaganda about nudists being saner than other people, I wasn't
impressed. One day in Sunland Health Colony and I had become involved
with a nympho and a masochist. And there was the enigma of the
apparently sexless Joanie Baker besides.
A nice bunch of people....
I comforted Harriet for a while, telling her everything was going to
turn out all right for her, that someday a fellow would come along who
could ring the bell for her without the violent preliminaries. I didn't
believe it, and I don't think she did either, but at least my talking
that way made us both feel better.
Around eleven I decided it was time to get back to my cabin. Harriet
held me tight at the door, and we hugged, our naked bodies pressing
together.
"I hope we'll be together again soon," she said.
"I hope so."
"You don't want to," she said. "You're not happy about it."
"It takes a while to get used to," I said. I stroked her satiny
buttocks affectionately. "Good night, Harriet. Sleep well."
"'Night, Al."
I unlocked the door and stepped outside, my shirt over my arm. Once
again I was obsessed with the unreality of the nudist camp environment.
To go into a girl's bedroom and make love with her, and then to walk
out stark naked and stroll home--that was grotesque, almost nightmarish.
I walked along. Glancing to my left, I saw two figures on the porch of
the cook's cabin. Riccio and Lorraine. He was sitting on the top step,
and she was sitting a step below him, leaning back, and his hands were
on her breasts. I looked away quickly and kept walking.
In a few minutes I was out of the staff area and past the mess hall, on
my way back down below to the cabins. The camp was quiet. Early to bed,
early to rise was the rule here. I came down the road and stood for a
moment in the middle of everything, in the calm, quiet night. Lights
were on in three or four of the cabins. To my right, in Cabin Four,
I heard the creak of bedsprings, and thought that healthy, clean-cut
Ernie Bryan was having a healthy, cleancut time in bed with his wife.
A light was on in Cabin Two, Joanie Baker's cabin, as well. I walked
quickly down to my own cabin.
Meehan's door was open, and the light was on. He was sitting up in bed,
scribbling shorthand notes in his book. He nodded as I came in.
"Have a good evening?" I asked.
"I scored," he said. "One for one is par for the course."
"Margaret?"
"Naturally. She was so damn pathetically _grateful_. How'd you spend
your evening?"
I told him, in some detail. He listened with a growing frown. When I
finished I said, "How'd you pick this place out, anyway?"
"Friend of mine told me."
"It's really Bugsville, isn't it?"
He shrugged. "Just because one funloving sun-lover is a nympho and
another a masochist?"
"Jack, _all_ these people are screwy."
"Sure they are. They wouldn't be running around in their birthday suits
if they were ordinary people."
"It's going to be a long three months," I said.
"Not for you. I figure you'll be in a rest home inside of a month, Al.
One before lunch and one after supper is fun for a while. But you gotta
show moderation, man. Don't run hog-wild just because there's a lot of
bare tail floating around."
I shrugged. "I never did learn how to say no to a girl who wanted to go
to bed with me," I said. "Guess I'd better start practicing."
"Guess you'd better."
"Goodnight," I said.
"Goodnight, kid. Sleep tight."
I didn't have to worry about that. I staggered off toward my pad and
dropped wearily into bed. It had been quite a day. Quite. It seemed to
be at least fifty hours long. I shut my eyes and sleep descended like a
closing window.
_CHAPTER SEVEN_
The next day, luckily, wasn't quite so hectic.
It started off on the cool and cloudy side. I woke up when the
breakfast gong sounded and went out onto the porch, but came scuttling
back inside at once. It was around fifty degrees out there, and breezy.
I woke Meehan up and we went to breakfast in clothing that would have
passed muster at any resort. Nearly everybody else was well covered,
too, both top and bottom. Lorraine and Harriet wore sweaters and little
aprons as they served breakfast. I had an extra portion of hot cereal,
to take off some of the chill. Harriet served me, favoring me with a
little knowing smile. As for Bonnie, she was away at the other end of
the long table, and I tried not to look in her direction. Hell hath no
fury, etc. I wanted to keep far away from her.
The sun was just beginning to fight its way through the clouds as we
returned to our cabin after breakfast. But there was still a nip in
the air. It wasn't exactly an outdoorsy kind of morning. We got the
cabin in order, and then Jack left. He said he was heading up front, to
the colony library. He wanted to consult the back files of the nudist
journals they had there, to get some historical info for the book he
would be writing eventually. As soon as he was gone, I set up the
typewriter in the cabin and dragged out my manuscript.
I read through the outline again and decided I was heading in the
right direction. Rolling a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter,
I began to type. This time, I was doing an expansion of the original
outline, filling in the small details--character names, background
data, chronology, and such. It was an exciting thing to see the texture
of the imaginary world I was creating become more solid with each tap
of the keys. Pretty soon I would be able to move around in the world of
my characters as easily as though it were my own. Then I would be ready
to begin writing the book.
I hardly noticed the time going by. After a while I became thirsty, and
on my way to the sink I noticed that the time was eleven o'clock. So
I had been working about two hours. It seemed like a lot less. And in
those two hours I had turned three pages of my old outline into about
ten pages of the new one. I had been typing along at full speed, hardly
able to keep up with the flow of my ideas.
Deciding it was time for a little break, I walked out onto the front
porch. The sun was definitely out, now, and the temperature was rising
at a fast clip--it was at least in the middle sixties by now, and by
the afternoon the sun would be fierce again. I was still wearing the
clothes I had worn to breakfast, and I began to get uncomfortable in
them.
I looked out at the big lawn, surrounded by the wide semi-circle of
cabins. Nude men and women were lolling on blankets in the grass. A
naked boy of about eleven was playing catch with young Janey Bryan.
Further down, a volleyball game was going on, with about five people
on each side. They were really banging the ball back and forth
enthusiastically.
It was the most peaceful sight you could imagine. It looked like a
scene out of an old painting. This was the Elysian Field, the Happy
Hunting-Ground.
I decided that I had been a little harsh the night before. Most of
these people weren't cranks or lunatics. In fact, they were mostly a
hell of a lot saner than the people outside.
There were exceptions, like Bonnie, like Harriet--people with problems.
But most of the nudists here were a different breed. Utterly relaxed,
utterly without the silly clutter of inhibitions that most of us drag
around with us. Most of the nudists were people like Ernie Bryan, I
realized. Sane, healthy, uncomplicated. I was willing to bet Ernie
Bryan was faithful to his wife, had always been, would always be. Why
shouldn't he? He had no filthy little repressed curiosities about other
women. Everything was right out in the open.
And these nudist kids, I thought. They wouldn't grow into teenage sex
addicts. They wouldn't hover around trying to peep into the girls'
washroom. They wouldn't be customers for the sleazy unshaven characters
who hang around high schools trying to sell the kids packets of little
glossy prints of naked men and women. They wouldn't have any interest
in burlesque shows, strippers, nightclub comics. They wouldn't turn
into rapists or peeping Toms.
Why should they? Nothing was hidden from them. They weren't throttled
with censorship at every step of the way--and so they didn't react to
censorship in an exaggerated swing toward the other direction.
I watched the volleyball players for a while, their tanned bodies
glistening in the sun, and I envied them for their many years of this
sort of lazy life, this complete freedom. And I thought about all
the people in the outside world--the ones who said that nudists were
crazy cranks--and I wondered who the crazy ones really were. These
unfettered naked people, or the ones who crept around the hellish murk
of summertime Chicago swathed in underwear and shirts and suits and
neckties?
Turning, I went back into the cabin and peeled off my clothes. I
dragged the typing table out on the front porch to soak up some
sunlight while I worked.
I put in another half hour's worth, two more pages, and then I decided
to call it a morning. I was starting to get tired of working, and
I resolved to quit whenever the book became a chore instead of a
pleasure. I carefully put the new pages in the folder and closed
everything up. Then I went for a stroll, reveling in my nudity.
I wandered over to the volleyball court first, and stood watching
the game. Joanie Baker was the captain of one team, Ernie Bryan of
the other. They faced each other across the net, faces set in grim
determination as though this were the World Series with twenty million
people glued to their television sets to watch. Bess Olin served from
backcourt. Norman Keyes tapped the ball forward, a soft high lob, and
Joanie went high, her breasts rising steeply and every muscle in her
spectacular body standing out in sharp relief as she slammed the ball
across the net and straight down. Everybody on both teams cheered as
the ball touched ground for the point.
Then Keyes served. Don Riemann set it up for Ernie Bryan, who spiked
it, but some chap I didn't know made a miraculous save. He popped it
up in the air; Joanie knocked it over the net, but Ernie took it and
spiked it again, this time slamming it down with a fierce leap. The
ball caromed off Joanie's back and bounced off the court for a point.
While they chased it, Joanie asked me if I wanted to play. But I
begged off; the sides were even and evenly matched, and the offer had
obviously been made only for the sake of politeness.
Instead I drifted on toward the lake. The only one swimming was
Margaret, Meehan's amour of the night before, who was going round and
round in a solemn breast-stroke. She waved to me as I trotted out onto
the dock.
"Hi! Where's Jack?"
"In the library," I told her. "He's doing some research for his
article."
"He's missing a good swim," she said. "The water's grand."
I dove in and surfaced next to Margaret. She was floating on her back,
now, and her big, soft breasts seemed to hold her up like water wings.
She had a pale, pasty look that no amount of exposure to the sun would
ever erase. There was something cow-like about her. But she was a
sweet sort, and I could tell she had long since resigned herself to
spinsterhood and was determined to grab whatever adventure she could
before subsiding into middle age. Hence her foray into nudism, and
hence her willingness to be slept with. There wasn't much point in a
girl like that saving her virginity for the wedding night everyone knew
would never come.
I swam around for a while, until the distant tinkling of the lunch
gong brought the swim to an end. Margaret clambered out of the water
first. She paused for breath on the ladder, and I resisted the impulse
to shove my hands against her buttocks and push. Instead I waited
beneath her in a gentlemanly way, modestly averting my eyes from the
enormous expanse of _derriere_ looming above me.
I toweled dry and started up the road. Another good thing about nudist
life is that you can just pop in and out of the water any time you
feel like it, without going to any bother about changing in or out of
swimsuits. You just kicked your sandals off and jumped in, and toweled
dry when you came out.
And at the athletic fields you didn't have to worry about getting
sweated up and needing a change of clothing before lunch. There were
outdoor showers mounted at every game area. When the lunch-gong rang,
you simply stepped under the shower, rinsed off the sweat of your
exertions, and headed up front to the mess hall. Simple and efficient,
all right.
The volleyball players were queuing up at their shower now. Margaret
went into her cabin to rearrange her hair before eating. Alone,
I strolled up toward the mess hall, feeling completely relaxed,
completely uninhibited, completely at home in the nudist world. It
seemed the most natural thing in the world to be walking around without
any clothes on. For the life of me, I couldn't imagine why anyone in
the outside world would have any hesitations at all about nudism.
The sun was warm. My skin was tanning rapidly, and seemed to tingle
with vitality. I felt more completely alive than I had in decades. I
whistled a little tune as I walked.
And then, in a moment, I was plunged into complete confusion again.
There is a little rise in the road midway between the cabin area and
the mess hall. A person coming up from the cabins is partially hidden
from someone coming the other way, until they both get to the top of
the rise. I was walking along without paying any particular attention
to the road in front of me. All of a sudden I heard a deep but youthful
feminine voice call out, "_Hello_, there."
I looked up in surprise from my relaxed reveries. "Hello," I said
automatically.
And then I felt like making a dash for the underbrush.
Sandra Richards stood in front of me. She was fully dressed. She wore a
tight sweater through which her breasts protruded like two burgeoning
hills, and a skirt that molded the lush contours of her hips and
buttocks. She was wearing lipstick and earrings and stockings. She
looked like she was on her way downtown for a shopping expedition at
one of the big stores.
And she was staring at my midsection with frank and intimate curiosity.
It was one thing to wander around in a camp full of equally nude
people. You get used to the idea quickly that way. Nobody has any
advantages over anyone else, and so there's no sense of embarassment.
But it's a totally different thing to find yourself confronted suddenly
with a full-breasted young lady, herself dressed to kill and yourself
mother-bare. That's when you discover the difference between being
nude and naked. A _nude_ man was what I had been a moment before,
strolling along in cheerful unencumberedness. A _naked_ man was what I
had abruptly become--with the overwhelming desire to crouch down and
shield my loins with my hands, to keep them hidden from this girl's
inquiring gaze.
I fought back the impulse to hide myself. I stood my ground and even
put my hands on my hips and widened my stance, as though ready for
conversation. While within I trembled with embarrassment and shame.
Sandra said, "We just got here five minutes ago. I was on my way down
to my cabin to get undressed. Do you want to come with me?"
I scowled. "Think it'll take long? I don't want to be late for lunch."
"Oh, it'll just be a minute. Come on, walk along with me," she ordered
petulantly, once again giving my body that brazen once-over with her
eyes.
I decided to see it through. I did an about-face and headed back toward
the cabin area with her, walking at her side. I was tremendously
uncomfortable about the whole thing. Her body, masked by her clothing,
had a sensuous appeal that not even Joanie Baker could arouse in me. It
was the element of mystery that was responsible. A fully dressed woman
in a nudist colony is practically an invitation to rape. It's on the
same order--maybe even worse--than a naked woman in outside society,
walking down the street or getting on a bus.
Sandra said, "Are you having a good time here so far?"
"Fine," I said, "It's a wonderful life."
"Yes, we think so too. Where's your friend Mr. Meehan?"
"In the library doing research," I said. I kept my eyes straight ahead,
wishing that this insufferably voluptuous and amoral teenager would do
the same. But she kept looking at me.
We began to pass the volleyball players as they headed up for lunch.
Sandra smiled and greeted everybody by name. Nobody seemed perturbed at
the fact that I was with Sandra, or that she was fully dressed while
no one else was. After the volleyball group came Bonnie Carter and a
youngish man I didn't know. Seeing the two of us together, Bonnie gave
me a look of black hatred.
The Richardses lived in Cabin One, which was at the exact center
of the semi-circle, by the flag-pole. It was slightly larger than
the other cabins, since it belonged to the director and was a kind
of meeting-place as well as a dwelling. We went up on the porch. I
hesitated there. Sandra looked at me, pouting.
"Come on in, silly."
"Maybe I'd better wait out here."
"I won't bite," she told me. "Come on."
Shrugging, I went inside. Sandra led me into the left-hand bedroom. I
leaned against the door, taking care to keep it open that way. Sandra
might have bedtime ideas and I wasn't in a mood to get entangled in
another romance so fast. Especially with jailbait.
But apparently all that was on Sandra's mind right now was a bit of
exhibitionism. She knew full well that mere nudity couldn't get a man
worked up to anything like the degree that disrobing did.
So she disrobed. I leaned back, trying to be casual, as she pulled her
sweater up over her head and tossed it on a chair.
"You don't look like you're thirty-four," she remarked, as she reached
around back to unhook her bra. "You look a lot younger."
"I owe it all to clean living," I said. "How did you know my age,
anyway?"
"I looked at your questionnaire, of course. But don't tell Daddy. He
thinks he keeps them hidden." She had the fastening of her bra open
now. Taking her time about it, she eased the straps over her shoulders
and let the cups fall away from her breasts. The round heavy globes
of flesh thrust forward, maintaining their position without any real
opposition from gravity, which spoke of superb pectoral muscles of the
Joanie Baker class. Sandra turned, aiming those spectacular breasts
straight at me and giving me a full view. The nipples were tiny, but
they were standing up stiffly. Her skin was dark, almost olive, and she
had a kind of Near Eastern duskiness about her. She was the sort of
girl who would be an ornament to someone's harem, I thought.
The sight of a girl fully dressed but with bare breasts is a
stimulating one, especially when you've had the numbing exposure to
total nudity that I had been having for the past forty-eight hours.
Sandra paused devilishly, making silly conversation, and then her hands
went to her waist and she started to unzip her skirt.
I felt a slow, steady crawling of lust across my belly. I clenched my
jaws. _No._ I told myself, _I will not let myself be aroused by this
little slut, I will not, I will not, I will not, I will NOT_!
But I was. It happened slowly, despite my inner objections. Sandra saw
it, and a sly smile appeared on her face as she shimmied the skirt over
her full hips. She was wearing a half-slip underneath, and that came
off too, leaving her clad only in a garter-belt, nylons, and a pair of
filmy panties. The panties hid nothing at all. They might just as well
have been transparent, because I could plainly see her navel, and, when
she turned, the cleft of her full buttocks. She raised one knee and
elegantly unhooked her stocking from the garter-belt. The nylon-encased
leg was lovely. I felt myself turning red all over at this infuriating
strip-tease. I wanted to turn and leave, to get out of here, but I
couldn't. I was held fast by the hypnotic sexual magnetism of this
lushly-constructed teenager.
