Mrs Guelf, who owned the photo development store in Brewer, had twin daughters: Gwendolyn and Jessica, 18 years old and still in attendance at Grover Cleveland High. "Those poor Guelf girls," lamented one local Brewer lady. "Both plain as pudding." Indeed their skin was pasty and their mousey hair hung limp. There was a hint- in this, and the prison-like drabness of their clothing- that their breath may not be altogether wholesome. In this context that they both had uncommonly large busts was a peculiarity, not a compensation. None of the sex-obsessed Brewer boys dreamt of probing beneath their bras to stroke their melon-like equipment. The price of proximity would have been too high. Better the perky if smaller conical offerings of one of the Doris Day lookalikes.
No, the Guelfs had never been taken to sock hop or prom; never been entertained by a boy in Pop's Soda; never been whisked out on a date to the Dandy Drive-in or the movie palace.
Yet their eyes had strayed.
To the trouser fronts of the athletes in corridor and classroom, to the exposed underarms of fellas in basketball games, to the photos of Greek statues in the school library. When rumours of the school musical had spread they had pored over Miss Cuff's mimeograph of the costumes and feverishly imagined what different boys might look like in, say, a three inch by five inch frontal flap. That they had both been enormously excited by this idea- of boys stripped buff naked and put in these flimsy and tiny garments and made to perform- could not be denied.
As it happened no girls at school had been more aroused than the Guelf twins by the notion of boys swimming in the nude. Imagine- boys from their class and the sports teams and the church, boys they saw everyday- getting around stripped to the buff! They day-dreamed about boys naked in and round the school and YMCA pools. And there were stories of boys by the lake who also went nude working out and swimming, with rumours that at least one girl had spied with binoculars from the shrubs. They had taken the keenest interest in any intelligence on the subject. With nude swimming in the school pool, did any of the female teachers get to go in? Did any of their cheeky school mates really get to peek, as rumour suggested, through loose bricks or spy holes? What did particular boys look like, with their clothes off? The questions tormented them.
Meanwhile the idea of those arrogant boys- those boys who ignored them- being stripped and embarrassed and vulnerable, thrilled them to their cores. Jessica would claw at her roomy vagina at night, under the blankets, dreaming of how she might catch Rodney Ricketson or Mark Sullivan in the chlorine-scented school pool after hours. Through the shimmering green water she would see that they were naked. They would gulp with embarrassment and try to disguise their nudity by paddling with their arms. Meanwhile she would stand there in her swim suit and tell them to get out. Their faces would tense up with shame. But she would insist. "Come on, fellas. Out this instant or I report you." But they would beg her and plead to be spared this humiliation. And finally she would order them to haul themselves out "this moment" and, bit by bit, she would see them nude and bend in close and stare at their groins and tease them mercilessly and make them twist and turn with shame so she could inspect their rears...and, imagining their nudity and their embarrassment, she would explode in big repetitive orgasmic shakes and stifled moans.
Which, night after night, would be an invitation for Gwendolwyn in the adjacent bed to switch on her mental movie and imagine that, walking in the woods, she frightened handsome Carl Harlson and Kerry Fulbright in a bosky dell, sunbaking on rocks near an old swimming pool, drying off after a nude swim. Carl was lying on his back, his genitals like those the girls had seen on Greek statues, totally exposed. Kerry was on his tummy, his shapely bottom absorbing the rays. "Well, this is a pretty how-de-do," she declares to make them shrivel, their clothes out of reach. In this fantasy she threatens to tell their sisters she had caught them naked and that they were up to no good. "Aw, no Gwendolwyn, don't do that...please," Carl begs. "We'll do anything you want...honest," offers a desperate Kerry. Soon she had both standing before her, hands on heads, and she shames them with a physical inspection. Oh, how the notion of shaming these boys thrilled her as she clawed at her own genitals. To make it worse for them she probed and fingered like a nurse- played with their things, stroking their bottoms- while they winced and twisted with the humiliation and all the while begged her not to tell on them and, in the end, she had two naked boys going wild as she exposed her melon breasts...and instructed them to kiss lasciviously their wide aureole and nipples...until she, letting this fantasy rage in her mind, exploded like her sister.
Neither girl said anything to her twin. Neither had to.
One summer day, before the start of one of the all-girls' classes, the twins sat bolt upright overhearing the panted conversation of the five attractive young women grouped at the desk in front of them. Attractive girls, girls who unlike them went on dates with boys.
"Yes, yesterday it happened. My aunt was there...oh, she said it was the funniest..."
"My brother came home with Mom and our neighbour. They were beaming. Oh, they looked overjoyed. Looked...on-fire. He looked like he was in tears."
"My dopey brother couldn't look us in the eye all night! And Mom kept prattling away about how manly all the boys looked, swimming in the nude just like their fathers and how much Gran had enjoyed it and she was surprised by how many aunts and neighbours had found the time to go for a YMCA swim meet. Every time she said something like this my brother looked like he just wanted to crawl away."
"Listen! Listen! You know my aunt? The naughty one? Who runs around?"
