Name: Route137 Title: An Awakening Summary: A chance discovery awakens a 13 year old boy to female sexuality. Keywords: Voy, mast, mF Although this is written in the third person and is styled like a short story, it is a perfectly true account of an incident that happened to me when I was thirteen which awakened me to female sexuality. **** An Awakening. The arrival of the Campbells that summer amid the villas and rhododendrons of suburban, 1960s Bournemouth caused something of a stir. They appeared as if from nowhere and occupied one of the largest houses on Glenwood Avenue without a by-your-leave. They were a mystery, and they showed no deference. Their greatest sin, in this self-satisfied sanctuary of the middle-aged, was that they seemed quite young. They did not appear to have served their time on the ladder of life or to have earned their place. Rumours fanned out along the avenue; he was only 43; she was even younger; their daughter was already 20. The emphasis was always on “already”, as righteous minds did the sums. James, however, awash in the uncharted seas of his early teenage years, bored with his own company, was delighted, particularly as the Campbells turned out to be his neighbours. And the more he heard, the more interested he became. He became aware of his parents’ hushed conversations, of his mother’s tut-tuts of disapproval, all directed towards the innocent flowering shrubs that hid his garden from the house next door. Well, whatever his mother disapproved of so thoroughly had to be worth investigating. He began to spend more time outside, occupying himself near the shrubs. He accidentally threw balls into the bushes and had to search diligently for them. He even took to climbing trees, his fear of heights temporarily forgotten. And through these deceptions, he learned there were six of them: father and mother, daughter, a son about his age, another woman he could not place, and, occasionally, a baby. He caught snatches of their laughter, their shouted insults, and the buzz of their quieter conversation; he saw them running and sitting and eating at an outside table; and on one glorious, lucky morning, he saw the bikini-clad daughter sunbathing. Even at his young age, he knew that luck was not always as it seemed; she lay facing away from him on the sun bed, her body sloping out of sight, offering only tantalising glimpses of cloth, contours and flesh. And yet to him she was a film star, a goddess of sensual beauty, a midnight, morning, midday, afternoon fantasy. He clung to the tree branch, his arms aching, waiting for her to move, to turn, to stand, but she lay still. Eventually he heard his mother calling him in and returned reluctantly to eat his lunch in furious silence. Rushing back out, he found the sun bed empty, along with his hopes. After a week, he gave up. He knew the bushes between him and this strange new world were impenetrable. The summer stretched languidly on and he returned to solitary amusements. Then, one morning, as he ambled in the garden, a figure stepped out of the bushes and stood in front of him. “Hello,” it said. “My name’s Robert. I live next door.” Thus began what he thought of as a friendship of convenience; two boys, both thirteen, waiting uncertainly to be men, in need of some sort of companionship. Unwritten rules were established quickly: Robert was slightly taller and more aggressive in his opinions and his behaviour; James was content to defer: James was more imaginative in his ideas; Robert was content to accept them. They spent their time doing what all teenage boys confined in narrow lives do: moping, kicking a football, sitting in each other’s rooms, feigning courage they didn’t possess, pretending knowledge of things light years away from their experience. They encountered each other’s families. James was hideously embarrassed by his, cringing at their politeness, their attempts to be funny, their normality. Robert seemed to feel the same way about his, but to James they became an object of study and fascination, the opportunity to solve the mystery he had abandoned. And of course, there was his Goddess. As it turned out, she showed no interest in him or Robert whatsoever, choosing to regard them both as children. She also frightened him. To an only child who had spent the last seven years in an all male boarding school, she was a real girl, a creature from another world. And what was worse, she sneered at him, laughed at his vulnerability, or more usually, failed to acknowledge he existed. Mrs Campbell he could cope with more easily; he was used to the company of older women: his mother, a bevy of aunts, family friends. She was also very attractive, in complete contrast to the mothers of the few friends he had in the past. She smiled a lot and always took the time to make him feel welcome, but once more, he quickly realised that she did so only for Robert’s sake, that he made no impact on her life. Mr Campbell tended to ignore him and was seldom there – Robert said that he was a publisher and had to travel a lot. In the end, the one who intrigued him most was Carla, the nanny. He had never had a nanny, but he expected one to be, well, nannyish, respectful, plump; instead she seemed the opposite. She giggled and teased, not just the Campbells, but anyone within range, including him, and she had a prettiness about her that he thought endearing. After a week, he found himself taking stock. Overall he felt pleased with the way things had developed. He had made a