There was a young lawyer called Bex,
Whose chest was quite flat for her sex;
When charged with exposure
She replied with composure,
"De minimis non curat lex."

The limerick sits neatly printed on the wall in our bedroom. The trifles aren't all that small any longer – two pregnancies have taken care of that. Still, they are fairly moderate in size. They were at their absolute peak just when the babies were born. Also on the wall, on either side of the framed limerick, are two papier-mâché casts of Bex' torso that we made just days before she gave birth. They were fun to make.

Most people notice the huge belly first (particularly the second cast when Bex carried the twins) and then the breasts. Not Bex. She will always have a thing about breast size which no amount of loving can make go away even though I assure her I never cared. I mean, my first wife could give the late Anna Nicole a run for her money – and Leona was all natural, but I wouldn't want to go back ever. Leona was a scheming cheating bitch with a room temperature IQ who caused me nothing but grief. Bex loves me unconditionally (and has done so all her life – I was just to dim to notice). She is bright and sweet. She is a fantastic mother, and she is my best friend and confidant in addition to being my wife and lover. Life is good.

Bex thinks so too. At least most of the time. And when she has one of her rare black moods and disses her breasts, I will usually demonstrate how wonderful they are. Bex is one of those fortunate women whose nipples are so sensitive that she can orgasm from breast stimulation alone. After a dozen or so breast-only induced orgasms we usually have a long period of time where Bex doesn't complain.

But getting to where we are today has been a long, and at times painful, journey. This is the story of that journey.

The story of Bex begins around the same time as the story of me – we were born only four days apart in the same hospital, but you can definitely say that our backgrounds were different. Actually, for the story of Bex to make sense we have to go back a bit further and start the tale a little over a year before she was even born

Bex' father was a lawyer with the impressive name Archibald Theodore Anderson. All his friends – and he had many, including the entire legal fraternity, the judges and court staff, most businessmen in the district, the doctors, the school principals, the pastors, you name them – called him Archie. Archie was a large jovial man who had a large jovial house, a large jovial wife and two large jovial sons who were both also lawyers and in partnership with their father. And they ran the biggest, most influential law firm in our part of the state.

When Archie was 64, Margaret, known as Dot – his wife of nearly 40 years and the mother of Albert and Eugene, better known as Bert and Gene, lay down for nap after lunch one very hot summer's day and never woke up. According to the doctor, Dot had a massive coronary and never felt a thing. It was sad and unexpected, but life's like that sometimes.

Being alone didn't suit Archie. Bert and Gene had long left home, of course – they were 35 and 37 respectively. Both were bachelors, although especially Gene was known to be something of a ladies' man. No way were they going to move back home to look after their father. But Archie had never made a bed, never sorted the laundry or as much as boiled an egg in his life so he knew he would have to get a least a housekeeper and soon.

Salvation was near – for twenty years Archie'd had the same personal secretary. Miss Constance Hastings joined the firm when she was a shy slight spinster of 22. Now she was a shy slight spinster of 42, unbelievably efficient and competent and utterly devoted to her boss. She didn't quite faint when Archie proposed, but it was damned close. Her secret dream had come true and less than a month later she was the new Mrs. Archibald Anderson.

Where Dot had been large and, well, curvy, and even in her sixties still showed clear remnants of a remarkable beauty, Constance was very slight of build, noticeably flat both at the rear and especially at the front and, for lack of a better word, desiccated. Given the age of both partners, no-one expected their union to be, well, fruitful. But Archie was a lawyer and made sure the marriage was legal. Before the honeymoon to the US Virgin Islands was over, the new Mrs. Anderson was neither so virginal in manners nor quite so desiccated to look at – she had put on ten pounds in flattering places and she kept putting on pounds for the simple but highly surprising reason that she was pregnant.

Surprise or not, Archie and Constance were delighted and a few days after Archie's 65^th birthday, his now 43 year old new wife gave birth to a tiny little girl who they named Rebecca Constance Anderson. At least that's what her birth-certificate says. No-one ever called her anything but Bex.