"Hurry it up," I barked irritably. "I don't want to be late for lunch."
"We've still got plenty of time. Don't you like to watch me undress,
Al?"
I didn't answer. I watched with interest and annoyance as she drew the
stockings off, rolled the panties down over her hips and buttocks, and,
finally, unhooked the garter-belt. She was nude. And I knew that the
photo of her that I had seen was out of date, at least a year old and
maybe more, because her body had come much more to maturity now. Her
heavy breasts promised excitement; her hips and buttocks beckoned.
"Let's go," I said.
"Don't you want to stay a while?"
I backed out the door. "Nix, Sandra. I'm hungry."
"Oh, all right," she said, obviously disgusted with me. She slipped
into a pair of sandals and we stepped outside. The moment I was
outdoors again, I felt the pressure ease off. My sexual excitement
subsided abruptly and I knew I was safe from Sandra, for a while,
anyway.
We had gone about thirty yards when we encountered Dr. Richards and
his wife, fully dressed, heading for the cabin. Once again I felt the
discomfort of being naked in front of people who were dressed--and
there was the additional complication that, walking naked at my side,
there was the nubile daughter of the man and woman coming toward me.
But the Richardses hardly seemed disturbed to meet their daughter naked
in the road with a naked man.
Instead they gave us a warm greeting, asked me how I was finding
life in Sunland Health Colony, and hurried on to their cabin to get
undressed themselves in time for lunch.
When they were gone, Sandra said, "Race you to the mess hall."
Suddenly she was a siren no more, just a bobby-soxer. She broke into
a dash, catching me by surprise. I stood flatfooted, watching her
buttocks bob as she ran. After she had gone about ten paces she turned,
running still, only with her torso twisted to face me, and yelled,
"Come on, slowpoke, chase me!"
I remained still, absorbed in the endless miracle of a woman's
bouncing breasts, and then I started to run. She set a good pace, but
I felt as healthy as a young satyr, and despite her head start I
soon caught up with her. I passed her near the big apple tree where I
had kissed Harriet the afternoon before. I came to a dead stop just
in front of the mess hall. Sandra ran up behind me, and--probably
deliberately--collided with me as I stood there. She wrapped her arms
about me to steady herself, and the points of her young breasts stabbed
the flesh of my back. I shrugged myself away from her and we went in
for lunch.
The mess hall was crowded. There had been at least fifteen new arrivals
during the morning, and the long table was completely filled. It had
been moved to one side and a second table set up parallel to it. I
found a seat at this less occupied table. Sandra slipped in next to me
and introduced me to the people sitting there. They were a family group
who had just arrived, but who evidently were regular campers here. Ted
and Cindy Nichols, they were. Ted Nichols was a cleancut, healthy,
Ernie Bryan-like fellow of about thirty, with an open and guileless
expression. His wife Cindy was about twenty-five. She had an attractive
face and big, elongated breasts which showed signs of having been used
for nursing. They had two children, a little girl of just under three
and a boy of four and a half.
A new waitress had arrived, too, to handle some of the newcomers. She
was a thin, flat-chested girl of eighteen or so, heavily freckled and a
bit bucktoothy. Her name was Doris, and she seemed like a nice kid.
Dr. and Mrs. Richards arrived and took seats at our table. Everyone who
hadn't seen them before waved to them now, and they waved back, like
the King and Queen at a royal reception.
The meal was simple but good, like all those so far at the colony. My
appetite was enormous. I found myself putting away endless slices of
delicious brown bread, heavily buttered, and gulping mug after mug of
cold fresh milk. It was quite a switch from my usual lunchtime routine,
which involved beginning every meal with two martinis, and sometimes
not bothering to have anything else.
After lunch Meehan caught up with me. "I see the Richards kid is here,"
he said.
I nodded. "She already tried to give me the business. Dragged me down
to her cabin for a strip-tease, but she couldn't get me into the sack."
Meehan laughed. "Man, are _you_ living it up!"
"Yeah," I told him. I guess in Meehan's eyes I was rapidly taking on
the character of a woman-hungry satyr. Bonnie, Lorraine, Harriet,
Joanie, now Sandra--all in two days. I didn't see the sense of
explaining that most of these women were chasing _me_. All except
Joanie, who was the one I really wanted.
But somehow I didn't feel like discussing my private life with Meehan.
We wandered back to the cabin together, and he told me all about
what he had discovered about organized nudism--the conventions, the
squabbles between different national bodies, and all the rest. I
listened politely, because I knew Jack was only talking this stuff out
in order to get it better organized in his mind for the article he
would do later.
I sprawled out in the grass in front of the cabin and got some sun
while I was digesting my lunch. I guess I dozed off for a few minutes.
I had an odd sort of dream. Women were dancing in a circle around me.
Not naked women, though. These babes were covered right up to their
chins. It's funny what a couple of days in a nudist camp can do to your
subconscious.
_CHAPTER EIGHT_
When I got tired of lolling around soaking up sunshine, I got the
typewriter out again and worked on the book. I put in two more hours
and finished up the outline. It was nineteen pages long. I leaned
back in my chair with my feet up on the porch railing, reading what I
had written and liking it. Maybe you're not supposed to like your own
stuff. I don't know; I had never written a book before. But everyone
in the outline seemed to be a real solid person to me, someone I could
summon up practically in the flesh. And every incident seemed to grow
out of the one before it. I felt satisfied. I had been terribly afraid
that I would poop out, that I'd go back to Wacker Drive in a few months
with no novel written, like plenty of other hot-air boys who make a big
stink about how they could be making better use of their talents than
writing ad copy.
But that wasn't going to happen to me. My book was going to get written.
I took a pencil and went over the outline, blocking it off into
chapters. It broke up pretty well into twenty-one chapters. I figured
I could do an average of three chapters a week. That way it would
take me seven weeks to get the first draft written, if I stuck to my
schedule. Then I could stash it away for a week to let it cool, come
back to it, and spend four more weeks editing it into shape, cutting
and rewriting, and finally sweating it into what I thought would be
the finished draft. When I got back to Chicago I could give the book to
a typist, and by the middle of September it would be ready to go off to
a publisher.
For a second I had a nice vision of the finished book, typed with a
nice dark ribbon on crinkly white paper, lying in a box just before I
packed it up and shipped it off to New York. It was a nice vision.
But I told myself you didn't write books in your dreams. You had to
sweat them out, word by word, before that magic final day when it was
all neat and packed up to go to the publisher.
I would begin Chapter One tomorrow, I told myself.
I riffed the sheets of the outline together, stuck a paper clip on
them, and carefully slipped them into the folder. I laid that folder
away in my dresser drawer as reverently as a new mother tucking her
baby into his crib. Then I went outside.
It was three in the afternoon. The sun was strong, now, and I
remembered to wear my sunglasses. I remembered how it had been at
breakfast, all cloudy and cold, but that seemed long ago, on some other
day.
The place was hopping. I guess there were close to forty-five people on
the premises, now--getting near to capacity--and wherever you looked
there were naked people having a good time. Some were just sprawled out
on blankets, writing letters or reading books or dozing. The volleyball
game had been resumed and was going along full blast. I watched it for
a while, marveling at the way Joanie and Dr. Richards and Ernie Bryan
and the others batted that ball around as though their lives depended
on it.
Before they had a chance to invite me to join the game, I moved away,
heading down the hill toward the lake area. Four teenage boys and
two wiry-looking teenage girls were batting fungoes on the baseball
diamond. All they wore were sneakers and baseball gloves. I thought
back to my own teens and tried to picture myself chasing fly balls
in my birthday suit while a bare-fannied girl of fifteen took the
throw-ins. Somehow I couldn't see it at all. Casual nudity between the
sexes wasn't the way we had been brought up. I remembered the photos
Eddie Root had passed around when we were fourteen, the photos of
potbellied naked models who stared tiredly at the camera and made no
attempt to look glamorous. Those photos had really heated us up.
But here--
A nicely-developed kid of sixteen was batting grounders now. He
pounded one down to third and a lean, tanned blonde girl gobbled it
up like a pro and rifled it across the diamond to the kid at first.
The fact that the third-baseman had a nice pair of breasts didn't
attract any attention at all. Nor was the third-baseman at all upset
by the exceedingly mature maleness of the kid at the plate. And the
center-fielder, a wiry girl whose breasts were just mere points, was
yelling for one to be hit to her. "Come on, Mickey, hit one over my
head!"
Mickey hit one over her head. She raced back, lost it in the sun, went
tumbling headlong. The boy in left field retrieved the ball, tossed it
in, and went over to help the girl to her feet. She came up grinning
and yelled for another chance.
It couldn't have been a sharper contrast to the kind of adolescence 99%
of kids have. I remembered my summer at camp, and how we spent hours
watching the girls taking showers, peeking through a knot-hole in the
showerhouse wall. That kind of hole-and-corner spying was unknown here.
And no loss, either.
I went past the baseball diamond and over to the tennis court. Nick
Riccio and Lorraine were on one court, volleying. On the adjoining
court was a couple that had arrived that morning. A fellow of about
twenty-five, a girl slightly younger. They weren't married, just good
friends going away together for a vacation. She was a creamy-skinned
blonde, very fair, and to protect herself from the sun she had donned
an eyeshade and a kind of bolero jacket that covered her shoulders but
did not quite reach down below her breasts. That was all she had on,
except for tennis sneakers.
I came across Meehan down near the dock, talking to one of the new
waitresses. Not the skinny one, but a full-blown brunette with oversize
breasts. They didn't seem to mind company, so I went over to join them.
Meehan was examining a sun-hat that the girl had given him.
"Look at this thing, Al," he said, holding it up for my inspection. "Al
Fieldston, Mary Kinowski. It's damn clever, Al."
I smiled at the girl and took the sun-hat from him. It had a zipper
pocket in front. I opened the pocket and looked in. It contained a
comb, a pair of sunglasses, and a pack of cigarettes.
Meehan said, "Now you know where nudists carry their personal effects.
This is a nudist special, manufactured for use here."
"You don't have to carry things in your hat, though," Mary said. "A lot
of men tuck things into the tops of their socks."
I laughed. I hadn't been faced with the problem of where to keep
things. My crewcut removed any bother of carrying a comb, and I rarely
smoked more than a couple of cigarettes a day. As for carrying around
money or keys--you just didn't do that here.
Mary looked up at me. "Jack tells me you're an advertising man," she
said. "Which agency?"
I told her. She smiled. "That's what I thought," she said.
"What do you mean?"
"Don't you remember me?"
I looked at her, aghast. "Am I supposed to?"
"I worked there last year in the secretarial pool. You made a pass at
me during a coffee break."
I felt myself turning red all over. I closed my eyes, trying to
remember. In my imagination I clothed Mary, covering her ample breasts
and heavy thighs, and in a moment I had my picture--of a dark-haired,
stacked-looking girl who had caught my fancy momentarily the winter
before.
"Now I remember," I said. "But--but you look so different with--"
"--with clothes on?" she asked. She stood up, patting her tummy in an
earthy gesture. "Maybe it was the girdle. I always wore a tight girdle
in the office. Maybe you just didn't think I had such a big butt."
We laughed over that. Score another one for this weird nudist world.
Boss could meet secretary, banker meet borrower, and the shock of
nudity would blank out recognition. Sometimes even a familiar face
might look strange because the unencumbered body was not what you
expected. The Mary I remembered had been bosomy but well laced. This
spreading full-bodied girl looked entirely different.
The afternoon passed pleasantly. I swam, played some volleyball, even
got a couple of turns at bat on the ball field. I popped a couple up,
then lined a sizzler down to third, but the husky kid playing there
scooped it up without batting an eye. On my next swing I hit a fly to
center, and watched the lithe blonde girl make the catch. I felt full
of pep, better than I had felt in ages. By dinnertime I was ravenously
hungry. The day had turned cool again, and I went up to the mess hall
fully dressed.
There were hamburgers for dinner. I guess I ate about a dozen of them.
I asked for and got some beer to wash them down.
Beer was the strongest stuff you could consume in the camp, and the
supply was strictly doled out--one can at a time, and you had to prove
you were holding it before you got another. The colony directors didn't
want anybody drunk and disorderly on the premises.
One beer was all I wanted, though. For someone whose daily routine
had included ten or twelve ounces of gin as a matter of course, I had
surprisingly little interest in alcohol. I felt so healthy at the
moment that the mere thought of drinking a martini was distasteful.
Bonnie cornered me after dinner.
She was dressed, more or less, wearing a thin T-shirt through which her
breasts and nipples were clearly visible, and a pair of bermuda shorts.
She came up to me before I could escape and said, "Al, can I talk to
you?"
"Sure." What else was I supposed to say?
"Al, come to my cabin tonight. Cabin Thirteen, on the left-hand side. I
want you."
Just as simple as that.
I hesitated for a moment before I said, "Please, Bonnie, don't start
up."
"I kept away from you all day!! Just--just come to my cabin."
I shook my head. "Tonight's my night for celibacy."
"Darling--"
"Look," I said with some firmness. "We had our little interlude, I told
you. Can't you find someone else for tonight? What about that fellow I
saw you with this morning, eh?"
Scorn made Bonnie look more popeyed than ever. "He's a boy. I need a
_man_, Al."
"Not this one," I said.
"I'm not ugly, am I? I'm as attractive as that waitress of yours. Or is
it the Richards slut you're after tonight? Anyone but me, eh, Al?"
"Come off it, Bonnie," I said annoyedly. "I'm not interested in any of
them. I just want a good night's sleep tonight. Clear?"
Her shoulders sagged. "All right," she murmured in a theatrical
whisper. "Take me and cast me aside. Just like all men. You--"
I didn't give her a chance to finish. Nodding curtly, I strode away
from her and into the Social Hall.
The program for tonight was movies. Amateur movies, taken at the colony
the summer before by Dr. Richards, and edited over the winter. I
entered the Social Hall and found Joanie Baker and a couple of others
busily getting benches lined up and the screen assembled. Joanie was
more completely dressed than I had ever seen her before--a button-front
sweater and a pair of toreador pants. The sweater was open in front,
leaving her breasts all but bare, and the pants molded her figure
sensuously. I grinned at her and pitched in with the benches. After
five minutes the place was in order for the evening presentation.
"Whew!" Joanie said. "I'm all sweated up." Unself-consciously, she
slipped out of her sweater and used it to blot up the perspiration on
her breasts and arms. "I saw Bonnie talking to you again. If she's
bothering you we can give her a warning."
"No, leave her be," I said. "I think she'll call off the hounds now."
"Let's hope so. You must be all tired out after today," she said
brightly. "I saw you playing baseball, and volleyball, and swimming--"
"I had a busy day," I told her. "I got a lot of writing done too."
"I'm glad," she said. She flashed that wonderful girl-scout smile and I
knew she really _was_ glad. Then, splendid breasts bobbing, she skipped
off to get the projector ready. Dr. Richards walked in, carrying a
can of film. Behind him came Sandra. She was fully dressed, looking
seductive and kittenish in her tight sweater and tighter blue jeans.
She gave me a slow, deliberately sensuous look, and walked on past.
The colonists began to assemble now. It was definitely a cool night,
and there wasn't an exposed thigh or buttock to be seen--nor bosom
either, after Joanie donned her sweater again. We were quite a decently
attired assemblage that evening as the projector was snapped on.
The film was called, with a coyness that failed to amuse me, SUNNY
DAYS AT SUNLAND. It was eight-millimeter stuff, in color. There was no
soundtrack, but somebody had dubbed in a musical accompaniment. It was
strictly home-movie stuff, but not bad, as home-movie stuff goes. And
if the footage had fallen into the right hands it could have made quite
a nifty item for the college fraternity set.
The film opened with a solid background, flesh-colored, which turned
out to be a woman's back right up against the camera. She began to walk
away from the lens, and it was easy to see that that back and those
buttocks could belong only to Joanie Baker. When she was twenty feet
away she turned and waved at the camera, front view, an effect that
could blind someone who wasn't prepared for a body of such splendor.
Then the camera showed Joanie bounding across the lawn, laughing in
delight as she ran, over to the volleyball court. A moment later a
game was in full swing, and the camera picked up some amusing angle
shots of jiggling breasts and backsides that caused general laughter.
I recognized about half the players. There was a good deal of "_There
I am!_" stuff from the audience, as well as identification of campers
who had not returned this year.