friend. He was disappointed on the Goddess front, but he had gained three faces to swim before his eyes and fuel his nightly ejaculations. Best of all, while the outside world looked on in ignorance and disapproval, he had found his way inside the mysterious family, even though he had little idea what all the fuss was about. He was to find out during the last week of the holidays. **** It was a miserable final week in many ways. The sun vanished and rain drizzled. Things had to be prepared and packed for his return to school. The prospect of leaving home for another ten weeks began to loom large. As he always did at these times, James began to regret wasting the precious summer days and tried to keep himself occupied. He spent a lot of time with Robert. They mooched about in the rain, trampled wet footprints through their respective houses, got in the way, and felt miserable. Thursday came, two days before departure, and they found that they had Robert’s house to themselves. Confined by the incessant rain, they spent the morning enjoying this unexpected freedom, sitting on barstools in the kitchen, playing catch in the long hallway, lounging in the sitting room, helping themselves from the fridge. By the early afternoon, they had grown restless and began to chase each other around the house, ambush each other from behind doors, tackle each other on the soft carpets. And then suddenly Robert disappeared. James was lying on the floor in the living room, trying to catch his breath, when Robert stood up and ran from the room. He heard footsteps climbing the stairs and then, after a few seconds, a distant door slam. He picked himself up and gave chase, taking the stairs two at a time to find himself standing panting on the landing, confronted by five closed doors and another set of stairs leading to attic rooms. He knew two of the doors, to Robert’s room and the bathroom, but he became aware, in the sudden stillness of the house, that he was a stranger standing there, an interloper in someone else’s private world. For a moment, fear seized him. Was this a trap? Were the Campbells actually out at all? Were they, rather, waiting behind the closed doors, ready to leap out and find him, to send him home humiliated? After a moment’s hesitation, he forced himself forward towards the sanctuary of Robert’s bedroom, but found it empty. Again, indecision gripped him. Should he dare to search further or return quietly downstairs? Suddenly, he heard running footsteps on the landing and another door closing. He spun round, too late to identify the source, but reassured that it was close. He checked the bathroom, hoping that this last familiar room would be enough, but it was empty. He stood outside the next door and, drawing breath, turned the handle and gingerly pushed it open. He peered quickly, not daring to step inside, and saw a kaleidoscope of colour; yellow bedspread, red carpet, light blue dress hanging on a cupboard door, stuffed toys, heaps of discarded clothing, a pile of what his mother called ‘unmentionables’, the smell of perfume. The Goddess. Even Robert wouldn’t dare to hide in there. Resisting the urge to look further he quickly closed the door and moved down the landing. Two doors left. He opened the next door more confidently. This room was more within the realms of his experience: double bed, dressing table, wardrobe, chair, chest of drawers, muted colours. Finding more courage, he walked into the room and round the bed. Nothing. It was as he was leaving, walking quickly past the wardrobe, that he noticed something fluttering, a short, shiny black strip floating lazily through the air and dropping onto the carpet near his feet. Instinctively he reached down and picked it up. He recognised it at once as strip of negative film, about three inches long, and held it up to the light of the window. What he saw made him gasp, made him forget the game he was playing, made him stand rooted to the spot. There were two grainy black and white images of a woman, partially undressed, lying down with her legs wide apart. Frustratingly the light was too dim and the images too dark to make out any details, but he knew with absolute certainty that what he held between his fingers was the answer to dreams, prayers, and ignorance. “Whatya doin’?” Robert’s voice made him start. He had forgotten for a moment where he was. He fumbled for words. “I was looking for you. I found this. Floating down.” “Whatya mean?” “I found this on the floor. It floated down” “Where from?” He thought for a moment, tried to remember the path of the twirling strip. “Up there,” he answered, pointing at the top of the wardrobe. Without warning Robert grabbed the strip from his hand and examined it. “It’s film,” he said, surprised. He held it up to the light. “Bloody Hell!” He paused. “Have you seen it?” James nodded, staring at his prize, so quickly surrendered. “Maybe there’s more.” Both heads turned slowly towards the top of the wardrobe. “This is my parents’ room,” said Robert, as if this somehow was important. And then, suddenly animated, he collected the chair, placed it in front of the wardrobe, and climbed up. “Bloody Hell!” he said again. “There are boxes up here, and piles of pictures. There must be hundreds of them. Turn on the light.” It took a moment for James to register his words. He realised his heart was thumping in his chest, he found it difficult to catch his breath. He felt a desperate urge to push Robert from the chair and see for himself. Quickly, he