I know all this from Mom. As I mentioned, I was born four days before Bex to Millie and Todd Henderson, both 23 and both natives of our city. They had been sweethearts since grade school and to this day remain as much in love as then. Dad was an independent motor mechanic in partnership with one of his and Mom's old school friends, Leroy, who I always knew as "Uncle Leroy". Mom had been a shop-assistant until shortly before I was born and never rejoined the workforce even though I remained an only child. At that time they had bought their first home (which they are still in) in an ordinary middleclass neighborhood but bordering on the more affluent part of town.

When I say "bordering" it is in a literal sense: At the end of our garden was a tall, forbidding wall that surrounded the grounds of the huge neo-gothic mansion where the Andersons lived. The summer I was two I "broke through the door in the wall" (according to Mom – it must have been in dire need of repairs if a toddler could do that!) and went exploring in the garden next door, finding Bex playing in a huge sandbox.

This is where my bemused but slightly embarrassed mother found me ten anxious minutes later. She had only gone inside to go to the bathroom; having left me in what she was convinced was a "toddler-proof" enclosed area. She almost collided with the very bemused Mrs. Anderson who had gone inside to fetch drinks, leaving Bex in what she was similarly sure was a contained area; a fence having been put up to protect Bex from their large pool. They left us to play, sat down to talk and struck up a close friendship of the kind that mothers all over the world forge from no other common ground than simply being mothers. According to Mom, Bex and I both howled miserably when they finally separated us and a repeat play-date for the next day was hastily agreed. From then on we were inseparable.

Naturally I cannot remember any of this. In my consciousness Bex has always been there.

Over the coming years we kept on playing and playing and playing. We went to kindergarten and then school together and we were also always together outside school. Our parents laughingly referred to us as "the twins". Bex was a waifish tom-boy who ran wild with me and the other little boys in the neighborhood, climbing trees – her garden had some fabulous climbing trees and Bex got to the top of them before anyone else, building cubby houses and so on. She may have been ostracized by the girly girls at school already then; I didn't notice. Bex was one of the gang – end of story.

Unknown to me, of course, Dad and Uncle Leroy were very industrious and successful. They gained college qualifications at evening school and expanded their business, taking over a moribund dealership and turning it into a roaring success. Uncle Leroy ran the showrooms and Dad the workshop. From a very early age, I was fascinated with cars and motors and I was a frequent guest at the workshop – as was Bex.

Dad and Uncle Leroy's business model was as simple as it was successful: They sold cars in all price ranges, maximizing the potential customer base. In addition, having both the dealership and an all-make workshop, they could hedge their business against economic fluctuations. When times were good they sold a lot of new or premium second hand cars. During lean times, the workshop was doing well because people wanted to run their older cars longer.

Uncle Leroy never married. He was gay. That cost him all contact with his unforgiving bible-bashing family. We were his family. When he died much too young there were rumors it was AIDS, but that was false. He died from testicular cancer. Over the loud protests of his "loving family" he left everything he owned, including his half-interest in the business, to Mom and Dad. That left Dad in charge of it all and he had to spend much more time in the showrooms than he really wanted to. Dad was a guy who wanted to get his hands dirty at heart, but now he spent more time in a suit than in overalls.

I was unaware of all that too. All I knew was that Uncle Leroy was gone and I felt terribly sad about that. But that is just about the only negative memory I have of my childhood. It was otherwise safe and happy. We may not have been wealthy in a classical sense but I was never in want of anything important. I was immersed in love from my parents. And instead of siblings, which never came, I had Bex.

