It was the
afternoon and sea birds squawked overhead. The plain of turquoise ocean was
foaming like whipped cream with the coming of each surging wave crest.
Down past
the boardwalk we followed a path along the shoreline of the bay, to a bench
looking out at the snowy waves. Taking a seat, Jen placed me down on the grainy
wood benchtop. As a stream of people sauntered down the path past us, I cowed
against the meaty wall of her thigh, as if for protection.
As Jennifer
flipped through her phone, there came gritty scraping as footsteps crossed the
path, heading towards us. I looked up.
Natalie was
wearing sunglasses and a bikini, without clothes her body was slender and
willowy. She walked hand-in-hand with a man heads taller who had a towel slung
over one shoulder and a slight paunch. Their pace slowed as they approached,
both looking Jennifer up and down. Neither had seen her before.
Then
Natalie’s eyes fell onto me and went tender and warm.
“JERRY! HOW ARE YOU NOW?”
“Busy. But
fantastic. You?”
Her lips
pursed and her head tilted to one side.
“FRAZZLED,”
she huffed, “BUT TRYING NOT TO BE. EXAMS.” She introduced the man:
“GRANT.”
I smacked a
hand against my fiancée’s outer thigh.
“Jennifer.”
She stood
to greet them properly while Natalie’s eyes had narrowed on me, receding into
analysis. She dropped onto one knee, bringing her face down to my eye level. I
was only wearing swim shorts and she wasn’t staring into my eyes, but at the
faint scar line running over my bare abdomen.
“YOU HAD A
HEART OPERATION,” she said through a squint.
“No, that’s
just…” But that had been an excellent cover story, and in my haste to answer I
had just blown it, “…just a minor accident at home.”
This was
not reassuring. Her breath sucked in and she bit her lip.
Jen was
radiantly mischievous.
“DON’T BE
FOOLED BY THIS MAN,” she said. “AT HOME HE THINKS HE’S AN UTTER BADASS
DAREDEVIL.” Her thumb aimed between my shoulderblades and gave a small shove,
making me stumble a little.
“GOOD TO MEET
YOU, FINALLY, JERRY, JENNIFER,” said Grant, in his crackling low timbre. His
gaze lingered on Jen’s bikini-clad form. He gave a curt nod. “NICE
FIGURE. VERY BAYWATCH.”
With a
start, I realized he was talking about me.
I had no words. Nice figure? Overstatement
of the century. More like, nice figurine.
Across the
shore, a volleyball was piffed over a net.
Giving
Natalie a sideways glance, Grant’s immense shadow rippled as he bent right over
me, feigned letting me in on a secret:
“THE GIRLS
DON’T UNDERSTAND. IT TAKES PAIN TO GET WHERE YOU ARE.”
“You got that
right,” I grimaced, maybe agreeing with him for a different reason.
‘The girls’
pretended to ignore this exchange for different reasons: Natalie trying to
ignore my life necessarily entailed pain, Jennifer ignoring that Grant assumed
she wouldn’t understand something because she was a girl.
Grant was
well-proportioned himself, his face squared and angled, hair perfectly parted.
He looked like one of these guys who headed student societies at SPU. Then
again, Natalie seemed like a student committee girl herself. He put his arm
around her shoulders and pecked her cheek at the appropriate times.
We carried
on down the path along the Boardwalk. Walking behind Natalie and Grant, who
were admiring the Boardwalk –which Natalie had not seen in a while, and Grant
had never visited – Jen fiddled with me a little, adjusting and re-adjusting
her grip, as if she was anxious. She was not. One cautious, sensual fingertip
made a passage over my belly, running a nail with delicacy under the waistband
of my little swim shorts, and making a small scooping motion for my shaft. The
prickling of her long nail tips was like tiny insect bites all around my torso,
I wiggled around, which seemed to amuse her even more. The nail slipped out by
accident, but resolutely peeked in again under my swim pants.
