Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 23:00:53 +0000 (UTC) From: James Breitbart Subject: Skinnydip Creek Chapter 2 The next morning, I called Jimmie and told him to meet me at the creek, and to bring liquor and cigarettes. It was time to collect my payment. I stuffed a jar of Vaseline and a towel in my backpack and pedaled off toward the creek. Jimmie was waiting for me at the turnoff. It looked like we were the first boys to the creek that morning. "How'd things go with the girl?" Jimmie asked. "Not sure. Seems like her family's hippies -- kind of a women's lib type deal." "You think they're going to make trouble." "Sounds like they moved here specifically to make trouble -- but not about the creek. My parents are going to invite them for dinner and try to talk some sense into them." We reached the falls, and sure enough, we were the first ones there. Once we'd stripped off, I laid out my towel on a clear stretch of dirt and told Jimmie to lie down on his back and spread his legs. "You gonna fuck me?" "Yep." "What's the liquor for?" "To make me last longer." I took a swig and got the Vaseline out of my backpack. I scooped a generous amount up with my finger and began working it into Jimmie's hole. The way he was positioned, his feet were in my face, so I took the liberty of sucking his toes while I prepped him. Jimmie's soles were stained brown from the dirt on the path, but as they say around Bartlett, God made dirt and dirt don't hurt. I took another swig of moonshine and swished it around my mouth just to be on the safe side. "God, that shit with my feet feels good," Jimmie muttered. "Spread the word, `cause it turns me on. You ready?" "Yeah." I positioned my prick at the entrance and slowly worked my way in. I'd been on the receiving end enough times to know how to do it without hurting Jimmie, but this was my first time on top. It felt great, way better than jerking off or even a blow job. "God, you're so fucking tight," I moaned. "Keep going!" Jimmie encouraged me. I went slowly, trying to prolong the pleasure until it built to the point where I lost control and jackhammered Jimmie until I shot my (still rather thin and watery) load in his ass. He shot his much more substantial load onto his stomach, and I collapsed, panting, on top of him. "There's one more part of your payment," I whispered, and then kissed him straight on the lips. Normally, the straight or straightish boys don't want to do anything affectionate, but Jimmie reciprocated, and we made out for a couple of minutes until Jimmie startled and pushed me off of him. "Holy shit!" I looked up to see Sophia, staring down at us from a rock, with Matteo and another boy I presumed to be a younger brother in tow. Jimmie and I scrambled to cover ourselves with the towel, and then I turned to Sophia. "What the fuck are you doing here?!" "I figured if we got here before everyone else..." Sophia sounded just a little embarrassed, which I would have taken for a positive sign if I hadn't been so embarrassed myself. "She told us they wouldn't let her swim here without a boy to chaperone her." "The rule isn't you need a boy to chaperone, the rule is you have to be a boy," I explained, "I told her that yesterday." "Well, I didn't know you were gonna be fucking," Sophia responded. Matteo rounded on his sister. "So, you just lied to me and got me to invade this kid's privacy." "It's not private, all the boys come here." "Boys have a right to privacy, too. How would you like it if Amir and I spied on you during one of your sleepovers?" Sophia flushed. "That's not the same thing!" Before Matteo could respond, Jimmie interrupted. "I'm not gay! I just owed Sam for him getting rid of her yesterday." Eager to change the subject, Sophia snorted. "Looked pretty gay to me." I could tell that the conversation was going nowhere, so I interjected. "Can the three of you turn around so Jimmie and I can get dressed?" "Why do they have to turn around?" Sophia taunted. In truth, I should have been fine being naked in front of Matteo and the other boy. I had been coming to Skinnydip Creek since I was nine years old and seen and been seen by peers in every stage of puberty. But I knew that at 13 I was substantially less developed than Matteo, and given my crush on him, I was unusually self-conscious about giving him any more opportunities for comparison than I already had. Besides, I had no particular reason to believe that he wouldn't react negatively to realizing that I was gay, let alone attracted to him specifically. However, I couldn't come up with a reason that I could explain to Matteo, so I just sputtered "Because!" Matteo obligingly turned around, and his brother followed his lead. Her options foreclosed by her brothers, Sophia did likewise, giving Jimmie and I the chance to quickly wash ourselves in the pool, dry off with the towel, and put on our shorts. "Alright, we're decent!" I called out, and the three of them turned back around. "I'm sorry about my sister," Matteo said. Fortunately, the alcohol and sexual release had tamped down my crush on him enough that I could formulate a