Pete's Vagina -39.2- Movie (Patreon)

The water in the pool was as warm as August, with only a breath of humid air moving above it. Did they keep it warm all through the winter? It doesn’t get that cold in Friendly, but we have snow almost every January. It probably costs a fortune just to heat the big old house, let alone an indoor pool.

No business of mine, I decided.

I waded in at the shallow end, then dog-paddled out to deeper water. It all felt very odd, and I seemed to be more buoyant than I remembered being. I used to walk on the bottom of the pool because it took effort to float; now, no. I floated easily and felt nearly weightless in the water.

Parts of me wanted to float a little more than other parts, a bit of positive bounciness in the chest as the water flowed around me when I or one of the girls moved. One of the other girls….

Everyone laughed and talked and pretty much ignored me. It was so very, very odd. I felt like the invisible boy, but to be truthful, I didn’t feel at all like a boy. How could I, naked in a pool with eight or nine cheerleaders, all of us wearing strings hanging from our middles, our badge of acceptance into the Ice Cream Party Sisterhood?

If I wasn’t a boy, then I must be a girl, and as long as I got to play football, I guess I didn’t mind that much. Weird thought, but I was finding it easy to enjoy myself. There were squeals when someone splashed someone, but mostly it was laughing and talking and giggling.

“Look,” someone said. “Gayle’s a member of the itty-bitty-titty committee, too.” I dove and swam underwater to escape that conversation, feeling my little breast buds being pushed up by the water. I didn’t need attention called to them. And wouldn’t anyone call me Petey anymore?

When I got my head above water again, Megan was beside me. “Having fun, Petey?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, I am. I’m sorry for, um, being such a drama queen earlier.” I smiled to show that I got the irony of what I was saying.

She laughed. “You’re entitled,” she said. “In fact, for the next five days or so, you’re expected to be emotional, maybe irrational. It’s a crock, mostly, but it makes a good excuse.”

We both laughed at that. Megan laughed harder, pointing at me and accusing me of blushing. I probably was, but it was also so much of a relief to discover I had a place where I was accepted that wasn’t a roomful of bloodthirsty jocks.

Johanna had somehow disappeared and came back into the poolroom wearing a towel to announce munchies and a movie in the big family room. A stack of huge towels were available. Megan had shown me how to twist one into a sort of dress, and I did so, like everyone else, without much thinking about it. And with a lot of squealing and laughing, everybody went back inside the main house.

“Movie?” I whispered to Megan, who explained.

“Mr. Linklater owns both movie houses in town and usually keeps a few prints of old movies around for emergency showings. And he has his own private 35mm projector at home.”

“Cool,” I agreed.

“So, what are we going to see?” someone asked while heaping goodies like wieners and cheese and veggie sticks on their plates.

“Tonight’s feature is Cactus Flower with Goldie Hawn and Walter Matthau,” Johanna announced in a fake television voice.

Several cheers broke out, but Beverly booed. “It’s a ten-year-old stinker,” she claimed.

Johanna ignored her, and soon the movie started, the big family room making a pretty good home theater. Megan and I sat together and shared popcorn. I didn’t remember ever having seen Cactus Flower before, and the opening scenes with a suicide attempt almost made me get up and leave the room. Megan held my hand, though, and I got through that.

Afterward, we all sampled each other’s ice cream and discussed the movie.

The consensus seemed to be that Walter Matthau’s character was just the sort of lying, manipulative crud that most boyfriends turned out to be. I laughed along with everybody else at that judgment. Almost everyone had identified with Goldie Hawn’s character, the lied-to girlfriend. Even me, I discovered.

“Does anybody have a decent boyfriend?” someone asked. Several girls jumped to their boyfriend’s defense, despite having just bashed boys as a group. I noticed Johanna didn’t defend Jake. It was all pretty entertaining, with a lot of laughter.

“Let’s face it,” Beverly announced, “Men are all pricks, and the only reason we date them is because they have one.”

That got some boos and more laughter.

But Johanna called Megan out, “You’re the only one here who isn’t dating a guy,” she noted.

More laughs, and I felt my face go red.

“That isn’t true, you know,” Megan objected. “Petey isn’t dating a guy either.”

My face couldn’t get any hotter, but Johanna pounced.

“Is that so, Gayle?” she demanded. “You’ve never had a boyfriend? Never had a date with a boy?”

I don’t know what gave me away, but just then, I did think of Leland Frick inviting me to the movies on Sunday. “Uhhh?” I said.