She assessed the situation. "Keep the skin stretched tight," she told me. So I held my dick up with one hand and used the other to pull down the saggy skin of my balls. She held the tweezers parallel to the skin, right down touching it, to grab the tick as close in as she could get. She pulled slowly, tenting the skin at first and then plucking the tick right out. She inspected it closely. "I think we got it all," she said with freckled concentration, holding it up for me to see. She squashed it between the jaws of the tweezers, then dropped it on the ground and smeared it with a rock.
She looked back up at me, still crouched between my legs, deliberately ignoring the fact that we were both naked. "I should probably check to see if there are any others," she said, speaking still with the authority of the field manual. I could see that she was probably right. She could check me much more thoroughly than I could check myself. I let go of my dick and spread my legs farther apart.
She bent in close. She started with my pubic hair, using both her hands to curry through it. Just a minute ago we'd been hiking down the trail, chatting about high school, and now we were naked and she was fiddling around with my crotch. All I could see from my vantage were her brown tresses and her broad, bare back. But I could feel her careful probing. No one had ever touched me where she was touching me. I could feel myself starting to stiffen. There was nothing I could do to stop it. She finally had to move her head back to dodge being slapped in the cheek. I was too embarrassed to even apologize.
She kept working as if protruding dicks were nothing out of the ordinary for her. She had me spread my legs even wider so she could check where my balls tucked up against my thighs. She was still using her fingers to curry the hair, but very timidly, trying hard to avoid touching my scrotum. I don't think I've ever been so embarrassed. Or so erect.
She scrunched way down, trying to see the underside of my balls. "Um . . ." she said.
It wasn't really possible for me to lean much farther back. "What if I turn around?" I suggested.
We stood up. I turned around and bent over the tree trunk, planting my hands on the ground on the other side. I don't know if asses blush, but it sure felt like mine was as red as a beet.
She gingerly swept her hand over my thigh, first the back, then the inside, right up to the seam. Then she cautiously parted my butt cheeks. Christ! She was looking at my asshole! Not even the guys in gym class had ever seen my asshole! Then she went even further down. I tried to think what was even down there. My butt crack must end somewhere. She was inspecting places so private I'd never even thought about them before.
Finally her probing stopped and her hands withdrew. "I don't see any more," she said. I stood back up. My dick was as rigid as a fire hydrant, and there wasn't anything I could do to hide it.
"So . . ." she said, hesitantly. It was pretty clear now that the only way to know for sure whether she had ticks would be for me to check her. But she was too shy to ask. I tried to muster up some of her field-manual confidence. I gestured for her to sit down on the trunk.
I did my best to follow her example. I made myself focus on the individual sectors rather than the girl they made up. Her skin was so white and so bare that it was easy to see that there were no ticks on her chest, on her bosom, on her sides, on her stomach. I moved my focus down to her fuzzy triangle.
I knew absolutely nothing about girls down there. We'd had sex ed in school, of course, but there had only been diagrams, and pretty schematic ones at that. Besides, it had been way back in sophomore year, when sex had seemed about as relevant to my actual life as medieval history. So I was venturing into uncharted territory.
Her pubic hair was a lot coarser than I somehow thought a girl's would be, almost as coarse as mine. At the top of the patch, where it came near her faint tan line, the coverage was wispy and you could see through to the whitish skin underneath. Further down, especially along the midline, it was bushier and more concealing.
I went slowly, checking every square inch, using my fingers to gently curry the thicker spots, making sure that nothing escaped my notice. I began to see that the dimple along the midline was actually more of a gash. At first I was horrified that it was the lingering scar from some unspeakable injury. But then I began to realize that it must have something to do with her vagina, that it might even be her vagina itself. I blushed and hoped she didn't notice.
"You'll . . . have to check there too," she said in a brave voice, the voice she must have used in the doctor's office. She put her fingers on either side of the gash and spread it a little ways open for me. It was deeper than I had thought, and much more elaborate, with different overlapping folds of pinkish skin, like the petals of an exotic, fleshy flower.
