Veronica Peeps

The girl walked briskly through the outskirts of town. She walked past the town dairy and milk processing plant, past the rail yards with their silos, past the drive-in theatre with posters for the latest Elvis movie, Jailhouse Rock.

It was the 1950s in mid-West America.

She walked past the houses of the poor people, with rusted car bodies and dented ash cans behind chicken wire in their front yards. She waited till a lorry with Black Hawke Meats on its side roared past in the direction of the interstate and, not waiting for the exhaust to clear, she crossed the main road that led out of town. She left the road and entered the woods, on a pathway that snaked through thick forest of black spruce and red pine. It was dark and cool with the beating wings of an occasional waterfowl to rustle the silence and, very soon, the scent of water - of one of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes, one of six in the immediate vicinity of Brewer, the town she had lived all her 18 years.

Veronica was a plain girl. She feared her breasts were too heavy, her hips too full. She thought her body resembled that of a stone neolithic fertility goddess she had seen in an art text. That her Ancient History and Art teacher, Miss Simpkins, had started sympathetically taking her under her wing just made her fear she was doomed to share the spinster's fate. That she had started performing well at school - especially in Miss Simpkins' class - only isolated her from the girls around her. They saw her as an "odd ball."

She had begun fearing in the last year that she would never be with a male. Yet her heart yearned...and her body.

In the first warm weather of the season she had drifted onto this trail, headed in the direction of the lake. She wanted to get away from school, away from the other teenagers, out of town. To sit by the lake and be alone. To day dream. To play with her secret thoughts. Pat Boone's latest, Love Letters in the Sand, was going through her head.

There were the first wild flowers - wild rose, indigo, bluebell, marigold- blooming in a celebration of fertility and renewal.

Fertility - it was a theme she could respond to since her favourite subject at school was the ancient world. Working under Miss Simpkins, she had spent a whole year on the ancient Greeks, their stories and mythology. Their sculpture and vase paintings. And especially the sculpture and vase painting of warriors and athletes.

If the truth be said, of nude warriors and athletes.

In one-on-one lunchtime and after-school discussions with the girl, Miss Simpkins lingered on the subject, gently nudging Veronica's attention to a book of photos of bronze and marble statues, noticing the girl's eyes dilate with interest. She saw Veronica gulp, tentatively turning the pages under her teacher's gaze. Pages of black and white photos of gods and men - of the Piraeus Apollo, of the spear carrier of Polyklutos, of a bronze ephebe, of the Farnese Hercules, of the Poseidon bronze. Each male figure naked without fig leaf- or shame.

Gloriously nude male figures.

As they gazed in admiration the teacher said nudity was "the costume" of Greek heroes and soldiers. This paradox seemed to quicken Veronica's interest. She shifted in her seat. Moved her thighs together.

The teacher noticed the girl's gaze settle on the middle of each figure, to the space between navel and scrotum- Veronica had been looting anatomy and medical texts to learn these words- including the ridge that the Greeks chiseled from hips to groin; musculature, the teacher said, that was called "the Adonis belt" or "iliac grove"...a particularly decorative, sinuous muscle. Tantalisingly it ran down to the groin where dangled the elegant tapered penis...resting on a bulging globe.

And then the teacher talked about the Greek "cult" of male nudity - these words made the girl breathe still more heavily- a cult! Of going about stark naked! The girl- for so long repressed in her world of church and family- was almost swooning when Miss Simpkins delicately opened a book on black and red figure painting on Greek vases, the athletes in profile, muscles incised in sinuous lines. And- how quickly the girl's eyes found it- the same tapered tubes of flesh. They lolled atop what looked like pieces of ripe fruit. Big globes of ripe fruit waiting to be fingered, tested and plucked from the vine.

Miss Simpkins said, in a quiet voice, that the young men of ancient Greece had always exercised "fully nude"...and let the frisson hang in the air. The girl shivered, and continued turning the pages, head down. And her teacher had added that girls had been able to watch. Girls had been able to present prizes to the winning athletes. Her student visibly shuddered, clearly came close to gasping.

And once when one of their cosy sessions had ended and the girl, flushed and distracted, had left for her afternoon classes her teacher had noticed a telltale moistness on her seat. It was fragrant with a young woman's desires.

Her teacher filed it away to think about later.

