A Winter’s Tale of Incest and Love.
For a moment, words failed me. “I’m sorry, Sandy,” I tried. “It may all work out…. This probably happens to almost every couple at some point…. Not to downplay your experience…. I don’t want to say ‘It’s perfectly normal,’ but… “
Sandy gave me a look; then she drained her glass and poured in more of the sauvignon blanc.
A gust of wind slammed rain loudly against the picture window. Then a fair-sized branch flumped onto the front yard, too close to the cars in the driveway for comfort. I should check the basement, I thought, pouring myself a second glass of wine.
I pontificated. “I don’t think nature designed men to be sexually exclusive for any length of time. I’d bet women are built the same, but all their lives society trains them to suppress their sexuality. Keep sex scarce, then exchange exclusive sex rights for security. Maybe that made more sense in 1900…. Men don’t get that lifetime of training that going against nature requires.”
Okay, so maybe social anthropology isn’t my strong suit.
Sandy looked me in the eye. “Women have changed, Richard. Times have changed.”
“And for the better,” I agreed. “But people are changing at different rates and in different directions. Why don’t you ask Mom… if you ever succeed in getting to her place?”
Sandy looked incredulous. “Ask her what? If Dad ever cheated on her?”
“And how she handled it….”
“Are you crazy?”
“… If it happened. Maybe he didn’t. Look, Mom was married for, what, 45 years? You’re her daughter and a married woman. She loves you and cares about you–though don’t expect her to make that obvious. Dad is gone. Why wouldn’t she talk about it now if she thought it would help you?”
“I’ll keep it in mind as a possibility. If I ever get to see Mom this winter. I guess driving up to Vermont in February wasn’t that great an idea, huh?”
“No,” I agreed.
“In my defense, they predicted a little rain and snow… nothing like this.”
Sandy took another sip of wine. “I had to get away, Richard. Which sounds funny because we had just separated… Claude and I. Nobody knows that yet besides you. I just have to talk things through with someone I trust before things go any further. My best friend is off on a cruise. Somehow Mom seemed the best of the remaining options.”
We sat side-by-side on the sofa. I pulled Sandy’s shoulders to mine, hugged her, kissed the side of her head. “I’m glad you quit driving when you got to Hartford,” I said. “The flooding around here is bad enough. Up in Massachusetts they’re having a big snow, and Vermont is probably worse. I doubt you’d make it into Vermont today. Stay here and let Big Brother take care of you for a day or two.”
“I’d like that,” she said. We snuggled as rain pelted against the windows. The lights dimmed then recovered. Sandy brought her lips to my cheek and gave me a sisterly kiss.
Then she let out a long sigh. “But it’s not just Claude’s wandering eye, Richard. Or, more precisely, penis. That’s not even the most important problem, if you can believe that–just the easiest to put a name to. Does that make any sense to you?”
I nodded. Been there, done that. She continued.
“It’s true as far as it goes. The bigger problems aren’t so easy to grasp, let alone explain. Our marriage is just so not working, on so many levels. I’m exhausted from all the effort I’ve been making, trying to make it work. Claude probably feels the same way. I’m not saying everything is his fault. I don’t even blame him… much… for looking elsewhere. God knows, I wouldn’t mind having some comfort like that myself.”
“You’ve tried counseling?”
“Most recently, a year ago. We should probably give it one more try. I don’t know if that would fix anything. Maybe it would help to clarify things.”
I held Sandy tighter, stroked her long brown hair. At first she stiffened at the touch of her head, but soon she relaxed and gave herself to it, even placing a hand on my leg in response. In our childhood home, affection was seldom expressed verbally, even less often physically. Sandy and I might have hugged each other ten times in our entire lives–usually as congratulations for something or other; probably at each other’s wedding. And once, memorably, when she was home from college for Christmas. It took years for me to learn that it’s not enough just to feel affection. You have to communicate it, and to do that well you have to touch.
“I should call Mom,” she said, after a minute. “Tell her I’m safe…. Tell her not to wait up for me.” She sighed. “Tell her she was right about driving to Vermont this weekend…. She’ll want to speak to you too.”
“That’s fine.”
But first we spent five minutes in silence, just snuggling on the sofa, listening to the wind and the rain, listening to each other’s breathing, feeling the warmth of each other’s bodies. Getting in touch again with how much we cared about each other. She lived only a couple of hours away, but we hardly ever saw each other.
It’s funny: I had always thought of her as my sister, never quite thought of her as a woman. But today somehow I could see more of her. She was physically attractive, smart, complicated, warm, hurting, stressed. Needing a little understanding, sympathy; needing love. She was not only a sister but fully an adult human being in her own right. Amazing, the obvious things one can be oblivious to.
Sandy turned, smiled, squeezed my hand briefly. “I’d better call Mom,” she said. “How ’bout if I take you out to dinner afterwards?”
