Tranquilized by the tide's rhythmic whoosh, I'm drifting into a solar-powered nap when a cavalry of baritone chatter trumpets reveille. My head abandons its forearm pillow, radar ready to scope out the hung and the shirtless.

"New arrivals, two o'clock." A pack of upperclassmen - Bowdoin, probably - shucks and tosses to reveal a range of abs from washboards to kettles. Like domesticated Kalahari warriors, they've staked their dune-side claim with coolers and discarded colors. 

Dawn's gleaming, recumbent vessel lists to port, and French-manicured fingertips whisk imaginary sand from the bikini's rear wedge. 

"Meh." Her ennui mingles with the aroma of Coppertone.

To our right, a middle-aged dude with a dozing wife lowers his sunglasses to check out Dawn's barely-covered ballast. He sports the same chest hair and chains as the agent in the Blues Brothers' steam room. Same perspiration, too.

"You haven't liked a single one so far today." 

For the week since we first spoke, we've bonded over adjacent towels every afternoon. In between frostbitten bouts of body surfing, we sun ourselves like cormorants and host an informal talk show on the passing parade. 

"He's not too bad." She nods at a chiseled Nordic giant. I've seen more enthusiasm from my mom when she orders a half-pound of Swiss at the deli. 

Way too much bicep. Plus, the sleeves didn't come off with the shirt, if you get my drift. "I kinda like the one on his left."

"The one who just turned sideways? Can't see him."

"Takes a disappearing act to know one," I grin.

Her definition of 'out in a minute' had been a stretch on that first day. Just as I'd contemplated turning in her bag to Lost and Found, there she was, shimmering fresh from the sea and strutting between hopscotch boards of lounge chairs. Judging from the convoy of swiveling heads, no one missed the dirigibles with balloon knots shrink-wrapped in a translucent lemon halter and leading the charge. Or the hip-band, rolled in on itself until only the width of a shot glass was guarding the V in Venus. Must've been a strong current. 

"I told you what happened." And she had. Someone she'd run into had burned her ear for twenty minutes. The unshaded detour had left her in need of a swim. 

Anyway, she made her way back to me and talked a streak. Safe topics. Like what we did for our eighteenth birthdays. That we're both opting to enter the workforce instead of subjecting ourselves to four more years of stifled classroom yawns only to be hamstrung with the debt of a banana republic. How we both love the beach, light novels and browsing the village five-and-dime.

The starting guns of a summer friendship's carefree sprint had been fired. And to think all this developed from a compliment on her overhead serve.

Differences? Sure. She gives off a class-cutting bathroom-smoking vibe, likely has a zillion boyfriends (I haven't asked, but come on - her mom must keep a loaded Remington 870 by the front door) and tilts the world through an intuitive bitchiness I can't help but admire. It's an exhilarating change from the girls I hang with from school, who are mostly straight-laced dateless overachievers whose book bags really do contain books. 

We're not so cozy, however, that I've spilled even a whimper about Marc and Vicki, mostly because the vacation sun is bleaching their headline from my front page. Besides, it just sounds too... I don't know... Whiny. Uncool. "Don't be a baby, Teri," was my dad's idea of consolation. Mom was more diplomatic. She took me to Saratoga Springs for lunch and a shopping day and listened without saying a word as the crab cakes with remoulade went untouched and tears pelted dainty gelato peaks into a white-chocolate mess.

"Would you fuck him?" Four husky drumbeats interrupt misery's recall.

I'm stunned as a jellyfish. Or did Dawn actually ask me to pass the SPF instead of what I just heard? Surely she can't be popping such a graphic question on the busiest day of summer so far when other sun worshipers have cast their prayer rugs a little too close for comfort? And who the heck is 'him'? 

It's then I spot the barbecued skimboarder who's waving at her. She pretends not to notice, her eyes masked in knockoff Ray-Bans that give nothing but twin distortions of my burning face.