Veronica was a girl from a Baptist family. She had never once seen a naked male. Because she had never swum, not even seen one with his shirt off. If she saw a male student from the basketball court she would avert her gaze from his hairy legs and exposed upper arms. Otherwise she might start imagining hair on other parts of his body, of white flesh too. Once a gardener with a naked torso shocked her and she turned her head rather than be caught staring at his chest and nipples, at his belly button and- horrors- the fuse of hair leading from it to his belt. She had shuddered. Hence these pictures of nude Greek athletes had set her on fire. Kept her awake. Stirred her imagination as she furiously stroked herself to orgasm beneath the blankets. Night after night.

Thus her heart had fluttered when Miss Simpkins quietly suggested she take the art books home. Averting her gaze she swiftly swept them into her school bag. She could do no other.

Then for weeks she would retreat to the privacy of the attic to lie on an old mattress and dilate over the illustrations. Or she might study them in her bed with a torch till midnight. At first she had fallen in love with the Spear Carrier. From the classic period, it was a marble statue of a naked soldier with a heavy upper body boasting a broad slabbed chest, a savagely defined central abdomen and decisive groves that started at his hips and tapered to the pubic zone - his "Adonis belt" as this muscular definition, so beloved of the Greeks, might be called- yes, to the groin where dangled a delicate tube of flesh- thin, tapered, like a new-born snake- resting on a spherical bag.

Then she might feast on a later piece, Hellenistic, from 200 BC, the so-called Barberini Faun or Sleeping Satyr. It was nothing other than a nude youth seated and sprawling back on a rock, legs provocatively spread wide so that any viewer's attention- certainly this girl's- was focused on, yes, the tube of flesh but, even more, the large lolling bag under it, not the perfect globe or sphere of earlier sculptures but a loose-hanging bag bifurcated- split in two- with a couple of distinct compartments. Loosely hanging between the muscled thighs. And when she chose to lift her gaze- after a very long time, admittedly- she sighed at the flatness of the tummy, its defined borders, the ribs exposed on his right because the right arm was stretched upwards to cradle his head...and then, with resignation, returned to the true object of her devotion, the display between his legs. More specifically, the loose sprawling bag.

How she longed to feel one, a real one. Were they hard? Were they soft? Walking the corridors at Grover Cleveland High she now took sly glances at the trouser fronts of the hurrying boys- they ignored her, didn't know she existed- imagining the same structures hanging in their groins as on her loved statues. And how she longed to be able to stroke, to finger, to caress. Oh, she longed to know, what they felt like...the tubes, the spheres. To be a powerful Empress like Catherine the Great or Cleopatra and have at her command handsome male slaves like the youths in these sculptures...this was a night time fantasy, stimulated by her hypnotic study of the black and white photos of these Greek heroes.

Young men for the most part, but for a time her true love was the bronze Zeus or, as some experts claimed it to be, Poseidon the god of the sea. A mature man- his full beard confirmed it- but his body was as lithe as any youth's: feet apart, an arm lifted for a spear and the other pointing ahead to give him balance. His hair "down there" was very decorative: dense curly hair in a neat patch. His things were delicate, his bag was compact compared with the loose, lolling flesh of the Sleeping Satyr. His open stance, his proud bearing, made her think more than with any of the others, the phrase, "gloriously nude". Defiantly, fabulously, thrillingly...naked.

A NUDE MALE!

On that life-changing day she drifted to the lake.

She had made her way along a sandy path, a narrow track through the hardwoods. There were butterflies and bird calls and the smell of pine and plants.

There was the first smell of the lake. And suddenly the sound of voices. Young male voices. The croakiness of voices recently broken. Veronica halted, then moved forward warily. More voices. Timidly she edged off the trail. Moved deep into the darkness. Out of sight, she hoped, in the tall shrubbery. She stood still as a forest animal and listened.

The voice of an older male rang out: "You fellas get yourselves in a line here! Fun's over. Practice starts!" Veronica climbed over a fallen tree and eased her way into a thicket, through arrowwood and bayberry shrubs. A coarse branch tore at a finger which she withdrew and placed in her mouth. She was...excited. By what? She didn't know. She crouched under the thick dark green foliage. She started crawling, heart beating, her face now close to the grass, lungs filled with the smell of moist, rich earth.

