I was a late bloomer — though like Eric Idle in The Holy Grail, I got better. But as of the summer between senior year and starting university, I still hadn’t seen a naked woman in real life. This was a source of constant angst and shame, as a painfully shy giant nerd with a raging libido.
So almost 30 years ago, my family was on vacation, camping on one of the barrier islands of Florida. This was the worst kind of hell for me. I liked camping, but I preferred mountains and forests. Also this was hundreds of miles from all my friends, my computer, my carefully assembled stash of dead-tree porn (USENET porn existed by this time, but I wouldn’t have access to that life-changing piece of technology for another couple of months), and the softcore wonders of late-night Cinemax. Worst of all there was no lube, and absolutely no privacy — and back then a *conservative average* of my jerk-offs per day was around three.
But there I was, on another blisteringly-hot July day, skulking around the picnic shelters just above the beach, intent on having the worst time possible and staying out of the sun. I was sitting on the brown-painted railing, glaring out over the sugar-white sand and tufts of sea oats from behind my (ridiculous) mirrored knock-off aviators, hating every second of this interminable day.
Then she walked up.
It hadn’t really registered in my brain that I was almost directly in front of one of the rinse-off showers. It was just to my left and about 30 feet away. In the time I had been sitting there, no one had used it or even come near it. But now a woman in a one-piece bathing suit was striding purposefully toward it.
She was *also* wearing aviators (they were the early 1990s hotness). Her hair was dark and wet, brushed back with her hands, and slightly wavy. She was slender and my best guess is that she was in her late 20s to early 30s — but I was a newly-minted 18 year old who didn’t understand a single thing about the world (excepting porn mags, computer shit, and Monty Python) so take that with a many grains of salt.
What I definitely understood; in fact the thing that I found utterly captivating about what happened next, and which is still my overriding impression of the memory today, is how much she absolutely did not care.
She walked up to the shower. She turned it on. She let the cold water run over her hair and face, with a small shiver from the shock of the temperature difference. And then, without a glance in anyone’s direction — least of all at the weird kid sitting on a picnic pavilion railing almost right next to her — she shrugged her shoulders out of her swimsuit top and peeled it down to her waist.
Her breasts were small and pert. Her nipples were already erect from the cool water, and they were brownish-pink, deeply contrasting with the pale skin she had just uncovered. I was just close enough that I could tell she had goosebumps.
My brain was in full overload. I was terrified to move in even the slightest way. I carefully kept my head level while my eyeballs were glued to her every movement behind my sunglasses. I was overwhelmed with arousal, but not erect — the situation just felt too surreal. This was completely outside my experience. Was I being tested? Were there hidden cameras somewhere?
I kept watching: she moved quickly and with purpose, but smoothly and without actual hurry. She ran her hands over her breasts, her sides, her abdomen, her hips. She stretched her arms up, rinsing her underarms and I watched her breasts glide upward on her frame, fascinated with their movement and wondering what they felt like.
(This is still how I feel about all breasts, to this day. Some things are just hardwired, it seems.)
She still wasn’t looking at me. She wasn’t looking at *anyone*. I was awe-struck and mystified. Her confidence in and comfort with her own body were both completely alien to me and the most arousing thing I had ever experienced.
And then she pulled up her suit, rolled her shoulders to get the straps comfortable, gave her hair one last shake, and walked away. I was silent and still, but on the inside I felt like I was vibrating and about to fly apart. I had just seen a naked woman for the first time, but above and beyond that I had just experienced the overwhelming sexiness of someone who seemed to enjoy their body and had absolutely no qualms about displaying it.
I waited as long as I could after she disappeared from sight before hopping down from my railing. It was late afternoon, and the sidewalks, the sand, and the asphalt of the road back to the campground were fantastically hot. My flip-flops were out on the beach, on the towels my mom had arrayed around the spot she had staked out. There was no time for that; I needed to get to the hopefully-deserted camp restrooms *now* and beat one out while everything was still clear in my brain The walk was long enough that I scalded the soles of my feet.
I shouldn’t have worried; I’m now in my mid-40s and I haven’t forgotten a thing about her.
Source: reddit.com/r/gonewildstories/comments/fcxulh/first_degree_burns_fm