Normally I looked forward to arriving at the campsite. Normally I spent the whole day before leaving buzzing with excitement, packing the car and settling all the last minute details with an eager energy. This year, though, I was dreading it. This year it was different and I was furious with Dave because he had allowed it to happen. This year, the girls were coming.
You have to understand; when Dave, Jeff and I go camping it is bedlam. We treat it as an excuse to live as close to savage animals as possible, forgetting every ounce of civility in an astonishingly short period of time. Virtually seconds after the canoe has landed at our favourite island, the beers are cracked. Before dusk the dares have usually started and after that it's an exercise in trying to determine where all the burn marks came from and where missing articles went to in the morning.
Girls change all that. Especially girls like Melissa. I'm usually frustrated as it is when Dave and Jeff are around our ultimate frisbee team mate, trying to talk around their lolling tongues, trying to be suave and genteel, when I know they used to try and fart into rubber balloons and surprise each other with the smell days later.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I haven't sustained a few solid Frisbee smacks to the head because Melissa was running near me in her damn skin tight lycra pants that just lick over her luscious round ass and show the tantalizing beginnings of cameltoe over her thick puffy pussy lips. Millions of my sperm have been sacrificed as I imagined her naked body straddling me, droplets of delicious salt dew hugging her toned moonlit curves as they flexed and twisted around my cock... Anyway all I'm saying is that camping is for debauchery, for blowing off steam, and for relaxing without the effort of pretence. The presence of the girls would allow none of that.
I mentioned Melissa first because the other girl, Wendy, is a stockier girl who has a loud laugh and is virtually invisible in Melissa's shadow. Once Dave's dick had allowed Melissa to come along camping, well, Wendy was part of the package deal. Actually, I wasn't as upset about her company because she didn't have the effect on Dave and Jeff that Madame Witsfucker had.
My feelings became apparent from the moment I picked Dave up early that first morning. Dave smiled grandly as I rolled up and he picked up his single duffel bag and large sombrero.
"Hey, dickgobbler," Dave blurted as he opened the door and threw his bag in, checking to see if Melissa was there already. "Ready for Survivor Orgy?"
"For fuck's sake," I growled, "get in."
"Jesus, not a morning person, I know. It's too bad for you: you're gonna get stuck with sloppy seconds 'cause the early dick gets the poon-tang!"
Although I said nothing to encourage him he chattered on in much the same way, barely acknowledging Jeff, and then I pulled up in front of Melissa's house, where Melissa and Wendy were waiting. I was a little relived, thinking that he would dial it down a notch once the girls got in.
"Hey babes," Dave called out the window, "looking for a good time?" Melissa rolled her eyes and Wendy giggled as they slid open the door and piled inside the van.
Dave did change tack once the girls were settled. He launched into a narrative about some volunteer organization he worked with to feed homeless people at the downtown shelter. I caught Jeff's eye in the rear view mirror and saw the puzzlement in his eyes too. Melissa and Wendy nodded politely. It was a long two hours to drive out of town down the increasingly smaller and less kempt roads until we finally reached the small beach from where we would launch our canoe.
I was denied my crucial camping moment, that is the moment when I have lined the canoe up with the beach on our favourite island and have given one last deep push in the still mercurial water. In the silence there is only the quiet drip of water from the tip of the paddle, the smell of pine and birch and dirt filling the very bottom of my lungs, and finally the crunch of the canoe on the beach, the sound that is like a starting cannon to all our trips. Dave instead decided that it would be gentlemanly to leap from the canoe to steady it so that Melissa could disembark easily. He very nearly tipped us over and my enraged "Fuck!" echoed across the still lake. Dave ignored me and took Melissa to the campsite to 'show her around', leaving me to toss the bags out onto the shore before I turned the canoe about to pick up Jeff and Wendy waiting at the van.
"What took you so long?" Jeff growled at me. He looked around at Wendy, who was a good fifty feet away organizing the remaining bags to be piled into the canoe. "It's like death hanging out with her, man. Dave's probably banging Melissa by now."
Wendy asked to paddle in the front, and Jeff, being lazier than a fossil of a sloth, was happy to oblige. We slowly tottered toward the campsite.
