Kate: Dealing with the city girl

Several readers asked for some stories about Kate. Where better to start than here

The City Girl

A movement caught my eye and I glanced up along the beach. There she was; the City Girl.

She with the pretty face and the smile that that seemed genetically modified to melt men’s’ hearts. She with the slender, olive skinned, perfect body. She with that long blonde sun touched hair cascading almost down to the small of her back that she flicked about as she frolicked on the beach with Greg. She in that tiny bikini. She with those perky little breasts that I knew all too well she’d being waving under Greg’s eyes and sticking in his mouth. A vision of preppy perfection.  

Greg hadn’t seen her yet. For the first day in over two weeks I’d managed to get some time alone with Greg – if you can call standing lifeguard duty with him on a crowded beach with a bunch of other lifeguards getting him alone – and now, right on the time Greg said she’d be here, here she was.

For once I’d got to play around with Greg like the old days; to touch him, play with him, joke around with him; even flirt with him. Like in the old days, three weeks ago, before the City Girl waltzed into town.

On that first day she’d entered our existence I’d come down the beach thinking I could join up with Greg for the second half of his morning training – or at least catch him for a post training cup of coffee – only to see them walk into the dune area where I knew Greg stashed his towel. They didn’t come out again.

I waited. They still didn’t come out.

I’m going to let you in on a secret that I’m going to take to my grave. If you tell anyone else, I’ll have to kill you – and the person you tell.

I then became a stalker. Not a knife wielding, axe murdering sort of stalker. More a ragingly jealous nosy parker sort of stalker. I took a jog up along the beach close to the dunes, slowing down for a rest close to where I knew they were only to be confronted by the sound of a girl climaxing. Climaxing loudly. I’d like to add like the slut I wanted to believe she was; but that sort of slur strikes too close to home.

I loitered long enough to hear Greg have his turn too before escaping down to the more popular end of the beach to nurse my injured soul; only then to see them come out of the dunes, frolic in the water and proceed to make love on the water’s edge.

And so for most mornings for the next week and a half I’d continued to stalk them; loitered on the beach near their private dune and tortured myself by listening into the unnaturally loud sound of her love making and the grunts of Greg pounding her body until I couldn’t take any more and withdrew from my stalking to sulk in a hidden silence.

On that first Sunday after her arrival Greg had introduced me to her. Sure, she seemed nice enough, but then she’d sat quietly behind us as Greg and I had shared duty with the lifeguards; a silent inhibiting presence suppressing the sort of relationship I normally shared with him. Worse I found she wasn’t just going to be some sort of two week fling like us holiday town kids normally have with these blow-ins. She was here for three months. To add insult to injury, she shared classes with Greg at Uni in Sydney.

So now I figured it was time for her to learn that she didn’t have him alone. That I owned part of him too and city girls can’t just come in and muck up a life time relationship.

But I’m starting this story in the wrong place. I’m starting at the end.

The real story starts long before that; really it has two starts.

The first is undoubtedly my parent’s divorce when I was about 6. I was a daddie’s girl. I distinctly remember the hugs and kisses I’d give my father and the delightful time I spend playing with him after begging him to join in with my childhood games.

My first recollection is of a happy family, even though I now know my mother had started to suffer from severe depression from the time I must have been about four. Then something went wrong; maybe my father being unable to cope with my mother’s depression.

At some stage the fights started; screaming threatening fights that left me hiding under my bed. Before I knew it my parents were divorced, my mother had taken out an AVO against my father – whether it was justified or just a tactical move in the divorce I still don’t know - and I was cut off from my adored father. He left town, remarried, had more kids and I rarely heard from him again.

The second is the day my mother first took me to nippers (in Australia, the playful junior introduction to the volunteer surf lifesaving clubs) and in the same group was a tall skinny friendly kid I recognised from my class – Greg.

In a way Greg became both the brother I never had and a very junior replacement for the father figure I’d otherwise lost. He was willing to replace my father in playing the girlie games I wanted to play with someone and a sympathetic and listening ear I could talk to when feeling the pressure of being the primary school grown up in the house when my mother was out of it with her depression.

