Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2022 00:11:39 +0000 (UTC) From: James Breitbart Subject: Skinnydip Creek Chapter 1 As the name suggests, Skinnydip Creek has been designated for boys to swim naked as far back as anyone can remember. There's no official law or anything, but everyone who grows up in Bartlett, North Carolina knows that boys between nine and 18 are allowed to skinny dip on the stretch of the river between the falls and where Skinnydip Creek meets Hazelnut Creek. Women and girls are strictly forbidden from going up there, and most adult men avoided the area out of habit. As a result, the creek was also an ideal place for any other activities a boy wouldn't want an adult to walk in on -- smoking, drinking, pot, and sex. It was universally understood that a boy developed certain needs once he hit a certain age, and quietly acknowledged that meeting those needs with another boy avoided the potential for trouble that came with girls. Pairs or small groups of boys could leave the creek and seek out a private place in the woods to meet their needs, and as long as it stayed at the creek, no one would call them queer. As a result, Wray County had the lowest teenage pregnancy rate in North Carolina, and boys who really were queer got a lot less crap about it than you would expect. I was one of the really queer boys, and the older guys knew that if they saw me at the creek, I'd probably be willing to go back in the woods with them, especially if they plied me with substances I couldn't legally obtain. On one particular afternoon in early June of 2004, I had sucked off Jimmie Clements, a sophomore on the Ramsey Collegiate Institute's JV football team, and he'd jerked me off in exchange. We were sharing a cigarette when we heard a commotion. Jimmie stubbed the cigarette out and we went to investigate. Before we got to the falls, we ran into Jeff Osborne, Connor Sexton, and Adam Fritz. Odds were they'd been about to start what Jimmie and I had just finished, and weren't going to be happy about the interruption. "What the hell's going on?" Jimmie asked. "There's a girl at the creek." "What girl?" "I've never seen her before. But she won't leave. She says she has as much a right to be there as anyone else." "Bullshit. We can't just run away. We need to send someone to stay there so she doesn't think she can just show up and take over the place." "Well, what if she seduces whoever we send?" "We'll send Sam." "Send me?" I objected. "I'm the last person here who wants a girl looking at them naked." Jimmie rolled his eyes. "I'll make it up to you." "How?" "Any way you want." The possibilities that raised were too exciting to turn down, so I agreed to man the creek. I went back to retrieve my clothes while the other boys dressed. When I got to the falls, the girl was swimming in the pool, so I put my clothes down and sat on a rock until she came up for air. "You're not supposed to be out here!" The girl rolled her eyes. "So I've heard." "It's boys only." "Don't you know it's the 21st Century. A girl can go everywhere a boy can." "Not if the boy's naked." "Oh, does the bikini bother you? Then I'll just take it off." She started getting out of the water. "There's no need. And if you think you're going to bat your eyelashes at me and get me on your side, then you'd better think again." "Let me guess, you're a good Christian boy who would never defile yourself with the wicked temptress." "Wrong guess. I'm queer." "And these rednecks haven't murdered you yet?" "No one has a problem with it as long as it stays at the creek. And that's another thing. This creek gets used for a lot more than skinny-dipping, and everybody knows it. Most of the adults in town are willing to tolerate it because it keeps that kind of thing out of town where they don't have to deal with it, but they wouldn't if they thought their daughters were going to go up here and maybe get pregnant. You showing up would be just the thing the preachers need to shut the whole thing down and ruin it for everybody." She got fully up out of the water, and I pulled my knees up so they were covering my genitals. "I didn't realize it was so complicated. We just moved here." "No shit." "Still, I hardly think that's fair. Don't you know we're in the 21st Century?" "Don't you know we're in Bartlett, North Carolina?" "It may have been pointed out to me. You know, coming up here wasn't my idea." I realized that she was probably in a snit because of being forced to move out to what she probably thought of as the middle of nowhere, and that arguing with her wouldn't do any good, so I decided to try an alternate tack. "Look, I'm getting hungry, why don't we ride our bikes back to my house and see about some lunch?" "They sent you here to get rid of me, didn't they?" "Yeah, and I was promised anything I want by a high school football player if I did, so you'll excuse my persistence." "Okay, fine. But I didn't bring my phone with me, so we'll have to go by my house first to tell someone where I'm going." "Just let me get dressed." "Okay," she stood up out of the water, toweled off, and put on a long t-shirt over her bikini and a pair of flip-flops, and stood on the bank, watching me. "I meant look away while I get dressed," I explained, just a touch peevishly. "Fine." She rolled her eyes, but turned away, enabling me to swim over to my clothes, last year's P.E. uniform, with a minimum of embarrassment. "You can look now." She turned around and sized me up. "You go to Ramsey Collegiate?" "Yep." "We're probably going there next year. Father doesn't believe in private education, but mother says it'll be a better environment for my older brother." I thought it was an odd comment but didn't respond. We set off on our bikes, me following a bit behind the girl, who continued to make conversation. "What'd you say your name was?" "I don't think I did, but it's Sam Murchison." "Are you related to that big building on the way into town with Murchison Mills on the front?" "It's been in the family since 1880, we're the last family-owned mill in North Carolina." "And what exactly do you mill?" "Mainly the fabrics they use for awnings and beach umbrellas." She looked down at my bare feet. "And the mill owner's son has no shoes?" "There's a backstory there, but it would probably bore you." The backstory was that during the Great Depression, my idealistic great-grandmother had begun having my grandfather go barefoot during the warmer months so that the poorer boys would be unashamed at their own lack of shoes. Given my family's influence in town, it quickly became a fashion trend among the area's small upper class