Nothing makes you feel quite so young and as old simultaneously as clearing out the family home to sell it when your second parent is gone. But here we were, David and I, standing in front of the porch staring up at the house, shabbier and smaller than I remembered. Hell, that description probably applied equally to David and me too! We were both mid-fifties, Irish twins, our parents had called us, being eleven months apart in age, although there wasn't a drop of Irish heritage on either side of the family. I guess it was a popular phrase or slur back in the day.
Both David and I kept fit. Although, he had a baby belly that didn't seem to want to go, and I had the sister of it. We'd grown up as best friends first and siblings second. We'd been through all sorts together. Not having any kids to play with nearby meant we relied on each other for company and entertainment. Not having any other brother or sisters meant clearing the house was on us. We were the picture of middle-class civility. I wore a baby blue polo shirt and pale khakis with hiking boots, David wore a pink t-shirt over sweats and sneakers. We could have been an old married couple about to wash the family truck.
Both our partners had declined the offer to help. David's wife was on the verge of a legal separation and my husband barely had the enthusiasm these days to haul himself out of bed, let alone help out. The kids scarpered the minute they figured there might be some actual physical labor required.
We made our way inside, both conscious we were treading on the graveyard of our youth. The house smelt old and a bit catty. Though Dad had never kept animals. We spent the morning going through each room together, methodically affixing color stickers to everything: trash, sell, save. By lunchtime, we were finished with the ground floor and decided to take a break before commencing upstairs. The local diner was a full-on flashback. The staff may have changed, and the prices may have risen alarmingly, but everything else was frozen in time.
"How're you holding up, Skip?" I asked David, reverting to his old nickname.
"Ah, just fine, Squirrel. How about you?" He responded in kind.
"A little sad, but it's being a hell of a trip down memory lane too."
"I know. I haven't thought about half the things in that house in years."
"Did you see the size of the dinner plates?"
"I know!"
"I thought they were side plates when I found them in the cupboard. Jeez, when we were kids, they seemed huge."
"Everything did when we were kids."
We reminisced for a while more over pie and coffee, and then made our way back to the house.
Bobo is when things started to go astray.
We found Bobo in the back bedroom. My old bedroom. David tried to claim Bobo, a stuffed bear of contention our entire childhood lives. David, the younger of us, claimed it had reverted to him upon birth. I claimed that, as it had been given to me first, it was and always have been mine. Back in the day, the fights could be quite rough, now, it was more of a half-hearted tug of war.
We'd been sitting on the floor going through boxes when the fight broke out. David finally manhandled Bobo away from me, falling back with the effort. Something snapped inside of me. I was suddenly eleven again. I leapt over the box between us and straddled his chest, grabbing at the bear he was now trying to hold out of my reach.
"No fair." I shouted and finally grabbed Bobo out of his clutches. I threw both my arms in the air in victory. Big mistake. David launched into savage tickles that I hadn't suffered since I was a child. I went into paroxysms of laughter and spasms and tears and punching. There are some things we do as middle-aged adults that we really know we shouldn't do because were not eleven anymore. Being tickled was one of these things. This 50-something lady was not used to the sensation, or the sudden flicking off of some internal switch that controlled those reflexes that inhibit us adults. Now those controls were suddenly required elsewhere. Long story short, in mid laugh, my bladder emptied itself. I'm not talking a little pee stain here. Nor a wet patch. I quite literally unleashed about two pits of urine onto my brother's chest. My khakis turned instantly dark brown and slick looking, as my pee soaked through them and into his pink shirt. It literally turned from pale to hot pink before my eyes. I felt the heat around my ass and my legs as the liquid flooded out and I'm pretty sure David felt the same heat as my tsunami engulfed him.
I was up and off him in a split second, but the damage was well and truly done. The room smelled of fresh pee and I was mortified. Thankfully I'd been guzzling water all morning, so it was mostly H2o. This would not be a consolation for my brother, who remained laying on the flat of his back with a quizzical look on his face.
"David, I'm so sorry." I stuttered. He seemed not to hear me at first, then my words registered, and he focused on me.
"Oh, don't worry about it, Squirrel. It one of those things. I shouldn't have tickled you like that. I don't know what I was thinking." He smiled but his face was still creased in a weird frown. Not anger, not disappointment, not surprise. I was about to help him stand up when my eyes were drawn to a shape in his sweats. They'd tented up under a very obvious erection. Now, I'd been pretty much sitting on top of that thing moments before, and it had definitely remained dormant. Now, his cock was doing a perfect Vesuvius impersonation, bar the eruption, and I was confused. I guess that explained the curious frown, I thought. But surely I wasn't responsible for giving my own brother a stiffy?
I made like I hadn't seen anything untoward and, flustered, set off in search of towels. David remained in the room while I searched, I guess waiting for things to return to normal. I also checked there'd be hot water for showers. Then I raided my parent's old room for clothes we could wear while I washed and dried ours.
That's when I found the box.
