There is so much more to tell about Y-camp - I learned to sail (enough to rise from "dangerous" to "merely incompetent", anyway); I learned archery (ditto); I had a blast on hikes; I made a ton of new friends; I even made that lousy wallet...

... but, to be fair, this story is long enough already - and I need to talk about skinny-dipping, and our game of "grab-the-weenie". So I'll get to the root of the matter, now.

There were three typical events in which Y-camp boys would be around each other naked or near-naked - bathing in the lake in the evenings, changing in the cabin, and skinny-dipping during rec swim. Bathing wasn't very sexualized, despite the fact that it was the only occasion at camp when everyone was naked together. For one thing, as I said, it was usually late and the light was fading, so you didn't see much of your friends. And it was a bath, after all. I don't think most boys like baths much, even in the lake. It's a chore, and you do it and get it over with.

Changing clothes was a little more interesting. I saw all the boys in my cabin in their underwear, of course - every evening and morning, and also at various points during the day when we changed for different sports or activities. Every Cabin W_____ boy wore white briefs - the standard at 9 through 12 years old, back then. So did Hal and our other counselor, for that matter.

As noted, I'd seen little boys in their underwear a lot - sports; friends sleeping over; my two younger brothers... The sight typically wasn't sexual to me - not before Y-camp. It was all locker-room ambience, just sweat and sports and all that. I had fooled around with my friends, and many of those experiments began with us both in just underwear, but that was different from equating boys in underwear and sex in general. Y-camp was where I woke up sexually, though. And seeing those boys in their briefs was a factor in my awakening. I don't know if that's part of what woke me up, or if waking up made me realize it was sexual. Doesn't matter. The two went together, and that's what matters.

There were two Cabin W_____ boys who weren't "little boys" like my friends, or the remaining campers in our cabin. Joe and J.J. were not prepubescent, and I was very aware of that fact. I wasn't obsessed with puberty, but I was more than idly curious about the physical changes and what they did to boys. With briefs, there's no mistaking that you're looking at a boy, and it's not difficult to tell if he's started puberty. The first puberty-related physical change for most boys (as it was for me) is bigger testicles, and that's obvious on a boy in just his briefs. I remember being intrigued by the way the two older boys looked different in their underwear - and more intrigued by the way they looked naked, when I got to see them that way.

Before I get to them, I should also mention our counselors in their underwear. They were boys too, of course. (I have trouble even today thinking of them as "boys" - they were authority figures! But both were in fact around 18 years old.) I saw Hal in his underwear nightly, since he slept in just his briefs, like Joe and me. Hal was modest. He usually turned his back or stayed covered up even with his underwear still on. If he was leading a prayer or talking to us after getting undressed for the night, he often sat on his bunk with the sheet or pillow over his lap and thighs. I do recall looking at the bulge of Hal's genitals in his briefs, and wondering fleetingly how big his penis was. I never saw him naked, or if I did I've forgotten. He didn't skinny-dip (or even go swimming) with us. I can't remember about seeing him bathing; but baths were always at dusk, and you didn't get to see much detail about anatomy or anything else. He never stripped in the cabin that I recall - I probably have just forgotten, though. Maybe I was looking the other way, at the boys nearer my age.

The other counselor, the guy who slept there maybe two nights, I have even less recollection about. He wore white briefs, which I saw one time when he changed into his PJs. I was more curious about why he was actually sleeping in our cabin that night, than about his penis. (This guy didn't make much of an impression in my memory, in his underwear or otherwise, obviously.) For whatever reason, I wasn't too interested in those guys - they were just too old to hold my interest at the time. High school seniors were almost adults, and adult men did not register for me in terms of sexuality.

