James sent this in, showing that skinning dipping is great with family too:
When I was in high school, I was really close with my older cousin Christine. She lived a couple hours away from me, but we hung out as often as we could. There was this one time, where my parents were out of town for the weekend, but they agreed to let her stay over, since we were planning to hang out anyway. So naturally, the first night we decided to stay up super late and watch movies together.
But after a while it started getting cold, so I suggested that we relax for a while in my hot tub in the backyard, since we obviously weren’t going to sleep anytime soon, being home alone and all. She told me that it sounded like a really good idea, but she hadn’t known that it was a possibility, and hadn’t brought her swimsuit. So I suggested she could borrow one of mine and an old shirt or something. She considered it for a second, but eventually just said that she’d wear her bra and panties, since we were close enough and it’s basically like wearing a bikini anyway.
So I went to go change as she started taking her clothes off and telling me to meet her outside. I remember it being a little weird at first, watching my cousin taking her pants off, even though I had seen her in a bikini literally hundreds of times. Something about the act of undressing made it feel like I shouldn’t be seeing it, even though in retrospect it was totally innocent.
Anyway, I change and go out to the yard in the dark to find that she was already in the hot tub, and she said the water was really nice. I get in, and she was right, the water was nice and hot.
As I’m getting comfortable, I start to hear Christine holding back laughter or something, so I just say “what’s so funny?” and she replies “Ha ha, oh nothing!” So I just glanced around in the dark, looking for what she was laughing at, until I actually looked at her for long enough to notice her bare chest above the water. “Are you naked???” I asked, and she just burst out laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world, and she just said “Surprise!!”
And suddenly, I felt a flurry of emotions; excitement about being around a naked girl, awkwardness that it was my cousin, confusion about why she was naked, embarrassment that she tricked me, anxiety that my neighbors might see us, and a million others. I remember getting super red in the face, and trying in vain to seem like I was as comfortable with it as she was, stammering out something like “oh… huh.. wow….” And she just kept laughing and said “I wish you could see your face right now!!”
But eventually she stopped laughing and just leaned back to relax, her body bare to the world. I started to accept my situation and eventually just laughed a little and asked “Why are you naked?” She confidently replied “because I didn’t want to deal with wet underwear and it feels really nice. But mainly to see that look on your face, ha ha.” Then I started to consider my own swimsuit, and how it would probably feel nice to not have any constriction. Especially since it seemed so pointless at that moment.
So I asked “would it be weird if I got naked too?” and she said “Probably not, besides it’s not like I could see anything of yours in this low light.” So I undid the laces on my swimshorts, started pulling them off, but hesitated at the mid-hip point to consider if this was really okay, but at that point I could feel the warm water on my bare privates, which started to get me excited, so I committed, pulled off my swimshorts and threw them out of the hot tub, which got a “Woo!” from Christine.
If I thought I’d been feeling a rush of emotions before, it was doubly so now. I involuntarily got a huge hard-on (which I swear to God was because this was my first skinny dip, not because of my cousin, eww), but it made me feel super awkward all the same and very thankful that it was too dark for her to see. After a long while, I finally calmed down and we just relaxed in the tub, looking at the stars, as comfortable as we could possibly be. Until we started getting sleepy and decided to head inside.
After we dried off, we just crashed on my living room couch, and forgot to put any clothes back on. Consequently, in the morning, we actually got a really good look at each other in the light, but we decided that it was just no big deal, and I don’t think we put any clothes on until my parents came home at the end of the weekend. It was the first time in my life that I felt comfortable with nudity, which was such a great experience.
Yes, that sort of thing can be awkward, but it’s a nice way to spend time with a cousin.
-Jen
Cousin often fill in a gap during our childhood and adolescence development. They are around and trusted. They are also going through the same growth and curiosity. And you know they are safe. Glad you had that experience with yours.