I'd been looking forward to it. Oh yes.

From when I first heard that we'd not have to stay at school during the exams the summer seemed to stretch in front of me like a golden mirage full of possibilities and promise.

And so it was the first week after the exams. Blissful idleness; lazing in the sun, drinking surreptitious glasses of Dad's appalling home brew whose quality, in my teenage ignorance I didn't recognise. Lapsing into justified indolence as with no exams my parents' nag-chest was empty of ammunition.

After a bit this began to pall, and so when Mum suggested I go swimming I took myself off down the lido, towel in hand.

I'd been expecting it of course, and secretly, between myself and my hidden, private ego, I enjoyed the prospect but one can fool even oneself, and so I feigned disinterest at the lithe lovelies disporting themselves in swimsuits about which my public self agreed with their mothers concerning appropriateness. Mind you, my other self, which lurked furtively in the back of my mind was far from disapproving.

Which was better I mused? The bikinis which showed all that expanse of soft, naked skin and ties which looked as if with a sudden tug they'd dissolve into the tiny scrap of cloth they surely were, or the one-pieces accentuating smooth lines curving in perfect sweeps from breast to waist to hip and down to thigh, covering more skin yet seeming to offer more too. And as for the bottoms; full, round and promising; well, one particular piece of me was certainly interested, very interested.

Damn hormones. There's no defence against them. They screw you up.

In the papers they always say that women dress for themselves, not to please men. I don't believe it, except insofar as it doesn't exactly please us. They're unattainable see. Look but don't touch. Lust but have it not slaked. Ye gods! don't they know what they're doing? Every stitch carefully tuned to snare the eye and stiffen if not the sinews then something else.

Damn hormones.

And so I sat on the bleachers pretending to watch the swimmers but seeing only the girls go by, the undulation of their hips, the hypnotic filling and emptying of the dimples in their bottoms as they walked. Legs freed from trousers stretching impossibly long from shapely ankle all the way to the secret valley I'd only pored over in biology text books.

And then they whine that we undress them with our eyes. Well, with clothes as skimpy as that you wouldn't need fingers would you?

Oh yes, I undressed them; undressed their pretensions, their pride now, in my mind. Each of the girls in a queue, waiting their turn to go over my knee, hearing their sisters squeal as I warmed the soft globes presented pert and ready to my gaze, to my hands. Watching the scarlet wave wash out from under their inappropriate swimsuits.

Appropriate for something of course