I looked out the window again. In weather like this, there should be plenty of tables available. We shouldn’t have any trouble with the roads if we stayed local.
“Sounds good,” I said. “Thai?”
Sandy smiled and nodded, rose, and headed towards the dining room to retrieve her phone. I admired her pretty, slim bottom as she walked away.
* * * * * 2
Bangkok Delight sounds like a massage parlor, but it is actually a nice little restaurant on Main Street. Sandy looked much more relaxed, almost happy, as we worked our way through our pad thai and pad see ew. We drank water, as we had decided to go out for a drink after dinner.
Sandy wanted to reminisce, not dwell on current problems. Naturally, she eventually came to The Night of the Neanderthal Big Brother. At least that put a smile on her face.
It was Christmas vacation, about 20 years ago. Sandy had come home from her freshman year at college; I had come home from graduate school. That night Mom and Dad were out late at a Rotary Club function or something. While I was enjoying some solitude in my old bedroom, Sandy was in the living room entertaining a guy named Ben, a former boyfriend from high school. I tried not to imagine the entertainment in detail as, in T-shirt and undershorts, I caught up on some back issues of Aviation Week.
From downstairs, the word “No” kept reaching my ears… with increasing volume and increasing frequency of repetition. “No, Ben… I said no!… Not tonight!… Get your… Ben, NO!”
I thought, Please, Ben, don’t make me get dressed, come downstairs, and cause a scene. Don’t make me act out a role every guy has learned from the movies and TV: Defender of the Maiden Sister’s Virtue. But Sandy’s protests kept getting more emphatic and louder, so I put on some trousers and Dockers and descended the stairs to the living room. Okay, here goes.
“Enough!” I shouted then dramatically pointed to the door. “Get out!” Ben, who was on the sofa, lying on top of my sister, turned his head and gave me a look, as if to say, “Who the hell let the Goon Squad into the house?” That ticked me off–probably because I half agreed with him. Fortunately, he was smaller and lighter than me. I managed to drag him over to the front door then gave him the best imitation of the bum’s rush I could manage. I scanned the room. All Ben’s clothes must have been connected to his body, however loosely, except his overcoat. I reopened the front door, tossed the coat after him, and closed and locked the door.
By now Sandy was sitting up on the sofa, pants still unbuttoned and unzipped, naked above the waist. This was the first good look I had ever had of her breasts. They were close to perfect–neither big nor small but just right for her frame, with a lovely complex shape. B-cup, maybe? Areolas brownish pink, the size of quarters; nipples thick and poking out invitingly. My sister looked both beautiful and amazingly sexy–in that sweet way that only the “girl next door” type can look when her clothes come off. No wonder Ben had trouble taking no for an answer.
“My hero,” she said, ambiguously. But then she stood, jiggling a little in the process. She approached, hugged me tight, chest-to-chest, and said, “Thank you.” I breathed easier as we hugged, stroking her hair, caressing her back. She gave every indication of enjoying our intimate though arguably innocent contact. Maybe more arguably than actually: she felt wonderful in my arms. Our embrace continued for a couple of minutes. Then we heard Dad’s car enter the driveway, and she quickly redressed.
Sandy swallowed a stir-fried snow pea, smiled, and brought the story to an end. “An evening we’ll always remember. The first time I showed my tits to my brother. And the last time anyone made an effort to save my virginity.” She giggled. “Even me.”
“‘Showed’?”
“I could have put my bra and blouse back on while you were seeing Ben to the door. I wanted to show you my body, Richard, wanted to share it with you. More than I wanted to share it with Ben. I know this sounds crazy and really warped–you being my brother and all. Look, I was a crazy mixed-up kid, like most 18-year-olds. I had just gone away to college, which makes you crazy enough, and I had just started taking the pill, just in case, and my hormones were going crazy from that too. In the dorm, I’m on this all-female floor, so I’m breathing estrogen with maybe a whiff of oxytocin for like nine hours a day for a whole semester….
“Plus I was in the final days of my virginity, and I knew it, and you know how stressful transitions are, even happy ones. And also I couldn’t decide who the lucky guy would be…. Actually, the first guy wasn’t so lucky. I think I had the most obstinate hymen in New England. That son-of-a-gun wouldn’t budge! It yielded at last, but first it put up one helluva fight. Straight out of The Old Man and the Sea–without the fishy smell, though, trust me. Even then, I stood for good personal hygiene, if little else…. It hurt, too!… Anyway, you actually did Ben a favor. My second guy had a much more pleasant experience having sex with me than the first guy did. The second guy was Ben.”
I couldn’t help smiling.
“I guess I shouldn’t be talking like this in public,” she reflected, “even if the place is named Bangkok Delight. But what do I care: I’m from out of town. Next time you take a girl out to dinner, though, you might want to go to that Mexican place down the street.”
