Girls Rules of Gamesmanship

Game Day

A club is formed for the purpose of undressing males

Over the years, there were very few families with boys in the neighborhood. It was a spacious suburban neighborhood with fertilized lawns and slate roofs, and over time the girls had admitted one of the few boys, Carl, into their games for the very base reason that, for as long as they could remember, he willingly did almost everything they asked. Besides, Carl was a bit younger and despite being a male was the more self-conscious of them. Though almost fully grown now, often when they were children he went along with acting out their games as a means of gaining their acceptance. All the while, as is often the case in this world, the girls were really the planners and schemers.

The Anderson girl, known affectionately as Cleo, lived across the street from and was best friends with Roberta. Cleo had strong Danish lineage with a doe-like forehead, crescent-shaped eyes and deep cheekbones. She worked the cash register on weekends at the super market, smiling cheerily at everyone, and was well liked by almost everyone. Roberta was small and tight and effervescent, like a gypsy with fluffy hair and easy dimples, but puberty had done wonders for her frame, and she carried her voluptuous 18 year old stature like a goddess.

Another playmate of theirs was Shantel Boyardi, of Italian descent, who had exceedingly expensive-looking black hair. Her eyebrows were straight, ultra dark, full charcoal, highlighting irresistible, languid brown eyes. She was a year or so older than Carl, lived across the street from him, and was distractingly and almost artificially beautiful to look at. And she knew it.

Carl was attracted to her without even realizing it, as any self-respecting male would be who gave her the slightest amount of attention. Her dark beauty, especially her spacious brown eyes, could hold the average male gaze like a magnet, but she found that that gaze faltered slightly when she returned it, which she had learned to do, piercingly, with a child's unwitting incredulity, causing the beholder to look away in recognition and take stock of his emotions as if an indecent and unbearably rare event had just taken place between them.

Shantel had grown accustomed to such attention. It happened frequently enough, and with experience she realized that some men seemed utterly uncertain of how to deal with her, and wore their attraction to her openly, even eagerly. For them she had come to understand that they held no clear remedy for this gift of their admiration. They could not help themselves, and accordingly she grew accustomed to exercising the potent and swift power to subdue them through no greater act than meaningfully returning their looks.

Despite this awareness, Shantel was not smug or self-conscious. Even now as a young adult she was quite outgoing, a lot of fun to play with, and in the vibrant warmth of summer she had not outgrown her childhood inclination to wear pink and white striped polo shirts and ruggedly tight denim shorts.

When Roberta mischievously announced late one weary afternoon that she and Cleo were forming a club, which she did with Cleo, Shantel and Carl on the front porch of Shantel's house, she told Shantel that she wanted her to be a member. It was a game club, they would be taking turns rolling dice, and she knew that Shantel knew a lot about dice, she said with coy naughtiness, implying that dice was a metaphor for something both more base and more adult. Knowing anything at all about dice seemed to them like reason enough to invite Shantel into the club.

"A club," said Shantel acceptingly, rocking in the porch swing, her black hair swishing onto her face and then flailing behind her. "That sounds like fun." She glided in slow undulations, acutely tuned into the underlying messages coming from Roberta.

Carl sat on the short sandstone-topped side wall of the porch wearing a t-shirt and shorts, and because it seemed obvious to him that he was not clearly invited into the conversation, he was expertly kicking a pillar with his buff-colored tennis shoes, but he was listening, suspecting something odd was going on based on the tone of the conversation and how it seemed designed to keep him at a distance.

"This isn't only a game club," Roberta said informatively.

Shantel stopped rocking. "No?" She asked.

"Oh, no, it's a women's club, mostly," said Cleo, with a joyful idiocy in her voice, purposefully encompassing the three girls and giving Carl the message that they were up to something that might include him, but definitely not yet.

Carl tilted his head, listening. He was used to this treatment and not put off by it. Yet, based on the blithe tone of their talk, he had the vague feeling that today they were talking about something important, more important than usual. He could not put his finger on it, but there was an odd feeling to it, as if underneath it all was something sacrosanct, tenable to women but not initially to boys, and he suspected that the girls-only bond they were keeping meant even a peripheral admittance to it might come with a price for the male sex. As he thought about it, it put a sense of daring into him, finally putting him a little on edge.

