Remembering days gone by, and some damned good luck...
Author's note:
This is set back in '71, before National Nude Day came out of New Zealand. Hippies and Naturists were thriving subcultures, though, and subjects of some interest/repudiation, depending on who you were. AIDS didn't exist and everything but Herpes could be cured with antibiotics. Unwanted pregnancy was the big concern. This a submission for the National Nude Day contest. I hope you, the reader, enjoy the story and vote accordingly, regardless of any contest. Oh, and all characters are over the age of 18.
*~*~*~*~*
My parents owned a vacation home on the Great Lakes and when I was in college, I would get up there every chance I got. I grew up going to the house and loved being there, especially when I was older, if I could be alone. Being alone became a lot simpler in High School, when I got my driver's license. It became almost a given in college, because I got breaks when no one else did and my parents appreciated me dropping in on the property to keep tabs on it. I'd go up year-round... it didn't matter to me.
Some of the breaks, especially in summer and over the winter holidays, meant taking along siblings and friends. The times I could get to myself, though, were always more appreciated.
My grandfather had built the house as a retirement home but never got to enjoy it. He died when I was young. He built it to last, though... some of the locals called it a bomb shelter. It was in the middle of once-cut timber, mostly evergreen and birch with some deciduous trees as well, which gave spectacular Fall colors, and it nestled up against a sand dune ridge so the front porch peeked over the top of the ridge, facing the lake. The basement, including a two-car garage, was below the ridge line with the first floor above it.
The woods had been cleared directly in front of the house, looking out over the lake side of the slope of the dune, across the beach and to the water. Woods surrounded the gravel apron and the house, and there was a long drive through the woods to the highway. Grandpa and a friend of his had bought almost thirty acres along the water and split it between them, but he'd sold off some parcels for other folk to build homes. By the time I was going up there in college, the property still had about 1,200 shore feet, and it was about 300 to 400 feet from the water to the highway. It was a lovely, isolated bit of heaven.
I was also a closet nudist. I tended to be shy around people, but when I was alone up there, I loved stripping down and just feeling like I was part of the raw nature of the place. When it was warm enough, and windy enough (to keep down the mosquitoes), I'd lay out on the beach at night totally naked, looking up at the stars, listening to the surf steadily rolling up onto the shore, listening to the wind in the trees and hearing the occasional owl or two. It was still, it was calming and it was awesome.
Sunbathing and swimming during the day were also activities I preferred to do nude. I wasn't stupid about it, though. Anytime I had to go into the woods, I was covered head to foot and wore insect repellent. Some people think it's a joke that the mosquito is the Wisconsin State Bird, but believe me, some of the ones in our woods you could have lassoed, thrown a saddle on and ridden to work.
We had neighbors... I just didn't see them very often. The closest house south of ours was a summer vacation home for an elderly couple who seldom strayed far from their patio. The closest one north of us belonged to a family that included the teenage daughter who had helped me lose my virginity. She was a couple of years older than me and seldom came around anymore. What I didn't know was that much farther north along the beach, a new family had purchased one of the vacation homes, and their family happened to include a couple of kids around my age. They also owned horses.
So, to the point of this story, I was enjoying a warm, sunny Memorial Day weekend basking on the beach. It was windy enough that I had staked out a spot in the lee of a dune about halfway between the tree line and the water's edge, put out a big, comfortable blanket, set up a cooler with drinks and sprawled out naked as the day I was born to soak up some sun.
My daydreaming was encroached upon by the sound of a horse snorting. As a horse was not part of my reverie, it confused me. Then I heard another and the weirdness started dragging me back from Nirvana. It was the girl's voice that brought me crashing back to reality.
"Wow... doesn't he look nice?" I heard. I sat on my instinct to panic and feigned sleep.
"Oh, yeah..." said another female voice and the panic started to leak out anyway.
I opened my eyes just a slit to try to assess. I couldn't. Unless I raised my head, I couldn't see to the water's edge, where they appeared to be.
"I wonder if he's one of those Hippies?" the first voice asked. "I mean, he has the long hair and the beard." It was true. I had hair past my shoulder blades and a full beard.
"But he doesn't have any pubic hair," the second voice said. "Maybe he's one of those Naturist people. Maybe this is his private beach." That was also true. Through a previous misadventure I had discovered staying shaved had its benefits. I steeled my resolve, opened my eyes and struggled up onto my elbows.
"In fact, it is," I told them. I
really
had to concentrate on getting the rest out, once I got a look at them. "My private beach that is. Which you are permitted to cross, provided neither you nor your horses damage anything." I actually got the entire speech out.
There were several reasons I was on my way to tongue-tied. First of all, the two girls were beautiful. They were made more so by being astride a couple of really nice horses and they were riding bareback. They would have been wearing bikinis if they'd had their tops on, which they didn't. The only thing on their tops were kit bags slung over their shoulders. My hormones were waking up and I realized that the only thing I had to cover up with was the blanket.
They and their horses were just off the beach, about three or four feet out into the water, riding in the shallows. One girl was a light blonde and the other was a reddish blonde. Other than that, they could have been twins.
"Thank you!" the light blonde smiled. "We're new here and just riding the beach, getting the lay of the land." She eyed the cooler. "You don't happen to have some cold water, do you?"
I kept to myself all the permutations "lay of the land" could mean, fought to keep sophistication on the surface, hoped to God I didn't come erect and tried to answer her.
"Not down here," I told her. "I've got some fruit juices and iced tea. The water's up at the house."
"Could we bum some from you?" the reddish-head asked.
Remember that bit about being shy around people? Yeah... well, around these two people, the embarrassment was fighting for control and I was really trying to keep my cool. I got on my knees and turned my back to them, ostensibly to rummage through the cooler. Actually, it was to hide my growing erection.
"What would you like?" I asked. "I've got sun-tea I've decanted, apple juice, pink lemonade..." They surprised me. They slipped off the horses and started walking them up towards the patio at the base of the stairs. There was a big bush next to it, or maybe it was a crabapple, that Grandpa had put in for hanging towels. They used it to tether their horses and hang their kit bags before walking over to me. This was going to be bad. I was completely erect. There wasn't anything I could do about it and nothing convenient to hide it with. There was the cooler...
In probably one of the un-coolest moves ever, I turned the cooler around so it was facing away from me, lid open, then stood up with it so it covered my groin. Then I turned to face them.
"Choose what you'd like," I told them. They broke out laughing. I felt my ears starting to burn and I knew I was turning red.
"Hi, I'm Marsha," the light blonde told me. "Can I choose what's behind Door Number Three?"
If I wasn't blushing before, I was blushing now.
"I'm Kate," the reddish-blonde told me as she walked up. "Don't let my sister faze you. She's an outrageous tease."
"I am
not!
" Marsha protested. "I
always
follow through!"
"Okay, she's an outrageous slut," Kate corrected as she looked through what was available in the cooler.
