Impact 17: of The Bikini

Robert has a dark olive complexion, with a thick black mustache and short black hair all over his body. Bobby is fair with a blonde surfer boy mop and almost no hair on his chest or belly, much less his back. All three men clearly spend a lot of time in the gym.

"I see what Kip means about Tom of Finland," Claire says watching the three of them going into the water. "Can you imagine the sex?"

"I do- I mean... I can," I jokingly stammer.

"We should ask to watch!"

"OK HELEN!" I snort, earning me tickles.

"I'm serious! Wouldn't you like to watch the three of them fuck," Claire asks. Kip and the Bobs are out in the surf tossing a football. "I think if we asked they would let us."

"Have you ever watched men fuck?" I asked, lowering my sunglasses, to look at her. "I mean besides the Norwegians, I guess?"

"That doesn't count," she says with an air of disappointment. "They weren't fucking each other. I should have asked them to though, I think they really wanted to... I wish I had - so yeah no, I never have, but I want to! Don't you? Just watch? I think they would like it."

"I can't," I tell her. She looks a little disappointed, but only a little. "Not with Kip," I explain. "Not just because we're friends, but because of work..."

"Mmm, that's real," she agrees. Then turns to me smiling, "Maybe we can steal the Bobs from him!" she laughs.

"He'd never forgive me!"

There's a long silence, Claire paging through her magazine, me looking at my book and imagining what it would be like to watch the guys fuck. The image is scary but exciting.

"Did you see Helen while I was away?" Claire asks, without looking up.

"No," I tell her, caught a little off guard. "Did you worry I would?"

She's still paging through her magazine, scanning the photos of models and celebrities.

"Yes, a little," she admits, still not looking at me. "Your fascination with her... and she is very beautiful."

"It's not like that-"

She lowers her glasses, so I can see her eyes. She's looking at me now, studying me.

"I will do anything you want with Helen," Claire says carefully. "Anything. But I don't think I want her to do more than watch you... I don't want you to do anything other than let her watch you. Does that make sense? Do you understand?"

"I think so..."

"Are you disappointed? Do you want to be with Helen?"

"You mean eat her out?"

"Yes."

I don't have to think about it because I spent so much time fantasizing about it while Claire was away.

"If you wanted me to?" I tell her. Thinking of my fantasy of the butch women, I lean over and whisper, "Like if you took me by the back of the neck and forced me down, I would eat Helen out. I would do anything you wanted."

Her pupils are tight little dots in the sun, but I feel like I can see them struggling to pulse open, like black flares.

"And me?" she asks, her voice a little husky.

"I... can't imagine you eating Helen out?" I admit - because I had tried to imagine it; Helen in her library chair, Claire kneeling between her spread thighs. The image just didn't feel right... never once getting me over the finish line.

"But the idea of her going down on you is really sexy," I tell her. I had cum repeatedly to the idea of sitting on the floor beside Helen while she licks Claire's pussy. I had liked to picture holding Helen's hand, the two of us squeezing hard at the moment of Claire's crisis.

There is a pause while Claire absorbs that, studying me. I am wondering if Helen has been with many other women, if it's been a long time or something she still does regularly, if her husband knows.

"Do you ever get jealous?" Claire asks, snapping me out of my thoughts. Her expression is clouded. Is she jealous?

"Yes?" I admit.

"With me," she says, as if maybe it's not clear.

"Yes..."

"Of what?"

"It's not..."

"Who?"

She looks maybe a little worried. I think of lying, of telling her how badly off the rails my fantasy of The Bitch went... but that wasn't jealousy. She's waiting for an answer... an honest one.

"Of whoever's next?" I finally admit.

It hurts my heart to say out loud, and must show on my face because Claire reaches for me now, her arm over my shoulder, her brow knit with concern.

"Oh Sarah-"

"I hate thinking about it," I tell her, feeling like I might cry, it hurts so much. "I hate picturing who they will be, but it's worse when I imagine a guy..."

"Sarah. I don't want anyone else," she says. "Sarah look at me," she commands, and I do, blinking back tears. "All I want is you, forever and ever. There's no one else, nothing else, there are no other girls, no more guys, just my Young Sarah."

She kisses me and wipes at her eye, but she's smiling bravely.

"Now stop that," she scolds. "No crying at the beach! The Bobs will never let us watch them fuck if they see us crying!"