After the volleyball match, the camera showed some activity down at the
swimming area, and then an inning or two of a nude and coeducational
baseball game. A highlight of that came when Don Riemann tagged a
girl out at second base by slapping the ball down hard on her plump
posterior. I caught sight of a younger-looking Sandra Richards in the
outfield. The camera panned to a couple of the teenage set, who giggled
shrilly as they saw their immature selves of a year earlier.
After visits to the crafts shop, the mess hall, and the music room,
the film concluded with an end-of-season event, the coronation of the
King and Queen of Sunland. I saw Don Riemann and Joanie Baker marching
in an imposing procession, wearing nothing but gilded crowns, while at
their sides walked two nice-looking teenagers I didn't know, the Prince
and Princess of last year's contest. There was a pageant, some nude
gymnastics, and the picture came to its end. I joined in the general
applause. I was almost coming to feel like a veteran member of the
colony myself, by this time.
For gags, Dr. Richards then put on a black-and-white film that had been
made eight years earlier. There were gasps and screams whenever anyone
familiar appeared on the screen. I was duly amused to see a breastless
and quite unseductive-looking Sandra wander across the screen. There
was a shot of Joanie, too, looking about fourteen years old, already
big and good-looking but with small breasts and narrow hips. She was
shown with a woman of about thirty-eight, identified as her mother, and
I saw where Joanie's good looks came from.
When the films were over, refreshments were served and dance records
were played. I took a couple of turns on the dance floor--one with
bulky Margaret, for whom I felt sorry, one with Mary Kinowski, and one
with Harriet.
It was Harriet who told me, "It's only on the cold nights that we ever
do any social dancing here. Dr. Richards won't allow it unless people
are dressed."
I was puzzled at first. But I could readily see how nude social dancing
could violate the canons of decency. I held Harriet tight against me,
feeling her hard breasts thrusting into me, and our bodies ground
sensuously together as we moved. Obviously it wouldn't be wise to
permit public nude dancing of this sort.
Harriet was interested in having me go back to her cabin with her, but
I ducked out of the invitation. It had been a full day for me, and I
was dead tired. I just wanted to get into the sack and shut my eyes.
At ten o'clock I returned to the cabin. With reveille at half past
seven, I wasn't in much mood for late-owl stuff here. Meehan was
nowhere around. I figured he was out somewhere with Mary Kinowski,
trying to make some time with her.
I drifted off to sleep.
Sometimes later I heard footsteps on the porch and I came up out of
my slumbers. It was Meehan coming home, at last, I figured. Just for
the hell of it, I opened my eyes and glanced at the luminous dial of
my watch. Ten minutes to five. Meehan had really made a night of it, I
thought. I settled back on my pillow and screwed my eyes tight shut.
The door of my room began slowly to open.
I listened to the creaking.
"Meehan?" I asked.
"No," came the reply.
It was a woman's voice.
I looked up sleepily. The cabin was pitch-black, and all I could make
out was the feminine figure standing in the doorway. The door inched
closed. The figure tiptoed toward me.
Angrily, I remembered that Bonnie had begged me to come to her cabin
that night. I figured that she had waited all night and, with dawn on
the way, had decided to come to me instead. But I was too sleepy to
make much of a fuss about it.
She crossed the room and slid into bed next to me. She was nude, her
body warm and soft. She took my hands and put them to her breasts, and
I felt firm round globes that throbbed with desire. Her hands wandered
over my body, and I gasped in sudden desire. I was annoyed that Bonnie
was making this much of a pest out of herself, but the moment her hands
touched me I knew I couldn't resist. I wasn't going to throw her out of
my bed.
Her breathing was harsh against me. My eyes remained closed, and I
let her toy with me, and my hands cupped the soft fullness of her
breasts, feeling the nipples hard and sharp and hot against my palms.
The bed creaked with the steady motion of her hips as she rocked back
and forth, waiting impatiently for me to take her. But I was still
half asleep, and I was in no hurry. I stroked her body, caressing her,
making her gasp with longing.
Our lips met. Her tongue slipped into my mouth. Her hands caught my
shoulders, pulling me over as she tried to slip beneath me. She had a
sweet, musky smell--the smell of an animal in heat. I clung tight to
her, no longer able to control my body, no longer annoyed because she
was plaguing me this way.
She drew me down on top of her.
I nestled on the firm pillow of her breasts. Her legs parted to receive
me. She gasped in pleasure.
"Give it to me, Al! Give me everything!"
The voice was not Bonnie's.
I opened my eyes and let them become accustomed to the dark. I stared
down in surprise.
The girl beneath me was not Bonnie at all.
Not Bonnie at all.
She was Sandra.
Sixteen-year-old Sandra. Jailbait Sandra. Writhing in a frenzy beneath
me on the bed.
_CHAPTER NINE_
My first impulse was to pull away and hurl her out of the cabin. But
when a man is two seconds away from heaven he doesn't pull away so
willingly. Sandra's evil hips thrashed up and down, and anger coiled
in me as I realized how the little teenage bitch had tricked me into
loving her, and in that moment it was over for me. But Sandra gripped
me tight and continued to move, until finally she let out a whimper, a
long indrawn hoarse sigh, and it was ended for her.
"Get out of here now," I muttered.
"Don't be angry with me."
"_Get out of here!_" My voice was thick, harsh, strange-sounding. I was
furious--furious with her because she had slybooted me into sleeping
with a girl less than half my age, and furious with myself because I
knew I had really been desiring her all along.
"Please don't be angry with me," she murmured, passing her hands over
me in a way that made me scowl in anger and shiver in delight all at
once. "It was fun, wasn't it?"
"You're under age," I snapped.
"So what? I've done this before. Don't you think I'm pretty?"
"I think you're precocious. And I hate precocious brats. Get out and
let me sleep. And if you breathe a word of this to anybody, I'll break
your sluttish little neck."
"I won't tell a _soul_," she promised. "And I think you're horrible for
being so nasty. After all, I _did_ give you some pleasure."
"Who asked you to?"
"You didn't stop me till it was all over. This isn't the right time to
be moralistic, Al. You should have said something before."
"I didn't know who you were." I shook my head, realizing how silly that
sounded. "I mean, I thought you were someone else."
"Who?"
"None of your damn business!"
"You were expecting someone else tonight. And I came instead, and
now you're angry." She was gloating like a little girl who had done
something naughty and who knew she was going to get away with it. "I
think that's funny," she said. "You don't even look at the people who
get into your bed."
"I wasn't expecting _you_," I said sourly. "Now get out of here before
someone catches us and I get put away for statutory rape."
"Come swimming with me."
"What?"
"Swimming. Right now, right at dawn. Have you ever been swimming at
dawn? It's beautiful. You think you're the only person alive in the
world." She tugged at me, trying to get me out of bed.
In annoyance I yanked my arm free. She sat on the edge of the bed,
cooing persuasively into my ear, and after a few more minutes I gave
in. I wasn't going to get any more sleep anyway, no matter what.
Naked, we tiptoed out onto the porch. The sun had risen, a few minutes
before, but it still was no more than a faint pinkness against the
horizon. Pearly grey mist shrouded the sleeping colony. Not even the
crickets were awake yet. Everything was absolutely silent, held in a
frozen stillness.
I looked at Sandra. She was drawing in her breath, filling her lungs
to bursting, making her breasts swell outward and up. Her nipples were
still stiff. She was ready for another round, I realized.
I drew in breath myself. The morning air was sweet and clean. We
stepped off the porch, barefoot, into the wet grass. Silently we walked
down to the lake. The morning mist was thicker down there, rising in
steaming clouds from the water. The sound of a bullfrog came to us
like an explosion in the quiet: "_grr-uNNK!_" Sandra laughed. Despite
myself, I laughed with her.
It was cool, but not uncomfortably so. I stood at the beginning of the
dock, while Sandra walked out toward the water. I watched her, eyeing
the smooth curves of her back and buttocks. She rippled sensuously at
every motion. As I watched, she picked up speed, running toward the end
of the dock and launching herself in a slicing arc toward the water.
She came up a moment later, grinning, pushing the hair out of her eyes,
and waved to me.
"Come on in! It's grand!"
I walked out on the dock. Standing at the edge, I looked down, clearly
seeing Sandra's nakedness beneath the crystal surface of the water.
I watched the eddies rippling over her breasts for a moment. Then I
dove in. The water was icy, and I came up gasping and shivering, but
after a moment or two I began to adjust to the temperature and become
comfortable.
We drifted gently back and forth in the water, watching the day begin.
The sun rose higher, beyond the trees to the east, and as it climbed
the clouds changed colors, from gray to pink to creamy white, and the
mist lifted and the sky became morning-blue. The birds awoke and began
to chatter in the treetops. Bold fish leaped out of the water for a
nip of fresh air, making little splashes as they slipped beneath the
surface again. I saw a big old turtle crawl up onto a rock near shore
to sun himself in the warming air.
After perhaps half an hour, we grew tired of swimming.
"I'm going in," Sandra announced.
I nodded. I had hardly taken notice of her. I loathed her for the trick
she had played, for the self-indulgent little girl she was. What she
needed, I told myself, was a good spanking administered by her parents.
She swam to the dock, breast-stroking. I followed her, treading water
while she scrambled up the ladder. Despite myself I had to admire the
taut loveliness of her buttocks as she clambered up the ladder.
Reaching the top, she turned and thrust a hand down as though to help
me out of the water. I shook my head, but she kept the hand out anyway.
I climbed up onto the coarse hemp matting that lined the dock, and
shook myself dry.
Then Sandra sprang.
It is the only way I can describe it. She _sprang_, like a tigress. She
leaped forward, wrapping her arms around my neck and locking her thighs
around my hips. I staggered and almost fell back into the water in my
surprise. Then I managed to get control.
"Get down, you idiot!"
"Let's have some fun, Al."
"Will you get off me or--?"
She laughed and opened her legs, sliding down my body and rubbing
sensuously against me. She stood flattened against me, her wet breasts
sharp-pointed and thrusting into me, her arms still locked around my
neck, her hips undulating in a motion that sent shivers through me.
"Do it to me, Al. Do it right here."
"Don't be crazy."
"I want it, Al! Do it or I'll scream rape. I'll scream and get you
thrown out of here."
"No one will believe you."
"My father will. He thinks I'm a sweet little innocent virgin. Do it to
me, Al."
I glowered at her in complete loathing. But then her hands slipped down
and she began to do things, and I felt desire like a spear through me,
and she dropped to her knees and began to kiss me.
She pulled me down too, and we crouched on the matting, both of us
still wet, and the morning bursting all around us and the frogs doing a
triple chorus. She leaned over backwards, her head touching the coarse
matting, her legs an invitation.
I hated her.
But right then I hated myself more.
She groaned. She moaned. "Do it to me, Al! Give me everything!"
She pulled me down to her, and there was a devil's smile in her eyes.
I thought to myself, _Suppose someone comes along and catches us now?
Catches me making love to the director's teenage daughter? I'll get
hell. I'll get thrown out of here on my ear. I'll go to jail, maybe.
I'll lose my job and end up on the crap-heap on account of this little
sexpot._
But I couldn't stop now. I felt the desire in me again, and I shuddered
and made hoarse sounds and felt the pounding and heard the drumming
in my ears. Sandra let out a gasp too, but she wasn't finished, not
just yet. She continued to move while I hovered motionless above her.
She was using me, now. Shakes wracked her again and again, until her
appetite was sated, and she slumped down on the dock matting.
I moved away from her. I half expected to see an audience watching
us on shore, but there was no one there, and silence still shrouded
everything.
Sandra lay on the dock, her face flushed, her lips slack and moist.
"Come back here," she murmured.
"Go to hell."
"There's still more than an hour before breakfast. That's plenty of
time for--"
"No," I said coldly. "You're a devil. A sluttish little devil. Someone
ought to take a hot poker to you."
She smiled. "Why don't you try?"
I wanted to swear at her. But I knew the real evil lay in myself, for
having given in a second time to her. I made sure there wouldn't be a
third. Stepping across her nude prostrate form, I strode quickly off
the dock, pausing near the basketball court to turn on the shower and
scrub myself clean. Then I walked up to the cabins, not looking back.
It was not yet half past six. I considered getting the typewriter out
and doing some work before breakfast, but changed my mind when it
occurred to me that in this silence the clacking of the machine would
be audible all over the camp. Instead I sat down on the porch, my mind
practically a blank, to wait for breakfast.
I saw Sandra come trooping up from the waterfront a few minutes
later. She did not look in my direction. Like some nude sprite that
had materialized out of the morning mist, she crossed the lawn and
disappeared into her cabin. For fifteen minutes all was still. Then
the door of a cabin on the far side of the semi-circle opened, and a
young couple emerged. It was the girl who had worn the bolero jacket
on the tennis court. She and her friend ran down toward the water,
hand-in-hand.
There were other pre-breakfast swimmers. Dr. Richards went down a few
minutes later. Just before seven the door of Cabin Two opened and
Joanie Baker emerged, looking like Aphrodite greeting the dawn. She
stood on her porch, touched her toes a couple of times, and sprinted
toward the lake. She saw me and waved. I waved back. I watched her
vanish behind the trees.
The swimmers returned by quarter past seven. At half past, Dr. Richards
appeared on his front porch to ring the big gong that summoned
everybody to breakfast. I went inside and woke up Meehan. He looked
bleary-eyed and unaware of anything that had happened in the last few
hours.
"Breakfast," I said.
"Oh. Yeah. Yeah." He sat up sleepily and thumbed his eyes. "You sacked
out early last night, huh?"
"Around ten. What time you come in?" I asked.
"Midnight. The Kinowski girl gave me a hard time. You can look, but you
can't touch. That sort of deal." He staggered off to the john. "Bet you
enjoyed a vacation from women, eh?"
"Yeah," I said bitterly. "Yeah, sure."
We went to breakfast. I got a reproachful look from Bonnie--who was
hurt because I hadn't taken her up on her invitation to come to her
cabin--and I got a sly look from Sandra, who was rejoicing in the way
she'd led me around by the nose. I ignored them both.
I got back to the cabin early and cleaned up. It was a bright, sunny
day. I hauled the typewriter out onto the porch, got the folder
containing my outline, matched up a sheet of paper and a sheet of
carbon paper and a second sheet, rolled them into the typewriter,
spaced down to the middle of the page, and boldly typed out in capital
letters, CHAPTER ONE.
Then I stopped.
I stared at the page. My outline was right there next to the
typewriter, but I couldn't begin.
I knew just how I wanted to begin. A scene in my hero's office,
showing him in action, illuminating his character right at the start
and providing a sort of overture to the story. But I couldn't decide
whether I wanted to begin with a line of dialogue or a paragraph of
description. I typed out some description, finally, and it sounded
wooden and stilted. I threw the page away, inserted a new one, and
bravely typed out CHAPTER ONE again.
And stared at the page some more.
I knew what the matter was. It had nothing to do with nervousness about
beginning the book. I knew that once I got rolling the opening chapter
would flow easily. The real trouble was that I couldn't concentrate. I
had women on my mind.
Too many women.
Harriet. Bonnie.
Joanie.
Sandra.
Harriet with the freckled breasts and the ping-pong paddle. Bonnie
with the bug eyes and the pathetic desire to be loved. Sandra with her
devil's lust, her hotbox insistence that could not be brooked. And
Joanie with the flawless body and all the amorous fervor of a Greek
marble statue.
They bothered me. The girls I wanted I could not have. The ones I
_didn't_ want gave me no rest. They made eyes at me in the mess hall,
they crept into my bed in the early hours of the morning, they pleaded
with me to visit their cabins after taps.
Al Fieldston, Stud.
Sure. You sit back there and you envy me. You say I'm crazy to be
complaining because three different women have a need for me.
Brother, let me tell you something.
It's possible to _have enough_. I mean that. You can eat filet mignon,
charcoal-broiled and dripping with juice, until your gut gives up and
the next mouthful brings everything up. You can really get to despise
filet mignon.
Especially when it's free.
And especially when you'd much rather be eating lobster.
The same here. Bonnie, Harriet, Sandra--I could have them any time,
any time at all. Well, love is fun. But there's a challenge involved.
Whether the woman is your wife or your mistress of ten years or just
somebody you picked up on the corner opposite the Merchandise Mart,
you want her to resist a little. You want to have to do some seducing
before you get their clothes off. You don't want them to run around
with everything out for grabs, and you don't want them slithering
into your bed at all hours of the day or night. That kind of stuff is
strictly for sultans. Me, I like a little resistance.
Bonnie didn't resist. Neither did Harriet. Neither did Sandra. For them
it was Sadie Hawkins day all the year round.