With a cool
burst of shame, I realized what she was doing, and began to panic, staring
around at the beach without really seeing any of it. She was checking I didn’t
have an erection since Natalie had shown up. Despite my insistence that we were
merely friends, she must have sensed something between us, the flicker of a
flame that had not yet burned out. She was perceptive like that. Or paranoid. If
I thought our engagement would squash her jealousy, I was wrong.
My heart started
to thud and I wrestled with her hands as the fingertip kept returning, trying
to tweak my manhood to gauge its firmness. Finally, desperately, I gave up and
stopped moving. The determined fingertip pushed around my balls, taking the
shaft beneath the weight of its pad, and satisfied, left me alone again.
We secured
a picnic bench looking out towards the water. A row of stalls and food houses
extended along the opposite side. Grant and I waited at the table while Natalie
and Jen went and got some food and drink to bring over.
Next moment
I was being prodded awake, just in time to hear Natalie’s concerned inquiries
about my heart, dismissed by Jen, who was only slightly more able to hide her
concern, but not much. Under the bright sun, I must have started to nap. At
least, that’s what I told them. Some Kolade perked me up and I was back online.
We talked and ate.
Grant
cleared his throat.
“YOU GUYS
ARE TOGETHER, TOGETHER,” he looked
between us for clarification. “HOW DO YOU—?”
“WHAT GRANT
IS TRYING TO SAY IS,” Natalie interjected, bumping her shoulder into his,
“DATING SUCH A SPECIAL LITTLE MAN LIKE JERRY MUST COME WITH CERTAIN OBSTACLES
TO...ROMANCE.”
"THAT HAS NEVER BEEN JERRY’S STRONG SUIT," Jen shook her head dismissively, "OUR FIRST
DATE, HE TOOK ME TO THIS WESTERN RESTAURANT, A COWBOY THEME, she exclaimed,
"IT WAS BIZARRE, AND SO UNROMANTIC I ALMOST WENT STRAIGHT BACK OUT.” She
looked down at me, pursing her lips in a smile. “AND THEN WE WOULDN’T BE
SITTING HERE. BUT HE SHAPED UP.”
“She’s
lying,” I piped up. “She wasn’t going to leave. She had to ride the mechanical
bull,” I explained, “…for the third time.”
“NOT WHAT I
REMEMBER, BABE,” she saidlightly.
“We
couldn’t leave until she’d mastered it.”
Natalie let
out a polite chime of laughter.
“YOU GUYS
MAKE A CUTE COUPLE.”
As she said
this, her pinky finger lifted and comfortably wrapped around my bicep, giving
it a quick squeeze, as if she’d done it many times before. An easy, friendly
gesture, and if I’d been normal size, she would have squeezed my arm with her
entire hand. Realizing this, my insides blushed, and I couldn’t help but think
by ‘cute’ she was specifically referring to my
half of the couple.
Even after
Natalie’s hand departed again, Jen’s eyes were suspended on the space where it
had just been. Then she sipped her drink serenely.
"ARE
WE ROMANTIC?" The unspoken end of this question: ‘…enough?’
"That’s
a luxury I don’t have a lot of time for anymore.”
"IN MY
CASE IT’S EITHER ROMANCE OR SCREW IT.” She shrugged. “AND SCREW IT WINS. BUT WE
STILL DO DINNER TOGETHER, AND JUST HANG. JERRY IS A BIG FAN OF JUST HANGING –
LIKE, FOR INSTANCE, FROM MY PONYTAIL. OH—" she stared down at me,
"—YOU HAVE SOME FOOD ON YOUR..."
Halfway
through a mouthful of Kolade I slapped a hand around my face with impatience.
"AH,
NO, BABY...RIGHT THERE--"
She dipped
her head, in a flash jabbed the tip of her tongue into my cheek with a sharp
poke. Drink spurted out of my nose in surprised embarrassment, and she
straightened in her seat, laughing and rubbing one finger up and down my back
as I coughed and panted.
Natalie and
Grant glanced at me, startled.
