IMPORTANT: This story is a continuation of the short vignette “What About Charlie?” from the “It Isn’t Easy Being a Girl” anthology By Sue DeNym. Please read it first.
When I read the original vignette, I fell in love with it. The short on its own is perfect as a standalone piece, and eloquently encapsulates a defining moment in one boy’s life as he pays a visit to his aunt, who is coaching a team of teen gymnasts. The vignette does a great job at placing you in its world, and leaving the reader's imagination with so many possibilities to explore at its conclusion. Even if you don’t go on to read what follows, I highly recommend giving the original short vignette a read.
Purely as a writing experiment, I decided to sit down and see where my imagination took the story next. Now, with Sue DeNym’s blessing, I’m sharing my unofficial continuation here.
This kicks off immediately following the final line of Sue DeNym’s vignette, so if you haven’t read that, please jump over here to read that first.
Thank you Sue for writing something so fun, that pressed all the right buttons to get me out of my I-don't-wanna-write rut!
And now, we continue Charlie's story, immediately following on from the last line of the original vignette...
My eyes flittered from one girl to the next, not knowing which of them would be the first to expose their underwear to me, and certainly not wanting to miss whoever it was. The girls stood stiffly in their two rows of six across the stage, their warm smiles wrestled away from them by the twisted turn of events that had befallen them in the last ten seconds. Now grappling with their new reality, they stood hesitantly toying with their leotard’s shoulder straps, and staring apprehensively in my direction, undoubtedly trying to wordlessly will me into looking away.
That, of course, was not on the cards. The opportunity for a twelve-year-old boy to watch a bunch of cute teenaged girls strip down to their underwear was, as far as I could tell, a thing of pure fantasy. It was never supposed to happen… But that very opportunity had just been presented to me on a silver platter, and served up with a side of my aunt’s blessing, no less! I easily convinced myself that with the benefit of time, the girls would see that this was too rare an opportunity for me to decline, and would understand my decision to watch them undress to their bras and panties.
“Girls, please, no more dilly-dallying,” my aunt persisted as she grew impatient with the girls doing little more than eyeing me anxiously and fidgeting about. “We have six more costumes to get through here. Enough with the stage-fright, he’s just a boy!”
It seemed clear to everyone but my aunt that this was the very issue the girls had with the situation. Myself and the girls could both scarcely believe what was happening. In order to avoid rocking the boat, I pulled my school bag up onto my lap, and pretended to rifle through it to find something to occupy myself with, while the uninteresting costume change took place.
For a moment, things remained in a frozen standoff, but then, slowly, one by one, they began to turn away from me… The indication that they were actually going to proceed with undressing!
I was about to see twelve girls in their underwear. Twelve! My heart was racing. This was crazy. I knew it really wasn’t a state of undress that much more revealing than the leotards they were currently in, and was likely less revealing than some of the bikinis I’d seen girls in at the beach… But underwear was a private thing. I wouldn’t just be seeing smaller pieces of fabric on these girls, I would be having an insight into their private world. I would see what kind of underwear these girls walked around in under their clothes. I would have a window into their personal lives, knowing which particular underwear they had chosen to put on that morning. The anticipation and weight of this moment for my young, curious, thirsty mind was intensifying with every lingering second.
I watched in complete silence as the girls began pulling their leotards down over their shoulders and carefully tugging their arms free. Each one stopped when they got to this point, and slowly crouched to fish around in the bag of leotards each of them had by their feet. Obviously having the next leotard at the ready would ensure they could spend as little time in only their underwear as possible.
Except… As I looked around at the girls’ shoulders, it occurred to me that there were no bra straps visible. I blinked and leaned forward, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. These girls were all clearly at a point in development where they should have been wearing bras - I couldn’t have been more intensely aware of the fact that they definitely had boobs - yet their now exposed bare upper backs said that, for whatever reason, bras weren’t a part of this particular dress code.
I was already on the edge of my seat from what was happening, but things had just become much, much more interesting.
I watched as the girls all caught up to this point of their undressing, and nervously looked around at each other, making sure they weren’t acting alone as they each began rolling their leotards further down their bodies, fully confirming to me their complete nakedness above the waist. Gradually, everything down to their lower backs became exposed, and then I glimpsed the very top of one girl’s butt crack.
