Circumstances 36

I opened the door to his knock.  Darryl looked a little nervous.  Good.  I was too.

He came in carrying his bathing suit wrapped up in a towel.  I was already wearing mine.  I took him outside to the patio and introduced him to Gary, then showed him one of the downstairs bathrooms and told him he could change there.

When he came out, he was carrying his towel and draping it casually but, if he was anything like me, probably purposefully, in front of him.

“Uh, I’m sorry,” he said.  “I’m on the swimming team, and I’m used to Speedos.  It’s all I own.  I see you guys are wearing regular suits.  I didn’t want you to think...”

He petered out there, and I could see he was blushing a little.  “That’s OK,” I said, hoping to lighten his mood.  “When I first swam here, I didn’t even have a suit.”

His eyes opened a little wider.  “You mean, uh, you skinny dipped?”

I laughed.  “No, Gary loaned me one.  He could lend you one, too, if you’re embarrassed.  You two are about the same size.”  I sort of looked him over, then said, “Suits, I mean.”

With me laughing, he did too, though he was blushing. “I’m fine if you guys don’t mind.  I actually prefer a Speedo.  Once you’re used to them, they’re great.  I just didn’t want to give anyone the wrong impression.”

Gary smiled at our exchange, then got up and jumped in the pool.  Darryl and I did too.  We splashed around a little, then Gary said to Darryl, “Swim team, huh?  Let’s have a race.  Four laps.  Keith can be the starter, and the judge.”

Darryl looked a little skeptical.  I didn’t know if it was because he didn’t want to embarrass Gary in his own pool, or if it was for some other reason.  It suddenly occurred to me that Darryl might be feeling a little cautious.  He didn’t really know either of us well, and could be worried that Gary might have an ulterior motive, perhaps because of what Darryl had been part of with me. 

Then I thought again, and wondered if this competition was Gary’s way of getting to know Darryl better and trying to make him more comfortable.  That was just the sort of thing Gary would think to do.

Both guys looked a lot like otters in the pool.  I was a much better swimmer, now that Gary had been working with me, but I couldn’t hold a candle to those guys.  Gary kept working on Darryl to get him to race and finally, as only Gary could do, cajoled him into accepting his challenge.

I lined them up in the shallow end, then yelled, “Go!”  They took off, and, man!  They shot through the water, and were very close to even at the deep end wall.  There, to my surprise, they both did perfect flip turns and then were coming back toward me.  I jumped up onto the pool deck so I wouldn’t get in the way, or get killed, whichever happened first.

Making a flip turn in the shallow end, where the water was only three feet deep at the edge, was pretty much impossible.  They both seemed to know that because neither of them tried.  They both just swam to the wall and touched it, then turned and kicked off from it.

They continued, neck and neck together, until the fourth lap, going back.  Then I could see Gary start to edge in front, only to be overtaken by Darryl in the last couple of strokes.  He touched the wall about a half-second before Gary did.

They both came up grinning, both swung their heads sharply back and forth, letting the water in their hair spray to the sides.  Darryl raised his hand, and Gary reached up and slapped it.

We fooled around some more, then got out, dried off and sat in the patio chairs.  It was a warm day and sitting there in just our suits, a soft breeze occasionally wafting across us, felt wonderful.

A little later, Gary went in and got us some cokes and a couple of bowls of mixed nuts.  We sat and talked.  I was surprised how easy it was.  I wasn’t a bit tongue-tied.  There was a lot of laughing, and teasing, and why it seemed like we’d all known each other for a long time, I had no idea, but it did.

Darryl’s Speedo suit was mostly white.  Our school colors were white and dark green, and his suit was all white except for a dark green stripe down each hip.  He sat sprawled on his chair, and I couldn’t help but peek at that suit now and then.  Couldn’t help it.  Those suits are pretty spare, and I was curious about what was under that micro-thin layer of cloth, and I could almost see it because the suit sort of formed around it as the material dried.

I couldn’t be obvious, though.  He looked at me when I spoke and looked at Gary when he spoke, and I used those opportunities, when his eyes were on Gary, to perv on him.  Yeah, that’s what I was doing.  I’m not proud of it, but I’m gay, and Darryl was attractive, and the more I got to know him, the more I was getting to like him, and mostly, there he was, about two feet away, wearing almost nothing, and, yeah, I was perving on him big time and trying hard not to get caught.

The problem was, the more I looked, the more I wanted to look, and once I got concentrating on staring at Darryl’s midsection, I sort of lost the thread of conversation that was going on between him and Gary.  And so, I got caught.

I was only sort of listening with one ear when I heard, “Keith?”

I glanced up from looking down at what was holding my attention and Darryl’s eyes were on me, and he was frowning.

“What are you doing?” he asked.  He didn’t sound mad, particularly, only curious, but I thought I heard some humor in his voice, too.  I noticed the frown didn’t look angry as much as bemused.

It was pretty obvious what I was doing.  I was looking at his dick.  He was looking at me looking at it.  He knew what I was doing.  But he’d asked, and I had to answer, and what could I say?

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.   I’m sure I looked like a deer in someone’s headlights, frozen, unable to move, or in my case, speak.

Gary saved the day.  He answered.  “I think he was looking at that bee on your suit,” he said.

Darryl quickly looked down.  I looked where he was looking.  Sure enough, a honeybee had settled on the suit, on the white part, actually precisely on the part I’d been directly staring at.

Darryl looked at it but didn’t brush it off.  Instead, he smiled at Gary, then at me, and said, “This happens a lot.  I think they’re attracted to the bright white color.  The thing to do is not bother them.  They’ll fly away on their own.  I have a friend on the team that panicked and swatted at one and it stung him, right through the suit, right on the end of his dick.  You should have heard him yell.  I don’t want that to happen, believe me.”  He laughed, then said, in a softer voice, looking at me, “He told us he couldn’t jack off for a week afterwards.  Damn, that’d be tough!”

“Yeah,” I said, “that’s why I didn’t want to say anything, why I just froze, watching it.  I was afraid if I said anything, you’d react, and then I had to imagine giving you first aid.  That would be nasty!”

Gary couldn’t leave that alone.  He just couldn’t.  “Yeah, sucking the venom out would be a bitch!”

I started laughing, and the others did too.  I thanked my lucky stars Gary’d been able to come up with something to divert Darryl’s thinking to something other than me staring at his dick.  I was a little late off the mark, but Gary saved me, even if, as the saying goes, it was better late than never.