We went
down to the beach, found a bare stretch of sandy carpet to claim as ours. Natalie
and Jen lay down on the sand, Natalie on her back, Jen on her front, and Grant
sitting upright. I was dumped over Jen’s shoulder, to sit just below her scalp.
She bunched her hair over one shoulder to keep it out of my way.
They talked
as I remained quiet, feeling extremely shy. Now that Jen had recognized the
depth of my feeling to Natalie, anything I said could be potentially used
against me later: that Natalie used to bath me in the sink like a baby rabbit,
or playfully ‘toe wrestle’ me on her bed.
Jen was
saying:
“…I RUN OUT
THE DOOR ON GRANOLA AND YOGHURT.”
Natalie
offered:
"JENNIFER,
I KNOW A BREAKFAST SMOOTHIE THAT’S SUPER QUICK. SOMETIMES I DRINK IT WHILE DRIVING
TO WORK."
A bottle of
lotion came after me, rudely spurting its contents at my feet until a glistening
puddle lay squarely between the massive shoulderblades.
“HELP ME
OUT, BABE,” came the casual utterance, in between a conversation with Natalie
and Grant. “THOSE HARD TO REACH SPOTS.”
Getting
down on my belly, I took a deep breath, shutting my airways to the lotion’s overripe
coconut perfume, and began to roll back and forth in the runny spill, coating
my entire body. The surrounding flesh gave a small appreciative shiver. An
insect droned past but the lotion aroma drove it away.
When I
looked up, Natalie was watching me with a small smile that was remorsefully
amused, as if she wished my predicament were not so funny. Catching my eye, she
reached over and stroked her pinky up and down my face to wipe dollops of
lotion and clear my vision.
I launched
forward, doing a mudslide right down to Jen’s tailbone, leaving a trail of
lotion, and coming to a rest at the curve of her posterior. In response, she
hunched her shoulders and drew in a deep breath, my passage over her back
tickled slightly but for now she tolerated it, so I could fulfil my lathering
duty.
Crawling on
hands and knees, I retraced my path back up her spine to the back of her neck,
and once more slid down the smooth slope of her back. Working up and sliding
down slowly smoothed the lotion into her back.
"HONEY,"
Jen continued, getting into the generous spirit, "I COULD TEACH YOU A MOJITO
THAT'D MAKE YOUR HEAD EXPLODE."
“OHHH…”
Natalie drew breath sharply as if to say ‘don’t tempt me.’
Treading and
crawling around the small of Jen’s back, I massaged the lotion around, and her
butt cheeks firmed, sending a faint ripple through the bikini bottom. Spitting
out some lotion, I said:
“She used
to work in a bar.”
“WE’RE BOTH
ON THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW,” Grant muttered, leaning towards Natalie, “WE DON’T
NEED THE EXTRA INDUCEMENT TO DRINK.”
Natalie
turned in her seat to him with a small encouraging smile:
“IT IS SEMESTER BREAK…”
With so
much lotion now coating Jen’s back, my next flight down her spine was fast and
frictionless. In an instant, her glorious ass cheeks grew immediately in direct
view until they blocked out the sky, and it seemed like a pair of mattresses
clapped in on either side of my head, making everything go black. As I rotated
my head, the lotion squelched and smacked, but otherwise I couldn’t move.
Then
something pinched my ankles and gave a gentle tug, but too gentle, it escaped
my slippery body, and came at my ankles again. It tried this three more times
before finally getting enough grip to retract me with a tiny wet pop that
played deafeningly in my delicate ears.
Lying on my
front, the massive globes of ass rose over me. directly below my face was the
top of the tight ravine separating them, just visible over the bikini waist, a
plunging, suffocating drop which my head had just been plucked free of, and not
by Jen’s generosity.
Natalie's
soft finger alighted upon my head to pet me, but accidentally pushing my face
down, and with the lightest ease, my lotion-greased head slid perfectly back
into place between the ass cheeks. The world seemed to shrink into a dark
skintight sheath.
