You've seen TV shows and movies about childhood vacations by some lake in the Catskills. Every one of them looks the same. There's a wacky dad, crazy adventures and sweet fleeting romances that make old people all weepy and nostalgic. The people who write them want you to watch and think "gosh, that looks so relaxing and pleasant"?

Those are all bullshit.

Cabins in the Catskills smell like wet dog, and they're full of gross bugs. There's no TV, no movies and no boys who aren't like 50 years old. There's a lake, if you like swimming in brown water, and there's a beach with no sun and even more bugs.

My best friend Nikki and me got dragged up to that cabin every summer since we were 7 years old because our parents thought it was like the awesomest most relaxing thing ever. We rented the same two cabins right next to each along the edge of the big brown lake for two loooong boring weeks. My uncle and his kids and the family of one of our other neighbors rented the other two cabins in the cluster, so we were always with the same bunch of people out by the lake. Every single year.

This year we begged and pleaded for them to just leave us home. Our friend Erin had even talked her parents into letting us stay at their house the whole time so they wouldn't worry. We were 14 years old, for God's sake, we were way too old to spend two weeks playing Marco Polo with the kids in the lake! But they hadn't budged and we ended up there just like every year.

"You girls aren't gonna swim?" asked Nikki's dad, Mr. Cooper, as he walked out on the dock. The beach didn't get any actual sun, so Nikki and me were laying in our bikinis out on the long dock, where there was sort of sun but not really.

"Don't feel like it," Nikki said without flinching or lowering her sunglasses.

"Yeah," I agreed, trying my best to sound miserable.

"Come on now, girls," he said as he exhaled. Mrs. Cooper made him walk out on the lake to smoke, so he only came out there for his cigarettes. "You can't be miserable the whole trip! There's lots of stuff to do."

"Like what?" I asked.

"Well," he thought for a minute. He was going to say 'swim' because that was, literally, the only thing there was to do. He just already said that so he needed to think of something else. "You could fish," he said.

"Ick," said Nikki.

"Or, um," Mr. Cooper was sweating. He'd insisted, when the we protested at home, that we would d have fun up here, and we were calling his bluff. "You could take the boat out. You girls are old enough to handle her on your own I think."

We both perked up at this. "The boat" was just an old canoe, but they'd never let us use it by ourselves before. It wasn't a car, but it was freedom. Sort of.

"Really?" Nikki asked, skeptical.

"Sure," he said, "I don't see why not."

We eagerly accepted the offer. I actually expected my parents and Mrs. Cooper to veto the idea, but Mr. Cooper was locked in and we weren't going to let him forget it. Our moms buckled easy, once we promised to keep our life jackets on, and my dad was won over by Mr. Cooper's rationalizing, when he thought we were out of earshot, that a little time on the lake "might work the bitch out of 'em." I didn't appreciate being called a bitch, but I wasn't going to make a fuss about it then.

Lake Papageorge is as big as it is brown, but it didn't take us long to get paddled out of sight of the beach and to ditch our clothes. Like any self-respecting teenage girls, we'd packed two bikinis—the ones our parents knew about and the ones they'd never let us wear. We'd covertly slipped into the skimpy ones beneath our tshirts, shorts and lifejackets before we'd shoved off. If there was any chance of meeting boys or getting a decent tan, the other ones just wouldn't do.

We'd only just stripped down when a motorboat full of older guys slowed down to hoot and holler at us. "Show us your tits!" they called, and we both giggled. I thought Nikki might actually do it, but she chickened out and they zipped away. I didn't think they'd want to see my little boobs, but Nikki had amazing big breasts for 14 and guys were always salivating over them. She had nice tan Italian skin like her mom, and a really cute body, but the only thing guys ever noticed were her big boobs. In that little black bikini, they looked particularly good, and I was super jealous.

"Wow," she said. "They were cute. I can't believe they stopped to look at us!"

I laughed at her. "Oh my God, of course they did. Guys have like Nikki-boob radar!"

Nikki blushed but she didn't deny it.

We drifted a little further. Our cabins were on a private inlet that dipped in for about a mile, but the bigger lake was a lot more crowded. It was a Saturday, so there were lots of motorboaters out for the weekend with all kinds of people in them. We saw a couple of other canoes, but mostly they were all lots bigger.