The remaining two boys were Joe and J.J., the oldest campers (along with Brian) in our cabin - I believe all three were 12 years old; I know J.J. was 12. I don't recall seeing Brian naked, though, and in his briefs he looked like the younger boys - prepubescent, or barely-pubescent at most. Brian could be a whole separate story, incidentally. He was the most religious kid in the cabin, a genuine Bible-Belt Baptist who read his Bible every night, and kept some distance from Joe and me, the two most indecent kids in the cabin. I liked Brian, and we actually had a good discussion once about the Bible. He was also a fair soccer player. And he really excelled at horseshoe-throwing, of all things. (If you're at all familiar with Southern Baptists, you'll understand the reason. I have never in my life been to a Southern Baptist church picnic that did not feature horseshoe-throwing. I guess it must be a sin to build a church without a horseshoe pit.)

I noticed the very first night that Joe and J.J. looked different from the others in their briefs. That day was too full of overwhelming stimuli for me to pay much attention, and in any case I was yakking with Tony and Phil while we all changed; so I didn't give it much thought that evening. But I recall distinctly noticing that Joe and J.J. both had bigger displacements. Their briefs stuck out more in front, and the support-area down between their legs showed that they had something to support down there, unlike us younger kids. Joe's bulge seemed more noticeable to me at the time, most likely because he was closer to me - his bunk was directly across from me, above Tony's, and he stood right next to my bunk to change.

I don't recall anyone taking off his underwear that night, nor changing the next morning. We were exempted from baths that first evening, and I doubt too many boys change underwear until they have to, at that age. So, I didn't see anybody naked till early afternoon the second day. That was our first rec swim - and therefore, the first time skinny-dipping.

Skinny-dipping during rec swim was an old, old tradition at Y-camp, and that fact was well-known before we signed up. We knew it wasn't mandatory. But I remember consciously planning, long before camp started, to be one of the kids who stripped for swimming, and feeling like planning it was a slightly naughty thought. It seemed more daring than swimming nude at the Y, my only previous experience of the kind. The Y was indoors, in a natatorium with no windows; this was open to the sky and everyone. I recall asking Phil earlier in the summer if he was going to go skinny-dipping at camp; he said he didn't know. I said, "Well, I wanna do it."

From the beginning, there was a clear distinction between the skinny-dippers and the swimsuit-wearers. Despite the director's admonition, it was hard for us skinny-dippers not to think of the swimsuit-wearers as chickens. I remember thinking that it would be wrong to tease them, however; and, unlike some kids, especially the 13-16 year-old's, I never did. It didn't seem nice. And, more pragmatically, at some point before camp was over I noticed that the boys who got teased never took off their suits; whereas the boys who weren't teased sometimes loosened up over time, and stripped. That seemed like a Good Thing.

Most of our cabin knew how to swim, so we always swam together as a group - the two nonswimmers, Frank and Rob, were in a separate beginner's class over in the shallows. Some of us were skinny-dippers and some were swimsuit-wearers - and that changed over the two weeks of camp. That first day, it was a 3-5 split, as follows: The skinny-dippers were Danny, Joe, and Bill; the swimsuit- guys initially were Phil, Tony, Richie, Brian, and J.J., plus Frank and Rob over on their end. By the end of camp, Phil, Tony, and J.J. had shed their inhibitions and their swimsuits, which left Rob, Frank, and Brian as the modest ones (Richie went home early).

So, back to that second day of camp, and our first rec swim: As with all other activities at Y-camp, there were several shifts throughout the day for rec swim. Unlike most other activities, rec swim was scheduled by cabin. That was for good reason, as I now understand - in kids' rec swimming, it's particularly important to rely on the buddy system, so nobody gets in trouble unnoticed; and a permanent set of buddies made things easier. Our shift was early afternoon, right after rest period. Y-camp had lunch at 12 noon, then an hour to rest - some kids slept, but I never was much of a nap- taker, so I usually went outside the cabin and talked to whoever else I could find. That day I was talking to J.J. and some randomly-assorted kids from other cabins. I remember enjoying talking to them - but thinking, the whole time, "When is that damn bell gonna ring?" I was itching to get into the water. I wanted to go swimming, and it had little to do with getting naked, either. The lake had been beckoning me since before I laid eyes on it - from the time I first saw it pictured on the camp brochure, in fact, over a year earlier.