"Is it OK to touch you there?"
"You'll probably have to."
I took a deep breath and tried to pretend that I knew what I was doing. I used just the very tips of my fingers to gently peek down between the different petals. It was pretty clear now that these were her most private, private parts, nestled away here at the very heart of her lap. It would have been obscene for a tick to even presume to enter there. I was relieved I didn't find any.
When I was done she stood up, red faced, and forced herself to turn around and present her bottom. The first thing I saw, right toward the top of her crack, was a little black watermelon seed. She heard my gasp. "Did you see how I did it?" she asked, nervously.
"I think so," I tried to reassure her. I spread her bottom with one hand and slid the tweezers along the crack. I didn't squeeze tightly enough the first time, and the tweezers slipped off. I tried again, squeezing more tightly, and this time I managed to pull it out. It looked like I'd gotten it all, but I took it around for her to double check. Then I pounded it with a rock like she'd done.
I continued my examination, but there was no way I could avoid seeing what I was seeing. There was her asshole, cuter, more feminine than I might have expected. And below it, somewhat surprisingly, her gash again, upside down now I guess, rimmed by hair, but not quite as camouflaged in this position. In fact, it made more sense this way. I could see right where a penis would go.
I didn't find any more ticks. She stood up again, still red with embarrassment. But she held it in and issued one last field-manual directive. "We should probably check our clothes too." She happened to be standing closer to my pile. "Shall I check yours? Can you check mine?"
——
I'd never paid much attention to clothes before, let alone girls' clothes. But now I had to carefully inspect every stitch, every seam. Her shorts, her shirt, her panties, her bra. Inside and out.
I was surprised by how plain and simple her panties were. I guess I'd always thought that girls' panties were silky and frilly, but these were just plain white cotton, not that different from my own. Skinnier though. It was hard to believe they would cover anything at all.
Her bra was simple too, soft and cottony, not at all like the severe harnesses I'd always pictured. Her bra and her panties were just underwear, I realized. The comfy clothes she wore closest to her body.
I emptied the pockets of her shorts. Car keys, wallet, pocket knife. I opened her wallet to make sure there were no ticks hiding inside. That's what the folds of her vagina were like—the different little pockets of her wallet. I probed them gently. Fifteen dollars in cash, her driver's license, her health plan card.
Almost hidden in the innermost pocket was a photograph: a younger Carrie with her parents and an even younger sister, outside on a sunny Spring day, laughing happily about some merriment taking place just off frame. Carrie was a bit ganglier, but just as earnest, just as pretty, just as full of confident expectation. It was in some ways the most intimate view of her I'd had yet. It made me feel as if I'd known her my whole life.
——
I ended up finding one tick in Carrie's shorts, and she found two in my pants leg. We smiled shyly and exchanged the items we were holding—my tee shirt for her bra. She didn't put it on, but she slowly brought her arm up to cover her chest. She slowly lowered her other arm to cover her patch of fuzz. She did it demurely, not as if she were trying to hide anything but just in a sort of muted acknowledgement that our excuse for being naked was drawing to a close.
I took it for granted that she must know the rules about boys and girls being naked together better than I did. So I followed her lead and tried to nonchalantly clasp my hands together in front of myself. It was a bit awkward, though, since I had to clasp them so far out in front. Carrie looked at the bra. She didn't seem at all enthusiastic about having to get dressed again.
But then I thought of something. "If we're going to ford the stream, shouldn't we wait to put our clothes on until we get to the other side?"
She had to agree that it made sense. Otherwise our clothes would get all wet. But that meant that we would have to stay naked a while longer. Apparently the field manual wasn't altogether clear about mixed nudity in non-emergency situations. So we stood there, a bit awkwardly, covering ourselves with our hands, staring at the ground, not exactly sure what to do next.