There was a
small gasp, and once again my ankles were anxiously pinched and pulled, until
my head burst free again. I blinked up at her through a white mask of smudged
lotion. Trying not to laugh, she looked away.
My face had
grown very hot with a blush as I wondered what it must have felt like to Jen:
that I had pushed my head into her crack twice, and wiggled around, for no
apparent reason. Her thoughtful silence was almost worse than laughter.
Grant had changed
the topic, still fascinated by my size and asked how I managed getting around
the house.
Jennifer
answered:
“WE HAD
DOOR ELECTRONICS PUT IN. JERRY’S FUND TOOK CARE OF IT.”
“OH,” said
Natalie, perking up, “SO YOU COULD HAVE ALL KINDS OF THINGS—”
“LIKE, LIFTS,
STAIRS, RAMPS,” Jen listed off, “YES—BUT HONESTLY, WE DON’T NEED IT. JERRY
LOVES CLIMBING. VERY GOOD AT THAT, BABE,” she cooed down at me, “AREN’T YOU?”
There was something concealed in her voice.
Natalie’s
mind was working away now:
“BUT YOU
COULD HAVE A WHOLE PREFAB FLAT SET DOWN FROM SCRATCH WITH ALL THE FACILITIES IN
SCALE.” Her face shone with the revelation. “PICTURE THAT, JERRY;” she said to
me, “OPENING THE DOORS, USING THE FURNITURE.”
I’d never
thought of that before. Four walls and a ceiling to fit, a tasteful shutter on
the giant, noisy outside world.
“Cool.”
I said it
without thinking.
Jen had
gone silent. In my peripheral vision, her head bowed over her straightened
hands, one resting flat over the other, the clear polish of her nails glinting
under the sun as her fingers flexed. She was twirling the stick of an icecream,
trying to look like she was thinking though she’d already made up her mind,
possibly a long time ago.
“IF YOU
MEAN 'COOL' AS IN…'COLD'," she
muttered.
"It’s
an option,” I said. “Not saying I actually want
to live in a tiny house." But even to me the way I said ‘want’ sounded
strained and forced.
"HOW
DO I VISIT YOU, HUH?” She shot back. “HOW DO I EVEN TAKE A STEP THROUGH –"
I burst out
laughing, unable to help myself. She reached back, nimbly found my skull
between forefinger and thumb squeezed it enough that I made a small sound. Once
free, I crawled down and rested against her butt, out of her reach.
Her back
flexed impressively, and when she spoke her voice was impassionate.
“I SUPPOSE
IT MAKES TOTAL SENSE ON PAPER, BUT PERSONALLY I THINK IT’S A LITTLE RIDICULOUS
TO EXPECT JERRY TO DOWNSIZE INTO SOME KIND OF GINGERBREAD HOUSE IN THE BACKYARD.”
Natalie
stared at Jen, puzzled.
“IT WOULD
HARDLY BE, LIKE, A DOG KENNEL,” she giggled a little at the mental image. “IT
WOULD BE A RESPECTABLE PLACE OF RESIDENCE FOR A SLIGHT-STATURED ADULT MAN.
REMIND HIM HE’S NOT SO LITTLE, YOU KNOW?”
“JERRY IS LITTLE,” Jen said, swatting an
insect out of her face. “IT’S A FACT OF LIFE.”
“Swimming,”
I said, bounding up Jen’s back, “who’s game?”
Everyone
went quiet. Natalie and Grant stared at me, their brains whirring with vague probabilities.
Jen arched
her back, lifting herself onto her forearms like a graceful Sphinx. My feet
went shooting out from under the lotion-slicked floor of her back, tumbling
head first towards the mount of her rump, face sliding right down the gentle
crease of her spine, the mount of her rump seeming to rise up over my head.
With a small wet squish, my lotion lubricated face slipped snug into the
uppermost portion of asscrack exposed just above the pantyline. Again.
There was a
sharp jostling back and forth and I came free. She had given her butt a tiny,
irritated wiggle to dislodge me. Then I was plucked clean into the air as she
got to her feet.
