Fuck me! I’ve never wanted to clip pumpkin stems so much in my life.
Later, after I’d worked the kinks out of my back enough to stand upright again, the boss confided in me that we’d done well. “I’ve never had a crew stick at it that long before!” he said.
Which made sense, because he hadn’t bothered to tell us there was an option.
And Then…
Sex.
Men, in my experience, are extremely weak in this area. I’ve seen good men seduced by evil women twice their age, with nothing more than a lingering gaze and a suggestively crooked little finger. Hell, I’ve been that man. It’s not something I’m proud of. Okay, I’m a little bit proud of it. But I’m not proud of being proud of it. Well, not much.
All of which goes to illustrate – using myself as a prime example – just how pathetic guys can be around girls, when it comes to matters of sex. Or potential sex. Or the slightest remote possibility that some time in the distant future there’s a chance that sex will be considered. Oh, yes! Those are the kinds of possibilities we live for.
If you’re reading this, and you’re a woman, then I guess you know this already.
If you’re reading this and you’re a man, stop denying it! It won’t do you any good. They know.
So anyway, there I was; lying not-quite-in-bed with the woman of my dreams. Literally the woman of my dreams, not that she knew as much – something for which I am truly grateful. If she’d been able to see into my head… ye gods, that would have been awkward.
But I was getting worried.
I now officially had a problem.
And it was only going to get bigger.
And yes, I’m talking about my penis again.
So far, I’d managed to keep a lid on my penis. Sorry! My imagination.
Well, I’d tried to. But I could feel my willpower eroding.
At first, I’d thought working together would help me get over it. Our job was so hideous, so incredibly unglamorous, that I couldn’t possibly spend my days thinking about sex. Surely not while I was knee-deep in mud, plastered with sweat, burning in the sun and aching in parts of me I didn’t know could ache?
That’s when I learned that, willpower aside, my mind is very, very strong.
It’s just not on my side.
Turns out, I can think about sex all day long.
Heat, filth and pain be damned.
And with both my body and my mind arrayed against me, I was in serious danger of losing this battle.
It didn’t help that Roo looked utterly adorable in the fields, her slender frame draped in a men’s shirt at least five sizes too big for her. Somehow she managed to stay cleaner than all the rest of us – and even when she didn’t, she made dirt look sexy.
Even the sweat glistening on her brow was somehow seductive…
Ohhh… Crap.
This was getting out of hand.
And never more so than when, early one morning, I woke to find I was curled around Roo. Both of us were laying on our sides in the foetal position. In fairness, it had been a very cold night. But laying like this, all snuggled up together, felt so right. I could have lain there quite happily all day, despite being poked and jabbed by every bump and rock in the ground. As it was, several sore spots in my hips were screaming at me to turn over. It would only be a temporary respite from the pointy lumps beneath me, and soon enough my other side would be feeling the pressure – but I couldn’t make myself do it. Because no-one could expect me to control what I did in my sleep. I’d woken up this way by accident, and as far as I was concerned it counted as a completely legitimate sleeping position – at least until I turned over. There was no chance I’d get away with doing this again; accidental snugglage is inevitable when three full-size people are sleeping in a tent barely big enough for two small children. But deliberate snugglage? That way lay trouble. And possibly some kind of sexual harassment charge.
So I ignored the messages from my whinging body, and curled myself a tiny bit tighter around Roo. After all, I figured, that’s what I’d be doing naturally in my sleep! If I was sleeping. Which I wasn’t.
But you know what? As I drew my legs up fractionally, and braced myself for the disappointment of Roo turning away from me and breaking our bond – I felt something else instead.
At the place where our sleeping-bag-clad bodies were touching – where I could feel the warmth of her even through two layers of shitty microfiber – my chest was pressed up against her, leaning on her slightly with the merest fraction of my bodyweight.
And, almost imperceptibly, Roo was pushing back.
It had to be my imagination. She was asleep anyway, so surely this was the unconscious act of a body seeking greater warmth? There was only one way to test this theory. I leaned in a little heavier, and waited again to be thrust away as she rolled over onto her front.
But no. This time… she was definitely pushing back!
What to do? My subtle moves were all used up. I was in quite a bit of pain, and couldn’t snuggle any closer without dramatically altering my position. Since we were both at least pretending to still be asleep, any such disturbance would wreck everything, and I’d be back to square one. Which, to be honest, was probably for the best.
Nothing good can come of this, I told myself. No matter how much I wanted it…
And then it came to me. A last ditch attempt, disguised as the innocent act of one fast asleep, to push this envelope far enough to be sure.
Keeping my eyes closed, I tried to relax my breathing to a regular, slow rhythm.
I sighed for emphasis.
And then I freed my arm from the sleeping bag and casually draped it across her.
Instantly her whole body tensed, for a fraction of a second. It was like an electric current ran through her. Here we go, I thought. Explanation time…
And then Roo reached out to grab my arm, and pulled it tighter across her chest.
