I’d be looking at Connie, but there’s not much to see. She’s spent most of the day wearing an extra large T-shirt over her swimming suit. Also, even though she has a decent build, she looks scrawny compared to her mother. And unlike her mom, she doesn’t seem to have any tendencies toward exhibitionism.

As for Thelma, she’s sort of cute in a thick, blocky way, but nothing much to look at. I don’t mean to be unkind. She’s a pretty nice woman and I actually like her quite a lot most of the time. The whole trip, I haven’t once seen her in a bathing suit. She always wears a big floppy straw hat, a loose blouse that she doesn’t tuck in, baggy shorts, white socks and Reeboks.

I probably shouldn’t be writing this stuff about the women. It’ll be embarrassing if someone happens to read it. Also, it sort of makes me look shallow and creepy. As if all I care about is how a gal looks in her bikini.

That isn’t all I care about.

The thing is, it’s probably easy to be nonchalant about gorgeous, semi-nude babes if you’re a handsome, confident guy who has nailed about fifty of them. But I’m eighteen, short and skinny and zitty. My name is RUPERT, for Godsake. (I was named after Rupert Brooke, the poet. He was a great poet, and I love his stuff, but if my parents had to pick a poet’s name for me, why not Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, or Walt Whitman? Rupert? Please! I guess I should count my blessings; at least they didn’t name me Wilfred, Ezra or Sylvia.) Anyway, I’m basically a shrimp with a dumb name and an attitude. Connie goes for me—to the extent that she does—because I’m nonthreatening, she thinks she generally controls me, and she often finds me amusing. There might be other reasons, but those are the most obvious.