August, 1961
By Dreamspinner



"How do you explain it?" the boy asked.

"Explain what?"

"Your muscles," he said.

"Do they need explaining?"

"Yes," he said. "They do. Muscles like yours belong on a man - not a girl.
Especially a nineteen year-old girl." He threw the stone he had picked up on
the way to their rendezvous. He heard it plunk in the lake of ink.

"They just happened," she said.

"How could they just happen?"

"I don't know," she said. "They just did. It was like I woke up one day and
there they were."

"I don't believe it!" he declared. A thousand cicadas in the branches hanging
over the water mocked his perplexity.

She shook her long, blonde hair. "I can't help what you believe and what you
don't," she said. "I'm telling you, they just happened." She sighed. "OK,
maybe over time they happened. It wasn't like I was skinny one day and the
next day I had these." She lifted up her arms and bent her elbows. Even in the
dark, the boy could see the lumps rise up. "I live on a farm, you know," she
said, growing impatient.

The boy bent his arm and searched for his muscle. He burned with shame and
knew the girl could sense his weakness. "My dad says you look like a man," he
said. "He makes fun of you when you're not around. He says you don't like
boys!"

The girl grabbed the boy's hand and put it on her breast. He tried to pull it
away, but she held his hand tight. "Do you like girls?" she taunted. He tried
to pull his hand away, but she was too strong. "Do you?" she insisted. He
tried again and with all his might finally pulled his hand from her chest.

"You don't like girls," she concluded. "I knew it. You're a pussy," she
declared. "A queer. That's what my dad says about you."

"I'm not a queer!" he hissed. The cicadas were louder than the boy had ever
heard them.

"Prove it!" she said. "Prove you're not a queer! Feel my tits! Kiss me like
you mean it!" she yelled and pulled him to her.

He struggled against her greater strength but lost. In a moment, she had him
in her grasp, pressing his thin body against hers, searching in vain for his
face, his lips, capturing his hands and pressing them to her breasts, urging
his reluctant fingers to grab her flesh, to squeeze it until it hurt. To do
something. To do anything but resist. "God damn, boy!" she yelled. "Don't you
see? Don't you understand?

The boy twisted and turned. "I'm not a queer!" he managed. "I'm not. Really,
I'm not!"

The girl grabbed the boy between the legs. "So I see," she said. "Why don't
you obey this?" she asked. "What's the matter with you?"

The boy began to cry.

"You're a pussy," said the girl. "My dad was right. You are a queer." She
turned away and pulled her feet out of the water. She stood up on the dock.
"Queer," she said, and strode off down the dock to the shore. The boy, sitting
there in the dark, could feel how her weight made the dock move. The cicadas
screamed at him. "Queer! Queer! Queer!"

He burned, sitting there on the dock with his pitiful feet in the black water.
He wished a big catfish would clamp down on his toe and pull him off and drag
him under. He searched again for his muscle, thinking about how much bigger
hers were than his, wishing he had taken her in his arms and laid her back on
the dock, climbed on top of her and kissed her like she wanted, pushing his
stiff thing against the place between her legs where she bulged out. He had
looked at it many times that day while they were out canoeing and wondered
what it was about that place that prompted so much discussion among his
friends. He wanted desperately to know but at the same time, he was paralyzed
with anxiety when he thought about what might be there.

The girl's muscles, on the other hand, were not all mysterious. Anyone could
seem them if they wished. The boy watched them bulging out as she lifted
things and as she brushed back her hair. Earlier that day and nearly all the
days that summer he had grown stiff between his legs, watching her muscles
ripple and ideas about feeling them with his hands came to him, but when the
time came, and even as she exhorted him, he refused her and lost the
opportunity.

He reviewed the events of the last few minutes. Clearly, he thought, she was
begging for it, she would have allowed...no, welcomed any advance. A feel of
her muscles, her breasts, a kiss or many kisses. She taunted him, he
concluded. She was a bitch...a lesbian, most likely, he thought. No normal
girl would be so forward, he thought. I hate her, he thought, and lay back on
the dock and stared at the stars. The cicadas were deafening.

The water was warm and he slowly kicked his bare feet back and forth. As he
felt the flow of it against his skin, the feel of the girl pulling him to her
came into his mind and he grew stiff, thinking about her from different
directions. She had shown off the day before, doing chin-ups on a low branch,
one after the other while the boy and several others watched. He had wanted to
run away but stayed until she grew tired and dropped to the ground, red-faced.
Some of the others had gone over to her and made her flex her muscles. One had
even taken a picture of her with her arms over her head, elbows bent with her
muscles bulging, and the boy thought about that as he lay on the dock, letting
his feet go back and forth in the warm water.

