'The fuck are you doing? You know this is private land?'
This is how I was caught, butt naked, soaking in groundwater and mud, covered in leaf litter, sat in a small puddle in the middle of the woods, a farmer - I supposed this was his occupation - angrily bearing over me.
I'll take a moment to pause the proceedings, and offer an explanation to how ended up in this situation, if only because the bizarreness of it, and said countryman's anger precluded any real explanation
in situ
. And I like telling my story if only to entertain myself.
I grew up close to the countryside, in a medium sized town that was nestled within farmland and woods - quite idyllic in its own way, if the town itself was fairly run down and bland. From an early age, I was excited to play outside and this I did with a dedicated fervour; many of my memories of youth are of running barefoot over the forest mulch, or playing and hiding in wheat fields.
As I grew into adulthood, the inevitable shifts in perspective brought on by maturity brought with them a shift in my perspective towards the outdoors that was somewhat less innocent. An 'experimenting' me would take himself for walks and derobe. This delight of being on the great earth - something I still find innocent joy in - had a highlighted element, the revelation of a previously unnoticed eros, a wild sensory touch, of vivid 'things going on' that nothing in the sterile human world of carpets and concrete could offer.
You see, its not so much that I find the outdoors the object of my desire - I don't consider it my lover, as one would another man or woman, or as some fetishists do with their blow up dolls or their pets... It's more that I like
stuff
. I suspect, if we lend any credence to those old theories of Freud, that a part of my mentality may have been fixed at the stage wherein one is 'polymorphously perverse'. I can, with the right amount of effort and perspective, find many things erotic, or make use of them in a sexual way. There are the obvious, sensible boundaries, and while I don't judge others for being into some of those - 'to each their own' - I retain a healthy distain for others, which I'm sure the reader won't need to have spelled out.
Lest this sound like I do protest too much, like I want to shout 'I'm no pervert', well, I
am
a pervert! And a healthy one at that, in command, mostly, of my interests and actions.
I can, for example, find 'it' in the touch of my pair of jeans, or the feel of a chair, a household object that fits into the hand
just so
. Sometimes a good visual helps, or a smell or a taste, but often it's just the feel - touch, in itself, can be basic, sensuous (pleasant but not sexual), sensual, or erotic.
We pretend that there is some magic at play that decides these things, but really the deciding factor is our own minds - who hasn't heard, or said 'I'm not in the mood' before? And while it would be a simple error to bluntly say 'we choose whether or not to be sexually aroused by something', it's clear the mind - both unconscious and conscious - has the greater part to play here. We may not choose our 'realm' of interest, so to call it (by which I mean, for instance, whether we are gay or straight - I consider myself a member of that great first clan), though I suspect we can
develop
it as one develops a taste for wine - so unpalatable when one is young - but one may be 'in the mood' or not (how it is that one's genitals may be the focus of great sexual focus one moment, and mere flesh barely noticed, another?), and I suspect, or rather, I have
found
, or it is my own particular mental makeup, that this matter of 'being in the mood' is more open to our conscious control that we usually give credit.
Which may, it's true, be a convoluted way of saying what may be more simply expressed as: when we are full of the hormonal revelations of puberty, we can get horny about anything - the rumble of the bus in our crotch, the rubbing of your shirt on your nipple, the way shower gel runs over one's skin... and the way the plants and muds and life of the outdoors feel around oneself.
It just so happens that I didn't experience the 'lockdown' most people seem to experience (or inflict upon themselves - are we our own jailers?) as they become adults, funnelling all of
that
into a few specified zones of the body during a few specified occasions of the week, or the month, or the year, based on a few specified triggers - a date, a look at some porn, 'steak night' with the wife...
The world is always wide open to us all, and some make it small...
I simply kept the world open, delighting in the touch, and the
situation
of a great many things. I love the feel of nature, of the mud and plants, as I have said, of the moods of the seasons, the chill of a frozen pond against skin, the hot midsummer air in my lungs... and I also know it is
dirty
- there's something feral in finding oneself alluring in a pool of mud under the full moon's light, or accidentally catching oneself on a bramble while self-feeling in a thicket as ramblers pass by unawares.
