Chapter 3

I was able to wear a tank top and jean shorts to the pool. I kind of wish I hadn’t because the moment that I had to remove it – I felt like I was performing a striptease for the old perverts who watched me undress.No one cared what the boys did, and maybe it was my imagination but I felt so many eyes on me that I couldn’t wait to step out of my shorts.

I tried to make the most of my afternoon at the YMCA. I avoided the water and the ‘front butt’ disappeared. The bikini bottoms were not see through and I remained close to my Aunt while her kids and my brother frolicked in the water playing Marco Polo with other kids.

Today, the bikinis that I wore would seem quite tame – however I’d felt this exposed in public in my life ... It felt really quite scandalous to borrow one of my cousin’s two piece bikinis – especially since hers was so much bigger on top even with the modifications my Aunt had made. I wasn’t the only one on display though – there was a lot of skin at the public pool.

No one really seemed to notice me, but many guys engaged in open girl watching – and my Aunt and cousin weren’t the only ones that welcomed the attention.

My Aunt was friendly towards men who waved at her and smiled. A few of them addressed her by Juggs and came over and spoke with her.

“This is my niece, Tish,” she introduced me. The men would usually take one look at my flat chest and freckled face and dismiss me. A few of them were polite enough to ask me how I liked Montana and make polite conversation.

One man that she introduced simply as the Professor was actually interested in me. He had a well-trimmed silver beard with a few flecks of reddish hair. “How long are you hear for Tish?”

“The entire summer,” I answered politely. I wasn’t used to strangers talking to me, but only because I seldom went any place that might happen.

“Oh no,” the professor jokingly acknowledged how bored I’d probably be. “You strike me as a young lady who enjoys reading.”

I smiled because he was right. “What gave it away, professor? The glasses?” my cousin popped out of the water behind him.

“Aww, that must be the lovely Harley Davidson. You are really growing up,” he turned and smiled at my cousin as her tits bounced slowly in the water.

“Thanks Professor,” Harley replied and then abruptly swam away. She stuck her butt up in the water and wiggled it like a duck diving to the bottom.

“How come you are not enjoying the water on this lovely day?” he asked.

I looked down at my feet.

“That would be my fault. I didn’t realize that my niece’s suit would be see-through and shrink up when it gets wet,” my Aunt admitted.

“Knowing you as I do, Juggs, that sounds like the kind of suit that you would design,” the professor offered a pleasant smile.

“My niece isn’t quite as outgoing as me,” my Aunt replied.

“No one is quite as outgoing as you, Juggs,” the professor replied. “Could we go somewhere and talk?”

My Aunt looked over at Eddie and asked if he minded. “No, not at all,” Eddie offered good naturedly. I was surprised that he wasn’t the jealous type. I thought very little of it when Juggs and the professor left he pool area.

However, slowly more and more men approached my Aunt and asked to go somewhere to talk to her. She’d smile at them and then at Eddie and ask his permission. Eddie would always graciously give it and after the fifth time I began to wonder what she was talking about with these men in private.

It wasn’t my place to question it, but in 1976 people definitely could get the wrong impression about a married woman leaving the pool area with a man that wasn’t her husband.

I squatted down to talk to my cousin about it after the seventh guy had disappeared with her mother. “Isn’t it odd?”

“Why are you asking me? Why don’t you ask Juggs about it?” Harley said as she grabbed my arm and playfully yanked me into the pool. I was soaked once again and the bikini once again became semi-transparent.

“Harley! Tish! Out of the pool, now!” Eddie called us over to his pool lounger. He was drinking beer and enjoying the sun. My Uncle was normally quite laid back and jovial, so when he became serious it was very noticeable.

“Yes Daddy,” Harley popped right out of the water. The kids near us noticed right away and made an “oooh” sound to suggest we were both in trouble.

I draped my arms in front of my chest and let them hang loosely in front of my bottoms.

“Did you intentionally pull your cousin into the water?”

“Yes, but we were just horsing around, Daddy!”

“I see,” Eddie looked at me and asked if I wanted to get wet.

“I didn’t mind,” I lied to protect Harley. I was mortified but I didn’t want her to get in trouble.

“You know how we feel about lying,” Eddie looked disappointed by my answer. “So, that’s why you have your hands in front of your body? Because you like wearing a see-through bikini?”

There were families nearby and they could hear him dressing me down. I was so humiliated by the observation that my bikini was see-through. The bikini wasn’t totally transparent when wet but now I felt naked. “No, I don’t, Eddie.”

“You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, Tish,” Eddie explained. “If you wanted to run around naked at the pool, It wouldn’t bother me, but the moment you tell me a lie well, I wouldn’t piss on you to put you out if you were on fire, understood?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Here comes your Aunt. She can sort this out,” he said. I was so nervous that I’d be in trouble.

“While you were off having fun, your daughter was pulling Tish into the pool and getting her wet,” Eddie said.

Harley looked worried but offered no defense.

“I can’t go have fun for five minutes without you pulling some sort of shenanigans at the pool, can I?” my Aunt’s face twisted into anger and disappointment.

