The summer after my junior year of college, I had come home to work and earn some cash. My sister April and I were sitting around the kitchen table, having breakfast, after Mom and Dad had gone to work.
This was in the era before smartphones and the Internet, so I was reading the sports section of the newspaper, and my sister had some sort of magazine with tips on makeup or catching boys or some other crap.
After I finished the cereal, I put down the paper and was lost in thought, staring into space. April noticed and looked over at me. She rapped on the table to get my attention. "Earth to Matthew," she said. "It's morning. Wakey, wakey."
I came out of my trance. "Sorry," I said. "I was just thinking about last night."
"What about last night. I thought you liked her. Didn't go well?"
"I do like her," I said, "but it was strange."
"Strange how?"
"Well, after the movie we went back to her place so we could fuck..."
April interrupted me. "Geez, Matt, maybe too much information?"
"No, it's important. I want to tell you," I said. I continued, "So, anyway, we started fucking and she was just lying there. I mean, she was horny and she wanted it, but she wasn't getting anything out of it. It was like she had no idea why she was doing it or what it was for."
"Just lying there? Doing what?"
"Doing nothing. It was like fucking a corpse."
"Necrophilia," she said.
"What's that?"
"It means fucking a corpse. It's something some guys do. God knows why," she said. "Maybe it's the best they can get."
"Not only guys," I said.
"A girl can't fuck a corpse," she said. "The physics don't work, do they?"
"Yeh they do," I said. "The World According to Garp. It's a book. A nurse fucks a brain-dead guy because she wants to get pregnant."
"Did it work?"
"Yeh, she got pregnant. That's who Garp is. The baby," I told her.
"You read the strangest things," she said.
"Then there's Corpse Bride," I added. "Remember that animated movie about the guy who marries a corpse? She's just a skeleton. We watched that last year at Halloween."
"I remember. I wondered how they were going to fuck. Where would he put his dick?"
"Well," I said, "she had boobs, if I remember correctly. If she had boobs, she could have had other body parts too."
"Skeletons don't normally have boobs," she said.
That was enough of that subject. We were too deep down that rabbit hole. "I think we're off the subject," I said. "The girl I was telling you about wasn't really a corpse. She was just acting like one."
"So what did you do?" she asked.
"I fucked her for a couple of minutes, but then decided that it wasn't getting anywhere, so I'd try something new."
"A new position?"
"No. I pulled out of her and laid down next to her, and decided I'd try to interest her with some fingering. Her pussy was incredibly wet, so I knew it wasn't a horniness problem," I explained. "But then came the weird part."
April had long ago put down the magazine, and was watching me intently. "What?"
"I asked her to help me out, to show me what felt good and how best to touch her."
"Good plan."
"The weird part is that she had no idea. She wasn't being shy or anything. She just didn't know what to tell me. She had no idea what would feel good."
"Shit. So what did you do?" she asked.
"I just gave up. I got dressed, came home, and jacked off. What else could I do?"
"That was another piece of too much information, but we'll let it pass," April said.
"So this morning, I was thinking. That's what I was thinking about when I was spaced out," I said. I wasn't done yet, so I continued. I looked at April. "You know, I've had sex with fifteen girls..."
April interrupted. "Geez, really? You keep count? That many?"
"Everybody keeps count. It's not really that much when you think about it. It's about three a year. That's not so much. It's not like I'm bouncing from bed to bed or going to orgies or anything. You've had three a year, haven't you?"
She thought about it. "I guess, but it's only been one year. A little longer."
April's sex life wasn't a secret. I knew she'd had three partners. Mom and Dad knew about at least two of them, and were ok with it. Her birth control pill dispenser was sitting on the bathroom counter for everybody to see. No secret.
"So by the time you're my age, you'll have had a dozen," I pointed out.
That caught her by surprise, but then she shrugged. "I guess so. I never thought of it that way. So why are you telling me your box score?"
"I was thinking that, of those fifteen girls, more than half had never had an orgasm. Can you believe it? These girls, they're like, twenty years old and they've never had an orgasm. I don't mean that they've never had an orgasm during sex. I mean they've never had an orgasm at all, even by themselves."