I returned to David with towels, shirts and trousers for us both. Underwear, I decided, we could forgo. I also carried the curious cardboard box I'd found in the closet in my parent's room. It had private scrawled all over it in Sharpie. A sure sign we should rip it open to investigate. I handed David the change of clothes and, still sopping, sat down beside him.
"Hot water will be an hour." I said shrugging. "But I found this. Weird, huh?"
David looked at the box, seemingly oblivious to his sopping shirt. He tore the top of the box open, and we both craned our necks to look inside, heads almost touching.
David fished about inside and produced a large black tube. It appeared to be made of some kind of rubber. I took it from his hand, spotting the bemused, shocked look in his face.
"What is it?" I asked innocently.
"Em." He responded, pulling a small pink tube out of the box, and holding it up.
"Sex toys." He laughed.
I looked shocked, which only made David laugh more.
"What? You think the folks never played about?"
"I --" Well, I guess I'd never considered the possibility. They were my parents after all. And yet, here I was, holding what was unmistakably a large dildo in my hand. And David was wielding a pink vibrator.
"Oh, my." I whispered, dropping the dildo with the realization it had been inside my mother.
David delved into the box once more and came up with four or five more vibrators of differing sizes and functions. One even had a remote. There was also an economy sized bottle of what I discovered was lube. Now, I'm not exactly a shrinking violet, but my sex life had always been what the young people call vanilla. The idea that my parents were into something a little more exotic shocked me. David saw the look on my face and laughed again.
"Oh, come on, Sis. You must have known they were always at it like rabbits?"
"I did not." I said with a touch more indignation that I had indented. This revelation was truly shocking for me and sat awkwardly with my memory of my kindly, old parents.
David tipped the rest of the contents of the box onto the floor and with prurient interest, I rifled through the various devices, handcuffs, tassly things and selection of what I presumed were butt plugs.
"Jesus." David whistled. "And I was worried the worst thing I'd have to do was delete Dad's internet history."
"David." I snapped, shocked even more at the thought of my father surfing for porn.
"C'mon, Squirrel. You should be delighted they were red blooded humans who obviously enjoyed each other."
He set one of the vibrators down which began to slide across the floor emitting a buzzing sound. This only made David laugh more and me go redder.
"When did you become such a prude?" He scolded.
"I'm not a prude. It's just, these are private things, meant to be an intimate secret between two adults. Not the butt of your immature humor."
"Prude." David teased waving the giant dildo like a lightsaber.
"Oh, come on." I scooped the items up and switched the errant vibe off, replacing all the items in the box. "This one's for the trash." I said, affixing the requisite sticker to the box.
"You go shower first. I'll take whatever hot water's left when you're done." I said with a finality designed to close the book on my parent's love life. After David left, something weird and uncharacteristic came over me. To this day, I couldn't tell you why, but I pulled the private box back to me and slipped one of the vibrators into my pocket.
Later, even as the hot water turned cold in the shower, I rinsed it off and slipped it inside me, surprised at how wet I was and how easily it fit. Conscious of the low buzzing sound, I maneuvered the vibrating sex toy in my pussy and around my clit until my knees buckled from one of the more intense orgasms I had ever felt. Post come down, I felt ashamed of what I had done and vowed to slip the now clean vibrator back into the box and forget all about it. The idea that I had just inserted something inside me that had last been inside my mother only added to my shame.
Later, we resumed our archiving, me sporting a fleece over a skirt, David wearing loose fitting trousers and a plaid shirt. We looked like two convicts escaped from a thrift shop. I never did get a chance to slip the vibrator back unseen, so it remained lodged in the waistband of my skirt.
Between the stop for lunch, the showering, and the need to wash and dry our clothes, our schedule was thrown out of whack and David suggested calling our respective partners to say we'd need to stay over to finish. I nodded my agreement and texted my husband. I didn't get a reply. David, it seemed, got the earful that he'd expected and let flow over him like water of a duck.
Dinner consisted of a food delivery that came with two bottles of wine. David did the ordering. I set the table. Tiny plates an all. We chatted amiably about our lives and failing marriages. David let slip that he hadn't been intimate with his wife -- or anyone else -- for over two years. I tut tutted and then realized, when I totted it up, I was having an even drier spell.
"What's the fucking point?" David snapped vehemently. "We have this opportunity of this wonderful thing called sex open to us on a plate, we're married, we're not going to catch anything, hell, there's not even the chance of a baby, and nothing. Zero interest."
I uh-huh'd in agreement.
"Like, I never realized that last time we made love was the last time I might ever make love." He said. "It's not like I'm going to have an affair. So, unless she decides to go through with a divorce, that's me done. My last shot spent."
"Christ, we're still young." I added, thinking of my depressed husband at home.
"I wish I knew when I was younger what I now know." David said.
"Which is?"
"Take every opportunity to make love. Every one. Don't ever say no. Never say later. Just grab it now and enjoy it for all its worth. Because one day, your last fuck with be your last."
