Bubbles: Stories of Sex, Scandal and Other Silliness Read online

  But if I'd been truly frightened, I would have run home and pleasured myself in the safety of my own bedroom. But I never did.

  As soon as the the neighborhood grew silent, I'd be on the move again...seeking a park bench, or on an especially warm night a patch of grass open to the night, where I would lie back and stare at the star-filled sky while touching myself. It was on one of these occasions in fact—in the middle of the little league softball field no less—that I discovered what could happen when I finally arched my back, pushed aside the limits I didn't know I'd placed, and allowed the first waves of orgasm to crash over my body in a heaving fit of spasms and a long, low moan that called every animal in the neighborhood to attention.

  In college, I took every opportunity to expose as much flesh as I could get away with, and between Toga parties, clubbing and Halloween, I could get away with a lot. I’m sure I am cemented in many men’s minds as “that girl who showed me her tits,” but the mere thought of one of them holding his hard cock in his hand while conjuring my image makes me tingle, so from my benevolent sacrifice, a personal reward has been reaped.

  So maybe its not surprising that I’d eventually find an outlet for my depravity. I learned about an erotic festival in San Francisco—a well-documented mecca for the public display of kink and preference—where participants were known to party completely naked. I considered that option until a little research netted a talented young artist willing to shirk canvas in favor of skin if just for the occasion. And so it is that I stand here with the tiniest of bikinis sprayed and brushed on my cleanly-shaved skin in a coat so thin I can count the goosebumps on my breasts whenever a breeze brings a chill. I’d studied myself in my hotel room’s bathroom mirror when she’d completed her masterpiece—mesmerized by an appearance in such stark contrast to the way I feel...naked.

  Totally, gloriously, unashamedly naked.

  I join in the occasional conversation, stand drinking with groups of my fellow revelers, and watch men’s eyes as they study my form. I know from my own scrutiny that they are having a hard time matching what their eyes are seeing with what their brain tells them is true.

  Strangely, not one of them comments on or questions me about my nudity—as if they’d be breaking some code to admit they’ve noticed—until a young man in a similar state of dress appears at my shoulder and leans his head in to speak close to my ear. “It’s all I can do to not get hard when I look at you.”

  Instinctively, I glance between his legs where from my vantage point the profile of his penis is clearly visible despite the camouflage of white and black paint that has made him into a credible likeness of a skeleton. I feel a little shiver between my thighs and my response falls somewhat short of coy. “Ooh. I might enjoy that!” I look up at his face—which is the only part of him not covered in paint—and see that he is smiling as broadly as I’m sure I am.

  He thrusts the beer in his left hand toward me while taking a drink from the bottle in his right. “Would you like a beer?” he asks, and I accept it from him and immediately take a greedy swig despite the fact I’d been determined to limit my alcohol consumption for the afternoon—both in an attempt to maintain whatever degree of decorum a completely naked woman can have have in the midst of a few thousand sexually-charged party animals, and to hold off the inevitable pee break I’d been reminded to approach with caution since the paints applied to my body are water soluble.

  “Thanks,” I tell him while wiping some beer from my chin with the back of my hand.

  “You’re welcome,” he says before taking another sip, smiling at me around the bottle. “I finally decided you might be thirsty when I’d watched you long enough to determine you weren’t with anyone and I could see no indication you had any cash.

  I smile and feel myself blush as it suddenly occurs to me neither one of us is wearing a stitch of clothing or holding anything other than our drinks. “So then how did you pay?” I ask.

  “I didn’t have to. I live right over there.” He nods toward a building at the other end of the block. “In an apartment over the restaurant.” I follow his gaze, but when I look back his eyes are on my chest. “It’s just uncanny,” He says. “It’s like I know you’re actually naked, but my mind can’t seem to comprehend that it’s not seeing a layer of fabric until I study your profile.”

  Again my eyes follow his and the shape of my nipples is clearly visible against the pavement we’re standing on. I take a slug of my beer and use the opportunity to study his penis against the same backdrop. It’s quite obviously more erect than it was when I’d first glanced at it—no longer nestled in between his ample balls but instead arching slightly outward from his body to give me a nice feel for its shape and girth. I marvel quietly at the care he must have taken in shaving himself, and I ache to run my fingers over the soft skin.

  “It is amazing, isn’t it,” I respond—more a statement than a question. I pull my eyes away from his cock, hoping my double entendre isn’t noted. “Have you done this before?”

  “I attended the festival last year, but not painted. It’s what motivated me.” He nods in the direction of some trash barrels with his empty bottle and I fall in beside him as he slowly wanders toward them. “You?”

  “My first time as well, though I...” I stop myself—uncertain whether I should say more. He tosses his bottle in the closest bin and motions toward mine which has little more than a swallow remaining. I finish it and add my bottle to the pile. As we turn back toward the crowd now dancing to a familiar calypso tune, he takes my hand in his and squeezes it as if reassuring me it’s safe to continue. “I’ve dreamt about this...or something like this...since I was a teenager.” I look up at his face for a reaction, but his eyes give nothing away. “Of course I had no idea one could be painted this way, but I wanted to be...”