No way…
There’s no freaking way they’re not wearing underwear down there too!
But as I scanned the leotard-clad posteriors across the stage, I realised I couldn’t discern a single panty line. Not so much as a hint of band peeking out from anywhere.
What I would later learn when questioning my aunt as she drove me home, is that in competitive gymnastics, a gymnast can actually lose points in a competition if any of their underwear becomes exposed during a routine. And so my aunt encourages in all her gymnasts the apparently not uncommon practice of keeping underwear out of the equation entirely.
No wonder these girls seemed so nervous! It wasn’t about me seeing them in their underwear, it was that they weren’t wearing any and were now expected to undress all the way down to their birthday suits in front of a boy!
The girls fidgeted about at this final hurdle of undressing. Their thumbs were hooked into the bunched up leotards at their hips, while in one of those hands their fingers simultaneously held onto the blue and gold leotard they would be changing into next. A dozen young gymnastic students stood hesitantly clutching their last remnant of modesty, none of them wanting to be the first to moon the practically drooling twelve year old boy staring unblinkingly at them.
My aunt, still unable to see what the big deal was, decided to move things along as though this was part of a completely normal group exercise. “On three then,” she announced in a no-nonsense tone.
The girls visibly tensed up at the words. Their body language, even from behind, spoke clearly of the fear and conflict gripping them inside. To disobey their coach was unthinkable. And yet, so was pulling their leotards down in front of—
“One, two, three!”
I don’t know if it was the numerous years of tutelage under my aunt that had conditioned them to unquestioningly obey without so much as a peep, but without any further hesitation, all twelve girls swiftly tugged their leotards down to their feet and kicked them off. My eyes just about bugged out of my head at what had just happened. Despite obeying their coach, the girls were obviously mortified at what they had just done, and at the fact that somehow they were powerless to stop it from happening, due to their almost religious loyalty to their coach. In the immediate aftermath, kicking the pink and white leotards off their feet, the girls were also fastidiously trying to block their toned bottoms from my view using one of their hands. But their strategy was less effective than they probably thought, treating me to a titillating little game of butt crack peek-a-boo.
I reflected back on my walk over here from school, and how I had been looking forward to the eye candy of these high school girls in their leotards. Now, my eyes were freely dancing across those same girls’ almost entirely exposed bottoms. What struck me was how I could now see just how tanned some of the girls were. The parts normally covered up were, on most of the girls, a clearly defined, pale shape; a ghostly reminder of where clothing should have been covering their bodies. I could see precisely where each girl deemed their threshold of “forbidden skin” to begin and end. For some, that limit was a lot bolder than others… but even the most daring of the girls had their own defined point where public view was supposed to end. And for me, rather than these areas having been redacted, they had merely been highlighted, with a footnote saying “These are the areas I wish you couldn’t see”. What I could see however, was that they were all well outside of their comfort zones, and by how much. I drank it all in, grateful to be the custodian of these visual rarities.
The girls moved on to their one-handed scramble of manoeuvring themselves into the next costume without having to uncover their bottoms with their other hand, or part their legs. They were all so desperate to get covered up again that a few of them began wavering in their resolve to keep the correct part of their rears guarded. The occasional exposed butt crack soon graduated to distracted moments of full, unobscured teenaged bottoms, and my eager eyes hunted to try and catch sight of something further between their legs, as the girls tried to shake inside out costumes the right way in, and hopped around trying to rush legs into leg holes. I guess the right type of nervousness can sway even a disciplined gymnast’s balance and poise.
In their hurried malaise, two of the girls discovered as they tried to pull their leotards into place that they had put the suit on backwards, prompting the poor things to have to take them completely off and try again. It was a full three minutes before all twelve girls were re-dressed, and although I miraculously didn’t get a glimpse of any of their “girl goods”, I got to enjoy a lot of pert, jiggling girls’ buttocks.
Now fully dressed in the blue and gold outfits, it still took my aunt’s prompting for any of the girls to turn back around and face us. As long as I wasn’t in their periphery, they could live in an imaginary world where I wasn’t there watching them the whole time they were getting changed. Unfortunately for them, they now had to come crashing back to reality.