“You’re my sister, and I love you, and you’d have to do a lot more than just talk ribald to make me embarrassed to be with you in public. Next time you’re in town I’m bringing you right back here and saying, “We’ll have our usual.”
Sandy smiled and took my hand. “I think I heard you say, ‘I love you.’ Aloud. In public.”
“So sue me.”
“I love you too, Richard. Lots.”
Had either of us ever said that before to each other? It’s possible, but I don’t remember it. Something important just happened. I smiled and squeezed Sandy’s hand.
“But on that fateful night… did you want me to intervene?”
“I wish I could answer that for you,” she said. “Look, today when I say no, I mean it. If I want it, I say yes. Very clearly. Back then, though, I was so confused and so–what’s the word?–mercurial. And my hormones were so out of whack, and I was jumping from one role I was playing to another. Probably that night I had no idea what I really wanted. Maybe I wanted someone else to take all the responsibility for my deflowering. At the moment I said no to Ben, I probably really did mean no… though possibly ten minutes later I would have voted yes. I’m not offering my earlier self as a role model for girls today, believe me….
“Look, you did absolutely the right thing, Richard, based on every bit of information you had. You were gallant and loving, and I love you for it… among other reasons. And no harm was done. Ben was uninjured apart from his dignity; his dream came true soon afterwards; he’s now entirely out of my life; and you and I have a wonderful story that we can chuckle over together forever.
“Plus,” she concluded, “despite our puritanical upbringing, I got a wonderfully sensuous hug, and you got to see my tits. In fact, if Dad and Mom hadn’t come home at that instant…”
Perhaps fortunately, the sentence was never completed. The waitress came to inquire about dessert, Sandy gave me a wink, and the moment passed. We decided to skip dessert, settle our bill, and move on.
* * * * * 3
My town still has a functioning, old-fashioned Main Street–not as prosperous or as crowded as it had been 50 or 100 years ago but still among the living. The Mulberry Bush Tavern was three blocks down Main from Bangkok Delight. The rain was lighter now though still coming down, turning to sleet in fact, but Sandy was in a good mood and wanted to walk. I put my arm around her waist as we went; she did the same and also leaned her head on my shoulder. With my outer arm I did my best with our umbrella. Everyone seeing us would think we were lovers.
“This is so simple,” Sandy said, as we passed the lingerie boutique. “With Claude, every word one of us speaks gets sifted for hidden meanings. Every remark feels like a dig. A random gesture or a look on your face can set off some deep-buried hurt in your mate that you didn’t even know existed–like a landmine…. Every ambiguous word or act gets interpreted in the most negative way–nobody gets or gives ‘benefit of the doubt.’… Was it like that with you and Wendy too?”
“The last year or two, yes.”
Sandy kept going. “Claude and I are absolutely unable to take anything that is said just at face value…. Communicating is Byzantine. It’s exhausting…. Living together was exhausting.” She took a deep breath of moist, cold air. “Tonight, with you, feels so simple, so clean… so normal.“
I gave her waist a squeeze. “There’s the Mulberry Bush,” I said.
“Richard, will you do me a favor?” she asked. “When we go inside, let’s be a couple… please?”
“You want to act like a couple?” I said. “Fine. Why not. I’m game.”
“I said ‘be.’ You said ‘act like.’ Claude and I can argue for hours about shades of meaning–but let’s not. Whatever verb you’re comfortable with I’ll accept.”
I collapsed the umbrella. “Let’s be a couple,” I said, holding the door open for her. She kissed me as she went through.
The Mulberry Bush was more crowded than I expected, and the music louder. We did manage to find a small, round table and two chairs to pull up to it. As I was hanging up our coats, the waitress came by, and Sandy ordered for us. I liked her choice: two mugs of a decent IPA they had on tap. We pulled our chairs close enough that we could talk over the music and the noise. Half the time Sandy’s hand rested on my lower thigh. From time to time I’d put my arm around her shoulders. We were both feeling comfortable being “a couple.”
After a while, when some uptempo song she liked started playing, Sandy stood and tried to coax me onto the dance floor. This was a problem: I dance poorly, and I know it, and I’m extremely self-conscious about it. An unattached young man nearby saw an opportunity and approached. I soon realized that neither of us guys knew what the proper protocol here was. I decided to make his life easier. “You’ll have to ask the lady,” I volunteered. “I don’t object.” He asked, and Sandy said yes.
They both danced well, especially Sandy. She moved her body to the music with gusto but also with grace. She looked like a lady, not a dervish–like a lady perfectly capable of glorious abandonment when she wanted but choosing not to go quite that far at the moment. She was wearing a bra; even so, her breasts jiggled and swayed beautifully in her clingy dress. She knew how to move her bottom, too–not crudely but still fetchingly. Several improper thoughts crossed my mind.