When the big bell rang (after an hour that seemed to last six), Hal rounded us up and told us to get changed into swimsuits, if we were going to wear them. He said, "You don't have to wear one. There aren't any girls around. But you can if you want to. And" - he glared around the cabin - "I don't want any teasing about wearing a bathing suit, or about not wearing a bathing suit." He added that we should wrap a towel around us if we were going to walk down there naked, and that all of us had to wear flip-flops (i.e., thong sandals) to and from the lake. (Little Danny, incidentally, was the only Cabin W_____ camper who forgot to pack his flip-flops. Hal let me borrow his extra pair for a few days, until my mom mailed mine.)

There was a big confused flurry of changing. I didn't see much of the other boys' anatomies at this point. I remember Phil, but I'd seen him naked before so it wasn't a novelty. We got ready hastily - there was an hour for swimming, and the clock was ticking. After a few minutes everyone was ready, and Hal led us out the door and down the path to the dock. Very atypically, I was the last one out (thanks to Hal's flip-flops, which were too big and awkward to navigate in.) Bill was immediately in front of me - he had his towel around his waist, like me. I said, "Heh, Bill... you're gonna skinny-dip, too." He looked back at me and smiled. Bill was fairly quiet, but his smiles said a lot.

There were two other cabins on our side of camp going down there, too. You could immediately tell the skinny-dippers with towels around their waists, from the modest kids, who had them draped around their necks or held in one hand. Maybe two-thirds of the kids wore swimsuits - similar ratio to our cabin - which gave us around 20 modest kids and 10 nekkid boys among the three cabins.

Swimming took place around the swimming dock (as opposed to the sailing/canoeing dock, which was a few dozen yards to the east.) The swimming dock and the water around it was further subdivided into three areas: the rec swimmer's area, to the right and in front (west and south) of the dock, as you faced away from shore; the advanced instructional area, at the deep end of the dock's left (east) side; and the beginner's area, on the shallow left (east) side. There were float-ropes separating the areas. The far end of one rope was attached to a floating (anchored) dock out in the lake, one hundred yards away from the end of the swimming dock; the other rope went to a piling to the east, where the shallows got deep.

We all crowded onto the dock, and listened (impatiently) while the WSI counselor rattled off yet more rules: No pushing or running on the dock, no excessive splashing of other kids' faces, no straying out past the floating dock, listen for the WSI's whistle... blah blah blah. I think those rules took two minutes, three at most. But every second was an eternity, standing there with the cool deep water calling and calling me.

Finally, the counselor stood back and said the magic words, "Have fun!" (As if he needed to advise us.) There was room for 5-6 boys at most to stand side-by- side along the dock, so we had to jump off in successive waves. I was near the back of the pack that first day, so I got to go in the last wave, along with Phil and Tony. Tony and I were swimming buddies (as in buddy-system) that day; Phil had hooked up with a kid he knew in one of the other cabins.

At this point, I want to stand back as narrator, and let another part of myself speak. The next few indented paragraphs are quoted from a story I wrote for my Cometfire website, titled Green Wonderlight.

Here is the sight that's etched in my visual memory of those moments: Picture thirty boys, irregular column, four or six boys wide. First row moves up to dock's edge. Five boys are wearing swimsuits, with towels around their necks. One boy has his towel knotted around his waist. I know what that means. No swimsuit. He's going free, like me.

Hey, I recognize that boy - it's Chuck, from the bus! Chuck is a skinny- dipper, like me! Cool!

All six throw off their towels in a scattered array behind them. Six boy- butts. Five covered with various brightly-colored fabrics. And Chuck's bare boy-butt, pale white, tan lines at the waist and mid-thighs, glowing in the afternoon sun. Chuck's butt, noticeably-toned from months of soccer, muscles working cleanly as he steps forward.

Six boys curl their toes over the dock's edge, hesitate a moment, as one. And jump cleanly off, an irregular wave, shrieking, into the diamond-spangled water. Swim away from the dock in several directions, scattering to make room for the next wave.