"With the big earrings? The blue stockings?"
"With the boyfriends? Who likes younger guys?"
"Well, she gave me ALL the details! She said that the boys had to march out of the locker room stark, stark naked! Not a stitch. She said they were SO ashamed and bashful, blushing like fire hydrants as they shuffled past. Not a stitch! In their birthday suits! Aunt's so funny...she said 'their equipment was swinging!' And that all the ladies, no matter where they sat, could see them!"
"Oh my god!"
"Jumping Jesus!"
"And that queer coach made them stand on the starting blocks for ages. She said she had never seen males more embarrassed! And...this is SO incredible...the coach even made them go and sit with their moms and families in the bleachers...that's right!...stark naked...cramming past them...and sitting between them...and she said they all looked like they wanted to die!"
The girls spluttered and swooned.
"Tell us, who was there?"
"Oh yes, pleeeeeese!"
And the girl proceeded to reel off names, and other girls listed brothers or cousins or neighbours, and at each name one or two would let forth a suppressed shriek as they imagined that boy- so familiar from class or basketball team or church choir or neighbourhood or grocery deliveries- walking around without so much as a cotton thread. At each revelation they became more excited.
The Guelfs noticed that as they talked one girl had pressed her palm into the crotch of her skirt, another had started stroking her upper thighs where her skirts had drifted high, and a third was unconsciously stroking her breasts.
"Oh HIM! Without a swim suit! Oh, how I wish I had seen that!"
"Oh god! I always wondered what he would look like!"
"Aunt knows Kerry Fulbright because he mows her lawn and she said...oh, I don't know how to put it...that his 'prick,' and I'm sorry but that's how she talks...his prick got stiff...poked out, and that it sticks out to the side, at an angle!"
There were suppressed shrieks. The two Guelfs, in the background and unnoticed, pressed their thighs tight with tingling agitation. Oh, to have seen it, pined Jessica. Oh, to have sat in those bleachers, dreamt Gwendolwyn.
"...and she said that Jimmy Strawbridge had a short, stubby one..."
The girls hissed and spluttered with incredulity.
"...and that little Timmy Townsend sitting with his mom and aunt had a sweet teensy one too BUT that Mark Sullivan..."
"Yes! Mark Sullivan! Ohhhhh, tell us!"
"...was a whopper! Yes, long and thick with a fat head! That's how she talks. And she told me about the nice looking Negro boy? You know, Samson Douglas. She said he is even more handsome without clothes and seemed very bold, walking right past ladies without any attempt to cover up. Aunt said his whole organ was big and black and upright but she said that his balls were huge- she said he and Mark Sullivan had the biggest ball-bags."
There was a quick, near-hysterical exchange in which several of the girls explained to the others that boys, behind and beneath their cylindrical cocks, have dangling bags- yes, it is indeed funny: little bags that contain two balls. Yes, balls that simply hang there in the bags. Bags made out of skin. And this scrotum is very sensitive and their balls can't be handled too roughly.
This new information made the eyes of girls flame with prurient interest.
"Here's the best bit. When they were standing up there before diving- and the wait went on for a long time- one after they other they all...and this is how aunt put it...(it's so cute)...'suffered erections!' Like that? Suffered!"
"Erections?" asked one of the less educated.
"It's when the boy's thing...his penis...(that's the word mothers like)...or his organ..."
"Oh, organ! Penis! Just call it a cock or a prick!"
"Whatever, when it stands up or sticks out or goes stiff! When I caught my brother with a bulge in his pyjamas he whispered that he had a hard-on. Get it- hard! A hard-on! That's what they call it. He begged me not to tell Mom. That's how I got to see it!"
More gasps and giggles and splutters.
"Aunt said that the hilarious thing was watching them straining to make it stop and there was nothing they could do, nothing to stop their silly cocks reaching for the ceiling! Oh, she said, they hated it! They were SOOOOOO embarrassed! Aunt said when males are in their teens their pricks have minds of their own! And she said one cock after another stood up and...she said this was the worst thing for each and every one of them...THEY KNEW THEIR MOTHERS WERE WATCHING!"
"Their moms! How humiliating!"
"Imagine how those big athletes musta felt!"
"Mommy's eyes all over them! And aunt's and grandmom's too, and the lady next door!"
Here the Guelf twins were close to fainting with the strange emotions that swept over them. Both shivered, with the physical details being sketched so vividly, this talk of organs and cocks and testicles and balls and hard-ons, and something else: with the thrilling notion of boys they knew but who never spared them a glance, being demolished with shame, mothers watching them naked, and suffering this further indignity of "erections."
Their school mates were nearly hopping with excitement.
"Oh my gosh! Can you imagine a line of them...on the blocks...with their sticks- sorry, pricks- poking up?"
"Yes, and all those cameras snapping!"
"Cameras?"
"Yes, the moms all went equipped. Gonna be some interesting additions to all those family albums..."
And that was when English teacher Ada Braithwaite arrived and shushed girls to their places to start the lesson on Jane Austen's Emma, from a more elevated age when young women were not tainted with such unromantic instincts.