“I am sorry Mom, I was just goofing around,” Harley pleaded for mercy with as few words as possible.

“I would make you switch bikinis with her if it fit you!”

“Mom, please,” Harley lowered her voice to imply that her mother was blowing this out of proportion and to suggest that my Aunt lower her own voice.

“You are going to get it just like I am when we get home! And the ONLY reason I don’t take your bikini down right now and tan your hide red is there are so many families here,” my Aunt had no qualms about talking about spanking in public though. “Now come here and let me adjust your suit!” she demanded of her daughter.

Harley approached her mother with a defeated expression. Rachel yanked her bikini bottoms up between her daughter’s thighs. Her brother’s yelled “ SUPER WEDGIE!” from the pool.

“Give her a front butt!” Gerald yelled his suggestion so that everyone could hear. Harley looked completely mortified but she didn’t’ answer back.

“Watch your mouth, Gerald!” his mother yelled back at him and I saw my Aunt actually blush as she released my cousin and told her to keep the swimsuit just like it was. The material was rolled up tightly so that it resembled what would one day be a string bikini and wedged between her butt crack.

“You can sunbathe for the rest of the day! No more pool for you,” Rachel insisted.

Harley didn’t argue. She hopped tummy down on the nearest pool lounger and tried to turn herself invisible. The attention on her eventually faded as people went back to doing whatever they were doing around the pool area.

“I am sorry, Tish,” Harley offered after things cooled down.

“Are you sorry you got busted, or sorry you did it?” her mother overheard her apologies.

“I am sorry I did it, Mom.”

“Well, I am sorry I put her in the bikini in the first place, so now we can both answer for it,” Rachel said.

“I didn’t mean for either of you to get in trouble,” I said.

“No one said you did, and you aren’t in trouble, Tish,” my Aunt assured me and even smiled sweetly at me.

After that, when a man came to talk to my Aunt she would politely decline to talk privately with him and say that they would be heading home soon. On the way home, she stopped at a fabric store and went in wearing her bikini and came out with some material to make another bikini.

“Did you get enough to make one for yourself?” Eddie asked her.

“Yes, I got everything you told me to buy,” she sounded rather contrite and serious. My Aunt drove the car home and as we neared their ranch she asked how long her punishment would last. We were in one of those tank-like Ford Station Wagons. They were twice as reliable as they were ugly.

That was the first time it registered to me that my Aunt really was going to be ‘punished’ for putting me in the skimpy bikini. I had assumed that when my Aunt said, “You are going to get it just like me when we get home” it was a figure of speech.

“Put the car in park and you can walk from here. I’ll decide after supper, Juggs.”

“Yes, Eddie, that’s fair,” my Aunt put the car in park. We were on a lonely Montana road. The sun had a few hours before it would go down during the summer. She left it running as she stepped out of the car.

“Get out too, Harley!” she insisted. Harley didn’t have to be told twice. She slid over my brother’s lap from the middle seat in the back and got out of the car.

My Aunt surprised me by stepping out of her bikini bottoms. She only had to look up at Harley for her to follow suit. Her sons didn’t seemed shocked or surprised by this. My brother and me were sitting together in the backseat and I was flummoxed.

“May I keep my sandals?” Harley asked her husband as she popped her tight bikini top and let her huge tits fall free.

“What do you think?”

She bent over, slid them off and then handed everything she had been wearing to her husband through the car window like a car hop at a Sonic Hamburger joint. My cousin did as well.

I should say this was a PAVED road and even though it was a fairly remote location in Montana there was still the possibility someone might see them.

“Take your time, think about what you did and I will expect to see you in about 45 minutes. Do not run,” Eddie insisted.

“I know,” she smiled.

“I love you, Juggs, but you are a dumb bunny sometimes,” Eddie said as she slid over to the driver’s side.

“I know, Eddie. I am sorry for embarrassing you all today,” she apologized to everyone not just me.

“Have a good walk, sweet heart,” Eddie waved goodbye as we drove toward his ranch. I saw his wife waving back at us.

No one spoke up about how that was cruel or even dangerous.

“What if someone drives by?”

“Then they will see two naked women walking down the highway. As long as the girls don’t hitchhike, I am sure they’ll be fine,” Eddie shrugged it off. He paused for a few moments and told me that he appreciated my concern. “When my wife makes a mistake, she owns it and gets punished. I am sure it’s a little different in your household but that is how we do things here.”

“I feel bad that I complained and about the bikini. I do not think ... uh, Juggs,” it felt awkward saying my Aunt’s nickname “that she meant to embarrass me.”

“Whether she intended it or not, she did and Juggs didn’t think. She just acted and that gets her in trouble. Trust me, she’s made this walk of shame plenty of times. Juggs will be just fine.”

The “walk of shame” term really hit home – I felt incredibly guilty for what happened.

“Do you want to join them? I’ll turn around but you’ll walk home just like they do if I do,” he promised me. I knew my Uncle wasn’t kidding. I told him that I was sorry.