The song was followed by another fast number, and they danced again. Sandy’s cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkled, and again her body moved enticingly, both top half and bottom. Minutes later, when a slow song began, she squeezed her partner’s hand, kissed his cheek, ran back to our table and grabbed my hand.
“You can dance to a slow song with me, Richard. Up with you!” She was right, and I went with her to the dance floor.
It was a moony love song in 6/8 time, probably from back in Mom and Dad’s day. The lyrics were lame enough. The singer loves the surfer girl and wants to ride the waves with her forever and travel around with her in his “woody.” He keeps asking if she loves him too. Lyrics aside, the melody was nice enough, and the complex vocal harmonies kind of got to you. As I shuffled about the floor, I found in my arms just what the surfer dude desired: a woman I loved and who also loved me. My sister and I certainly had told each other that enough times tonight, possibly for the first time ever.
And as she had said out on Main Street, it all seemed so simple, so clean, so normal. No Byzantine effort required, no minefields to be crossed. We’ll just ride the surf together, Sandy, while our love would grow. Maybe the lyrics weren’t actually that bad. Maybe they spoke not to your intellect but to some irrational, subconscious level of longing and yearning.
As we danced, Sandy held me tight, clasping her chest against mine, caressing my back, a hand occasionally drifting down to my bottom. I did the same, my hand lingering longer below her waist. By the time the song changed key near the end, I was fighting back a tear or two. The world of the song–like the world of that sweet pretend-couple, Richard and Sandy–was so clean. So simple. So uncomplicated. So unlike the other world, of Sandy and Claude, or the vanished world of Richard and Wendy. If only life would stay so clean and simple. If only love would.
As the music ended, we stood and looked at each other for a moment, still embracing. Sandy’s eyes were slightly moist. She gave me a sweet kiss on the lips. Then she said, “Take me home with you, surfer boy.”
* * * * * 4
My street was black. Not demographically: black as in no streetlights, no porch lights, no ceiling fixtures shining through kitchen windows. Farther down the street a gasoline-powered generator whined. “Shit,” I said, eloquently.
I guided Sandy to the front door, ushered her inside, and retrieved a flashlight. “Have a seat,” I invited, training the beam on the sofa. Candles were easily accessible in the living room, butane lighters as well. I had lived here long enough. Soon the room had a dim, candle-lit glow. After hanging up our wet coats, I joined my sister on the sofa.
“Very romantic,” she said, ironically.
“Alas, we can’t have Mozart playing softly in the background,” I apologized.
I opened the power company’s app on my phone. After a little typing and swiping, I learned as much as they were going to tell me. “They know about it,” I reported. “It’s pretty localized. They’re predicting less than 12 hours for the outage, so figure 18 at most.”
“Do they say what the problem is?”
“No, they never do. Probably the same thing you get in Westchester County. A car skidded into a pole and knocked out a transformer. A branch fell and took down the lines. A tree toppled and took down the lines. Welcome to Connecticut. The water heater will keep working, so you can still have a hot shower if and when you like. The gas furnace won’t operate without electricity, but that woodstove over there will keep us alive. We’ve got flashlights and candles galore.”
Sandy smiled. “I’ll survive. I’ve had a few adventures already today. What’s one or two more?”
“‘Or two’?”
“Just thinking aloud,” she said. “What do you think about sleeping arrangements?”
“The guest room currently lacks a bed,” I explained. “Plan A was to give you my bedroom. The sofa beneath your pretty little bottom–not that I noticed–unfolds into a bed: I was going to take that. But let’s do Plan B instead: we’ll fire up that woodstove, you can have the sofa bed, and I’ll take the bedroom.”
“Without any heat?”
“I’ll bundle up.”
Sandy gave me a look. “We’ll talk about it when the time comes,” she said.
* * * * * 5
An hour later the woodstove was crackling, the room was warm, the sofa bed was unfolded and made up, the bedroom bed had extra blankets, we had each freshened up in the bathroom, and several more candles were burning. The two of us sat on the sofa bed, facing each other, shoeless, same clothes. The coffee table, along the side of the bed, held cheese, crackers, grapes, a carafe of vintage port, and our two glasses. We were feeling mellow and perhaps closer to each other than we had ever felt. Today our relationship had evolved extremely quickly, though; and while my heart, soul, and some lower regions were saying, “Full speed ahead,” my head was saying, “Let’s stop and process things a bit.”
“We do make a good couple,” I began.
“Mmmmmm.”
“I think we crossed a few boundaries today.”
“Didn’t we. Thank you for that. Too many boundaries constrain my life…. Want to cross a couple more before morning?”