My mother tells me I would walk hand in hand with Greg out of our primary school playground as she came to pick me up each day; our hands joined in a sign of close friendship rather than some sort of precociousness.

His family became like a second family to me and I longed for the nights I would spend at their place, sitting down like a proper family to a table served dinner and ganging up with his sister to wrestle with Greg.

Indeed, wrestling with Greg is an enduring memory of my growing years. No doubt at some point I started to enjoy it for more than just the challenge of trying to get the better of him. Indeed, I know I did; but that sort of sneaks up on you. You don’t really know when you cross that threshold; just wake up one day and realise you have. I certainly learnt to become very tactile with Greg and that’s something I’ve never lost; his dual role as both a surrogate brother and as a male friend meaning we never really reached that awkward point where the physical contact no longer seemed right.

Of course somewhere along this line I started to develop physically. Indeed I recall reading that if the biological father is not present in the household a girl reaches puberty much earlier. That certainly was my story.

My mother was – is actually – a strikingly tall slim attractive woman with large breasts for her build; that contradictory combination perhaps helped by her bulimia. I seem to have got her genes. So well before primary school was over I was in a proper bra. Well before I was thirteen, I had the D cups I have today.

But still, I want to avoid the bulimia thankyou very much. I have never doubted that with my breasts and booty, I’m well capable of stacking on the weight if I’m not careful. I looked after myself diet wise, but most importantly I tended to use exercise as a substitute for binge eating when dealing with my mother got me down; something which, as you will see, Greg has also helped me with – even if he didn’t know it.

Greg, like most guys, was slower to develop. I was using our wrestling to satisfy my early yearnings for innocent physical contact with guys while he was still just trying to ensure I didn’t beat him; although I started to notice that I could get a reaction from him even at that early stage.

When we got too old to just roll around on the floor fighting, I’d snatch his towel down the beach and make him take it back from me; running away, hiding it behind my back and generally doing everything I could to force him to be in contact with me. I well remember the day I first noticed he’d cracked an unambiguous full on boner while we wrestled; the first of many. I made a point of not reacting; acting as if it was normal and he had nothing to hide – at least as long as we were somewhere not too public.

Eventually one day I straight out asked if I could touch it; to feel what it felt like. Not the bare flesh of it; my contact was only ever with the erection encased by his swimmers. Sometime if he was aroused while we wrestled, I grabbed it – using it merely as another potential hold on him. And sometimes I actually sat on it while I pinned him down; pushing its firmness against the most sensitive part of my crutch. I’m almost certain the first ejaculation Greg ever had while in the presence of a girl was one day when I was sitting on it. One moment it was hard and his swimmers were dry; the next it had gone soft and his swimmers were wet. It was unannounced. No groans or other noises – neither of us had even been moving up and down. It just happened. He was quite keen to get up and go for a swim straight away after; and since I felt a dampness in my own swimwear, so was I – uncertain whether the dampness was my body fluids or his.

At that age they were all just innocent games.

And I’m fairly sure that was the last ejaculation Greg had in the presence of a girl until City Girl came along.

We continued our involvement in lifesaving long after many early starters had dropped out. We both liked the sense of community giving it involved and that feeling of actually being able to “do something” in an emergency instead of just being a bystander. As we shared duty every weekend of our younger years we had plenty of time to talk. We found we shared an interest in reading, in developing our political ideas and our concept of the world and even in history.

We also liked the competitive side of it, leading eventually to us both getting involved in the iron man (or woman) competitions; a combination of beach running, swimming and paddle boarding.

Whenever possible I liked to share training time with Greg, but we started to run into a couple of issues. The first was he was a morning person; wanting to start training well before I got up. Sometimes I’d come down the beach later and join in the second half of his routine.

The second was more practical. Initially I found running in the standard club swimwear uncomfortable as they didn’t do enough to stop my boobs from bouncing. A sports top was much more practical for running, but I couldn’t find one that was as comfortable for swimming; so tended to do the two things separately instead of as a single session like Greg did.