As if to assuage his fears, Roberta spoke up, saying, "Males are allowed, but they have to follow all the rules, right?"

"It's all in the dice," answered Cleo giddily. Roberta looked at her and simultaneously they flitted their eyes up to the heavens.

"Yeah. It's a dice club for sure," Roberta said instructively. Then she asked Shantel, "Do you have some dice?" It was clearly meant as a way forward, a way to get started on whatever the next part of this adventure would turn out to be.

Shantel lifted her feet and let her rocking come to a still while she pondered the question.

"Here's the game," Roberta went on. "It's a little old-fashioned. You roll the dice and based on what you roll you have to go to a certain base. Like anything under 5 and you go to first base." Roberta then looked quizzically at Carl to see if this baseball reference had any meaning to him. He was staring slack-jawed at them, but his eyes revealed his thoughts, narrowing keenly, and his mind focused and buzzed with attention.

Shantel stood up thoughtfully, pulling back her hair and staring myopically into the middle distance, realizing that there might be very interesting consequences to playing this game with Carl. If she understood things at all properly, the game meant experimenting with sexual themes.

"Males have to follow all the rules," said Cleo, emphasizing the world 'all,' "because it's a girls club, but sometimes girls don't."

"Right," said Roberta in a drawn out tone of mockery.

Shantel wanted to know if Carl understood what they were talking about. She skipped over and stood looking at him, enveloping him with candid eyes, purposefully inspecting him to see what was going on in his face. She locked eyes with him and he rather abruptly seemed to surrender his gaze to hers. He looked down between them, then returned her gaze with conciliation written all over his face, his eyes daubed with an unspoken pleading, and, even though it was not her intention, she felt again the satisfaction that comes from the look of a male publicly revealing the effect she had on him, his gaze confessing a private need to please her.

"You know this club is for ladies," she said instinctively to his face, smiling wickedly, then with a wave she beckoned the other girls over.

"Males can play the game, like I said" said Roberta, walking over to Carl. Then Cleo sauntered over and suddenly there were three girls all fencing him off from the rest of the porch. "It'll be fun," she announced conclusively, giving Carl a mad smile.

Carl's mind was tilting all over. To him, what hung in the air most, and which he could not see beyond, was at least the possibility of some kind of sex with three very grown up girls. He had almost no experience of sex, but he believed they were going to include him in the game they were taking about, and it hardly mattered to him what was actually meant by sex. The idea of joining in a game of titillation with the older girls seemed fun, and the idea of anything sexually suggestive with Shantel held a magnificent drama of its own.

"Let me go look for the dice," said Shantel joyfully. Pivoting like a ballerina, hair radiating, she turned away from the group and made her way into the house. A moment later she returned with a dice, holding it tremulously like you might handle a delicate moth. When Roberta and Cleo saw it, they gave each other down-lows followed by hi-fives. They looked at Carl to get his reaction, and he gave everyone a grand smile meant to say, I'm in no matter what.

"We have to play this game somewhere inside," said Roberta, taking the dice. "We need a table and maybe another room too."

"My older sister is here watching TV," said Shantel, referring to Georgia, he sister home from college, 2 years older at 20, "but we can go upstairs to the playroom. There's a spare room there with some junk on the floor."

"Oh," said Cleo smugly, 'We'll have to see if Georgia wants to play at some point." She shared a lighthearted look of conspiracy with Roberta.

"If only," said Roberta bravely.

The playroom was a large arched room filling most of the attic. Short walls lined with paneled bookshelves led to the slanted walls that arched up to the ceiling. The ceiling was painted white. There was a long, beat up, blotched wooden table in the middle surrounded by chairs.

"Here are the rules," announced Roberta.

Cleo let out a soft, whimpering laugh which interrupted Roberta. She held up a finger to pause Roberta's speech, then moved around the room studying it, and whispered in Shantel's ear. Shantel's eyes widened appreciatively. She looked back at Cleo with amazement, then looked at Roberta and said incredulously just the single word, "really," and then turned and gave Carl a snickering omniscient scan of appraisal, her eyes traveling up and down the entire length of him.

