Most will agree that the most beautiful period in high school is the last month before you graduate. I don’t know how it is today, but in the early nineties, that was the case. The grading is concluded earlier, allowing students to prepare for graduation at their own pace, providing more free time--only having to attend a few “consultations” at the school. I can say with certainty that the students are still given some concessions--I don’t remember anyone failing their last grade unless they were a total jerk. In fact, not only the last month but the whole last year had been more relaxed than any of the previous ones. Everyone is an “adult” or almost “adult, being over 18 already or close to 18 --so most were trying out things that were considered “grown-up” actions and indulgences. This sometimes led to disagreements between students and teaching staff, as well as parents and their kids.

Apart from the fact that this was the first year that I didn’t worry about whether I would take remedial exams or not to make up for failing grades. It was an all-around surprise that I had no failing grades this semester, which has never been the case before. It was also in that year that I started changing the way I handled my relationships as well. I was still friendly with everyone, but unlike before, I didn’t wander from one group to the next. Instead, I chose a narrow circle of people whom I socialized with both at school and outside of it. While everyone at school was divided into rappers, hard rock, alternative and metal rock, my preferred group of friends never decided on just one side. We did not go to extremes but balanced somewhere between rock concerts and disco clubs.

Jadranko, my best friend from school. I could count on his friendship and on having a good time when I joined him in his escapades. We had known each other since freshman year in school, and although we did not attend the same classes for the first two years, we knew each other by sharing stories during lunchtimes and bumping into each other in the halls. I knew him as a teenager who did not like to expose himself too much, so I was very glad when I saw at the beginning of my senior years that we would be in the same class for the last 2 years.

We had been sharing some classes, but we only became real friends when we met by chance on a night out. Since then we had many common subjects in school and sat together in every class. Jadranko is a few months older than me, so he used the opportunity to apply for a driver’s license, and having passed the exams, he regularly came to school by car. Yes, here in Europe we have to wait until 18 to get a driver’s license, but we don’t need to wait until 21 to drink a beer. Like many boys from the suburbs at that time, Jadranko was obsessed with cars and motorbikes, so he spent a lot of time fixing his motorized pets. As a result of this, his yard was sporting one of the most beautifully arranged car and motor shows in the city. The biggest problem was the empty gas tank, so we spent all our lunch money on gas just to drive around in town after school and pretend to be classy dudes.

Two weeks before the end of the senior year, as I’ve said before, is the best period of school when most of the grades have been finalized, and for the rest, I didn’t care as long as I passed. We had math for the first two hours, and while we were waiting for electrical engineering, the head teacher came and said that the professor was sick and that we were free for the next two hours. There was only one more period after that on “work organization”, which really wasn’t that essential. Jadranko and I just looked at each other and nodded.

“Do you have gasoline?” I asked Jadranko.

“Do you have any money?” He replied with a question.

I pulled out a bus pass from my back pocket. The money that my mother gave me every day so that I could eat something was sticking out of it.

Jadranko was jolted into action, saying, “Great, let’s go!”

We got into the car and headed towards the city. The sound of the shortened exhaust was overpowered by the blaring of Guns’n Roses, and the looks of the passersby seemed as if everyone was looking at us with envy and admiration. Now I know they were looking at us like that because we were jerks. We soon parked in front of the café and ran onto the terrace, convinced that everyone was seeing us as cool dudes. Every teenager knows that feeling when, instead of sitting at a school desk, they are sitting on the terrace of a café in the sun: free and on the top of the world. It was the blazing sun that gave us the idea to go outside the city to the beach. We counted our money, calculated how much gas we could buy to have enough left over for beer, and set off.

After about twenty minutes, we parked on the side of the road and in a nearby store counted the change with which we bought two beers with the promise that we would return the bottles. We started slowly towards the beach. At the end of May, there were only a few people on the beach: some taking a stroll, and a few who wanted to get a head start on their summer tans. We went down to the sea to a place where there was no one, stripped down to our boxers, and lay down on the stones like lizards that had just come out of hiding to warm themselves. A few sips of beer and the warmth of the sun contributed to the fact that we both fell asleep for a while.

When we woke up, there were two people ten meters away from us. An elderly man was sitting on a towel in shorts and a T-shirt, but next to him lay a woman whose age was an absolute mystery to us. The woman was lying in a bathing suit, and her body was akin to ones displayed on the covers of erotic magazines, which confused us. It was difficult to determine her age based on her body, and when she took off her hat and we saw her face, we were even more confused. Her face looked completely unnatural, without a single wrinkle, as if she were a statue. When she spoke, we could only see the movement of her lips, while her cheeks were frozen in place, unmoving.

