Not every kid gets a summer of s’mores, kayaks, and rollercoasters. Brandon didn’t. His mom having returned to work in order to help pay mounting bills that came with the new house and his older siblings both working summer jobs, Brandon spent many days fending for himself at home. It wasn’t all bad. Once he had punched out the daily chore list his mom had left for him, he would sometimes bike downtown and meet a few friends at the pool concession stand, or occasionally he could find someone to join for an afternoon at the local reservoir, which was the closest thing to a beach he ever saw. But the summer he was sixteen, Brandon mostly desperately searched for things to do.

It was a particularly oppressive day that saw him trudge into the attic for inspiration. It took a lot of boredom to incite anyone to head up there. In spite of the thoughtful ridge vents and gable windows that were cracked on either end, the attic was a furnace, never letting escape any of the heat radiating through the asphalt shingles above, yet somehow attracting every variety of wasp, fly, and mosquito native to Pennsylvania. The windowsills and floor were already littered with their baked little corpses, which only further served to deter entry from anyone for any reason.

Brandon could only bear to be up there for two or three minutes at a time before he would have to clomp down the steps, red faced and slick with sweat. After having a few minutes of exposure to air conditioning, he would return again, the smell of hot pine trusses filling his nose. To make matters worse, nearly everything was packed in stacks of nearly identical boxes, many of which were labeled vaguely or not at all. “F’s Closet.” “Econ.” “Trip Stuff.” Most unhelpful.

It was during one of these brief sauna-like visits that Brandon uncovered a collection of winter things tucked under the eaves. A few scratched flying saucers, puffy oversized gloves, a snow fort block form…and boots. By now, Brandon was interested in almost any form of boot. Rubber boots were the most exciting, but no one in his family owned a pair of those. But laying among a few ancient pairs belonging to his older sister was one pair of black insulated boots. They were nothing fun to look at…trimmed in black plastic, shafts of wrinkly nylon…but perhaps they could be used for something.

Brandon snagged the boots, which had taken on the heat of the attic, and carried them down to the comforts of climate control. The boots had a zipper on the inside of the leg. Brandon tipped his no-show sock into the boot and pushed his foot in. The boot made a satisfying “thmpf” as it accepted his foot, but just barely. The boot was snug, likely a hand-me-down from his brother that he never got to use himself since the last two winters had completely fizzled, snow-wise. Now they were on their way out. But maybe he could get a little enjoyment out of them before they could no longer be his.

Brandon liked the way the padded interior rubbed against his bare legs. After slipping the other on, he clomped a bit through the house, then decided to seek more exciting terrain in the woods beyond the back yard. Fortunately, Brandon’s house was far enough away from neighboring homes for anyone to ever see an adolescent boy enter the woods wearing winter boots on a 96° day. He shuffled through the dense dry leaves, the puffy boots sometimes brushing against each other making a high pitched “zip” sound and knocking back the bowing fronds of ferns that thickly covered parts of the forest floor. He found rotting logs and watched the boots as they dug at the damp, crumbly splinters. Even though the boots were imperially ugly, it was exciting to see the slippery nylon uppers stretch tight over his foot as he bent them over a pointy rock or fallen branch.

But what Brandon really wanted was mud. Their mountainside plot of treed land had nothing as exciting as a creek. There was a retention pond for storm runoff, but that was in an open area by the road and subject to passersby, and it was probably bone dry in the heat anyway. It was in sitting on a fallen tree and digging his heel into the loamy earth that Brandon suddenly realized he could make his own muddy terrain to satisfy the boots. Racing back to the house, he changed into his sneakers, then grabbed a shovel from the garage, tucking the now dusty boots under his arm.

For two hours, Brandon toiled at making a hole in the ground next to the fallen log, which was back in the woods far enough to be out of sight from the house. He chopped at roots and used to shovel to lever at shards of shale. He sorted the soft organic refuse from the rest, piling it up by the hole’s edge as he dug deeper. His excitement grew as he finally got to the point where his dirt-smudged knees now seemed level with the forest floor as he stood in the pit.

He returned to the house once more, this time returning with a bucket of water in one hand and a full watering can in the other. He stood at the lip of his hole and poured the contents bucket of in. The water sat at the bottom, refusing to sink in to the underlying clay, which is exactly what Brandon had hoped for. Using the shovel, the pushed the soft pile of earth back into the hole, the small mountain of soil and leaf debris pushing most of the water out to the sides. Then, with a final flourish, Brandon sprinkled his mud trifle with the watering can. By now, his youthful erection was already pushing through his gym shorts. He was practically quivering with anticipation as he kicked off his shoes and pushed his dusty socks into the soft, squishy winter boots. He stepped into the hole.

At first, nothing happened. Some damp leaves clung to clunky treads, but that was about it. Brandon slowly pumped his legs, his alternating weight forcing the boots into the sides of the hole. As they slurped downwards, a slimy wet mass of forest detritus swelled between his feet, collapsing outwards against the sides of his boots over the tops of his feet. Brandon was in heaven. He quickly discovered the suction of the mud, and the force he needed to apply with the tops of his feet against the insides of the snug boots to extract then again from his mini swamp.

He removed a foot and brought it to rest on the log, admiring the blackish paste that now smeared it’s way nearly to the top. It was beautiful to him, the way these boots—which had been intended for snow—were now being put through completely unexpected paces. Brandon grabbed the shovel and scooped the mush in the hole into a little mound. Then sitting on the log, he plunged both feet in, the sticky sounds mixing with the crunch and crackle of the plastic and foam of the boots as they were pushed and shoved and twisted and contorted with his feet.

Brandon’s two hour time investment was quickly appreciating. He rubbed his shorts, watching in unbridled bliss as the winter boots slowly became unrecognizable, more and more of the forest paste clinging to them. When he finally could take it no more, he pulled on the waistband of his shorts and let his eruption of sperm splatter in the hole and tops of his boots. Brandon could not believe that he had allowed himself to climax outdoors. He had only ever done so in the bathroom. It felt forbidden and dirty…and all the more delicious.

Even though the trek to that spot in the woods was long, the hole needed to be dug out again each time, and the cleanup of the boots and shovel required a lot of effort, Brandon found it worth it to repeat this exercise five or six more times that vacation. But when summer turned to fall and the first cold snap settled over the woods, Brandon’s mom gave the winter boots to a friend who had a son that was the right age to wear them. Brandon always wondered what paces that kid put the boots through, and if they were nearly as fun as his.