There were lots of guys!

After a while, we stopped even noticing guys who slowed down to look at us or whistle. Some of them offered us beer and lots more wanted us to come on their boats. It was sexy, but we didn't cause we saw a police boat float by and didn't want to get in trouble.

"Where you girls heading?"asked one guy, as he and his friends drifted up beside us. They were college boys or in their early 20s, shirtless and very hot.

"Don't know," I said. "What about you?"

"Aww, was hopin' a couple of fine little honeys like you was heading for Neptune beach."

"Quit the cradle robbing, Danny," said his friend, a little annoyed.

He smiled at me. At me! "Aw come on, Robbie," he said, his big brown eyes still fixed on mine. "You ain't no baby, are you blondie?"

I'm sure I blushed. "Nope," I said sheepishly, "Not a baby."

He laughed. "See, Robbie? She ain't no baby." Then he winked, "Up beyond those trees on the left. Don't be shy. Bring that little friend of yours back there, too."

"Okay," I said, feel tingly and shy.

"I'm Danny, by the way."

It took me a minute to think of my line. "I'm Emily," I finally managed.

"Pleased to meet you," he shouted as he and his friends drifted away towards those trees.

Nikki laughed at me. "You're drooling," she said.

"Am not," I said.

"I'm not a baby, Danny" she teased in a little baby voice.

"You're just mad he was looking at me and not you," I snapped.

"They all look at you, too, you know."

Apparently Nikki was oblivious to these things. "Wanna check out their beach?" I asked.

"They're probably just going over there to get drunk and stuff," she said. "I don't know."

"Come on," I said, "they were cute."

"Yeah, but they were like 21 or something. They don't want to hang out with us."

"He told us to come," I said.

"Yeah, but, he probably couldn't tell how old you were from far away."

"It was only a few feet."

Nikki rolled her eyes. She knew how stubborn I could be, and she knew I was going to win if she kept arguing. "Just a little while, ok?"

"Of course," I said.

We paddled off towards the trees, around the bend where Danny and his boat had disappeared. It took us a good 45 minutes in our canoe, but eventually we pulled around into an inlet a lot like the one our cabins were on. It wasn't as big as ours, maybe a qarter mile, but there weren't any cabins on it that we could see, just trees. At the far end we could see boats all pulled onto the beach or anchored, so we paddled that way.

There weren't people on the beach that we could see, but we definitely heard voices coming from further inland.

"Why are they all up there?" Nikki asked.

"I don't know ... want to go look?'

"Not really," she teased.

We pulled our canoe onto the beach and put our flip flops on and grabbed our beach towels for the walk up the wood-plank path towards the voices. It was a lot longer walk than we expected, and the noise kept getting louder. "Wow," said Nikki as we came to the edge of the woods onto what looked like a bigger sandier beach on the opposite side. "Sounds like a lot of people!"

We pushed through a little further and found ourselves on actual sand, not the rocks on most of the lake beaches. It was a big expanse of real beach, full of real people.

"Oh my god," said Nikki, "Everyone is like totally naked!"

Well, not everyone. Not even close really, but there were a few. Some of the girls were topless, and others were running around completely naked. But they weren't ALL naked.

We darted back into the woods before someone saw us.

"We have to go!" Nikki exclaimed, though she was staring back out at the beach.

"We don't have to," I said.

"Kids our age aren't supposed to be at places like this," she said.

"Why not?" I asked, "We went skinny dipping that time at Rhonda's house."

"That was a slumber party. This is like ... public!"

I rolled my eyes, trying my best to so-very-mature. "We don't have to take our clothes off. Hardly anybody else is. Let's just hang out."

I bit my lip. I knew she was right, and we probably shouldn't be hanging around out there—it was the sort of party our parents would flip if they knew we were at. But I was just too excited not to hang around a little while. I loved the way Danny had looked at me before, and all those guys who whistled at us in our little bikinis. I wanted more of it.

"Come on," I pleaded again "just a little bit. If they tell us to leave we will."

Nikki hesitated. "You promise?"

"Yes!" I said.

"Ok, just a little bit." Nikki relented. She was smiling now too, so I knew I wasn't the only one who was excited.

