(Welcome to 1950s mid-West America.)
One night over dinner the subject came up, the awful embarrassing subject.
It was raised by Rodney's twin sister and their female cousin who lived with them in their house on Elm Street, Brewer. They raised it to embarrass Rodney, the shy 18 year old who struggled with his grades at Grover Cleveland High.
Rodney was a quiet boy. He was tall and awkward. Having carrot-red hair and pale skin sprayed with freckles may have explained some of his shyness. And Rodney didn't have a girl friend. In class he sat silent, fearing any questions. He was hopeless at Math and English. He had been labelled stupid more than he liked.
But he was in the school swim team. Something of a star. Also lately he had started to exercise with weights in the gym at the YMCA- squats and the benchpress his favourites- and, on waking up every morning, would do 200 push-ups on his bedroom rug. With his clothes off, and poised to dive, he was transformed: no longer gawky, an athlete of the Athenian Golden Age, only a bit more slender- and, of course, his hair was red, and not just on his head. Naked- in swim class or in the showers- he did get attention, especially- and it gave him the creeps- from queer old Coach Compton.
The point is swimming and diving seemed the only things Rodney was good at.
But away from the pool he blushed easily and his eyes watered when people turned to him, girls especially.
Especially on the awful, intimidating, shameful subject.
"Mom why do boys have to swim in the nude?"
They were at the table. The meatloaf- made of ground chuck, eggs and breadcrumbs- was finished, their plates bare. His mother had lighted a Chesterfield and the pungent smoke flavoured the air. There was promise of cheddar pear pie. Soon they would be in the living room watching Leave it to Beaver and Gunsmoke.
Rodney froze at the words, nearly choked on the last sip of his milk. The three females were looking at him, his mother through a filigree of smoke.
Then his awful cousin joined in.
"Yeah, boys at school have to swim in their birthday suits. And down at the Y."
Birthday suits! The ridiculous words always made Rodney cringe.
"Don't be silly," said Mrs Ricketson. "Boys always swim nude, yes, in their birthday suits..."
Those words again, thought Rodney! They always say it about boys going nude! Birthday suits.
"...it's so threads from their swimsuits don't clog the filters in the pool."
And the two girls spluttered. At the ridiculous, comic idea, a whole class of boys stalking naked into the pool area. At how embarrassed those boys would be if girls got to burst in. At Rodney's terrible embarrassment right now.
Oh, it was a rich, gamey subject- 18 year old males naked and shamed- for two hot-blooded 18 year old girls.
And Rodney wanted to sink into the floor.
"But Mom, we get to wear swim suits."
"Yeah, no one worries about our swimsuits clogging the filters."
"Well, girls are expected to be modest, boys are different."
Like dogs with a bone the girls would not let go.
"So boys get to see one another...without a stitch!"
"They look at one another's naked bottoms...and...organs of generation!"
The expression came right out of a 1920 Practical Medical Dictionary that Rodney's sister had found in their grandpop's attic.
""Oh, cut that talk!" ordered his mother. But she was clearly amused. "Organs of generation" tickled her fancy. Her son- just think- had "organs of generation" hanging in his groin certainly, she assumed, enlarged and developed since she had last seen him in the bath. She exhaled smoke, and smiled, in a far-away fashion.
But Rodney's cousin closed in. She stared hard at blushing Rodney. "And aren't you scared that girls might be peeping?"
The bashful boy withered with shame but the girls kept it up.
Across the table they peppered him with questions.
Girls from his own class, girls he sat with every day- how would he feel if they saw him without a stitch? And did female teachers get to see them? They heard they sometimes walked in and that the boys hated it and desperately tried to cover up. And down at the Y did mothers get to watch the races?
Mrs Ricketson interrupted.
"Now stop making Rodney embarrassed. Your fathers did it. Nothing to be ashamed of. Think of the ancient Greeks and their Olympics, all done in the nude..."
"But if it's normal and healthy, why can't we watch?"
Mrs Ricketson looked like she was thinking hard. Her lips curled into a hint of a smile as she looked at her cringing son.
"Why would nice young ladies want to look at a lot of awkward, gangling young fellas...getting round a pool...naked as jays..."
At this Rodney felt very small.
Grinning like crocodiles the girls undressed him with their beady eyes. Rodney felt they were inspecting all the things that embarrassed him- his scroll of orange pubic hair...his extra large penis head...his fat balls lounging in the loose scrotum that hung low, like drapes.
"Well, I think we should go to the next family day at the Y and see Rodney compete."
His cousin let this hang in the air, staring brazenly at Rodney. The boy shivered at the prospect.
"As it happens," said Mrs Ricketson. "I got a letter from the coach about the next big swim meet. A competition with Paul Revere High in Minneapolis- the fellas have to compete in swimsuits- so all the boys will need new ones, in the latest style and colors, up to date with the swimsuits at the last Olympics apparently. I'll be taking Rodney to Logan's to pick his...after school on Friday."
"Oh Mom! Can we come?"
And so on the second floor of Logan's Department Store in downtown Brewer, smelling of floor polish and haberdashery, the three females and the tall boy stood at the male swimwear display with Miss Rosalind Newbold, one of the store's most seasoned saleswomen. She had, for as long as anyone remembered, taken delight in fondling and holding aloft mens' trunks and helping boys find the right size and lead them into the change booths and help them fit them on. Miss Newbold was neither young nor old. She was a tall, spindly, sharp-featured woman with cats' eyes glasses on a chain dangling the front of her black uniform.