Eventually I found that if I wore an undersized suit, the back strap would pull the material of the front of the suit more firmly against the underside of the boob and that was much more comfortable and supportive; although since I was too tall for the intended wearer of the suit, it showed an impressive amount of cleavage – not to mention it being pulled up into my bum crack and camel toe. For some reason once I started training with him dressed like that Greg became a lot more accommodating about the starting time of the training. So sometimes I trained with him and sometimes I didn’t.

Of course there were other aspects of my life developing in parallel with all this.

I don’t suppose I should make too sweeping generalisations when my sample size is a bunch of beachside town country kids. But it did  strike me that as girls start to develop, their first instinct is to dress to display so to speak; short skirts, plunging necklines – there’s nothing quite so slutty in appearance as a group of 13 year old girls. After that first flush of “OMG, look at this female body I’ve grown” has passed, they seem to go in two different directions.

Many, maybe most, get all shy – especially about the top half – and wear shape hiding higher necked clothing; although very short skirts never seem to be left behind. Others never change from their first instincts.

Me, I was clearly in the second group. Nature had given me a body guys found attractive and I didn’t mind advertising it. Small bikinis, plunging necklines, fitted shape hugging clothing, spray on hot pants and indecently high hem lines were all in my repertoire – sometimes all at once. I’d act all innocent while testing an outfit out on Greg and watch him grow a boner just looking at me; quite enjoying the power it gave me over guys.

The law says I need to cover my breasts, so I do. But I’ve always found it strange that the only bit you’re meant to keep hidden – the nipples – are just a different coloured bit of flesh that guys have too and have openly on display. Frankly I didn’t find what are usually referred to as ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ the slightest bit embarrassing. I just tucked them back in; which was lucky because when you swim in the surf with big boobs and a small bikini top they’re fairly common. I suspect I became somewhat famous for them.

Greg was a special beneficiary of my lack of inhibition. As I experimented with the best clothing for our training, I went through phases where I’d change the top between the sessions. That dune where he’s banging away at the city girl – together with another one closer to the main beach – have for year been our hiding spots for our clothes and valuables while we went for extended exercise sessions. It was also where I just got into the habit of continuing to talk to Greg while I slipped one top off and put on another; acting as if I was doing the most natural thing in the world.

Eventually I started changing into and out of my one piece swimwear the same way; giving him a full frontal in the process. I always wished he’d satisfy my budding sexual curiosity by changing in front of me too; but Greg was far too shy and conservative for that. All I got was to see him grow a boner in his pants.

But I probably got away with all of the above because I was – as both an only and oldest child, and a virtual parent to my mother – a rule follower and initially socially disengaged from the wilder parts of my age group. Until I was close to 16 I’d never really gone to a party in any sense of one that didn’t involve a parentally approved and supervised birthday party. Often they’d be all girl sleepover parties, with Greg invited along as the token guy. And if you’re thinking of those stories of guys in that situation acquiring erections displaying multi-coloured rings of lipstick along their length, forget it. We were far too innocent for Greg to be that lucky.

Even when I stripped in front of Greg I never intended it to be a sexual invitation for him. It was actually just an affirmation of my trust in and closeness with him; I being far too naive to even understand the concept of prick teasing.

And that rule following instinct meant I got to the legal age of 16 with my panties on and my virginity intact; if only just. Sure, by then I was an expert French kisser and well knew the delight of having my nipples felt up. Plus I’d had a hand or two, or may be three, up my skirt; although all that taught me was how hopeless most guys were at navigating around there – even if they were a year or two older than me.

And when I did finally lose my virginity I also discovered that just lying back and spreading your legs wasn’t the pathway to orgasmic bliss – far from it; plus how strong and unyielding you had to be to ensure guys used condoms – every time..

So was Greg the beneficiary of my early sexual experimentation. Well, frankly, no.

