Orienteering Each Other

We'd been thrown together as partners that morning pretty much just by the luck of the draw. But now it felt like we knew each other more intimately than we knew anyone else on earth.

"I suppose you've seen a lot of guys naked," I said, trying to cut the awkwardness just a bit.

She gave a little self-conscious laugh. "Hundreds," she said. Then she blushed. "Not really."

"How many really?"

"Counting today? . . . One."

"But . . . you seemed to know your way around pretty well."

Her blush deepened. "I was just checking for ticks."

I had to believe she was telling the truth. I really had thought she'd known her way around. But I guess she'd just been faking it, the way I had.

"I kind of wished I had a topographic map," I said.

"I know." She scuffed the sand with her toe. "They should have a hike where we get to orienteer each other."

She was making a little joke, but it was a pretty risque one. There was nothing to stop us from doing just what she was suggesting. My dick twitched, right there behind my hands.

"'Proceed south twenty finger paces,'" I quoted from the imaginary instruction list.

She caught on right away. "'Find your way through the great mangrove forest.'"

"'Identify these two breathtaking landmarks: the Grand Canyon del Norte, the Grand Canyon del Sur.'"

"'Be aware that the elevations of certain features can change without warning.'"

I'd never joked around with a girl like this before. So racily. So mutually. So nakedly.

"Do you want to . . ."—my heart was pounding—"keep on exploring a bit?"

It took her a second to realize what it was I was actually suggesting. Her voice quivered between hesitation and excitement. "OK."

I let my hands drift slowly back to my sides.

She let her hands drift slowly back too.

We looked at each other, not as first-aid givers, but as the boy and girl who'd met in the parking lot, who'd chatted along the trail. The boy who wished he'd had the opportunity to ask her to the prom. The girl who might very well have said yes.

She was beautiful: her shock of sandy hair; her bashful, freckled smile; her skinny, girlish arms; her earnest, forthright breasts; her fashion-model waist with it's fashion-model belly button; the breathtaking curve of her hip and thigh; her shy, fuzzy mangrove triangle. Friendly, pretty, outgoing, companionable, and, at the same time, naked, alluring, fully a woman.

She was taking a closer stock of me as well. Shy, beanpole-ish, somewhat of a nerd, that couldn't be denied. But neither could the fact that just like she was fully a woman, I was fully a man.

Her gaze fixed on my erection. "It got so big," she said. "Can I . . . touch it?"

I put it within her reach. Touching is what orienteering is all about.

She touched it reverently, on the shaft and then on the head. "It's so hard and so soft at the same time."

"I didn't mean to poke you with it," I blushed. "It kind of has a mind of its own."

She put her hand around it, just barely grazing its circumference. "Did you ever . . . put it in a girl's vagina?"

"No!" I said, kind of surprised at how shocked I sounded.

"I just didn't think it would be so big." She glided her hand softly up to the mushroom cap. "The sperm and the pee both come out from the same hole, right? How do you switch between one and the other?"

I'd never really thought about it. "It's just automatic, I guess. I just pee and pee comes out."

"And how do you make the sperm come out?"

"It just comes out on its own. When it's ready to come it just comes."

She was still holding my dick in her hand. She looked up at me to make sure she understand what I was saying, Then she reached with her other hand to gently touch my balls. "And this is where the sperm comes from, right? Your testicles?"

"My balls, yeah. I'm pretty sure that's where it comes from." Even just an hour ago the subject of human reproduction would have been of only mild academic interest to me. But now I was finding it a very compelling topic.

She fondled my balls, pensively. "It's so weird that they're just hanging there on the outside."

"I know. Not like you. Everything of yours is so neatly tucked away."

"My boobies aren't exactly tucked away."

"Everything else, though." She let go of my dick and balls, and they were missing her touch.

"I guess," she said. "Although it doesn't feel that way when you're wearing a skirt. It's like, 'Hey, guys. Guess what I've got under here.'" She swished her hips in a provocative way. Then she covered herself with one hand and wagged the finger of the other. "'Oh, no, no, no! Mustn't peek.'"

I crouched down to take a peek anyway. She took a step backwards and sat on the trunk, keeping her legs demurely together, knees touching, very ladylike. She smiled in a coquettish way.

"Hey, girl. What have you got under there?" I put my hands on her knees and urged them open just a crack. She relented and I opened them wider. There was her bushy gash. There were her exotic pink petals.

"You're the first boy who's ever seen me down there,"

"I never thought it would be anything like this."

"What did you think?"

"More like just a hole, like your . . ."—I tried to remember the proper term—"your anus. I wondered how guys would be able to know for sure which was which."

