I was 26, it was an unusually hot May, and it was my last chance to enjoy a month of unlimited travel on Europe's trains at the bargain student price.
I was a lone traveller, and looked younger than my years. I was a very late developer, and though I had experienced one or two fumbling encounters with girls, I was, to be honest, still a virgin.
I had decided this European tour would be make or break - and I headed for the beaches of the south, where I was sure I would find some liberated young Europeans who would be happy to rid me of these anglo-saxon inhibitions.
Mind you, I knew was also I was doomed to fail. What convinced me wasn't my background or my upbringing, it was simpler than that - anatomy. The size of my penis was the true reason.
From an early age I'd been aware I was a lot smaller than other boys. It hit me the first day at the hated all-male secondary school, when we were forced into communal showers, stark naked, as the games teachers slapped us with their wet towels. I hated sport, and became so plump that I could barely see my own genitals. I was given a new nickname - a Latin word, "Praeparvus", meaning very, very small indeed. The shame of this had been branded deep into my psyche, and had affected almost every aspect of my life since - especially, needless to say, my (non-existent) sex life. Basically, my self-confidence had been destroyed.
All these thoughts were going round in my head as my train pulled into Marseilles. I found a cheap room in a very scruffy hotel, and started to explore.
After a day in the hot city I yearned for beaches. I'd read about the secluded "calanques" down the coast, so next morning packed trunks, towel, camera, and food and caught the bus to the nearest one.
It was a hot day and the bus was packed, mainly local students, I thought.
We reached the end of the line, everyone bundled off, all heading the same way. I followed a group of four noisy French girls, who seems to be eager to get away from the even noisier boys who'd been teasing them on the bus. I held back, and saw that the French boys had given up and were chatting up three Scandinavians with blonde pigtails and backpacks.
I stumbled down a very steep, rough path and soon got onto a lovely rocky beach, with plenty of boulders to hide behind. Not that there were many others there to hide from.
As I unrolled the towel, I heard voices from above. The French girls from the bus were aiming for a patch of beach about 10 metres away from me. They staked their places and started unpacking bottles and food and sun lotion and so, chattering and giggling.
I rolled over and let the sun soak in to my poor pale body. I had awkwardly changed into a pair of rather worn black Speedos. They'd done for my last six holidays, so why not this one? I must've been fatter at 19 though, as they seemed distinctly loose.
I was half-reading, half-snoozing when a girl's voice asked me something in French.
I twisted around and sat up and was staring into the gorgeous, grinning face of a girl, about 20, and she was making the gesture of rolling a cigarette with her two thumbs and index fingers. She wore a stringy light-blue bikini, her olive skin gleamed. Her small yet full breasts were gently, loosely, cupped in the minimal material.
She needed Rizlas - presumably for a joint - and knew I had them from the half-smoked roll-up wedged between my fingers. I got the pack out of the bag and handed it to her. As she took out about 12 leaves, she seemed to scan my poor white speedo-clad body. I felt a tiny stirring.
She said: "You are English, right?"
"How did you guess"
"You look like English hippy".
It was true I had shoulder length hair then, and as I was thin and a bit curvy, I was sometimes even mistaken for a girl.
She thanked me and went back to her friends. I decided to to take a swim, but kept looking back at that group of girls. I came in to sunbathe and put oil on as much of me as I could reach. But I was thinking all the time of that gorgeous girl, with her playful, smiling eyes. And of course, her three friends as well.
I watched them sneakily from under my right armpit as one by one they got changed, and trekked up and down the beach, some having a real swim, some just messing. Two of them got topless. I very carefully got the little digital camera out of my bag and propped it on stones under my t-shirt, set the zoom to max and surreptitiously snapped 10 or 20 shots of them. They all seemed to me unbelievably gorgeous and attractive.
A few minutes later another of the group came over. She had cropped bottle-blond hair and mischievous elfin face with dark brown eyes. She said, "You come talk us in English, please? Is good if we speak with real English man, yes? Please, come and smoke stuff?"
The former tiny stirring returned with force. |t appeared someone had pushed an AA battery down the front my trunks, perpendicular to the body.
That - to be frank - was the size of it, and as I glanced down I saw that she had also glanced down and the ghost of a quizzical smile flashed across her face.
"Please, yes? Just five minutes?"
I fluffed, groping for jeans and shirt and said I 'd just put some clothes on and join them. I was urgently hoping that I could do something to suppress the seven centimetres of arousal before standing up. I cursed my foolishness at wearing Speedos - the worst thing, obviously, for someone with my inadequacy. Now I come to think of it, this must have been a Freudian thing all along - I was subconsciously inviting humiliation even before I realised it.
"No need clothes, come, come!"
