Scout Grope

It was 1959 and a hot, humid summer night in South Florida. My Boy Scout troop was on a campout on an island in the middle of the bay. I was the senior Scout in charge and only two adult men were along with us, the Scoutmaster and one of the troop dads.

My tentmate was Allen, son of the Scoutmaster. I was 14 and he was 13. Because of my seniority, I got to choose the best of the tents, a roomy walled tent that would normally sleep four.

We had all retired to our tents but would have some free time before “lights out,” so Leo (also 14) and his tentmate,  Ike (13 like Allen), came into our tent to play some cards. Leo had one of those decks of cards with topless women (it was 1959, remember), so the four of us sat cross-legged in a square to play poker. It was a hot and humid Florida, night as I said, and we were all just in our white cotton Jockey underwear, our “tighty-whities,” the scene illuminated by all four flashlights. We played briefly, but we soon gave up the pretense of a game and just passed around the cards, commenting on the breasts of the women and imagining that we were seeing tufts of pubic hair, which we were not. But never underestimate the imagination of four horny teenage boys.

I assumed that we were all virgins. I had kissed girls, but I had never even touched their breasts. I had discovered masturbation by accident in the bathtub at a young age, so by age 14 I had been masturbating several years. I loved walking around the house nude while my parents were at work (only child), and those nude walkabouts always ended with my rubbing my penis on my mattress and imagining my pillow was a girl. I made that pillow scream in pleasure, though maybe it was I doing the screaming. That was my teenage sex life.

So imagine my surprise when Leo began telling a story about the time he “fucked a girl” on the golf course. Brilliant! The golf course was a grand lawn for sex. (I played golf on that course myself and never again thought of it the same way after hearing Leo’s story.)  Leo explained how he inserted his penis in her vagina and they “bounced around” a while until he came. Bouncing around? Not what I imagined, but what did I, a virgin, know about actual intercourse?

We were all sitting cross-legged, as I said, bit between the naked ladies on the cards and Leo’s bouncing story I think we all had erections in our shorts.

It came time for “lights out” and Leo gathered his cards and he and Ike left our tent to their own.  Allen and I lay down on top of our sleeping bags (too warm to get in them) and turned out our flashlights. Soon one of us (I don’t remember who) said that he still had a boner from the pictures and the other one agreed that he did too. I slid over to be beside Allen and reached to touch his boner through the soft cotton fabric. He felt my boner. We squeezed and rubbed a bit and then the underwear came off. Now I was touching a bare penis and he was touching mine. Our lights were off but enough moonlight filtered through the walls of the tent that we could make out our naked bodies. I was amazed how long and thin was his penis. He was amazed how shorter and fatter was mine.

The mutual masturbation was getting me very excited, and I rolled over on top of Allen, face-to face, while we began grinding our genitals between us. I had my face nustled in his shoulder and neck. Without knowing what I was doing, I stuck my hard penis under his balls and between his tightly closed thighs. I began humping him that way, my face still buried in his neck. “I wish you were a girl,” I murmured. “So do I,” he answered. To this day I’m not sure he meant we wished he was a girl at that moment or wished I was a girl. In any case, I humped him a while and then rolled off of him. I was afraid to cum, afraid of the mess. We lay there in silence, catching our breath, and then put our underwear back on. We said “good night” and went to sleep. We never talked about that night. It was 58 years ago and still vivid in my memory.

This was my true story. My 6-part story, “A Test of Trust,” is a fictional version of what I wish had happened on the campout the next night.