Well, I didn't go for that routine. I've never seen much in shooting
fish in a barrel. I wanted to have to _chase_ a girl a little bit, and
I didn't want to be chased myself.
I knew who I wanted to chase, too. Only she couldn't be reached.
Joanie.
I sat there and stared at my typewriter, trying to begin Chapter One,
and I realized what the trouble was. I was suffering at the same time
from too much sex and from frustration. I wanted Joanie. And not just
to lie on that muscular body and fill my hands with those big boobs of
hers, either.
I loved her.
I shook my head. _You're out of your mind, Fieldston. You don't know a
thing about the girl except that she's either frigid or a les. Pretty,
sure. Ravishing. But cut out this jazz about loving her._
I scowled at the typewriter for half an hour more. My net progress for
the morning was nil. I had used up sixteen sheets of paper on eight
false starts totalling maybe one hundred words. I knew when I was
licked. I got up and put the typewriter away. Meehan was lying on the
grass in front, scribbling notes for his article, and he said, "You
giving up?"
"For the time being. I can't get started."
"Take the day off, then. Start tomorrow. Let your subconscious get the
book started for you overnight."
"Yeah," I said. I walked past him and headed toward the volleyball
court. A small group of colonists were choosing up a game. They were
waving to me.
Joanie was there. She called out, "Hurry up, Al! You're the tenth man."
I counted up. She and Don Riemann were the captains, and Riemann's team
had five, Joanie's only four. I walked out onto the court and Joanie
put me up front at the net, just to her left. Someone on Riemann's team
volleyed for serve. The ball went into our backcourt, where Ted Nichols
passed it up to Joanie. She hit it over. It came back and went back
again, and when they returned it it came down straight at me. I took it
on my fingertips and popped it up in the air, still on our side of the
net where Joanie could reach it.
She went high in the air and blasted the ball over the net in a perfect
spike that won us the serve. As she came down she lost her balance and
started to tumble in my direction. Without even realizing what I was
doing I opened my arms wide and caught her. For one moment we were
together, body against naked body, her full, firm breasts warm on my
skin, her thighs touching me. Then, recovering her balance, she pulled
away.
She grinned. "Nice play, Al."
I didn't reply.
I was tingling all over. My skin seemed on fire where she had touched
me. I was trembling like a schoolboy who had just held the class
belle's hand. I could almost feel the imprint of her breasts and thighs
on my skin.
_Christ, but I want her!_ I thought.
I was still thinking it when the ball came sailing over the net
straight at me. It bounced off my chest and skittered to the ground.
"Wake that guy up!" someone yelled behind me.
I looked shamefacedly at Joanie. She was smiling.
"Asleep at the switch," I muttered, embarrassed. When the next ball
came at me I leaped ten feet high to smash it over the net. Like a
schoolboy showing off for his girl, I thought. A thirty-four-year-old
schoolboy.
_CHAPTER TEN_
We played volleyball for better than an hour, working up a good sweat
and a good appetite. Then everybody lost interest in the game all at
once, and someone yelled, "How about a swim?" and the next moment we
were all racing down the hill toward the lake.
We splashed around in the water till the lunch-gong rang. The lunch
menu was meatballs and spaghetti, and I put away three heaping portions
and was considering asking for another. I felt invigorated.
I felt so invigorated that after lunch I set up the typewriter again,
rolled in the sheet of paper that was blank except for the words
CHAPTER ONE, and started to type so fast that I didn't have time to
think about whether or not I was in the mood for writing.
The pages practically wrote themselves. I just sat there feeding in
paper at appropriate intervals and watching words appear. By the time I
paused for breath, it was three in the afternoon and I had done twelve
pages, lightning-fast. Chapter One was finished.
I rolled the last sheet out of the machine and leaned back to read
it, while my heart returned to its regular pace and some of my sweat
evaporated. It wasn't bad at all. It was on the rough side, and the
spelling was lousy, but the raw material for Chapter One was all there.
All it needed was careful polishing.
It wasn't the same thing at all as finishing a page or two of ad copy.
I was a lot more tired, but also a lot more satisfied with what I had
done.
Deciding that I had put in a good day's work, I shut up shop and set
out for a stroll. In the back of my mind was the nebulous idea of
finding Joanie and perhaps spiriting her away for a long private talk.
I figured that maybe I could get to know her as a person--without
making any clumsy passes--and somehow that way contrive to break down
the barrier of inhibition with which she surrounded her true self.
The trouble was that Joanie was never available for long private talks.
She took her position as Dr. Richards' right-hand-man seriously. She
was always wandering around the camp, organizing volleyball games,
checking to make sure everyone's plumbing was okay, and generally
making herself useful.
I walked up front, since there was no sign of her on the athletic
courts. And I found her standing near the gate, leaning into a car that
had just arrived.
The car was a convertible sports car, a little MG or Jaguar or one of
those. The driver was a black-haired young lady wearing sunglasses and
a striped shirt. I started to fade away, figuring that she was a guest
or a newcomer and might be upset to have a naked man come wandering up.
But Joanie saw me. She waved. "Al! Al, would you come here?"
I didn't have any objections. By this time I wasn't too greatly
hampered by inhibitions. I walked over to the little car. I was a
little surprised to see the driver averting her eyes from me.
Joanie said, "Al, I want you to meet Naomi Gardner. She's never been to
a sunbathing colony before."
"Hi," I said affably.
"Hello," she said in a strangled voice, still not looking at me.
"A friend of Naomi's told her about us," Joanie went on, "and she
decided to try us. Al is new here too," she said to the girl. "Four
days ago he never would have dreamed of running around without any
clothes on."
Naomi managed a smile. She was obviously having a good many second
thoughts about having come here. But it was too late to back out now,
without seeming like a complete coward.
I figured my presence was making it harder for her to accept the idea
of nudism. I decided to fade away and let Joanie get her down to her
cabin. Once she got her own clothes off, she might find it easier to
adjust to the new environment.
So I invented some excuse about having to go into the library on an
errand for Jack, and drifted off. I saw Joanie get into the car and it
slowly moved off toward the cabin area.
The brunette was a good looker, I decided. But scared. Probably wishing
she were anywhere but here. Most likely it had been a bluff, the whole
idea of coming to a nudist camp, and she had never really expected
actually to arrive here. Only here she was. I shrugged, figuring that
the experience would do her good, and went on into the library.
To my horror, Bonnie was there.
She gave me a thousand-watt smile and inflated her lungs to perk up her
bosom a little. Then she said, "Were you looking for me, Al?"
"No."
"Why are you so cruel to me?"
"Why can't you leave me alone?" I countered.
Tears glistened in her eyes. For one awful moment I thought she was
going to pour out the story of her life in all its dolorous detail. She
nibbled her lip hesitantly and said, in the high-pitched tense voice
that was becoming so wearying for me, "Don't you want me? Don't you
desire me at all?"
"Bonnie, listen," I sighed. This was taking on all the aspects of a
farce. "I'm tired of having you moon after me. Find yourself someone
else. If you keep bothering me I'll file a complaint against you."
Not exactly spoken like a gentleman. But, then, Bonnie wasn't a lady.
What happened next was neither ladylike nor gentlemanly. Bonnie
narrowed her eyes to slits and came toward me, evidently determined to
overcome my resistance on the spot. She seized my hands, clapped them
to her breasts, and began to nuzzle against me, rubbing the lower part
of her body against mine.
I grasped her breasts good and hard.
I shoved.
She went reeling back across the room, lost her balance, and sat down
butt-first on the linoleum with a _whack_! Her face wore an expression
of utter astonishment, but only for an instant. A moment later the look
was one of hatred.
Any glares Bonnie had given me before were sheer benevolent smiles
compared with this. This was a sizzling stare of complete malevolence
that made her look a hundred and eighty years old, and sent cold chills
through me. She sat up, kneeling, her legs spread, her breasts rising
and falling in a paroxysm of excitement and frustration and hatred, and
she looked H-bombs at me. I could only take it for a moment. I turned
and rushed out, slamming the door behind me, just as the torrent of
abuse began to spill from her lips.
I was shaking. I had only seen such a look of pure hatred once before
in my life, and that had been in the Army. There was this recruit from
Mississippi, and this big colored corporal, and the recruit made a
remark about the colored boy's ancestry, and the colored boy came right
back with a crack about the Mississippi lad's mother. For a moment I
thought the white boy would go purple with rage. The look he turned on
the corporal had been almost the equal of the look Bonnie had given me.
Then the Mississippi lad came piling forward, fists swinging, and the
colored corporal beat him to a pulp. The Southerner came out of it with
two smashed ribs and a bunch of stumps where his front teeth had been,
and after that he remembered that he wasn't back home in Crackerville
now.
I didn't look back at Bonnie. I half expected her to come flying out
of the library wielding a scissor or a knife and avenge the insult to
her femininity. I ducked into the social hall, found nobody there, and
headed back toward the cabin area.
I was just going past Cabin Six when the new girl, Naomi, appeared. She
looked terribly pale, and when she saw me she kept her eyes rigidly
above my waist, as though the sight of a naked male would strike her
blind or something.
She was wearing a bikini.
I was so startled I almost gasped. She was about twenty-two or so,
nicely tanned, very nicely built. She had long legs and full breasts
and wide shoulders, and she had this little wisp of orange and black
cloth around her hips and another one over her breasts. I stood there
gaping.
"Hi," she said, eyes above the beltline.
"Hi," I returned. "All moved in?"
"Yes," she said, coming down off the porch. She moved with a kind of
fluid catlike grace. And the bikini heightened her considerable erotic
appeal. I understood now why such skimpy swimsuits were _verboten_
around here. She was practically an invitation to rape, dressed that
way.
I said, "You know, you aren't supposed to wear bikinis on camp grounds."
"Really?" she said, looking perturbed. "But I thought--it was just the
first day, till I got used to everybody being naked--"
"It isn't _us_ you have to get used to," I said. "It's you. Why don't
you go inside and take that off, and then we'll go down for a swim?"
She acted as though she had just been invited to have sexual
intercourse before 100,000 people in Soldiers Field. "Oh, no," she said
hurriedly. "I couldn't."
"You'll have to, sooner or later, you know. They won't allow you to
stay here if you don't peel."
"Just give me a few hours," she pleaded, nibbling her lips.
Well, I wasn't going to argue with her. I didn't run the place, after
all. But it was damned disturbing to watch her in the seductive bikini,
and I didn't like the idea of a pretty kid like this being so snarled
up with inhibitions. She still hadn't lowered her eyes within range of
my nudity. I pitied her. I figured she was going through hell as all of
her ingrained training fought with the rules of the new society she had
wandered into.
She started toward the lake, and I followed her at a few paces.
There was no one else around, at the moment, but I wished someone in
authority would show up. The play of her buttocks against the fabric of
her loincloth was unnerving me. The quicker she got that bikini off,
the less of an erotic excitement she would be, paradoxical as that may
sound. Right now I was eager to see what she had under the bikini,
and that was exciting me. But once I saw, I wouldn't _keep on_ being
excited by it. That's the reasoning of nudism, and it works.
My wish was granted. Elinor Richards appeared on the porch of her cabin
and called out, "Young lady! _Young lady!_"
"She's calling you, Naomi," I said.
Naomi turned and looked toward Elinor's cabin. As she turned she
inadvertently got a look at me and I saw her go crimson beneath her
tan. _Nine out of ten says this kid's a virgin_, I thought.
Elinor came trotting down from her cabin. As she drew near she said,
"I'm sorry, young lady. It's absolutely impossible for you to walk
around our grounds in that sort of costume."
"But--just for the first couple of hours--"
"Didn't my husband explain the rules when you signed up?" Elinor asked.
"Garments that might be erotically provoking are forbidden."
Naomi was beet-red now. "I--I know. But I--I just can't take everything
off!" she wailed.
"Would you like to leave?" Elinor asked kindly.
"N-no. That is, I don't want to. But--"
"Hold it, then," Elinor said. "I've got something for you to wear. I'll
be right back."
Elinor returned to her cabin and joined us again a few moments later.
She had a white terrycloth robe over her arm.
"Here," she said. "We call these 'transition robes'. Anyone who
wears one is automatically marked as a first-timer, and gets special
consideration until her inhibitions wear off. Go take that bikini
off and put this on--with nothing underneath it. You can wear the
transition robe until you feel comfortable without it."
Smiling gratefully, Naomi took the robe and headed back to her cabin.
I sat down in the grass to wait for her. A moment or two later, she
reappeared on her porch, wearing the transition robe.
She looked a little uncertain about it. It came down no more than two
or three inches along the thigh, and when she walked it rode up a
little bit, revealing a couple of inches of sweet buttocks and some
tufts of dark fleece. She knew that she was all but naked, even though
the vital areas were theoretically covered.
"You look fine," I said. "Let's go down to the lake and see how fast
you can shake off those embarrassing inhibitions of yours."
She smiled again, trying to look cheerful about the whole thing, but
her eyes were still avoiding my body. I showed her the path to the
lake. Nearly everybody was down there, because it was a hot afternoon.
Ted and Cindy Nichols were playing tennis, Ernie Bryan was taking
pot-shots at the basket, and just about all the rest were either in the
water or lolling on the dock. I heard Naomi gasp a little as the full
impact of sixty naked people of both sexes hit her at once. Averting
her eyes wouldn't work any more. Wherever she looked, there were naked
men going unconcernedly about the business of relaxing.
I said, "It's a shock at first. Like diving into cold water on a hot
day. But you get used to it right away. Just take the robe off and
you'll see."
"Not just yet," she said.
I led her out on the dock and introduced her to the people sprawled
out in the sun. She smiled at them, but she was evidently miserable.
For one thing, anyone lying on the dock could look right up under her
"transition robe" and see what she was so panicky to conceal. For
another, they were all naked themselves.
She took a seat on the dock, primly pulling the hem of the "transition
robe" down as far as it would go. By sitting with her legs straight out
in front of her, she managed to preserve her idea of decency. I decided
at this point that she would have to take the next step without help,
so I let her be and dived in.
I swam around for five or ten minutes. When I looked up at the dock,
she was still sitting there, covered up, talking to Bess Olin.
Abruptly Naomi stood up, making an attempt to keep herself decent as
she rose.
Suddenly she saw me in the water. She smiled and in one quick gesture
stripped off the terrycloth robe. Nobody said a thing. She stood on the
dock, looking odd with the two bands of untanned white flesh across
her breasts and hips. She had nice breasts, nothing sensational but
well constructed. She stood on the dock while everyone around her tried
to look unconcerned, and after a moment she made a neat dive into the
water.
She came up near me.
"Congratulations," I said. "It didn't hurt at all."
"I thought I'd die the minute I took the robe off. But it didn't
matter," she said in wonderment. "No one seemed to _care_."
"No one did care. There's nothing startling about a naked girl here."
I swam around for a while. She left the water before me, and I was
pleased to see her lying on the dock in the sun, using the "transition
robe" as a blanket to rest on. So she had made the transition after
all. From my vantage point as a veteran nudist of half a week's
standing, I was glad for her, because I knew what sort of struggle she
must have been going through.
It was getting late now, close to five o'clock. I had had a busy day,
and I was tired. I went back to the cabin, planning to stretch out and
read for a while until mess call. But fifteen minutes later there was
a knock on my door. I prayed that it wouldn't be Sandra or Bonnie or
Harriet.
"Come in," I said.
It was Joanie.
She didn't come in. She stood in the doorway and said, "Al, are you
busy now?"
"Not at all."
"Would you come over to the Richards' cabin, then? Something
important's come up."
"Sure," I said. I swung myself up off the bed and followed her out.
As we crossed the lawn, I saw Naomi coming up from the lake, the
transition robe jauntily swung over her arm. She waved to me and I
waved back. She seemed completely at ease now. I was glad she had made
the grade. I told Joanie, as we walked, of my part in helping her over
the hump. Joanie nodded, but she did not seem to be her usual cheerful
self.
She led me into the Richards' cabin. Dr. Richards and his wife were
waiting for me. They looked grim. There was no sign of Sandra, for
which I was grateful. But I was apprehensive. Had they found out about
my pre-dawn tryst with their daughter? Were they going to give me the
heave-ho on account of that teenage trollop? I started thinking of some
way to defend myself. But I knew I would have a hard time proving to
them that their young daughter had seduced _me_, and not the other way
around.
Dr. Richards said, "Al, there's been a very serious charge made against
you."
_Oh, oh_, I thought. _Sunland, goodbye!_ "What kind of charge?" I
asked, trying to sound relaxed.
Dr. Richards looked coldly at me. "The charge was made by Bonnie
Carter. She claims you raped her this afternoon in the library."