She kisses me again, and I kiss her back, and we hold there, letting the kiss open up until we are kissing like lovers, our hands on each other, under the blazing sun and in front of the whole world... or at least the super gay bit of the world here on the beach with us.

"Oh my God bitches get in the water and cool down! You are TOO HOT!" Bobby bellows as he comes dripping across the towels, kicking sand and breathing hard. "Seriously the whole beach smells like pussy... or maybe that's the ocean?"

Claire throws her magazine at him, which he catches just as Robert and Kip arrive.

"What's going on?" Kip asks suspiciously. "Whudwemiss?"

"Six letter word, the clue is 'smells like fish'?" Bobby tells him, looking down at the wrinkled wet magazine. "Starts with a V-"

Claire just barely starts to huff in outrage and I don't even have a chance to narrow my eyes at him in mock anger.

"Venice," Robert says dryly, not missing a beat.

Claire and Kip and I all explode in laughter while Robert dries himself off with Apollonian cool and Bobby makes a sour face, but laughs too.

And this is how the day goes. The five of us wile away the morning, making jokes, sharing celebrity gossip, and actually finishing the crossword. We go in and out of the water to stay cool in the building heat - alone, sometimes in pairs, sometimes all together. At lunch time we all get beers. The guys eat hotdogs and Claire and I have nachos. They're gross, but as Robert keeps reminding us, "We're at the beach!"

Walking back from the boardwalk with soft serve ice creams Claire notices a woman walking towards us across the sand, topless.

"I didn't think you could do this in America," she says, as the woman passes. "Kip, I love this beach!"

As we reach our towels she hands Bobby her cone to hold, and takes her top off. We all watch as she applies lotion to her bare breasts. Retrieving her cone, takes her place on her towel to eat her ice cream.

I am for a moment, like a deer caught in headlights - both because I am staring at Claire's high beams, and because I am paralyzed with fear that she will insist I do the same. But she doesn't. Instead she pats the towel next to her for me to sit.

"Come Sarah," she tells me. "Your ice cream is melting!"

If Kip and the Bobs weren't already impressed with Claire, her native nonchalance about being topless clearly cements their esteem. But Claire goes one further.

"Time for a proper smoke, no?" she asks, pulling out a little tin box from her beach bag, and proceeds to roll a hash "spliff" - this involves using Kip's lighter to burn a sticky ball of hash, and sprinkling the crumbled burn bits of hash into a construction of three overlapping rolling papers holding a generous pinch of pouch tobacco.

Claire is hunched and focused. Legs drawn up and the soles of her feet pressed together, with Keith's copy of Piketty's Capital In The Twenty First Century on the towel in the space between her heels and her bikini-clad crotch as her work surface. She works in the shade of her hat, its enormous brim shading her project. Her naked breasts are tear drops, crowned by dark conical nipples, her bikini bottoms sit so low on her ass, most of her crack is showing, which, instead of looking crass, is like something out of a Richard Avedon photo. Claire belongs on the coast of North Africa not Long Island.

"This is all really complicated," Bobby says suspiciously, but watching attentively as Claire carefully rolls a bit of cardstock torn from a matchbook to make a little filter.

"Oh, I like that!" he says as she licks the papers and expertly rolls the tobacco and matchbook filter into a sturdy looking conical joint, twisting the fat end tightly closed, and presenting it to him.

"Booby, please do the honors," she tells him, straightening her legs, and stretching her back.

He is examining the little twist of rolling paper.

"It's like a wick!"

"Or a very short fuse!" Claire warns. "Now stop fucking around, and LIGHT IT BOOBY!"

The guys love Claire's hash and so do I. Besides a small toke now and then, I've never been much of a pot smoker - it gives me terrible coughing fits - and never smoke tobacco. But the hash is a different animal altogether. It gives the tobacco smoke a smooth round texture - like wet clay, or the color blue, and the high is wonderfully soft and furry.

"I think we have gotten my Young Sarah properly stoned," Claire laughs, her voice deep and hollow sounding as she exhales an enormous cloud of smoke.

And she's right, despite only taking small shallow hits, I am properly very high, but so is everyone else. After a burst of excited talk and laughter the others settle in and quiet down. I tuck into Capital while everyone else dozes.