We tried to act confident as we strode out onto the sand, but we were definitely out of place and you could probably tell we were nervous. Everyone was older than us, but the guys weren't shy about leering as we passed. It was sort of wild, because there were other girls there who were older and really pretty, and totally topless, but guys still looked at us.

Two hispanic guys came up on each side of us and starting talking. "You girls are looking good," said one. He was in his 20s, muscley and tanned all over. "Come here a lot?"

"It's our first time," I said.

"Should've known," he said, "love the tan lines!"

I blushed. The bikini was so much smaller than the one I normally wore at home that you could make out all of the tan lines all over my pale skin.

"You gotta great body," he said, sort of whispering to me. His friends—two of them—were chatting up Nikki, and even though they were way over a foot taller than her they didn't even pretend like they were looking at her face.

"Thanks," I said shyly, unsure what the appropriate response was.

"Most blonde girls have like dark hair down below, you know? I really like girls that are blonde all over. You blonde all over?"

Now I really didn't know what to say! It was getting sort of embarrassing, but if I was letting on her obviously couldn't tell.

We wandered as an apparent fivesome close to the edge of the water and sat down when we couldn't really walk further and spread our towels out. We lay down and our entourage circled around.

"You got a boyfriend?" My boy, who called himself Julio, asked.

I should've said yes, but I wasn't thinking quite right. "Nope," I said.

"I gotta girlfriend," he said, "but she's not as pretty as you." He layed down beside me and propped his head up one arm. "You wanna be my new girlfriend?"

I had absolutely no idea what to say to that, and I was even more speechless when he brazenly put his hand on my hip. Next to me Nikki half shouted protest as the two boys each got a handful of breast and started squeezing. "Whoa..." she said, but one of them just started kissing her and they both kept groping.

I turned to help but Julio laid on top of me and stuffed his tongue in my mouth while he forced his hand between my legs, tugging feverishly at the thin pink bottom. I panicked. This couldn't be happening in front of all of these other people, could it?

Julio was way bigger than me. No matter how hard I struggled, I couldn't even manage to make enough fuss to make it clear that I wanted him off. God knows what they were doing to Nikki, because I couldn't even turn my head to see.

"Hey holmes, that's my girl," someone shouted.

I didn't even know they were talking to us until Julio lifted his head to shout back.

"Get lost, man," said Julio. "These chicks are taken."

"I know," said the voice, "They're taken by me. You got a problem with that?"

I couldn't see what was happening because Julio had me pinned, but very suddenly he lifted off and stood up. His friends did likewise, and just like that they ran away from us.

Danny, the guy we met on the boat, was standing over me smiling down, and he had four hulking friends standing behind him. "Emily! You made it!"

"Oh my God, thank you soooooo much," said Nikki before I could even manage to speak. "I was so scared, you have no idea!" She was covering her breasts with her forearm and one hand, holding the tattered remnants of her bikini top in the other. Those guys had apparently ripped it in half.

"No problem," said Danny. "Them boys should know better than to get fresh with my girls. You two wanna come party with us over here? We got the grill going."

Nikki didn't even need convincing this time, and we both answered "Yes!" in unison. Danny and the boys lead us around a bend to a wider beach that was less sunny but also less crowded. They had a barbeque grilling and were working on setting up a volley ball net.

I could see Nikki was still quivering a little, and I sort of understood. All Julio did was kiss me and feel me up, but his friends had already begun tearing her clothes off and there was no doubt what they had in mind. "You ok?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said, softly. "Guess I am now. 'Cept for the suit."

I giggled at her. "Just go topless," I suggested. "Other girls are."

"You gotta do it with me," she taunted.

I knew she was toying with me, and certain I wouldn't do it. To be fair, I probably wouldn't have any other time but I was still charged up with adrenaline from what just happened, and still turned on by the way guys were looking at us so openly. "Ok," I said, grinning naughtily as I unsnapped the top and lifted it over my head without hesitating. I tossed it over a branch and made a point of not covering my boobs up. "Fair?" She just giggled and dropped her own hands.

We tossed our towels down in a sunny spot on "their" beach, but mostly hung around with Danny and the guys by the grill. They told us they were from New Jersey but came up here because Robby's uncle had a big house on the lake and he let them use it to chill out.