Confessions of a Juvenile Beach Pest
Posted: Thu May 21, 2026 12:52 am
Every Summer my family would vacation up to Cape Cod and rent a villa at a beach club for a few weeks. One feature of this club was most the buildings were on platforms elevated above long stretches of sand, resulting in a roomy crawlspace under all the floors and hallways that kids my age could easily explore and get in and out of. Despite most the adults telling me it was dangerous to play down there, no one really made an effort to discourage the few kids our age from treating them like a playground.
One year when exploring I discovered how to get behind the wall of one of the outdoor changing booth/showers, where a tiny gap between the wall and the floorboards could give me a worm's eye view from the corner. Whenever I heard the sound of the showers running, I would sneak over and peek to see who it was. I had to suffer through a couple wrinkly old man dongs before I got to see a few naked women. Despite the view being from a rather unflattering angle and the subjects being pasty middle-aged New England-ers, the thrill of such a candid sight awoke a taste for voyeurism.
In the last few weeks of the vacation, I decided to show one of the boy's I had just befriended this secret. In part I was trying to impress him, but more pragmatically he had a sister (a year older than us who I thought was cute), and zero hesitation about betraying her modesty. Sharing the view with him felt a little different, but it was nice to have a fellow witness to what we were witnessing. When he finally succeeded in goading his sister to go swimming, I was a little surprised he joined in to watch, but the rules of their sibling dynamics were lost on me. Perhaps it was because she was my age, or maybe because (unlike the hairy hags I had been preying upon before) she had no pubes to obscure anything, but this view felt monumentally more memorable. The view was so distracting, I failed to notice she had decided to pee in the shower while she rinsed off. I was only made aware of this detail, because her brother audibly gagged and exclaimed "EW she's peeing! Gross!"
For a brief moment I hoped the sound of the shower had drowned out his voice. But I guess your sibling's voice is iconically recognizable, because just as I was turning to flee I overheard her scream "Ohmygod Royce! Are you spying on me!?(I think it was Royce, might have been Roy, I knew the kid for a day 20+ years ago, cut me some slack)" It seems I did far too good of a job fleeing though, as I lost Royce as well, and not wanting to risk tempting fate further, I slipped back home to cement as good of an alibi as I could in case things blew up. Apparently Royce had tried to implicate me as the mastermind, but we'd never actually exchanged names, so his accomplice story fell thin with no way to single me out.
The following year the crawlspace was fully closed off. The story was some kid had stepped on a nail buried in the sand while exploring and it resulted in a lawsuit and my secret summer clubhouse becoming just a memory.
One year when exploring I discovered how to get behind the wall of one of the outdoor changing booth/showers, where a tiny gap between the wall and the floorboards could give me a worm's eye view from the corner. Whenever I heard the sound of the showers running, I would sneak over and peek to see who it was. I had to suffer through a couple wrinkly old man dongs before I got to see a few naked women. Despite the view being from a rather unflattering angle and the subjects being pasty middle-aged New England-ers, the thrill of such a candid sight awoke a taste for voyeurism.
In the last few weeks of the vacation, I decided to show one of the boy's I had just befriended this secret. In part I was trying to impress him, but more pragmatically he had a sister (a year older than us who I thought was cute), and zero hesitation about betraying her modesty. Sharing the view with him felt a little different, but it was nice to have a fellow witness to what we were witnessing. When he finally succeeded in goading his sister to go swimming, I was a little surprised he joined in to watch, but the rules of their sibling dynamics were lost on me. Perhaps it was because she was my age, or maybe because (unlike the hairy hags I had been preying upon before) she had no pubes to obscure anything, but this view felt monumentally more memorable. The view was so distracting, I failed to notice she had decided to pee in the shower while she rinsed off. I was only made aware of this detail, because her brother audibly gagged and exclaimed "EW she's peeing! Gross!"
For a brief moment I hoped the sound of the shower had drowned out his voice. But I guess your sibling's voice is iconically recognizable, because just as I was turning to flee I overheard her scream "Ohmygod Royce! Are you spying on me!?(I think it was Royce, might have been Roy, I knew the kid for a day 20+ years ago, cut me some slack)" It seems I did far too good of a job fleeing though, as I lost Royce as well, and not wanting to risk tempting fate further, I slipped back home to cement as good of an alibi as I could in case things blew up. Apparently Royce had tried to implicate me as the mastermind, but we'd never actually exchanged names, so his accomplice story fell thin with no way to single me out.
The following year the crawlspace was fully closed off. The story was some kid had stepped on a nail buried in the sand while exploring and it resulted in a lawsuit and my secret summer clubhouse becoming just a memory.