Piketty's text is dense but absorbing. The sun is high in the sky and the air is still, ripples of heat are rising off the sand in the middle distance. The whole beach seems blanketed by the same post-lunch stupor that's silenced our group. Even the guys playing techno have turned off the music and quieted down.

My hat shades the pages of my book as I chip away at Piketty's thesis. His assertions are bold, but he backs them with mountains of data and fact-rich historical analysis, all of which are well written and organized. I claw through the introduction quickly and am making small marks and quick notes in the margins as I dive into the first section. Maybe it's the pot, but I keep seeing exciting ways to show his data. Every time I do, I doodle the idea onto the blank pages at the end of the book, and then on the fly leaf, and then on the inside of the covers. My heart is beating fast as I go deeper into a creative space inside myself - at some point I realize I'm going to need to buy Keith a new book. I've ruined this copy

After a while, however, the beer and pot and ice cream and sun all get to me and the words stop making sense. I jam my glasses in the book, saving my page, and cover it with my hat. No one moves as I stand, they're all asleep.

The sand is hot, but it feels good pushing up through my toes, a dry burning scrub. I find myself imagining I'm Claire as I walk; picturing what she looks like from behind. I enjoy the feel of my hips rolling as I walk - rolling like Claire rolls her hips. Rather than picturing my cheeks stretching the little suit, I picture hers. Rather than worrying about whether or not the crack of my ass is showing, I picture hers showing. I am pleased to discover, I find the image so glamorous and unpretentiously elegant, there is no room for me to feel mortified.

I reach back to pull my hair away from my neck and back. Lifting it and holding it up the way Claire did, feeling its weight while I walk, remembering how it turned her on. I picture myself now, but trying to see myself the way she does. I feel beautiful and sexy.

While the burning sand felt good at first, I'm grateful to reach the cool wet pack at the shore and for the icy water to rush up and quench my cooking toes. The cold water splashing up the front of my legs is a relief.

Unlike the first time I got in the water, when I was tentative and had to adjust to the cold of the Atlantic while Claire and the guys teased me, this time I walk straight in. The foam of breakers crashes against my shins and I pick up speed, lifting my feet high so I can run. The beach is gradual here, and the water is especially shallow as another big wave builds and prepares to curl. But even so I am running and very quickly the water is high enough to trip me. I let it, diving forward into the wall of water just as the big curl breaks over my head.

The happy sounds of the beach's midday hubbub behind me and the roaring surf all around me is shut off like a switch being thrown. All surface sounds are entirely gone as I plunge forward and down into the sunken roil of stretched and murky sounds. The shock of the cold braces and embraces me. The bodily surge of the ocean is simultaneously infinite and intimate - a cacophony with elements that might easily originate half a world away, while others might be coming from the fluid inside my own ears. I am keenly aware that not only am I in the pulse of the tide, it is in me, in my body, that the sound is a physical thing all around and entering me.

Another wave passes over me and the water pulls violently at me from every direction. The little bikini is tugged and yanked as I struggle with the surging tide, finally righting myself and diving deep to avoid the more chaotic currents above me. I swim like a frog, just above the clean sandy floor, which is a blurry topography of miniature white dunes.

I close my eyes and let fingers brushing the rippled bottom guide me along its slow gentle incline. I push myself to swim further and further out until my lungs ache and the sea floor disappears out of reach. I surface with a gasp. The horizon is entirely empty, not even a ship or plane in the distance. For a moment, treading water, I can imagine I am alone in the middle of the ocean, that the horizon is just as empty to my back, an endless empty depth beneath my kicking feet.

The image is so viscerally shocking I spin around, needing to see the beach. I am immediately reassured by the sight of my fellow beach-goers. The colorful crowd blanket the shore in both directions, thousands of us all escaping the crush of the city, just to crowd together here on the sand.

I no longer feel adrift, but I am out far enough that their voices and music and calls are almost entirely lost to the white noise of the surf, all but the loudest shrieks and laughs swallowed by the distant roar of the breakers. I kick forward and stroke with my arms, until I feel the reassuring brush of sand against my toes; feel myself reconnecting to the land, part of the world again.

My feet can just touch the bottom until the swell of an incoming wave eases me up off my toes. This far out these swells are giant but far less violent. I float upwards, carried high, my stomach dropping, then my heart leaps as I drop back down into the trough between waves.