“Sandy…”
She smiled and took my hand. “I hear you, Richard. I’m just teasing you a little. Yes, we’ve sailed full-speed into uncharted waters, haven’t we. And you do not want me to get hurt. And I feel the same about you.”
She kissed me then continued. “But we didn’t start loving each other today, Richard. We always did. Today we just stopped denying it. Incidentally, you were right this afternoon… about girls being trained all their lives to deny nature. But not just girls: boys too. Trained to deny not just sex but love too. Don’t affectionately touch the people you love; don’t say, ‘I love you’ to them; ideally, don’t even realize how much you love them. That’s how we were brought up, isn’t it? That’s how we do it in Vermont… north of Bennington, anyway…. ‘Taciturn,’ that’s us…. Tell me, in fourth grade, how would your schoolmates react if they ever saw you kissing your sister?”
“Oh, God, I’d never live it down. I’d be lucky if they didn’t call me anything worse than ‘faggot.’ I can hear them taunting, ‘Ritchie loves his sis-ter! Ritchie loves his sis-ter!'”
“The ultimate insult for a boy: ‘loves.’ And in self-defense you’d shout back, ‘I do not!'”
“Yes. Not now, but then, yes.”
“Exactly. What kind of sick culture produces children like that? Like us…. I’m picking on Vermont, but I doubt it’s that much different in Ohio, Texas, you name it…. We’re damaged, Richard…. Even sane people have enough trouble keeping a marriage going. Is it any surprise that neither of us could?
She looked like she was on the verge of something unpleasant: crying? screaming? collapsing? I moved to her and hugged her firmly, which seemed to reduce her agitation. Richard, the Human Xanax. Sandy continued to reflect, though, if somewhat more calmly.
“That night you yanked Ben off my body… There I was, looking like a total slut… pants unzipped, breasts exposed… and you didn’t yell or scream at me, didn’t call me a whore…. You just silently hugged me and stroked my hair and caressed my back…. I was so grateful, and I could feel how much you loved me and, I guess for the first time, I realized how much I love you…. But of course I was well trained not to tell you any of that… not to come to you, later, and stroke your hair and caress your back and say, ‘Thank you again.’ Certainly not to say, ‘I love you too, Richard. Every bit as much as you love me.'”
By now we were both getting a little choked up. I stretched and retrieved a box of Kleenex. We both blew our nose. Very romantic, as my sister would say. What next?
Reaching behind her, Sandy pulled down the zipper of her dress. She eased the dress top forwards, pulling her arms from the sleeves. Then she unhooked her bra and shrugged that off too. Once again, she was naked above the waist in my presence. Her breasts were much as I remembered, from two decades back–perhaps just a touch larger now, with a touch more sag. Still a perfect size and perfect shape, still with those beautiful thick nipples of pinkish brown. “Nothing you haven’t seen before,” she said. “Right?”
“That’s true.”
“And I’ve seen you shirtless many times,” she said, unbuttoning my shirt. Then she placed my two hands on her breasts and brought her hands to my chest. I fondled her areolas and beyond. No man could have resisted doing that, though probably I should have tried harder. She fondled my chest too, then brought her lips to mine and gave me a kiss that was a fair distance from “sisterly.”
“Sandy…”
“You’re wondering what I’m doing and where this is going. The answer to the first is, I am addressing my crying need to give and receive physical affection with a man I love. At the moment, only one or two men qualify. Second: where is this going? I can only guess.”
She moved her face very close to mine, moved a hand from my chest to my lower thigh, and caressed me, sliding her hand gently back and forth, gradually working her way upwards. I wanted her both to stop and not stop.
She gave me a long, sweet, loving kiss that practically took my breath away. I couldn’t help responding in the same spirit. Somewhere in the middle of the kiss, her hand moved over my trousers to my cock and gently caressed that. Then she spoke again. “If my guess where this is going is a good one, and we do wind up in the place I guessed, can I imagine any real problems with being there? Answer: no. Can you? Keep in mind that marriage is not in the cards–I already have more husbands than I can deal with gracefully–and I’m on the pill.”
Sandy rose to her knees and worked her dress over her head and off. The moments that took allowed some more doubts, or maybe sanity, to work their way back into my head. For a few seconds, though, I was distracted. She was now wearing only earrings, elastic-top stockings, and panties–low-cut white cotton briefs. She looked stunningly lovely and wholesome and female and incredibly desirable. At that instant I wanted her more than I could even believe. But then my mind recovered from its near-stall.
“Sandy, we’re brother and sister!”
“Nobody’s perfect.”
“There’s a name for what you’re talking about.”
“Love?” she said. “Physical display of affection? Satisfaction? Communion? Consummation?”
“Keep guessing.”