For gymnastic girls who were supposedly energetic by nature, they looked exhausted. Their faces were flushed and their breathing suggested they had just completed an intensive five minute routine.
Where before the girls had been staring at me with a look that silently pleaded with me to turn away, they now seemed to be actively trying to ignore my presence in the room. Or more likely, they were continuing to try and convince themselves there wasn’t a boy in the room that was witness to their undressing stage spectacular.
Regardless, I was there, having my twelve-year-old mind blown as they all faced me. Oh how I wished they had been facing this way while naked. The tease had left me positively aching to know what had been exposed to the back wall of the stage mere moments ago, and I actually caught myself thinking that this situation was somehow unfair on me, simply because I didn’t see as much as I could have!
“Okay, aaaand Salute!” My aunt instructed, and a dozen girls’ arms shot skyward as they adopted the traditional upwardly stretched stance a gymnast takes at the beginning of a routine.
“Arms to sides, and quarter pivot!” She sang, and in unison the girls’ arms all snapped down to their sides, and they turned on their heels to face left. The instruction was repeated three more times, resulting in the girls providing us with a full 360 degree display of how their costumes clung form-fitted to the various contours of their bodies.
I was, by this point, incredibly grateful to have a school bag sitting on my lap.
“You all look stunning in this one!” my aunt finally said with a warm smile. “Let’s place this one in the shortlist too, and we’ll try the white and lemon striped one next. Chop, chop!”
Holy heck, I realised. They still had to get completely naked in front of me five more times. And from the looks on the girls’ faces, the full weight of this fact was really starting to sink in.
— —
The girls spun away to once again hide their fronts from me, and I used the opportunity to scurry in an awkward hunch with my school bag and folding chair, to sit closer to my aunt - but more importantly, closer to the stage. If my aunt had noticed this, she certainly didn’t acknowledge it.
With this improved vantage point, I hoped being able to see between their legs would be easier. I all but held my breath in anticipation as the show began again.
It didn’t appear to be any less mortifying for the girls the second time, as they began anew the nightmare of stripping bare-butt naked in front of me. This time, however, there seemed to be slightly less effort going into the task of one-handedly masking their bottoms right from the offset, and I wondered excitedly how much they would progressively be letting their guard down by the third, fourth and fifth undressing. I prayed for them to get to the point where somehow turning to face away from me was too much work.
When it came to the most precarious part of dressing again, stepping into the next leotard, the girls somehow managed a level of guardedness as to once again prohibit me from being able to see between their legs. I suppose it made sense; as gymnasts, legs were their tools of the trade, and it stood to reason they would be able to wield them with the precision of a surgeon with a scalpel.
But something very revealing did happen as the girls started pulling up the pale yellow and white costumes. I could see their butt cracks… Even with the leotards covering them. It appeared that the yellow parts were very, very slightly see-through. It would probably have gone unnoticed in any other circumstances, but under the heavy stage lighting, I was able to make out the swooping line of each and every bottom crack. I twitched with anticipation at what I might be able to make out when the girls turned to face us.
I sat in silent hope that I was the only one to have spotted the slight transparency, but after a few moments, the six girls nearest the front of the stage started to bring their hands around to cover up their butts, apparently having clocked the visible cracks on the six girls further to the back of the stage. Though this was a disappointment, I still had goosebumps over the fact that the other half of the girls had no way of knowing what they would be revealing to me in just a moment.
“Okay, turn around girls, let’s see how these ones look,” came my aunt’s instruction.
The girls all nervously turned to face us, with the girls in the front row holding an arm over their chest and the other positioned over their crotches. Of course, my sights were zeroed in on the girls at the back of the stage. At first I thought they might immediately notice the slightly visible butt cracks of the girls now in front of them, but it seemed that the lights being angled toward the stage meant that the flaw in the fabric wasn’t apparent to them.
As they were further back on the stage, detail was at a minimum, but I could still very vaguely make out these girls’ nipples! Below their breasts, the slightly see-through yellow fabric then alternated with horizontal stripes of fully opaque white fabric all the way down their front, and irritatingly switched to the fully opaque white over their genitals. Curiously though, I could make out a small darker patch on two of the six girls just before that fabric change, which I promptly realised were their carefully curated little patches of pubic hair.
