Chapter 1

My daughters came into the living room and announced to me they were having a contest to see who could go longest without wearing underwear.

“Why are you sharing this information with me?” I asked the two of them, with genuine curiosity.

Elena, the older, laughed and shrugged. Her younger sister, Julia, chimed in, “we need someone to be judge.”

“I don’t know why you would need a judge - I would think you two could ... uh, judge each other.”

Julia and Elena exchanged glances, as if this was an implausible or even preposterous idea. Julia said, “Not really.”

“I don’t see why not,” I said.

Elena explained, “Well, ‘cause then it’s not really judging. It has to be someone else.”

Since there was no logic to this reasoning, it was hard to argue against it. I just nodded. The girls continued standing there, as if waiting for something. After I didn’t say anything more, Julia, impatiently bouncing on her feet, said, “So, will you be the judge?”

“What, exactly, is involved in being judge?” I asked, uncertain where this was going.

“You have to look at us to make sure we’re not wearing underwear,” Elena explained.

“Like, each time when we change clothes,” her sister added.

“Uh. How long is this supposed to go on?” I asked, realizing they weren’t asking me about a one time ‘duty.’

“Daaad,” Elena said, clearly annoyed at my denseness. “It’s a contest. It might go on really long.”

“I’m going to go at least till Christmas,” Julia announced, optimistically.

“What?” I said. It was August. “I thought this would be just for the day, or something.”

Elena grinned, and said, “Actually, I think she’s right - it could go on super long.” She and Julia exchanged looks, half competitive, half conspiratorial.

“What, and you guys want me to be judge every day?” I asked, incredulously.

“Of course,” the girls nodded in unison.

“Probably like twice a day. Once in the morning when we get dressed and again at night when we change for bed. Or other times when we change clothes, or if we think the other is cheating we will ask you to check.” Julia explained all this, somewhat officiously, but in a single breathless spiel.

“I still don’t get why you need a judge. Can’t you just, uh ... look at each other?” I made one last effort at weaseling out of what seemed like an awkward if not inappropriate proposition from my two daughters.

“Wull, then it just wouldn’t be the same as a real contest, then,” Julia offered, as if stating the obvious. Actually, at least this made some psychological sense. Still. Were they really asking me to do this? They were barely into puberty, much less out of it - especially the younger, Julia. Girls that age were notoriously shy about their bodies, normally. Weren’t they?

Finally, I said, “Well, so how is this supposed to work?”

Elena stepped forward, authoritatively. “We just have to show you,” she said, and without any hesitation - almost as if she’d practiced it - she unbuttoned her jeans and pulled down the zipper, and spread the two sides apart.

“See, no panties. Not even super low rider,” she added, helpfully tugging her jeans down enough so that the bottom of her young labia were visible. At the peak of her mons, she had a unkempt patch of black fuzz, the color matching her straight black hair. The pressure lines from her tight jeans showed on her waist, faintly.

“Okay,” I said, trying not to stare but just look on, dispassionately. I decided that as ‘judge’, they might prefer me to sound more ‘official’, so I added, “I pronounce that Elena is officially pantiless.” I figured as long as they were asking me to, I might as well play along with it and have fun with it.

My playfulness had the desired result. Elena giggled slightly, as she pulled her jeans back together and fastened them.

Julia had an even easier job, as she was wearing a skirt. She simply stepped forward and flipped the skirt up, showing her pale bare skin from the waist down.

“Julia is most definitely officially pantiless, also,” I declared.

Julia giggled too, and let her skirt fall back down. And with utter aplomb, both girls fled the room, with nary a “thanks dad” between them, but only a sort of echo of giggling.

I had a strange thought that the whole thing had been some kind of weird, elaborate prank or dare, and so I had nearly convinced myself that it had been a one-off event.

But then, bedtime rolled around. Both girls suddenly appeared, in their long nightshirts that they typically wore to bed these days, and stood side by side in front of me.

“What,” I said, though I suspected what it was about.

“Judging time,” Elena said.

“Okay,” I sighed, but smiled indulgently.

With nightshirts, the procedure was as simple as Julia’s skirt had been, earlier. Each of them flipped up their nightshirts, in turn, and I pronounced them pantiless.

They laughed and thanked me, this time, and kissed me good night and went to bed.

The whole thing actually didn’t really feel very erotic, that first day. It was more just a bit silly, and clearly private, in that it wasn’t something either they or I would have shared with any one.

The next morning, they had to go to their summer day camp classes instead of just hanging around at home, and in their typical shorts I became more aware of what it was they were doing. Yet they were so matter-of-fact about it, I didn’t really see any reason to object. I think when I inspected them that morning, I must have said something to the effect of ‘be careful’ as far as not letting random people see up their shorts legs, but their response was a strong “Duh, dad” in unison.

Later that day, I sent an email to my mostly-long-distance girlfriend, Angie. Long ago, the girls’ mom had married the second man of her dreams and moved off to somewhere in Asia, but in recent years, I’d been in a quite steady relationship with Angie, who I had met through work originally. Angie knew the girls well, but our careers kept us on opposite ends of the continent. Several times a year, though, Angie would visit. We’d do “family type” outings with the girls, and she and I would generally get a sitter for at least one weekend and go bonkers having sex at a hotel. It wasn’t just a sex relationship at all, however. We were just both of us moving slow, feeling a little bit damaged by previous relationships, and deeply committed to our respective careers.

I somehow felt like I would feel less guilt about the girls’ little game, if I “confessed” the situation to someone, and Angie was the only logical choice. In the email, I described the situation to her much as I have here - in fact, the description I wrote, and later ones I sent to her, form the basis that I used to make this narrative, although I have also made a lot of additions and changes.

My girlfriend’s response was rather low-key and I wasn’t sure she’d really paid close attention to what I’d been describing. She sent me back a comment something to the effect of: “I’m pretty busy so sorry for the short answer ... but that’s really cute.”

“Cute?” I couldn’t help but laugh at the whole situation.

Anyway, that set a pattern that quickly became part of our daily routine. Since it was only the three of us, it wasn’t as if there was anyone around who could question it.

Frankly, once it became part of the routine, I didn’t really think that much about it, for the most part. After about a month, though, there were a few incidents.

School had started, so schedules at home shifted. Where during the summer, the girls had generally changed for bed fairly late, so that it was the last I saw of them in a day, with their school time routine they went back to what they had been doing the previous school year - they would take care of showers and changing right after dinner, and then stay up doing homework or watching TV or messing around on their phones or the living room computer until bedtime.

This meant that my most social time with them - this sitting around the living room - happened after the ‘judging’ time.

During the first week back at school, we were eating dinner and somewhat randomly, Julia asked, “How long do think this contest can last? I bet we could go for years.” She glanced expectantly back and forth between me and her sister.

“Well, at some point,” I mused, “I expect Elena’s going to get her first period. And that might make it a bit more complicated.”

That was actually pretty bold of me to say. I’m not sure what made me bring it up. I guess, partly, I was exploiting the topic to raise an issue that I was actually somewhat concerned about, as a parent. It’s hard as a single dad to find ‘safe’ openings to talk about these kinds of things.

Elena made a deeply annoyed face. “Dad, that’s gross.”

I knew she knew exactly what I was talking about. They’d had something about it at school the previous year, in her grade, and I’d supplemented that with some earnest talks and the purchase of a few smarmy “birds and bees” type books that’s I’d put on a “self help” shelf we had in the living room.