Growing up, fashion was a terrible embarrassment to me. While there's the old saying about clothes making the man, I was a boy--I wasn't supposed to even think about clothes! Except insomuch as remembering to change my socks and underwear more than once a week, but that was just to keep my mother off my back.

The embarrassing thing was that Mom would go off shopping, and sometimes in the mix of bags she'd bring home would be clothing for me. Hideous things I wouldn't be caught dead wearing outside of my closet. Shirts that might as well have been embroidered on the back Kick Me! just to spare the guys at school the bother of having to write up the sign and find some tape.

In middle school, when all the guys started wearing Levis blue jeans, I pleaded for a pair. She agreed. I hammered home the point that they had to have that little orange insignia flag sewn into the back pocket to ensure that she didn't buy an off-brand. She came home very pleased with her shopping acumen. I had two new pairs of jeans! See, for the price of a pair of Levis ... she'd found something that sort of looked like blue jeans, maybe, if you saw them from across a busy street. They weren't even denim, but some weird stretchy fabric. They were actually rather comfortable, but they looked like something your widowed grandma would wear down in Florida, younging herself down to fetch another man. Whose eyesight was like he was standing across a busy street!

Finally I got as smart as Sharon, my younger sister. She was a girl, so she liked shopping anyway. If Mom deemed it time for me to get some new clothes, I went with. It hardly mattered. She'd keep showing me stuff I would never wear, and every time I'd find something I could live with, the Moms would go scurrying away, always returning with something sort of the same, of a cheaper brand, and usually only tenuously similar. Yea, I'll take that shirt with the blazing tiger on the front. Two cuddling kittens, no, that's not really a match.

When I was 14, I put my foot down. According to Mom, I staged a public tantrum. I wanted one of those Izod long-sleeved polo shirts, with the cuffs and collar, striped egg-yolk yellow and the deepest navy blue. The tiny alligator of authenticity stitched above on the left in lieu of a pocket.

Everyone was wearing shirts like that. It wasn't like I wanted to fit it. I just wanted to blend in. I wanted to wear camouflage, so I wouldn't be noticed. And thus picked on.

She came back with a store-brand shirt with diagonal stripes in hot pink and gay-glow green, like she was suggesting a career as the official back-stage Blow-job Boy on the upcoming KISS tour.

I held my ground, had a tantrum, held my tantrum. I made Mom buy me that goddamned shirt.

And it worked. I kind of got forgotten. But that only worked for a year. Then I grew some. And it was gruesome. First day back to school after the summer sprout, so of course I wore my favorite shirt. For the last time. One remark about how I looked like a well-dressed gorilla. That was enough to retire the shirt.

I kept it because it was still my favorite shirt, even if its folded shape stayed unmoved in a year from its nesting in the back left corner of my shirt drawer. By now, I've gotten into a grungy punk thing with my friends. I keep thinking about how it might be cool to make an ironic statement by ripping off the embarrassingly short arms and scissoring, in rude cuts, the tight collar.

That's the great thing about cool ideas--you don't necessarily have to do anything more than just think 'em.

We went over to Grandma's for Sunday dinner. Which meant we ate lunch at home, and then went over to Grandma's to waste the entire afternoon waiting for dinner. It was great when Grandma moved back to town, so we could just visit her without wasting all of the holidays just getting there. Sometimes, even though we lived in the same town, we had to spend a night or two. I hated that. My bedroom was always the smelly cot down in the scary basement.

This time it was just gnaw at slice of roast long enough to go home. I'm not sure how my grandmother managed to take a roast and stick it in the oven and then pull out a smoldering Duraflame log to serve up, but she did it every time.

Since we were just there for dinner, it doubly freaked me out that when we sat down to dinner, Sharon appeared out of wherever she'd been. She was dressed for dinner. She'd changed for dinner. My sister showed up wearing my shirt!

At first I was in shock, immobile and speechless, stunned by how good Sharon looked in the shirt. Way better than me. Because I didn't have boobs. I was well aware that girls did stripes great justice.

I just hadn't ever considered Sharon in that light. When did my sister get boobs anyway?

Once those considerations melted away, I had my usual bad temper.