[I should point out that, in the days before the Internet, there was far less porn available. Playboy magazine had pictures of boobs, and Hustler magazine had their trademark "wide open beavers," to provide anatomy lessons and wanking material for boys, but there was much less for girls. There were certainly no easily-available videos of girls playing with themselves and cumming. No educational aids.]
As I spoke about girls who'd never had orgasms, I noticed a change in April's face. She was trying very hard to show no emotion. I had to ask. "You've had orgasms, haven't you?"
She tried to act offended. "Geez, Matt, why don't you ask a really personal question! You don't get to ask me something like that!"
She was avoiding the question, wasn't she?
"Come on, April," I said. "We've told each other personal stuff before. You know all about my jacking. We're friends."
I waited for her to calm a bit, then asked again. "Have you had orgasms? Really, it's ok to tell me."
She hesitated. "I think so," she said quietly. "Probably."
I worked very hard to keep from laughing. How could she not be sure? "April," I said. "There's no more obvious feeling in the world than an orgasm. It's incredibly intense. If you aren't sure, you haven't."
She looked at me, wide-eyed. The wheels were turning in her mind, but she didn't know what to say, so I helped her. "Have you tried?" I asked.
"Tried?"
"You know, played with yourself," I clarified.
She stood up and picked up her cereal bowl. She tried to shut down the conversation. "We can't be talking about shit like this, Matt. Jesus!"
"We talk about me playing with myself. You mock me all the time for jacking off. Why can't we talk about you?"
"I mock you all the time for jacking off because you jack off all the time," she retorted. "This conversation is over."
She walked out of the kitchen, leaving her cereal bowl in the sink.
--------------
That evening, after we both finished our shifts at work, she came to sit next to me on the couch. It was obvious that she wanted to talk, so I put the game controller down and turned off the TV.
She got right to the point. "Yes, I've tried," she announced.
"Tried what?"
"You know, what we talked about."
"An orgasm?"
"Yeh," she admitted.
"By yourself or with a boy?" I asked.
"Both."
"Didn't work?"
She shook her head.
"He didn't know what to do?"
"Of course not," she said. "He could barely figure out where to put his dick, let alone help me with anything."
I nodded sympathetically. I really felt sorry for her. I tried to imagine not being able to have an orgasm. I wouldn't be able to accomplish anything without that relief. How does she make it through the day? How does she fall asleep at night? Girl's brains must be wired so differently than boys.
She had an idea. "Is there like a book or something? To tell me what to do?" she asked.
"Maybe," I said. "Not that I know of." I shook my head. We were both quiet for a minute. Neither of us knew what to say.
"You been trying for a while?" I asked.
"Years," she said.
"Years?" I was incredulous. "You've been trying to masturbate all this time and haven't said anything? You should have told me. I tell you about my jacking. It's not a secret."
"What's the point? What could you do?" she asked.
I shrugged. "I could've helped you," I said.
"Help me how?" she asked. "What can
you
do?"
"I don't know. I've helped other girls." I thought about the girls I've helped have their first orgasms. Four of them. "I'm a boy, you know. A boy can help. I've done it before, for other girls."
"You help them? How? What do you do?"
"I don't know. Touch them, kiss them, talk to them. That kind of stuff. It works."
"You mean you feel them up to get yourself off?" she asked.
"I wouldn't phrase it that way, but there's a lot of that kind of touching. And other things. That's the point of it."
"Well, that wouldn't work for us, though, would it?"
"Why not?" I asked. I knew what she meant, but I wanted her to say it.
She was getting pissed. "Why not?" she asked, standing. "Let me count the ways." She put her hand up and began to count on her fingers.
"Number 1, you're my brother." She moved to the next finger. "Number 2, you're my brother. Number 3, you're my brother. And there's Number 4, I'm your sister. That's a different one."
I interrupted her before she could get to number 5. "Alright, I get the point."
Then she looked at me skeptically. "Is this just some scheme to get in my pants? Are you trying to fuck me? For real?"
That caught me by surprise. "April," I said, "I can honestly say that never, in all the eighteen years I've known you, have I ever thought about fucking you. It never entered my mind. I'm just trying to be helpful. If you don't want the help, it's ok. But it's an offer."