Julia was a sight to behold. She had long, black hair, deep hazel eyes, and a pert, pretty face that perfectly complemented her gracefully curved body. It was, alas, a body that, as of my senior year in high school, I'd only seen buried beneath impenetrable mounds of fabric. Not that she dressed conservatively in any way—quite the opposite, in fact—but on a girl like Julia any amount of clothing seems like too much.
By now you've probably surmised that I was attracted to Julia. To say that, however, would be a monstrous understatement. I wanted, I desired, I pined for Julia. I wanted her with all the force a horny eighteen year-old's sex drive can summon. Every moment I could, I spent with her; every glimpse I could get, I got, and savored until the next—a flash of her panties seen climbing the stairs behind her, or a hint of cleavage when she bent over to pick a tater-tot from her plate. Not that I was obsessive. No, not at all. My relationship with Julia was, at least on the surface, nothing more than a very good but very platonic friendship, one that I didn't want to compromise by being too candid with my feelings. Whenever I thought a dirty thought about her, I'd try to think of something else, like battle scenes from the crusades or star-cruisers plying the spaceways in the distant future. I tried to tell myself it was wrong. But any straight man in my situation would have felt the same—and I think Julia would have made even a few gay men have second thoughts.
Julia, in short, required an unbearable quantity of self-control to be around. And by the end of four years of friendship, my supplies were running low.
School was out. Ex-seniors poured out of the classrooms into the bright California sun, Julia and I among them. Now there was time to focus on more important things, like cars, the beach, movies, friends, and, most importantly, members of the opposite sex, all to be packed into a few short months before we split off to colleges in the fall. At that time I was dating Chrissy, a nice enough girl (both in and out of bed), but a little bland. In retrospect, I think, I went with her more to distract myself from Julia rather than because of any virtues of her own. And, for a while, the strategy worked: in the day I'd build up some tension with Julia, and at night I'd release it with Chrissy. But this wholly satisfactory arrangement was ruined when, about two weeks after graduation Julia invited me to stay with her for a couple days at her family's beach house up the coast—without Chrissy.
Obviously I accepted. I couldn't say no to Julia. She had a way of charming me into anything without lifting a finger. Maybe it was her sense of humor or the way she smiled that made me helpless. It felt silly being a strong (if not terribly buff), tall, reasonably handsome man so easily reduced to near-idiocy by a woman, even a woman as splendidly endowed as Julia. But, of course, I never tried to resist. Who would?
Anyway, in a day or two I was in the backseat of a car with Julia and her parents (Mark and Lindsey, for the record) heading north.
"What'd you bring?" asked Julia.
"Not too much. Just some clothes and a toothbrush, I think. Oh, and a digital camera."
"That could be fun."
"Yeah. I just got it. It's pretty cool."
"There's not much to take pictures of. Except the beach, of course, but you might as well get a postcard unless you're a really good photographer. I'm sure you're not, of course."
"Of course. I'm not much good at anything."
"Whatever. It'll be fun just to be there."
We kept talking all through the drive. Julia made a few comments about clubbing baby seals. She had a surprisingly dark sense of deadpan humor that often caught people off guard; sometimes she bordered on cruelty, but was always playful and very, very ironic. Her deadly accurate sense of irony was one of the things that attracted me most, in fact. Ah, but don't think it was only her body I liked—I'm not all that shallow, my dear reader!
My name, I should probably add, is Nick.
Mark and Lindsey's beach house was not as secluded as I would have liked. Packed on either side were other houses stretching for several miles, nearly all of them, I noticed, larger than theirs. The house was a single story, and looked to be dismayingly small. But once I stepped inside and saw the view through the plate-glass windows of the living room I felt an immense surge of contentment. The beach was wide and immaculately white, sloping gradually down to a curving shoreline before disappearing under the crystalline blue of the ocean. I soaked up the sight. Moments like that always make me feel a little more grateful to be alive.
Lindsey soon interrupted my reverie, however.
"Nick? You're room's right over here," she chirped.
