Chapter 1: Making Plans

15 September 2016

This could be the start of a whole new storyline but is actually the middle section of the story of my life. At Alice’s encouragement, I wrote about my trip around the world in Seven Wonders of the World. Then I went back and wrote about my first eighteen months on the road in Wonders of the U.S. Highways. I’m still on the road and now I’ve completed this middle part, Wonders of American Backroads. I’ve slowed down my travel since returning from Europe, but haven’t stopped. I’m about to leave for wintering in southern California like a good snowbird. The road goes ever on.

So, I’ll get on with the adventure as soon as I make the usual disclaimers. Here are the further adventures of Aroslav, the avatar of the pseudonym of the alter ego of an author. There’s a lot of story and sightseeing—kind of a travelogue in places—and a fair amount of sex. At the beginning of this story, I’d already made one full circuit around the U.S. I was trying to fill a map on the back of the trailer with the states I’d visited. Had a few more to go.

When I started writing about my adventures, my memory was flooded with the wonderful women I’ve known and loved in my life. I get sidetracked a lot and those memories from long ago become as important to me as the story I’m writing in the now. Bear with me. It’s my life. Based on the true story of my travels, only the names, places, and events have been changed to protect me—I mean the innocent—and to keep several wonderful women from hunting me down to call me a liar.

The problem is that I’ve fallen in love with each of them.

These are the stories of my life.

5 December 2014

“You’ll kill this old man, Alice.”

“You forget, Ari. I’ve lain with my head on your heart listening to it beat. I know how strong it is. Can I come?”

“I hope so. Several times,” I laughed. “Honey, I would love to have you visit me. It would be easiest for you to fly into Phoenix. Do you have any idea when you can get here?”

“Well ... um ... Now that I’ve gotten you to agree ... I’ve got almost a month off. I could, sort of, be there for Solstice if you’d like. I mean, unless you’ve got someone else handy to finish your ritual with. Could we?”

“You’d better believe we could. Let me see if I can get a condo in the Phoenix area that week. We could spend a week in luxury before we go rough it in Quartzite.”

“Yes! Someplace with a hot tub and a pool and ... Oh, Ari! I’m so excited!” she said. I could actually hear the longing in her voice. I was pretty sure it was reflected in my own voice.

“Are you moist-excited, wet-excited, or dripping-excited?” I asked.

“You’re going to have to get your face down there and find out for yourself, baby. I think you’re going to like what you find.”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Have you told Cassie that the campground there is nude?” Alice asked after we’d gone through another round of smoochie noises.

“Um ... I suppose I should do that. They plan to start the trek after they celebrate Christmas with her kids. Do you think she’ll mind?” I asked. I fully expected her to decide to camp in a completely different part of the BLM and never set foot inside the Magic Circle. Alice and I would join her and her husband at their campsite, fully clothed.

“I have to go to class, lover. I’ll send you my flight details. You know, I could never live with you full time, Ari. How’s a stripper supposed to make a living in a nudist park? Put clothes on?”

We disconnected and I sat at the coffee shop in Tucson thinking about the call I needed to make to Cassie and Andy. I’d been putting it off, but I needed to let them know. It was only fair.

A Long Time Ago: Voyeur

That one time. There’s always that one time.

We were all in junior high. We’d all been sent to church camp for a week. Everybody in the neighborhood. I wondered what the parents all did while the kids were sent away. Oh, and it wasn’t all to the same camp. The high school kids all went to a different place and even in junior high, we were divided into age groups, so Betts was in a different group older than us and John had to go to elementary school camp. The rest of us would be in seventh grade in the fall. Of course, we were further mixed with kids from fifty or a hundred different churches and then segregated into cabins by sex. Twelve campers and two counselors per cabin and no matter what you might have heard about camps, no one got out of their cabin after lights out without an adult escort.

The church was in charge of our innocence.

Good luck with that.

I think the one thing that marks the transition into puberty more than anything else is curiosity. It’s not like we boys wanted to go fuck all the girls in camp. Most of us only had a vague notion of what fucking was and the word was so secretive that no one said it out loud. But we were a perverted lot when it came to trying to catch a glimpse of the girls. Or their underwear. One boy was reprimanded for taking pictures of the girls’ swimsuits hanging on the line to dry. One of the suits was carelessly turned inside out, so we could see the padded cups and lined crotch of the one-piece suit. I think guys beat off to that image later that night.

There was a rumor that Sally had been caught trying to peek into the boys’ restroom, so it wasn’t just the boys that were curious.

Our activities outside the cabins were integrated and the small groups were made of half boys and half girls. We hiked together, ate our meals together, and did crafts. We all braided lanyards and learned to burn our names into a slice of wood with a magnifying glass. That was a skill that I used years later when I burned the runes into my staff under the solstice sun the summer I was initiated. I was one of the first to learn four-stranded square braiding and had a day of popularity helping the girls who wanted to learn. Then there were the usual activities like canoeing, archery, lawn darts (yes, they were still legal back then), swimming.

I think that, in addition to all of us trying to get a glimpse of the developing bodies of our counterparts, there was a little bit of exhibitionism going on, as well. It was almost as exciting to think of a girl getting a look at your dangler as it was to think of seeing her boobs. Cabin doors were sometimes left slightly ajar—or even wide open—while we changed to swimsuits.

And that’s how it happened that I was accidentally passing the girls’ cabin on the way to the pool, which was the other direction, after racing to get into my own trunks. Wouldn’t you know, I’d get caught.

By Cassie.

We hadn’t been close since second grade, though we saw each other often enough in the neighborhood, at school, and at church. She was my next door neighbor and got on the bus a stop before mine. I don’t know why, but it always seemed like I was sitting three seats behind her on the bus. I mean, like that was always the next seat available when I got on the bus.