He thought too, about the lumps on her arms rising up when she demonstrated
for him moments before and vainly felt for his muscle then, wishing it was as
large as hers and wishing he could have her feel his muscle. This idea was
very strong so he took himself out and moved his hand along the length of it
as if he was an athlete preparing an implement for a competition, stretching
out the kinks and concentrating. Soon he was using quick, short strokes and
quickly felt the approach of the inevitable.

Then he heard the girl call out, "Hey! Are you still there?" and he felt the
dock moving and knew she was coming towards him, and he stopped what he was
doing but because he had passed the point of no return his stuff began to leak
out. He held his breath and hoped she would stop, but she kept on. When she
got to within a few feet of him the boy could not think of anything else to do
but roll off the dock into the black water.

His wish that a big catfish would bite hold of his toe and drag him down
vanished when he went under. It was replaced by the certain knowledge that he
would drown and he kicked furiously towards what he thought was the surface.
He didn't hear the girl hit the water but felt her strong grip on the
waistband of his still undone shorts pulling him in opposite direction. His
lungs were burning and he did not resist.

They broke into the air and she yelled, "Are you crazy? You can't swim and the
water's ten feet deep!"

"Don't let me drown!" the boy yelled, and put his arms around her neck with
all his strength.

She got an arm free and slapped him across the face. "Goddammit! Are you
trying to drown us both?" She shook him by the shoulders even as she treaded
water with her powerful legs. "Don't panic! Listen to me!" she yelled, and
told him to be still, that she would hold him from behind and pull him to the
shore.

The boy finally understood what she meant and did his best to relax while she
held him around the neck. She told him to hold on to the crook in her arm so
she wouldn't choke him and when he had his hands in the right place, she began
frog-kicking her way to shallow water. When she could touch she told him to
let go and stand. He wouldn't let go and she yelled at him again. "Stand up,
dammit! You can stand here!"

He found his feet on the gravelly bottom and stood there, waiting to be told
what to do next.

The girl took him by the shoulders and said, "It's OK. You're safe now," and
when he didn't respond, she said, "Really...you're all right," and asked,
"You're touching the bottom aren't you?"

He nodded and she pulled up his shorts and took him around his waist and they
walked across the uncertain bottom up onto the grassy bank. The boy shivered
and the girl put her arms around him.

"I'm cold," he said.

She put her warm face next to his and told him he was safe and sound, that he
was just scared and that she felt bad about calling him a bad name and had
come back to apologize, and she felt him stop shaking, and then she felt a
hardness pressing against her in the place between her legs where she bulged
out. She smiled and thought she could have her way with him, after all.

"Let's go shower," she said. "You could use a warm shower."

"Without our clothes?" he asked.

She pulled away and looked to him as if she could see him in the dark. "Your
shorts are falling down already," she said, but when the boy shrank back, she
said, "It's OK...we'll use separate showers."

They stumbled their way across the grass towards the bare light bulb high on a
pole above the public dressing rooms. The girl made him go to the men's side
and she went to hers and waited until she heard him turn the shower on. When
she heard the water splatter on the concrete floor, she peeled off her wet
clothes and snuck around to the men's side. The boy was in his shower with his
clothes on, holding his unfastened shorts up with one hand and trying to wash
himself off with the other.

The naked girl strode in and took the boy by the shoulders and said, "Look.
Let's stop fooling around. I want you and I think you want me, so let's
dispense with all the false modesty, OK?" He nodded.

She took his shirt off in a rehearsed series of movements and pushed his wet
shorts to the floor. Then she took him in her strong arms and kissed him hard,
forcing her practiced tongue in his mouth, but when he recoiled, she knew he
was naive and she was gentler then, testing his growing willingness to let her
invade his private mouth space. He stiffened within seconds and she grabbed
his hardness with one hand and guided his hand with her other to her private,
bulging place.

"It's going to happen!" he yelled, and she quickly pinched him hard in the way
she knew would prevent it from happening.

"You've never done this before, have you?" she asked, still clamping down on
the base of him with her strong thumb and forefinger.

He shook his head. "I want to, though," he said.

