Chapter 11: Dry Humpin'

Like so many of the good things in our lives, we take them for granted. That was certainly true for me in my family. I took them and their love for granted, for that is the way it always was. I didn't think much about it, if at all. It wasn't something I had to work for so I didn't give it any conscious thought.

That taking-for-granted was particularly true with my sister. Like my parents, there was never a time in my life when she wasn't there, so I was hardly grateful for them or her... at least not then. Because we had an active sibling rivalry and because I was the younger, I often lost. So, if you were to have asked me what I thought about Jean, I suppose I might have answered that I didn't think about her at all, except to wish she might immigrate to Saturn or some equally distant and hostile place.

Yet the vagaries of my developing youth suddenly moved me from a totally self-centered, largely insensitive and unaware young man to some marginally more mature stance of appreciation for the goodness and beauty in my life.

I had gone from being mostly unaware of Jean to that tingling, hypersensitive consciousness where I thought of little else. There was not a day that passed that I'd not thought of her, of her kindness and her gentleness, and yes, if the truth is known, of her erotic sexiness.

I frequently dreamed of her, usually erotic, and it often waked me with an intense, near-painful hard-on. Add to that my walking-around, day-dream state and you can see how I was preoccupied with her. Dazed might be a better description.

It was almost too much. I didn't know the first thing about handling the intensity of these feelings, so I did that which I'd always done so well when I was in doubt. Emotionally bobbing and weaving, I tried not to show my feelings -- those feelings that were bubbling and about to overflow. Not that there were "downer" feelings... not at all. They were just powerful and new. I was confused.

In the days and then weeks that followed our last unplanned and largely uncontrolled sexual encounter, my sister and I had both pulled back a little. There was no emotional "badness" connected with this; we did it comfortably, without conscious decision as we had done in some reflexive manner several times in the past. There was something almost moth-and-flame-like in our behaviors. Perhaps governed more by our hind brains, we were pulled toward each other, longing, and in some ill-defined way, hungry for each other. Of late, we often fell, unplanned and unanticipated, out-of-control, into a heightened sexual awareness and more, into a sexual connection.

This frightened us. And it excited us. Neither found the paradox puzzling. We were terribly attracted to each other, emotionally, lovingly and now, with a sexual ferocity that simply frightened us. So, in a silent acknowledgment of that fear, we'd stepped back just a little. Oh, not so you'd notice it around the house, for we continued our open-for-business-as-usual banter and interaction. Yet, we knew. Sometimes a word, a gesture would ring in our minds and looking up, we'd see the other staring and we would recognize that vulnerable, uncertain look.

We knew at base what it was about. I did anyway. I loved my sister. The uncertainty wasn't about that. It centered about our lust. We'd danced around it, slowly at first, with a gradual opening and increasing intimacy. Some time ago I'd confessed to her that I wanted to make love with her. (Actually, I think I told her I wanted to "fuck" her.) At once out, I wanted to bite my tongue. I'd have given anything at that moment to take back those words. Not that I didn't mean them. I did. But I knew I'd crossed the Rubicon with those words and the felt a sinking feeling with the irreversibility of it all.

Jean handled it well, at least on the surface of it; she was an uncomplicated, up-front girl without guile. She had simply said something like, "Me too, but we're not gonna do that, Billy. That's incest." End of discussion. Or was it?

Clearly it wasn't, for that was the nidus of our emotional turmoil. That we both wanted to "do it" wasn't the question. We'd confessed that. No, the tension arose from the not knowing. The not knowing in view of the wanting and that nagging voice coming up from the hind brain that repeatedly urged, "Go ahead. Have a bite. It's just an apple."

I smiled to myself and thought, "Lead me not into temptation. I know the way myself."

Despite that sometimes-delicious pull into the last taboo, we continued to be comfortable about each other. As long periods of silence are comfortable among close friends, we had no feeling of malaise around our unresolved passions. We were, both of us I think, content in following the thread of our lives and our connection, not knowing where it would take us.

There was a time, both before and again later, when I practiced a studied imperturbability, a coolness on the surface that frequently gave the lie to the cauldron beneath. I certainly didn't suffer from alexithymia... that failure to recognize feelings when I had them. To the contrary, I was in heightened contact with my feelings. As a safe cracker might have sanded his fingertips, my emotional awareness was crackling with sensitivity. What I didn't know was how to really talk about them... my feelings. Jean always helped me out when I was stuck like that.

"What are you feeling right now, Billy?" she asked as were walking in the hills behind our home.

I'd been aware that her breasts were swaying inside her sweatshirt and wondered if she had departed from her usual conservative attire to pique interest or if she'd simply grown accustomed to me.

Picking up a rock, I heaved it as far as I could into the wooded canyon and muttered, "Oh, nothin'."

"I've seen you do that a thousand times," she observed, looking in the direction of the thrown rock.

"Uh... throw a rock?" I asked.

"Yeah. Or it's equivalent. When you're uncomfortable, you move. You just can't stay still. You leave. Heck, I've seen you get up and leave the room without ever getting out of your chair!"

There was no debate here and I knew it. We'd covered this one before and she was concomitantly observant and accurate.

"So. Tell me. What's goin' on? You've been silent for more than a week."

"Jean, I'm sorry," I said. And then glancing at her to make eye contact, I added, "I'm not trying to be an asshole (as if it took much effort on my part) and I'm not trying to punish you or anything like that. I'm just not sure what it is that I'm feeling."

Jumping from stone to stone, we crossed the winter-rain swollen creek and started up the other side before she spoke again. "I thought that, but also know that if we don't talk about what's going on, it'll go underground and ferment."

"OK, OK," I sighed with resignation. I knew this was going to happen. Then, taking the plunge, I stated the obvious, "Lady, you know how moved I was when we... when you... "

Laughing, Jean finished my stuttering sentence, "... when I sucked your cock?"

"You do have a way with words, you silver-tongued devil you." I glanced down at the tight spot where her jeans were drawn into her crotch and then up to her eyes. She'd seen me looking.

"Yeah, and you're the one whose always telling me to call a spade a spade," Jean countered.

I sat on a fallen tree and looked back into the ravine. Jean sat beside me her elbows on her knees, cupping her chin. For a few moments the noisy jays made the only sound to be heard.

Not looking at her, I continued, "Well, whatever we call this rose -- or this spade -- that fact is that I keep thinking about you... about us."

"Cut to the chase, boy. You mean us doin' it, don't you?"

Drawing back and placing my hand flat on my chest, I replied, shocked, "Moi?"

"Yes, you! You horny jerk, you."

Then, in a moment of complete honesty, I admitted it. "Yes. All the time. It's all that I think about." Then, rushing on, "I'm not asking you to do it, you see... it's just that it is on my mind all the time. You know?"

Nodding her head, Jean murmured, "I know." And then placing one hand on my arm, she pulled my face around to look into my eyes and said, "Let's not have this be the elephant in the living room. We both feel it. We mustn't pretend it's not there. We've got to talk about it."

"All right, woman. I'll tell you what I've been thinking. How we feel about each other and about our selves is no secret. Cripes, we're both horny and all we can think about is screwing... at least that's the way I feel. We've talked about it enough that we know, for the moment anyway, that we're not prepared to actually do it. And it would seem that we're not ready to enter the monastery or take vows of chastity either. So... " I paused.

"Yeah-yeah... so?"

I've got her attention, I thought to myself. When in doubt, tell the truth. "So... I propose that we continue as we have. No rules... well, except one. For now, we won't do it. As much as I'd love to really do it with you, Jean, we won't. Whatever else we do, we do."