The Right Way to Begin

Cory arrived at the camp just as the sun was making its way down beneath the horizon. He'd had plenty of other summer jobs before, but the opportunity to spend two and a half months away from all the chaos out here in the woods was the best one yet. Especially since this would be his last year before he left for university.

There were seven other councillors besides Cory. Four girls and three boys. They were all standing in front of two cabins that were separated from the children's living quarters by a small field. One cabin for the girls and one for the guys. The camp coordinator was standing with the other councillors. His job would be finished by the end of the day and he didn't look too happy that the last of his summer councillors was late. All he'd have to do is show them all the ropes, which they had all basically been through last week, then he could get on back to town.

Cory walked up to the group and was pointed without a word toward the cabin on the left by the coordinator. He walked up to the door, trying not to let his heart sink. The bitter old man would be gone soon, and although Cory didn't know any of his fellow councillors, he was sure it wouldn't take him long to get acquainted.

When he had thrown his bags down on the only remaining bed in the cabin, he hurried back out to the waiting group and joined them for their final orientation.

* * *

Later in the evening, the four boys lay in their beds. There were two sets of bunk beds in the small building. Cory was on the bottom bunk on the set of beds facing the front door. Above him was Lawrence, a short athletic guy with a buzz cut hairdo. The other set of bunks was on the perpendicular wall. On the top bunk was Joe, a tall, dark haired guy that looked like he was trying to get in for auditions for some stupid teen football movie. He was the kind of guy that seemed to do no sports or activities but somehow stayed in great shape. Finally, on the bottom bunk of the second set of beds was Shawn. Cory couldn't figure out how Shawn had managed to get a job at the camp. He hadn't said a word the whole evening. He just watched and listened to everything that was going on, but didn't seem eager to take part. He was about Cory's size, but Shawn had scruffy brown hair and thick glasses. He was real thin, too. Not exactly the summer-camp-councillor type.

The conversation was basically happening between Lawrence and Joe. They really hadn't been paying attention to the coordinator's babbling either. They'd been too interested in the four female councillors that were staying in the cabin next door.

"You get a load of Janine's tits?" Joe said.

"I remember when she was flat as a board," Lawrence replied. "Didn't take long to fill out though."

"Just in time for the year book pictures. Even under that gown she looks amazing."

"Sherry's looking good, too."

"What?" Joe said. "She looks like somebody just flicked some orange paint on her face. I don't like freckles."

"Why the hell not? She's cute," Lawrence defended. "She looks kinda like Lindsey Lohan."

"Yeah, without the implants."

"Hey, maybe someday."

Joe laughed. Lawrence quickly did the same.

There was a brief pause in the conversation. Lawrence shifted in the bed above Cory.

"All summer here with Janine," Joe said, almost philosophically.

"You say that as if you think you got a chance with her," Lawrence replied.

"I don't see why not. The only other options she's got here are you three and I don't see her choosing any of you."

"What makes you stand out? You're not exactly a charmer."

"I don't see the point wasting any time doing any charming. A woman who looks like that knows what she wants. It ain't you."

"Oh," Lawrence said, sarcastically, "so you're gonna give it to her."

Before Joe could say anything in response, Lawrence said, "I don't think you've got anything to give." He laughed.

"No? So you think she's gonna come running to you? Come on little man, you're probably too little where it counts."

"You know what they say about guys with big feet."

"You don't have big feet."

"Not really, but all I need is feet bigger than yours."

Cory couldn't believe Joe's next move. Before Lawrence could get anything else out of his mouth, before any of them knew what was happening, Joe hooked his thumbs into the waistline of his pajama bottoms and pulled them down over his hips. In a split second, they were all looking at his large-end-of-average penis, nestled against his left leg. The organ was soft, but they could all see what it would be had it been erect. It lay proudly just outside of a tuft of curly, jet black pubic hair.

"When it comes to girls like Janine, this is all that matters."

As Joe tucked his pants back up, all eyes turned to Lawrence. He didn't seem aware of what they were doing at first. At first, he just thought the conversation had come to an amusing, and slightly weird punch line. Then it hit him.