But she was never mean. Not like some of her friends. One had actually brought a copy of Mad Magazine to school and pointed at the picture of Alfred E. Neuman on the cover. “Look! Aroslav is in a magazine!” she’d called out to her friends. I really hated that bitch. Especially after she turned me down for a date as a freshman.

Nonetheless, I was ‘passing’ the girls’ cabin and there was Cassie. I just missed seeing her little boobs as she pulled her swimsuit up and she lifted her eyes and looked straight into mine. I was done for. I was sure she’d scream and I’d get hauled before a judge and sent home where my parents would gleefully hang me from the willow tree in the back yard. Shit!

She didn’t scream. I saw her mouth the word ‘pervert’ and then turn away. Her suit wasn’t all the way up and she did quite a job of wiggling her butt to get it up, but I didn’t expect her to call out, “Hey, Sally. Do you think my suit is getting too small?”

Sally turned toward Cassie and I saw a full frontal view of her awesome tits as she pulled her suit up. Sally was focused on Cassie and not on me so after burning that image into my mind I hustled myself away from the cabin and over to the pool. I had my towel held in front of me to keep from showing my stiffy and as soon as the lifeguard blew the whistle I threw it aside and dove into the cold water.

I wasn’t going to get out of the pool, no matter how cold it was. Every time I looked at a girl, I saw Sally’s headlights staring back at me. I felt a brush along my shoulder and turned to see Cassie floating past me on her back.

When a girl floats on her back ... Yeah. Her boobs are right up there out of the water. Right where I could sort of stare at them.

“Pervert,” she whispered to me. She splashed me and grinned before swimming away. She never mentioned it again.

Back to Cassie

I’d put things off as long as I dared. Cassie had given me her phone number at the reunion, but I’d never used it. So far all our communication had been through messages. But it was the second week of December and I’d left my site in Coronado National Forest to go to Tucson for supplies. I had a cell connection, so there was really no excuse.

“Cassie, it’s Ari. Aroslav.”

“Ari? What are you doing calling me? My husband might have been home!”

“Um ... Cassie, he knows I’m going to be at Quartzite, doesn’t he?”

“Quartzite? Oh. Yeah, of course. Is that what this is about?” She sounded like she was suddenly relieved. “We’re leaving the day after Christmas.”

“It’s not fair for me not to tell you about the site where I plan to camp in case you want to choose a different location,” I said.

“What is it? On the edge of a cliff?”

“Uh ... no. The Magic Circle is seventy acres that are reserved as clothing optional.”

“You mean ... naked?”

“Well, yeah. It’s not a requirement, but most of the people in that area are nudists.” There was silence on the other end of the line. “There are other areas nearby that aren’t nude. I mean the BLM land there is thousands of acres and you can camp almost everywhere.” Nothing. “Cassie, I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to deceive you.”

“Yeah. Damn. Excuse me. You’re a nudist. Oh, wow.” She was quiet again.

“Cassie?”

“I’m just trying to get my head around the concept. Give me a minute. Don’t say anything!” she shouted. I waited. I know time is relative, but it sure seemed like more than a minute. “You know what this means, don’t you?” she whispered when she returned to the phone.

“I’m hoping the worst is that you’ll camp in a different part of the grounds and we’ll still get together to swap stories and have a mojito or two,” I said.

“Are you kidding? Andy would kill me if he had the opportunity to see a couple hundred beautiful naked women and I took him someplace else.”

“Well, most of them are our age or older, Cassie. Don’t get his hopes up too much.”

“It’s not his hopes I’m concerned about.”

“Okay. Then what’s it mean?”

“It means that finally, after waiting decades, you are going to see my naked breasts,” she whimpered. “Damn it, Ari! I wish I’d shown you in junior high instead of getting Sally to flash you. My boobs were worth looking at then. I’m all saggy now,” she sounded distressed.

“We’re all a little saggy now, Cass. People don’t go there to look at other people’s privates. There’s no judgment. No body-shame allowed.”

“Andy will be trying to find the most beautiful pair in the campground.”

“He won’t have to look far,” I said. I took a deep breath. “They’ll be attached to the woman sitting on my lap.”

“Ari, you can look at my breasts and ... everything else, I suppose, but I’m not going to sit in your lap. I don’t think. I wonder if I could convince Andy ... Hmm.” Cassie had completely misunderstood me. It seemed so natural for her to simply assume she’d have the best looking boobs in the camp. I chuckled and contemplated letting her keep her ideas. It’s not like I’d object to having naked Cassie Clinton sitting on my lap for a while. Even at our age. I sighed.

“Alice is a good sport, but I don’t think she’ll share my lap with you,” I said.

“Ari! You have a girlfriend?” Cassie shrieked. “Who is she? Tell me all about her. Was she in our class? Your class at Tippecanoe Valley? A college friend? Come on! Spill it, boyfriend.” I held the phone away from my ear and looked at it. Boyfriend?

“She’s actually ... a little younger. You’ll like her though. She’s really sweet.”

“A little younger? Ari, how much younger?”

“Um ... a lot younger,” I hedged.

“Ari, you’re not paying a hooker to go camping with you, are you? I’m so disappointed,” Cassie said.

“Cassie! It’s not like that at all. Alice really is my friend. And when we get together, we’re lovers. She is not a hooker. In fact, she’s even paying her own way down here.”

“From where?”

“Montana.”

“Wow. I mean ... wow. Sorry I jumped to conclusions.”

“What could I expect? Old men like me don’t have pretty young women sleeping with them unless they get paid to,” I said a little angrily.