"Who, him? Nah." I'm more annoyed with the reflection than at her question.

"What type of guy would you consider fuckable? Or is their appeal strictly theoretical?" 

Rather a leap from our chit-chat so far, isn't it? A crinkled doyenne whirls toward us, cyan-tinted from her umbrella; her chin, a fist of righteous indignation. 

"Can we talk about this later?" I mumble.

"You're a virgin, aren't you?" she hoots. "I knew it."

I'm lip-syncing, "Why don't you yell it louder?" and gesticulating like an exasperated hula dancer. "So what? Does it violate some obscure local ordinance?"

Her brows arch and upstage the onyx slant of frames. "I thought all you New York girls were sophisticated badass bitches in the sack. What happened?"

"Funny, and I thought all you Downeasters knew how to mind your own business."

Unperturbed, she reunites a renegade blonde strand with its stylishly tousled tribe. "Fine, let's assume the guys our age there are the duds they are here. You've never been hot for a teacher? Or one of your dad's friends?"

Sleazy Agent's eyes are gobbling Dawn's tawny lushness as he would a bacon buffet. His hand creeps past the chest chains and paws at his Bermudas.

"Not really," I dodge, stuffing a sordid fantasy involving Mr. Kirby and a chair-mounted vibrator back into its memory hole with all the success of a motorist struggling to refold a map. 

"Then what, really?"

Think fast. "Feeney Falkland." For about two weeks. Still, I'd rather admit to the bewitching tv-turned-film star and his legendary pout and his offscreen penchant for changing girlfriends like boxers than breathe one word about Anton, up-and-coming singing icon, whose melted-Midori gaze has launched a thousand shivers from belly button to, well, that other button. 

"Actors don't count."

"They're so shallow! Have you gone out with that guy? He obviously knows you." 

"Gone out with. You're so quaint. I hooked up with him a few times." She reclines and stretches her arms overhead, causing more of her tits to bulge from their confinement like well-set butterscotch custard. 

"Not my type, but he is kinda cute."

"He's okay. Fun, no drama. You'd never know it to look at him, but his dick is huge. Instant rock, too."

Whew. Granny Blue-Hair missed that one. I squint harder at the skimboarder's wiry silhouette but can't spot any warping in the outline. "And yet you used the past tense of 'hook up'. What's the catch?"

"He lives up to his name."

"Which is?"

"Jimmy Swift."

"Oh."

"He always gets off before he can get it in."

Sleazy Agent is going to dislocate a vital organ or two if he leans any farther out of that chair. 

I gesture at her boobs' escape artistry, unable to resist joining in the fun. "Well, look at you. Why wouldn't he?"

"Wasn't my fault." She tugs the bandeau just in time to avoid an arrestable offense, much to the chagrin of goggle-eyed admirers rooting for a double nip-slip. "I found out he likes handjobs better than fucking."

Of all the times to sip my Coke. "Seriously?" I gust between coughs.

"Mm-hm. He fessed up after the first couple of tries and proceeded to give me detailed instructions. Like when to take my clothes off, where to grip his wood, how he wanted me to sit."

I sit straighter, wondering if she'll elaborate and hoping Granny Fist-Face has turned down her Beltone until further notice.

"Very particular about his lube, too - even insisted on bringing along his own Crisc - "

The rest is muffled in the creak of stressed-out aluminum chased with a thud.

Having tipped off his lounger and into the sand, Sleazy Agent has assumed the identity of breaded veal. The muumuu mountain next to him rouses from her paperback nap with a snort like ripping trunks. And 'poof' goes the internal porno I'd begun to loop, in which Dawn's agile fingers unwrap Jimmy too-Swift's disproportionately huge package, skillfully redirect the pulsing projectile to keep her kisser from getting smacked, then tease the shortening-slathered knob until it spouts like a breaching humpback all over Boom-Boom Acres.

Wonderful. Bad enough I've already been harboring a bedtime fetish even kinkier than Mr. Kirby's chair-mounted vibrator. 

