I was visiting my friend Sandy at college. It was the summer of her sophomore year and she had undertaken a light course load along with a couple of part-time jobs.
She was living in a neighbourhood close to campus that had been completely taken over by students. She was sharing a house with 3 guys, Lyle, Emerson and Tyler. They were all in computer science and pretty nerdy. I'm guessing they couldn't believe their luck when Sandy had said she wanted to move in with them. It made perfect sense to me. Sandy was hot-looking and loved to flirt and be adored, but her weakness was strong, confident burly men.
She had her roommates wrapped around her little finger, but she'd wasn't overly attracted to them so she'd never hook up with them. "Don't shit where you eat," she explained to me. That was Sandy.
I actually quite like nerdy guys. Lyle in particular, I discovered. Sandy would have encouraged me to hop his lean, awkward bones, but I had a policy of not hooking up with guys without an appropriate "getting to know" you period. I was only visiting until Sunday.
The weather was perfect and, whenever you walked down the street the atmosphere was either buzzing with anticipation for the next party or hung with mild suffering from the last one.
Just like when I visited last year at the same time, I knew that Sandy would be dragging me to at least one such party.
The big afternoon party that she'd dragged me to last year was a birthday bash put on by a guy named Jeremy. It was his birthday and he liked mud wrestling. He liked it so much that he created a big mud pit in his backyard and invited all his friends over to have a tournament. He called it his birthday mud-suit mash.
My name is Talia. Most of my friends call me Tally. I can't speak to what happened the first year of the birthday mud-suit mash because Sandy and I weren't there, but the second year a couple of girls got carried away and finished their match wrestling topless. The cheering was so loud that I was sure someone would call the cops. Apparently there were only about 20 of Jeremy's friends the first year, but I'd say there were around 40 there last year.
Sandy was a freshman last year, so she hadn't known what the party was about. We'd just wandered into it and definitely weren't dressed to jump in a mud pit.
As soon as I arrived at Sandy's place this year, she started talking about how we would be going to the mash again, and that we'd absolutely be going ready to wrestle.
Being ready meant wearing a bathing suit or clothes that you didn't mind getting trashed. If you wore a bathing suit, you needed to choose something sturdy. Accidental exposure was at your own risk.
Trying to purposely remove your opponent's clothing was not allowed, unless it was agreed to prior to the match and, much to the disappointment of the majority of attendees, intentional strip mud-wrestling had not been featured at the mud-suit mash so far.
I brought out the inappropriately flimsy string bikini I'd brought and said, "sorry Sandy, there's no way I could mud wrestle in this. But I'll happily cheer you on!"
Sandy appraised my bikini and said, "I think most of the guys at the party would be okay with you getting all slick with mud in that." She was joking, but only because she knew I'd never do it. Sandy loved being audacious and pushing boundaries.
She wasn't done with the mud wrestling idea though. We had to go get groceries and, while we were at the local strip mall, she pulled me into a second-hand shop. "Maybe we'll find you a suit that you can wear to the mash in here."
I'm 22, 5'5", reasonably athletic and I have perky C-cup boobs. There were several suits that fit and a retro one-piece in particular that seemed both sturdy and fairly sexy. Sandy was insistent that whatever I wore had to be sexy. The fabric was held together on each side by 3 sturdy-looking metal rings. The front panel was flat, but there were twists in the back panel. A pair of rings attached the front and back panels the hips, then the back twisted and attached to a second pair of rings before twisting again and attaching to two rings that attached to the breast cups. There were two more rings just above the cups that attached to shoulder straps that went down the back to the back panel, doing a twist before attaching to the side rings.
I tested the fabric carefully, even trying to tear it with my fingernails. It was not going to tear apart easily. The other good feature was that you stepped into it and pulled the shoulder straps on. There were no snaps or adjustments on the straps to fail in embarrassing ways.
I pointed out that it was an easy suit to grab onto, which might be a disadvantage, and there were a couple of other suits that were more plain and just as sturdy, but when Sandy saw me wearing it she whistled and said, "that is definitely the one. The only problem with it is that it makes your ass look hotter than mine."
I tried to find other ways to say no to Sandy, but she was relentless. It was also really hard to avoid getting caught up in her enthusiasm.
Anticipating a big turnout, Jeremy and his roommates had sent out invitations this year and Sandy didn't have one. Apparently, that was why our bathing suits had to be sexy. She lived less than a mile from Jeremy's place, so on the afternoon of the mud-suit mash, we just put on our suits, our flip-flops and each hung a towel around our neck. Sandy correctly guessed that two pretty girls showing some skin and looking ready to get in the mud wouldn't be asked for invitations.
Sandy didn't even bother mentioning the party to her roommates. Without invitations, they had no chance of getting in.
Sandy was much braver than me. She wore a bikini. It was sturdy and didn't have any snaps or strings, but in an enthusiastic match, there was a good chance that her lovely D-cup boobs or her cute bubble butt would end up being inadvertently revealed. Knowing Sandy, she actually welcomed that bit of exposure.
For my part, I was very happy to have a suit that would remain in place the whole time. It did have a tendency to ride up my bum a bit, but I could live with that.
Before we left, Sandy had us remove our jewellery. For me, that just meant removing my earrings. Sandy pinned her house key to her towel. It felt kind of weird to leave the house without anything but one piece of clothing, some flip flops and a towel. Not even our phones, but she said we were close to home, and this way we could just enjoy the party. One of my arguments against going was that there would be lots of video being taken, and I didn't want to be recognized if anything was posted online. Sandy's answer to that was that she would call me "Peggy" so no one would know my real name, and once we got into the mud, our faces were bound to get covered in mud.
She had an answer for every argument I made, so that's how I found myself being ushered into Jeremy's back yard nervously anticipating my first mud-wrestling match.
Some guy we'd never met put some tasty alcoholic drinks in our hands. Whether he did it on his own initiative, or if it was his job to lubricate pretty girls toward the mud pit, we never found out.
The space for the party was actually pretty large. All of the houses in the neighbourhood were rented by students, so the party had expanded into the neighbouring yards.
From the cheering up ahead of us as we pressed ourselves into the crowd, it was clear that a match was already underway. Four guys were getting hosed down, and two girls were up to mid-calf in the mud pit, ready to start. There were at least 70 people there. Maybe 30 were girls and they were split half and half between those wearing swimsuits and those in shorts and t-shirts.