  I stop in my tracks and force him to look at me before I continue—deciding I need to know if he truly understands. “I’ve always wanted to be outside naked.”

  His smile is immediate and genuine and he just stares at me a moment before leaning toward me slightly and kissing me on the forehead. “Me, too,” he says reassuringly as he squeezes my hand and drags me toward the music.

  Bubbles

  As any traveling businessman will tell you, the secret to mental stability is smart packing, and I’ve refined my own methods into a doctrine as dogmatic as any religion’s. Never carry what you can ship, replace liquid or gel items with powder or solid, and fit it all into the smallest daypack you can manage. These are the three commandments I’d consider chiseling into a tablet if I thought it would deliver my fellow humans from strife. Alas, I have neither the patience or charisma of an evangelist, so I usually keep my peace on all but one golden rule: eliminate everything you’ve failed to establish a need for during your last three trips.

  A more secular label for this key component of my sanity is obsessive minimalism, and I’m completely aware it’s a far easier practice for men than women who are forced to pack all manner of accoutrement just to sustain life and meet the minimal standards of beauty that society imposes on them. The contents of my bag this particular trip are a testament to my Y chromosome—an extra shirt, socks and underwear in one compartment, a toothbrush, tooth powder, solid deodorant, comb, an electric razor inside a ziplock bag, and an iPad, charger and a few travel documents in a padded pouch. I use the conditioner supplied by the hotel as hair gel and take comfort in the knowledge that there’s pretty much always a Walmart a short drive away should I have other needs.

  Oh...and a pair of swim trunks, a T-shirt and cheap flip flops—all of which serve as a constant reminder that I’m apt to ignore my own advice.

  I set those last items on the bed next to my backpack (I’m careful to never put anything in a drawer or out of sight lest it be forgotten) and silently curse myself for allowing them passage despite the knowledge it’s been months since they’ve been used for their intended purpose. Which, I must confess, is not to facilitate a trip to the hotel po
ol for exercise laps, but rather for relaxing soaks in the hot tub that always seems like a great idea at the beginning of a 15-hour day and less so at the tail end.

  This day is no exception. I woke at 3:30AM to drive to the airport for the first flight out to a morning meeting in one city with enough day left to drive to a second city for another meeting before a mad dash to yet another airport for a flight to wherever I am now—Charlotte or Charleston, or something like that—for an early meeting tomorrow. It would feel so good to slip into the warm water and allow the stress and aches and pains to melt away, but sleep is an even more attractive proposition.

  I kick my shoes off and lie back on the second bed with the television remote poised for attack and my brain ready to disengage when it occurs to me that my meeting in the morning is an hour later than I’d usually schedule, and that might make this particular night be the perfect opportunity to press the superfluous items into service.

  “Okay,” I say to the empty room. “Let’s do it!”

  I drag my ass off the bed, change into the trunks and tee, and minutes later I step off the elevator and make my way past the lobby and down the hallway to the pool where I’m stopped short by a sign indicating a closing time only five minutes later.

  Figures!

  No way it’s worth dealing with wet swim trunks for that little time in the water. I turn back toward the elevator, but then, on a whim, stop at the front desk first.

  “Do they really throw everyone out of the Jacuzzi at the stroke of ten?” I ask of the well-dressed young woman behind the counter. At some point in the last ten years, the better hotel chains seemed to have figured out that the desk clerk is the face on their organization, and they started hiring and training sharp people for the role. They’ve done a good job in this instance. She’s impeccably groomed, quite well spoken, and has a perfectly-beautiful smile. My cock twitches to attention. I can’t help it; I’m male.

  “Your room key won’t open the door from the outside after ten, but you’ll be able to leave,” she tells in a very professional tone, and then leans toward me and continues in a more conspiratorial tone. “And, if you’re very quiet, you won’t be bothered until they start cleaning around midnight.”

  “Perfect. Thank you,” I reply with a sincere smile and renewed enthusiasm. I start back toward that wing to make sure I make it in time, my sick mind conjuring a completely unrealistic scenario in which this beautiful, young woman gets off work at ten and has a thing for older men...

  My fantasy fails to carry me all the way to the pool. It’s so ludicrous to think anyone so young and beautiful would want to be within a hundred yards of me half naked and wet that even I—as perverted as I am—can’t take the image any further without launching into a fit of hysterical laughter. My arrival at the door punctuates my thoughts with an abrupt stop and a mental “the end.”

  The pool itself is empty. I pull a plush terrycloth towel from a neat stack on a counter next to the shower doors, and make my way to the back corner of the room where a landscaped grotto provides some privacy for the hot tub, and a row of lounge chairs rings one side. I kick the flip flops off and set my towel on a low table next to one of the lounges. It’s then that I notice a rather attractive, middle-aged woman sitting at the far end of the spa.

  * * *

  I’ve always been amazed that women don’t rule the world, given the effects of estrogen on the male of the species and the power a suitably-provisioned female with evil intentions could exert over them. It proves, I think, that women in general simply don’t have a killer instinct, or men would all be reduced to fawning slave status by now. Certainly the dynamics in this particular room changed for me the moment I became aware of her presence.