Male voices. In a forest. On a lake. She was...curious. Excited. She must keep herself hidden. Out of sight she could...watch. Observe. Peep.

There was a dense blocking wall of vegetation but she was squeezing through it- on hands and knees- even as foliage scratched her...and she saw a small gap and through it a glimpse of sky and water...she hauled herself to it.

She looked out. There was a small swade of grass and a clump of old pine. Then a pocket-handkerchief beach and the shallow water of the lake's edge...and on it stood half a dozen...Greek athletes! Greek warriors!

They had walked out of the pages of Miss Simpkins' art histories and stood in the sun at this Minnesota lake!

There were completely nude.

Shockingly naked.

She checked again. Was she dreaming?

No! Boys...and a man, entirely one hundred percent stripped of everything! Stark naked! Buck naked! In their...( here she gasped!) "birthday suits!"

One youth stood with his back to her, facing the lake, and the bold globes of his cleft bottom were exactly those of bronze statues she had secretly worshipped. The grown-up man was in three quarters view, massively built with slabs of muscle and slashing ribs like Hercules or the Laocoon. And as naked. A youth faced the older man- and Veronica gulped down the view. He had broad shoulders and his torso tapered to a narrow waist, with his sex organ held up by his sphere. Jeepers! He was exactly like one of the kouroi from the antique period.

And then in a flash she recognised them as boys from her school, some from her class- and the sports teacher who coached swimming, Mr Gordon Compton- yes, she remembered now, with his massive muscles from lifting weights in state competitions. And his funny, flattened peroxide blonde hair.

They were completely naked! She again mentally pinched herself. She was not dreaming. They...were...NUDE! A violent shiver passed through her. Her stomach fluttered as if with a thousand butterflies. Boys she sat with in class, who she passed in the corridors. Boys who went to the sock-hop with the other girls but would never consider her.

They were on nude display- for her!

The boy closest to her was Timmy- the cute snub-nosed letterman on whom she had a crush. With his swept back auburn hair- a "ducks bottom" cut- and his long fluttering eye lashes he was a heart throb, the charming class president who, she noticed, had moments of quiet reflection seeming to rise above the rowdiness of his companions. Above them, and above even the pretty girls who competed for his attention. In one single flash of revelation she was looking at him...without a stitch of clothing!

She could see his small black bush in his groin, his tube of flesh with a wide blue artery down the middle and pink bulbous tip, a little sack behind. And his hairless white chest, his bare hips, his naked upper thighs! Thrilling in their absolute unapologetic nudity.

The curve of his bottom in profile- its muscles thrust his posterior further out than his upper back! None of her buxom classmates could compete with curvaceousness like this and the crack (from researching the physiques of her statues she knew it as the "intergluteal cleft") ran deep. Real deep.

Cleft indeed, "intergluteal" to be sure.

He was tensing, stretching, smiling - not knowing a plain girl with a secret crush on him was observing from the shrubs! Observing every inch of his naked form.

She felt such power! She felt a delicious lewdness suffuse her being. Her crotch quickly got damp. Never in her life had she imagined...

Two boys stood nude at the lake, then started wading into the water. She knew them from the school corridors- Colin Gray and Ernest Harris. She knew their sisters and mothers! And now she was staring at their white naked bottoms! Oh, how she could have loved to have got hold of them and prised apart their intergluteal clefts! Then- this seemed a gift from the Greek gods- they both turned back, to face her, in response to an order from the coach. Wow! she thought. Two nude slender 18 year olds seen full frontal- each as as softly shaped as the famous Getty bronze of an athlete from the late fourth century. Which she had spent hours worshiping in black and white photos.

She focused on Colin, a brunette, his hair in a Ricky Nelson pompadour. His muscles were barely defined except for the edges of his belly and a hint of a groove from hip to groin. In the groin there was a thick circular explosion of black bush, the only hair on his body, looking fresh, as if it had appeared overnight. The bulbous pink knob was big, the rest of his tube modest.

Another stepped out, and ran across the beach so that his tube shook wildly from side to side and up and down as did his small compact sack. Veronica thought of another bronze, this one of the first century BC, the Kyme runner. Tall and lean as a greyhound he was Stevie Sullivan and delivered their groceries. He was on their doorstep twice a week ("Hello Mrs Thompson! Hello Veronica!") and she had admired his long straddling legs and cheery smile. Now she was seeing him in his birthday suit- she couldn't believe this stroke of luck!