This was huge to me! I hadn’t started getting any pubic hair, but couldn’t wait to have some, and I found the notion of it to be such an exciting thing. Doubly exciting was knowing what these girls were choosing to do with theirs!
It seemed from this small sampling, female gymnasts either just removed it entirely, or kept a little badge of it and got rid of the rest. I wondered if this small sampling was accurate enough to be representative of all girls who took up gymnastics.
I figured I wouldn’t have to wonder for long, as it was likely that a ‘salute’ from the girls was about to cause the sample size to double.
“Um… Mrs. Abernathy?” Squeaked Gabby, a curly haired brunette in the front row. My aunt held up a finger as if to say “just a moment”.
I could see the looks of distress on the girls’ faces in the front row as the anxiety of their coach’s inevitable next instruction crept ever closer.
And…
“Salute!”
Oh! Yes! Good girls!
Every single one obediently raised their hands high above their heads, the six in the front row instantly joining the ones behind them in baring their secrets. But these six girls knew what they were putting on display, and their blushing faces, glowing bright with mortification, made it perfectly clear how they felt about it. I surveyed the front row and my brain took in what it considered to be the most pertinent details.
Little patch, hairless, hairless, hairless, thin strip, little patch.
My young mind didn’t really know what to do with this information, but it felt exciting to know the secret pubic maintenance habits of each of these slightly older girls.
I also found it interesting to see that Claire, the only redhead on the team, and standing first from the left in the front row, had matching red pubes. I had always wondered if her hair was dyed that color, as it almost seemed too rich a tone to be natural. Now I knew better.
“Arms down to your sides” my aunt instructed after a lengthy pause, and the girls arms swooped down to their sides.
“Mrs. Abernathy?” Gabby tried again, a great deal more distress and urgency in her voice this time.
“Gabby, please,” my aunt said, “I’m trying to focus here, to determine whether this Leo is the right choice for the meet. Show me the discipline you would show during a competition routine, just for a few moments more, and we can discuss at the end.”
This exchange gave me time to take in something else… Nipples! A dozen pairs of girls’ nipples! Before this reveal, I would not have been able to anticipate the varying shades and sizes of areola each girl was sporting. Elena, a blonde girl in the front row caught me looking right at her peach colored pointies, and as our eyes momentarily met, I could see her squirming slightly. Her fists clenched and unclenched at her sides as she fought against her natural urge to cover up, knowing exactly what I was looking at. As I allowed my gaze to wander to the next girl, and then the next, I realised that the entire front row was partaking in their own version of this subtle, squirmy dance. And though I’m positive the movements weren’t intentional, it was one of the sexiest things I’d seen in my young life.
I tried my best to memorise as many of the girls’ individual “stats” as I could, studying harder in those short moments than I’d ever done for any school exam. All too soon though, my aunt had finished her little mini-lecture to Gabby, and had them begin their pivoting. Fortunately, they weren’t facing away for long, much to the girls’ chagrin. I looked to my aunt and she was squinting at the stage curiously.
Here it comes…
“Girls, are these leotards…” she began, her brow wrinkling.
I watched the back row with keen interest to see how they would react to the news that was about to befall them.
“…are they… a little sheer?”
The six blindsided girls’ eyes went wide as saucers. They immediately wrapped an arm around their chests and shot a hand between their legs with a gasp, before even looking to see whether the question had any merit, on edge as they already were.
The other girls took this as a cue that they could cover up as well, and adopted the same self-preservation hug.
“Yes, they are a little bit see-through.” Gabby confirmed ruefully with a wavering in her voice as she clutched herself tighter.
“Okay, well, remind me that these will need to be lined before using them!” My aunt laughed flippantly, completely dismissing the embarrassing ordeal the girls had just experienced. “Now Gabby, what were you wanting to say?”
“I wanted to warn you that the Leos were see-through,” Gabby said flatly.
“Ah, well I appreciate the attempted warning, but my heart isn’t that frail, dear!” She laughed, again, missing the point. “Let’s move on to the simple hot pink costume next.”
