Looking back now, from the jaded and cynical temple of middle age, I can honestly say that I'm not ashamed. It took some time to get to this place, of course, and with everything going on my life lately, with the divorce and the loss of my job, I really do think that a lot of what should have boiled up years ago is finally starting to surface. I'd just never dealt with it before and, to be honest, I probably wasn't ready to.
Family dinners every week have gotten fewer and fewer since I've made my peace with what happened. I say to myself that it is because I don't have the time, but I know that's a lie. It is because I feel like their eyes are always on me, judging, and no matter what I say or do, how content I am with the past, nothing could ever fully wash away that stain for them. They can see it, obviously. It is everywhere, hanging like a taut rope between us. It was always there, lurking, like a shadow just below the surface, and now it sits in the room with us, ominous and dark.
I've come to the conclusion that I can't really be too hard on myself or my sister. We were more or less just kids, I know. With our family growing up in a small bungalow and with everyone becoming a teen at the same time, it was almost inevitable that something would happen. From the tension in the air, some days, I'm surprised we made it out alive. Outright fist fights were actually common with my brothers, considerably less common with my sister (of course) but no matter how virulent the spat seemed at the time, we made up minutes later because like most larger families, we were also our own best friends.
If someone had asked me at the outset who would be the one in the house to finally crack and do something stupid with our sister, I'd have had to put money on my older brother. I'd always toed the line with school, with women (no, girls at this point, I have to honest) but he was not quite there, if you know what I mean, and what was missing was that part of the brain that allows you to self-edit, to control the worst of those impulses. Years later, he would cause issue after issue with my girlfriends until we eventually had it out over the inappropriate touching, barely disguised innuendo and the leering. He would definitely be culprit number one.
My younger brother, on the other hand, was a real Lothario, so I had no illusions about him. He could get better looking, more ardent lovers with just a quick trip down the street on most days. No, his plate was full.
Now, though, I can see that it was inevitable that it was me. Shy and intelligent, I never really fit in with the normal crowd at school and frankly stuck out in almost every way in the general populace of the town. Most people went straight from High School into a job at one of the local plants and never gave the notion of education a second thought. If they could do enough math to calculate what was left after the mortgage for beer on the weekend, they were happy. My sister and I, however, burned just that little bit brighter than the rest. She didn't care as much for school as I did, at least at the time, but you could see that we both at least liked learning. I craved it and for her it was a pleasurable pastime, but we were in the same general ballpark.
And that, is ultimately is what brought us together.
It sounds odd, but I can thank my early sexual success to Jacques Cousteau, the famous marine biologist. We had his entire book series so when school let out and the first two weeks had rushed by and we were already done all the wonderful things that should have lasted us all summer, out came the books. I was the comedian, so it was my job to slap as many hilarious voices on the various marine animals as I could, creating stories and plots and twists that would have the rest of them in stitches. As we got older, that low comedy was less and less of a hit, but they still asked me to bring it out on occasion when they were feeling nostalgic.
And on the day I first felt it - the big it - my sister Michelle and I were the only ones home, bored out of our trees and in the first flushes of adolescence. She was lying on her stomach on the living room rug, kicking the floor repeatedly while she lay her head sideways over her arms. I stretched out like a cat, taking up almost the entire couch. I'm rather short, so this was a feat, let me tell you. The day was so slow, the ticking of the clock started to put me in a trance when she started kicking, unconsciously, in time to the ticks.
"I'm bored.", she said. She didn't need to tell me, I could hear it in her voice.
'Yeah, me too."
"Got any money?"
"I blew my allowance last week, so ... no." She knew that and I let some of my irritation slip into my voice.
"Fine", she said petulantly. There was one of those long silences everyone dreads, and then she continued.
"Wanna do the voices?"
"Oh, Jesus, no." I laughed but, to be honest, part of me wanted to. It was my thing.
"Come on. You know that you always like it once we're started. I'll even pick your favourite book, S-T. Sharks, sea snakes, snapping turtles ... how you can resist?"
"Oh, we're too old for that shit."
"Hardly. If I like it, I'm obviously not too old for it." She had me there, and I knew it. Art is always in the eye of the beholder, not the artist.
"Fine, but bring it up here."