I’ve read somewhere that all those hippies who populated communes in the early 70’s thought the children they raised in such a close environment would grow up and marry each other. They didn’t. When kids grow up together there seems to be some sort of instinct born of our earliest tribal existence that says mating has to happen outside the tribe; probably some anti-inbreeding instinct.

I’d been getting hit on for dates from an early age. With my looks I accepted that was inevitable. I worked hard to learn to deal with the situation nicely; accepting there was a long road ahead of having to do so. I always hated those girls who effectively told a rejected suitor to piss off; at least before he’d proved to be a serial pest.

But Greg had never asked for one and that didn’t seem to either of us to be strange. When I started accepting those invitations it was inevitable they would be what would lead to my sexual education. Greg was still my best friend and I still handled him like I always had – in ways any other guy would have said was prick teasing, but our dating went in different directions.

And that turned out to be lucky, because when I started dating I discovered a fatal flaw in my make-up. I was incapable of committing – incapable of romantic love. May be the early guys didn’t exactly set a high standard for a potential romantic interest, but I knew it was deeper than that. I was running away from commitment. My family background had poisoned that part of my physic.

In essence I was just using them for sex and entertainment (and they were doing a pretty poor job of that anyhow).

When Greg asked me to our year 10 ball I accepted, but as the day drew near I realised I’d made a massive mistake. We weren’t going as friends, it was a real date. If there was any guy I might actually initially fall for it was probably Greg, but I knew I couldn’t sustain a relationship. I’d blow it and with it my friendship with Greg.

In a panic, I spent the whole night glued to the table chatting to some boor opposite me; pissing off both Greg and they guy’s date in the process.

Afterwards I worked hard to win back Greg’s friendship, and so life continued.

In year 11 I disgraced myself, becoming the senior footy team’s bike. From that I learnt just how few guys really know how to deal with a girl and I also learnt that I needed to treat myself and my reputation with more respect. I also had a first warning of a whole new world I’d been protected from; guys who want to control you and use violence to achieve it. Fortunately I was sufficiently emotionally disengaged and saw the signs early enough that I squirmed out of a dangerous situation without too much fallout; quietly using a renewed closeness to Greg to find just a little more protection.

By year 12 I’d discovered a more convenient “friends with benefits” approach which at least narrowed the circle of sexual partners without forcing me to a deeper commitment. But it still seemed too dangerous to include Greg in that circle.

All this time Greg had no shortage of dating partners himself. But I knew from feedback I was getting that Greg’s sexual life was following a different path. He was shy with girls when he got them alone. He was so used to being handled by me that he didn’t even recognise the sexual teasing they employed for being the come-on it was. Often the girls would just give up and be left wondering what was wrong with them that Greg hadn’t responded by trying to bed them.

I even considered offering him a ‘just as friends’ instructional experience; but it seemed like too awkward an offer to make – “hey Greg, I hear you’re hopeless with girls – want to screw me to get some lessons?” I think not.

At the end of year 12, during the long Summer break before heading off on my overseas trip, I also discovered one advantage of being in a seaside holiday town – especially one with a world famous surfing point break. You had a whole stream of well-built guys coming in for a few weeks of holiday. You could pick them up, have a great uninhibited time, screw them unmercifully and just kiss them goodbye at the end of the three weeks. There was no risk of an entanglement, so my whole time wasn’t inhibited by trying to control the signals I was giving out.

Since by then I was over 18 and can actually publish the stories of those affairs on this site I might even write about them one day.

The gap year flew by and before I knew it Greg and I were planning our University enrolments. I really wanted to go to the same one as him, even though he was planning to do accounting and I wanted to do medicine; although knowing I had only a borderline HSC result for that might have to settle for law. I thought I’d be a shoe in for the UNSW law degree, but instead ended up with my second choice at ANU in Canberra; and so come the start of term Greg and I went our separate ways.

I’m not going to hide the fact I had a little bit of a weep as I settled into my room in Canberra. In a way it was nice to escape the chaos of my mother’s problems, but I realised I had also taken the first step which would possibly see the one stabilising constant of my life start to drift away from me – Greg.