Carl returned her look with one of awakened oblivion. He had been friends with these girls most of his life and could not bring himself to sense uneasiness, but then the odd thing happened in that Shantel and Roberta and Cleo all went into the other room for a minute, leaving Carl alone, and their barely audible whispering shot through the closed door right into him, their hushed group sounding so quietly excited, triggering an ineffable stirring in his body. He became cognizant of a change to his physical state, how he was zinging with the faintest pageantry of exhilaration, awakening a greater awareness of the surroundings, of the upcoming game, and of who might do what with whom. His face lit up, his eyes bolted awake. His urge to play expanded, and he found himself feeling light, pliant, and willing.

The girls came back, all three of them trying to hide an open interest in Carl by patently ignoring him. They went to the table and focused on the dice. Fluttering lightness continued in Carl's body, finding its way everywhere.

"Like I was saying, " said Roberta, "the game goes way back to a game from older days. The rule for under 5 is first base. Five is second base. Six is third base, or roller's choice, but we don't go all the way."

Carl reviewed in his head the vague sense he had of the meanings of these bases. First base was kissing, he knew, and second base he imagined was using your hands to feel the other person. Third base? Carl wasn't sure, maybe feeling without clothes.

"OK, we take turns. I go first. All ladies go first." Roberta confidently rolled out the dice on the table top. It came up a 1.

"That's first base," said Cleo. "Kiss someone."

The girls' eyes went briefly to her and then shifted away to land with permanence on Carl, the only male.

Carl dared not move. Roberta turned toward him and in a fiery instant she turned into something brazen, sexy, and daring. The idea that he was about to be kissed by her, by this suddenly real, larger-than-life female body, seemed oddly affecting to him, as though if it had to happen some time in his life, it might as well be now. He felt fidgety but he felt ready for it. Electricity waved through him with force as he turned his face to meet Roberta who walked over and proceeded to give him a real kiss on the lips. Her soft lips pressed on his with tenderness and his thoughts turned inward with amazement at the perilously gentle touch of the girl. He was moved to a suddenly heightened awareness of being the lone male. His thoughts whirled into chaos, and his body grew tense and anxious. His penis seemed to wake up out of nowhere.

Roberta pulled away and said to the room at large, "Well, how'd you like that?"

There was unequivocal silence. Everyone watched the two of them for a moment. Then Cleo said, "Now Roberta has kissed Carl. She doesn't have to do that again."

"What if she rolls another first base roll?" Asked Shantel with genuine interest.

"Girls club rules say she can skip it if she wants, or invoke the girl's choice rule," answered Cleo.

Shantel had been paying close attention when Roberta kissed Carl. She had watched both of their faces, and saw what she thought was heated but calculated indifference in Roberta. When she pulled away, however, she saw that Roberta moved with a new nimble grace. And Shantel saw that Carl was flush with embarrassment, obviously deeply affected. Was it because maybe he enjoyed it, and that he was turning red from that, or maybe because he was incapable of hiding before all the girls how embarrassing it was to be kissed by a girl.

Then she saw him quickly drop a hand to his crotch and with the deftest of movements adjust his clothing, and something new occurred to her about what might be happening to him. She got his attention by theatrically covering her mouth with one hand as if to say, oh no! I saw that! And when he did look at her, which she knew eventually her actions would cause him to do, she gave him a knowing smile. The effect of this was apparently to profoundly disconcert Carl, for she watched as he tried unsuccessfully to look away from her, and she manifestly held his eyes while his entire face radiated entreaty. Then, as Carl sat down, he winced and squirmed uncomfortably into one of the chairs, but still did not look away from her, his face going redder.

"Cleo next," announced Shantel liltingly, eying Carl mostly. She was beginning to enjoy the game more than she had expected.

Everyone watched as Cleo sat down and carefully shook the dice then rolled a 4. She then banged it down on the table and rather matter of factly said, "I have to kiss Carl too."

"No," said Roberta. "Carl has to kiss you. Or at least you have to kiss each other." This distinction in ownership made sense to them all.

"Yes, kiss each other," said Shantel.

"No, it's OK," said Cleo peacefully. She stood up and went over to where Carl sat in his chair. "C'mon," she said, encouraging him to stand up.