“Fuck, she’s like a robot,” Jadranko commented quietly.

“Um. It looks more like a doll to me,” I countered.

We stopped looking at them for a moment because it was becoming obvious that we were staring at them. After a while, she got up and started walking towards the sea. When her ankles were in the water, she stood there, and we stared at her again.

“She has a perfect body,” I said.

“Yes, but look at her neck; I don’t think she’s that young,” Jadranko offered.

“Of course she is not young--her man is a pensioner,” I huffed.

“Obviously some rich man,” Jadranko added.

She had a short haircut, blonde hair, and a perfectly sized and shaped butt and tits to match. She turned to her partner and said, “Es ist kalt.”

It was then that we realized they were Germans, and the color of the voice confirmed our opinion about her age. We were hypnotized as we avidly followed her walk to the towel with our eyes. This time she lay down on her stomach, and after a short communication with her partner, he unbuttoned her swimsuit top. Of course, we didn’t see her bare breasts in the position she was in, but just the fact that the woman was without the upper part of her swimsuit aroused us. We were both constantly looking at her so that we wouldn’t miss it if she turned around. After ten minutes, we waited for the moment when she would turn on her back. When we glimpsed her tits, it caused an erection for both of us, which we were still ashamed of, so we both turned on our stomachs and continued to watch her.

After some time, she got up and walked to the sea again with her breasts bare, and we turned again to look at her. This time she bent down and touched the sea with her hands and then returned to her place again. She was completely indifferent to us staring at her. The time had come for us to stare a little too because our hard-ons in the boxers didn’t budge. Even though I knew that the beer bottle was empty, I still leaned in to mask my problem, as well as to ensure that the last drop of liquid should reach my throat. We got up and waded into the sea until it reached our knees. It was really cold, so we didn’t go deeper, and the cold had already helped us by softening our erections. We had returned to our place on the rocks when we saw him stand up, approaching us with a bag in his hand. I immediately thought that he would be objecting to us looking at his wife.

“Möchtest du ein Bier?” he asked and handed us a nylon bag containing two cans of German beer.

We both answered in unison, “Danke.”

That was all we knew in German. We continued our communication in English. He sat down with us, and that’s how we met.

We found out that his name is Joseph and his wife is Christa. He had an insurance business, which he sold and retired. They had bought a house near the beach and were enjoying it now. They had no children, and that is all we knew about them.

Jadranko naturally asked what car he was driving and was disappointed when he realized that it was not a BMW but a Mercedes. After we had a beer, Joseph said he liked that we were watching his wife. We blushed a little, but when he asked if we liked her, we eagerly answered in the affirmative. Then Joseph man-hugged us with one arm and quietly asked if we wanted to sleep with his wife. While we were still shocked and not understanding what he was asking us, he added that he would reward us with a hundred Deutche Marks each.

He then released us from his embrace, and we looked at each other and then turned to the woman who was lying bare-breasted.

Jadranko said quietly, “Well, I would.”

I agreed with him, and we both nodded our heads towards Joseph. Then he called out to Christa, and the woman with bare breasts came to us. Completely, without any emotion during the handshake, she just said her name. I must admit that even such an unnatural face looked beautiful and sexy. If I had been alone, I don’t think I would have agreed to such a thing, but when Jadranko agreed, so did I. For a few moments, we just stood there in awkward silence. My mind wandered to the near future, hoping that Joseph thought it would be a classic one-on-one fucking, first one of us and then the other. I had a mixed feeling of excitement and arousal intertwined with that of shame, discomfort, and even some kind of fear. Neither of us were innocent, but we were far from being some experienced fuckers.

Joseph broke the uncomfortable silence and said that if we all agreed, we could do it right away in their house. We couldn’t do anything but agree with him. The two of us got dressed in an instant, and then we watched Christa get dressed in slow motion. I concluded that she looked better naked than clothed, which is rare for a woman of her age. We never did find out her age. She might have been in her forties, but it was also possible that she was in her sixties, but that was the least important to us.

We climbed the stairs to the road, and Joseph said that they lived in the house behind the store and pointed in the direction with his hand.

“Fuck, we didn’t bring the bottles,” Jadranko reminded us of our previous promise.

I just agreed, “Fuck.” At that moment, the last thing on my mind was empty beer bottles.

We stood in front of the door of the old stone house while Joseph unlocked it. The house looked like all the other houses in the town, so I figured they must have bought it recently and had not remodeled it yet. We entered the house, which was almost empty. Only the most indispensable furniture was inside, but there were also many boxes and suitcases on the floor. We settled in the living room and were offered cookies and juice, and after a short conversation, Joseph said to go upstairs to the bedroom. All this time, Christa did not speak a single word.