"Hey, that's my shirt!"

The table was silent.

I pressed. I insisted. "That's my shirt--give it back!"

"You never wear it," Sharon dismissed my complaint.

Mom backed her up. "It's too small for you."

"But it's mine!" I countered.

"So why don't you wear it," Sharon stabbed, "and look like a preppy gorilla?"

I was ready to rebut and get into it, but further discussion at Sunday dinner with Grandma was forbidden.

And in that fashion, my shirt was effectively stolen.

The house was empty when I got home from school--Mom was probably off shopping or something. I was in the kitchen making a snack when I heard Sharon come home from school. She went straight to her room. I was hoping she'd just stay in there until dinnertime. I didn't want to get in a fight or anything. I just wanted to enjoy my snack and watch some t.v. in the den. I took my snack in there and was watching some junk when Sharon came out of her room. My blood started simmering. She'd changed into my shirt and came sauntering into the room to flaunt it. Just the sight of her breasts bulging out the stripes of the fabric, the one nipple poking out right below the little alligator ... made something snap in my head.

"Why are you watching this stupid show? Let me change the channel to something worth watching!"

I stood up and held my hands in front of me, palms up. "Still think you're so fast? Best two-out-of-three gets to control the t.v."

Sharon got a wicked grin on her face and walked up to me. "That's easy. I've got the slowest brother in the world." She held her hands palm up an inch or so above mine. It was that game where the person with the bottom hands tries to slap the other's palms before they can yank them away. It was a good challenge to dare her with. She thought she'd be controlling the t.v. for sure. The truth was she was always much faster than me, not matter if she was the slapper or the slappee. I made a couple fake moves, but she didn't even flinch. What I was actually doing was positioning my hands so my thumbs slipped into the loose sleeves.

The way Sharon was just standing there smirking with her breasts in my shirt was making me boil. When I had my hands perfectly positioned, I grabbed the sleeves and yanked my hardest. Her hands disappeared down into the sleeves and she got a shocked look on her face.

Before she could otherwise respond, I quickly tied the end of the sleeves together in a double knot, trapping her hands inside the shirt. I knew what I was doing. Sharon's greatest weapon was her fingernails, which she kept filed long and sharp like talons. Defenseless, she screamed, "What're you doing?!! This isn't how you play the game!"

"No, but it's how I get my shirt back."

The struggle began in earnest. I had to keep one hand on the sleeve ends, wiggling it around to keep her from pulling her arms out of the sleeves entirely. Sharon wore the shirt tucked in. My other hand worked the hem free from the waistband of her shorts. She was trying desperately to get her arms untrapped. There was enough slack I managed to get the open neck of the shirt up past her chin, and then to the top of her head so I didn't have to see her eyes anymore. I was mere seconds away from total victory after I yanked enough to get the hem up to her armpits, but then I stalled, shocked, staring at my sister's bared tits.

I'd been expecting a bra, or at least an undershirt. Instead I was looking at a beautiful pair of breasts. I knew what boobs looked like, but only from photos in dirty magazines. I ... I wanted to touch them. My hand started moving towards them like magnets were involved. But then I caught myself. I just wanted my shirt back. If I started perving on my sister I'd wind up in jail or the hospital or worse.

Sharon was shrieking like I was murdering her. She got her arms free, and slammed them across against her chest, like she was shutting a lock. I pulled my shirt back into my possession.

"For god's sake, Sharon, they're just tits; half the world has 'em. And believe me," I lied, just wanting to get her to shut the fuck up, "yours are nothing to scream about."

With that Sharon did shut up. She looked at me as though I'd broken her. I ... I didn't mean to do that. I peeled off the old t-shirt I was wearing, and lay it across her. "Here, cover yourself up."

I got up off my sister. I knew I was so dead. I knew I should at least say something. Though I knew nothing I said would make a difference. Sharon was famous for holding grudges. I knew I had to say something, because every second I stayed in the room looking at her made me every second more a pervert.

"Sharon ... I'm ... I didn't mean for that to happen. I'm sorry."

