No doubt about it, my brother Josh was always Mom's favorite. Not that it bothered me that much; I just always took it for granted that that's how it was. She didn't hate me, or anything like that; she just treated me different than him. From the beginning, he could always get whatever toys he wanted and anything he liked for dessert. Mom would criticize me and sing Josh's praises, give me chores to do while he got to play, and then say things to me like, "Emily, why can't you be more like your brother?"
It wasn't that bad, really, not being her pet. Josh was always Mom's little angel, which left me free to be a little bit of a devil sometimes. I was never afraid to be a bad girl. I'd argue with Mom when I had to, or say and do things I wasn't supposed to. Mom never expected any more of me. In fact, a lot of the time she ignored me, and that was just fine. I learned to be independent and strong.
Josh's problem was that he was basically a nice guy who didn't mind being adored by Mom. In Mom's mind, Josh was always her baby boy. She saw him through rose-colored glasses, and she indulged him. In return he felt obliged to be a good boy. He never did anything he wasn't supposed to do, or at least never let her catch him at it.
Don't get me wrong; I love Josh a lot. There's always been a special bond between us that goes all the way back to our time sharing Mom's womb. We're twins, you see, and I've always been able to feel what he's feeling and sometimes even to think what he's thinking. In my own way, I feel protective of him too. He's always been my little brother, even though he's only nineteen minutes younger than me.
He was sickly as a child; I've even been told that as a baby, he almost died. I was always the healthy one, so naturally, Mom was less protective of me. But I think there's even more to it than that, and I've always trusted my intuition about such things.
It seems to me that Josh filled a peculiar need in Mom for male energy after she separated from Dad. Nothing sexual was going on between them; it was more of a psychological thing. Mom was emotionally raw and confused when she broke up with Dad, which I can easily understand because so was I. He was screwing other women, though I didn't know that at the time. I was just a child, and all I knew was that something deep, dark and hidden was going wrong between them; Daddy wanted something that he didn't get from Mommy, and so he went away. Mom felt betrayed by Dad, and by extension by all men, and she never took up looking for a man to replace him as a husband or even boyfriend after the divorce. Instead, she glommed onto the only safe, compliant guy she knew who she could never imagine betraying her, her darling son.
By the time Josh was eighteen, the way Mom coddled and protected him was beginning to seem kind of weird. To make matters worse, although he wasn't shy with Mom and me, Josh lacked self-confidence with girls. At eighteen I'm sure he was still a virgin.
From the time his voice changed, I would have loved to see Josh declare to Mom in a moment of rebellion, "I'm not your little boy any more. I'm a man;" but he never did, until his dick did it for him that time when we were eighteen and Mom took both of us camping.
That camping trip was all very spur-of-the-moment. Josh and I were getting old enough to leave home, and Mom had a sudden urge to share something special with us as a family before we did. We hadn't been camping since we were kids and Dad was around. Mom almost couldn't talk me into going. At eighteen, going camping with my family wasn't on the top of my list of things to do, but nothing else was happening that weekend and I felt bored.
"I haven't been camping since summer camp in seventh grade," I told her. "I don't even have a sleeping bag anymore."
"Neither do I," said Mom, "but we still have your Dad's old tent, and a big air mattress with an electric pump, and plenty of bedding. The forecast is for warm nights, even up there, so I'm sure we'll keep each other plenty warm."
I had a funny feeling about that sleeping arrangement even then, but I didn't say anything about it. I wasn't concerned for myself, but I had a feeling it might be kind of weird for Josh. Mom was excited about it though. She thought it would be intimate and snug.
"We haven't done anything special together as a family for a long time," she told us. "We really ought to share the things we enjoy together now, while we still can. We all like the outdoors. It's something we have in common, but somehow we've never taken the time to go camping. I sometimes feel like there are so many things I don't know about you anymore. This trip will give us a chance to have fun together and get to know each other again."
Mom got off work early on Friday so we could get an early start. We packed our gear into the car and headed out. Josh rode shotgun in the front with Mom, leaving me the whole back seat to relax in. Knowing we'd reach the campground late, we stopped along the way at a cafe for dinner. By the time we arrived at the campsite, the sun was already going down.