It started last week. I was minding my own pent-up business, prone and splayed and fantasizing of frotting my lead singer's trousered mic stand. Out of nowhere, a flash of Dawn's smooth-lipped upshorts lit the fuse, catapulted my knees in opposite directions and clenched my mint-condition orifice in a vigorous fist. The noise I made was wild and sharp with surprise.

Spent, shocked and sweating, I squirmed free of the tangled sheets and convinced myself it was a one-off. Except it's happened every night since. 

"I need to cool off," I grumble before springing to my feet and racing toward surf as blue as a boutique brand of soda I once tried. Vonnie had taken a sip and declared it tasted like something the dental hygienist gives you to rinse. 

I feel a pang of disloyalty's guilt at the thought of my best friend back home. Then Dawn flies past me, tresses swaying, peach-fuzz bum sugared with the first splash of seafoam, and like a kite she's sending aloft in her wake, my mood soars into a giddy, forgetful sky.
 

Sunset. Bare toes, lapped by the fickle tideline, cutoffs slipped over dry suits. A dedicated dozen or so of the day's hundreds, scattered and contemplative. Over the sea, an anomaly: a pale-peony ceiling with no trace of fog.

Something breaks the symmetry below Dawn's waistline. She hasn't bothered to zip her shorts. Not that she needs to; they're contentedly snuggled around her hips as we walk.

I was glad when our swim washed away the earlier sex talk. But now, her tummy's provocative frame, denim parted like a burlesque curtain to reveal the low rise of her bikini, shoots tracers through my own equivalent and removes all conversational filters.  

"What you said before... about Jimmy Swift being into handjobs... what else did he ask you to do?"

I brace for a cutting 'none of your business' or mockery at my change of interest, but a feline smile ripens the color of her lips. We're good to continue.

"Soon as I touched his dick, he couldn't ask much. Too busy hyperventilating."

Her directness, like cold water, takes getting used to. I flinch, adjust and wade in a little more.

"I would think all guys would be speechless once they saw you naked. Not to mention quick-triggered." Oh crap, that was just plain groupie-gauche.

She looks straight ahead and lets me blush in peace. "With Jimmy, you could count it in strokes, not minutes. Once, I swear it took less than ten before my tits were soaked. Didn't even give me a chance to lose the bra."

"Ewww."

"Hey, don't underrate speed. Once, I wanked a guy who didn't blow till both arms felt like they'd been throwing shotput all night."

"I meant the wet-bra part," I nudge her back on-course.

"Pfft. It's a Reny's closeout, not Victoria's C-note. I just took it off and toweled down the first load while he watched. His tongue was hanging out along with his semi."

Self-consciously, I press my lips together.

"Next thing I know, he's raring to go again and asks if I'd let him fuck my tits."

I remember the mirrored humiliation when, using both hands and all my strength, I tried to mold the separate-but-equal into the appearance of meaningful cleavage, but their estrangement remained irreconcilable. No amount of training would get these demitasse pups to make so much as a pencil happy, let alone the real thing.

"Should've seen him when I opened my mouth in time to let his longest thrust slide in. I trapped it between my lips and it felt like it grew twice as big."

Even the gulls are giving us dirty looks.

"And it jizzed twice as quick. Didn't think he'd have that much left, but shit, I nearly choked."

Too funny. I think my diaphragm will end up in a cast for a month. It's such a relief to be talking to someone who's living things I've only imagined, with or without my hand in my skivvies.

The minute I can breathe again, "Has anyone ever gotten it in without, you know, finishing first?" 

I can't believe that popped out, but what must it be like for a guy to watch Dawn take her clothes off for the first time, rub his hands over her voluptuous mounds and realize he's about to feel them squeezing him all the way to cloud nine? Premature sensory overload would be inescapable.

"You're a curious little cub, aren't you?" Her eyes narrow with amusement.