That spat out, I walked down the long hallway to voluntary exile in my room. My exile seemed to last an eternity, several long hours before the sharp rap on my door. Mom knocked and immediately opened the door. It would've been embarrassing if I'd had my pants down. But I'd been doing nothing in my room but waiting for that banging.

She crooked a finger. "Come. Talk now."

So Sharon had been Sharon. No surprise there. So now I got dipped in boiling oil.

The pow-wow was at the kitchen table. Thank god Dad wasn't home yet.

Mom started it. "Tell me your side of the story." I thought, oh great, I get pulled into court after the Prosecution has already rested their case. Wonder what evidence was presented? That I might need to refute?

I decided my best bet was to go on the offensive. "It's my shirt. And I don't think it's fair that you pass it off as a matter of but it doesn't fit you anyway. The fact of the matter is that my shirt was in my dresser in my room. And then Sharon was wearing it."

Sharon sort of sputtered with indignation, but I had the judge's ear.

Mom began singing a song about how when a girl starts blossoming into womanhood, she is naturally uncertain about the changes going on, and shy and modest about her burgeoning body, so that being seen even in a bra can prove very embarrassing.

Even Sharon was about to barf. "Yuk, Mom, shut up."

But Sharon had spoken up too late. I'd learned her lie.

"I didn't mean to see her breasts. I'd expected she'd be wearing a bra or at least an undershirt."

"Wait a second," Mom hit the pause button. "Go back." Her focus was on Sharon. "He saw your bare breasts? You told me you had your bra on."

"Yea, but, well, it was after school. I meant I'd changed clothes and..."

Sharon was producing so much rope to hang herself, it was almost sad.

"She was still in her school clothes," I suggested

Mom ignored me. "Young lady, what did I say about wearing a bra?"

I was staggered by my own genius. I'd flipped it around. Sharon was the one in trouble. As if to confirm, Mom turned and rediscovered me. "Out of here. You're done."

Later, I was coming out of my room when Sharon was heading towards hers. It was awkward in the hall. Sharon hissed like a snake, "Thanks for getting me in trouble!"

I took the high road. "Just returning the favor!"

The weird thing was two-fold. Not only did Sharon not give back the shirt I'd loaned her as a cover-up, she started wearing it as a sleep tee. It was a cool shirt that I really wanted back, but ... it was a big old v-necked undershirt Dad had given me as a cover up last summer when we painted the garage. I'd gotten plenty of paint on it, and then had added more to make it look even cooler. The shirt was so old that fabric was barely there, so thin as to be on the verge of shirt rot. It was the perfect shirt to wear mowing the lawn, or if I was hanging out with my friends and trying to look cool.

The second part was that Mom never said a word. When we'd get all comfy and watch t.v. at night she never said a word to Sharon about how without a bra the shirt not only showed her nipples poking out like thumbs through the flimsy filmy fabric, but you could even see their darker coloration.

And the shirt wasn't nearly as long as her usual sleep tees. Several times over several nights I caught more than ample glimpses of the proof that Sharon was in fact wearing panties underneath. It was like she was torturing me, without even knowing it.

Later the next day I was in my room and bored, so I decided to finally do something about the shirt. I figured I'd punk it out and make that ironic statement. The polo shirt with the short long arms cut off--so I wouldn't look like a gorilla. I'd hack out the collar with blunt scissors. The stupid emblem, I'd rip the cloth, and leave it hanging. But just before I could make the first cut, I realized it wouldn't look ironic, it'd just look stupid. It was too nice of a shirt to just savage.

Instead, I carefully folded the shirt, and went across the hall to my sister's room. I knocked, identified myself, and was eventually granted entry.

I took a few steps into her room, leaving the door safely open.

"What do you want?" she asked, clearly curious about what I was holding behind my back.

"I acted really stupid. Here," I held out the shirt as a gift, "I want you to have this."

Sharon glared back at me. "I don't want it!"

I took the steps forward to lay it on the bed beside her. And then I carefully retraced my steps back. She grabbed at it and then flung it back, winging my thigh. I picked it up. "Sharon, it doesn't fit me, and you look great in it." I tossed the shirt back.

Sharon hissed, "You practically raped me!"

"No, I didn't. Geez. I was just borrowing my shirt back."

