This discovery incredibly surprised me. “How can it be? After all, he is older than me, there are so many girls around,” one thought crossed, and another crossed: “Why did I not pay attention to this before?” Noticing this, I, of course, said nothing to Kosta, but I felt a little awkward in his company and began to get accustomed to the reaction of others. The most interesting thing is that no one had dealt with this before: the adults had fun, and groups of other children were busy with their games. Some time passed after my discovery, as I, fascinated by games, forgot that I was playing with a naked peer. At dinner, I asked my mother if it was not indecent that Kostya did not wear swimming trunks. In response, my mother suggested that I also undress and sunbathe with him naked. I was then seized with a contradictory feeling of incomprehensible shame, on the one hand, and a desire to join Kostya, on the other. When we had lunch and went to the beach, mom, seeing my doubts, again offered to remove swimming trunks. It was embarrassing and unusual to do something that did not do before. But in the end, after all, I myself played for half a day just with Kostya, and not with the naked boy. That is, it was interesting for me to play with him and, in fact, I didn’t care if he was naked or not. I finally made up my mind and with a quick movement pulled off the trunks, throwing them on the beach litter. At first it was a bit awkward, but the feeling quickly passed away, because Kostya came up and we returned to our studies.
I also remembered this trip to the lake by the fact that I won a prize in a walking competition on stilts. After lunch, the adults, who were already quite tipsy, were drawn to extravagant entertainment. They were probably conceived by the masters-entertainers before leaving for vacation, because all the requisites, including stilts, were prepared in advance. I learned to keep balance and move at high speed on stilts in the courtyard of our friendly apartment building long before this trip. By afternoon tea I had become accustomed enough in my new "dress", so even to participate in competitions I didn’t even think to find my heat again. I just got in the queue of those who want to take part in competitions and after several “races” I reached the final, where I beat a solid uncle.
The following trips to Lake Kapchagai this year, and a few more years after it, I sunbathed exclusively without swimming trunks. For the first time I became ashamed of my nakedness when I was fourteen years old. And embarrassment, for some reason concerned only my relatives. This is how it happened.
My grandmother and I went to the village to visit her sister. Every summer my cousin Oleg rested with her, God rest his soul - he died in the Chechen war in 2000. He was a cool guy from my point of view, however, my grandmother considered him spoiled, so she tried to control all our steps. But this is, by the way, irrelevant to the case, although such control always provokes unlawful things. So, we are with Olezhka, who was older than me for a couple of months, great fun all summer in the village. They caught pigeons on the collective farm, gathered mushrooms in the forest, and helped senior household workers — without which village life is unimaginable. Local people knew Oleg well, so they accepted me to the general company easily. This company consisted of several boys and two girls. The girls were in their own board and, like, according to Oleg, the boys allowed a lot. I do not know if this is true or not, I was not a witness and participant of this. Maybe it was all my brother's teenage fantasies. The only thing I can say for sure is that on the river the girls bathed and sunbathed with us completely naked. This, of course, did not bother me at all, as did everyone else in our company. Everything happened by itself, naturally. When we went to the river for the first time, I simply followed the example of others and took off my white pants, which were unusual for those days.
So we gathered on the river all the first week of my stay in the village almost every day. At the end of the week, Kolya's grandfather, grandmother’s husband, heated a bath. My grandmother and I went to bathe first, while the bath was not very hot. Since the bathroom in our house was combined with the toilet, I never closed during the shower, and often even asked me to rub my back with a washcloth. I was not even ashamed to think of my parents, including women. When we came out of the bath, Oleg's mother asked her grandmother if I was not ashamed of her presence, because Oleg had not allowed her to help him bathe for a long time. I do not remember what my grandmother answered then, but either the authority of the elder brother had an effect on me and a desire to imitate him in adulthood, or something else in the question of my aunt, but since then I began to reject not only help bathing, but also from any presence of close women. That summer passed, and we returned to our hometown Alma-Ata.