The innocence of childhood ends of course. Puberty hit me around the age of 13. I grew tall and strong in no time, taking after my father in build. I developed quickly in other areas too. Like boys through the ages I started waking up with wet pajamas pants on occasions, worrying that I might have peed my pants. Having always felt confident that my parents where there for me for anything, I mentioned it to Mom one Saturday morning. She smiled, reassured me that all was well and got hold of Dad to explain things to me. The "talk" – apart from the usual warnings and admonitions to be responsible – contained a lot of practical and useful information about the joys that my "new equipment" could bring me. When Dad had left for work – the showrooms were open on Saturdays – Mom added her bit, essentially telling me that since it was bound to come out anyway, I might as well have the enjoyment from triggering it myself, rather than have it happen in my sleep! I quickly found out that she was spot on there.

Speaking of spots, my practical and anything-but prudish mother discreetly placed a dish-towel together with my clean pajamas the next week. After only a few moments of puzzlement I got it. I might have blushed – who knows – but it was neater than the socks or tee-shirts or whatever else teenaged boys use to catch their almost limitless semen emissions.

And boy was it neat to have parents so utterly devoid of hang-ups regarding sex.

Growing tall and strong quickly was an advantage socially too, especially when it came to sports. I dare say I have the build to be a football player, but I lack the psyche. I just don't care for the game. I did play a little baseball and was good at it, but it just wasn't my thing either. It's not that I am a loner or otherwise anti-social, but team-sports were just not me. I did much better in athletics and being ahead by a year or more in physical development compared to my peers made me a bit of a star through grade school. Only when the true jocks caught up in high school did that end, but at that stage my interests were elsewhere. I was an all-round kid; middle-ground in everything. Good, but not shining grades. OK, but not exceptional looks. And pretty content with life.

If puberty was easy for me, it was hell for Bex. She too was hit by hormones around the age of 13. That is in one sense normal, but kind of late in another. Unlike her peers there had been no signs of budding breast on her completely flat chest and practically nothing happened there now despite the onset of regular screaming-agony periods. Poor Bex got all the pain and none of the fun.

She didn't add much in height either leaving her out of most sports except gymnastics, at which she excelled. Her hips never flared and her bottom stayed little-girlish. At 13, she didn't stand out too much. Some girls needed bras. Other had them for no reason. Bex was still enough of a tom-boy not to care.

At 14 those with tits looked down on those without. Although we're talking a long time before the obesity epidemic that has now hit the US, very few of Bex' 14 year old peers were as flat as she was and none were as short.

At 15 it was unbearable. Bex was mercilessly teased about being a baby. She was teased about having elderly parents. Her social life had dried up completely; none of the other girls wanted to be seen anywhere near her and her former friends amongst the boys were now well and truly into girls who looked like girls.

She still had me, of course, but not in the same way. We were friends, and close friends at that, but I had my sports, an afternoon job at my dad's workshop and more than my fair share of girlfriends. Adhering to Dad's lecture about responsibility and Mom's about fidelity didn't stop me from having a rich sex-life. It just meant that all my sex was safe and always only with one girl at the time. (OK, I have on one occasion broken up with a girl over the phone just moments before I drove out for a date with the next one, but that's still technically monogamy, isn't it?)

Bex on the other hand had no sex-life whatever. No-one invited her out. The closest she got to dates was hearing about mine. In retrospect that was cruel, but she asked and I never withheld anything from her. She developed a strong dislike for the golden girls. I couldn't agree with that – I dated them and from shortly after my 16^th birthday bedded a lot of them. I wasn't boyfriend material for the true A-listers who preferred the top football players, but I was a reasonable athlete so it wasn't a social disgrace for a girl to be seen with me. Besides, girls talk. I am well-equipped both when flaccid and especially when erect and I know how to use it. So I "sinned above my station" on many occasions.

It was not just the kids who were cruel to Bex. One particularly stupid biology teacher going through human genetics and various non-fatal but debilitating chromosome defects mentioned Turner's syndrome where girls have just one X-chromosome. Those girls tend to be small and undeveloped sexually. The way the cow presented it she might as well have said straight out that Bex was a Turner girl and that rumor now ran around school in no time. During the next class I asked pointedly if a Turner girl would have periods. When the teacher replied "Of course not", I just said "I thought so... ," looking pointedly at Bex. She was menstruating – clearly in pain and with fairly bad temporary acne. The teacher got flustered and I got a bad grade for the rest of the year.

