Skinny Dipping

It wasn’t our intention to go skinny-dipping that day. We were just going to go swimming. Me, and my three cousins, Jesse, Belinda, and their younger brother, Mark, all decided that it was too hot to do anything at all inside or out, and that was the best way we knew to cool off. Jessi had just gotten her driver’s license, and the brand new truck to go with that symbol of freedom. She and Belinda got in the front of the truck, and I was about to do the same when I realized that Mark would not fit up front with us.

“It’s ok, Keith,” he told me. “I like riding in the back better anyhow.”

“Well, if it’s that much fun back there, maybe I should hop back there, too,” I announced.

“Fine with us,” Jessi told me. “We’ve got the air conditioning up here.”

“The padded seats are in here, too,” Belinda added.

“That’s ok,” I told them. “I’ll be just fine, I’m sure.”

“Suit yourself; but get in somewhere so we can get going,” Jessi instructed. “The day ain’t getting any cooler.”

“You ain’t going to get us in trouble for you riding back here, are you Keith?” Mark asked me as we were riding along through the turn rows at the edge of the cotton and soybean fields. “If you get too sunburned, your mama will skin us all alive.”

“By the time I see my mama again, the sunburn, if I get one, will be all faded out.” He had a point of course. My being the city boy cousin that only spent summers at my grandparents’ farm had the most overprotective mother in the whole family. She was known for being the meanest in the family, too. Even her own parents were afraid to cross her.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Mark agreed. “Summer’s just started. It’ll be all right.”

“Hey, we’re almost there,” I called out a couple of minutes later. “I can’t wait to get wet all over.”

“Do you really mean that?” Mark questioned.

“What do you mean do I mean it?” I countered. “Why else would I be going swimming if I didn’t plan to get wet?”

“Well, the way you said that, I thought you meant…. Well, never mind,” he told me.

“No you don’t,” I snapped playfully. “You were going to say something. Come on, what did you think I was talking about?”

“Well, I thought you meant you wanted to go skinny-dipping,” he answered rather bashfully.

Skinny-dipping? I had heard the word many times over my fourteen years but I had never in my life done it or even considered it seriously. Me get naked… outdoors…where anyone could see? Was I ready for that? What if I got caught?

“I don’t know about skinny-dipping with the girls along,” I reasoned out loud. “I don’t know if I would want to do that.”

“They might do it too,” Mark offered. “I know they’ve done it down here before. I heard them talking about it once. Jessi has done it with boys before.”

“I don’t think I could do it, though,” I chickened out. “My mother would have a heart attack if I came back home with a sunburn all over.”

“Well, like I said, I just thought that was what you meant,” Mark told me. Then very quietly he added, “I thought it sounded fun.”

I pretended not to have heard him since he had said it so softly. It was reasonable that I wouldn’t have heard it. We were in the back of a truck after all. No one could blame me for not hearing something that was whispered in the back of a truck bouncing its way through the back side of cotton and soybean fields on the way to the bayou. The problem was I had heard it. What’s more, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Mark wanted to be naked with me again.

Yes, we had been naked together before. In fact, I had been naked with him and his sister, Belinda. We had done things together before as well. We had never done them with just the two of us, though. Our older cousin Paul had always been involved. It was called exploration, and it didn't hurt any of us one little bit, then or in the long term since.

The thing was, Paul had decided about two years earlier that he wasn’t into playing those types of games with us anymore. He had discovered that there were girls that weren’t part of his family that would play with him. He withdrew from us and our sexual play had just sort of stopped without him. I was doubly disappointed by this, since not only was it the end of the fun, but I had actually enjoyed playing with him and Mark much more than I did playing with the girls. This was the first indication that Mark might want to recapture the fun we used to have.

Nothing more was said about skinny-dipping right then though. We had arrived at the swimming hole. I was never really sure why they called it that. It wasn’t a hole; it was a curve in the bayou where our grandfather had built a dock out over the water. Our uncle Lance kept a boat nearby for fishing. That was why the dock had been built. He would pull up to it and unload the fish, turtles, and anything else he caught on his trot lines, and then he would pull the boat up out of the water, turning it upside down on the muddy bank.