"You don't want to get into a pissing match."

"Come on," Joe said, "you were the one saying that the hot chick with the big tits wasn't gonna want me. What do you have that's gonna make her pick you?"

Lawrence hesitated for a long moment. Then he laughed and pulled down his pants. He did it slower than Joe, obviously not nearly as comfortable with this game as Joe was. Lawrence didn't have anything to be ashamed of, though. His penis may not have been as big as Joe's, but it was still on the big side of average. His pubic hair was more sparse then Joe's was, and because he was not totally flaccid, it made him look about as big as Joe had looked.

"Even you think I'm hot!" Joe laughed.

"Don't flatter yourself. You're the one that started talking about Janine. Maybe I should ask you why you're not hard at all." Lawrence quickly covered himself back up.

"Sore loser." Then they both started laughing.

For a second there, when Joe had exposed himself, Cory had thought the argument was becoming real. Now he started to calm down a bit. That is, until he realized the room had become completely silent. He looked slowly out at the two boys on the top bunks, but to his great relief, they weren't looking back at him. His relief didn't last too long though, because they had decided to target Shawn.

Cory immediately felt terrible. The guy hadn't said anything all day, so what made these two macho jerks think he wanted to play their stupid game. They didn't seem to care at all. They just kept looking at Shawn, as he looked quietly back up at them.

Cory saw actual fear in his eyes. It was the kind of fear that, in small children, soon leads to tears. Even though Shawn, like all of them, was a recent high school graduate, he still possessed that look of being near tears.

"Come on man," Joe said.

Shawn didn't say anything. He only averted his eyes.

"Not fair, us showing you ours and you not showing us yours," Joe prodded.

"Yeah, man. Gotta play fair," Lawrence added.

It felt like forever. Shawn had finally lifted his eyes back up to the guys on the top bunks. Then, his hands started their agonizingly slow descent to the waistline of his pajama bottoms. The thumbs fumbled with the elastic for a second, then found their grip. He pulled the fabric slowly away from his skin, then down, toward the foot of the bed. The whole process took several seconds to accomplish, but he did manage it.

And there he was. His skin was so pale it seemed to glow in the moonlight. There were some shadows around his groin, and in the middle of them lay his completely flaccid penis. It was fairly small. Unlike the other guys, Shawn's penis was on the smaller side of average, and without a bit of erection, it looked a little bit bigger than Cory's thumb.

Shawn didn't leave himself out in the open for long. He got his pants back up in a flash and pulled up the bed sheets.

"Wasn't so hard was it?" Joe said, turning to Cory.

Cory didn't want any crap from these guys and he wanted this conversation to be over as soon as possible, so as soon as Joe and Lawrence looked his way, he pulled his pants down to let them have a look at his penis. He knew he was almost smaller than average, so he just let them look between his legs for a second, then pulled his pants up and lay back down.

The rest of the conversation overhead was about the girls and the possibilities for summer flings. Cory didn't hear much of it. He tuned it out and went to sleep.

* * *

It was very clear why Shawn had gotten his job.

As soon as the kids arrived, he proved himself marvelous with them. Cory and Shawn were partnered up and were responsible for organizing some craft time with the children. Shawn immediately took charge. He knew just how to talk to them and how to make the arts and crafts, which most children actually find boring, seem fun. A few minutes into the allotted time, the kids were already coming up to Shawn and eagerly showing him their progress.

Cory had known a couple of people like this in his life. People who seem so painfully shy that you actually feel sorry for them, but who, when they find a place in which they're comfortable, go straight from introvert to extrovert. It isn't common, but here was the evidence in Shawn. Cory had trouble keeping up.

About half an hour into the craft session, Shawn came up to Cory and said, "Hey, we're running out of construction paper. We got plenty of it back in the equipment shed, but I didn't bring it all down because I thought we wouldn't need it on the first day. Could you go get us some more?"

Hearing all of that come out of Shawn's mouth was astonishing. It was more than he had said all the day before. He spoke warmly, too. As if he and Cory had been doing this together for weeks.