coherent reply. "That's alright, just try to keep her from doing it again. It's fine for the two of you to come, as long as he's nine years old." "I'm nine," the younger boy confirmed. "This is my brother Amir," Matteo said. "Nice to meet you. Y'all might be getting a dinner invitation from my mom shortly." In fact, the additional intel that the Farrellis had a younger child helped Mom finalize the guest list. It included Mayor and Mrs. Atkinson and their kids Chelsey (15), Wyatt (17), and Robbie (20 and home from App State for the summer). Reverend Whaley's oldest daughter Mary (13) would hopefully be able to provide Sophia with some gentle guidance as to appropriate lady-like behavior, and his younger three would serve as playmates for any Farrelli siblings younger than Amir. The Sanderson's sons Matthew (11), Mitchell (10), and Michael (8), would give Amir a couple of playmates his own age, and Uncle Jack would give Mr. Farrelli someone to talk shop with. Once the other guests had been invited, I was drafted to go with my mom to extend an invitation to the Farrellis, bearing housewarming gifts of pinot noir for the parents and strawberry rhubarb pie for the children. The door was answered by a frazzled-looking woman in a sweaty t-shirt, who I assumed to be Mrs. Farrelli. Mom extended her hand. "I'm Cathy Murchison. My son Sam seems to have made the acquaintance of your daughter, and I wanted to welcome you to Bartlett." Looking somewhat confused, Mrs. Farrelli took the proffered wine. "Thanks." "I was hoping your family would be able to make it to a little dinner party we're having Friday evening. It'll be a great chance to get acquainted, and I'm sure the children will get along fabulously." "It'll save me having to cook if nothing else." The Atkinsons were the first to arrive Friday evening. Mr. Atkinson naturally wanted to maximize the opportunity to schmooze some of his most influential constituents. They were dressed appropriately to the occasion, with Chelsey in a sundress and the boys wearing polo shirts and madras shorts. As the host, I was dressed a smidge more formally in khakis and a checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up halfway to my elbows. True to Bartlett tradition, Wyatt, Robbie, and I were barefoot while Chelsey wore shoes. I wondered idly if Sophia would take that as another instance of unacceptable gender discrimination. The only deviation from the norm was a tiny diamond stud lodged in Robbie's right ear, which hadn't been there the last time I'd seen him over Christmas break. Wyatt was thoroughly enjoying giving his brother grief over it. "You like Robbie's new bling?" He was clearly expecting me to join in the roasting. "Actually, I think it's quite fetching." "Aw, you're no fun." "Wyatt, honey, do you remember who you're talking to?" Wyatt rolled his eyes. "Speaking of which, I heard the interloper and her brothers got quite the eyeful of you and Clements the other day." "What else did Jimmie tell you?" "You did something to his feet that I'll have to try." The Sandersons had arrived in the middle of our conversation and Matt, the oldest, was interested in the goings-on. "What'd you do to his feet?" "Never mind," Chelsey admonished him, "it's a conversation for the creek, not the parlor." This was a common phrase used in Bartlett whenever a boy strayed across the boundaries of polite conversation. "I'll show you next time we're at the creek," I promised. From what I'd seen of him at the creek, Matt was shaping up to be a fellow homosexual. Ironically, Mitch was one of the few boys who took positively zero interest in sex play at the creek, and I'd had to rescue him from aggressive older boys a couple of times. It was too early to tell about Mike, who wasn't old enough to go to the creek yet. I was starting to debrief Chelsey on what I knew about Sophia's personality when a well-used Camry pulled into the drive. The three Farrelli children tumbled out of the back seat and their parents emerged from the front. Matteo was the only one who'd made any attempt to dress for the occasion -- wearing the sandals I'd seen him in earlier, a nice pair of jeans, and a plain black t-shirt. His sister's t-shirt bore one of those sarcastic slogans you see in Hot Topics, and she was wearing denim shorts that most Bartlett residents would have considered immodest. Mrs. Farrelli wore a t-shirt advertising Planned Parenthood of Douglas County (I made a mental note to check that she actually went by Mrs. Farrelli), and her husband was technically the most formal, wearing a flannel shirt, jeans that had seen better days, and work boots. Mom stepped outside to greet them and usher them into the house. She had arranged the party so that the adults were having cocktails in the front parlor while the kids stayed on the back porch. I wished they would have let me have a cocktail, as Matteo's presence was making me hot under the collar, and he seemed to notice. His sister was cornered by Chelsey, and Mary Whaley once they'd arrived, but resisted their attempts to engage her in conversation. Amir seemed to cling to his older