Chapter 11H

Each day in New York introduced me to a different and fascinating experience that I hadn't imagined in Memphis. Wednesday was no exception. The Long Island Railroad was a world of its own. We rose at five thirty and Martha and Ronnie and I had a quick, greasy breakfast in Pennsylvania Station before boarding a commuter train bound for eastern Long Island. We shuttled through Jamaica Station just as the westbound rush hour mounted; for miles and miles as we headed east toward Bay Shore, we were passed by one after another packed, speeding rush hour trains headed for Manhattan. I was flabbergasted at finding it true, as I had heard rumored, that people on the rush hour trains really were so packed together that their shoulders and backs, and in some cases their faces, were pressed against the glass doors of the commuter cars.

Martha and Ronnie, in jeans and printed shirts, sat smoking and reading as westbound trains roared and clanged past our window.

"God," Ronnie said, shaking her head as yet another crowded train blasted by, "I could never *DO* that. I'd die first! If I knew I had to go through that when I got up in the morning, the first thing I'd do is put my head in the oven."

By eight thirty we arrived at the seaside town of Bay Shore and took a taxi to the ferries that waited to shuttle small crowds of people to various landings on Fire Island. Martha and Ronnie carried shopping bags. I toted the aluminum deck chairs we rented at a clam shop near the ferry. Soon we boarded a boat and found seats on the upper level, the deck's stark white benches gleaming under the brilliant sun.

Martha put on her sunglasses. Ronnie sat next to her, combing back her fluffy black hair that fluttered in the brisk ocean breeze.

"Don't look now," Ronnie said to Martha as she primped herself, "but you're getting the eye again, Martha."

"Right," Martha said, unaffected, her chin in her hand as she sat bored and waiting for the trip to get underway. "One of them's giving you the eye, too."

"Which one? The fat sweaty guy in the sombrero and the ammo belt around his chest?"

I smirked at Ronnie, wagging my head. I lounged against the bench, inhaling sea air for the first time in my life. "Ronnie, it's true. Two guys right behind you are mesmerized by your beauty."

"It's not mesmerized, kiddo, it's heatstroke," she said, stuffing her comb into the shopping bag at her feet.

"No. Really. The whole deck's giving you the eye."

She leaned toward me and wrinkled her face and squeezed my jaw, pushing my cheeks together. "Aw, you're sweet. Keep talkin' to me, honey. Mmm-MM!"

With several growls of the big engines and a cloud of steam, the ferry got underway. The boat cruised slowly down a half mile, narrow inlet. Soon I saw the channel open into a wide, endless expanse of sea. Sea gulls were everywhere, following in the roiling wake as the boat opened its engines and sped into the wind. It was exhilarating. I couldn't resist standing up and leaning on the railing to survey it all, my hair billowing in a blast of sea air. The sky was a clear wash of cerulean blue. It seemed the whole world opened around us. I beamed at Martha.

She asked, squinting up at me, her eyes hidden behind the dark sunglasses, "Isn't it beautiful? I told you you'd love it."

"I do," I said. "This is marvelous. This is really great."

The ride to the island lasted fifteen minutes. I spent the whole time marveling at the screeching gulls that accompanied us. More birds greeted us at the village pier. Sea gulls and swallows swooped and glided everywhere. The port lay at the foot of a small village only three or four city blocks wide, dotted with wooden homes painted in bright pastels. The crowd of beachgoers alighted onto the wooden pier with their bags and umbrellas and chairs and headed down a wooden path that led slightly upward toward the horizon a few hundred yards away.

"The beach is straight ahead," Ronnie said. "Keep going. You can't miss it. When you start sinking, you're there."

We strolled down the wooden walkway, Martha and Ronnie chatting animatedly. I was oblivious to what they said. As I did when first walking along the streets of Manhattan, I gaped at everything in sight. Wood frame houses lined the path, set back in small lawns crammed with lacy shrubbery and short, thin cherry and holly and dogwood trees. Each house had its garden of wildflowers or cultivated plants, each front porch the home of rubber balls and rubber rafts and beach blankets hung out to dry. It was serene, painterly, miragelike.

We reached the top of a gentle rise of land, which I found was a dune of soft tan sand. Before us lay the blue ocean, small waves lapping briskly into the shore.

Martha said, "Let's get our jeans off and look like beach people."

I thought: Uh-oh, this is where we get nekkid. But Martha and Ronnie stripped down only to their swimsuits, Martha's a bright yellow one piece and Ronnie's a one piece, dark indigo with a pink slash across one hip. I stripped to my shorts. We gathered our bags and walked in the sand to the water, then followed the waterline down the beach.

"Our place is just a mile or so down," Martha said. "Steven, walk out here by the water. Walking in soft sand will wear you out."