She didn’t appreciate my sarcasm. She shifted into hyper-rational mode. “There are all sorts of un-useful but scary-sounding names one can haul in to scare people away from doing beautiful and appropriate things,” she replied. “I think you’ve been smart enough not to fall for that ruse, so far. Who was the gorgeous Black girlfriend you used to have?”
“Winona.”
“When Winona first opened her legs to you, did you say, ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that. That would be miscegenation‘?… After Wendy moved out and you took up with quote ‘some little blonde thing’ unquote–that’s how Mom described her–did you say, ‘I won’t touch her until the divorce is final: that would be adultery’? How about self-abuse and onanism? Did those scary-sounding but bullshit names ever lead you to take a cold shower instead of jerking off?… In three cases the girl loves you and wants you, and you love the girl. Tell me why incest is so much worse than miscegenation and adultery!”
I couldn’t begin to answer that. Logically, she was entirely right. If logic has anything to do with sex, which I doubt. I suppose I could have come back with, “Well, in our case it’s incest and adultery”–but even I could see how lame that one was. What I wanted to say was, “Sandy, you can’t badger a man into making love to you.” But I didn’t say that either. Her body now was wracked with sobs, and my heart broke. I took off my shirt–it was unbuttoned and untucked, anyway–and eased her down onto the bed with me, hugged her, chest to chest. As she cried, I caressed her hair once more, caressed her back once more, told her over and over how much I love her, how much she means to me; listened as she told me the same.
I understood her pain. Enduring many months of a marriage going down the tubes. Her best friend unavailable, her sole living parent unreachable. A long, stressful drive today and then an emotional-roller-coaster ride with climbs and drops that just keep getting larger and steeper–a ride that still shows no sign of ending. Plus a power failure and the prospect of a night alone in a strange bed.
On top of all those stress factors, she doesn’t need a sudden, huge change in a family relationship, right? She definitely doesn’t need to cross a line that could make her a social outcast–doesn’t need to violate a major taboo. On the other hand, she doesn’t need any more rejection either, or any more men in her life unable to give her the intimacy she craves. What does she need now? I realized I wasn’t even close to understanding.
* * * * * 6
She rose, took a candle to the bathroom, and closed the door. Eight or ten minutes later she returned, naked, looking fresh, composed, and relaxed, and smelling faintly of Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap. By then I too had settled down and mentally regrouped.
She sat on the bed and smiled sweetly. I smiled back and sat up too. As Sandy ran her hand over my chest I stroked her thigh. Our caresses felt like friendly affection more than foreplay–which was fine.
“Another glass of port?” I offered.
“Thanks, I’m fine.”
“You have beautiful labia.”
“Thank you…. Do I get to see your cock and balls?”
“Okay.” I removed the rest of my clothes. Sandy’s hand gently explored my genitals. We were still being playful, but there was no hiding the fact that I was enjoying her touch.
She rendered her assessment. “You’ll do,” she said.
“Yeah, that’s about the best anyone says. At least you like me enough to leave your panties on my bathroom counter.”
“Not just my panties,” she teased, “my earrings. I don’t leave my earrings behind in guys’ bathrooms as readily as I do my panties.” We both smiled, but then Sandy got serious. “Richard, I’m sorry about the pressure I put on you. Let’s just be with each other… and do whatever both of us feel comfortable with. We’ll stop if one of us starts feeling uncomfortable. Okay?”
It was my turn to apologize. “I’m sorry I was so unreceptive. I tend to balk at any new idea. But you were right about everything. This is not a time to start running away because we’re afraid some stranger will call us a nasty name. Forgive me?”
She answered nonverbally. Our lips met, then we were lying down again, both of us naked, our bodies tangled together.
In part to see just what I would do in this utterly new situation, I allowed myself to live in the moment. It didn’t take many moments before I committed wholeheartedly.
Our kisses quickly became less brotherly and sisterly. Sandy’s tongue probed my mouth, and mine explored hers. As I fondled those beautiful breasts, Sandy made little sounds of appreciation–growing louder when I replaced my hand with my mouth. I would have fallen in love with those thick, stiff nipples–now even stiffer, thicker, and longer–if I hadn’t already been in love with all of her. She sucked on my nipples too, but we had to stop after a minute: that was bringing me too close to climax.
By the time I moved a hand to her pussy she was wet. She opened her legs wide to give me all the access I wanted, and my fingers explored, spreading her thick moisture all around. Her clitoris was very sensitive: I learned to be gentle and indirect with that, touching the back of the hood rather than the little button starting to poke out from it.
Not surprisingly, from time to time through our intimate encounter, a voice would enter my head urging me to cease and desist. It was the voice of reason, perhaps, or my conscience or superego or maybe just a stray neurosis from my sexually repressed youth. Whatever it was, its message was clear: You can’t do this to your sister! The message came as no surprise. The surprise was–between nags from the voice–how natural and right our lovemaking felt.