— —
I can’t begin to imagine how these poor girls must have felt as they began their third strip tease for me. I felt like I detected a collective frustrated groan from them, likely from knowing that including this change, they had to get naked a total of four more times. I couldn’t blame them for being frustrated, but I also couldn’t help but grin. With twelve girls getting changed four more times, the odds were that someone was going to let something slip at some point. I just didn’t know who I was going to see, and what parts. Honestly, to my twelve year old libido, I would have been elated to see any of them in anything less than the leotards I normally saw them in when I visited my aunt. I now knew what all twelve of them looked like naked from behind, and after a few more rounds would probably be able to identify them all by their butts alone… So anything else was just icing on the cake.
This time, my eyes were drawn to a girl second from the left in the back row. A girl with jet-black hair cut in a bob, called Harley. She had, unbelievably, foregone any attempt to cover her backside, opting instead to focus on the task of getting out of the previous leotard and into the next one as efficiently and quickly as possible using both hands. She was right, she was able to shimmy into her new costume while most of the other girls were still fumbling with their prior one. But I’m sure she also hoped that with her being tucked away in the back row, I wouldn’t see what I absolutely ended up seeing. For the first time in my young life, my eyes had been introduced to the soft folds of a real life girl’s private parts. It was only from the rear and shadowed somewhat between her legs, but I could see the most intimate part of this girl. I stared intently as she momentarily widened her stance to lift each leg into the leg holes of the new leotard, marvelling at the elasticity with which the flesh of her labia moved in kinship to the raising and lowering of each leg.
I thrilled at the moment, and hoped with stifled excitement that the other girls would see how “efficient” she was, and follow suit, providing me with more opportunities to learn about these alien parts. I had just seen my first real life girl genitals, and I would never forget what they looked like. But I knew from getting changed at the pool that boys’ genitals weren’t all identical, and now, letting my eyes drift across the stage, I wanted to know if, and how girls varied down there too.
With one girl now dressed, my attention diverted to other girls as they continued their flaky attempts to retain their modesty while getting naked on a stage. My scouting had only progressed two girls along from Harley to Prue before I was rewarded. Prue had her brown hair up in a high ponytail, which flopped this way and that as she juggled the dual tasks of getting legs into a leotard and blocking her bum. In one unanticipated move, Prue accidentally misjudged her step, pressing her raised foot into the fabric rather than a leg hole. She almost toppled sideways as the action caused her to effectively kick her leotard out of her own hand. With a yelp, she lunged after it, momentarily forgetting her priorities and allowing me a moment to enjoy her side profile and slightly jiggling B-cup breast as she stooped to pick up the runaway costume.
The vibrant pink of these latest leotards had an almost fluorescent glow to them, and were unique to the other costume sets thus far in that they had clear shoulder straps, to give the impression that they were strapless. Outside of these features, the design was fairly unremarkable, but having the area above the girls’ armpits exposed was definitely an aesthetically pleasing look.
“Mrs. Abernathy?” Claire timidly asked. She sounded worried, and as I located her, I could see that it wasn’t merely my presence that was the cause this time. The vinyl shoulder straps of her leotard had snapped and the slender redhead held the front of the costume up against her chest with all the force she could muster.
“Oh no, Claire!” My aunt said with concern. “What happened?”
“They… The straps just… broke… when I tried to pull it up”, Claire offered with dismay.
“Here,” my aunt said, stepping forward and reaching out, “Come down here and show me. I need to see if this is a stitching issue, a materials issue, or something else.”
The girl hesitantly shuffled forward, and climbed (again, one-handed) down the front of the stage. She finally broke the facade that I wasn’t there, and eyed me nervously as she came right up to where my aunt was standing, and quite close to where I was sitting. Even if she wanted to ignore me, I was lodged firmly in her periphery now.
My aunt looked across the row of girls for a moment, and then asked them to tug upward on their shoulder straps. She was checking for durability, but as she instructed the girls to tug “a little higher” and “a little harder”, the only thing I was checking was the way this tugged the lower fabric tighter and tighter against their crotches. My aunt seemed completely oblivious to the fact that she was having the eleven remaining girls on stage effectively wedgie themselves, every tug digging a more prominent camel toe into the girls’ fronts. I watched in sheer awe as each girl repeatedly pulled the contour crease of their own privates into and out of view before my eyes.