And if I'd hoped that at least this particular rumor about Bex would now stop, I was sadly mistaken. The busty head cheerleader Stacey Stevens and her close friend Leona Ingleby whose tits were even bigger kept up their endless banter about "the titless wonder" and how she was a "genetic freak" which according to them was no wonder since "Bex' parents were ancient when they had her."

The cruelty of that came in to perspective shortly after. Early in our junior year both Bex' parents died within a few weeks of each other. Archie had been ailing for a while – he was 82 and well and truly old. The very hot summers didn't agree with him either and he suffered a series of strokes. He survived the first two, but the third one killed him – which was possibly a mercy; the second one had left him partly paralyzed and unable to speak. Unknown to everyone Constance had terminal cancer and she only outlived her elderly husband by three weeks, dying a few days before her 60^th birthday.

To say that Bex was distraught would have been an understatement. How she got through it I don't know. She knew she wouldn't have her father forever and with the first two strokes there had been a kind of warning, but losing her mother was a jolt that came out of the blue. I tried to the best friend I could – to the annoyance of my girlfriend at the time who found my affection for Bex "weird" even though she knew it wasn't sexual and that she had no cause for jealousy.

Mom and Dad were fantastic too and offered to take Bex in, as in actually adopting her. It was obvious that the Anderson house would have to be sold; it was outrageously big for a family of three. Having a 17 year old girl living there alone was not an option. I think Dad was most keen on the adoption solution, but Gene and Bert were adamant that they could and would look after their half-sister. They were both still single and shared a huge apartment above their offices. Bex moved in with them. With no women in the Anderson brothers' life it could have been difficult to get an OK for the arrangement, but they had a housekeeper coming in on a regular basis and their secretaries were also listed as appropriate female role models. I'm sure it helped that Gene and Bert are both top lawyers...

I would have liked to be able to tell you that the merciless teasing and outright persecution of Bex stopped after the sudden death of her parents, or that it at least was toned down. Not so. Small-town American kids can be angels, or they can be vermin. Our peers largely fell in the latter category. Within days Bex was no longer "the titless wonder" but "the titless orphan" when Stacey and Leona had introduced the new term. Some half-baked intervention from the school curbed that heartless abuse a bit. But only a bit. Over the next year and a half both terms were used gleefully to Bex' face, but rarely when a teacher would hear it.

The ultimate humiliation of Bex occurred at our Senior Prom. Mike Dupres, one of the minor stars on the football team, had started chatting Bex up. That surprised everyone – he was otherwise thought to be going steady with Stacey, but now he was all attentive to Bex and the absolute shocker came when it got known that he had asked her to be his date at the Prom. Bex' status went from ridiculed non-entity to someone girls talked to and wanted to be seen with merely on the strength of that invitation. I didn't see her all that much – being busy with sports and girlfriends and my job at Dad's workshop (not to mention occasional school work), but the few times we talked she seemed very happy and talked endlessly about her Prom dress, the planned corsage, the limo that Mike would come in to get her even though she lived only half a mile from the school, the after-Prom parties and so on.

I would like to claim that I knew something was fishy, but I didn't. I had been as surprised as everybody else, especially because nothing was known about an alternative date for Stacey, but high-school couples do split up and I knew better than anyone that apart from the lack of breasts, Bex was very pretty and also very sweet and exceedingly bright. So I was happy for my friend and said so.

And then it all came crashing down. Bex, all dressed up at her brothers' apartment, awaiting her date with the limo and corsage, did just that. Waited, I mean. And waited and waited and waited. It was all an elaborate hoax as the entire senior year, minus poor Bex, discovered when Mike strutted in fashionably late with Stacey on his arm.