The four of us got out of the truck and raced for the water. It felt so good and cool. Mark, being the youngest, was the most active and soon started a water fight. We were all splashing and it soon became clear that it was the boys against the girls. Boys being generally more adventurous, we won. Girls being generally bitchier, they pouted. They decided that since we had gotten their hair wet, which they hadn’t planned to happen, we could just walk back home. Before we could protest, not that we cared to, they ran up the bank of the bayou, jumped in the truck and took off.

“Now that they’re gone, do you want to….” Mark asked quietly, his voice fading to nothing at the end.

“Do I want to what?” In all the fun of the water fight, I had forgotten what we were talking about in the back of the truck earlier.

“Well, you said you wouldn’t do it with the girls around, so I made sure I got them pissed off enough to leave us alone,” he told me.

“Oh, you mean….” I suddenly remembered.

“Yeah, do you want to now?” he asked me directly. “I will if you will,” he pressed.

“Well….” I said thinking it over. On some level, I knew where this was headed and knew that it was supposed to be wrong. It was wrong for several reasons. We were both boys. We were cousins. We were out in a semi public place. At the same time, it was fun and it felt good. It felt better than good. Playing with myself felt good. Doing it with someone else felt fantastic. Doing it with another boy felt incredible. While I was sorting through all of the reasons we shouldn’t do it, I was hit in the face by something wet. It clung to my head and face and I reached up to pull it away. As I did, I realized that it was Mark’s shorts.

“I peeled mine, now let’s see yours,” he said with a teasing smile.

“Mark, what if Uncle Lance comes to check his trot lines?”

“First of all, Uncle Lance took his car to the races over in Chinquapin this morning, so he won’t be back till tomorrow,” Mark began. “Even if he did come by though, there is no reason to get embarrassed. He’s a guy too, isn’t he? He has the same stuff between his legs that we’ve got. Who knows, he might join us?”

“I wouldn’t want him to do that,” I said quickly. “He’s mean.”

“Yeah, you’ve got a point,” Mark agreed. “He would probably go back and tell everybody on us.” He twisted around in the water for a second and then held his hand up out of the water. He was holding his underwear. “Come on, Keith,” he pleaded. “It feels cool.”

I don’t know what came over me, but I reached into the water and removed my shorts and underwear at the same time. While I did this, Mark had swum over next to me. He reached out under the water and his hand brushed along my thigh.

“You did it,” he observed. “Cool.”

“What are we going to do with these now?” I asked indicating the wet clothing I was holding. He took them from me and threw them on the bank.

“That’s what we do with them,” he replied with a grin. “Now what should we do with this?” he asked as he grabbed my dick underwater. It was instantly as hard as rock. He began stroking me until I was moaning, and then suddenly stopped. “Can logs float against the current?” he asked with a tremor in his voice.

“What?” I was confused by the question and distracted from rational thought by the surge of hormones he had awakened.

“You see that log over there?” he asked pointing. “It wasn’t there a minute ago. It was further downstream.”

“You’re crazy,” I told him more calmly than I was feeling at that moment. “It had to have been upstream.” Just then, we saw it move toward us across the current of the bayou.

Both of us were out of the water and at the top of the bank in seconds. I had never run so fast in my life. We heard laughter from the trees nearby and turned to see Jessi and Belinda holding their sides as well as holding a long string. The string ran down to the water. Illumination dawned.

They had been pulling on one of the cords from Uncle Lance’s trot lines. The log was caught on it. Mark and I were standing there naked as the girls laughed their heads off at us. I went down to the edge of the water to retrieve the clothes as Mark stormed off toward his sisters. I had just picked up my pants and underwear when I heard Belinda yelling for me to get away from the water.

“You can’t fool me again,” I yelled back. “You’re just pulling the string again.”

“Keith, get up here now!” This time it was Mark yelling.

I looked up to yell back at them and saw that all three of them were nowhere near the string. I slowly turned back to look at the water. The log was indeed moving closer. Dropping my clothes, I ran up the bank, past my cousins, headed for the house. Halfway across the field, the fact that I was still naked occurred to me. I turned back toward the bayou and saw my cousins standing there all laughing. I had been fooled again after all.  It was already shaping up to be a fun summer once again.