Ch. 11: The Journey to Brook
Of course the first thing to do was to read up as much about Brook as Alice could. It certainly seemed a pleasant place, full of woods, streams and valleys, but the most interesting aspect of the country was its liberal attitude towards sex and nudity. Kedi escorted Alice to the railway station and soon she was on her way.
She shared the compartment of the train with several other people: most of them very much older than her. In front of her, an elderly man was reading a newspaper, but Alice was not to be outdone. Blanche had lent her a copy of a Brook newspaper, a tabloid which she said would help her get an understanding of the district. It contained many pictures of naked people, but these were mostly just photographs accompanying articles about fairly dull things such as garden fetes, mayoral banquets, goat farming or whatever.
There were however certain pictures that could only have been inserted for titillation, and these featured not just nudity but full sex. The captions were of a fairly odd nature saying things like "Geraldine's nipples are even harder now that there's something hard up her cunt", "John's certainly come to a fortune now!", "Mummy never told her about using the back entrance" and "How many pricks can you get inside you?" This coyness was in curious contrast to the explicit photographs of all sorts of sexual behaviour.
As the train traveled along, the passengers disembarked at the stations on the way, and soon Alice was in the compartment by herself. She occupied her time looking out of the window at the countryside passing by and leafing through her newspaper. All at once she started as a loud sound came from outside at a station where the train had stopped.
"That certainly surprised you!" commented a little voice. Alice looked back at the source of the sound, which was a boy about the same age as Alice. He actually looked young for his age, but Alice could see that he wasn't too young, by virtue of the fact that he was wearing no clothes. This shocked Alice a little too: a fact that must have been noticed by the boy as he crossed his legs.
"Are we in Brook already?" Alice asked - as this seemed an appropriate response to the boy's nakedness.
"No, not quite," the boy answered smiling, "but there aren't any more stops till we get there."
"And that's why ..."
"I just hate wearing clothes!" the boy replied. "But it's so necessary when you're away from home. Clothes are so uncomfortable. Don't you agree?"
"Well ..." responded Alice who didn't really have an opinion on the subject.
"When I'm away from Brook, I only wear clothes when I go out and about. The rest of the time, the most I ever wear are shoes."
"Is everyone like you in Brook?" wondered Alice.
"No, of course not," the boy responded. "Many people wear clothes."
However, Alice couldn't be at all sure of this as the train continued on its journey and all the people who passed by the compartment seemed equally unclothed. And she could tell that she was in Brook when she saw through the window that everyone outside was also naked. After a while, Alice gave in to the prevailing custom and shyly took off all her clothes and packed them neatly into her suitcase.
"I'm glad you've seen reason," commented the boy, smiling at Alice. "It's so much better without textile constraint, isn't it?"
When Alice finally got off the train at the little station of Tweedle, she at first found it strange to wander around in the company of so many naked people, and indeed the most prominent feature at first was the unaccustomed smell of their bodies. However, she handed her ticket to the Guard who took it from her and bade her a good day. Alice shyly thanked him for it, being perhaps more aware of his slightly tumescent penis than of his good intentions.
It was early evening and Alice definitely wanted to get to Blanche's house by the river before it got dark, but the route led through a wood which seemed quite threatening in the lengthening shadows. Although she was pretty sure from the instructions she had written down that she did know the way to her house, Alice felt she needed some confirmation.
She was quite pleased to see a couple of teenage boys lying naked on the grass who looked like they could help. As she came up to them, however, she couldn't help noticing that one boy was sucking the penis of the other one which the other was lazily enjoying. Although the penis wasn't particularly stiff, it was fairly clear to her that it wouldn't take a great deal more encouragement for it to become so. She looked at it with intense curiosity, and was startled by a voice coming from the one lying on his back.
"If you think we're a porno show," he said, "you ought to pay, you know."
The other boy disengaged his mouth from the penis and looked up at Alice whom he'd just noticed. "I'm sure I'm very sorry," was all Alice could say.
The two boys sat up, visibly annoyed by having been interrupted in their play.
"I was thinking," Alice said very politely, "which is the best way out of this wood: it's getting so dark. Would you tell me, please?"
The two boys giggled, and the one who had been sucking his friend's penis grasped it firmly in his hand and started pulling it through his fingers. He pulled his hand up from the base to the tip in a slow and languid way.