It was such a ridiculous charge--and I was so glad that it concerned
Bonnie and not Sandra--that I began to laugh. I chortled uncontrollably
for a few seconds, while the Richardses and Joanie watched me sternly.
"It isn't a joking matter," Dr. Richards said.
"No," I agreed. "But the idea of my raping Bonnie--" I laughed again.
"Look," I said. "I encountered Bonnie in the library. Right after
I met you with Naomi," I remarked to Joanie. "Bonnie and I had a
conversation, the gist of which was that she wanted me to go to bed
with her and I refused. Then she began making physical overtures to
me. I repulsed her. In fact, I shoved her away from me so hard she sat
down. Then I walked out. There's your rape, you see?"
The Richardses looked puzzled. Joanie said, "Bonnie _has_ been
bothering him. I've seen her running after him since the day he got
here."
"Bonnie and I had a little--ah--romantic episode my first day," I said,
turning red. "Since then she's had the idea she owns me. I've tried to
discourage her."
"She filed a complaint against him before," Joanie said. "The day
before you came. It was pure jealous bitchiness, and I took no action.
She's obviously out to get Al."
"I won't make love with her," I explained. "So she makes false charges
against me."
Dr. Richards was scowling. "Elinor, get on the phone and ask Paul to
come up here. And Bonnie too." Paul was the colony medic, Dr. Paul
Kristin. "I want him to examine her," Richards went on. "He can tell us
whether she's been raped or not. That woman's been a troublemaker for
years. If she's lying, she's going to leave. But if she was telling the
truth, Al--you know what that will mean."
_CHAPTER ELEVEN_
For the next ten minutes I sat around and fidgeted while Bonnie and
Dr. Kristin were rounded up. They showed up, finally, and after some
discussion Dr. Kristin took Bonnie into Sandra's room to examine her.
Bonnie made a big fuss, of course. She didn't want to be examined, all
she wanted was justice--meaning my immediate expulsion from the colony.
But she was hushed up and bundled off into the next room.
After perhaps fifteen minutes Dr. Kristin came out. He was a thin,
muscular man, a doctor by profession and a nudist by hobby, who had
been the staff doctor at Sunland for years.
He was frowning.
He said, "The woman hasn't had sexual intercourse in at least
twenty-four hours. I'd be prepared to swear to that."
"See!" I crowed. "Told you, didn't I? She was making the whole story up
out of spite."
Dr. Richards ran a hand reflectively through his hair. "Can you be sure
about this, Paul?"
"Positive."
"All right," Dr. Richards said. "Al, you can go. I think I'd better
have a private talk with Bonnie right here and now."
Joanie said warningly, "You've let that woman disrupt the camp for
years and years, remember, Henry--"
Dr. Richards shrugged. "Perhaps I've been too tolerant all these years.
But she _is_ an unhappy human being, after all. I'd best talk with her."
I left the cabin gratefully. As I went out, Sandra came in, wet from a
late-afternoon dip, and she looked at me queerly as though wondering
what I might be doing in the cabin of her parents. I went past her
without a word and back to my cabin to wait for the ringing of the
dinner gong.
Meehan had returned from swimming, now. He was sitting on the porch in
front of my typewriter--he hadn't brought his own---pecking away with
two fingers.
"Working?" I said.
"Transcribing my notes. If I wait too long to transcribe them, I can't
read what they say. Lousy handwriting, that's the trouble."
I peered over his shoulder and saw a page full of disjointed phrases,
random jottings, and pure gibberish. He seemed to understand it,
though. And--what the hell--somehow he managed to distill $50,000 a
year worth of material out of gibberish and jottings.
He looked up. "That new one is nice."
"Naomi?"
"The one who came down to the water in the terrycloth robe. I could go
for that one," Jack said.
"She's inhibited," I told him. "It took her half the afternoon to make
up her mind about getting her clothes off. You should have seen her
before, when she tried to go swimming in a bikini."
"What happened?"
"Elinor Richards nabbed her and gave her that robe. She would have
started a riot here in that bikini."
Meehan leaned back, smiling lazily. "I could go for that one," he said
again. And the way he said it told me that he was plenty interested.
Remember what I said about men wanting a challenge? I guess Jack wanted
to tackle the challenge of this maidenly but sexy-looking brunette. I
couldn't say I blamed him.
We went inside. I told him about the Bonnie incident, and about the
pow-wow up at the Richards cabin. Then the gong sounded, and we started
up front toward the mess hall.
Bonnie was not at dinner. Neither were the Richardses or Joanie, at
first. They came in about fifteen minutes late, looking solemn, and sat
down without saying anything to me. At the end of the meal, as I was
walking out, Dr. Richards gestured to me and waved me into a vacant
seat next to him.
He said, "The Carter woman admitted lying about the rape incident."
"Glad to hear it."
"For half an hour that woman spewed up her filthy soul," Dr. Richards
said, shivering. "Finally I had to ask her to leave the colony.
I should never have admitted her in the first place. She needs
psychiatric help."
"She's going?"
"She's gone. She packed in a hurry and we saw her off five minutes
before we came to dinner." He frowned. "She promised not to make any
trouble for us. I hope she keeps her word."
"What kind of trouble?" I asked.
"Her kind of personality reacts to what she considers an insult with
hatred."
"I know."
"Hatred and lies. She might get in touch with some newspaper and tell
them that there are wild and drunken sex orgies going on out here."
Richards scowled. "Most of the people of this state believe that's what
goes on here anyway. And if someone who's actually _been_ here says so,
there could be all kinds of trouble. A police raid, photographers, bad
publicity, everything. We've had to struggle for acceptance all these
years, and if Bonnie decides to stir up a hornet's nest she could come
close to ruining us."
As I walked away, I wondered what effect a police raid might have on
my job. "_Also arrested and charged with indecent exposure and lewd
behavior was Alfred Fieldston, 34, a copywriter for the advertising
firm of_...." That sort of stuff. If it ever got into the Chicago
papers, I might very easily find myself right out on my nudist butt,
lenient easy-going management and all. The top brass had a relaxed
attitude, all right, but they were still advertising executives,
which means they were highly conservative people. Anything that
might conceivably offend a client--such as eccentricity among the
underlings--was to be shunned. A copywriter who grew a beard was
likely to get a polite note from J. D. telling him to get rid of it
"for the sake of the team." A copywriter who got his name--and the
agency's--into the papers on whatever charges they might hang on a
nudist was sure to get the axe.
$14,000 a year, goodbye.
Expense account, goodbye.
All on account of a bugeyed bit of neurotic tail who was miffed at my
refusal to sleep with her? No. There wouldn't be any justice in the
universe if Bonnie's jealousy cost me my job.
I spent a pretty uncomfortable evening worrying about the possibilities
thereof.
There was no formal program scheduled for that night. The weather
turned cool again, and by half past eight it was downright chilly,
and everyone was not only fully dressed but bundled up in jackets as
well. I wandered around, seeing what was going on. In the music room,
half a dozen people were gathered around Ted Nichols, who had a banjo
and was singing folk-songs. Off in the corner, some of the older folks
were having a quiet game of bridge. A few people were in the library,
catching up on magazines and newspapers from the remote outside world.
A couple of brave souls were even watching television. It was a
typical quiet night at any country resort. Dancing in the social hall,
basket-weaving for the artsy and craftsy, table tennis in the rec room.
I drifted around from one group to another. I was too restless--after
the scene with Bonnie--to feel much like settling down in any one place.
Joanie was in the crafts room, finishing up a professional-looking pair
of leather sandals. She smiled warmly at me, but obviously was much
more interested in finishing the sandals than in talking to me. I left
after a little while.
Meehan had already dropped his fruitless pursuit of Mary Kinowski and
had taken up the chase of Naomi Gardner. I spotted them in the social
hall, Meehan looking his usual rumpled self in clothing, Naomi looking
chic and gay and _very_ happy to have her body covered again for the
time being. They waved to me as they came dancing by the door.
Both Sandra and Harriet were occupied with fellows. Sandra had snared a
newcomer named Davis, an architect in his middle twenties whose face,
all planes and angles, looked like it had come from some surrealist's
drafting board. As for Harriet, she was with the new kitchen man, a
hatchet-faced friend of Riccio's who had come up to work here when the
influx of guests made more help necessary in the kitchen.
I hoped he would make her very happy. In the way that she liked to be
kept happy.
With both Sandra and Harriet occupied and with Bonnie gone, I felt
very much at loose ends with myself. Everybody else seemed to be right
at home, busily involved in whatever he or she wanted to be doing,
and here I was floating from place to place. I wanted to be alone
with Joanie, but I didn't know how to go about getting through the
impervious layer she surrounded herself with. She was working on crafts
tonight, and that was _all_ she planned to do. Since I was a hopeless
dub at anything more complicated than tying my shoes, I didn't feel
like joining her in the crafts shop, and I didn't know how to get
her away. So I wandered back to the social hall and danced with the
wall-flowers for a while.
Meehan and Naomi slipped away around half past nine. I was dancing
with Margaret at the time, and not particularly enjoying the experience.
I realized I had been pretty dumb; I had had the inside track on Naomi
this afternoon and hadn't followed things up. I had been too busy
daydreaming about Joanie, who couldn't be had, and I had let this
girl--who probably could be, with the right persuasion--fall into
Meehan's waiting hands.
Well, I couldn't begrudge her to Jack. But I told myself glumly that I
could very well be exploring the contents of her sweater now, instead
of dancing with fat giggly Margaret.
Human beings are weirdos, aren't they? Bonnie, Sandra, and Harriet
climb all over me, and I brush them off. Then a perfectly luscious
young dish, shy and virginal and ripe for seduction, appears on the
scene, and despite an initial advantage I fail to capitalize. And then,
after I see someone else ploughing the pasture, I get regretful. We're
never happy with what we have. We only want what can't be had, or what
someone else has taken.
Filled with brooding of this sort, I wended my lonely way back to the
cabin shortly before ten and got into bed. I wondered idly whether
Sandra would come slithering into the sack with me again in the small
hours. I hoped not. I was tremendously depressed, for no really good
single reason, and I just wanted to be left alone by Sandra and any
other eager tail in the vicinity.
Sandra didn't bother me. I slept the night through without interruption.
When I woke, a little before seven, it was raining. The thump-thump on
the cabin roof woke me up. I went to the window and looked out into a
gray morning. Rain was falling in enormous drops. The volleyball court
was a muddy shambles, and little pools of water were collecting on the
lawn.
I turned around and got back into bed. But after listening to the
pounding of the rain for half an hour, I heard the breakfast gong
ringing right on time. I went to the window again. Dr. Richards was
standing on his porch with a megaphone, and he was yelling to us to
stay where we were, that everyone would be picked up and taken to the
mess hall by car.
I woke Meehan up and we got dressed--warmly, because it was miserably
nasty outside. Dr. Richards was going around with a big gray
station-wagon that belonged to the camp, picking people up. We made it
on the second trip. Breakfast was a welcome thing that morning--good
hot oatmeal and plenty of scalding coffee.
It rained all day. For the people of Sunland, it was by way of being a
major tragedy; it meant a day of fidgety boredom indoors, growing paler
by the minute. Don Riemann conducted his morning calisthenics class in
the social hall, and it was announced that various sessions of singing
and dancing would be held during the day.
I wasn't interested. I rode back to the cabin after breakfast and set
up the typewriter.
I thought it would be easier to work in complete privacy than out in
the open on my porch. But I was wrong. The cabin was cold and drafty
and not very well lit, and the melancholy drumming of the rain on the
roof added to the general greyness of the day. I read through the
chapter I had written in such a white heat the previous afternoon, and
then tried to get started on Chapter Two. But getting started was hard.
I typed out an opening sentence and stared at it for fifteen minutes
before I could figure out what I wanted to say next. After half an hour
I had managed to string one entire paragraph together, no more.
The rain and the chill depressed me. I began to think that the chapter
I had written yesterday was no good. I came close to tearing it up.
Then, for a while, I decided that the whole book was no good--a
hopeless waste of time on which I was expending a hell of a lot of
unpaid weeks, at a net cost of better than $250 a week in salary I
wasn't earning. That's a stiff price to pay for a hobby horse.
It took me fifteen minutes of staring out into the rain to get me off
that kick.
I got back to work, and things went a little easier. I typed for
an hour, slowly and haltingly but without any real interruption of
thought, and when I stopped to rest I found I had written three and a
half pages. I settled down into my chair and began to type some more,
adding one word after another. By noon I had done half of the second
chapter.
The station-wagon picked us up again for lunch. The spirits of the
colonists were as damp as the lawn. One day without sunlight had left
them all pretty unhappy and irritable.
At the table some of the old-timers were reminiscing about the weather
in past years. Joanie cited one year when there hadn't been any rain
at all, except a sprinkle or two, during all of July and August. That
had been hell for the surrounding farmers, and it had left the Sunland
lawns looking brown and crisped, but the colonists had never had so
much sunshine before.
Dr. Richards countered with a recollection of one of the years in
the late '40s when there had been a solid week of rain. "It started
Sunday night, and it didn't let up again until the following Saturday.
Sometimes it was only a drizzle, sometimes it came down in buckets, but
it wasn't dry that whole week. We thought we'd get floated away."
Something like that would be pretty grim, I thought. These cabins
weren't built for lengthy occupancy. They were designed as places to
sleep and hang your toothbrush; the rest of the time you were supposed
to be outdoors soaking up Vitamin D.
Meehan disappeared right after lunch. Whether it was to while away the
hours with Naomi or just to do some research in the colony library, I
never found out. But I went back to the cabin alone and plunked myself
before the typewriter.
It was a long while before I could get warmed up and started again.
Writing a novel, I kept telling myself, was tough work. I wondered
about the people who wrote books for a living. Every day of their lives
they had to go through what I was going through right now: the awful
moment when you apply the seat of the pants to the chair before the
typewriter, roll a sheet of paper in, and command yourself to _produce_.
It was so easy just to get up and walk away and _not_ produce. I
began to be grateful I was swaddled in the protective warmth of an
advertising agency, call it prostitution or no. I didn't see how I
could take the pressure of writing novels for a living, knowing that I
had to produce or there'd be no cigarettes or drinks or steaks or shoes
for the baby. And facing the possibility of earning absolutely nothing
for your efforts. I figured I'd be happy enough to get this one book
written--and, maybe, published--and then I'd get back to the Wacker
Drive womb, pick up those nice fat checks every Thursday, and to hell
with creativity. Let Faulkner and Cozzens and O'Hara write the novels;
I'd be content to read them instead of writing my own.
But I plugged away anyway.
One word after the next after the next, telling my story, letting my
hero speak out. The important thing to remember was that I had to get
the book _written_. I had to tell the story from beginning to end, from
page 1 to page 250 or wherever. There was time afterward to go pack
and polish things up, and time after that to worry about getting it
published. But the rough draft had to be there before any of the later
steps could come about.
I didn't look at my watch, and I didn't get up out of my chair, and I
didn't stop typing. And almost before I knew it I was rolling along
toward the end of Chapter Two. Twenty-five pages of manuscript sat on
the table, thirteen of them written today, and I knew now that the
hardest part of the job was over. I was under way, and momentum would
carry me on.
In fact, I was making damned good time. I had budgeted myself to do
three chapters a week, and here were two chapters done in two days. But
I knew I couldn't keep up that kind of pace. Later on, the story got
a lot more complicated. I would have to work things out in advance,
then write the passages a few times until they made some sense. Still
and all, I had five days left to get Chapter Three done. Which meant I
could loaf if I felt like it--or, if the rain continued, I could get
ahead of schedule and do my loafing later on.
I looked at my watch. Half past four. I had worked the whole afternoon.
My clothes were soaked with perspiration, my legs felt cramped, my
backside sore. I got up and walked to the window.
What I saw out there was a scene out of pagan mythology. A dozen naked
figures dancing in the rain, their heads thrown back in joy, their
tanned bodies bare to the winds and the rain.
Joanie was there, and Ted Nichols, and Don Riemann, and most of the
volleyball set. Their hands were joined and they were going round and
round on the grass in one of those Palestinian folk-dances where you
run six steps to the left, kick your heels, run back to the right,
kick your heels again, leap in the air, shout, run into the center of
the ring, hands in the air, shout, run out, run to the left again. I
watched them for a moment. They were having the time of their lives,
and the rain wasn't bothering them a bit.
I had to admire them. They were making the most of lousy weather and
having a high old time of it. A month before, I would have said they
were all lunatics for dancing in the rain. Now I was eager to join them
myself.
I got out of my clothes in a hurry, shivering a little in the draft. I
toweled some of the sweat off, so I'd be less likely to catch pneumonia.