and persisted through to the present. For me, it was something of a sexual fetish, but most of the other boys in town just liked the freedom of not having to wear shoes. "I've got time." I explained the backstory to her, minus the part about the fetish. "So, what's your backstory?" "My name's Sophia, and we're from Colorado. My father's an environmental attorney, and apparently this specific shithole backwater is in dire need of his talents." She brightened, momentarily. "He's probably going to sue the pants off your family for all the toxic waste your mill dumps." "Naw, he's probably here to sue the emerald mine. The hippies around here are always complaining about them dumping this, that, and the other." "That sounds about right. Before this job he sued coal mines. Anyway, here we are." We pulled our bikes into a modest brick house somewhat on the outskirts of town. There was a moving truck parked out front and a plethora of children's toys strewn around the driveway. "Anybody home?" Sophia called out. An older boy emerged from the back of the truck, carrying a box. He was evidently athletic, wearing a sleeveless t-shirt that showed off the definition in his arms, well-used shorts, and a pair of Velcro sandals through which I could see that his feet were well-tanned and perfectly proportioned. His face was just as attractive and framed by ringlets of strawberry-blond hair that curled down to his shoulders, pushed back far enough that I could see the silver ring in each ear. My heart skipped a beat at the sight, and I'm sure that if anyone had tried to get me to speak at that moment, I would have responded by babbling gibberish. Fortunately, the boy addressed Sophia instead of me. "What do you want? I thought you were going up to spend the day at the waterfall." "It's a long story. What you need to know is that Sam's taking me to lunch." "Fine. Just be back by dark and don't bother me any more until then." We headed back on the road into town. "That was Matteo," Sophia explained, "he's an asshole." "Uh-huh." I was much more impressed by Matteo's physical appearance than Sophia's assessment of his personality. So impressed, in fact, that I had to discreetly reach into my shorts to adjust a growing erection as we pedaled up the hill leading into town. By the time we reached the town square, Sophia was a bit winded, so I decided to show off my superior lung power by giving a brief tour. "So, Ramsey Collegiate's a few blocks to the right, past St. Joseph's Episcopal Church..." "Is that the church on the square?" "No, that's the Baptists, or the most organized set of Baptists anyway. And then the building with the clock tower on is the town hall, and as you go counterclockwise, you'll see the library, the Holcombe Inn, and the courthouse." "Fascinating." "You ready? It's a lot less work downhill. You just have to keep control of your bike." "I can handle it." She did -- barely, and we used the momentum to keep coasting until we reached the turnoff for my house -- a stately Victorian built by the patriarch of the Murchison family in 1890, after the mill had turned enough profit for him to afford the house he wanted. "Nice place," Sophia remarked, "how many brothers and sisters do you have?" "I'm an only child." My father is gay and convinced my mother to marry him when his father threatened to leave the mill to my uncle if he didn't produce a suitable heir. My maternal grandparents had been financially ruined in the savings-and-loan crisis, and my mother decided that putting up with the obvious drawbacks of marrying a homosexual was worth it to maintain the style to which she had become accustomed. I was conceived by IVF, and upon determining that I was suitably male, grandfather handed over the reins of the company to my father, dying four years later before it could be determined that I had inherited the gay gene. Mom had her tubes tied and gets her physical needs met by our landscaper, who I refer to as Uncle Fred, while Dad splits his attentions between a long-term relationship with our attorney, who I refer to as Uncle Jack, and short-term relationships with a series of the landscaper's hired hands. Uncle Cecil got elected to Congress shortly before I was born and maintains a 100 percent rating from the Moral Majority. It so happened that mom was home when we got there, which meant I had to explain Sophia's presence. I told her that I had met Sophia at the creek, and that since she was new in town, I had decided to be hospitable. I could tell from the look on Mom's face that she'd noticed the discrepancy in a girl being at the creek, but she was all smiles when she turned to Sophia. "Well, I'm delighted to welcome you to Bartlett, Sophia. We'll have to drop by and invite your parents to dinner." Sophia seemed unaccustomed to Southern hospitality and mumbled as though she were in trouble. "Yes, ma'am." I didn't quite trust Sophia not to go back to the creek if left to her own devices, so I showed her upstairs to my room, located in the turret of the house, and we played Xbox for the rest of the afternoon. She remarked that her parents didn't let her watch television, cementing their hippy image in my mind. Finally, the shadows outside began to lengthen, and Sophia announced that she needed to leave to be home in time for dinner. Once she'd left, I went back upstairs for a quick jerk-off session, using Matteo as fodder. Then it was time for my own family dinner -- despite their background being a recipe for dysfunction, my parents get along quite well, like very long-term roommates, and we have dinner as a family whenever their schedules allow it. Mom took the opportunity to tell Dad about Sophia. "What the hell was she doing at the creek?" Dad asked. "She showed up and wouldn't believe it was boys only. They sent me to lure her out seeing as I'm immune to feminine wiles." "Hmmph. Somebody ought to have a talk with her parents." "I think they're hippies, she said her dad was some sort of environmental lawyer." "Oh, he must be the one Jack McFarland's been telling me about. One of those junk mail lobbying outfits in DC is trying to scare up a lawsuit against the lumber company, and they sent someone out here to find a plaintiff." "That sounds about right." "Did you meet the father?" "Just an older brother -- a very good looking older brother." "How much older?" "Probably a bit too old for me, definitely too young for you." I teased my father. "I think the best thing to do will be to invite them to a dinner party," Mom suggested, "that way you can sound out their intentions and, if the opportunity presents itself, explain the customs around the creek."