"They figure it out, I guess." Then she reached down and touched herself toward the lower part of the gash. "This is where the hole part is, down here."

I could sort of see how it would work. "That's where a guy would . . ."

"Mm-hmm."

I touched her there myself, ever so gently, using my finger and thumb to gently separate her fleshy petals. It was indeed an entrance, a mysterious one, but at least now I knew where to look.

I traced my fingers gently around the full circuit of her petals. She fidgeted slightly. "And what's all this for?" I asked.

"Decoration," she said.

——

I looked up from my crouch. But my eyes only got as far as her breasts. They were hovering now right in front of my face. I'd always pictured a girl's breasts as hanging down under their own weight so that there would be something for the bra to lift up. But hers didn't hang at all. They arose so gently and so sweetly that you couldn't really say where they started.

"They're not as big as some girls'," she said.

"They're perfect. They're beautiful." Her nipples were perfect too, puffed little buds, like juice-plump raspberries. I had actually seen a breast before, when my aunt had nursed my little cousin. And Carrie's breasts reminded me of that.

"If somebody sucked them, would milk come out?"

She started to reply, but then, instead, she turned her torso just enough to present one of her breasts to me. I leaned closer and put my mouth to its soft roundness. I pursed my lips around the nipple. It was soft but rigid at the same time. The perfect size and texture for sucking, for licking. I remembered how intently my little cousin had sucked away. Carrie drew in her breath.

I backed off, afraid I'd hurt her. Her eyes were closed. She opened them dreamily and then blushed when she saw me looking.

"I could feel it all the way down to my toes," she said, shyly. Then she shyly offered me her other breast, closing her eyes again in anticipation. I put my mouth to it and found the nipple and kissed it and licked it and sucked it. No milk, but satisfying nonetheless.

I stood slowly up. She opened her eyes. She took my arms and drew me down beside her on the trunk. She bent over and put her mouth to my nipple. It had never even occurred to me that there was anything there worth sucking, but she found it, and licked it, and teased it with her teeth. It tickled in a way. And I felt the soft whispers of a tender feeling that I thought I remembered from long, long ago.

"You felt it too," she said, in a hushed, solemn tone.

I didn't deny it.

"It feels like . . . the start of something."

The answer popped into my head. "The start of sex."

"Yeah," she realized, still solemn, still hushed.

We straightened ourselves up. We tried to resume our roles as hiking partners taking a little rest along the trail. But it wasn't much use. We were naked. Our shoulders were touching. Our thighs were touching.

"Have you ever kissed a girl before?" she asked. "You can kiss me if you want."

She pursed her lips into a soft bull's eye. I pursed mine too and touched them to hers. Was that a kiss?

We tried again. This time instead of just touching her lips I gently caressed them, the way I'd kissed her nipple. I tasted them with my tongue. Her lips were were softer this time, more luscious. She began caressing my lips back. It was like we were a blind boy and a blind girl trying to see each other with our lips.

She tasted me too. We let our tongues meet. Shyly at first, and then more brashly they touched and caressed and shared their secret wetness.

We pulled apart. Her expression was misty and out of focus, just the way I felt too. She trailed her hand down my arm, over my knee. She slid off the trunk and crouched down on the ground.

"Come on," she whispered.

——

She lay back in the sand. She spread her legs just enough to make a cozy spot for me. Her pretty bare feet, her smooth white thighs funneled my attention right up to the fuzzy heart of her lap, right up to the rosy petals of her femininity.

I saw it all so clearly. This was sex. This was how sex would happen, even to someone like me. There would be a someone else, and she would not be unwilling, and she would lie down, and just like that all the seeming impossibilities—of meeting her in the first place, of overcoming our mutual bashfulness, of knowing the what and the where and the how—would be resolved in plausible, almost inevitable ways.

I knelt down into the space she'd made for me. I saw just where my penis would go. I touched her there with it, nestling its proud, flushed head right up against her mysterious opening. She kissed it with her rosy petals. I looked up at her. Her freckled face was wracked with the same conflicting emotions that I was feeling too. I lowered myself down over her, hoisting my hips just enough to bring my stiffness safely away from her opening, leaving it to fend for itself amidst the fuzz of her mangrove forest.

I settled down onto my knees and forearms, embracing her naked body in its entirety. She put her arms around my neck. She clasped me tightly with her thighs. I rubbed my chest against hers to better feel the nubbiness of her nipples. She pulled down more of my weight upon herself. I rocked my hips against hers to better feel her fuzziness. She rocked me back, kissing me with her lap as well as her lips.