I ran out into the rain.
It was cold outside--maybe sixty degrees at best--and the rain was
coming down in buckets. It hit me like an avalanche of live coals,
and for a moment I almost went back inside. But only for a moment. I
trotted across the grass, my feet slipping and sloshing in the soggy
lawn at every step, and ran up to the dancers.
The circle opened for me as I came up. Joanie took one of my hands,
Ernie Bryan the other, and I got into the swing of the dance. One, two,
three, four, five, six, _kick_! To the right, one, two, three, four,
five, six, _kick_! Jump in the air, now. Shout for sheer joy as the
cool rain cleanses your naked body.
Breasts bob and jounce. Bodies glisten in the rain. Everybody into
the center of the ring, now, naked bodies practically touching, Reena
Bryan's breasts inches from my chest. Throw your hands in the air and
shout again. Join hands again, now, run back to the original position.
To the left, one, two, three, four, five, six, _kick_! To the right--
A primitive kind of joy welled up in my throat, and I yelled
spontaneously for pure happiness. I was naked in the rain, feeling warm
and completely at ease in my skin, and the pure water was washing away
all my troubles. Two chapters were written, Joanie of the beautiful
breasts was holding my hand, and life was good.
It was a moment of complete bliss, the sort of moment Faust sold his
soul for. Above us the skies were menacing, below us the lawn was
mushy and slippery. But for the dozen of us, none of that mattered. We
were all one, one joyous group, dancing in the rain. One, two, three,
four, five, six, _kick_!
Jump in the air.
Shout.
Everybody into the center.
We roared with delight. Finally somebody broke the circle, rolling back
on the wet grass, kicking his feet in the air and laughing in pleasure.
The dance ended. And in one sudden spontaneous motion everybody was
hugging everybody else.
I found Joanie in my arms, her breasts hard against my chest, her loins
tight against mine. For one wild moment we hugged, and then, carried
away, I sought her lips and kissed her, and her lips opened to mine and
my tongue slipped into her mouth.
She shivered. I didn't know if it was a shiver of delight or disgust.
I released her and we backed away from each other, both of us a little
surprised by what had happened. She looked confused and fuddled.
But she was smiling.
_CHAPTER TWELVE_
The group broke up, each of us heading back to his cabin to dry off.
With the end of the dance, the impulse of spontaneity died away, and we
were all just a bunch of cold, naked people, soaked by the rain.
I was tingling all over from Joanie's kiss. Tingling like a goddam
teenager. The kiss had been part of the moment, the wild, spontaneous
moment. We had both been carried away.
I wondered about Joanie. She had kissed me willingly enough,
enthusiastically enough. Yet immediately afterward, despite her smile,
she had worn a look of shock, a _what-have-I-done?_ kind of look. And
she had escaped quickly from the group, without a word to me. As though
she had to get away by herself and think over the causes of the strange
impulse that had led her to kiss me and let me kiss her.
I was pretty sure that Meehan had been wrong about Joanie's being a
lesbian. But he had definitely been right when he said she was mixed
up sexually. Frigid or just neurotically virginal, perhaps. Despite
the abundant riches of her body, she had no more sexuality than a
ten-year-old. Yet for one moment in the rain she had throbbed with the
sort of inner warmth that befitted her superb feminine endowments.
Just for one moment.
Tingling and edgy, I made my way back to the cabin and dried myself
off. Dancing in the rain had been grand, but now I felt cold, chilled
through and through. I dried myself thoroughly and dressed in fresh
clothing and settled down with a book.
I couldn't read. I couldn't concentrate. That damned kiss had shaken me
all up.
Tremendous sexual desire overwhelmed me as I lay there. Fierce pains
sleeted through my loins, and left in their wake a dull, pounding ache.
If Harriet or Sandra had walked in the door at that moment they would
have been raped. Even Bonnie, if she still were around, would have been
welcome. I needed a woman--any woman--to calm me, to take the edge off
this throbbing excitement. But no woman appeared. First a feast, then
a famine. I wouldn't find it as easy as it had been to find a sleeping
partner now. Bonnie gone, Harriet involved with Riccio's friend, Sandra
working her wiles on that hapless architect ... the remaining single
women in the camp were mostly dogs or else, like Mary Kinowski, they
couldn't/wouldn't be made. And the one pretty girl available, Naomi,
wasn't available, thanks to my pal Meehan.
So I just had to do without. Well, it was a refreshing change from
the hectic humping of the earlier days. And in an odd way I felt that
remaining celibate would help my chances with Joanie.
The rain continued on into the evening. Everyone gathered in the social
hall for films--a couple of animated cartoons for the kiddies, and
then some more of Dr. Richards' eight-millimeter films of past seasons
at Sunland. Afterwards, the benches were cleared back and there was
square-dancing. I danced a couple of sets with Joanie, but her behavior
was distant and formally polite, as though she still were reacting to
our kiss in the rain that afternoon. At ten, when the program broke up,
I walked her back to her cabin. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, now,
and there was some hope that tomorrow might be a decent day.
I stood hesitantly on the cabin porch, and a wild fantasy passed
through my mind--that Joanie would invite me in, that we would peel
away the wet clothing that at the moment hid our bodies from each
other. My hands would slide around the taut fullness of her breasts, my
lips would once again seek hers, her body would come to life, her legs
parting to receive me, and we would merge in white-hot ecstacy.
Just a wild fantasy. But a nice one.
What really happened was more expectable. She smiled at me, opened the
cabin door, said a cheery "Goodnight, Al," and walked in.
The door closed.
I wandered away, still living my little dream-fantasy. The drizzle
continued. Twenty feet from Joanie's cabin I turned and looked back.
The light was on inside, and she hadn't bothered to close the shutters.
She was half undressed, walking around bare to the waist. For some
weird reason this peeping-tom moment excited me. I had seen Joanie
in the altogether from a distance of six inches, but here she was
undressing with the blind open, and there I was standing in the rain
staring at her bare breasts with my tongue hanging out....
Human beings are silly people.
I leaned against a tree and watched her unzip her fly-front blue jeans
and step out of them. She wasn't wearing anything underneath. I could
see her naked body down as far as mid-thigh.
I laughed at myself for what I was doing, and walked quickly
back to the cabin. Meehan was there already, and he had a
cat-with-canary-inside look on his face.
"Where were you tonight?" I asked. "I didn't see you at the movies."
"Did I miss anything?"
"Some Mickey Mouse and a film of 1954 fun at Sunland," I said. "Square
dancing afterward, and Elinor served punch. Unspiked punch."
"I had a better time," Meehan said.
"With Naomi?"
"With Naomi," he agreed. "That girl has inhibitions, you know?"
"Sure I know."
"But she can be coaxed. And when she decides to stop acting
inhibited--like, _wow_, man!"
I felt a pang of jealousy. For no good reason at all, since Meehan
wasn't getting anything I couldn't have had if I'd kept my wits about
me. "You scored, huh?"
He shrugged. "After much travail and suasion, yes. It was indeed a
struggle. But a worthwhile one. Like a rabbit, Al. Or a mink. That's
how she goes. Like a friggin' rabbit."
"Were you the first?"
"Not quite," Meehan said, looking up at the ceiling dreamily. "She
gave me the life history after we got tired of doing it. I'm the
third, she says. You can probably add one or two to the list. She was
seduced when she was nineteen, and then again last year when she was
twenty-one. Scared stiff of sex. Never had satisfaction in her life
till tonight." Meehan sighed. "Ah, love! Life can be so beautiful!
Yesterday she was a frightened little unvirgin who couldn't bare her
fanny for anything, and tonight she's a confirmed nudist, and better
still a satisfied _woman_. It's heartwarming, man."
"I'm sure it is," I said a little sourly.
"How's your novel coming?"
"I finished Chapter Two today."
"Don't rush it, Hemingway. You've got all summer."
"Yeah," I said, and moved along into my own room, feeling angry at the
world and realizing I didn't have very much to be angry about that
wasn't my own damn fault in the first place.
The drumming of the rain, and the general tenseness of my nerves, kept
me up for a while. But I dropped off into sleep finally, and when I
woke the sun was streaming in the window and it was a gorgeous day.
The grounds were a mess from the rain. But even at half past seven the
sun was high and hot, and it was easy to see that by noon the day would
really be a scorcher. I thought about the boys back on Wacker Drive.
The office was air-conditioned, of course, but they had to step out of
the office to eat and get home. It was probably 99 down in Chicago,
with humidity to match. Here it was hot, but it was a dry, soul-warming
heat, and there was always the lake to cool off in. Plus the advantage
of having no clothes to wear.
It was such a good day that I decided to let the typewriter have the
day off. Chapter Three could wait. After twenty-four dank and drizzly
hours, I wanted to get out into that sun.
The trouble was that not too many facilities were available. The tennis
courts would need another day to dry before they could be rolled;
same with the volleyball court, though you could get up a game on the
grass if you didn't mind risking a sprained ankle or two. The baseball
diamond was similarly soggy and needed some toasting in the sun before
anyone could use it.
The basketball court, being paved, was available. So after breakfast I
got a ball out of the games shed and went down by myself to get some
exercise while the morning was still young.
Playing basketball by yourself can be pretty dull. I ran up and down
the length of the court a few times, taking layups and usually blowing
them. When that got dull, I moved back a ways and took some set shots,
at which I was pretty good, and then started throwing in some one-hand
heaves from mid-court and beyond. After about fifteen minutes of steady
dribbling and shooting, I had worked up a healthy sweat, and my skin
was glistening. I sat down at the edge of the court to rest.
The day of rain hadn't affected my suntan at all. I was still pretty
brown. It was a novelty to me to have the foot-wide strip around my
middle just as brown as the rest of me, but I rather liked the effect.
I also liked the way camp life had toughened me up, removing that
incipient bulge around my middle and giving me some semblance of the
lean, muscular fellow I had been a decade earlier. I was lying there
admiring my tanned, hairy, sweat-shiny nakedness and deciding it was
about time to take some more shots at the basket when I caught sight of
Joanie coming through the trees toward me.
She was carrying some folded-up canvas. She waved and smiled at me, and
I got to my feet.
"Lovely morning, isn't it?" she said.
"Sure is. Where are you heading?"
"To the dock," she said. "I want to get the sailboat in shape."
The camp owned a little sailboat, hardly bigger than a rowboat.
Flat-bottomed, single-masted. Sailing it wasn't particularly difficult,
and it was a popular item at the colony.
I walked down to the dock with Joanie. The rowboats and canoes and
sailboat were all full of water. "The kitchen boys said they'd be down
to bail the boats when they were through cleaning up," Joanie said.
"But we might as well get the sailboat bailed now. Want to give me a
hand?"
"Sure," I said.
I waded out into the shallow water and got the bottom end of the boat,
while Joanie remained on the dock. She lifted the front end and hoisted
the back, and together we got the little boat up on the dock. While I
was lifting, I admired for the millionth time the play of muscles over
Joanie's body. Nothing masculine or overdeveloped, mind you. She was
utterly feminine in every respect. But the muscles and sinews rippled
the way a cat's will, and it did things to the contours of her breasts
and stomach that made me catch my breath.
Once we got the boat on the dock, it was an easy matter to tip it up on
one side and let the rainwater drain out of it. After the final gurgle,
we eased the boat back into the water. Joanie got in it and began
attaching the sail, while I sat on the edge of the dock, dangling my
feet and eyeing with pleasure the golden-brown loveliness of the girl
in the boat.
"There," she said, when the last knot was tied. "It's all ready now for
anybody who wants to use it."
"How about us?" I suggested, surprising myself by the way the notion
rippled out of my mouth. "Why don't we go take a sail, now that we've
put the boat into shape?"
Joanie looked nonplussed. "But I've got to organize the volleyball
game," she said weakly.
"The volleyball court's all wet," I said. "Besides, you're always
organizing things or bailing boats or doing something else useful. Why
can't you just relax like the rest of us? Come on--I'll steer."
It took a little coaxing. Evidently the idea of just loafing away the
morning never occurred to her. Besides, she seemed a bit leery of
being all alone with me in the boat. But her arguments grew weaker and
weaker, and finally she gave in.
She stretched out on the cushion in the front of the boat. I climbed in
at the stern, and grabbed the tiller. There was only a faint breeze,
and for an awkward moment I thought I might have to man the oars to
get the little boat away from the dock. But then the sail filled and
bellied out, and we began to glide outward.
Now, I was an Army man, and had no experience at navigation. But I
got the hang of steering the boat quickly enough, and made the most
of the light breeze. The lake was a fair-sized one, oval-shaped, with
some coves and inlets down at the east end. It was ringed on three
sides by dense woods; on the fourth was the Sunland dock. No doubt from
time to time curious yokels from the town crept through the woods to
train telescopes on the dock, but Joanie had told me earlier that it
was a risky business: the woods were thick and well vegetated, with
a particularly heavy growth of poison ivy. That and the barbed-wire
fences helped to keep peepers out most of the time.
I headed for the middle of the lake, and then, taking advantage of the
breeze, let the boat glide gently toward the coves at the east end of
the lake. Joanie lay stretched out on her back, her eyes closed. She
was smiling as the warmth of the sun bathed her.
Her breathtaking beauty brought a lump to my throat. It was like a
dream, being alone in the boat with this naked goddess. My eyes came
to rest on the clean lines of her face, on her strong throat, on the
twin peaks of flesh jutting from her chest. They travelled lower, to
the firm, unsagging belly, to the golden fleece at her loins, to the
flawless thighs and perfect calves. And both of us naked. I fought back
the wild craving to pitch forward onto her and take her by force.
"Sleeping?" I asked.
"Just relaxing," she said. "The sun's so glorious."
"It's a marvelous day." After a moment I said, "Not at all like
yesterday. But there were some good moments yesterday despite
everything."
"The dancing, you mean."
"And what happened afterward."
She frowned, for a moment, but she didn't seem displeased. I held my
breath. She said, "Yes. That was nice too, Al. But so--unexpected."
"It's the unexpected things that you treasure most," I told her. I
stopped steering and let the boat drift, and stretched out until the
soles of my feet practically touched hers as she faced me in the boat.
"You're a very mysterious girl, you know, Joanie?"
"Mysterious? Me?"
"Yes, you. It's funny, really. I know all about the freckle you have on
your left hip, but I don't know a thing about _you_."
"Such as what?"
"How old are you, for one thing. Where you live. Where you went to
school. What you do during the winter. What sort of person you are."
She laughed. "Whoa! Let me answer those before you ask any more."
"Fair enough."
She said, "I'm twenty-three. I live in Edgewater and I went to
Wisconsin and majored in education. Since last fall I've been a Phys Ed
teacher at a junior high, and if the Board of Education ever found out
I was a nudist they'd probably fire me."
"How'd you get interested in nudism?" I asked.
"Oh, it wasn't any of _my_ doing. My folks met the Richardses at some
sort of political meeting, and they got converted. I came up here first
when I was twelve, and I've been here ever since. For the last two or
three years I've been sort of an assistant director."
"And you took naturally to this kind of life?"
She shrugged prettily. "When I was twelve I was too young to have
inhibitions. The next couple of years, when I was developing and all, I
felt kind of uncomfortable here, but since then it's been all right."
"And in the city?"
"I'm the most prudish thing you can imagine," she said. "A completely
different person. I don't even wear dresses with low necklines. I don't
mind nakedness, but it annoys me when people try to use their bodies as
bait. Hiding all but a little, and teasing people."
"I know what you mean," I said. We were practically in the cove, now.
I steered us away from a shady area, back into the open. I said, "How
about a personal question, now. Have you ever been in love?"
She was silent a moment. I could tell that her desire to mask
her personal feelings was warring with the relaxed atmosphere of
conversation I had established in the boat. She said finally,
hesitantly, "There was someone--once. A long time ago. Three years."
"It didn't work out?"
"No," she said softly. "He--he turned out to be married. I'd rather not
talk about it, Al."
"All right," I said. I was grateful to know that there _had_ been
someone in her life, once. That she was not completely sexless.
"What about your parents?" I asked. "Don't they come here any more?"
Her face darkened, and she said with some difficulty, "They're--dead."
"Oh. Sorry," I murmured.
"They were killed in an auto accident. Three years ago. Right around
the same time as--as I found out about _him_. I had a pretty rough time
for a while."
"I'll bet you did," I said gently. I was beginning to fill in the
picture, now--of this radiantly beautiful girl who had somehow been
turned into an emotional cripple by the practically simultaneous deaths
of her parents and the exposure of her lover's deceit.
