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."