Across her… well, anyway. The point is, she did it.
On purpose.
And that was the most fascinating, most delicious, most exciting thing that had happened to me since arriving in Australia.
And by far the most dangerous.
Gill was first up that morning.
Gill was first up every morning – something I’d never really thought about one way or another. But suddenly it created a strange situation, one that I had no idea how to deal with.
As soon as Gill stirred, I pulled my arm back into my sleeping bag. I couldn’t quite bring myself to roll away from Roo, but I doubted Gill would notice anything untoward. Hell, space was so tight in that tent, the difference between sleeping next to someone and sleeping on top of them was only a matter of centimetres. So I held my position and waited, while Gill zipped herself out of her sleeping bag, cursed the tent’s door zipper for being on the opposite side of the tent, found it, and freed herself from our colourful silken prison. Shivering and mumbling to herself, Gill closed the door and stomped off towards the toilet block.
Leaving Roo and me…
Alone.
Together.
And awake.
Awkward…
Oh well. He who dares, wins, I told myself silently.
Or else he ends up with a knee in his testicles.
Time to find out.
So I pulled out that arm again, that arm on which all these hopes and dreams rested – that arm of infinite possibility – and I draped it back over Roo.
“Mmm, that’s nice,” she murmured, pulling me close again.
And that was when I knew.
Not that I’d spend the rest of my life with her, because that’s an almost impossible thing to know from two sleeping bags away – but I knew this: our cosy little world was going to change dramatically.
It might be messy and uncomfortable. It was likely to upset some people. It was likely to upset us, both together and separately, to cause division and animosity, to end badly, and to crash and burn right through the middle of our frien
dly family unit.
But for my part, I was over the moon.
And I promise, that’s the last time I’ll mention my part.
At least in this chapter.
Where Do We Go From Here?
The simplest thing, at least for now, was to pretend that nothing special had happened.
After all, we had to get ready for work.
It was a complex process, involving moving Rusty’s seats up and down to access different areas of storage, rummaging in bags, crates and a clean laundry pile that we never seemed to get around to putting away. Only one person could get in there at a time, which is why we staggered our morning trips to the bathroom. That morning there was another reason for me to visit the bathroom. Two actually, if you want to be crude, but more than anything, I felt a powerful urge to hide. And also, to think. I dunno, does that make three things?
Work that morning was depressingly normal – and torturous – but I couldn’t help it. I regularly found myself stood still, remembering, with a goofy smile on my face. Then I’d catch Roo looking at me, and we’d both look around guiltily to see if anyone else had noticed. No-one had.
And even if they had, no-one would have cared. Hell, we could have been naked mud-wrestling, and no-one would have given a shit. Well, maybe they would, but not about our relationship status; you just rarely get to see naked mud-wrestling live at work.
To us, it seemed like something forbidden and illicit had taken place – and that only we two, out of all the world, could possibly know about it.
But to everyone else… well, to be honest, they had the right of it. Nothing actually had happened.
Sweet, sweet nothing!
I was quite excited about it.
And because we were at work, and the boss could zoom up at any time to inspect our progress, we couldn’t say anything about it to each other. It remained trapped in a bubble of fantasy, or nostalgia.
Thank God!
I had no idea what I was going to say to her if we ever found ourselves alone again.
And then, at lunch, Roo and I were chosen to join a group digging irrigation ditches. It’s hard to believe I know, but this job sounded infinitely preferable to picking pumpkins.
And it was.
Water flowed around each field though a main channel, which we crossed and re-crossed on narrow wooden planks. All we needed to do was divert it to run into each successive furrow, by taking chunks out of the bank here and there with our bare hands (I don’t think they trusted us with shovels).
Of course, when hand-digging ditches there was the omnipresent danger of falling into ditches – and due to the clumsiness which is my genetic legacy, I did so quite frequently.
Roo – being far more poised and in control of her limbs – required pushing.
By the end of the day we were both caked in mud from head to toe – so much so that the boss gave us a lift home in the back of his filthy ute, rather than letting us wreck the inside of the staff minibus.
We got home before Gill, but couldn’t do anything because Rusty was still locked, and she had the keys – so we lay around on the grass outside the tent, laughing at the extended mud-fight we’d not only managed to start, but had been paid for having.
Gill, when she got back, was more than a bit pissed off that she hadn’t been involved. We hadn’t really broached the topic of what to tell Gill, possibly because we hadn’t really broached the topic of what to tell each other. Neither of us knew what was going on – if anything even was going on – but I was pleased to find I didn’t feel awkward around Roo, despite the elephant in the room.
Our ritual, regular as clockwork, was to shower immediately after getting back from work – because stopping to catch our breath often resulted in us being unable to stand up again.
As Gill marched on ahead, desperate for the loo, I hung back with Roo. An idea had just dropped into my head. Now, how to phrase it…?