“Hmm”, my aunt pondered aloud, “Seems to just be yours, Claire. I’ll have our seamstress reinforce your shoulder straps this week.”
With that, and without warning, my aunt proceeded to wrench Claire’s leotard down her body in one fluid motion. Claire made a move to grab for the fabric as it descended down her body, but being caught off guard meant it was out of her reach before her hands acted, and so she quickly moved to shield her privates with a shriek that could probably have been heard from back at my school.
I didn’t have long to process Claire’s nakedness, but boy did I see it. Those deep orangey red pubes really made a point of drawing the eye. And this was an unprecedented (for me) view of what girls hid between their legs. With her legs together, the more intricate inner folds of Claire’s femininity weren’t on show, but I was audience to a close-up presentation of the little division of soft flesh that was her pussy. Claire’s outer lips were almost being squeezed toward me as she pressed her legs tightly together. I was absolutely fascinated at the way that the color of the skin surrounding her genitals shifted gradually to a darker, warmer color the closer it got to her central fold.
And then it was gone as she dramatically dug a hand between her thighs to hide it from me.
“Claire!” My aunt admonished as she recovered from the shriek. “There’s no need for that kind of outburst! You almost blew my eardrums!”
“Sorry Coach.” Came her quiet reply as she looked down at the floor. “What costume should I get changed into next?”
“Just a minute.” My aunt said, before turning her attention back to the rest of the girls on the stage. “Okay girls! Salute!”
The naked Claire, hunched over and covering herself as best she could, was left to awkwardly wait. She allowed herself to glance over at me for a moment, and of course saw my looking right back at her, causing her to swiftly turn away in embarrassment.
It took the flustered redhead a moment to remember to cover her backside. In that interlude, I saw another very specific sight that would for whatever reason stay with me, just as vividly as when I saw it: The pink tips of Claire’s fingers peeking out between her legs from behind, where they remained tucked and holding her privates. I’m not sure why this sight felt so special. Perhaps it was the distilled symbolism of her desperation to hide herself. Maybe it was the intimacy of where those fingers were in that moment. Or it could have been a combination of these things. Whatever it was, it sent a shiver of wonder up my spine.
“Oh shit!” I heard one of the girls whisper from the stage as they all stood with their hands held aloft.
“Who was that?” My aunt asked, the girls all frozen in place. Then I spotted Gabby, whose left breast was almost out due to another strap breakage.
Gabby didn’t say anything, obviously terrified of having to go through what she just witnessed Claire experience.
“It sounded like Gabby?” I whispered to my aunt, nudging her toward making the discovery for herself.
“Oh my goodness, Gabby!” My Aunt said, spotting the problem. “Okay, hands down, girls, and Gabby, come down here.”
Gabby climbed down the front of the stage and made her way over. Not wanting to be stripped by my aunt facing me, she instead took it upon herself when arriving, to turn her back to me and undress herself. The curly brunette’s naked back was now almost within touching distance, and the coziness of this proximity allowed me to better appreciate the finer details of her smallish behind, like the little dimple she had above each buttock.
“Alright!” My aunt exclaimed, clapping her hands and addressing the rest of the girls. “These straps are too risky. But straps aside, I think the pink and white one from earlier looks better on you girls than this all-pink one anyway. I like the shimmer effect this one has under the lights, but it hasn’t got much character other than that. Let’s put this one in the ‘no’ pile.”
While my aunt spoke, I could see the two naked girls fidgeting and wishing she would cut to the chase and tell them what to get dressed into next. They looked so relieved when she gave them the green light to head back up to the stage.
“The Leo with the red and white pattern next, please everyone!”
There were still three outfits to go…
Hope you're enjoying this creative writing experiment. For me, it's been great to find something that pulled me out of writers' block stasis, and made me remember how fun writing can be.
Oh, and if anyone has a better title for what to call an "expansion on a vignette", please let me know!
Part two is below, or you can click here to jump straight to it.