Here it comes - delayed ridicule.

"Okay, yeah, there's a big jock with a big cock. He gets it in just fine," she smirks. "He used to start off inside and then pull out and cream all over my tits, but the last time we did it? Man, he couldn't get enough of the tight stuff."

"He could be a keeper." 

"He's going steady with Miss Goody Two Shoes Head Cheerleader." 

My ribs gain ten pounds on either side. She's just admitted to being a Vicki to some other Marc and Teri.

I glance at Dawn's refined profile again - the swan to Vicki's vulture - and at the Shetland mane dusting the dip of her back. Marc's defection for a Dawn, I would understand, even be okay with, knowing his ego would end up as roadkill under her short-attention-span Porsche. Maybe I should invite her to the Hudson Valley once the summer's over. 

"Look, I don't need the hassle of a full-time boyfriend," she explains to the silence. "Reid's a hunk and the cheerleader's saving herself. I'm his physical therapy."

Well, that's an interesting way to put it. "Were you ever able to come with him? Or Jimmy Swift?"

"Nope. Neither one of 'em knows squat." 

"But if they're so clueless, why even bother?"

Her fingers glide beneath the bandeau's top edge, surf the swells and plunge toward the snug harbor between until they've re-established secure coverage. "I dunno. It's kind of a rush. And at the end of the day, there are other options."

Is she hinting what I think she's hinting? More dirty laundry explodes from my imagination's overstuffed hamper and through my mouth. "Do you think about them... while you... " 

"While I what?"

Don't make me say it. "You know... after being frustrated... "

"What, while I masturbate?" I wince. Her laugh is wholesome and oddly comforting. "Sometimes, I guess. My favorite is a centerfold mag I swiped from one of my brother's friends."

Oops, that's right. In the Back of Beyond, the porn is the paper kind. 

"Dirty in more ways than one - there's still dried cum all over my favorite page." 

What? Is she yanking my chain? The dried-cum part sounds repulsive.

"I don't know whose cum it is," she exhales dreamily, "but it turns out we both like Marla."

I can almost hear the crackle as slender fingers carefully pry open a naked nymph's sticky likeness. Moments later, the restless shuffle of legs on linen, followed by slick lapping sounds.

The same dizziness from untimely engorgement reels me as it did the first time I stumbled upon Desktop Dix and its faceless, rigid prongs of masculine glory.

"Marla?" I croak over the desert of my tongue.

"Tell you what. Next time, you can come over and see her for yourself."

Jig's up. I fake-cough until the real thing takes over.

"Anything else you'd like to know before you tell me about your alone-time fantasies and techniques?" she croons.

Oh hell, I'm not ready to open up my chapter of this book at all. "Have you tried it with anyone else?"

"Mr. Danforth, once."

"The pharmacist?" He must be pushing fifty - and hardly anyone's idea of a hunk. Nevertheless, her answer is a godsend. "How'd that happen? More importantly, why?" Yes, keep her talking.

"I dunno. I thought an older guy might be a kick. He perved on me at a clambake last summer after a couple of beers. Kept staring at my tits and hinted he could teach me a few things the younger guys couldn't."

"Like what?" It's my best rhetorical sneer.

"I didn't ask for the class outline - just told him to fuck off."

Nothing like playing hard-to-get. "What changed your mind?”

“Few minutes later I saw him weaving toward the buoy shed. I thought he'd had too many Shipyards and needed to whiz... until I figured out he was trying to hide the bulge I must've given him. Got curious and followed.”

Bloody joggers. She goes quiet for too long while a duet of Red Sox-capped matrons trots by in a varicose hobble.

“And?” 

"I camped out behind a stack of old fishing gear and waited. Sure enough, he looks around, making sure the coast is clear and starts fumbling with his belt."

Her breasts seem to inflate further, tight and high and proud of their undue influence on this bit of history.