“Do you want to save water?” I asked her. “You know – shower with a friend?” I said it half-jokingly, so that I’d have a get-out clause in case she was offended.
But she wasn’t.
“Yes please,” she said, “I’m all for saving the environment.”
So, after washing myself thoroughly in the men’s shower block (because no-one wants you to shower with them if you actually need a shower – sweat-stink, dried-on mud and navel fuzz are notoriously unromantic) – I sneaked around to the women’s bathrooms, ventured inside, and tapped gently on the door to the only shower still in use.
There were definite advantages to being the only people at the campsite, and this was one of them; I was fairly certain it was Roo in there, though I poised myself to flee just in case.
Roo was in there. And she opened the door, suppressing a nervous giggle, and then I was in there too.
It was the first time I’d seen her naked, and I drank in the sight in case it was also the last. I had no idea what the future would hold for us. How Gill would cope if she ever found out, and if we’d decide to nip this in the bud before we risked going down that route.
But for now, it was breath-taking.
Roo was as pale and slender as an elf-maiden, only she was real – and she was naked – and she was within reach. Elf-maidens are almost never like that.
Roo was also very shy, so I pressed myself against her, and we held each other as the warm shower water cascaded over both of us.
It was a long time before we let go.
Back at the tent, there was no sign of Gill. We’d worried, as we dressed, dreaming up elaborate stories about looking for a lost necklace, an accidental clothing mix-up, or having to kill a horde of giant spiders (guess which one was mine?). We never actually settled on a convincing version of the truth to tell her, so it was perhaps for the best that we discovered her on a bench in the kitchen, fast asleep.
I gave her a gentle shove, and then a slightly less gentle one when she didn’t stir straight away.
“Eh? Oh!” she sat upright and scrabbled around on the table for her glasses. “Sorry, I must have dozed off. What are you up to?”
“You know, the usual. Lost necklace. Roo had my jumper. Giant spiders. How are you?”
“Um, I’m okay. Um… what?”
“You want a cup of tea?” I asked her. It was a sure-fire way to distract a confused member of the Slater family.
“Oh. Yeah, thanks!” she said.
And that was that.
At least for now…
And still, neither Roo nor I were sure how to proceed.
But I knew one thing – this wasn’t just going to go away.
Not this time.
Luckily for us, Gill sleeps like the dead. Well, she doesn’t go stiff and decompose, at least not that I’ve noticed, but once asleep she was almost impossible to wake.
She also tended to pass out around 10pm, giving us the opportunity, should we so desire, to misbehave quite extensively.
The only problem was, we lived in a tent.
And Gill was already in it.
If only we had another place, some kind of alternative sleeping space – not too far away ideally, but padded and discreet…
Poor old Rusty. He’d seen a few things in his time, but I’m not sure he was ready for this. Neither were we, to be honest – even the discomfort of sleeping in Rusty hadn’t prepared us for just how awkward sex in him could be. Rusty seemed to have protrusions everywhere, all made of the hardest, most unyielding plastic, and I swear they multiplied in the dark.
Every move was accompanied by yells of pain, swiftly stifled, or the muffled sound of knees and elbows smacking into inconveniently placed bits of console.
If I had a penny for every time I sat back to find the handbrake probing its way into places best not probed… well, let’s just say I gave it a damn good rub with a pair of socks before I felt right about letting Gill handle it again.
It’s a testament to the strength of our desire that we managed to overcome these obstacles – night a
fter night after night.
It was a pretty good week, all things considered.
Back To Nature
As the days wore on it became more and more difficult, finding ways to sneak away from Gill.
Not because she was suspicious or anything; Gill, bless her heart, was as innocent as a person could be. Or, so I thought.
But when you’re living as close as we were – literally in each other’s pockets – discovering a bit of privacy becomes as challenging as it is rewarding.
And oh boy, was it ever rewarding!
So one night, weighing up our options while Gill was in the kitchen making her tenth cup of tea, we decided to take more advantage our gorgeous surroundings. We were, after all, living in a place of outstanding natural beauty, and it also happened to have a very forgiving night-time climate.
In other words, we were going to do it outside.
It came about because Roo was complaining that she was getting a permanent indentation in her lower back in the shape of a seatbelt holder.
I too had suffered at the plastic latches of these little buggers. There were six of the damn things in the back seat area, and somehow, whenever I tried to do anything, one of them got in the way – either knelt on, or leant on, or more often than not working its way uncomfortably between my bum cheeks.
It was getting to the point where if I’d inserted a seatbelt into my asshole, it would click in.
There had to be a better way than this.
And I had just come up with it.
“Outside?” Roo sounded nervous.
“Yeah! We’re pretty much the only people here. There’ll be no-one around that late. We could lay by the pool. We could use the picnic blanket!”
Kamikaze Kangaroos! Page 10