I'm guessing that on most big lakes in the country, and maybe in the world, there's a place where partying boaters anchor together to blow off some steam, drink some beers and get a little rowdy. For my wife and me, on our favorite lake, that place is Empty Harbor.
Empty is a broad harbor, prone to some serious chop when the winds turn southerly, but in our prevailing north-westerlies it stays nicely calm. Most of the waves on those summer days come from the wakes of other boats and from personal watercraft, those buzzing jet-skis that seem to be everywhere.
My wife, Michelle, and I keep a twenty-one foot Sea Ray on a trailer in our driveway, ready to go, whenever we feel like getting some sun. It's an older boat, almost a classic, you might say, but it's still in beautiful shape and runs like a champ. We don't have children so we never got into water skiing or wake boarding or any of those pull-toy kind of things. We just enjoy the sun, and having a few beers, and being able to crawl into the cuddy cabin to get cuddly once in a while. There's not much room in the cuddy β it's just mattress-style cushions to sprawl out on β but it's perfect when certain urges strike. We call it our little porn palace, because it smells a little musty, like a dirty book store, and the cushions are still upholstered in the original 1981 fabric that's more than a little cheesy looking. A guy with a big mustache, and a woman with a bushy 'bush,' would look right at home.
Michelle and I are generally responsible citizens β we don't boat drunk, we go to work on time every day, that kind of thing. She's an ER nurse, one of the most experienced on her team, and I own and run a lawn equipment company, Paul's Equipment, and yes, I do get kidded about the name sometimes. We sell commercial and residential mowers, snowblowers, chainsaws and other things.
Michelle turned forty-five over the winter, but you might not guess it. Being on her feet all day has kept her slim and kept her legs toned. I kid her and tell her she looks like a dancer, Ann Miller, from the classic movie days. Michelle does look a little like her, but she always scoffs when I say it.
I haven't fared as well with middle age. Less hair, a few extra pounds, although it's well distributed. Michelle says I'm still "handsome," but who knows what that means. Maybe just "slightly better than the next guy."
Truthfully, age isn't something Michelle and I worry about or talk about much. I guess we're not quite to the tipping point yet, when middle age slides into health problems. We eat sensibly, stay active, and get lots of sun on the weekends. That last part isn't considered 'healthy' anymore, but we enjoy being tan in the summertime, and, did I mention Michelle looks good in a bikini?
She had one on when we were out on the lake one Saturday. It's a bikini that she wears quite a bit, two shades of purple with some white mixed in. We happened to see some friends of ours out on the lake that day, in their racier, newer boat. It was late in the day when we had our little get-together in Empty Harbor, and the beer and hard lemonade flowed a little too easily. When daylight was fading I didn't feel comfortable heading back to the marina at high speed, so Michelle and I decided to spend the night on the boat, in our cozy little cuddy cabin. Our friends raced away, even though they shouldn't have, chasing daylight back to the marina where their boat trailer was.
It wasn't the first time Michelle and I had spent the night on the water. Even though we sometimes don't have the proper provisions with us, it's still fun, and always seems to make us at least a little horny. So that evening, as twilight faded and darkness fell, we settled in for our first overnight in Empty Harbor. We hadn't overnighted there before because it's often a bit rowdy during the day and we figured it would be that way at night, too. We were correct in our assumption β the partying rolled on into the darkness and beyond, but we weren't rafted up with the main flotilla, we were anchored on our own, albeit not too far away because the harbor isn't exactly huge.
It was an amazingly warm, beautiful night, so Michelle and I sat and watched the partiers. They were all rafted up together, boats tied together side-by-side and end-to-end, as is the custom, with a few anchors tossed out to hold the whole thing in place. People walk freely across each other's boats to get to and from their own. Lashed to the stern of one of the longer, sleeker speedboats was what I guess you might call a floating trampoline. Well, maybe not a trampoline, more of a gigantic, inflatable air mattress, at least fifteen feet square, but probably bigger. There was lots of jumping and childlike play on it, and lots of lounging around, too.
Michelle and I nibbled on the meager snacks that we had with us, sipping on cold beer, talking quietly as the night wore on. The raft-up of partiers slowly dwindled as boat after boat untied and motored away into the darkness. I was contemplating getting Michelle out of her purple bikini when, from what seemed to be the core group of partiers, now much quieter and mellower, we heard a female voice. "You guys want to come over and tie up with us?" the young woman yelled over to us. "We just put some more shrimp on the grill."
Michelle and I waved our thanks, and we debated our options. We knew that, at that hour, it was sensible to just crawl into our little cabin, get a little frisky and get some sleep, but we were both hungry. We gave in to the amazing aroma of grilled shrimp. Michelle pulled up our anchor and I quietly motored us the short distance to the others. We tied up to the side of a sleek yellow Rinker and we hopped across a few other boats to get to the remaining partiers. Besides us, it was just eight people, four couples from four boats, including the one with the giant inflatable float lashed to its stern.
"We didn't know how cool you guys are with things, so we've been kind of taking it easy tonight," the nice young woman named Cailee said.
"Oh, we're completely cool," I said kiddingly, smiling.
"Yeah? So, you don't mind, like, topless?"
Michelle laughed. "You don't understand men, honey, if you think my husband would mind that."
I was a little surprised that Michelle was so laughingly casual about it, and maybe, when she re-thought it, she was surprised, too, because all of a sudden Cailee was bare-breasted. Eye-poppingly, stunningly, bare breasted. We're talking a gorgeous young woman here, blonde with dark eyebrows, a Scarlett Johansson look-alike with well delineated tan-lines that made her big breasts glow like honeyed cream in the bright moonlight.
One of the other three young women was quickly topless, but the other two either didn't normally go there, or were bashful in my presence. All of them are very attractive.
"You guys hungry?" Cailee asked. "Aaron has a seafood business. He brought us tons of shrimp today."
Young people are casual about introductions, so Michelle and I played it that way, too. Cailee and her boyfriend Matt were the first names we put together with faces, and then, as time went on, some others were figured out. The other brave bare-breasted young woman was Nicole, and her young man β her
husband
, we later found out β is Drew. The other two couples are Becca and Aaron, and Rachel and Jon. Putting them all together as couples wasn't easy at first, because, unlike Michelle and me, none of them clung together the way many couples do.
I call them all
young
men and women because they're all in their mid to late twenties, I would guess. It's an age I remember as being particularly ripe, and maybe even the best age, when looked back on through the filter of middle age. This group of four couples seemed to bear out my hypothesis β they all seemed to be settled into a nice life, obviously with money, judging by their boats, and yet they still had more than a hint of the carefree attitude of youth. And they sure as hell still had their looks.
Cailee seemed especially free spirited. Her toplessness was the first big hint of it, but then, as she got more used to us, she said some things that came as a shock. Nicole's husband, Drew, got into a friendly argument with Cailee about the memories of a concert some of them had gone to, and, when he got a little wound up, Cailee said to him, "Calm down, baby. You need a blowjob to relax you."
"Go ahead," he said to her, flashing a quick glance at Michelle and me. "I dare you."
"You know I will," Cailee said, smirking, with some sass in her voice.
Drew, glancing at Michelle and me again, didn't follow through with an answer.