Back in high school I used to pal around with Jeff and Paul, a couple guys who lived in the neighborhood. We rode our bikes downtown to get a burger or ice cream, or shot baskets, or made little sailboats out of whatever materials we could find and raced them on one of the little ponds in the neighborhood. The undeveloped land around the ‘hood being a marsh.

Sometimes, my sister, Lisa, used to hang around with us. Jeff and Paul didn’t always want her around, but I always “stood up.” Saying that either she comes or I don’t come. At other times they got a little bit too much “like boys” for her and I had to negotiate everything back down to a lower intensity level. It was just really a continuation of the dynamic that we had had ever since the first day I walked with her to school and our father said that, “since she was a girl,” it was my job to take care of her and make sure that she was safe.

Now, like so many other– probably all– boys, I discovered masturbation. Something I rather enjoyed doing at night after the lights were turned out. I didn’t really at that time imagine that Lisa was masturbating too, over in her room. Mind you, it’s not something I didn’t think she should have been doing. It just wasn’t something that I considered that she might be doing.

We were very close as siblings and would sometimes sit and snuggle up as we watched television together– we both loved horror movies. Sometimes Lisa would get freaked out by the weather. Or more often by something we had watched on television– which often overlapped, have you ever noticed the prevalence of storms in horror movies? Not wanting to appear to be a baby to our parents, she would come to see me in order to get back into a calmer state of mind.

Sometimes this was after I had begun but before I head completed pleasuring myself. While it was an interruption, and a bit of an imposition, she was my sister after all. It was my duty as her brother to make sure that she was safe– which included not having nightmares during the night because we had watched some horror film, probably one I had chosen. Taking care of Lisa was more important to me than pleasuring myself.

She would cuddle up into me, sometimes put her back tight up against my front so that we were like spoons in the kitchen drawer. She normally wore a pair of panties and a long flannel sleeping shirt. When she came into my room and snuggled up to me I would be wearing a pair of pajamas, but I guess you could still feel the stiffness of my erection or semi-erection, because sometimes we ended up talking about that. Joking about how much control I had– or did not have– over that part of my body.

One summer after school had ended I took notice of Wendy at our neighborhood pool. She was our age but really developed, with a bubble butt and large breasts that didn’t really fit in her swimsuit very well. When she dived off the diving board into the water her breasts would usually escape and she’d have to pull her top back up before exiting the water.

Years earlier I had been given a pair of swimming goggles, which I never really cared for. But after noticing how Wendy was always repositioning her top. I decided to start wearing them, I also always made sure I was somewhere that I could see her bare breasts as she entered the water and they sprang free.

A few days later, I chatted Wendy up at the side of the pool. I’m not sure why she was more interested in talking to me than anyone else, but I wasn’t looking a gift horse in the mouth. Lisa, who would be playing with her friends at the pool, or Jeff and Paul, would come over and tease me every once in a while. But that didn’t really matter, almost nothing mattered. Because I had a really cute girl who was interested in me.

Cute but a little bit crazy, or maybe a whole lot of crazy, I wasn’t paying attention to negatives. We’d go to the roller skating rink, just like at the swimming pool it wasn’t really a date, it was us showing up in the same place at the same time. Wendy was a little bit possessive, and incessantly talking about herself. She didn’t really like me to be around other girls. But was required to make a reluctant exception for Lisa because she knew that if I was forced to choose ... well, I had to go home.

I probably heard it elsewhere before, but Lisa warned me. There is a lot of truth to the idea that when you are dating somebody the world sees as more dateable or mateable than you are, you end up with a power differential in the relationship. I was beginning to question a lot of my own internal beliefs. Because Wendy was constantly suggesting that I’d be happier doing something different than what I had originally decided to do.