stepped over to the light switch and flicked it on. Turning back, he saw Robert climbing down off the chair carrying a cardboard box. He ran over beside him as he placed it on the bed and tried to look inside. To his surprise and anger, Robert blocked him. “No! This is my parents’ room,” he repeated. “I’ll look.” James’s voice rose, a mix of outrage and pleading. “But I found them!” “It’s my House!” Robert spat back, aggressively, his body suddenly tense. James took half a step back. He seethed. This was his discovery, his treasure trove, and it was being stolen from him. And yet he knew that his position was impossible. Life had taught him that he was no match for the Roberts of this world, and even if he were, as Robert said, he was in his house. “Well look then!” He didn’t bother to hide his resentment. Robert reached into the box and took out four square cartons. He opened one and slid out a reel of film. It had no label, and when they unwound the beginning of it and held it to the light, emnity temporarily forgotten, they could see nothing but a series of blank frames. It was the same for the second and third carton. They did not bother with the fourth. “It’s a film,” Robert said, calling on unexpected understanding. “The beginning is the lead in. The picture comes later on. We take films like this of our holidays. You need a projector to watch them.” James found himself looking round for a projector lying handily by. Robert reached into the box again and pulled out a thick pile of paper, fixed together along one edge with string. On its cover was written ‘A Master and His Maid’ in flowery handwriting. Inside were pages and pages of carefully typed writing. Once or twice, stuck into the text, was photograph: a woman dressed as a maid; the same woman raising her skirt to show her stocking tops. As they flicked through the pages, the next photograph stopped them; the maid was lying across the knees of a man, her skirt around her hips, her bottom naked. They stood and looked at it in silence until Robert broke the spell. “Weird,” he said, stretching the word. They both laughed, and put the papers aside. Robert returned to the box and stretched his hand in. He paused. James waited with growing impatience, anticipation welling inside him. “Well?” he said, unable to contain himself. “Get on with it!” Robert quickly withdrew his hand from the box. It held nothing, it was just his hand. He started to put back the manuscript, the cartons of film. “What are you doing?” James shouted. Robert tuned on him, his face angry, strangely dangerous. “No!” he snapped. “We can’t. My parents’ will know. We must put them back. “WHAT?” Robert had picked up the box and was climbing up onto the chair. “They’ll know we looked. We have to put them back. I’ll get into real trouble. Anyway, they’ll be back soon.” He stretched up and replaced the box, stepped down and returned the chair to its place. James’s mouth hung open. He wanted to shout, to beg, to plead, but no words would form. He just stood, staring, dumb. “Come on, let’s go back to my room.” Robert paused, searching for something to say. “We can listen to records.” He started towards the door and then paused again. “Sorry,” he muttered, “it’s just that ...” He left the sentence unfinished and walked out of the room. James stared at top of the wardrobe for moment, so tantalisingly out of reach, and tried to swallow his disappointment. Was that it? Having discovered the treasure, were they just going to abandon it? He sighed and followed Robert down the landing to his room. They sat in silence listening to "The Shadows", absorbed in their own thoughts. James tried to cling to hope: tomorrow was his last day; perhaps Robert would change his mind; perhaps, tomorrow they would find a way to look again? Perhaps. He couldn’t shake off the intensity of his disappointment. And then he realised the truth. Robert wasn’t going to share. He was going to keep it all for himself! The distant ring of a telephone interrupted the revelation and, almost at once, Robert left the room and walked down the landing. Afterwards, James remembered the next minute only as a series of still frames, and even then his audacity surprised him. Seeing Robert’s head sinking out of site on the stairs. Moving swiftly across the landing and into the room. Climbing on the chair. Scrabbling blind fingers clutching. A yellow paper envelope with Kodak written on it. Climbing down and replacing. Listening at the door before returning to Robert’s room. He sat just where he had been sitting. He forced the envelope down the front of his trousers, feeling the corners digging painfully into his groin. He heard feet on the stairs and tried desperately to control his breathing, to look relaxed. “That was my mother. She said they’d be home soon. I think you’d better go.” **** When he reached his backdoor, the lights were out in the kitchen, and he could hear no sound. Tentatively, he turned the handle and crept inside. He could hear the sound of the television in the sitting room. Heart thumping, and the pain in his groin making him limp, he walked quietly down the hall, up the stairs and into his room. He removed the envelope and hesitated. He so wanted to look, just a glimpse, but he forced himself not too. Having risked so much, he had to do it properly. He slid the envelope into a small gap behind the skirting board, the secret place where he hid all his secrets, and went downstairs to join his mother watching television. **** The