Chapter 3

"I'm sure you have lots of questions," Mom said that afternoon. She knew us, and she let us spend our time in Church formulating what we wanted to ask her. She used to ask us right away, but we'd come back to her hours later with questions, so it was far better to simply wait until we were ready.

"One or two," Liz said.

"Or five or six ... dozen."

"I suppose the first one is how I can do it."

Liz shook her head. "No, it's obvious you enjoy it. Dad's not jealous, you're not worried about getting a pregnant, and we concluded that either everyone has the same sex disease, or everyone's clean."

Mom blinked at us in surprise. "Uh, hes. I mean we're clean."

"So that just leaves a few dozen," Liz said, "like how you and Dad don't do the jealusy thing..."

"Or how you got started."

Mom visibly swallowed. She'd asked for this, and she knew we were going to hold her to it. We wanted answers.

Typical Mom, though, she didn't go at it quite the way we expected. "I called the doctor on Friday. I made appointments for both of you, next Thursday after school. You're at that age that a mother worries about. I want you both on birth control as soon as possible."

"All right with us," I said. "That eliminates a few questions."

"And we're not in any sort of hurry to rush out and do it," Liz said. "We haven't found any boys yet."

"Though we have some ideas." I looked at her, and we communicated volumes.

"All the more reason to make you baby-proof," Mom said. "Now about those diseases. A lot of them get propagated through teenagers, so you'll need to be careful."

Again we exchanged a look. We were on the same page. No teenage boy we knew was going to get in our pants. That left a very obvious solution.

Mom spent the next hour talking about feelings, some sensations, and getting almost mechanical in her descriptions. We came away from it with a lot of information, but not all of it relevant. We retreated to our room to sort through what we'd learned. We also discussed the future, and just how we were going to go from two nervous virgins to someone taking part in the party on the Rec Room floor. I had some ideas, Liz had some ideas (they were pretty much the same), and we got fairly frank in our talk. If any guy had heard us I'm sure his ears would have burned.

The problem Mom had was the same one every mother has faced: when a girl gets it into her head to have sex, it is very hard to stop her. At best she can control some aspects of it. In the past this has been done through fear of pain ("it hurts when he puts it in") and public shame. We weren't worried about the first one, and while we cared about the second one, we knew how to keep a secret. They say two can keep a secret if one is dead. Twins can keep a secret like no one else. When we did it, we wren't going to brag about it all over school. Our twin sister would know, but that was because she was going to be there doing it at the same time. No one else, correct that, no other girl need know. The boys would know, but we had a remedy for that, we just had to talk a few people into it.

Most teenage girls go through several steps as they mature. First there's the confusion as their hormones kick in and start telling them to do something. Most girls resist this quite firmly because they've had several years of programming from their female relatives, and a lot of social pressure, to NOT do it. Plus a girl's body is changing. This is a mixture of apprehension, curiosity, pride, and just being uncomfortable and embarassed. We're conditioned not to show that we're having our period, and we go to great lengths to hide it. If it's your time of the month you hide used tampons, and their holders, so you can dispose of them in secret. If you're using pads, same thing. And then there are your boobs.

Boys don't understand the love/hate relation a girl has with her boobs. Secretly she wants to be as big as Barbie because television tells us that big boobs are the secret to attractiveness. Some girls never outgrow this idea. Adults will tell us this isn't so, but every night on TV we see the girl with the big bosom getting the boys. We also see it in the magazines, and at school. The boys pay attention to the bigger chests. Only as we develop our own do we realize that a lot of boys don't realize that there's a person attached to those boobs.

Your chest is never the right size. It's either too small or too large. It's misshapen (one boob larger than the other), or any number of other things. And your bra, it either pinches, or just hangs. It's never that comfortable. Most women are wearing the wrong sized bra, and when you're growing you are obsessive about wearing one (even when you're small-chested). Girls say nasty things about other girls who aren't wearing one.

Girls are competitive little bitches. Fortunately most guys don't see this. Ninety-percent of a conversation at high school is what girls think of other girls, their hair, their make-up, their clothes, and what they're showing off or hiding. If someone thinks another girl is showing too much, the knives come out and they'll cut her down without a moment of hesitation. This includes such things as color and fabric. A girl might think a particular outfit flatters her looks, but trust me, there are girls who don't think that's so, and don't hesitate to say so.

The prize in all of this is to have your pick of the boys. Girls realize that, in the end, it's their choice. We're the ones who are going to have the babies, after all, so you get to choose which boy. Now Liz and I didn't formally learn that until later, but every girl has it figured out sooner or later in her teen years.

Now Liz and I did pretty well in the bosom lottery, thank you. Not so big as to require spending a fortune tailoring clothes, but not so small, either. We weren't called "cows" more than a few times, and we blew that off. Flat-chested girls will say that of any girl one cup size larger than them, even if the gil in question really doesn't need a bra. But we did all right. The rest of us was pretty much on schedule: average height or just a little more, long, dark brown hair with a nice bit of styling; mien went past the shouler while Liz's stopped just at the shoulder. An oval face with skin tones that said "burnette" without hitting you over the head with it. Eyebrows that behaved themselves, full lips, and pert noses. All in all, quite the attractive package for the boys to look at.