I don't suppose that I can explain it, really. Or not any more than the plain eye could see. The farmer - or whoever he was - here saw a young man, stark naked, rolling on the floor of a copse with something up his arse; a pervert getting off, in
his
woods. And that's precisely what was taking place, I am neither embarrassed nor proud to admit. Actually, if the erection that grows as I write is anything to go by, I am a little bit proud...
I had moved to a city for university and to take the first steps in my career, and a lot of fun I had while I was there. But I was relieved when the rise of remote working meant I could continue to pursue my career from somewhere rural. Nowadays I commute when needed, but spend most of my time in a small town parcelled amongst countryside, not too dissimilar to that of my home town. Surrounding are woods, a river, and much farm land - much of it private land, as our friend has just pointed out. It brought no small pleasure to me to know that 'lover of nature' meant something in the mind of the estate agent, who showed me around this place, that was quite different to what was running through my mind as I looked out into the fields from the upstairs window, though I'm unsure whether he noticed the bulge in my trousers...
In the months since moving here - it's been nearly a year now - I've made simple barefoot walks in a jacket long enough to masturbate in, I've found mud pools to wallow in, I've floated nude in streams and rivers, out of the sight of other bathers, finding simple natural pleasure in the smoothness of riverbed stones, and the slick weeds that grow on them. I've been up trees, night winds rushing over tormented and teased skin, and on my knees amongst brambles as dog walkers wonder why their pets are looking so intently in the bushes...
I might say, here, that while I suppose I represent a kind of wide-spanning territorial presence - 'omnipresent' seems too much, but I do visit a lot if places in my local area...- I am not, and do not wish to be the kind of 'local sex pest' or 'town pervert' one reads of in the papers, such a men in gimp suits jumping out at women in the night, or people in long coats exposing themselves at playing fields. I don't, I am glad to say, suffer the loneliness and confusion, or even malice, that seems to control these people's actions. 'Horny, but not compulsive; perverted but not twisted', I like to think.
While there is an understandable thrill to finding one's personal pleasure in proximity to others, or indeed in the risk of being caught, that is not so much the point of my my activities as a kind of happy accident, much like any couple sharing an outdoor quickie might get a thrill and a giggle of someone hearing, but not go out of their way to get heard.
(And on the subject of loneliness and couples, while I fond of my own company and quite happily single, I do enjoy spending time with others, sometimes for long stretches. But I have found that, even in the more 'exotic' dating circles, that 'lockdown' of one's desires has often happened, and when I have tried to enlighten others about my sexual proclivities, things rarely get beyond 'oh you're into outdoor sex?' From online conversation, it seems women my be more inclined to understand the kind of wide pleasures of touch and sensation that delight me, but, alas, I've found
some
of my preferences not to open to change, and not for want of trying.)
That is to say;
they -
passersby - are not the object of my interest, nor are they a required part of it, nor indeed do I want to make them a part of my little 'scene' without their wishing to be so. I'm doing my own thing and they just happens to be passing by, unaware of what I might be up to, just the same as passing any house that has an open window while fun takes place inside...
Which was all the more cause for embarrassment when, this time, I was caught. I had found a lovely little copse, offset in a number of fields mostly used to grow wheat, and which was in an area less travelled by locals or ramblers - there were many paths around the town and its surrounds, but only some were used with any regularity. I thought I had the place to myself, and it was a good place, too - large oaks standing amongst smaller, younger trees of birch and ash and the like, a tangle of trees and branches and leaves at head height and up, the a thicket of brambles and nettles and unkempt bushes all around the edges, and inside a mix of mud that barely dried even in the summer months, and layers of lovely old, healthy humus. Unlike many farmland copses around here, this one hadn't been used as a dumping ground, and was fresh and pristine and dank and natural, as far as I could tell. A perfect little outdoor 'playground' less than fifteen minutes' walk from my front door!
I had made what must have been my fifth visit to the little copse, and as I had the day to my leisure, I had decided to take my time, first stripping to my underwear and quickly brushing past the sharp brambles, then smearing mud against my chest and neck before embracing the thick, gnarled bark of an oak and pressing myself against it, leaving an inverse print of its form on my skin.
Freeform and reeling in pleasure, like an afternoon spent with one's toys and one's favourite erotica or porn, teasing oneself, drawing my senses out, full of the richness of the soil, the light spilling through the leaves above, the rush of the wind through the field, chilling my skin - a joy on a hot day - my cock straining against my underwear as I knelt and rubbed leaf litter over my thighs and belly.