"What happened to Bex Anderson?" I asked loudly. My question was met with general laughter – no one picked up the edge to my voice apart from Ingrid, my date, who kicked me on the shin and muttered "Shut up! You're here with me!" under her breath,

"Why would I go with a flat and skinny little girl when I can have this?" Mike laughed as he groped both Stacey's huge mammaries from behind to much laughter.

"Because you invited her, you prick!" I hissed. Few people heard me, but Ingrid did and we argued about it for so long that she eventually very pointedly went to sit somewhere else.

Forget it, I thought and left. I walked over the Gene and Bert's apartment. I had expected to find Bex in tears and there were certainly streaks on her face after a lot of crying, her makeup smeared and her eyes puffy, but she was remarkably calm when I arrived. "What happened to your Prom?" she asked.

"Didn't feel like staying," I replied, sitting down next to her in the couch. "The company was unpleasant."

"Including Ingrid's?" Bex asked in a forced light tone. She'd never liked Ingrid much – in fact she didn't like any of the golden girls – but she had never criticized any of my girlfriends to my face.

"Especially Ingrid's," I replied. "She doesn't rate loyalty to friends very highly. I do."

"Thanks George," Bex said and there were tears in her eyes again. "Your loyalty means the world to me."

Then she wiped the tears away once more, steeled herself and yelled "Gene, can we sue the prick?"

He looked startled and came over, followed by Bert. "I don't think so Bex," Gene said. "It's not like we could use breach of promise or anything like that – you were not engaged to the bastard, only invited to a Prom."

"But he didn't show – he broke that promise," Bex argued.

"True," Gene agreed. "But your participation in the Prom was not dependent on him being there. You could have been admitted on your own. The only material thing he failed to deliver, apart from a rose, was the transport – and the school is just up the road."

"De Minimis Non Curat Lex," Bert added. "The law does not concern itself with trifles. We don't have a case. There are no legal avenues to pursue."

He put his hand on Bex' shoulder. She looked up almost startled – physical affection was rare in the Anderson family. "If Gene and I were thirty years younger we would have beaten the crap out of the bastard. But it is not really an option at our age."

It brought a reluctant giggle from Bex and a hearty laugh from us three men. Gene and Bert may have been football players in their high school days, but now they were pretty much the archetypical soft and sedentary middle-aged lawyers. In all likelihood Mike could wipe the floor with both of them if they tried anything.

"I could take him on," I started to say, and I meant it although I didn't fancy my chances, but Bex held up her hand to stop me.

Her face hardened. "I don't want either of you to do anything. I'll take care of that. Even if it takes all my life, I'll find a way of getting even. It will be legal – if only just so. But it will be merciless. Now I want to sleep. Good night." She stood up, turned on her heals and strode down to her bedroom.

Bex' brothers and I just stared. There had been something dangerous in Bex' voice. Something hard. Something totally unforgiving. We finally pulled ourselves together. "I'd better get going," I said and got up.

"OK," Bert said and Gene just nodded. As I was heading for the door, Gene spoke up.

"Thanks for being such a friend to Bex," he said. "In many ways you've been a better brother to our sister than we ever have."

"That's OK," I replied, slightly embarrassed. "We're more of an age and I do love her like the sister I never had."

"We know," Bert said. "Don't do anything that you'd regret or that would jeopardize your future. In short: Don't do anything illegal."

"And if you do," Gene added, "don't go to any other law firm than ours for your defense."

The brothers were still chuckling when I left.

I went home. Mom and Dad were surprised to see me so early. And aghast, mixed with some pride, when I told them why. Mom was crying for Bex – not the first time she'd shed tears for my friend – and Dad was livid. "Mr. Dupres came in yesterday fishing for a traineeship for Mike. It'll be a cold, cold day in hell before that swine joins my pay-roll and I'll tell them why to their slimy faces."

"Todd!" Mom exclaimed. Dad very rarely swears.

"Don't you Todd me Millie," Dad shot back. "We're talking about a girl we tried to adopt only last year. I love her just as much and you and George do!"

