Or at least, I must have, 'cuz when I woke up, it was suddenly six o'clock, the sun was setting behind me and pretty much useless for sunbathing, and the beach was pretty much empty. Empty, except for this chick that was standing over me, who in a navy sweatshirt and red pigtails, looked very very familiar. "Hey, stranger," she said to me.
Her voice also sounded very familiar, but she answered my question before I could ask it. "Hmm, so it is you. I heard you were back in town." She had the look on her face of someone who was trying very hard to look angry, but within like some fifteen seconds, she had like the goofiest grin on her face, and it wasnít really until then that I actually recognized her.
"You probably wanna talk, huh?"
"Tell you what. Are you gonna stick around a little bit longer?"
"I guess..."
"Why don't we go for a swim before we have to go home for the night?"
"Nah, donít want to."
"Watch my stuff while I go?"
The girl didnít wait for me to say yes before she took off her sweatshirt and shorts and left them on the sand next to me. The bikini she was wearing looked as if it were two sizes to big for her, at least the top did. It occurred to me as she was walking away towards the water that last time I saw her, she hardly ever wore bikinis, or not ones with strings like the one she was wearing now. Not because she had poor body image or anything like that; they just didn't look right on her for some reason. (Okay, fine, and because she had poor body image.) I seem to remember seeing her wearing one-pieces. Whatever...
I'd almost fallen back asleep after a few minutes. I genuinely was tired, and that girl really wore me out. I know what you're thinking; she didn't do anything to wear me out, and yeah, I guess you're right. But it was the day before school was starting up again, and strange as it may seem, she was actually the last person I wanted to see. And I would have fallen back asleep, right there on the beach, if it weren't for her incessant giggling. I looked up to glare at her, wondering if she even realized that she was keeping me from my precious Z's. And then I realized she had no clue what was going on around her. Or at least I hope she didn't.
Her bikini, yeah... well, it was about two sizes too big for her. Or something. When I looked up, I saw both her breasts hanging out staring at me; it must have slipped off of her once she dived in. I looked around trying to see if any of the other people on the beach noticed that there was a topless teenage girl in the ocean, but they were all far away enough, I don't think they did. It was my job to inform her that her top had come off, and screaming it out at the top of my lungs wouldnít be the right thing to do. So I did the mature thing.
I took off my shorts and went into the water in my bikini to talk to her. And when I got there, I realized... she had every clue what was going on around her. This girl had two different smiles: angelic, and fake angelic. You could tell within a matter of seconds whether or not she was only pretending to be innocent, just from her smile. I was standing right in front of her, her boobs were standing right in front of me, and her smile was, surprisingly, 100% angelic. She was nervous, I could tell, but she wasn't going to try anything. "You know," I said, "I can see your breasts."
Too nervous to laugh, she just said, "I know."
"Your top is right over there, I can see it. Want me to get it for you?"
"It's up to you, I trust you."
She trusts me? What the fuck does that mean? This was not a very trusting individual to start with, and I was the one person she had the least reason to trust. Then again, as I stood there chest-deep in the water, staring at the girl bobbing bare-chested in the Atlantic Ocean, the water barely covering everything necessary, I as able to answer my own question. She wasn't a very trusting person, meaning that it takes a long time to get her to trust you. It was a long, tiring process, and about a year ago, I'd successfully made it through. For a good portion of last year, I was the one she trusted most; and as much as I'd thought things had changed since then, she was willing to let them stay the same. Realizing this, I brought her body into mine, brought her lips into mine, and enjoyed one of the sensual kisses that Iíd been missing for so long.
If you, the reader, have some lesbian fantasies left unfulfilled, then you may have to read another story. That's not to say that I don't have sex--oh trust me, I do--I just don't have it quite as often as you might wish I did. Certainly didn't have it that first night on the beach.
When we disengaged from our kiss, I looked again at her smile. It was much larger than it was before, but equally as angelic. She was just happy to have me back, back in her arms where I belonged. I pulled her head toward my bosom and just caressed it, staring toward the horizon. I'd been back in town for almost a week now, and for the first time, I was happy as well. We disengaged again, smiled at each other again, and for the first time in minutes, spoke to each other again. "Ready to head back to land?" I asked her.
"I dunno. Do you see my top anywhere?"
"No."
Without words, we communicated with each other slowly. We both looked toward the beach, and saw that it was much emptier then it was when she first let her top slip off, completely devoid of people in fact. We slowly walked towards my blanket hand in hand, me still wearing my full bikini, her with her free arm carefully wrapped around her breasts. When we got there, I sat down; she put her sweatshirt on and sat down in front of me, then leaned back against me. I wrapped my arms around her. I started to speak, "Remember that time--"
"Yeah..."
"You don't even know--"
"There were only two times, and I remember them both like they were yesterday." That was why she still trusted me. She still clung to all her memories of me, and somehow knew that I'd make them reality again. And I didn't know how I'd do it, but I knew I would. I wouldn't let her down again. We just sat there, me in my bikini, her bare-legged in her nice warm sweatshirt, and I held her as close to me as I could. "So does this mean your coming back to school, too?"
"Yeah, I guess I should."
"You'll have fun then."
"Why's that?"
"The Program finally came."