All year I took a bath by myself. That question of my aunt did something about me. I even became ashamed to wear sports pants during physical education classes and my favorite athletics classes. In physical education, I had to wear underpants, as this was a requirement of uniform, but I used to wear tights during athletics trainings. Briefs and shorts were now an unusual form of clothing. The following year, with the onset of hot summer days, when I was going to go into the yard, I was offered to change my pants, in which I usually went for a walk, to shorts. Despite the inner desire to follow the advice, I showed an external protest and categorically refused to do so. My mother and grandmother began to persuade me, explaining how cool and easy it is to walk in the heat, not in long pants, but in short shorts. At this time, a neighbor Aunt Ira came to us and joined the persuasion. After vain exhortations, women, at first for fun, and then seriously decided to dress me up by force.
They twisted me and after a short struggle (to be honest, I didn’t particularly resist), which caused an involuntary erection, I was still dressed. Aunt Ira then, seeing my resilient member, who burst out when the pants were carried away by her pants, noted that I was already a big boy. This moment then postponed the imprint of either the complex, or, conversely, freedom from the complexes. I spent the whole summer wearing short shorts, spitting that my peers had already chosen to wear trousers. It was believed that shorts are children's clothing, and teenagers, like adults, should certainly wear pants. My friend Sashka made me company. I advised him not to wear underwear shorts, as it was cool and comfortable. In moments when we were sitting in the evenings by our company on a bench in the courtyard, I, as expected, caught the eyes of my friends, aimed at the space opened with their legs wide apart. With these girls I grew up in the same yard and knew them from early childhood. We showed them to each other at kindergarten age the secrets hidden in their underpants. It would seem that they still could not see anything new, but I have since grown up since then, and the difference probably still was. Therefore, I did not interfere with curiosity and pretended not to notice. I liked to behave freely, although this demonstration was not accompanied by any sexual arousal. In the afternoon, Sasha and I often went on bicycles to the Bolshaya Alma-Atinka river and swam there naked all day in the company of other boys. By the way, the river flowed through the center of the city and from the bridge, which was walked by pedestrians and passed through public transport, everything was clearly visible. This, however, did not confuse us or pedestrians. We just rested on the summer holidays as we wanted.
One day that summer, my parents left somewhere and left me at home alone. Usually they returned in the evening, but this time they stayed overnight, and I knew it. I spent the whole day at home enjoying the opportunity to be without clothes. When night fell, I was still awake. I didn’t want to sleep at all, so a thought came to me that terrified by its oddity. I decided to go to the river, under the very bridge where Sasha and I used to go swimming. I put on my jeans and a shirt over my naked body and quietly, listening to the sounds of the night city, slipped outside. In Alma-Ata, even at night it is warm, the city does not have time to cool off from the summer heat. I walked along the streets of the night barefoot, enjoying the overwhelming emotions of the upcoming swimming in the night river. Rare passersby did not seem to pay much attention to me. Even the police squad that met me on the way did not ask what the lonely teenager was doing at such a late time on the streets of the city. Having traveled a few kilometers, I finally found myself in the center of the city by the very river. I descended under the bridge, carefully looking into the darkness and feeling a vague fear of being noticed. I threw off the clothes as soon as I found myself under the bridge, and neatly folded them on a large stone.
The strangeness of my actions frightened me and gave me pleasure at the same time. I walked along the embankment and plunged into the cool water, trying not to make excessive noise. Water pleasantly tingled the body. Lanterns were reflected in the night river, and rare cars were rushing along the bridge. Suddenly I heard some approaching voices. Soon I was able to discern the figures of two men who descended under the bridge. They were tipsy. When they opened their pants and began to cast, I calmed down a bit. Having finished their work, they disappeared as quickly as they appeared. All this time I sat in the water, hiding. When I made sure that they were gone and were not going to return, I came out of the water and walked along the embankment, moving further and further away from my clothes. The warm air pleasantly caressed my body, I was incredibly easy and free. The feeling of fear was replaced by an unusual excitement, which I decided to take off right in the middle of the embankment. Satisfied, I returned and, taking my things under my arm, decided to extend the new sensations, returning home in a roundabout way. Crickets - the only thing that disturbed the night calm, even the cars no longer rushed through the streets. The city was asleep. I went unnoticed all the way to the house. It was about three o'clock in the morning, so I, without fear of being caught, entered my own staircase and, rising to the third floor, quietly opened the door and slipped inside. For the rest of the night, I slept as hard as I had ever been.