"This is hard!" Wendy gasped. She was giving it a supreme effort, leaning far forward and digging her paddle far into the water with each stroke. I could see strong shoulder muscles bunching beneath her creamy skin and surprising triceps rippling down her arms as she hauled on the paddle. Water boiled around the blade as she heaved, testifying to the girl's real strength. As she leaned forward her shirt rode up over her waist. It was true that she had a muffin top forming at the top of her tight pants, but I found myself admiring the swell of her bottom on the hard seat. Jeff stared obliviously at his hand as he trailed his fingers in the water beside the canoe.
When we got to the campsite Dave had already set Melissa up in a folding chair, given her a beer, and had made no attempts to start a fire or pitch a tent. Apparently my city slicker friends were leaving the chores to me. Sighing, I started laying out the ground sheets for the two tents and unpacking the jenga-like mess of tent poles.
"Hey there, this'll help you with that." I turned to see Wendy striding up with a beer held out to me. She had taken off her sweater to reveal her tank top, which strained over her huge tits. As she walked her breasts jiggled playfully and my eyes soaked in her prodigious cleavage. The cold beer can jolted my palm.
"Thanks," I said, "you have no idea how much I wanted one!" The crack and hiss of the can was loud in the calm forest. Wendy smiled and drank deeply from her own beer. I watched her neck as she leaned back to drain the can, her skin smooth and white and vulnerable.
"Well," Wendy said at last, "do you know how to put these things together?"
"Hell no," I said. "I only put them together once a year and I'm usually dead drunk when I do it, so it's kind of an instinctive thing."
Wendy bent down to pull the tent poles apart and separate the pegs from the birds nest on the ground. Her tits swung free of her body as she bent over and I almost choked as her cleavage seemed somehow even larger. She looked up suddenly.
"What?" She demanded. "One sip of beer and now you're as useless as your lazy-ass friends?"
She got me to smile, anyway. We set to work on the tent, chatting freely as we worked. I tried to keep my mind on the job, but I was quite overwhelmingly aware of how close she sat. I could smell her perfume and shampoo and wanted to lean over and bury my face in her neck and hair. Several times she laughed and squeezed my knee or arm, sending ripples of energy from my fingertips to my chest.
Finally we were finished and headed back to the others. Thankfully someone had gone to get firewood and start the fire as Wendy and I had dawdled until almost dusk with the tent set-up. "There you two are!" Jeff exclaimed as we neared the fire. "We were wondering what you'd gotten up to!"
"Thanks to us the tents are now set up for you, master," I replied, performing a mock bow.
"Riiiiight," Jeff replied. He and Dave looked fit to bursting with something. There was something about the way Melissa was looking a little bit too nonchalant that told me it had to do with her. I found, though, that I didn't care. I just wanted to sit by the fire, drink some beer, and watch the course of orange and yellow brightness stab at the cool night air.
It was not to be. Dave insisted on talking, hovering close to Melissa. He tried to tell scary stories, screaming "Boo!" into Melissa's face and then wrapping his arms around her, pretending to comfort her. Wendy, Jeff and I sat silently trying to ignore the mounting awkwardness. For my part, my earlier anger was returning and finally I reached the point where I couldn't stand it any longer and got up to go to bed.
"G'night all," I said and went to my tent.
I had a motive for going to bed early, that being to be the first one up in the morning. This is a glorious prize. The morning was pristine and quiet, like a rare unopened collectible. The lake was mirror-still with a layer of hovering mist. The sky was blue, unending and cloudless. I tiptoed excitedly toward the canoe, ready to slip it stealthily into the virgin waters, ghosting over the lake in deep communion with the water.
There was no canoe. Someone had woken up earlier than me and paddled away. Disappointment and resentment boiled up inside me and I slumped into one of the folding chairs around the sooty remains of the campfire. Not long after I heard the telltale bump of a paddle against fibreglass and looked up to see the canoe edging along the shore. When it came close I saw Wendy in the stern paddling with some difficulty. I walked to the shore.
"Good morning," I said in a hushed voice, respecting the massive weight of an entirely quiet and still forest. Wendy's head snapped up and she smiled.