The girl kissed him once and said, "Let's go to my cabin. We'll go through the
dark and sneak in. My parents are with the others and will be away until very
late. We have time," she said. "It'll be fine," she said, picked up her
clothes and shut off the showers and waved for him to follow her into the
dark.

The boy hesitated. The girl went back and took him by the hand. "Hold on
tight. We're going to have to walk fast," she said. "Now, come on, follow me!"
she hissed, and dragged him into the night.

They ran-walked through the campground and they came to the girl's cabin. She
stopped at the door, looked one way, then the other and then whispered, "It's
clear. No one's around," went in and pulled the boy after her. She made him
stand in one place while she got towels. She came back, gave one to him and
used the other on herself, then went over to her bed and turned down the sheet
and got in.

The boy stared at the girl's muscular body lying on the white sheet. The cloud
cover parted and moonlight suddenly poured through the windows, covering her
with cheese light. He thought he would cry, just looking at her. "What should
I do?" he asked.

"Are you dry?"

"No," he said. "Do you want me to be?" he asked.

The girl tried not to be impatient. She remembered her first time. "Yes,
silly," she said. "That's why I gave you a towel. Now, use it and then come
over here!" she whispered.

The boy toweled himself off and went over to an arm's length from her bed. The
girl pulled his hands away from his shorts so they fell to the floor and
reached out and took his stiffness in her hand.

"It's nice," she said.

"It is?"

"Yes," she said. "Big and nice. Big is nice. Bigger is nicer," she said.
"You're a big, eighteen year-old boy," she said, and pulled him by the dick so
he was close by the side of her bed. She scooted over so she was next to him
as he stood there, unbelieving, staring at her face so close to him, all of it
illuminated in the cold cheese light of the moon that made everything either
pitch black or stark white. He thought she was very beautiful and wondered why
her face was moving ever closer to his most private part. The cicadas in the
trees around her cabin were as loud as thunder.

He suddenly felt warmth all through his body and knew she had taken him into
her mouth and a great sudden burst of air filled his lungs and he wanted to
scream because he remembered how he and his best friend had done the same
thing to each other years ago, spending a night in the tree house they had
built together and he knew for certain that the cicadas were right. He was
queer and he had to tell her.

He drew back and blurted out, "I can't do this with you! Bobby did this to me
when we were eleven and I love him and I always will!" Then he cried, standing
there naked in her cabin with his stiffness bobbing wildly with every sad,
shuddering breath.

The girl propped herself up on one elbow and looked at the boy. She saw his
pain and his frustration. She told him to sit on the edge of the bed and
finish crying, and when he had, she told him about the girl who lived in the
farm one over from hers and how every Saturday one summer when they were
thirteen they would meet in the hay mow and take off their clothes and kiss
each other on the mouth and on their private places, and how to this day she
often thinks of the other girl and how her sweet, childish breath had smelled
when she was near, murmuring sweet things in her ear and how she still loved
her and always would. The boy listened and became kindred with the girl.

"But," she said, ending the story and bringing the boy's attention to the
present, "That was then and this is now."

"What about the other girl?" he asked.

The girl reached for the boy and drew his face to hers. "What of her?" she
said. "I love her, but I will love you tonight if you are willing," and pulled
him down, face-to-face with her. "Kiss me now," she said, and he did.

The boy relented and took the willing girl in his arms, feeling her hard
muscles and smooth skin, perfumed with sweat and he smelled her bleached
summer sheets and grew excited and went into her bed and knew her and held her
and kissed her deeply, sometimes thinking of the boy in the tree house when
the two of them were eleven and sometimes only of the girl with the black hair
and white skin, writhing with pleasure on the stark sheets, her lips parted
and her hands holding the headboard so the muscles in her arms popped up.

When it came, he felt as if he were in flight, and remembered the dreams he
had had of flying over the treetops and roofs of the houses in his
neighborhood and of the tops of houses in towns he had never seen but hoped to
one day and he thought how the man-thing he was doing fit together with life
as he understood it and wondered what else might lie ahead for him and then he
kissed the girl like he had never kissed anyone before and he said, "I love
you."

Hearing this, the girl took the thin, tall boy in her strong arms and took in
all of him her young body could take and then she went to glory and squeezed
him until he could hardly breathe. Then she let loose of him and fell into the
soft mattress and lay there, heaving and sweating in the August night. The
cicadas in the heavy branches hanging over the cabin stopped for an awful
second, then took up their chanting again.

The end