Chapter 1.
When I was a teenager I was very shy and body conscious. I avoided any and all situations in which I could be seen naked. I felt uncomfortable at home showering with the door open, and was glad that, in high school, nobody showered after gym class. Other people who didn't have the same hang ups as me and who managed to walk around naked were avoided by me. I usually made it very clear that I took offence to their nakedness. It was simply a case of being too uncomfortable with my own body.
But as I grew older I realized that I was making a fool out of myself. I eased up, let go of my inhibitions bit by bit. As I left the awkward years of puberty behind, I started too look forward to living my life as an adult.
When I was twenty I realized that I lacked something in my years as an awkward teen. I kept hearing stories of male bonding, and read numerous anecdotes, and couldn't identify with any of those stories. It began to bother me, because I had always made it a point to avoid those situations, because in my mind those things were just not acceptable.
So I lacked any real material to compare myself with at the age of twenty, and it bothered me. I had missed out on innocent play and exploration of my own body, and I began to believe that it had stunted my development as a man. Having too much spare time on your hands tends to do that to you. You start to over-analyse and before you know it, you're convinced that you're damaged goods.
So I decided to make up for missed opportunities and go where apparently everybody had gone before.
The only problem was, I had no idea where to start. I had plenty of male friends, but for some reason it felt weird asking them outright about the issue. It felt awkward just thinking about it. They'd surely see me as some kind of freak, and I was sure the prospect of comparing dicks at the age of twenty was pretty much a turn off for any grown man. So I saw my resolutions failed before I even started.
It was somewhere in the middle of summer, past my twenty-first birthday, that I decided to give it all another shot. Most of my friends were out of town, they were enjoying the beach or had flown to some other exotic location to spend their summertime, but there were still a couple of them back home, bored out of their skull and pissed that they didn't book something earlier.
I made a couple of calls, and suggested a camping trip. After all, the weather was more than fine, and nobody had anything better to do the next week or so, why not do something to break the boredom. Two of my friends thought it was a great idea. So Dylan and Mark signed up and the three of us decided on a location.
Dylan wanted something popular, but Mark and I preferred something a bit more remote. Closer to a survival weekend. Dylan succumbed to the pressure and followed our plan. Four days wasn't exactly a punishment, and with the promise of plenty of booze, who could resist?
Two days before we left my mother got a call from my aunt. Dennis, my younger cousin, needed a place to crash while their house was being fixed. Since my aunt and uncle had planned a hotel room for two in a sunny resort to wait for the house to be fixed, they needed for Dennis to be somewhere where he wasn't going to cause any trouble.
Dennis wasn't a bad guy. I was two years older than him, and we always seemed to get along just nicely. When we were younger, we had sleepovers regularly. I clicked more with his older brother Peter, who was one year older than me, and who was something of a role model in my eyes when I was younger. Peter had fled the house last year, and now spent his summer at his girlfriend. I hadn't seen him in months, but I reckoned he was doing fine. No news is good news they say.
Without consulting me my mother had already told my aunt that Dennis could go camping with me and my friends. I was a bit flustered when she confronted me with the news that there was going to be a fourth member to our group.
It wasn't that I didn't like Dennis, he was a great kid, but this didn't exactly fit any of the plans I had made, or the expectations I had of the trip. I tried to defend myself by telling my mother that the other two guys might not like babysitting my little cousin, but my mother quickly replied that Dennis was 19 and no longer needed a babysitter.
I countered that if he didn't need one, why was he sent here. My mother didn't manage to make a real argument against my objection, but at certain points in life, you know that mothers seldom need a real reason to burden you with a task.
I called the other guys up, told them the news. Surprisingly enough they didn't seem to mind. They couldn't care less about my little cousin, and were still excited about the trip. I let out a sigh of relief and made further arrangements.
The next day Dennis stood at our front door. Cheerful but hiding a definite sense of duty as he made his way inside. After all, his parents had sent him here, and I was pretty sure he had made other plans for the week. He was stuck with me the same way I was stuck with him. We both hid it, but we knew that there were more favourable options.
My mother told Dennis that he could just keep his stuff packed, after all, tomorrow he'd leave to go camping. Why unpack today when you need to pack everything up before the crack of dawn? Not that it would matter, because Dennis was sporting a backpack that didn't look very impressive. I reckoned it held about enough clean boxer shorts to last him the week and perhaps a couple of shirts and two pairs of shorts.
I had already packed my bag, and had only the bare essentials with me. Clean underwear, couple of shirts, and one pair of shorts that could double as swim trunks.
Dennis and I spent the rest of the day lounging about, doing nothing, passing small talk and watching TV. Nothing out of the ordinary. We turned in relatively early, just so we could get up the next morning at an appropriate time.
"Come on, it's time to leave," was the sound of Dennis the next morning at what seemed like the most ungodly hour known to man.
"Dude, we still have two more hours before Dylan is coming to pick us up. Chill out," I grumbled turning around hoping to fall back asleep.
"One hour, at max," Dennis sounded almost eerily perky.
"Seriously, who laced your cornflakes with crack? Go back to bed!"
"See ya in an hour!" Dennis said with glee as he closed the door to my bedroom.
That kid was way too perky at this time of the day. Enthusiasm should be reserved for noon, everything before noon should be groggy and quiet and full of regret about waking up. Still now that I was awake I couldn't fall back asleep again. This was my trip, and on this trip I had plans to do away with past insecurities.
I rose to my feet, threw on fresh clothes. A t-shirt, trunks, and easy-going shoes. I brushed my teeth, combed my hair, didn't bother to take a shower and reckoned I was pretty much ready to go to places previously unknown.
When I got downstairs I saw my mom had made breakfast. She stood there in here plushy robe with a plate in her hand, smiling only half-awake. I felt 8 years old again, and it felt slightly embarrassing.
"I'm going to go back to bed. Have you guys got everything?" she sounded a bit hoarse.
"We've got everything, don't worry about us. See ya in a couple of days mom," I replied half-heartedly.
And with that I said goodbye to my mother, who moved up the stairs to the bedroom. My dad was still asleep, and wouldn't wake up for another couple of hours, and I envied him for that.
We finished breakfast, checked our bags and stacked three bottles of cheap liquor in them.
Before we knew it, Dennis and I stood outside and we greeted Dylan and Mark as the car came round. A pretty decent car even, everything but a dusty old rust-bucket, but still nothing to brag about.
"Ready to go?" Mark asked.
"Yep," I quipped.
"So you're the infamous Dennis," Dylan said. "I've heard so much about you."
"You have?" Dennis replied with some amazement.
"Not really, I didn't know you existed until Jason called. I'm just glad to see you're human, and not some hideously mutated swamp rat or something."
Dennis smiled, not getting the joke.
And with that we made our way to our destination.