Wave two, wave three, wave four. My eye is drawn toward those bare boy-butts, flashing as they strip off their towels and prepare to make the leap. Skinny- dippers, brave and unashamed. I see Bill's butt, I see Justin's (ohhh, there's Justin's...) My companions in nakedness, special brotherhood-within- brotherhood.

Last wave. My turn, Tony's turn, Phil's turn, some kids I haven't met yet. Two skinny-dippers in our row: a boy I don't know, down at the far right - and me. I'm on the far left of the row, Tony's right next to me, Phil to his right, a couple of other kids... and the other naked boy. We've got 'em sandwiched.

Just as the previous row leaps, I strip off my towel, turn and heave it into what is now a large rainbow heap in the dock's center. I'm the first in our group; the others follow my lead. I'm naked under the sun, above the miraculous water, next to boys, my friends, and we are young, and we are everything, we are NOW.

We're stepping into place at the edge. I look over at Tony, grinning. Tony is looking over at me; but he's not looking at my eyes. He's checking me out. A half-second later, he notices I'm looking, meets my eyes... and grins back. He's not embarrassed that I caught him looking at my weenie. Cool.

I look down at myself as we line up, in that moment that lasts forever, and curl our toes over the rough weather-worn gray wood. My knees, bent. My thighs, muscled (like Chuck's) from the season. My hands at my sides, tense with the moment. My tan lines. My ribs. My nipples, stiff. My testicles, drawn up, and my penis, sticking out in the slight chill of exposure. It's okay, that way, it's more than okay, it's good, it feels good, so alive, so good.
And that's my last thought, the time is
NOW. We shriek, we leap, we twist, we fall.
That icy-shock hits and slides over me from toe to head
as I enter, so fast there's not time to gasp. And
now, right NOW, I'm sinking, I'm seeing
green, my eyes are full of green wonderlight, my heart is full of joy, I'm swallowed,
I've returned to the home I once knew, naked as I should be, young, boy, and
I am so full of joy, joy, joy...

Swimming that day was awesome. We had races out to the floating platform. We played underwater tag, and sharks, and submarines, and lots of the swimming- pool games we'd learned in our previous existences - all made more challenging by playing in murky water instead of clear. And this set the pattern for days to come. Rec swimming didn't change much from day to day. It was always fun, always awesome. What changed was the weather: some days, the sky as clear as a great blue bell; other days, a parade of puffy white cumulus clouds playing tag with the sun. Special friends changed, too - one time you'd hang out with Phil and Tony, another time it was Chuck and J.J.; and some days you made new friends and that was always good.

And the other change, of course: Boys who started out the first day with swimsuits on, lost them. Not every boy. But it was good to see another bare boy-butt on the dock that you hadn't seen before. That was, to me, a little bit about sex, but more about freedom.

Some conversions came dramatically. I remember when a kid named Jerry switched. He was standing out on the floating dock with me, Joe, and a third naked kid, as well as several other swimsuit kids. Jerry was standing there in his suit, which in the fashion of the time was relatively baggy (though nothing like 1990s-baggy.) He and the third naked kid (whose identity I've now forgotten, dammit) were challenging each other to a race back to the main swimming dock. The other kid pointed out that Jerry was at a disadvantage; his swimsuit would drag in the water and slow him down. Jerry looked thoughtful for a second - then he grabbed his trunks and yanked them down and stepped out of them, threw them aside, and said "Now we're even." I have no idea if Jerry won or lost the race, but he never put his suit back on. I liked Jerry.

Not all skinny-dipping conversions were so spectacular, naturally. Most happened when a kid showed up in his suit one day and naked the next. I think more kids in our cabin switched, compared to the other two in our shift. Cabin W_____ ended up with a clear majority of skinny-dippers, but the others in our group seemed more like 50-50 by the last day. Only one kid on our shift ever switched from skinny-dipping to swimsuit-wearing - a boy named Gordon. He had good reason; he was very fair-skinned, and after a few days he was looking pretty sunburnt (no sunscreen back then.) He wore his swimsuit and a T-shirt after that. He was pretty bummed about it, too, and I don't blame him.