Uni was great; good friends, shared adventures, interesting study and the quality of the ‘friends with benefits’ experiences were at last getting better. But always I pined for my time with Greg and even though we kept in contact, anxiously looked forward to the summer break when we’d both be back in our home town again.

And then, no sooner do we get back here than City Girl comes along and shows every sign of spoiling everything.

I know I have to be fair here. I can’t and don’t expect Greg to maintain some sort of virginal existence while I go around banging every guy in the town. I’ve often set him up with girls I know from the town who’ve expressed an interest in him – and there’s no shortage of those. I fully expected – even wanted - at least some of those to develop into sexual relationships, even if in the end they didn’t. But they know me, know my relationship with him and so for me things can continue as they always have.

City Girl is different. I can see Greg falling for her and to her I’m just a townie she will probably be jealous of.

And that’s where the other new dynamic comes in; the real nub of my problem. Love was never going to let me be driven away from Greg. If any guy I picked up was jealous of Greg and even hinted at some sort of ‘him or me’ choice, the answer was easy – I’ll keep Greg. Greg doesn’t have my love block. I suspect he’s fussy about giving his heart away in the first place, but when he does he’s going to fall heavily; and I suspect City Girl’s going to be the one it happens with. If City Girl tells him to back off with me that might just be what he decides he has to do. I don’t doubt we’ll still be friends, but I won’t be allowed to handle him, flirt with him and just spend time with him like I have for what seems like my whole life.

Which brings us back to where the story started; to where City Girl learns I own a piece of him to.

I’ve seen her approach from the distance. In these days of OHS rules lifeguards wear long sleeved shirts and knee length shorts to keep the sun off them. Our captain has always been a bit slack. In the heat of summer, as long as were standing well under the vinyl shelter erected for us, we can strip down to swimmers. Greg and I have always taken advantage of that permission. Today I’ve pulled the front of my swimwear down as far as I dare; just tempting my boobs to pop out.

All morning Greg and I have been chatting away while we stand on duty watching the swimmers, me bumping his hip or pushing him slightly if I disagree with him, and just generally being touchy feely with him – just like we always have. As City Girl approaches I simply ramp it up a bit; more contact, more obvious contact and a more animated conversation. Greg is completely and absolutely oblivious to what I’m doing. When he spots City Girl he bounds over to her and finds he’s got a problem on his hands; she’s not yelling at him or anything – just in a complete sulk and Greg has no idea why. And it seems she’s not telling him.

It’s about then I realise what an idiot I am. Here I was thinking I was a savvy smart operator in the dating game; worldwise even. Instead I proved I was a fool.

What I see on City Girls face is hurt and fear; but fear above everything else. She has no idea of our history, no background on our relationship. All she knows is that this tart of a woman is flirting with her man and he’s not pushing her away. She thinks she’s about to lose him. I’m suddenly overwhelmed by a fear that I’ve just done the very thing that will lose Greg completely and poor Greg just knows both the women in his life have dropped into a sullen funk and doesn’t have a clue why.

So there we are three hurt individuals nursing their wounds. Greg’s trying to console Karen – because that’s who the City Girl is - without knowing what he’s consoling her for and all the time being limited by his duty obligations as to the time he can sneak away to talk to her.

Naturally we do what any smart sensible adults do in that situation. We internalise it and hope it goes away. I turn around and try to smile at Karen, but realise that could mean anything; it could be a smile of victory, of spite or any one of numerous other less than friendly intentions. She ignores me.

In the end Karen is the one who breaks the ice and starts the road to healing. Buying an ice cream for Greg, she buy me one too. I kiss her on the cheek as I thank her. The rest is history; one told well enough in Karen’s version of that day that there’s no point me repeating it here. In time Greg explains to her our history, we start sharing coffees and days on the beach while Greg’s at work and in the end she becomes nearly as good a friend as Greg.  By the end of the summer we’re both in tears as we say our goodbyes as we head back to Uni. All in all as happy an ending as you could hope for; if only I could overcome my commitment problems.