To get off what was becoming an unpleasant topic, I switched over and
had her asking questions about me. I told her about my job, about
my newspaper work, about the book I was writing. We talked about my
marriage briefly--the seventeen-month deal to a scatterbrained redhead
who cuckolded me at least twenty times. We talked about how much I
enjoyed staying at Sunland.
Everything was just perfect. The two of us naked in the boat on the
quiet lake in the warm sunlight. Her bronzed body with its improbable
perfection and athletic grace. The first beginnings of a real
relationship between us. It had been a wonderful hour. Even when I
said hesitantly, "After the summer--perhaps we can get together for a
date--" and held my breath, waiting for the steel gate to clank down.
She said quickly, "I--I don't do much dating, Al," but in the same
breath she said, "But it would be a nice idea to get together. Yes.
Let's."
I was on my way to success.
Then I spoiled it.
We were lying utterly becalmed in an inlet where no one could see us
from the dock. I felt myself growing taut with desire for her. As she
lay there, eyes closed, I crept forward in the boat toward her. My
motions caused her to open her eyes.
She looked up at me, and one glance at my body and at my face must
have told her what I had on my mind. I felt about three inches high.
There was a mournful look in her eyes, as though my foolish moment of
randiness had smashed something terribly fragile, terribly lovely. She
sat up abruptly, closing her legs and drawing them up underneath her
in what would have been a gesture of modesty in a girl who was wearing
anything.
I made my way back to my seat, face burning. I wished I could undo that
moment. But you can't turn time back by wishing.
There was coldness in her voice, the coldness of steel, when she spoke.
The words were like whiplashes. "We'd better head back to the dock, Al.
There's a lot of work I have to get done yet this morning."
_CHAPTER THIRTEEN_
I didn't have anything to say. Apologies would have been foolish,
excuses even worse. I had stepped out of line, that was all. I had
taken advantage of our privacy in the boat to assume that because she
was naked and I was naked and we were alone and were conversing on
reasonably intimate terms, I could then automatically go on to other
intimacies. That was my mistake.
Joanie turned and looked away from me. I sat up straight in the stern
and concentrated on bringing the boat back to the dock. During the ten
or fifteen minutes it took to sail back across he lake, neither of us
said a word. I felt like a man who had killed the golden goose, or
something. I had grabbed too soon, and probably fouled up my chances
forever.
The boat glided shoreward. When we were in knee-deep water Joanie
hopped out and tethered the boat to the dock while I lowered the sail.
We left the dock in silence. Just as we passed the oar shack, Joanie
turned to me and said, "I'm sorry, Al."
That was all. Just _I'm sorry, Al_, in a small, choked-sounding voice.
Then she was gone.
I stood with my hands on my hips watching her disappearing. Then I
walked over to the nearby basketball court. I picked up the ball that
was still lying where I had left it and fired it with all my might
against the farther backboard. It rebounded high in the air and went
rolling away toward the tennis court.
I wished I had pockets to put my hands in. I was in the sort of
mood where you want to slip your hands in your pockets and let your
shoulders sag and your arms go limp. I didn't feel like walking
straight and proud now, even though that was the posture nudism almost
automatically enforced on you. I didn't feel proud of anything right
now.
I went over to the baseball diamond and took a seat on one of the
wooden benches along the first-base line, resting my head dejectedly
on my fists. It was about eleven o'clock. The sun was high and hot,
and the ground was rapidly drying out. Perhaps by the afternoon the
baseball field and volleyball court and all would be in playable shape.
After a while I slouched up the hill to the cabin area. A few games of
catch were under way, and a few people were just lolling in the sun.
The rest were down at the waterfront. I went into my cabin. Meehan
wasn't there. I sat down on the edge of my bed, feeling as dismal and
as desolate as I had felt since the days when my marriage was breaking
up minute by crumbling minute. If I had never gone out in the boat with
Joanie at all, it wouldn't have been so bad. But to go out--and then to
make a crude and clumsy pass and ruin everything when all was going so
well--that was what I couldn't forgive myself for.
There was nearly an hour to kill before lunchtime. In my present mood I
didn't feel like going out and socializing with the carefree nudists.
And naturally working on my book was impossible just now. So I pulled
my legs up and stretched out on the bed to stare at the ceiling of the
cabin until the gong rang.
I wasn't very hungry or very talkative at lunchtime. The people I was
sitting with realized at once that I was down in the dumps, and in a
tactful way they drew a little cloak of privacy around me. In a nudist
camp, where your body can never be hidden, they give you an exaggerated
degree of privacy in other ways. Nobody was going to bother me if I
felt like sulking. Nobody would make phony gestures of cheering me up.
Leaving the mess hall early, I wandered around the front end of the
colony for a while, going finally into the music room. On a sunny day
like this, I could be guaranteed a couple of hours of solitude here.
I switched on the phonograph and dug through the stack of long-plays
until I found something that fitted my present mood--a disk of
some Chopin played by Rubinstein. I was in a mood for cornball
sentimentality, and Chopin is the best cornball stuff there is. So
I sat there listening to cagy old Rubinstein spinning out all that
self-pitying piano music in his masterful way, and after a while I
stopped feeling quite so sorry for myself.
I told myself that things would _never_ have worked out with Joanie,
that we were too far apart on too many of the really important things.
So maybe it was lucky that I had turned grabby at that inopportune
moment. My real error was in thinking that Joanie's personal maturity
was on the same level as her physical development. It wasn't. Her
unhappy experience of three years back had obviously turned her into a
badly neurotic woman.
That was just what I needed: a neurotic woman. Like a hole in the head.
After a little while longer I was almost convinced that Joanie was not
what I really wanted. _Almost_ convinced. The experience in the boat
had left me with a powerful sexual longing. Unfulfilled desire sent
painful throbs through my loins. After the almost feverish pace of my
first couple of days in the Sunland Health Colony, my sex life had
dwindled to absolutely nothing at all, while I went around chasing my
golden-haired will-o'-the-wisp, Joanie. And now I was in dire need.
I clenched my fists tensely. Every nerve seemed to be twinging
individually inside me. All of a sudden I was colossally horny. Joanie
had left me frustrated, and I had to turn elsewhere for relief.
Where?
Bonnie was gone. Sandra was underage, though no doubt willing.
That left Harriet.
I was a bit queasy about going through another session with the
trimly built little redhead masochist. I didn't even know if she'd be
interested in me. For all I knew, she was getting the hell slapped out
of her by Riccio's friend and was gloriously enamored of him.
But it was worth a try.
I had done her a favor when _she_ was keyed up and needed relief. Maybe
now she would do the same for me, I thought.
I shut off the hi-fi in the middle of a waltz and put the record away.
Quickly, I left the music room, going out the back way, crossing around
the mess hall and heading up the dirt road toward the staff quarters.
Everything looked quiet up there. Doubtless the cooks and waitresses
and all were down at the lake with everyone else, having a good time on
this sunny day.
The cabin that Lorraine and Harriet shared was at my left. I walked up
onto the porch and knocked at the outside door.
No answer.
I started to turn away. But I heard sounds coming from within.
Sounds like sobs.
I stood there a moment longer, listening. Yes, someone definitely was
inside. I knocked again, and, getting no response, turned the handle
and let myself in.
Harriet's door stood open, and her room was empty. The sobs were coming
from Lorraine's room, whose door was closed nearly all the way.
"She isn't here," Lorraine said in a dismal voice, broken with sobs.
"She and Tony are down at the waterfront."
_Cross that idea off_, I thought. But Lorraine was still sobbing. I
hesitated outside her door, wondering if I ought to butt into her
business. I was half perturbed by her sobs, and--I admit it--half
interested in the notion of taking a tumble on the bed with her, if she
were in that kind of mood.
I said through the door, "Are you okay, Lorraine?"
Sobs.
"Lorraine?"
"Who are you?"
"Al Fieldston."
"Go away." More sobs.
I decided to chance it. I pushed the door open and walked in.
The room was a mess. The dresser was overturned, the chair was broken,
the closet had been dumped. Lorraine was lying face down on the unmade
bed, her head in her hands. She was naked, of course, and every few
moments I saw the tender flesh of her buttocks quiver as a sob racked
her.
She looked up at me.
She was more of a mess than the room was. Her lower lip was split and
bloody, her eyes were red from crying and she had the beginnings of a
neat shiner on her left eye. There were scratches on her breasts, and
the marks of punches here and there on her body.
"My God," I said. "What happened here?"
She shuddered. She looked pathetic, naked, bedraggled, battered.
"Riccio," she said in a hoarse voice.
"What did he do?"
She turned eyes wild with fear on me. "He's drunk," she whispered. "He
went into town last night and bought a bottle of whiskey, and he was up
half the night drinking it. He was drunk in the kitchen this morning,
and then just before lunch he finished the rest of the bottle." She
shivered. "The cook threw him out of the kitchen and told him to pack
up and clear out. Instead he came back here and waited for me. He was
here when I came in after lunch. He--he was angry with me. He said I
made him jealous. He--he beat me up."
She began to sob again. I stood above her, lifting her face, and saw
that her eye was rapidly swelling shut. He had really given her a
pasting.
"He wanted to make love after he finished hitting me," Lorraine went on
in a rasping whisper. "Of course I wouldn't. So then he threw himself
down on top of me and forced my legs apart and--and--" She buried her
face in the pillow, unable to go any further. Any thoughts of making
love to her myself had long since vanished from my mind. Lorraine
drew her legs up, huddling in a pitiful little fetal ball, sobbing
constantly at the outrage that had been done to her.
"Where is he now?" I asked.
"I don't know," she said in a hollow, muffled voice. "When he was
through--through _raping_ me, he went away. He said I should wait for
him here, that he'd come back in a little while and--and do it again.
But that was half an hour ago. I don't know where he is. But he's
dangerous, Al. He's dangerous when he's sober, and he isn't even sober
now."
"You mustn't stay here," I said. "Come on with me. I'll take you to
the Richardses, and then we'll catch this Riccio and see that he's put
away."
"No! I'm afraid to leave! If he comes back and finds I'm gone, he'll
kill me!"
"He won't touch you," I said. But Lorraine would not budge. She clung
to her pillow, shivering and sobbing, insisting that she was afraid to
leave. I scowled indecisively and finally made up my mind to leave her
here.
"I'll send someone to stay with you," I told her. "Don't worry about
Riccio. He won't touch you again."
I darted out quickly. My heart was racing. A drunken rapist was just
what a nudist colony needed least. All of my original suspicions about
Riccio were confirmed, now. I felt almost sick with anger at the
thought of what he had done to Lorraine, and of what he might be doing
at this very moment to--to _Joanie_, I thought, and the sudden wave of
alarm that swept through me told me that I had been only fooling myself
in the music room when I had persuaded myself I did not love her.
The thing to do now was to get back on campus and alert Dr. Richards
about what had happened. Then someone could be sent up to comfort
Lorraine while a posse of men hunted down Riccio. What would happen
after that, I didn't know. Dr. Richards might not want to risk phoning
the police, and might simply expel Riccio from the colony without
dragging in unwanted publicity. Well, that was his problem. The
important thing was to get the news to him that Riccio was marauding
somewhere on the colony grounds.
I passed the mess hall and started down the road to the cabins.
I heard a scream.
My first thought was that the scream had come from the staff cabins,
that it was Lorraine screaming--perhaps at Riccio's return, perhaps at
the mere retrospective horror of what had happened. I stopped short,
about to whirl around and retrace my path back to Lorraine's cabin,
when I heard the scream again.
This time the scream was cut off before it reached its peak. And it had
not come from behind me.
It had come from the left, where a back road led from the baseball
diamond to the social hall past the auxiliary tennis courts. The road
was rarely used, and massive oaks gave it a secluded atmosphere, hiding
it from view at any considerable distance.
I started to run.
A row of little hemlocks had been planted at the entrance to the road,
screening it. I darted around the hemlocks and stopped.
There was Riccio.
He was busily trying to rape Naomi Gardner.
Naomi lay on the ground, naked. Her dark hair was flying in every
direction and her breasts rose and fell wildly as she struggled to keep
Riccio away. He was kneeling above her, naked too, looking like some
wild satyr, his maleness aroused, and he was desperately trying to
force her legs open and keep her from screaming and prevent her from
kneeing him in the groin, all at the same time.
He had one of his knees forced between her tightly-clamped thighs, and
slowly, inexorably, he was forcing her legs apart. In another moment
he would be able to thrust himself between her legs and take the girl.
Roughly, brutally, a searing experience that would remain imprinted on
her brain the rest of her life.
I'm not exactly the hero type, as I may have already made clear. But
there are certain times when even the most pacifistic of men doesn't
stop to weigh the ifs and buts. This was one of those times.
"Riccio!" I yelled, and I hardly recognized the sound of my distorted
voice. "Riccio, you drunken bastard, get off that girl!"
And I went plunging forward.
Riccio saw me and looked up, scowling, his dark, long-beaked face a
mask of utter hatred. For a moment it almost seemed as though he would
ignore me and continue forcing the girl, now that he had practically
succeeded in prying open her legs. But I kept on coming, and he rose
from her to turn to me.
I had him by fifteen or twenty pounds, but that was where my advantage
ended. He was a couple of inches taller, a whole lot longer of arm, and
ten times as mean. He was younger and tougher, too.
Naomi rose to a sitting position, her eyes blank with terror.
I screamed at her to run and get help, but she just sat there
uncomprehendingly. In a state of shock, I guess.
I practically collided with Riccio.
One long arm snaked out and crashed into my face. No teeth went, but I
felt my lips slicing against my choppers, and warm, salty blood spurted
into my mouth. At the same moment I barrelled a punch straight forward
aimed at Riccio's bony stomach. It landed and produced a satisfying
grunt from him.
The idea of physically fighting another human being had not occurred
to me in more years than I cared to think about. But I was in it now.
I was profoundly grateful that we were both naked. Riccio was the sort
who would be carrying a knife, if he had any place to keep it. But he
wasn't wearing a thing--no hat, no socks--and so I knew I had nothing
worse to face than his bare fists.
Drunken, bloodshot eyes loomed up in front of me. A hand clawed for my
face. I swiped it away and started to aim a body-punch, when his leg
began to rise. I got out of the way just barely in time. I had more to
fear than fists, evidently. Riccio was going to fight me tooth and claw.
I parried a couple of other wild kicks and punches, and tried to get
close enough to him to land one myself. But his long arms and legs
kept me at bay. Naomi still sat stupidly in the grass, watching us
in a dazed sort of way and ignoring my shouted requests for help. I
envisioned myself getting beaten to a pulp by this drunken madman
before anyone heard the sounds of battle.
But Riccio _was_ drunk. That was my salvation. It made him an
unpredictable opponent, but it also interfered with his coordination.
We traded a couple of wild blows. Then he reared back and aimed
another kick at my groin, but this time I was ready. As the foot came
up, I sidestepped and wrapped both my hands round his bony ankle and
yanked. He came skidding forward on the grass and tried to pull free,
but I held tight, and he started to topple. He went over in a spidery
tangle of arms and legs, yelling in agony as his other leg folded up
underneath him, and the next moment I was sprawling on top of him.
He still had plenty of fight left. He smashed me in the midsection
hard, two or three times. I just wanted to pin him. His leg was still
caught under him, and if I could only get those flailing arms to hold
still--
I tried to pinion his wrists. He squirmed loose and managed to roll
halfway over, freeing his leg and nearly throwing me off. His ugly
face was contorted with hatred and contempt. He arched his back,
trying to toss me, and I grabbed his throat, feeling the protruding
adam's-apple against my palm.
"Lie still or I'll choke you!"
"Go to hell."
I tried to tighten my grasp, but he caught my wrist and started to pull
my fingers off my hand, and I had to release him. He writhed again in
an attempt to throw me off. This time he nearly succeeded. He moved two
feet along the grass, but I moved with him. One of his arms was pinned
down, now, but the other moved freely, clawing at me, going for my
eyes. I heard Naomi stirring behind me; she was coming out of her daze
at last. But I didn't know how long I could hold out against Riccio. I
was running out of breath fast, and before very long I would have to
release him.
Once he got the upper hand it could be slaughter. He was just drunk
enough not to worry about gouging out my eyes, kicking my teeth down my
throat, or otherwise messing me up.
Luck was with me, though. Luck and a bit of flexible morality. What I
did wasn't exactly approved technique for gentlemanly fighting, but I
didn't see why I had to stick by the rules if my opponent didn't.
His shift in position had brought his head within a couple of inches of
a large flat rock. I wriggled him over a little more. Then I buried my
fingers in the thick, greasy coils of his hair, lifted his head about
four inches off the ground, and smacked it down hard. He let out a
yelp and struggled hard to break free. I grabbed him and banged him
down again. I think I might even have wanted to kill him, just then.