“RACE YOU
TO THE WATER,” she said to me. It was a joke; I was stuffed in her fist, with
my head peeking out, but trapped stubbornly under the weight of her thumb. She
was gripping me extra tight because I was as slippery as a wet bar of soap. Her
thumb pushed down on my head affectionately, and the weight made my neck groan.
Grant
jumped up. Natalie stood warily, her eyes scoping Jennifer’s hand, identifying
my tiny face peeking out from beneath her thumbnail, like I was a lighter and
my head was the switch.
She worried
the sea was too big and open for me, but Grant found an inlet, like a finger of
turquoise water at a right angle to the sea, bordered by sandy rock walls,
where the water was placid with no swells.
The water
was cool and the sun warm on the top of my head. I had my arms stuck in some
tiny inflatable rings, and floated about, unable to swim very fast, and
constantly poked in the back by one of the three to steer me around. Sometimes
Jen plucked my head up between forefinger and thumb and manouvered me around in
the water like a chess piece. Their splashing cast hails of briny water drops
over my head, in my eyes and mouth, while the motion of giant bodies sent out
waves that spun and bobbed me about madly and unpredictably. In order to have
fun I had to relax and let their swelling currents drag and pass back and forth
like a helpless bath toy. I tried to remain in the shadow of one of the women,
but not so close that I was in danger of being accidentally kicked or paddled.
Jennifer casually
mentioned that I could hold my breath for at least nine minutes. Actually, it
was only eight minutes, she had mistakenly tacked on an extra minute.
At this,
Grant proposed they see who could hold their breath the longest. Jen swiftly
took him on. Natalie was reluctant, looking to me as if for permission. The
gentle appeal in her eyes, as if my opinion had some kind of power over her,
had me lost for words. It occurred to me that if I’d asked her to leave the
water with me, this instant, and take me back to the car – or, potentially
anywhere else – she would have done it without question, possibly over
Jennifer’s objections.
Noting
Natalie’s concern, Grant’s low, dull voice broke the moment:
“JERRY’S
THE JUDGE: WHO’S UP FOR AIR AND WHEN.”
The sun’s
glaring warmth seemed to beat into my skull.
“You don’t
think I can?” I shot.
“JERRY,”
Natalie said pleadingly. “YOUR HEART.”
Jen’s
figure treaded up to me, and bringing her face down very low in the water to
look straight into my face.
“YOU’RE
BASICALLY AQUAMAN,” she murmured, very low. “YOU DON’T NEED TO PROVE ANYTHING
TO HIM.”
Below the surface, my groin was given a teasing stroke by
the back of a nail, as if to remind me of potential I had unknown to Grant. I
relented.
The three of them got into position, counted down, and
submerged.
I started counting. I was bobbing with every wave crest,
suddenly all alone on the sea as the gentle waves scrolled by. Then the quiet
got boring. I kept counting.
The coast appeared as I ascended every wave crest, then rose
away. It was far ahead of me, too far to swim. Treading, I circled away from
it, and focused on the horizontal blue ribbon out ahead, trying to find where
the sky met the ocean, but at my size, the emerging wavefronts kept it hidden.
So I watched the wavefronts to anticipate each oncoming flush of the tide.
The water grew darker. My pulse quickened. As I stared down
into the inky depths below my feet, I wondered if the sea was thick with shoals
of fish. Or bigger creatures that could snap me up in one bite.
The darkness seemed to shift around, surrounding me. It was
too coordinated to be a group of creatures. My stomach churned in knots as I
watched it.
There was a roaring sound as a wave of water stirred and
foamed right in front of me. I sucked in a breath as the wave expanded into me,
sending me tilting into the water and bouncing back up again. A giant pair of
bare feet had parted above the surface in a kick and darted back down, like a
whale’s tail smacking just above the water. The spray flew up and rained down a
second later.
Who was that? I had no explanation: the three of them were
all supposed to be holding their breath, not swimming around.