"I don't want it!"

"Then put it in the rag box, I don't care."

"You put it in the rag box!"

By the time she threw the shirt back, I was already to the doorway. It fell well short of me. I let the shirt just lay there. On the floor of her room, it was her problem.

I paused at the door. I took a deep breath. "Okay, Sharon. Here's my final apology. If you want to keep being a bitch after this, then you can kiss my ass."

That got my sister's attention.

"What I said about your chest was mean and completely untrue. Yours are very pretty, from the glance I got. You yourself should know you have nothing to worry about, not in that department. Anger-management department, that's another story."

It took a couple days, but then one morning Sharon popped into the kitchen for breakfast, dressed for school, wearing my shirt. She looked really hot in it, and yes she was wearing a bra.

Mom glanced over from her post at the toaster. First at Sharon, the shirt, and then me. "So you guys have kissed and made up about that stupid shirt?"

Sharon smiled back at us all, "Yes." And then she directed her smile at me. I ... I was glad I was sitting at the table, because underneath I was starting to get a boner.

I was back in the kitchen, after school, making a snack, when Sharon bustled into the house. "Hi!" she exclaimed as she shot by on her way down to her room. Usually she said nothing to me when she came home from school.

I went back to my snack. The toaster oven pinged, so I pulled out the tray and set it on the counter to cool a moment. I'd melted cheese on saltines.

"Mmm, what smells so good?" Sharon announced, entering the kitchen. She'd changed to a pair of "home" shorts, but she still wore my shirt. It sure looked like she'd broken Mom's Rule about bras.

"Cheesy crackers. Want one?"

"Mmm," she replied, "love one ... or two, if you can spare."

I picked one up, and fed it to her. Then I ate one. I fed my sister another, and then I had another turn.

As Sharon crunched, she casually asked, "Did you mean what you said? About my boobs? The second time?"

I about shot dry cracker crumbs out my nose.

"Well ... yea, from the glimpse I got, it's really something you shouldn't worry about."

"Would you like a better look?" she asked. With that she lifted the hem of my shirt up towards her neck. I'd called it right. My sister had taken off her school bra. And memory served correct--my sister had awesome breasts.

Thus exposed, Sharon got brave. "You can touch them if you like."

My hands moved to cup those heavenly orbs. Sharon sort of sighed. "You're the first one to touch them."

I gazed back at my sister, gently fondling her tits, "Yours are the first I've ever touched."

Whatever was going to happen next totally froze when we heard the roar of the automatic garage door opening.

"Mom's home!" I shouted the obvious.

Sharon shoved my hands away and pulled down her shirt. I reached up and tweaked the twin bullets in the fabric. "You really need to go put on a bra."

"I know," she moaned, turning to dart off down the hallway to her room.

I was left to scoot directly against the counter to hide my hard-on as Mom entered the kitchen from the garage. "Making a snack, I see."

"Yup."

"Where's your sister?"

"Dunno, probably in her room."

Mom has always been demonstrative, so she snuck up and gave me a hug from behind. There was nothing untoward about the gesture, except that maybe I'd chosen the wrong hide-the-woody posture. In the brief hug, there was a pair of breasts pressed against my back. While my front was pressed against the lower cabinet. As I thought about my sister. I about shot off in my pants.

The next several days, I kept looking for clues, but Sharon acted as though nothing had happened. It felt sad jacking off to what might have been, but I did it anyway.

And I moved on with my life. My friends and I were eager about this movie opening on the weekend. It was the usual shoot-em-up blow-things-up, with the hot actress having a topless bedroom scene. We made plans to see the early evening show on Saturday. And then the plans turned into something else. My two friends had girlfriends, so it turned into a double-date, with the side-car of a blind date. My two friends had a friend--me--while their girlfriends also had a friend. I was always the hero, because my parents allowed me to drive and I had an old beater at my disposal.

And then Mom and Dad ruined things by announcing that they'd be going that weekend up to a cabin on the lake with Uncle Paul and Aunt Pauline. They sounded like they were named siblings, but actually they were Mom's brother and Dad's sister. In our small town, things work out that way. Since Monday was a Monday holiday, Sunday night was also included.