waiting was agony, both mentally and physically. He had gone to bed at ten, earlier than usual, in the vain hope that his parents would follow his example, but they had not. By eleven he was beginning to despair. He had cleared his desk, changed into his pyjamas, found a handkerchief and turned out the light. He waited, sick with anticipation, his balls aching for release. Numerous times he almost gave in to temptation, but somehow managed to resist; somehow he knew this had to be done right. It wasn’t until eleven thirty that he heard the familiar routine of his parents preparing for bed, but even when their bedroom door was safely shut, he knew he had to wait another half an hour to ensure they were properly settled. At midnight, his hands shaking with excitement, he retrieved the envelope. Carefully he removed the contents, ensuring he could not see what was on them, and laid the pictures face down on his desk, as if he was playing a bizarre game of patience. He sat down on his chair, his heart thumping and surveyed his arrangement. There were eight pictures, just eight. Remembering the piles on top of the wardrobe, he felt slightly disappointed; he had been hoping for more. He wished he had taken just a moment longer, reached up a second time, but he knew that had been impossible. He had to settle for what he had, and the wardrobe was still there... Checking for sounds outside his room, he moved forward and, with trembling fingers, turned over the first picture. It was in black and white. It was a close-up of the side of a woman’s face. She was young and very attractive, and her eyes were looking up out of shot, alert and smiling. Strands of blonde hair clung to her cheekbones, held there by a sheen of sweat. But it was not this that focused his attention and made him gasp. Her mouth was wrapped round a thick cock which stretched away, solid and dark veined, out of the picture. From the shape of the girl’s stretched lips, it seemed to be pulling back and her cheeks were sucked in. A ring of moisture glistened on the shaft. He sat back and stared at the photograph. It was only later, years later, that he realised his reaction to what he saw was not so much arousal as joy. He was having his first excursion into a world that he had dreamed of but knew nothing about, and it had already exceeded his expectations. Of course he was also shocked. In his world, women did not enjoy sex; rather they seemed to refer to it with undisguised scorn. Yet the girl was enjoying what she was doing; her eyes said so. And there was also the size of the man’s cock: it was so large. He gripped his own in alarm. He turned over the second photograph and was immediately confused. It was in colour, slightly blurred, a mix of red and pink and black, and the only things he could identify immediately were four fingers pointing upwards. It was only when he realised he was holding it upside down that understanding dawned. He knew what he was looking at. He had giggled with his friends at school in what passed for sex education when they were told about 'the vulva'. It seemed such an odd word, so clinical and foreign. What he was looking at now wasn’t foreign and certainly not clinical; it was pink, and red, and glistening. He knew another word for it, a word that he had been beaten for using, a word that was so taboo to him that it both thrilled and frightened him when he thought it: a cunt. The woman’s red, nail-varnished fingers lay on a mat of pubic hair which extended down between her thighs. They seemed to be pressing downwards into folds of pink skin. The folds continued downwards, pink deepening to red, rising above the hair that surrounded them, and in the middle, a patch of darkness, blurred, undefined; a secret place. And everywhere, moisture, matting the hair, glistening on the folds, on the fingers. He came. He had not intended to, he had not even thought about it. He had been holding his cock but his hand had been still as he absorbed the picture. It was as if, as he stared at this magical place that he had so yearned to see, his balls made the decision for him. He gave a startled grunt and felt his sperm coat his lower belly and dribble over his hand; he was hardly aware of pleasure, just of release. He cleaned himself without taking his eyes off the picture, and realised that his penis was still hard. Every picture tells a story, and he savoured the story of this one. Two incredible possibilities occurred to him: that this was a picture of a woman masturbating, that most dreadful of sins; or, the hand belonged to another woman. He sat back and allowed the dimensions of his world to expand. The next two pictures, black and white, were a disappointment. They were both of the same woman, naked, one from behind, one from the front. In both pictures she was looking at the camera, laughing, and her arms were stretched out like a dancer. She was slim and pretty, and he liked the roundness of her bottom and the shape of her breasts. He studied her erect nipples and the flat triangle of black hair at the top of her thighs. If he had seen these first he would have been thrilled, but now they seemed tame, they lacked the explicit excitement of the others. Suddenly he was anxious that the others would be the same and that his efforts had been wasted. His anxiety increased when he turned over the fifth photograph. It was the face of the woman from the first picture, again in black and white. Just her face. For a moment he didn’t understand why it