"I know," Mom sniffled. "Just don't do or say anything that could land us in trouble."

"I wouldn't worry about that," I said slowly and mentioned the Anderson brothers' offer.

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Dad said. We all agreed and went to bed.

On the Monday Bex showed up for school at the normal time. There was some unpleasant derisive snickering, but the new hard-edged Bex from Saturday night was now very much in presence and she stared everyone down. For the next few months she was an avenging angel. Rather than school work which went on auto-pilot, she used her superior intellect to snoop out as much damaging information about the jocks and the golden girls as she could and used it to devastating effect. She undermined the fragile confidence of the hangers-on, broke up several relationships and friendships through massive and deliberately undiplomatic use of gossip, rumors, and half-truths, and caused fear, uncertainty, and doubt all around. The whole juggernaut took a life of its own when most of the misfits gleefully started feeding her with the information they had gleaned. They had never before been empowered – now they saw a leader in Bex who could help them avenge the indignities they had been subjected to. Personal happiness may be the best there is but if that is unobtainable then the tormentors' misfortunes are not to be despised seemed to have been the motto.

I stayed largely out of it all, except telling Mark in a very public setting that my dad had told me to ask him and his dad to come to the showrooms on Saturday morning to discuss something. That startled and pleased Mark, who had been expecting a confrontation with me, I'm sure. He bragged to his peers all week about getting a job as a trainee, but Dad was as good as his word and the two Dupres men received a very loud and public humiliation when told why Mike would never be accepted as a trainee.

Bex' brothers also chipped in. Their law firm managed virtually all the local scholarships for college. Usually the awards are handled quickly, going more or less automatically to the progeny of the old established families. Not this year. Gene and Bert managed to disqualify almost all the golden girls and jocks who otherwise felt entitled to these funds. They did it on personal character grounds and made sure that the decisions were leaked which in turn poisoned the ground for other scholarships. Many a middle class kid saw their future evaporate like a mirage that spring. Their past derision of "the titless wonder" became costly.

Bex had avoided going after the ringleaders – Mike, Stacey and Leona – except indirectly. When Loretta, one of the second ranking cheerleaders, who had lost a scholarship she would otherwise have been almost certain to get, yelled at Bex that it was her fault and that Bex was only jealous about not landing Mike after all, Bex shot back "Sure, but at least I was spared getting chlamydia. Mike caught it off Stacey who caught it off Pete C at Easter. God only knows which slut he got it from. Could be anyone from what I hear."

Loretta blanched. Pete Cummings was her boyfriend and her world collapsed. A lot of relationships went down the drain when one of Bex' new friends – a distinctly weird girl called Alison – put a "Chlamydia Alert" poster up several places in the school urging anyone who'd had sex with six named seniors, or whose partners were cheats, to be tested. I learned that the campaign was successful when Mom's friend and neighbor Liz, who works at one of the main doctor's surgeries in town, told Mum in hushed tones that the number of high school kids seeking chlamydia testing had suddenly exploded. In those days the tests were not nearly as easy as they are today and the sampling procedure much more unpleasant for both sexes.

That most of the tests came back negative was irrelevant – the social damage had been done. Amongst the casualties were Stacey and Mike's relationship.

The mayhem died down around the time of the final exams. Bex was floating around aloof – despised and feared by the jocks and the golden girls, a hero to the outcasts and someone you didn't quite know what to make of to the rest of us. She didn't care. When I argued to her "You can't go around hating everyone forever – it will eat you up," she simply replied. "I won't. I don't care about the hangers-on. It was fun to see them squirm; now it's time to move on. But the gang of three? I'll hate them forever. Even if it takes me all my life, I'll get them."

The gang of three was her code name for Mike, Stacey and Leona of course. This was the second time she had declared she would pursue revenge indefinitely. Somehow I never doubted she was serious: She was very good at what she set out to do. She got a perfect entrance score for college. And she had loads of money.