Dark sandpipers hopped and flitted around us. Small waves swooshed in loudly and then hissed away, gurgling as they coiled back. We walked toward a blazing sun. The beach was sparsely populated, as Martha said it would be, with several long, empty stretches. Martha and Ronnie talked as they walked, their feet sinking slightly into the wet, packed sand. Walking behind them, I couldn't hear their conversation over the sound of the waves and the simmering ocean. I had never seen Martha in a swimsuit. I had seen her either dressed or nude. She walked gracefully, poised and smooth, almost as if she had trained herself to do so. Ronnie was more flippant, kicking up little spoons of sand behind her. Whereas Martha had a toned, firm, ballerina's body, Ronnie was sinuous, her limbs longer and softer. She had a slim, compact torso and delicate shoulders. She was the same five and a half feet as Martha, but Ronnie looked taller with long, slender limbs and hands, a sparse but firm tush, her long legs less muscular but smooth and gently tapering into lean calves and ankles. As they walked and talked, Martha hugged her shopping bag to her chest; Ronnie carried hers in one hand at her side, her other arm poised carelessly in the air while she flipped her hand loosely as she talked. I was too spellbound to do anything more than watch and listen to the Atlantic.

After a while Ronnie turned to me, pointing ahead. "There it is!"

"Come on!" Martha yelled, moving ahead. "It's open! Come on!"

I caught up with them. Ahead, a few older couples and a younger one sat on beach towels, separated by wide stretches of beige sand. Some on their sides, some on their backs, some on their tummies. All nude.

Martha and Ronnie found a spot, spread the towels, and slipped off their shoulder straps.

"Oh, it's so NICE out here today!" Ronnie squealed as she peeled her swimsuit downward. "Oh, Martha, it's heaven! We picked a perfect day!"

I'm certain my eyes tripled in size as Ronnie's soft, jiggling, dark nippled breasts came quickly into view. A couple of her ribs stuck out. Her tummy was flat; Martha's was so tight it seemed sucked in. Both women were the same size, but slim Ronnie looked alluringly long legged. Martha's mound stood out prominently under her auburn bush; Ronnie's tummy sloped gently to a smallish black whorl, simple and feathery, and her pelvis curled inward immediately beneath it, showing only a hint of a slit. Now I had seen three nudes in my life: Martha, and a brief and incomplete glimpse of Karen, and now Ronnie. I found Ronnie surprisingly pleasing to look at; she seemed almost teen-like, looking younger naked than she did dressed.

Nude, they sat on their beach towels, knees bent, and fished for their bottles of Coppertone.

I stood fiddling with my shirt, shuffling around nervously and kicking off my shoes.

"Come on!" Ronnie called to me. I picked up my shoes and walked to them, and dropped the chairs on the ground. I started to unfold them, but Martha said, "Put the lotion on first, Steven! Hurry! You can get sunburned out here before you know it!"

Ronnie smirked and kidded, "Get undressed. Come on, it's so perfect out. Here, use up my lotion first." She handed me her bottle of Coppertone. I looked at it, and looked down at my clothed body. The moment of truth had arrived. Courageously, I removed my shirt and then unzipped and removed my shorts, looking around casually and trying to pretend that Ronnie and Martha weren't there. There I was: naked. Not nude -- naked. I knelt into the sand, facing toward the water and slightly away from the others, the better not to let either of them notice I was half erect. I squirted lotion on my arms and chest, gasping as the cool stuff hit my skin. I rubbed it in, adding more to my legs and face.

Martha reclined face up on her beach towel, saying, "Come on, Steven, finish up and get comfy. You're never gonna get a tan like this in Memphis."

Ronnie asked, "They don't have water in Memphis?"

"Of course not, Ronnie, it's five hundred miles inland from the Gulf."

"Jeez, I couldn't live in a place that didn't have an ocean. I'd dry up and die. Steven, sweetheart, can you do our backs? I promise to do yours."

"Sure," I said, kneeling down and holding the bottle firmly so they wouldn't see my hands shaking. I thanked my stars that both of them turned over and had their backs to me: perhaps my organ would have time to settle down. I rubbed lotion onto Martha, whose sleek back I knew only too well. And then onto Ronnie, whose unfamiliar, softer skin had a comfortably warm and melty feel to it.

Ronnie moaned "Mmmm" as I rubbed, which didn't do much to calm me. "Steven, what a nice touch. Martha, does he give you back rubs?"

"No," Martha said. "Women who are always badgering somebody for free back rubs are a pain."

"God, I haven't had a complete back rub since my last time at Fiore's. Martha, you don't know what you're missing here."

"Ronnie, he just did my back."

"Wasn't it wonderful?"

"Steven always had a nice touch."

"Oh, Martha, why didn't you *tell* me earlier?"

"Oh, Ron, shut up. Steven, finish her back. She's just teasing you."

"Steven, I'm not. You're a miracle man. Really. Oh, I was so tense. I'm always so tense in the city. It's so nice to come out here and relax, isn't it?"

"It's nice," I said, rubbing quickly to get it over with.

Martha sang out, "Don't forget the tusheeee."

And I thought: oh for gods sake, will it never end? I squirted the cream on my hands, plenty of it, and massaged it into Ronnie's gently rounded, compact gluts, noticing a glimpse of her slit and turning away before my cock hardened enough to hit her leg. I slathered the stuff onto her even more quickly than onto her back.