The campground was pretty isolated, up in the foothills, crowded with trees. We turned off a dirt road onto an even dirtier and ruttier road that led to the camp. A hundred yards or more before we reached it, we passed an outhouse.
"I remember this place now," said Josh. "We were here when I was a kid. It didn't have proper toilets, just that thing."
I remembered it too. I had a vivid memory of the outhouse. "I hope it smells better that the last time we were here," I said.
Three tents were already erected in the clearing. A few people wandered around or sat beside fires, cooking and eating. There were at least a half a dozen children playing noisily. Mom chose a spot as far away from the others and as private as we could find. She made us help her pitch the tent, and then we brought in everything we needed for the night. Josh eyed our bedding as the pump inflating our mattress whirred. The mattress was about queen size, taking up almost the whole floor of our little tent. One side and the head were practically touching the wall, and the little bit of space left at the foot was full of our stuff. Mom had brought one set of bedding that would cover us all.
"Is that really where we're sleeping?" Josh asked. "All together?"
"Sure honey," Mom said. "Didn't I tell you? A family bed. Historically, most families slept together like this. Don't worry. We'll be quite cozy. It will be great to be a bit intimate with each other for a change. "
By then, the sun was already behind the hill, and Mom was anxious for us to all get a chance to pee before it got any darker. We went all together to the outhouse, Mom shining a flashlight in front of us, though it was really still light enough to see the way without it. The outhouse was even worse than I remembered, all smelly and riddled with flies, and when you waited your turn outside you could hear, right through the door, pee and anything else splashing down into the noxious pit below.
"It's a long way to go to that place in the dark," Mom told us as we walked back to our tent. "If either of you need to go in the night, maybe you'd better stay in the clearing. And I don't want you going into the bushes either. You might trip over something you can't see, or there might be poison ivy, or ticks, or snakes, or bears."
"But Mom," Josh said, "it's against the rules to pee in the camp."
"I don't care about rules when your safety's at stake," Mom said. "It's only pee."
We hadn't had time to build a fire, so with it getting dark and nothing else to do, we all got into the tent and switched on our battery-powered lantern. Mom tried to read, and Josh and I tried to find something to talk about that we didn't mind Mom hearing, but soon enough we all got tired of that and decided it was time to sleep.
At home we all had our own rooms, so it was strange getting undressed together in such a tiny space. I tried to turn my back to the others while I took off my bra and put on my sleep-shirt, but they probably both saw my tits anyway, we were all so close. What came as a surprise to me was that I really didn't care. It didn't seem like a big deal at all if my family saw my boobs.
I pulled off my shorts, leaving on my panties, and I was ready for bed. Mom meanwhile stripped down to her bra and panties and put on a short, plain nightgown. Josh took off everything but his boxer shorts. He got into bed first, and Mom made him scoot to the far side to make room for us. I got into the middle, and Mom lay down at the outer edge.
"Everybody ready for lights out? "Mom asked brightly before she switched off the lamp.
The night was warm, verging on hot, and right away I began to resent having to wear a t-shirt. Guys are lucky; Josh only had to wear his boxers. I pushed my share of the covers down to my waist, and the others must have been hot as well because they followed suit and pushed theirs down too. I was drowsy, and I would have gone to sleep immediately if Josh hadn't been so restless. I could feel the covers moving every time he fidgeted, turned or moved his legs.
"Try to go to sleep, honey," Mom said to him. "You're keeping us all awake."
"I'm trying to," Josh said. "I just can't."
In a flash of intuition, like I get sometimes, I knew what the problem was. "He needs to jack off, Mom," I impulsively said. I'd never learned to keep my big mouth shut. Josh gave me a swift kick.
I'd never really thought about Josh jacking off before. I guess part of me had always believed it when Mom said he was an angel. But in that flash of intuition I realized that my brother was just an ordinary, horny young guy.
"Don't be coarse, Emily," Mom said. "He's just excited about being out in nature. Aren't you, Josh?"
But it must have set Mom wondering, for a minute later she lifted up the blankets and looked across me to where Josh lay. Josh and I both complained at the same time.