brother, frustrating the Sanderson boys' assignment to peel him off so that we could have a frank discussion with Matteo about the creek. It turned out that we didn't need to worry about it, as Sophia brought the creek up of her own accord. "So do they not let you swim at the waterfall, or is that just me?" "Oh, you mean Skinnydip Creek?" Mary asked with feigned innocence. "We just leave the boys to it. They all swim naked there, and they don't look half as good naked as they think they do." Chelsey laughed on cue, but Amir interrupted. "We saw him and another boy at the creek," he pointed to me, "and they were both naked, and he was kissing the other boy's feet, and then, OW!" Matteo pinched Amir's ear to shut him up and apologized to me. I was too flustered to respond. I hadn't realized just how much Matteo and Amir had seen and suspected that Matteo would be put off by my foot fetish even if he wasn't by the homosexuality. Of course, he had still worn sandals to the dinner, but then again, he might not have owned many other pairs of shoes -- the Farrellis didn't seem to be much for dressing up. "Matteo," Amir whined, "You're hurting meee!" "You don't need to talk about that in front of all these people. It's something private that we weren't supposed to see." Matteo shot Sophia a withering look. "I think it's awfully chauvinist that the boys are locking the girls out of the best swimming spot just so they can get their rocks off in the great outdoors." "Oh, we girls can get up to some trouble of our own," Mary said, but Sophia ignored her and kept talking. "I'm going to the next town council meeting and telling them that they don't ensure equal access to public property, then I'm going to sue them for illegal gender discrimination, and Father called the Mountain Review, so they're going to send a reporter out." That raised the stakes of the problem substantially. The Mountain Review was a left-wing tabloid newspaper that subsisted off of grants for `investigative journalism' from the same types of foundations that employed Mr. Farrelli. They were based in Asheville but made themselves generally obnoxious across Western North Carolina. The paper was particularly disliked in the Murchison household because they had filled a slow news week a couple of years ago with an expose of my father's sexual proclivities, featuring an interview with a college ex-boyfriend and a full-color photo of Dad locking lips Uncle Jack at a Christmas party in 1989. The conversation petered off until we were summoned into the dining room for Reverend Whaley to say the blessing. After the blessing, we served ourselves from the buffet and proceeded to arrange ourselves around the kids' table in the kitchen. I ended up directly across from Matteo, who bent down and undid the Velcro straps on his sandals as soon as he was seated. A few seconds later, I felt the warmth of his bare feet sliding over mine. I gave Matteo a quizzical look, and he responded with a smile and a nod, confirming that he reciprocated my affections. The presence of the younger Whaleys forced us to keep the conversation G-rated, which inhibited discussion of anything to do with the creek. I was left to enjoy a private game of footsie with Matteo while the rest of the party ate in awkward silence punctuated by Adam and James Whaley's (5 and 7, respectively), oblivious conversation with their sister. The Farrellis were the first to leave. Evidently the adults' evening had not gone much better than our own. I volunteered to wash the dinner dishes before dessert, with the idea of using the plates to cover the tent in my pants. Wyatt followed me with the excuse of drying, and Mom came in to get the dessert plates. "So, what did we learn?" As the blood returned to my head, the full gravity of the situation dawned on me. "She's planning to sue the town for illegal gender discrimination and plaster it all over the Mountain Review." Wyatt looked worried. "You know, if word gets out that I've been at the creek, I'm going to have hell to pay at church." The Atkinsons were nominally Baptist, which Mr. Atkinson made sure to play up around election time. This assured his conservative constituents that the town was in good Christian hands despite its tolerance for the goings on at Skinnydip Creek but left him electorally vulnerable if information that contradicted his public piety got out. In particular, both Wyatt and Robbie were known to enjoy male company at the creek, and Robbie had never been known to take any interest in female company. It was perfectly plausible that the public scandal Sophia was threatening to launch would lead to Mr. Atkinson's replacement by a genuine fundamentalist, or a good government reformer running on a platform of closing down the creek to spare the cost of a lawsuit. Good government would not be in the interest of many of the town's leading citizens, and a genuine fundamentalist was certainly not in my interest. "I'll have your father talk to Jesse about the legal aspects of it," Mom replied, "and I think you'd better get the First Frost Club together to deal with the fallout.