Carl's complexion was still flushed from the impact on him of the kiss from Roberta, but his eyes had returned to the room, looking bright and aware. Very reluctantly he stood up, and Shantel clearly could tell that something about being a male had begun working its magic on him. "I think he needs to kiss Cleo with his eyes open," offered Shantel.

"Good idea," said Roberta. "Strategy, I think you call it," she said observationally.

Cleo planted a soft-lipped and prolonged kiss on Carl, who did keep his eyes open. He looked at Cleo with mild appeasement and tried to kiss her back, but he did not move or flinch or react in any other way. It was ever so slightly less novel than the first kiss with Roberta. But the look in his eyes was one of wonder and greed, and after they had parted and Carl was back in the chair, Shantel could sense that something about him was changing even more.

In a hurry, Shantel then took the seat and rolled the dice, which turned out to be another 4.

"My turn," she announced. "After this, we all will have kissed Carl. If we keep this up, something's got'a give."

For Carl, the erotic excitement of kissing or being kissed by a girl, the soft, warm, receptive touch of a girl's lips covering his, felt somewhere between fine and abnormal. He replayed the lurid physical sensations of it in his mind, and as he did, he relished that they were new and wondrous. His mind dashed into high gear, and he began trying to make sense of the fact that they were all doing this together, that there were no scruples in anyone's actions. Like nothing in his life before, the open-ended sexual freedom of the situation started to pry the lid off of lust in his psyche, and for the first time in his young life truly uncontrollable arousal rose up hot and fantastical from the natural abyss within. He was spellbound by it, carried on a wave of it, and feeling intense shame lest he be the only one unable to conceal such excitement.

Shantel approached him, her eyes dark, wide and free. "Are you ready for a real kiss?" She asked with good humor. She came before him and beckoned him up from the chair like a cheerleader waving both hands in an upward fashion. He rose mechanically. She gave him a riveting look, full of challenge. Her face seemed to Carl to be one big invitation.

"Eyes open, now," she admonished him.

He looked back at her with longing and sheepishly said, "I'm ready." His heart was pounding out a frantic drumbeat of desire that moved him forward. Their faces came together. Shantel looked at him and Carl found himself fixated looking back into Shantel's steady, spacious brown eyes and sensing an existential well of allure far behind them. Her eyes beckoned and he wanted to pour himself into her.

To his utter amazement, when Shantel kissed him, she opened her mouth a little and lushly licked both his lips with her soft, flat tongue. He dared not move. Chemistry poured into his bloodstream. Her eyes were suddenly brimming with light and never left his. His physical body began slipping away, and soon a full erection sprouted fabulously in the confines of his shorts, at least partially disguised by the surrounding material. It felt sensational, stiff and hot and pleasurably swollen, and he was preoccupied with it and whether he could hide it from all three girls.

Roberta and Cleo, watching the kiss, looked at each other and nodded their heads ostentatiously. As Shantel pulled back from Carl, their view took in his entire body, and for the most part they saw that Carl was pink with embarrassment. It took them by surprise that when it was over he stood stock still. Having little experience pondering the male form, they had only the crudest expectation of a penis let alone an erection, but it was hugely obvious from the front of his shorts that Carl was now fully aroused. They studied him with new appreciation, enjoying the scene before them, both thinking that, because of Shantel, the girls club was playing out far better than they hoped it would.

"Carl's turn, " said Roberta, offering him the dice with a gesture of her hand, openly examining his crotch. He looked at her with a touch of fright, but he sat down and rolled a 5.

"A five! Wow!" Roberta larked. She drew her head back swiftly. "That's like third base."

"Does that mean Carl gets to feel one of us up?" Asked Shantel.

"Yeah. I guess so," said Cleo.

"His choice," said Roberta, refereeing the event now. "Third base means with no bra."

This announcement was met with taciturn agreement, as though Carl's feeling of one of the girl's naked breasts was simply part of an agreement they'd already entered into, like terms of a lease.

"I'll do it," continued Roberta.

Carl felt outnumbered and like he could not argue one way or another about which girl, if any of them, would let him feel her breasts. Certainly Roberta's breasts were a fair sight more developed than Cleo's or Shantel's. He actually felt relieved that it had been so easily decided how this would take place.