  I instinctively suck my stomach in before pulling my T-shirt off over my head as if that effort will undo twenty years of overeating and under-exercising. I’ve joked for years that I’m perfectly capable of wearing those fitted European shirts, it’s just that I have to wear them upside down. Short of an immediate diving into the hot tub, there is no way I am going to avoid exhaling before it will be apparent to my audience of one that “ripped” is not a term one would likely employ in a description of my physique.

  But my swim trunks are. Ripped that is. Or maybe that’s the wrong term; they’re really just threadbare in a few strategic places, a result of excessive chlorine concentrations in public hot tubs and the consistent position of a certain anatomical feature of the male body that is prone to stressing the fabric. Normally this wouldn’t faze me, but in this particular situation I’m still slightly erect from my mental gymnastics with the desk clerk, and I can feel my soon-to-be-Jacuzzi-mate’s eyes on my back.

  Perhaps my gut will distract her?

  I chuckle at my own joke and then turn and face my audience with as much confidence as I can muster and realize she has tilted her head back against the edge of the tub and closed her eyes.

  New plan! I slip into the water as quickly as I can manage without drowning myself and do my best to relax.

  Whoa!

  The jets are making the surface of the water resemble a boiling cauldron and my body is being buffeted as if a fire hose has been aimed at me. I shift my position as best I can to avoid direct impact, and I realize I’m being laughed at.

  “Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” my audience says with a big, pretty smile.

  “Yes it is.” I look around for a switch or dial. “You’d think there’d be a way to turn it off ‘stun,’ wouldn’t you?”

  When I turn back in her direction, she’s shaking her head. “There’s not. I stay here regularly and I’ve asked.” She brings her hand down on the top of the water where one of the jets is aimed and her fingers vibrate in the turbulence. “I’ve learned where to position myself...for different purposes,” she adds, sounding a bit coy with these last words.

  “Really?” I move toward one of the jets shooting up from a seat moulded in the fiberglass. “You mean like propelling yourself out of the water without standing?” I settle into the seat, but my swim trunks immediately expand with air which causes me to float toward the surface until I press down on the taut fabric and force the air out.

  The surface of the water explodes above my lap like a big popping bubble.

  She laughs. “I’ve got a white, one-piece suit I’ve stopped packing ‘cause it fills up like a weather balloon and I can’t stay in my seat.” She shifts to position herself in front of a jet and after a moment pushes her hands into the churning water to create a burst of bubbles of her own, and we take turns alternately filling our suits and expelling air for several minutes between exchanges of laughter and bits and pieces of our life stories, though after a while we both find spots between jets that allow us to relax somewhat. She again leans her head back against the edge, closes her eyes, and is silent for a while.

  I use the time to observe her without, I hope, being creepy about it. She’s really quite attractive, I note. Her dark hair is pulled back in a pony tail, exposing high cheek bones and a long, elegant neck and well-toned shoulders. The swirling water masks almost everything below her upper chest, though I’d caught a good look of her breasts and upper torso during our silliness earlier, and my appraisal had been positive.

  She speaks without lifting her head, sounding a little sleepy, or dreamy maybe. “I try to do this every night when I’m traveling.”

  “Soaking helps you fall asleep?” I ask, perhaps hopeful that it will have that effect on me since it often takes me a long time to drift off in hotels despite my exhaustion. I lean my head back as she has and concentrate on the flutter of the water against my body, though I continue to watch her while imagining what I’m feeling is really her fingers gently caressing my skin. I feel my cock stir in response to my conjuring, and I mentally downshift.

  “Well yes...the soaking helps.” She opens her eyes and studies me for several moments—almost to the point it begins to feel a little awkward, though I figure I deserve the scrutiny considering the
way I’d been analyzing her appearance just moments before. Eventually she closes her eyes again and continues so softly I can barely hear her over the bubbling water. “I’m trying to decide if I should tell you a little secret about this Jacuzzi, or if you would find it offensive.”

  I tilt my head forward to study her face more clearly.

  What could possibly offend me?

  Her features remain neutral as if challenging me to analyze her agenda.

  “What could possibly offend me?” I ask finally, having come up with no better response.

  She opens her eyes only long enough to confirm that I’m watching her. “Maybe ‘offend’ is the wrong word.” Just a hint of a smile touches her face. “Perhaps ‘shock’ is more what I mean.” Her voice now seems more sultry than sleepy, and after a moment’s silence she lifts her eyebrows and purses her lips slightly as if reacting to a sudden pain.

  Or pleasure?

  My cock immediately stiffens in a subliminal response to that expression, and I feel myself smiling in recognition of what she’s about to tell me.

  She shoots me a cute little smile which morphs into an exaggerated wink. “If I position myself just right over the bubbles, I can make myself come,” she says, finally confirming what I’d sensed and triggering a surge of blood to my penis that leaves me simultaneously happy the churning water is covering my crotch and sad that it so effectively covers hers as well.

  “And that’s what helps you sleep, I take it.” I like this woman.

  “Possibly,” she says, and closes her eyes again, tilting her head back and smiling toward the ceiling. “And if you’ll be a gentleman, I’ll let you watch.”