“He leans against the back of the shed, unzips his pants and whips out a hard-on as red as a stoplight. Pushes his briefs down with one hand and rubs the tip with the palm of the other while wedging it up against his belly. I thought that was kinda weird, but it made me horny as fuck. I was hoping he'd move his hand out of the way.”

“So you were perving on him. Was he big? Average?”

“Yeah... Yeah, I guess I was, and no, he's average. Didn't matter, though. He starts to grunt and pull on it, and I know he's imagining the dirtiest things about me while he jacks himself."

I shouldn’t be listening. Worse, I shouldn’t be responding.

"Stuck my fingers under my cutoffs and rubbed right along with him, stroke for stroke. Fuck, was I wet.”

I sneak another peek at the undone zipper's gold-toothed gape and wonder if those are the same cutoffs, if that was how she accessed her relief valve, or if there was enough wiggle room through one of the frayed cuffs...

“So his eyes are screwed shut and his face is all red and his fist is a blur, back and forth. My fucking legs melt when his other hand fumbles a hanky halfway out of his pocket. I know he's not gonna make it. And by now, I'm on my knees leaning chest-first into a lobster trap and start coming like crazy. Then he let go three, maybe four blasts. Straight out, no dribble."

My own legs are feeling more than a little wobbly right now. Again, there's that surge of revulsion... but something earthier slithers through the basement window and flicks my breaker box back to the 'on' position.  

"I came again after the second spurt and again when he finally let go of it." 

Three times?! And here I was, all puffed up because I'd vibed myself into a double once. 

"Could've gone another round if Mrs. Britteridge hadn't started screaming that Mrs. Weld's Labradoodle got into the burgers again. Made him buckle up right quick."

I choke back the giggle, afraid of detouring Memory Lane.

"Anyway, the more I thought about it,  the more I kinda liked the idea of being someone's porn."

"Huh?" 

"Being like Marla, showing off, seeing how far you can push him before he cracks. Imagine what he'd do for the real thing, not just an idea or a picture." 

Another jogger splashes by, a forty-ish buzz-cut with zero body fat and the matching perpetual grimace. Telepathically, I scold him to pick up the pace.

"How'd you let him know?" I pounce once we're alone again.

"Like it was hard? Everyone knows Mrs. D. takes the first Wednesday of the month off to host her garden club gab-fest. I waited for near closing time at the apothecary. No one else was in there, so I brought a pack of cough drops to the counter, opened my slicker - thank fuck it was raining - and let his hormones do the rest." 

"What'd you wear?" As if it mattered.

"Extreme crop top - low cut and lots of underboob. He's shaking so hard, he drops Mrs. Fernbine's digitalis script. Then he goes to pick it up and knocks over the Preparation-H display. Naturally, I volunteered to help."

I roll my eyes and recite, "Lemme guess," picturing more retail wreckage as Dawn's peek-a-boo nearness turns a mild-mannered druggist into the proverbial china-shop bull.

"Nah, it didn't happen like that. He told me to wait in his office while he locked up. I sat on his desk, yoga-style and faced the door."

A lotus pose, perhaps? Even through extra layers, the cutoffs' rough inseam tongues my swollen groove.

"When he came in and saw a better replay of what wasn't under the skirt, I thought he was gonna have a coronary."

He's not the only one. Thermal pools are percolating into the lining of my swimsuit. 

"He was staring so hard I thought my pussy would melt. I asked him if he'd ever seen a waxed one before. For real, I mean. He said no and that he'd always wanted to find out what it felt like."

I may never be able to leave my room again for the rest of this trip.

"I started running my fingers over it and told him it felt really, really nice. Made sure they didn't block his view too much."

I'm doomed to return home as pale as when I left. 

"He sits down in the chair right in front of me and leans forward like he's watching a movie or something."

And forget about the pilgrimages to Marshall Point Light or Cadillac Mountain's first-in-the-nation sunrise. 

"Then when he starts squeezing his lap, I pull up my top."

