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?"