So simple, so clean, so normal.
Besides, it’s hard to feel much guilt and shame when your body is basking in pleasure and your heart is rejoicing and your soul–and most of your mind–is at peace. The naysaying voice finally gave up and, like an old general, faded away.
My sister and I were new to each other–at least when it came to sex. One thing I had learned from Wendy: if you’re not sure what your lover wants at any given moment, try asking.
“I want to taste you, Sandy,” I said. “Which do you prefer: 69 or one at a time?” Turns out we both like the latter. Supine, she spread her legs and I moved in-between. Wanting to see what I had been caressing, I spread her outer labia and looked, gently touching this and that–all of it soft, warm, and very moist–with a fingertip. How simple a pussy looks, usually, when a woman is standing. How complicated it looks when she reclines and spreads her legs for you and allows you to explore.
I brought my nose down and inhaled deeply, loving the complex, slightly musty scent of my beautiful, aroused lover. I detected here too a hint of peppermint. At the Bangkok Delight, Sandy had joked about her commitment to personal hygiene–joked but not lied. But I much preferred her own scent mixture to Dr. Bronner’s. She tasted wonderful too.
My sister’s mound of Venus was hairless–not my favorite style, but I wasn’t going to let that ruin my evening. Some women like it when you run your fingers through their pubic hair during cunnilingus, maybe also tug gently on the hairs near the labia. I like it too. But with Sandy I contented myself with massaging her mound a bit, before returning my hands to those beautiful breasts.
Her first orgasm came quickly. She was quiet about it, but the mechanical signs were hard to miss: hips bucking, hands pressing my head tight against her pussy, then deep, slow breaths, a little smile, and a soft, “That was nice.”
“Care for another?”
“Oh, God, I want everything, and I have no idea what order I want it in. Everything-all-at-once, if possible. Though perhaps even you aren’t quite good enough to do that.”
“Not anymore,” I kidded. “Ten years ago, sure.”
“What would you like, Richard?”
“Everything.”
“Everything?”
“Yes.”
“It’s yours.”
* * * * * 7
Sandy eased me onto my back then approached from the side on forearms and knees. Extending her tongue, she bathed my half-erect cock in warm moisture, kissed it everywhere, then bathed it again. Her tongue traced the borderline between glans and shaft, then rapidly flicked the notch. By this point my cock was well beyond half-erect. I reached out an arm and caressed her bottom and the cleft between her outer labia. Her tongue returned to bathing my shaft.
“Sandy,” I said, “you do that very well.”
“I meant to warn you I’m not entirely a virgin,” she teased. “Did I remember to do that?”
“I think you mentioned it in passing, back at the restaurant.”
“Are you sorry?”
“I’ll adjust.”
She helped me adjust by taking my cock deep into her mouth and sucking hard, meanwhile caressing my balls with her hand. My toes curled. Possibly my eyes crossed. Somewhere along the line, this woman had learned to give a serious blowjob. Sometime in the future I might invite the master to tell me about her apprenticeship. Not tonight, though. Tonight only two people in the world mattered in the least.
“Sandy, stop now!” I was on the verge of climax.
She did and gave me a smile. “I’m flattered,” she said. “But why don’t you men just learn to have four or five orgasms in under an hour, like we women can do?”
I teased back. “Why don’t you women learn to do a job right the first time? Then you won’t have to go back and do the job over three or four more times.”
“Do you want to argue with me or do you want to fuck me?”
“I want to fuck you.”
“What’s keeping you?”
We threw ourselves into each other’s arms, kissing madly while rolling about the bed. I loved the feel of that beautiful, slim body against mine, those wonderful breasts against me, those big, hard nipples pressing against my chest. I moistened some fingers and brought them to her pussy. After only a few strokes the labia parted and her own moisture flowed. As we kissed, her hands caressed my body, too: buttocks, chest, back, face. Knowing I was close to coming, she kept away from my more sensitive zones. What a delight: a woman who understands how to make love to a man.
After a few more minutes of play and a good deal of rolling about, I found myself on my back. Sandy climbed on top, a leg on either side of my body, her weight on her shins and knees. We looked at each other, and the playful mood suddenly changed. We both understood what was happening. Sandy took the lead.
Keeping her eyes locked on mine, she stroked my chest with a hand. “Do you want to play missionary?” she asked.
“We’re fine,” I said.
“We’re pretty close to that place I guessed about. How do you feel?”
“Let’s go there together. How do you feel?”
“Transitions are stressful, Richard, as I said–even happy ones. This is a happy one. I’m a little scared, but I’m ready. More than ready.” She reached down and held my cock by its base, adjusted the position of her body. “Remind me again how much you love me,” she said.
I began. Halfway through the first sentence, she was upon me, and in an instant I had committed both adultery and incest. Adultery technically but incest absolutely. Sandy too. It felt wonderful.