Sharon was instantly shouting, "We get to go too, right? And our cousins will be there too?"

Dad got called onstage, by a look from Mom. "Well, actually," he stumbled, "this is a get-away-from-the-kids weekend."

"Well, that's good," I staked my claim, "because I've made plans to go to a movie with my friends Saturday night."

"Well," Mom inserted, "maybe you can change that to the matinee. I was thinking you two could call in a pizza for dinner." She said that so brightly, I knew I was doomed to abide.

I made the calls and shifted the time. It was weird, going into a theater in the late afternoon, then emerging afterwards into full daylight. By then it was nearly dinnertime, so everyone talked about going to Luigi's for pizza. Instead I was slated to get Luigi's delivered for me and Sharon. This pissed me off, as the movie experience was that this lovely spare girl Anne let me roam my hands like we were already boyfriend/girlfriend.

I explained the situation, apologizing. They all decided to give up on the idea of Luigi's.

Anne said, "Make sure you knock first when you get back home! Your sister may not be as innocent as you think. Lord knows, at that age, if I had the house free, I'd be on the phone fast saying, 'Boyfriend, git over here, right now!"

I had to pass that up, and was sorry when the logical route didn't involve dropping Anne off last. My friend Chris, the last stop, commented on my stupidity. He just shook his head. "You should've arranged it so that Anne's was your last stop. I guarantee you would've gotten at least a blow-job."

Instead I went home alone. I'd have pizza at home with my sister, and then I'd go to bed and talk to the hand. Is there any better definition of a loser?

When I got home, I walked in and called out to an empty house. I went down the hall, quietly and full of fear. But the door to Sharon's room was wide open. Her bed was made and there was no one in the room. I started to get worried, returning down the hall to the rest of the house.

I was standing around in the empty kitchen when Sharon came in the back door.

"Where have you been?"

Sharon was surprised by my question. "Out working in the garden. Waiting for you to come home from your date so we could have pizza for dinner."

"It wasn't a date."

"Well, I'm sorry that Mom and Dad being gone meant that you had to change your date so you had to be home for pizza with your kid sister. It wasn't my plan to ruin everything by existing."

I stopped her. "Sharon, you didn't ruin anything. It wasn't a date." I let down my guard and sort of explained all that had gone on. I even talked about what Anne had said, trying to make it into a joke.

The joke bombed.

"Thanks for reminding me that I've never even been asked out on a date. I wouldn't know what this Anne was talking about." My sister was looking me straight in the eye. I could see an energy building behind her eyes. And then the laser shot out.

"I'll have you know," she softened, "I'm not just a virgin," she went nearly quiet, adding the whisper, "I've never been kissed."

And then Sharon's voice went booming, "So don't worry about me. And don't blame me."

I wasn't quite sure if somehow she thought I blamed her for not getting a blow-job from Anne? Apparently I'd needed no help in fucking that up. I really didn't know what to say in reply. I knew it needed to be strong and personal.

But then it didn't matter because Sharon did the girl thing of suddenly thinking about something else entirely. Or the same thing, but at a different angle.

She giggled.

"What?"

"It was so a date!"

"What?"

"You go to a movie with your two friends. And their girlfriends are along. And they bring one of their girlfriends who doesn't have a boyfriend. And then she tells you that she'd like to call you to come over if she had her house to herself."

"What are you talking about?"

"About how boys can be so dense about what's being dangled in front of their faces," she chirped. "While you ponder that, I'm off to a quick shower."

I was waiting on my translator to come back to me with the transcript. Not knowing what to do in the meantime, I called out after her retreating figure, "Should I maybe call Luigi's while you're getting cleaned up?"

"No!" she scoffed. "I've been gardening, and making dough and letting it rise between punch downs."

I was confused. "What are you talking about?"

"When I knew it would be a stupid pizza night for us, I made Mom take me to the grocery. She thought it was cute that I wanted to make it special. We'll be eating pizza from scratch! Okay, sorry, the sauce is jar, but if you want to get a head start, there's a pepper and onion and some garlic to chop up."