But his eyes started to glaze. I gave him a third smash and felt him go
limp all over. His head lolled to one side. I clung to him for a couple
of moments, on the wild chance that he might be shamming, but he didn't
move. He was out cold. I didn't feel like a conquerer, somehow.
_CHAPTER FOURTEEN_
I got up slowly, keeping my eyes on him, but he was stretched out like
a long strand of cold spaghetti. Naomi was gone. For help, I hoped. I
staggered over to one of the big oak trees and proceeded to lose my
lunch. I was shaking all over, my face felt battered and swollen, my
mouth was full of blood. But far worse than any of the bruises or cuts
was the psychological effect. I had never been a very good soldier,
and in the years since my discharge I had grown rather civilized. To
be thrown back fifty thousand years in a twinkling is an upsetting
experience. I had fought with a man--a drunken beast of a man--and I
had knocked him out, perhaps had fractured his skull, maybe had come
within one bang of killing him altogether. And we had been naked while
we fought. It was something straight out of Neanderthal days, and now
that it was over I was shocked and revolted by the ugliness of the
fight, by the mere fact that such a conflict was still possible in our
allegedly civilized era.
I clung to that big oak until the wave of nausea passed. After a minute
or two it was gone, and I felt mostly just the aches and pains Riccio
had inflicted on me.
I began to walk uncertainly down the road toward the cabins.
Riccio stayed where he was. Every five paces I looked back, half
expecting to find him charging toward me with a boulder held high, but
he was really out.
It was perhaps a hundred or a hundred fifty yards from the place where
we had fought to the bottom of the sloping hill on which the cabins
were. I moved slowly, each step sending a shaft of pain through my
body. I could still feel Riccio's fists landing under my heart, landing
in my mouth, in the pit of my stomach. And I could still hear the dull
thunking sound of his head hitting the rock.
I had gone about half the distance when people appeared in front of me.
At first it seemed like an entire army, but I realized dimly that there
were really only five--Joanie, Dr. Richards, Meehan, Naomi, and Ernie
Bryan. I stood still, swaying like a tree in the breeze and feeling
ready to topple.
"Riccio," I muttered thickly.
"Where is he?" Dr. Richards asked.
"Back there. On the ground. I hit his head against a rock and knocked
him out."
My legs felt weak. My knees were turning to water. The world was
spinning around me. I looked at them--at Naomi, pale and frightened, at
Joanie, eager and anxious, at the men, grim and determined. Don Riemann
and Ted Nichols came running up. Riemann said, "Where's Riccio? Where'd
he go?"
I pointed back behind myself. Then my legs gave way altogether, and I
started to fall forward as my feet slid backward.
Riemann caught me and eased me to the ground. I sat there muttering
something and feeling very stupid for the flop. I tried to get to
my feet, but it was no go. Strong hands hoisted me up. Riemann and
Joanie, they were. They started to carry me, half-dragged between them,
up the hill to my cabin, while the rest of the posse took off in the
direction of the prostrate Riccio.
I'm a little fuzzy on what happened next. I know they got me to the
cabin somehow and stowed me in bed. Then I have confused recollections
of people coming and going, and very little idea of how much time had
passed before I opened my eyes and saw Dr. Kristin looking down at me.
"Drink this," he said, and gave me a spoonful of something sweet. I got
it down--though I had to struggle to keep it down--and lay back. He
went to work with some cotton, squeegeeing the blood away from my face
and examining my cuts and tidying them up. He gave me a quick once-over
to check for broken bones. Evidently he decided there weren't any,
because after ten minutes of poking he gave up and left.
I was alone.
Or so I thought. I closed my eyes in the dark cabin, and waited for
the various places that hurt to stop throbbing. After a while most of
the pain subsided, and I opened my eyes again and was most agreeably
surprised to see Joanie sitting in my chair, staring at me with wide,
worried eyes.
"Feel better now?" she asked.
"A little." My lips felt like platters. "What time is it?"
"Half past four."
"Morning or night?" I asked.
"Afternoon," she said. "You've been asleep around twenty minutes."
"It seems like hours." I was silent, digesting that fact. It was just a
couple of hours since my fight with Riccio. And it was only six hours
since my goof in the boat with Joanie. It seemed like all that had
happened days and days ago.
But she was smiling tenderly. I wondered vaguely if the incident in the
boat had ever really happened.
I said, "What's with Riccio?"
"We called the town police, and they took him away. It was the only
thing they could do."
"He didn't make any trouble?"
Joanie laughed. "He didn't wake up until half an hour ago. He's got a
concussion."
I winced. Then I told myself not to be sorry for anything. Riccio had
been vermin, and if he had been in my place and I in his I would have
been lucky to get quit of him with nothing worse than a concussion.
"How's Naomi?" I asked.
"Doc gave her a sedative. She'll come out of it, probably. Right now
she's in bad shape--shock, all that sort of stuff."
"Riccio didn't have time to rape her," I said.
"He came close enough to give her a good case of the heebie-jeebies,"
Joanie said.
"And what about Lorraine?"
"Elinor's with her now. She's been hysterical all afternoon." Joanie
scowled. "Oh, _damn_ Riccio!"
"He won't cause any more trouble now. They'll give him twenty years."
"That doesn't undo the damage to Lorraine and Naomi!" Joanie said
passionately. Then she shook her head. "But I'm getting you all upset,
and you're supposed to be resting. Maybe I ought to leave and let you
get some sleep."
"No. Stay here."
I closed my eyes again. I didn't hurt so badly any more, but the
aftermath of the fight had left me sort of weak and wobbly, and I
didn't want to be alone. I wondered why Joanie had elected to become
my bedside guardian. Surely she didn't have any lingering feeling of
fondness for me after the crude stunt I had pulled in the sailboat that
morning. Maybe it was just her maternal instinct coming to the fore
now, I thought bitterly. Maybe she figured that I was too woozy to make
any passes now, and so it was safe to come tend me.
Be that all as it may. I lay there quietly in the dark, happy just to
know that she was in the room and watching me. Five silent minutes went
by. Then I became aware that she had crossed over from the chair and
was sitting on the edge of my bed, her lovely naked body only a few
inches from my own.
She put her hand gently over mine. I smiled at her, though it hurt my
lips.
She said quietly, "Al?"
"Mmm?"
"Will you let me say I'm sorry?"
I frowned. "Sorry about what?"
"This morning."
"_I'm_ the one who ought to apologize for this morning," I said, my
heart beginning to race again.
"No," she said. "I ruined everything. It could have been so perfect.
Only I saw you coming toward me and I went cold all over. I just
couldn't help myself. I had to get nasty."
"Joanie, look, don't blame yourself for--"
"But I _am_ to blame. Al, why am I like this? Why am I so cold? Why do
I turn on the freeze any time anyone gets interested in me?"
I didn't answer her--how could I?--and I turned my head away from her
so I wouldn't have to stare at the breathtaking profile of those two
jutting breasts. Right now I just wanted to rest--or so I thought.
But Joanie went on, "I was cruel this morning, Al."
"Please. Let's not talk about it now."
"I'm sorry. You're not in any shape for this kind of discussion," she
said gently. "But it was just that we're alone now--the way we were
alone this morning--and I thought perhaps I could make some sort of
amends."
I didn't know what she was talking about. I was in a sort of mental
fog, I guess.
But the fog lifted abruptly when she put her hand on my thigh.
Involuntarily I caught my breath. This was a Joanie I had never known
before.
The hand moved--slowly, tremblingly--across my thigh. The moment
she touched me, I stiffened with desire, and I felt confused and
bewildered, embarrassed before her, not understanding what she was
doing. But then she was lying full length next to me on the bed, and I
was on my side facing her, and suddenly I had forgotten all about the
fight with Riccio, and I was one hundred percent alive again.
My breath came in short gusts. Joanie was smiling strangely. She
took my hand and lifted it until it was on her breast. She clasped
it against her left breast, and for the first time in reality I felt
that marvelous mound of flesh in my hand, and it was warm and firm,
the nipple jutting up steeply, and there was the pounding of her heart
behind her deep bosom, and she let out a little sigh and wriggled her
body in pleasure as my fingers grazed the terribly soft flesh just
about the nipple, and tightened once again on the entire wonderful
globe of the breast.
She said softly, "I've wanted so much to tell you, Al. But the words
would never come. I kept running away instead of telling you. I liked
to see you involved with Bonnie and Sandra and Harriet, because that
gave me an excuse not to tell you."
"Tell me what?"
"That I love you, Al."
My other hand moved up her body, up that smooth sweet flank, over the
taut muscular sleekness of her satiny buttocks.
"I love you too, Joanie. Right from the start, I loved you. From the
very beginning. And all those other girls kept getting between us."
"They won't any more."
"No one will get between us."
"Al--do you still hurt?"
"Not very much."
"I've been thinking about this ever since the boat this morning. I was
going to come to your cabin tonight, to give myself to you. But then
you had that awful fight--I volunteered to stay here--and suddenly I
couldn't bear to watch you any more, I had to get into the bed and have
you touch me, and touch you, and _oh! oh, darling!_" she breathed as
my hand swept past her knee, over the satiny flesh of her thighs. Her
breath began to come faster and faster, and I had to bite down on my
tongue to keep myself from rushing things. I wanted to burst out crying
for sheer joy at having this splendid female at last in bed with me.
Even if I were too battered to take full advantage of her magnificent
body, it was still something I had dreamed about like a small boy
dreams of a vanilla ice-cream mountain.
"Be gentle," she whispered. "Be gentle, my darling, be gentle."
Her strong arms cradled me gently, and suddenly I was with her, feeling
that powerful yet womanly body throbbing beneath me. Her eyes were
open, and there were tears in them, but she was smiling, and my mind
went back over all the hundreds of times I had wished for this moment
to be taking place. It _was_ taking place now, she beneath me, her firm
breasts flattening against my chest, her body against mine, her breath
coming in irregular little bursts.
I felt her trembling with fear and love, and I vowed to myself that
this would be an experience for her that would wipe out whatever
nightmares lurked in her mind. I remained still a long while, holding
her tight and loving her motionlessly, waiting, letting her body accept
what her mind was doing.
And then I felt her quiver and her muscles contract, and I knew she
was ready and I began to move, and she moved too, frightened and
nervous at first, then joyous as the warm flood of sensation stirred
her. I could tell that this wasn't her first time, but that she was
inexperienced, perhaps had made love to the long-gone deceitful one no
more than two or three times, but now her body radiated love the way it
had once seemed to radiate light.
I felt none of the pain of my fight. Everything was warmth and love and
the merging of two human beings. I arched slowly back and forth while
Joanie gasped and whimpered.
Then she came to life.
All the superb power of her body was unleashed in a frenzy of
excitement that probably astonished her. She tightened constrictingly
around my body and she arched her back so high I was lifted high
in the air, and she began to move, wildly and inexpertly and with
complete natural grace, her body gripping me and every muscle of hers
rippling and flowing, and I felt the thunder, the booming explosions,
and felt the shudder ripple through her body too, and then the arched
back subsided and I slumped down limp above her. I felt drained and
completely exhausted. I opened my eyes and saw Joanie smiling at me.
We lay that way for a long while, her body strong and firm beneath me.
"Am I too heavy?" I whispered after a while.
"Don't be silly."
But I felt that I was crushing her, and so I rolled over to one side,
and there were her splendid breasts with the nipples still stiff.
I touched her breasts as though I were handling the jewels of the
madonna. It was with complete reverence, and nothing of lust, that I
tenderly kissed her body. What we had just completed might have looked
to an outsider like an animal-like act of savage lust, but to us it had
been different.
It had been something like a sacrament.
We lay side by side for a long while. I began to ache again from my
bruises, but in the afterglow of loving Joanie I hardly cared.
"Happy?" I asked.
"Very."
"Me too," I smiled.
"It's too bad, though--"
"What is?"
"That we wasted so much time," she said. "All these days we could have
been together."
"There'll be plenty of time ahead of us."
"I know, darling." After a moment's silence she said, "I was such a
sick girl until this afternoon. And now--now you've liberated me, Al. I
was afraid. Afraid of people, afraid of sex, afraid of being in love.
So I hid behind masks. I played volleyball and went water-skiing and
tried to pretend I wasn't a woman."
"Don't talk about yesterday, Joanie. Let's think about tomorrow."
"All right," she said. She nestled up against me again, and I put my
head on her breasts, and closed my eyes.
I dozed off for a little while. I woke when I heard the outside door of
the cabin slam. I looked around, half surprised to find myself in bed
with Joanie, and she smiled at me.
"It's Jack," she said. "He's been with Naomi."
"I better go talk to him," I said.
Joanie looked around alarmed, as though she didn't want Jack to know
she had been to bed with me, and then she smiled, thrusting down this
outcropping of her old frightened self. I swung my feet off the bed and
stood up. I was weak, but generally okay. I walked slowly toward my
bedroom door. Interestingly enough, Joanie had taken the precaution of
locking it--to prevent any interruptions of what she had made up her
mind to do.
I walked into Meehan's room. He seemed very serious, much more so than
I had ever seen him before.
"You all right?" he asked.
I nodded. "I'm okay. How's Naomi?"
Meehan shrugged. "The kid had a rough experience. Doc Kristin gave her
some sedatives. I talked to her a while before she went under. I think
she'll be able to forget what happened."
"I hope so."
Meehan's lips trembled. That wasn't in character with Jack at all.
He saw Joanie standing behind me, and he frowned a little, and then
he said, in a quavery sort of voice, "Al, I want to thank you. If
you hadn't fought off Riccio, he might have--he might have--" Meehan
paused. "I mean, Naomi means a lot to me. More than I really suspected,
until this afternoon. And--and I'm grateful for what you did."
"Skip it," I told him. "It could have been anybody."
I'd never seen Jack Meehan looking maudlin before. I realized what had
happened: the flip, cynical gay blade had actually gone and fallen in
love!
Well, he wasn't the only good bachelor to bite the dust that day.
I said, "Just to change the subject, Jack, there's something I think
you ought to know. Joanie and I--well, we're--well, we're keeping
company."
"He means we're engaged," Joanie said. She laughed good-naturedly and
added, "And really we're as good as married already."
Meehan looked dumbstruck. But he managed a smile and a shaky laugh.
"Gosh," he said. "Gosh, that's--that's wonderful, Al. That's really
tremendous."
I slipped my arm around Joanie's shoulder. She stood there, my big
glowing golden girl, more radiant than ever now that she had at last
become a woman. I told myself that there might be a couple of weeks'
delay before I had a free moment to get back to work on that novel.
I said, "You see, all I was doing was evening the score, Jack. I owed
you a favor, because if you'd never brought me here I would never have
met Joanie, and--and--well, it works out nicely, doesn't it?"
"Very nicely," Jack said. He was smiling broadly. "Christ everlasting,
but I just got a swell idea."
"What?" Joanie and I said at once.
"The perfect scene for kicking off my article," he said. "A description
of a wedding. No, a _double_ wedding. A double wedding with brides and
bride-grooms and guests and everybody in the nude."
I began to laugh. It was a swell idea, I thought. A perfectly swell
idea. We could be Best Man for each other, and we could import a nudist
minister to read the ceremony, and--we all laughed roaringly and threw
our arms around each other, and Jack gave Joanie a big kiss, and even
though both of them were stark mother-naked I didn't mind at all.
THE END
* * * * *
OTHER NIGHTSTAND BOOKS YOU'LL WANT TO READ
LOVE ADDICT
LUST CLUB
SEX GANG
GANG GIRL
CAMPUS TRAMP
CARNIVAL OF LUST
THE WILD NIGHT
SUMMERTIME AFFAIR
BORN FOR SIN
PARTY GIRL
THE ADULTERERS
ORDER FROM YOUR NEWSDEALER
* * * * *
THESE WERE THE NUDISTS!
_BONNIE--whose sickness was sex. She didn't care who she slept with,
as long as she owned him afterwards. Her fever for lust Al could never
quite quench._
_HARRIET--who could never be aroused unless her love-partner beat her.
So Al used the weapon she gave him, and struck her unmercifully. It was
the most terrifying union he'd ever known._
_SANDRA--sixteen-year-old daughter of the nudist camp's director. Hot,
lusting Sandra, jailbait Sandra who crept into Al's arms and demanded
his body, using her own like most women use a knife!_
... AND THERE WERE OTHERS!
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NAKED HOLIDAY ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg™ License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 41 Watchung Plaza #516,
Montclair NJ 07042, USA, +1 (862) 621-9288. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