"You do realize in some states, that's attempted murder?" 

"Haha. I don't even get it all the way off when he jumps on top of me and starts gobbling and sucking my tits, grabbing my ass with one hand and groping my snatch with the other. Everything else on the desk went flying."

"Doesn't exactly sound like smooth moves to me."

"I know. So far, nothing different from Jimmy Swift, right? I figured I could slow him down by offering to take his pants off."

"Did it work?"

"Mm-hmm. Then he started saying we didn't have much time. I asked if he had enough time for a blow job before he popped my cherry. That shut him - "

"You picked him to be your first?!" I holler loud enough to startle puffin colonies off cliffs in Newfoundland.

"You wanna hear this or not?"

"Well, sure." The unacceptable alternative looms and mutes my volume. "Sorry, go ahead."

"He lets me unzip him, he drops trou and his dick's as hard as a stripper pole and twitching like it might splatter my face right then and there."

Her expression alights with - what's the phrase I'm thinking of, a contact high? - that rush you get from recounting a thrill.

"I was afraid to lick it too much. He seemed awful close and the last thing I wanted was to have to explain cum in my hair at home, so I kept the dive a short one."

The parted denim below her belly button invites me to picture her thumbs gathering and pushing down after she's home and alone, coaxing the cherry spandex to join in the same path... after which, she'd don an oversized t-shirt for bed, one that would conveniently ride up as she rolled between the sheets, panties still chastely folded in the dresser drawer...

"Before he could climb on top of me again, I cupped my palm over the juicy end of his tool and ground it into his belly as I rubbed..."

"Like you saw him do behind the shed," I blurt to prove that I'm still paying attention.

"Yep. He started breathing like a steam engine. I don't know what came over me. I stared him straight in the eye and said, 'Fuck off.'" The last two syllables hover between her lips, thick as smoke.

"You didn't!" 

"His eyes rolled up, he made the weirdest noise in his throat and suddenly he jerked hard into my hand and gushed all over it, all over his groin - everywhere. I didn't even put my top back on, just wiped my hand on it, pulled on my slicker and shoved it in one of the pockets. Then I took off."

I wait for the 'my skirt' in vain before bellowing a cheated, "That's it?" 

"Come on, let's face facts. He was done for the day. No wonder Mrs. D.'s such a grouch."

If there's such a thing as listeners' blue balls, my symptoms check all the boxes. Disappointment clears my deck enough to remember a vital detail. "But if he locked the place up, how'd you get out?"

"Fire door. Alarm's been broken forever. He gives the inspector Cialis freebies to look the other way. Anyway, so much for that experiment."

"Isn't it awkward when you have to go into town, though?" 

She shakes her head. "He got over it. Still tries to perv on me here and there, hoping for an encore. Probably whacks off thinking of it every chance he gets. I got a big silver lining out of it, though."

"What was that?"

"He's Miss Goody Two Shoes Head Cheerleader's uncle."

"Omigosh..."

Boisterous mirth fades to a reverent hush when I see the solitary male figure first. It glides toward us at a marathoner's steady pace, honed to a photogenic dream even from afar. 

I sniff for the inevitable narcissism that's bound to exude from someone wielding such aesthetic clout, but there isn't a trace. Not at a hundred feet, not at fifty. His glance brushes us just long enough to ensure a clear path, and I notice with mild joy that it's an equal-opportunity glance instead of the usual 'target acquired' stares riveted solely on my companion.

The distance is closing too quickly. I freeze in my tracks to memorize as much of him as possible: clipped waves in shades of cream soda and caramel, glacial eyes ablaze from the sun's last embers, the serene focus that animates his expression. He wears only a pair of trunks, the better for us to admire the marble carving of his chest and wheat-dusted limbs. 

In the golden twilight, he's mythology in motion. 

"Adonis," I breathe, lost in the grace of his retreating stride. 

"Not bad," chides Dawn. But this time, there's a smile in her voice.

To be continued...