I am a toddler bouncing on an oceanic knee.

Breathing deeply to catch my breath I take stock of my condition. My top is half off and twisted, one boob hangs out, the other is uncovered. My bottoms aren't much better, pushed down well below my ass. I hike them up and beat my arms in slow liquid movements, just enough to stay afloat. I'm all alone. The only other swimmers are far enough away I don't need to worry about flashing them. I scan the beach, finding our towels by their colors; I can just make out Claire and the guys. They are all still stretched out, unmoved if not still asleep. I've drifted a bit down the beach. I swim towards them until I can stand, even in the swells, and crouch to adjust my top.

Naturally, my first impulse is to cover myself, and I start to before hesitating. Rather than pull the bikini top back in place, I find myself tugging at the little bow behind my neck. Untied, the little top falls entirely away from my breasts, held to my body only by the underband.

I cup my breasts that way, making no effort to cover my nipples, but instead just enjoying the feel of being topless. Keeping just my head above water I rise and fall with the swells. I smooth my hands over myself, cupping my breasts, which float in front of me, pointing at the shore. My breasts are radiating heat into my hands, long and swollen to the touch. I squeeze them thinking of what Claire said about watching the guys fuck.

My nipples are tender cones. Pinching them, I enjoy how engorged and sensitive they feel. I imagine sitting with Claire on Kip's sofa watching Robert kissing Bobby. She is watching them and I am watching her. I can picture Claire's excitement as Bobby sucks Robert's cock. I push my bikini bottoms down my thighs and touch myself. I'm slippery even in the sea. I picture going down on Claire as she watches Kip fucking Bobby in the ass, the sounds of them rutting behind me, grunting and slapping, Claire's hands in my hair, grinding my face into her cunt, calling to the men.

I find myself remembering the feeling of being fucked by Claire's thumb, I try and imagine what it would feel like to have a hard cock in my ass, how much it would hurt. But I remember how much I had wanted more, for her to fuck my ass harder, for her to tear me to pieces. Something about the idea, the image of listening to poor Bobby grunting in pain while Claire gets off to it, of her cumming hard in my mouth, brings me over the line.

I let myself slip under the water as I cum. A large curl passes over me and I am thrown, tumbling as I arch and flex with my own inner waves. Finally, I let myself drift. When I am forced to come up for air I find I've drifted a good way down the beach and am again far from shore. But I've also gotten dangerously close to a group of other swimmers, although I am almost certain they can't see I'm naked as I pull at the little bikini bottoms and I swim back in the direction of the towels.

I feel a moment of terror as I search my waist for the little top and can't find it. After a frantic scramble, I realize it's entirely gone. I stretch my neck and spin around hoping to find it floating nearby, but it's nowhere to be seen. I can finally stand again, and covering myself with my hands, I lift myself as tall as I can, but it's disappeared.

The swimmers closest to me are three men. They are looking at me and seem to understand what's happened, but don't seem to know how to react anymore than I do.

The "men" are probably a few years younger than me, I realize. None of them has a sculpted gym body like the Bobs - they look more like Wes and his friends, soft and pale, college boys.

I drop my hands and shrug.

"It's fucking gone!"

We laugh and commiserate. And while they all seem a bit flustered by a topless women, it's not because they're even remotely interested. Instead of leering or hitting on me, they make friendly jokes and help me look for the top, And when I finally give up, exasperated, they ask for me to point out my towel and promise to keep an eye out for it.

"You guys are the best!" I tell them.

"You look great without it," the asian boy tells me with a wink, he is flabbier than his friends and has a sweet southern accent. I wave goodbye and start pushing through the water in the direction of our towels. I walk, hips rolling, back straight and head held high. I think of how much I love the way Claire's elbows bend towards her waist when she walks. I hold my arms a little bent, but away from my sides, fingertips touching the surface of the water, breasts bared.

There are hundreds of eyes on me, but somehow I am not afraid. It's not just that there's no mothers in that mass of onlookers, it's that no one remotely like my mother is here to see me. It's her brand of disapproval I feared, my father's glare I dreaded, the lecherous way Danny and his friends would look at "slutty" girls that scared me. But I don't feel scared, just the opposite. I feel strangely elegant. I feel entirely alien to the world I grew up in, unrecognizable to my former self. I am part of Kip and Claire's world now.