Less than a year after I was born, my father got caught drug dealing and was sent up for ten plus years.

My mother (understandably) availed herself of the divorce option.

I was still a baby and had no knowledge of this for years yet to come, but my mother found and married a young black man who proved to be a soulmate, a devoted stepfather, businessman, and lover.

Within a year and a half, mom had my sister Tianna, whose perfect coffee complexion was a stark contrast to my Irish iridescent whiteness.

But we had no problem with being half brother and half sister. (Shit! We had no problem being brother and sister until we found out differently.) As a matter of fact, when we were actually sat down and given those details (I was almost eleven - she was nine), our only disappointment was that we weren't told earlier.

We had always been brother and sister as far we were concerned, but the realization that my birth father was soon scheduled to get out of jail still gave me pause. I didn't particularly care to meet him (other than the curiosity of seeing what he looked like); but fate precluded his seeing me because he got knifed to death in prison. All I got to see of him was a cutaway photo showing just his face (at the morgue).

Naturally, for a short time there was a disruption while I was given space to assimilate these new revelations in my life.

Only Tianna and her girlish charm had access to my inner thoughts, not because I was in any way despondent about a father I had never known, but because my mom should have told us about him earlier.

Us. Tianna and me. And it led to other things.

One night, Tianna saw me staring, not at her, but right through her! My eyes were glazed with thoughts and I just happened to be looking in her direction. I didn't even realize she was there.

But she came right up to me and said that this was the first time I made her feel uncomfortable, my staring like that.

I blinked twice and and asked the perfunctory, "Huh?"

When Tianna realized I had been day dreaming, she softened her tone and asked me what I was thinking.

I told her, "I don't know if I'm ready to be a 'mick' now. They told me I was adopted and that I still can legally use the last name 'Allen', but my born surname was McShane."

"So?" asked Tianna, not knowing what I was thinking.

So I told her, "I hate sitting in the front row in school all the time. Those bastards are constantly bombing us with junk from the back of the room. Mom and dad told me (if I really wanted) that I could use my old dad's last name (McShane) when I get out of grade school.

"So, why don't you?" suggested Tianna innocently.

"I didn't want to hurt YOUR feelings - I hope we can continue to be like brother and sister," I responded.

(We were still too young to understand the minutia of the legalities - that adoption only meant for name and responsibility - we thought that my being adopted meant Tianna and I were no longer siblings!)

When we hugged (and we held this particular hug for a while), I felt something I had never before felt. Tianna was sporting a couple of premature "bumps" on her chest. Futhermore, I could feel a certain shudder in her body, and needless to say, the rubbing alone would've given me a woody, but the closeness of Tianna (who was no longer my sister in my uninformed mind), engendered a purely physical response.

Now Tianna felt the heat of my growth and our hug morphed into a kiss - no tongue - just lips to lips.

[It's funny how our inner psyche alerts us to the fact that we might be doing something we want kept private, and that's what broke our clinch.]

Over the next several weeks, Tianna and I began exploring each other in private, discovering completely different physical specimens and enjoying the sight, touch, and finally taste of one another, right down to discovering that age old number without knowing what it was called, yet.

But before either of us could decide to try the next step - we still weren't sure how at this point - we were caught in a clinch by mom and given hell for it. Later, dad and mom gave us the speech, but warned us against ever again exploring each other.

When Tianna retorted that we weren't brother and sister anymore, our father lifted his hand (as if to give her a backhand slap), I leapt to her defense and would have caught the blow, but dad was just cocking his arm as a reaction (ala Ralph Kramden). But I explained that I was the one who told Tianna we weren't brother and sister, for that is the way we understood it.

A new speech - and the details this time - corrected all our misconceptions.

Tianna and I stayed real close, but at arm's length, until I graduated high school and went to college.

I was a so-so soccer player my first year (not a starter), but I was persuaded to try out for the football team in my sophomore year because of my long kicks in soccer (they play seasons at the same time so I could only choose one).

I made the team as starting place kicker and punter.

Well, what a great decision THIS turned out to be! I didn't know the football team had first dibs on the cheerleaders, as it were. I must have attended eight parties where the sex was either freely exchanged or performed in groups! I couldn't get enough.

By the following season, I couldn't wait to see the newest batch of cheerleaders. I had seen a few of them in class and fully clothed, they gave me wood!

Several of them also pledged sororities and that's where the steady pussy came from - it became a (voluntary) hazing ritual. The starting eleven on offense got to pork cheerleaders. There were twelve cheerleaders, six of them new.

Our quarterback was "all conference" in his junior year, and this year he was elected captain of the team. His first act was to single me out for my place kicking and announce, "This year, we consider Gerry McShane one of the starting twelve! [applause] AND, we just happen to have to new cheerleader who is pledging Lambda Nu."