"Sure thing," Cory said, as he turned and went out in the direction of the equipment shed.

To get to the equipment shed, you needed to go out beyond the councillor cabins. It's the closest building to the forest on that side of the camp. Instead of going on the gravel path around the two councillor cabins, most people had immediately taken to using the small grassy path that went in between them.

When Cory was on this particular grassy patch, he heard something coming from inside the boys' cabin. It was a sharp intake of breath. The sound could only have been one of two things. The first was a gasp of pain, the kind of noise that you make when you stub your toe or hit your shin.

The noise Cory heard definitely sounded like it was the second possibility. Without even having time to think about what he'd heard or the circumstances under which the sound had been made, Cory's penis immediately began to stiffen. Cory moved to the rear of the cabin as silently as he could, so as not to alert whoever was inside. On this short trip to the back of the cabin, Cory had time to wonder if Joe had managed to convince Janine to take a "break" with him in the middle of the work day.

That isn't what he saw. When Cory got to the back of the cabin he stood a few feet away from the building, right next to a tree that hangs over the cabin. Then he looked in the small window.

There, on his bunk, Joe was lying on his back stark naked. His left hand clutched the top sheet on the bed while his right hand was gripped tightly around his rigid penis. It was every bit as big as it had looked last night. His right hand was rubbing rhythmically up and down the length of the organ. From the curly, jet black hair up to the tapered purple tip. Joe's face was contorted into such an intense mask of ecstacy that Cory couldn't believe he was only masturbating.

Cory was instantly so hard that his penis began to hurt. Joe was sweating profusely and looked like he was reaching his orgasm. He started to flex the powerful muscles of his ass, which rocked his hips up and down off the bed.

Cory was transfixed. The woods around him were quiet. That is, until he unzipped his shorts. The button came next and the garment fell away from his hips and dropped to the forest floor around his feet. He hooked his thumbs inside the elastic band of his briefs and slid them down off his hips as well. They fell around his ankles on top of the shorts. He immediately grabbed his penis and started pumping his right hand up and down its length. That first touch immediately sent an intense tingle along the organ's length that he felt in the pit of his stomach.

No sooner than Cory had begun to masturbate himself, Joe came. The white strings of ejaculate leapt out the end of his rigid penis and landed on his stomach. He stopped flexing his buttocks and moments later, stopped pumping his hand.

As soon as Joe got up to clean himself, Cory released his penis and shuffled awkwardly, shorts and underwear around his ankles, to the back of the tree so that Joe wouldn't see him. He leaned against the tree, his bum pressed against the rough bark and grabbed his penis, which was bobbing in the air after the clumsy move he'd made. The woods were silent but for the sound of flesh on flesh, rubbing faster and faster. The cool breeze caressed his penis and scrotum and then wound its way between his legs. It was all too much.

He pulled on himself a few more times and then drew back his foreskin. His cum didn't "squirt" or "shoot" the way most people thought it did. Cory's ejaculate simply leapt a little bit from the tender tip of his penis and then landed quickly, releasing just a hint of visible vapor as the hot body fluid met the cooler air of the forest morning. The muscles of his buttocks flexed a staccato rhythm as his penis released his semen, scraping the flesh of his bum against the rough bark of the tree.

The orgasm was the most forceful he'd ever had. In fact, when he was in its final throes, his body involuntarily bent forward. It was the first time he'd ever seen anybody else naked in real life, with the exception of a couple of public showers at swimming pools. Not only was this other person naked, but he had an orgasm right in front of Cory. One day here and he'd already had more sexual experience, with the exception of simple masturbation, at this camp than his entire life up to that point.

When his breathing began to return to normal, Cory stood away from the tree and brushed his bum with his hands. A few flecks of bark came off, and the pale cheeks were imprinted with the rough pattern. He bent over and pulled his briefs and shorts off the ground and clothed himself. Right in front of him on the ground, his semen had landed in a few tiny clumps. Cory kicked some leaves over those cooling, viscous, pearly white remains of the most intense sexual experience of his life. Then he tried his best to compose himself and continue with the almost forgotten task of getting the extra art supplies Shawn had asked for.