As with his mother's smell, Rodney picked up her scent: Chesterfield cigarettes and perfume, and, after a time, something else...a sour, intimate smell.
She was vaguely familiar, this frightening and unfriendly lady. Had he caught a glimpse of her that terrible night in the school baths when Coach Compton, stark naked himself, had opened the steel doors and admitted half a dozen ladies- oh god! It had made the boys freeze, horrified! Ladies! Being let in to watch the boys exercise, dive and swim for a two hour practice session! Who had those ladies been? Friends of the coach? Friends of the coach's old mother? The boys never found out.
Either way they had come in eagerly, staring hard at the swimmers suddenly caught in the nude. That had been horrible: the ladies gazing at them. Rodney would never forget the womens' looks that night- eyes with bloodlust, as if they were glued to a boxing match. Yes, how they had stared as the coach had called the boys around the pool to order and they had shuffled into line. Oh god, and that night didn't they stare when a boy got stiff!
It had happened with Rodney. He knew what to call it. His mother had last year given him a handbook entitled A Guide to Young Manhood, published by the Boy Scouts of America. It devoted several paragraphs to explaining what it solemnly called "involuntary erections."
He had sported a particularly stubborn one that night- an "involuntary erection"- as he and three buddies had crouched in the chlorinated water.
"Out of the pool, Ricketonson, and show us a dive!"
Out of the water? In front of them? Nude, and stiff?
And there had been nothing to do but climb out with his bolt hard erection sticking out from his red curls and shuffle along in front of the women- his thing slapping his tummy as he walked- all the way to the board and climb up and stand there on display, cock reaching for the ceiling and showing off its under-belly, until after what seemed an hour the coach told him to dive.
Or had Miss Newbold been with that group of ladies the boys had glimpsed in the window of the little store room on the upper level of the smelly old brick and tile Y baths, one night when they were training? It had shocked them, that half a dozen "old ducks" had been suddenly sighted, noses pressed to the glass, smiling, peeping it seems for a full hour while boys had stretched, lounged, limbered up, queued to dive, heaved themselves from the pool...with the ladies looking on. And many of the fellas had, as usual, sustained erections or half erections during that time. Imagine...ladies from Brewer seeing boys- young men they may have known- with their cocks shamefully stiff!
As Miss Newbold rummaged for Jatzen and Catalina trunks Rodney became more convinced she had been there on at least one of those occasions. No, he was certain it had been that time at school- she had been with the group of ladies walking through the steel doors, standing there watching them practice, peering with her glasses sitting on the end of her long, somewhat pointed nose.
Yes, it had been Miss Newbold. The long nose, the glasses, the peering stare aimed right at the boys' groins. At Rodney's particularly, with its rigid member jutting up from wet, red curls. Its head so mushroomy. Its wrinkled and veined underbelly on display. Her eyes popping out of her head. Feasting on his erection.
"No, no, no," she was now saying. "These old fashioned swim shorts with waist bands and pleats..."
She held up a Jantzen. Knee length and loose. Like boxers.
Yes, thought Rodney, sell us that one. So loose he could almost imagine a full erection- even of his freakishly long member- being sheltered in its floral folds. It would disguise bulges and swellings. Disguise the fleshy penis head which Rodney's friend, Danny Bold, had said, standing with him in the showers, looked like a "plum jammed on a pole." Even a half erection which thrust out parallel to the ground might pump away unobserved. Oh yes, Rodney wanted its looseness and folds and cover!
"Old fashioned!" declared Miss Newbold, looking furiously at the item in her hands. "They are too, too modest. They show nothing of a young man's full physique, nothing of his manly characteristics..."
Too modest! Manly characteristics! Full physique!
She meant they don't show off my cock and balls, thought Rodney!
Here they all looked from the swimsuit towards Rodney's waist. Even his mother had a grin curling at the corners of her mouth as her eyes seemed to drill through his dungarees. Again Rodney grasped the truth: these females wanted to see him nude. They wanted to see his prick. They gave the impression they knew his prick was...well, big. Even "funny" big. In fact something told him they seemed to know about his embarrassingly enlarged, plum-like glans. And know of his very low hanging testicles in a voluminous pouch.
After all his buddies had made fun of it in the showers. They had said his balls "reached his knees" and they had laughed at the huge vein down the middle of his cock ("Like a ventilation duct," jeered Dave Hanney, in the showers.) Had his buddies told their sisters...and had their sisters told his own sister? Had those nosy female teachers gossiped? The ladies behind the glass at the Y who had stared, eyes popping? Had they passed word? Very likely one of them knew his Mom.
"These are a far more modern version!"
Miss Newbold swooped on a light blue swimsuit and held it up. It was square cut and would reach from belly button- even hide the belly button- down to the groin but leave every inch of the legs bared. It was not loose, not one bit. It would stretch tight across front and back. Skin tight. It was in a shimmering sky blue.
"Jantzen!" She declared, "But not boxer shorts. No loose folds. No pleats. It stretches tight. Very tight. See?"
Rodney gulped. He froze.
He gulped again...while something tingled in his groin. Tingled and twirled and tickled at his insides- at the sight of the shiny sky blue material...the high cut that would put all of his legs on display right up to the cleft of his groin...and the tight fit across the front that would show the outline of his prick and balls...so tightly stretched, it would show them in all their detail- the big sculpted head, even the heavy central vein.
His mother, his sister and cousin took the swim suit in their hands, grinning.
"Yes," his mother said. "Shows off all the legs, unlike those shorts that flap around the knees."
"Oh yes, shows off the fella's legs. What we call the high cut."