The tender feeling washed over me again, more beckoning this time, more insistent. There was something timeless about it, something familiar, something . . . I suddenly realized what it was. I tried to lift myself away, but before I could, my proud, stiff penis, fed up with being so ignored, erupted there between us, spurting its gallons of sticky goo up between our bellies. I tried again to lift myself away, but instead I shot another load. And then I shot another.

Carrie was breathing heavily. She hadn't relaxed her embrace, even now, goo coated as she was. I felt embarrassed and ashamed. This must have been her first sexual experience, and I'd made her waste it on me.

But she kissed my cheek, sweetly, affectionately, and pulled me closer. As if to say that yes, this was her first sexual experience, and she was giving herself to it fully, and so should I.

——

Later that afternoon, back in the parking lot, Carrie and I were leaning back against the trunk of her car, savoring our accomplishment. We'd successfully completed the orienteering circuit, visiting every checkpoint, siting every bearing, reckoning every traverse. (Well, mostly. As far as we could tell.)

And beyond that, we'd proven ourselves off trail as well. We'd whacked bush, we'd interpolated contour, we'd forded stream, we'd performed mutual field tickectomy.

And beyond even that . . .

——

We waded across the stream, holding our backpacks out of the water with one hand and holding on to each other with the other. We found a sunny spot, daringly exposed, to share her carrot sticks and my bologna sandwich while we dried off. Carrie was intrigued to see that my penis had shrunk down again, and I felt pretty man-of-the-worldly that it stayed that way even when she touched it. Finally we were dry enough that we got our clothes out of the backpacks.

Carrie pointed out that orienteering hikes are supposed to have checkpoints along the way where hikers get their instruction lists stamped to document their progress. She proposed that we ought to document our progress too. So, instead of putting on her panties, she handed them to me.

"You can hang them next to your Science Fair trophy," she teased. I stuffed them down into the very bottom of my backpack, just imagining what my mother would say.

I hesitated to offer Carrie my old, raggedy underpants, but she didn't seem to mind. She held them up and grinned. "I think I'll start a collection."

We finally got around to putting our shirts on. It felt kind of unnatural, though, kind of sad, after being naked for so long. Carrie didn't bother to put her bra on. I don't think she was used to going without it. She kept twisting her shoulders and her chest subtly to feel the fabric rub against her nipples. And she kept giving herself, and me, little surreptitious glances to try to gauge how conspicuous she was. You could definitely see a little contouring in her polo shirt right at the peaks of her breasts. She didn't try to hide it.

We weren't in any hurry to finish dressing. We checked our shoes and socks again. And then we fiddled with our backpacks. And then Carrie noticed a pretty wildflower, a white one, and I picked it for her and put it in her hair. She danced a little grass-skirt-less, split-bottom hula, and I kissed her on the cheek, my dick bobbing around the whole time as free and easy as a rattlesnake on vacation. And then we consulted the map again to finalize our route.

And only then, finally, reluctantly, wistfully, Carrie put on her shorts, and I put on my jeans, and we headed off across the rocky terrain.

——

"I am a little nervous, I suppose," Carrie said. "Being away from home and all. And I'm sure that college will be a lot harder than high school.

"But I'm ready. Actually, I'm looking forward to being on my own. My mom and I, well, we've been having some issues lately. It will be good for both of us to have a little break."

She was twisting her chest gently as we walked along. My balls were gently swinging along the seam of my pants.

"Sometimes in high school I couldn't tell if I was really being myself, or if I was only being the person that everybody expected me to be. You know what I mean? You walk into a room and everybody there just assumes that they already know exactly what you're going to say, what you're going to do."

"Well," I said, "I didn't. You walked into this room today"—I spread my arm to indicate the trail, the green hills, the fluffy clouds—"and everybody here was enchanted to make your acquaintance."

She smiled, self-consciously, and took a graceful swishing step, the kind an actress might take during an ovation. Earnest, pretty, full of confident expectation.

That's when I had my other great realization of the summer. Even if there hadn't been in my past, there were going to be in my future things that I would really, really care about. And I didn't have to just sit in my room and wait for them to happen.

——

It was getting time to go. We were still leaning back against the trunk of her car. She still had the wildflower in her hair.

"Hey," I said.

She turned her head and arched her brow.

"Want to go to the show tonight?"

She considered for a moment. "What's playing?"

"I have no idea."

She grinned. "Sure. I'd love to."

I grinned too. Like a third grader. Like a third grader with a popsicle. Like a third grader with a popsicle who's just won a sheaf of tickets at the pinball arcade.

"What?" she laughed.

I got up and stood in front of her, as close as I could get, straddling her shins, hands around her hips.

She arched her brow with an expectant smile.

"Hey," I said, softly.

She was listening.

"Have you ever kissed a guy with your clothes on?"