Free The Summer of Naked Swim Parties by Jessica Anya Blau Page B

fifteen people, including Jamie and Flip, gathered in the room. The aura reader was blond, thin, German; she looked college-age but spoke with the authority of an old woman.
    “I hope everyone remembered to wear a bathing suit—the only way to truly see the aura, is to see it reflected off bare  skin.” The aura reader slowly enunciated each word as if she were translating from German.
    Lois went first. She stood in the center of the room wearing a baggy yellow bikini. Jamie thought she looked like a woman waiting for the doctor in an exam room. She was followed by a fat woman in a leotard, whose skin folded out at the arm and leg holes and looked as soft as under-baked dough. Then it was Betty’s turn. She stood and removed her clothes until she was completely naked.
    Jamie listened to Flip’s breathing beside her; she felt his body growing tense. The aura reader walked slowly around Betty, bouncing her hands Marcel Marceau–style against an invisible contour.
    “Beautiful,” she said. “You have a beautiful deep orange aura.” Betty opened her mouth and smiled. She looked peaceful, so relaxed that one could almost forget she was naked. And Jamie did forget she was naked, until Flip took her hand and pushed it onto his crotch so she could feel his solid erection.
    Jamie jerked her hand away and fled into the kitchen.
    Five minutes later, Flip joined Jamie in the kitchen.
    “Hey,” he said.
    “Hey.” Jamie was at the counter, eating a bowl of pine-needle soup the Chumash man had given her.
    “Something wrong?”
    She leaned into his ear and whispered, “You’re grossing me out with the boner for my mom.”
    “That was for you!” Flip said.
    “Pardon?” the Chumash lady said.
    “So you’re Chumash, huh?” Flip sat on the stool beside Jamie and smiled at the woman.
    “I’m from Mexico,” she said. “He’s Chumash.” She pointed at the man with her thumb.

    “Cool,” Flip said.
    “You like Chumash?” the man asked.
    “Chumash are cool,” Flip said.
    “Chumash used to own Santa Barbara,” Jamie said.
    “Mexico owned it once, too,” the woman said.
    “Now look who owns it!” the Chumash man said, and he laughed as a keg-bellied man, wearing only white cotton briefs, walked in with an empty wine glass.
    When Jamie finished her soup, Flip insisted that they skip the rest of the aura reading and go out in the backyard to look at the stars. They settled in a patch of soft grass; Jamie folded her arms behind her head and sighed. She was baffled by moments when she didn’t see absolute perfection in Flip. Before their first date Jamie couldn’t imagine that anything Flip Jenkins did or said could be wrong or unappealing. But now, here in her backyard, he didn’t seem like Flip Jenkins, he seemed like a Labrador who could think only about food, who would snap your half-eaten burger off your plate while you sneezed, who assumed everyone wanted him on their couch, or their bed, where he’d leave behind blankets of hair without once thinking about the person who had to clean that hair up.
    Flip rolled over and mounted Jamie.
    “I am so horny,” he said. “I swear, I’m about to explode.”
    “Gross.” Jamie pushed him off. “You’re horny from seeing my naked mother!”
    “No way,” Flip said. “I swear, I was just sitting there and thinking about you standing in that room naked and thinking that maybe someday your bosoms would be as big as your mom’s, and I swear, it was all thoughts of you and then I—” Flip began to grind against Jamie, reminding her uncomfortably of Tammy’s black Lab, Tigger, who always tried to hump Jamie when she was on her period.

    “Flip! You had an erection from my mom!” Flip rolled back.
    “Okay,” he said. “So what? So what if I had an erection?  Your mom has, like, totally awesome tits. How could I not have an erection?”
    “She’s my mom!”
    “It’s, like, so what? I mean, if you stuck a picture of some Playboy model in front me