* * *

The cafeteria was the biggest building in the camp. It was designed to house all of the children who were attending the camp at any given moment. In the midst of this faintly structured chaos Cory and Shawn sat together at the end of one of the tables closest to the kitchen.

Without the presence of Joe or Lawrence, whose group was not done with its morning activities, Shawn was totally at ease. Even around all the girls he was very comfortable, which cannot be said of most people like Shawn. Janine's presence alone would have been enough to make Joe or Lawrence nervous, but Shawn just conversed at everybody's level and nobody felt awkward or left out. This group of six would work just fine over the coming summer. Cory was relieved by this. Even though he was excited about working here through the summer, he was nervous about who the other councillors would be. There were always people at any job that wound up taking the fun out of things and making things hard for those around them. These six would be the perfect match for any bullshit Joe and Lawrence might get up to.

The girls were the first to leave. They had already been in the cafeteria with their groups when the boys came in. They all said their goodbyes and then the cafeteria got much quieter and emptier when they were gone. This left Cory and Shawn alone at their table.

"I'm surprised the men's men didn't coordinate their day with Janine," Shawn said.

"They'll never do it. They talk big, but I don't think they can really live up to that teen movie image they're trying to set," Cory replied. He had a tremendously vivid image of those tight buttocks clenching while that determined right hand rubbed that rigid flesh. He had to try hard to banish it, but he eventually managed.

"Nope. And Janine's no idiot, either."

"I feel kinda bad for her. She seems really sweet. I hope if they do try to pick her up, they get the picture fast that she wants nothing to do with them. Just so that she doesn't spend her summer fending them off."

"I'd say between her, Carol, Kelly and Susan, the guys wouldn't be allowed to get any closer than the ladies wanted them to."

"I know what you mean."

They talked for awhile about their high schools and how it would be to never have to see them again. Both were excited by that.

"I don't have any illusions about fitting in there either," Shawn said, "but at least there, you just go on about your own business. No sanding in crowded hallways waiting out recess. You go to class and you go home."

"I wouldn't worry about fitting in though." Cory said. "My older brother's been away now for two years and he says there's basically someone for everyone, no matter how weird."

"Thanks."

"Shut up. I know you know what I mean."

They both smirked.

Cory continued, "I mean, they have clubs for anime fans. My brother says his school's even got an anarchy society – if you can figure that one out."

Shawn laughed at this. "An organized society to promote a disorganized society. I guess calling university a place for 'higher learning' is a bit of stretch these days."

At the next tables the kids were starting to get restless. Shawn noticed immediately.

"We're supposed to have a half hour for lunch," Shawn said, "but I guess they're ready for more now."

So the guys got up and took the children back outside for the rest of their day's worth of summer fun.

* * *

Public showers. It was unbelievable that this place had public showers. The councillors' washroom building had one doorway but beyond that there were two other doorways that let into the building proper. One for boys and one for girls. Once inside this second doorway, you could go to the right and wind up in the washroom or you could keep going straight, to the end of this small building, and wind up at another door. Beyond this door was the shower room. It was just an empty tiled room with four shower heads.

Cory hated public showers. Although he didn't feel like he had anything to be ashamed about when it came to his body, he didn't like showing it off either. This was the one thing he knew he would detest at this camp. The whole summer, he would be trying to pick the perfect time to go so that he wouldn't have to be in there with anyone else.

After the first long day of camp, sun set long ago, Cory finally decided it was time to go in for his shower. He walked down the short hall to the boys' shower and opened the door. Nobody there. He walked over to the farthest shower head and pulled off his shirt. His shorts and briefs were next. He slipped them off over his sandals and hung them up out of the water's way. The air in here was cold and he felt his skin prickle. He quickly turned on his shower and moved his nude body under the water's warm spray.

The water cascaded down his back and flowed over the mounds of his buttocks and down the crack between them. The warmth of the caressing water felt fine. Cory poured some shampoo into one of his hands and then began to rub it into his hair. When he was finished, he dipped his head underneath the spray and began to rinse it out.