I saw Joe naked for the first time, that first afternoon.

That first afternoon, because of my position at the rear of the pack, I didn't get to see frontal nudity (besides my own) until we'd been in the water several minutes. Most kids headed straight out to the floating dock as soon as they jumped in. The floating dock was big - I'd guess 15 feet on a side - and all 30 of us boys could conceivably stand on it at once, though I don't recall that actually happening. I was swimming freestyle (or Australian crawl) out to the dock, and that stroke isn't the best way to see in front of you; so I wasn't looking at the boys on the dock (and couldn't see well in any case with water in my eyes). When I got near, I switched to breaststroke - head out of the water, eyes straight ahead - and looked.

The dock was crowded with laughing, yelling boys. Other swimmers and I were approaching from the right, and to my left kids were plunging back in, hooting. Immediately in front of me was a crowd of boys facing me. Most were wearing suits, but as I recall two were naked. Frontal nudity. I don't remember much about the first boy, except that he was prepubescent... because the other boy was Joe.

Joe had been in front, getting ready to leap back in the water as I approached, so I only got to see him for a few seconds before he dove. It was long enough.

Joe had commenced puberty, without question. His dick was big (or so it seemed to me), and somewhat darker; his balls seemed bigger too, despite being drawn up from the cold water; and he had some sparse, downy-looking pubic hair (actually I should just say "sparse pubic hair"; wet hair of any kind doesn't look downy).

It's difficult to describe the effect seeing Joe had on me. If wanting Tony was heat lightning, then this was a thunderbolt. It wasn't conscious thoughts, the way I'd had them several times earlier, when I wanted to jack off with him. It was more animal heat. I felt light-headed from the sheer energy of the moment. My body knew - I got an erection immediately, so hard it hurt. Joe swam past me, heading back to the dock. I saw his butt, the muscles in it working as he kicked, and I felt pure lust. I wanted to turn and grab his shoulders and get on top of him and put my dick between his buttocks and push. Not in his rectum - anal entry had never occurred to me at that point in my life, as far as I recollect. But burying it in that cleft, where it felt good.

That moment passed as quickly as it had come. My erection wilted. I was left feeling dizzy for a few seconds, and then that passed, too. I do not know how many readers are acquainted firsthand with prepubescent boys' sexual activity. It's not that different from prepubescent boys' bike-racing. You have a desire, and all at once you're faced with a way to fulfill it. Immediately - boys live in the moment - you give it all you've got. You pour on the energy, physically. Emotionally you are charged. The event is intense, and swift. When it's done, it's done; that moment passes. Maybe you're drained for a few minutes. But life goes on, and so does boyhood, and there's always something else fun to do with your friends. There's not much afterglow. But if it was good, you find a way to do it again.

It didn't take long before I saw all the skinny-dippers frontally that first afternoon. We were all in and out of the water, constantly the whole period. Bill and Chuck were the other two I remember from that first day, since we were already friends. Both were thoroughly prepubescent, like me. Bill in particular had very small genitals, smaller than mine (and mine were and are small). Just out of the cold water, his penis was drawn up to look like an acorn. Chuck, on the other hand, was bigger than most little boys down there. One of my small regrets was never getting to play grab-the-weenie with Chuck. Size didn't concern me as such, but it's fun when there's plenty to grab.

Most of the skinny-dippers were prepubescent, judging from appearance. That's not surprising - most of the boys on our side of camp were prepubescent. As I said, I was used to seeing boys my age in the locker room and at the Y and so on, and nakedness wasn't much of a novelty. Until now. This was different. Skinny-dipping at Y-camp was my first exposure to what I'll call "sexual group nudity". There was a clear atmosphere that the skinny-dippers were doing it with an edge of rule-breaking - something our parents might not approve of, like smoking cigarettes... or like some of the things the doc warned us about in "Boy Talk". It was sexual, although I didn't consciously think about it in those terms until later.