I walked over, a little sullen. But the room was nice enough—large, with a big window on the far side, a nice big bed, a closet (closed) and a dresser. The sheets on the bed were pink and furry-looking, while the lamp on the end-table beside it had a frilly lampshade adorned with pink tassels. I got the feeling that the room hadn't been intended for male occupancy.
"This is Julia's room," said Lindsey. "Julia said it'd be okay for you to sleep here tonight. Is that okay?"
"Sure," I said, trying to sort out the implications of this development in my head.
"Because otherwise you'd have to sleep in the living room, and that gets pretty cold and noisy from the freeway and the trains at night. I think you'll like this better. Does that sound all right?"
Lindsey had a habit of asking approval for everything, often again and again. Charming in very small doses.
"Yeah, that sounds good." I threw my backpack (containing clothes, a toothbrush, and a camera) on the floor of the room.
"Great. Dinner's going to be at about seven, but until then you and Julia can hang out at the beach, or whatever you want to do. Okay?"
"Yeah, I'll just change into my trunks," I said.
I stepped into the room and closed the door behind me, then quickly undressed. Since this is the first occasion in this tale of mine that it's come up—no pun intended, of course—I might mention that my penis is slightly above average in size (or so I'm told), hanging like a little stalactite from a mound of dark brown curls the same color as the (much less curly) hair on my head. I'm not inordinately attached to my dick the way so many men seem to be, but it's served me well over the years and I am therefore grateful for it.
I slipped my trunks on and went out into the living-room. Julia was already in her bathing suit, an eye-poppingly skimpy red bikini that gave me a better view of her body than I'd ever been privileged to see before. Julia was such a sublime creature that it seems disrespectful to describe her in anything but the most exalted of terms. But no words, no matter how fine, could match her beauty, and trying to use them would only make me sound ridiculous. So, for lack of any alternative, I'll use the (admittedly crude) diction that's already available for the task:
Her ass (oh, so vulgar!) was round and plump, almost spilling out the narrow confines of the thong that failed to cover more than a miniscule strip of skin. It was her ass that drew my eyes first, since it was both the most unfamiliar and the most delectable sight to be seen. But soon I was almost equally enticed by the long, smooth skin of her legs as they tapered to her feet, and then by the perfect contours of her just-exactly-right torso. And then her tits—perfectly round and firm and just large enough without spilling over into vulgar excess. Even her face, the face I knew better than my own, seemed to take on a new radiance to equal the glory of her body. This sounds extravagant, I know, and perhaps to a disinterested observe she might not have appeared quite so stunning, but at that time in my life I was very deeply intoxicated with the still-fresh phenomenon of sexuality, especially as it pertained to Julia. It was with great effort that I kept my cock from springing up to meet her.
"Ready to go to the beach?" she asked.
"Yeah. Let's go." I was surprised by my own nonchalance.
"Hey, take your camera."
"It might get sandy."
"Just be careful not to drop it."
I ducked back into my room to fish the camera from my pack and returned to the living room. Julia and I practically skipped to the beach, towels in hand. Mark and Lindsey stayed at the house, doing whatever it was they did. Julia at the beach was Julia as she was everywhere: bright, smiling, and charming through and through. (To be fair, she wasn't always like this. Like anyone else, Julia could get depressed, and it was the saddest sight in the world to see someone so wonderful in such an awful mood.) The sun made her lightly toasted skin shimmer gold; her black hair shone bright. We lay our backs on our towels. There was a good number of other people lounging on the sand or swimming in the water, but we found a place a pretty good distance from everyone else.
"Take some pictures of me," she said.
I turned the camera on.
"You'll have to pose," I said.
"Like this?"
Julia propped herself up on her elbows, pushing her tits out into the air. She threw her head back, closed her eyes to mere slits, and parted her lips slightly, in imitation of a fashion model. My mind was aware all of it was a ridiculous parody, but that made little difference to the less refined portions of my body. Watching her I felt my cock stir in my shorts.
"Perfect," I said.
I framed her up in the viewfinder and snapped a picture.
