Chapter 2

We played our “naked games” — Cavemen, Mowgli/wolves in the jungle, and other variations like “African tribe” (there was a whole shelf of old National Geographics in the rec room, ‘nuff said) regularly for a long time. I’m honestly astounded that we were never caught; the risk was obviously higher once we began shedding all of our clothes. Mom mostly left us to our own devices in the rec room for hours at a time (and Dad was always at work when we were playing), but we had a couple of close calls where she came down without warning while we were totally naked and we had to hide behind the sofa or drape ourselves in blankets and try not to look or sound too suspicious. Looking back, I really have to wonder if Mom didn’t know darn well that we were running around in the nude down there. If nothing else clued her in, we were pretty careless about leaving our clothes strewn on the floor when we stripped down, and it’s hard for me to believe that she never noticed that, while we were hiding, giggling, behind the sofa, all our clothing, including our underwear, was lying out in plain sight. One would think she’d have put two and two together. But then again, she’d already tacitly given approval to near-nudity when she caught us in just our underwear bottoms the first time we played Mowgli and didn’t say anything. Maybe she was too embarrassed to confront us; or alternatively, maybe she thought it was cute and harmless and that she would harm our psyches by speaking up? The 70’s were a weird decade. In any case, she never once let on that she had any idea about the “naked games,” and in retrospect, she interrupted us so rarely that I have to believe that, if she didn’t know, she didn’t want to know.

Anyway, for a long time, the games could have been, perhaps, be described as “cute and harmless.” Regardless of which one we chose on a given day, the point was always simply to be naked with each other, to get an eyeful of each other’s bodies, to look closely, to breathe in each other’s scents, and sometimes to touch tentatively, but it never led to anything one could conclusively label sexual activity. Nevertheless, both my sister and I were unquestionably getting sexually aroused — very much so — from these games. I would be hard most of the time and, while the signs in a girl are a little more subtle, in retrospect I recognize them all. She’d get slightly out of breath and slightly flushed all over; her nipples would get stiff and her vulva would look puffy and swollen. After we were done, I’d invariably go to my bedroom and masturbate. I don’t know what, if anything, my sister did to relieve herself. But I think we both had an inkling that we could unlock untold delights if we took the games in the direction of more intimate contact; it was just that neither of us felt self-assured enough to take the initiative and step them up. We’d crouch on our hands and knees with my face an inch from her vulva, and what I really wanted to do was dive in and start licking wildly, but instead I’d satisfy myself with staring and breathing in the thick scent. We’d lie next to each other, running our hands all over each other’s bodies but generally avoiding more than incidental contact with the genitals. Sometimes we’d even come up with an excuse for me to lie on top of her, my penis pressed between her thighs and my belly, feeling all sorts of urges; but it didn’t go further than that, even though I sensed there were ways it could go further, wanted it to go further, and I instinctively knew my sister felt the same way.