"I'll get right on it," I nodded. She turned and went down the hall to her room. It was then that I noticed the cut-offs she was wearing. They were a pair of jeans I'd chopped into shorts. I'd cut the legs off too high. After a couple wears, my friends had suggested that instead of looking sexy they made me look kind of gay. I'd quickly consigned the shorts to the rag box.

Filled by my sister's ass, the shorts looked incredibly sexy, and not at all gay. So not at all gay that I was glad to retreat into the kitchen and deal with sharp knives and vegetables.

It was a quick shower. Sharon came bubbling back into the room smelling of flowers. The dampness of drying hair.

She was wearing just about my favorite shirt, a Ramones tee where I'd gutted the arms and neck so severely it was easy to see my sister wasn't wearing a bra, that she'd made that decision. I was more than a little confused. Her bottoms were an old pair of my gym trunks from Middle School I'd totally forgotten about. They must've been at the back of some drawer of mine, thus forgotten. I'd quit wearing them several years before because they barely contained my butt. They made Sharon's butt look awesome.

I was continually distracted, but still it was a lot of fun, hanging out in the kitchen with my sister while we constructed our pizza. Me sneaking armhole glimpses of the breasts I'd seen twice before but apparently nevermore.

And then when we sat down, tray tables in the livingroom in front of the t.v., the dinner was devastatingly good. We kept remarking on how good it was. "Guess we make a really good team," Sharon smiled at me.

Once we were stuffed, and the movie we were watching took a dull turn, I gathered up plates and stuff to quickly clean up. Sharon quickly joined me, standing beside me. Everything I washed up in the sink was immediately dried. The leftovers were properly wrapped up and placed in the fridge.

And then my sister grabbed my hand and pulled me back to the sofa in the livingroom to finish watching the bad movie. I didn't get why we had to do that. I was full and dull and just sat there on the couch watching the box change colors. For someone insisting we watch a bad-bad movie to the end, Sharon was pretty fidgety. She kept squirming around. I was so full and dull, I just enjoyed the slide show.

Finally a small line of late night ads sent the movie into temporary remission.

"Why are we still watching this?" I asked.

"Why are we still watching this?" she answered. "Why are you still watching that is the better question."

I was pondering what she meant by that when she just slapped me in the face. Really fucking hard! I took notice.

Sharon had shifted gears yet again. She clambered onto the couch on both knees, scooting way closer to me in the process. She plucked at the cloth along the slope of her left breast. She yanked the odd tent way out.

"Hey," she whispered in a husky tone, "That's my shirt."

I had no response.

Then her voice mellowed to her own. "Are you going to take it back?"

Again, I had no response.

"This time I won't resist. In fact, I'll help." With that, she grabbed the hem and started to pull the shirt off.

I grabbed her wrists, and then slowly brought her arms back down. Sharon gave me a questioning look.

I smiled. "First I want to feel you up wearing this sexy shirt."

Which is what I did, only encouraged. I slid one hand down and around to clasp her ass. "Say, aren't these my gym trunks?"

Sharon abruptly stood up. I was afraid I'd made a wrong turn, but then she extended a conciliatory hand down towards me. "Come," she said, then shrugged. "I want my first time to be in my own bed."

It took a few seconds for that message to sink home. Then I reached for her hand and stood up. "Funny," I noted, "I want my first time to be in your own bed, too!"

With that we left the room, holding hands, moving down the hall side-by-side until we reached her door and Sharon took the lead to draw me into her room. She hit the wall switch when we walked in, then she pulled away from my hand to walk over to switch on the low-watt bedside lamp. "Kill the overhead," she said sweetly, moving back my way.

We started kissing, gently at first, and then like crazy, hands roaming with impunity. It was one thing for me to be caressing her breasts through her shirt, but when she started stroking my cock through my pants!

I thought to warn my sister, "The first time for a girl, it usually hurts."

Sharon smiled at me. "It's so sweet you're so considerate. But there's no worry. I lost my hymen to an accident on the balance beam back when I used to do gymnastics."

That spurred me to ask, "Why did you stop? I know you used to enjoy that a lot."

Sharon replied by pulling her shirt up, and off, over her head, tossing it to the floor. "I developed, and got a little too top-heavy."