Then I realized I’d lost count. It didn’t matter.
Right before my face, a massive, round shape thrust up above
the water, sending me into a mad bobbing action. I shielded my body as a pair
of enormous eyes emerged from the sparkling blue depths, followed by the ridge
of a nose, and then a big pair of shining wet lips. The entire head emerged,
lifted up by a long, slender neck. The giant figure only stopped once her
shoulders showed, just hovering above the water level. Her skin shone under the
sun, and a short, gleaming mane of reddish brown hair ran back over her head.
She flicked it back, whipping flecks of water over me.
I treaded helplessly, becoming acutely aware that, the
shadowy bulges of the woman’s colossal chest lay, scarcely contained in the
stringiest bikini possible, like a pair of underwater boulders straining
against ropes, and each dark protruding nipple standing in the cold water. The
underwater shelf was practically below my feet.
Where were the others? They should have been below me. In
fact, they should have surfaced by now. At my size, the ocean looked
never-ending. It was difficult to gauge where I was. I must have drifted away
from them without realizing, to the end of the inlet, or even beyond. My
thoughts began to whizz in my head like a disturbed flock of birds. How far had
I drifted?
The woman made a noise of surprise and glided backwards. The
swell of her receding motion tugged me towards her as if by an invisible bind.
Now I could see her face again; her expression went from
surprise to inquisitiveness, blinking at me as if trying to figure out if I was
real. Her mouth opened – anticipating an expression of remorse for startling
me, I raised my hand, preparing to wave off her apology – just as the air
charged with her blaring voice:
“OH MY GOD! JERRY! JERRY MOUSSEAU!”
My hand froze in the air. I twisted around, trying to make
distance with an inelegant, panic-driven freestyle, my body whipping and
jerking more than paddling, fighting the tilting green surface at every
instance, which suddenly seemed thick and unyielding like slippery sand.
“WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE
GOING?!” the woman’s voice rang out behind me. “YOU HAVEN’T GIVEN ME AN
AUTOGRAPH YET! THERE’S A PEN IN MY CAR – LET ME TAKE YOU!”
My heart raced as the water splashed and rippled behind me.
I urged my body into overdrive but the inflatable rings – designed to keep me
safe – were now hampering my escape.
There was no time to react. I just caught sight of the
glimmering wet fingers as they closed around me and ripped me out of the water.
My heart was no longer just hammering away, it was in freefall.
“SO I KISS YOU AND
IT’S GOOD LUCK,” the suggestive trill of her voice hammered into my ears, “OR
SO THEY SAY.”
Blinking and staring, I was struck dumb. I’d never heard
anything like that before. But people could be saying anything about me online.
I tried not to Google myself.
Before I could ponder it, I was flying up into her rapidly
magnifying face, while her shining wet lips dived down and smacked around my
face like two pool inflatables. Just as quickly the vacuuming pressure
departed, her head drew back and bowed over me, giving my body an up and down
inspection.
“SO,” she began, “IS THE OTHER
RUMOR TRUE?”
Her eyes honed in on my groin, and a finger uncurled from my
body and pushed downwards against my swim shorts.
Then stopped as a voice barked out:
“JERRY!”
It was Jen’s voice. If you didn’t know her very well you’d
think she sounded angry. But I knew the urgent growl in her voice actually
meant she was afraid.
The woman’s head swiveled around, and then rested upon me,
smiling smugly.
“LOOKS LIKE I GOT YOU FIRST! NOW…” her eyes were drawn along
to the mouth of the inlet, where it met the rocking wave wrests of the ocean.
She looked like she was making mental measurements, and then made up her mind.
My stomach crumpled up in utter, dismal dread. Clutched in her hand, I was helpless as a landbound fish.
Jen’s voice resounded, even more urgently:
“JERRY—!”
I let out a shriek:
“Jennifer—!”
“…CATCH US IF YOU CAN!” the woman gloated.
With a cymbal-like crash, the world collapsed forward in a
powerful dive. My head was thrust underwater.