A soft glove of moist warmth enveloped my penis. Then Sandy was lying on me, chest to chest, legs upon legs, our genitals still together, my arms around her as we kissed. It’s funny: we weren’t kissing desperately, passionately, like lovers consumed by lust. We were kissing romantically, basking in each moment rather than straining towards a climax. But a climax–at least mine–couldn’t be far away.
Sandy pulled her head back enough to look at my face. I examined hers. She looked happy. She moved her head in to give me a quick kiss then pulled back a few inches again. In the middle of our first fuck, she was feeling playful again. I was too. She smiled.
“I guess I interrupted you in the middle of a sentence, and you lost your train of thought,” she teased. “I’m working on not doing that so much.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’m used to it. Wendy would never let me finish a sentence, either.”
“Fuck Wendy.”
“Never again. Fuck you.”
“Do!”
We resumed our lovemaking. That pause in our passion had brought my body down from the edge of orgasm, so a few more minutes of sex were possible. I don’t think my performance as a lover was outstanding that night, but I don’t think that bothered either of us. Somehow, Sandy came too–either just before I did or just after.
Like most people, I don’t actually know what it feels like to be hit by a freight train. Now, after my orgasm, I have at least a rough idea. Though I can’t say any pain was involved.
Eventually I recovered my ability to do things like focus my eyes, breathe normally, and speak. Sandy declined my gallant offer to bring her, orally, up to her alleged usual quota of orgasms. She was happy as-is. What we both wanted to do next was spend the night in each other’s arms.
While she tidied up in the bathroom I poked the woodstove, put in more firewood, and snuffed out the candles except the big one on the coffee table. Then it was my turn in the bathroom. Soon the last candle was out, and my sister and I, both naked, were snuggling under the covers of the sofa bed in a very dark room.
Sandy was still feeling playful. “Thank you for a lovely evening,” she deadpanned.
“The pleasure was all mine,” I politely replied.
A minute later, a further thought occurred to me. “Here’s our mistake. Outside the Mulberry Bush you proposed, ‘Let’s be a couple,’ and I agreed. Somehow, afterwards, neither one of us remembered to say, ‘Okay, we can stop now.'”
I sensed she was smiling though I couldn’t see it. “Too late now, Luv,” she said, running a hand over my thigh. “Maybe next time….”
I awoke to sunshine and familiar noises: the deep hum of the refrigerator, the rumble of the gas furnace, the rattly whir of the fan blowing hot air through the ductwork, coffee dripping into the pot. And some unfamiliar noises: of someone in the kitchen washing last night’s dishes as the radio played softly in the background.
* * * * * 8
During a final round of counseling, Sandy and Claude saw that their next task was to divorce with as little bloodshed as possible and as much charity as they could muster. Sandy stayed in Westchester County during the process–she had leased an apartment, and her job was there–and joined me in Connecticut on weekends. Claude retained the boat, two of the three cars, and the house in Mount Kisco–which turned out to have a ridiculously high market value. Sandy received a very large check representing her half of the couple’s assets. She put a few thousand in the bank and the rest in long-term securities. When her company finally agreed to transfer her to its Hartford office, she moved in with me.
The former guest room now has a bed and some female-appropriate furniture and is officially known as “Sandy’s bedroom.” The bed is a cheap one. We figured it wouldn’t see much use–except for sex occasionally, when we felt like a change of scenery. Although we furnished the room mainly to deceive visitors, the extra drawer space and the mirror did prove useful.
Mom, hoping for a grandchild, keeps encouraging us to stop pining for our lost mates and start dating again. We both promised we will when we feel ready. Alas, grandchildren are unlikely to brighten Mom’s remaining years. Consanguinity aside, Sandy is feeling that she’s getting a bit old for pregnancy, and maybe we’re both getting a little old for raising our first child. There’s also the question of what we’d put on the birth certificate under Name of father. “Unknown” would cause as many problems as it solves.
Our friends and neighbors are getting used to seeing us, brother and sister, at social events together, as though we were the last of the Victorians. The most clever ones believe they have figured out the truth of our household: my sister and I both must be closeted homosexuals, just sharing a residence for convenience while conducting our secret lives elsewhere. They always suspected that about me. Poor Wendy!
With our two incomes and simple tastes, Sandy and I live comfortably. Besides, the most important things we have can’t be purchased for any amount of money. And some of my favorite things in our house cost us almost nothing–like that kitschy little plaque Sandy found at a yard sale and put in her pretend bedroom. It reads, “Catch a wave and you’re sittin’ on top of the world.” And unlike the plaintive singer during our first dance, I have an answer to my question. Do you love me, little surfer girl? Yes, she says. Yes, I do love you, Richard. Every bit as much as you love me. Yes.