There were post-pubescent skinny-dippers, however. From our cabin, there was Joe, and later J.J., who didn't become a convert until the second week. I'll talk about J.J. and puberty when we get to our grab-the-weenie game. There were pubescent boys from the other cabins at rec swim, too, and one in particular I remember distinctly - a 12 year-old boy named Adrian. I got to know Adrian rather well, since he was in my instructional-swimming class and played morning soccer as well.

Adrian was a shy boy. He was reluctant to meet your eyes, and didn't talk much. But underneath he had a strong will. I realized that fact in soccer the first morning. I was on midfield offense and I had already pegged him as an easy defender to get past - I stereotyped him (unfairly) as "shy means timid". I learned better when I tried to blow past him dribbling. I thought he'd feint at most. He closed and had the ball before I could blink. Adrian might not look you in the eye, but he could and did get in your face.

I was a bit surprised when Adrian showed up naked at rec swim the very first afternoon, in light of his noticeable shyness. But he turned out to be oddly willing to show off his body. Adrian was the "farthest" into puberty of any of the boys I saw naked at Y-camp - he had very noticeable pubic hair, his penis was big and dark, and his balls hung down even in the chill. I wonder now about Adrian and what he felt, sexually. He seemed to me to flaunt his skinny- dipper status at times, like standing for a second or two longer on the dock facing us in the water before he jumped, not minding that we looked.

One incident is very telling, I think. During rec swim one afternoon, I ended up sitting with Adrian and a couple of other kids on the floating dock. Adrian and I happened to be directly facing each other - both of us nude of course, and sitting cross-legged. I looked at his dick and balls several times, and he looked at mine - we both tried to be discreet, but I noticed his glances, and I'm sure he saw me checking him out. Typical boy-thing, of course. :) But the effect on Adrian was intriguing. After a few minutes of that, he shifted around slightly and drew his knees up. He wasn't quick enough, though. He was getting an erection. I saw it, and I could feel a response in my own cock. I usually didn't care about that, but for some reason I did, that time. I chickened out and jumped in the water, right then. I have no doubt he saw mine getting hard, too. That day was the extent of anything remotely sexual between us, except some "looking" during rec swim. I never saw Adrian again after Y- camp, but I wonder...

There was hard evidence (if you'll forgive the pun) that the other boys reacted to skinny-dipping sexually, too. Most of us got erections at some point. Some got them a lot. I saw Tony get stiff every day, I think - before he shed his swimsuit, and after. He was remarkably un-self-conscious or embarrassed about it, considering he went to a school run by nuns. That was one of the qualities I liked in Tony; he was a confident kid and didn't worry about stuff like that. I admired him for switching to skinny-dipper status on the third or fourth day - he was obviously getting boners before that (yes, I looked for tents in swimsuits, too); and yet that day in the cabin he nonchalantly stripped and wrapped his towel around him and joined us naked boys, no doubt knowing he'd get a stiffie, and doing it anyway. Tony was a very willing grab-the-weenie partner, too, as you'll see.

Boys get erections for non-sexual reasons, of course. But it's difficult to keep a hardon in cold water, and many of us did, so something must have been stimulating us. And that ambience was definitely sensual. I felt it.

-----

I haven't been near a summer camp for years and years. But my guess is that skinny-dipping is a thing of the past - officially-sanctioned skinny-dipping, for sure. Probably even casual skinny-dipping, except among two or three close friends. Boys nowadays are nervous - actually afraid - of getting naked in front of each other, past around age eight or so. I think it's rare for boys to shower after school phys-ed classes. I see kids showering with their swimsuits on (using soap and everything) at the YMCA. Body-consciousness is an insidious thing. And I'm not saying that because I still want to see boys naked - that's a thing of the past. I just hate to see kids indoctrinated with a sense of shame about their natural state. I think it's a product of the times, and the pendulum will swing back to the relaxed feeedom we enjoyed in the 1970s. But what of the lost generation in between?