was there. She was looking directly at the camera, her head slightly tilted, one eyebrow raised, as if challenging him. It was only when he looked closer that he realised that this picture was the culmination of the first. There was a large blob of white fluid on her hair and he knew at once it was sperm, just as he knew that it was sperm that glistened on her lips. He looked again at her eyes, taunting him as if to say, “Yes, you’re right. He came on my face. Do you want to make something of it?” He tried to swallow, his mouth dry. His cock ached. He felt his resolution crumble. He had intended to look at each picture in turn, but looking at the three remaining, his senses in overload, he knew he couldn’t wait. He turned the last pictures over together. They were all in colour, and their quality was better than the others. They seemed to form a sequence: a woman lying on her back on a carpet, her knees bent and her legs wide apart. A satin robe hung away from the edges of her body, completely revealing her nakedness. But it wasn’t the abandon of her pose or her complete exposure to the camera that attracted his attention; it was her face. It was Mrs Campbell. His mind reeled. He had known her for a summer, stood near her in the kitchen, returned her smiles, even tried to talk to her in the way that adults talked to each other. But he would have never known, never guessed... He instinctively turned his head in the direction of next door, as if somehow he would be able to see through the masonry and she would be standing in her robe, beckoning to him. He returned to the pictures. In the first her hands lay elegantly on the inside of her thighs, as it holding them apart for him to see clearly. Her pubic hair was sparser and her folds more exposed; they seemed redder, thicker than the second picture. And once more they seemed to glisten in the light. Her body was thin, curved, and her breasts were the shape he had always imagined breasts to be. Her eyes shone at the camera, confident, smiling, excited. In this next picture, only her hands had moved. Her hands had moved up. Her index fingers now held the folds apart, exposing a red, wet centre. He felt knowledge wash over him. He and his friends often talked about fucking, pretending understanding. Now he knew. The last picture was the most abandoned of all. She no longer looked at the camera but had her head tilted to the side, her mouth open. One hand was on her breast and she could see her nipple between her thumb and forefinger. Her other hand was between her legs, two fingers buried inside her. Her back was slightly arched, her bottom lifted slightly into the air, her legs straighter, tenser. He recognised that tension; it was the same he felt when he came, that moment when he abandoned himself to the pleasure. She was doing than now, and she looked beautiful. He looked again at her face in the previous picture and felt overwhelmed. He knew that face, it was real. And it seemed to speak to him. ‘I know what you see, and I want you to see it. I am a woman, I am enjoy what I am doing, and I am just like you. This is not my vulva,’ she said, ‘it is my cunt.” He came again, rubbing himself this time, looking into her eyes. He felt the prick of tears, and an absurd gratitude for the understanding she had given him. Tiredness filled his muscles. He cleaned himself, returned the photos to their hiding place and crawled into bed. Spent, he fell asleep at once, following two smiling eyes into his dream. *** As soon as he woke, his mind buzzed with plans. He wanted more pictures, but more than that, he wanted to see her, to stand next to her with his secret knowledge, to look at her hands, her eyes. But fate conspired against him. His mother had a surprise for his last day, a trip up to London on the train, and when he eventually got back home, he knew it was too late. He returned to school and fretted through the ten weeks of term, Mrs Campbell filling his dreams, making plans, longing for the holidays. After an eternity they arrived. His father collected him from the station and as they drove home, he felt a delicious tension building inside him. When they eventually parked in the driveway, it was dark and it had started to rain. His mother rushed to greet him, and as she hugged him, he looked over her shoulder for lights from next door. All was darkness. He helped his father unpack the car and went into the house to find a meal waiting for him on the table. “You must be starving,” his mother said, happiness in her voice. They talked a lot over the meal; at least his parents did, bombarding him with questions. He sensed their happiness and tried to respond, but his mind was elsewhere, on the other side of the shrubs, in his bedroom, behind the skirting board. Eventually he stood up and said he needed to unpack some things. They watched him leave the room, but as he reached the bottom of the stairs, his mother called after him. “By the way, James, I’m afraid you’ll have to find a new friend. Robert’s gone. The whole family just packed up and went. People say they did a moonlight flit. Anyway, the house is empty now.” “Good riddance, if you ask me,” he heard his father say. He stood still for a moment, and then, with leaden feet, climbed the stairs to his room. He shut the door and sat slowly down on his bed. Holding his head in his hands, he wept. If you would like to send me feedback, good or bad, it will be very welcome, and I shall always try to reply. Email: adrianloop@yahoo.com