"Joy," I said, in the most monotonous tone of voice I could come up with. Everyone knew what the Program was. Let me rephrase that. Everyone knew that the Program existed and that it had something to do with being naked in school. Very few knew what it actually was until they were put in it and it blindsided them like a brick. I was one of the lucky ones who would not be blindsided. The Naked in School Program was something schools started to put in place about ten years ago to try to heighten our sexual awareness and maybe loosen some of our inhibitions. America was founded by Puritans, and ever since then we've been trying to catch back up to Europe. Nudity is legal on almost all the beaches there, here you used to have to really search to find a decent place to get an all-over tan. You still do, but I suppose it's gotten a little easier. Once a school implements the program, the public indecency laws usually get repealed, too; sometimes just for the kids, sometimes for everyone. Laws against sex in public usually stay in place--we're not quite ready for that jump--but even in some places that wasn't the case.
There was a reason the girl in my lap thought I'd have fun in the program, and a reason she was shocked when I said I wouldn't. There's something you should know about me--several things actually, but one thing at a time. I'm a nudist. I've never quite found the point of clothes, and while I'm happy to wear them should I be required, being naked comes naturally to me, and have been known to wander around my home, wherever that may be, wearing nothing at all. I enjoy being nude usually, so I don't blame her for making the assumption. But the problem (one of the problems, that is) with the Program is that it's all about forcing someone to be naked. I think that's just wrong, as wrong as it is to force someone to wear clothes. They're using nudity in all the wrong ways for all the wrong reasons.
The other thing you should know about me, if you haven't figured it out already, is that I am proud to be a lesbian. The problem (one of the problems, that is) with the Program is that it's too heterocentric. It's all about boy-girl touching. It's not supposed to be; nothing in the writing says it's supposed to be boy-girl. It's supposed to encourage students to explore their sexuality, and I'm sure that if it were implemented properly, it could do that, maybe even show some closeted teenagers who they really were. But no one's ready for that. There are these things called Reasonable Requests in the Program. Students participating in the Program have to acquiesce to these requests, ranging anything to posing a certain way to letting a student touch you. If a girl walks up to a Program boy and asks to touch his dick, he has to let her. Well, technically, if a boy asks to give a Program boy a hand job, or a girl asks to caress a Program girl's breasts, they have to let them do it, too. If they ask. No one's dumb enough to ask. They'd get beaten up on the spot. It's not homophobia exactly, they're not afraid of homosexuals. They just don't want to be thought of as homosexuals themselves.
The Program had been in effect at our school for two weeks now. When I said it was the day before school was starting up again, I lied, half-lied anyway. School was starting up for me again tomorrow. I'd missed about two months of school at the end of the year last year, and I guess another month now. The girl in my lap told me the story of the past two weeks. I hadn't missed much, she said. She hadn't done any touching because, well, she was a lesbian as well. There hadn't even been any hot girls to go through the Program yet according to her, although the dress code had been laxed, and two Fridays ago, Tracy Mallors went through half the day in no shirt, just a bikini top, before cutting the afternoon to go to the beach. Come spring when people had gotten used to it, everyone would be doing that, we both thought. The public indecency laws had in fact been repealed, but no one seemed to be taking advantage of that. That would also change come spring, we decided. The town we lived and went to school in was forty miles away from the beach we were sitting at, bathing suits still required; nude sunbathing would have to be done in the city park.
One cool breeze brought our conversation to an abrupt end, as I realized I was completely freezing. I got up and wrapped the blanket around myself as the other girl put her shorts on. It was obviously time to go home, but the question was, whose home do we go to? Without conferring with me first, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed home. It took some convincing on a school night, but she swore she'd be responsible, and explained she'd pick up her schoolbooks on the way to school tomorrow morning--"You'll never guess who I'll bring with me when I do!"--but eventually her mother gave in and let her spend the night at my place. We crawled into my pick-up truck (we didn't know when we'd be back to pick up her Jeep, but we didn't really care at the moment) and drove to my own private one-bedroom apartment, me having worked out the emancipation papers halfway through my absentee summer. I didn't get dressed, drove home barefoot, still wearing nothing but a bikini. Whenever I didn't need two hands to steer, my right arm was around her shoulder, unspoken communication telling her that she was once again my girlfriend, not that she ever wasn't. We drove home in silence, wholeheartedly content with that silence.
We pulled up in front of my building, and got out of the car, leaving my blanket, shoes, all our spare bits of clothing, just carrying ourselves up to my apartment. I let her in and closed the door. She quietly snuck up behind me, but I knew exactly what was coming. Within seconds my bikini top fell halfway down and she was working on the bottom knot. I reached down to my right hip and undid the knot there, and my bottoms fell to my ankles just as she finished my top. I turned around, stood completely naked, and without fully making eye contact, strutted to my fridge. By the time I turned back towards her with a bottle of beer in each hand--don't ask me where I got the beer because you know I'll tell you eventually--she was standing next to a pile of clothes, once again dressed only in the black bikini bottoms. I walked towards her, and since my hands were full, she grabbed me, her hands against my bare buttocks. Since I'm a good three inches taller than her, she stood ever so slightly on tiptoes to kiss me.
Between our light kisses, I whispered in her ear, "Are you going to take those off?"
"Not yet," she whispered back.
I dropped the beers, and we slowly made our way to my bed. We lay on top of the covers, still kissing, still caressing each other. Me still naked, her still only mostly so. After a while, she slipped out of my arms, and we both slipped under the covers. She wiggled a bit to get a little bit more comfortable, and it took me far longer than it should have to realize exactly what she was doing. She took my hands and brought them to her sides, and only half-consciously I slipped them down to her hips. As I felt cool flesh where only moments ago her bikini was, she simultaneously brought her hands out from behind my butt to my front. As her finger slipped into my holy place, I immediately started moaning...
O God...
I'm so sorry...
I missed you so much...
O God, Caitlyn...