She was seeing Stevie Sullivan fully nude!

Let me relish this, she thought! Every delicious bit of him!

Stevie had large light brown nipples that would have satisfied any girl, with spidery wisps of hair around them, flattened with wetness. The rest of his torso was hairless apart from the line south from his navel and the burst of it in his groin. As for his things swinging too and fro, the tube was thin, the head wide. Like a snake, she thought. And his bag was loose and wrinkled. It had her, for some reason, thinking of a skinned chicken.

She wanted to corner him the next time he made a home delivery- when her mother was out. Threaten to allege he had exposed himself to her, blackmail him into stripping off all his clothes and reach out for those things dangling in his groin.

And Mister Compton! Under his funny peroxide-blond flattened hair he was a classic body builder, every muscle big, pumped up and defined. His thing looked a good deal smaller than those of the students. Perhaps because of his Herculean physique it looked tiny, perhaps he had grown up everywhere else but not developed there. Either way he was like her Greeks. And at the start of summer, at the very start- she shuddered over this- he was bronzed all over, including in his groin, over his upper thighs and across his globular buttocks. An even copper-tone. He had been going nude, a lot.

Then suddenly something else was happening...the boy closest to her hide-out had bent over to scratch a toe and his cleft had flared and Veronica had gasped at the intimacy. Virtually in her face, he was so close. His name was Tommy McGregor and he sat an aisle away from her and she was looking up the crack of his bottom, seeing into his obscenely parted intergluteal cleft...even seeing a red circle with surrounding wrinkles and radiating black hair that must be his little hole!

Tommy straightened up and swung around, facing her, gazing at the tree tops to watch...what? A circling hawk? John Glenn's supersonic jet setting new records? And what a view Veronica now had! Tommy boasted a spray of auburn hair across his chest, even lapping at his throat. Like a wild beast. It narrowed on his tummy and descended like the trunk of a tree, to darken- become black- around his navel and spread out again across his belly. She stared hard to make out the bulbous purple crown at the end of his tube of flesh. The hair completely concealed his little bag- he may not even have one. And his legs- thickly furred, as if he were wearing animal skin breeches that ended at his ankles.

What fun, in classroom or corridor, she would have from now on: stripping him naked in her mind's eye. Tearing his clothes off. In mentally inspecting his spectacularly hairy torso and shanks. Mentally running her hands through the boy's body fur.

Her prurient thoughts were racing.

Another boy, Glen Christopher, stood talking to the coach, unselfconsciously caressing his chest with one hand and idly fondling the edge of his little bag with the other. He by contrast was completely hairless apart from a little black bush. Not even a fuse from his belly button. Glen's thing was a wide one with a fat head on it, a small sack drawn up behind. This stark naked boy went to her church! He sat in the aisle opposite! Yet by a miracle as grand as any they learnt about at church he was on display to her, as gloriously nude as any of the Greeks in her books. Next Sunday she would swipe him with a glance and instantly strip him with her greedy eyes. She would fantasise about him while he sat there across the aisle, imagining him stark naked as he was now, his broad appendage with its well-formed cap and the little compact sack...displayed for all the worshippers to inspect, in the boy's lap. His face looking skyward, clean and wholesome, as he sang the Baptist hymns. Only, naked in the congregation, as nude as he was now.

Then- what a sight! No! it couldn't be! Striding out from the trees was tallest boy in the group, Jimmy Fraser. The best singer in the school choir. And a boy who thrilled and frightened Veronica to the core. He had the deepest register to his voice, a resounding bass baritone. His hair was jet black, swept back at the sides and curling over his forehead in Elvis style. His eyebrows were thick black bands plastered above his eyes, eyes flashing under thick eye lashes. And there, jutting obscenely from his neck, was that massive Adam's apple, every bit as big as an apple too. When he hit that low register Veronica thrilled to see it vibrate and felt a violent tingling all round her groin.

His narrow chest was decorated with fierce black hair tapering to his navel and leading in a wide black fuse to his big bush where dangled a...thing...with a huge head, pink, with loose skin bunched above it.