Revenge is Sweet, Part 2
Enticement
Aoife's Note:
All characters engaging in any sexual activities are 18 years or older. This story is a work of fiction, and any similarity between any characters and any person, living or dead, is only in your dirty little mind!
Revenge became one of literature's favorite themes because it is so universally relatable. At one time or another, everyone yearns to exact some measure of revenge upon someone. A boss. Your parents. The team that beat you on a sports field. Your ex. A romantic rival. Your brother or your sister.
Admit it: right now, you need at least two hands to count everyone you want to commit an act of revenge on. If your revenge can take the form or revenge sex, I suppose you've already taken it. Because, really, what better excuse to screw someone's brains out than to get revenge on someone who has done you wrong?
A true romantic, of course, abhors such impure motivation for sex. The only legitimate reason for sex, they argue, is for pure, passionate joy. The very purpose of revenge sex being to inflict pain therefore makes it a shameful perversion of the pleasure of sex.
For my senior paper on literature, I wrote that these motivations for sex which seem so contradictory oftentimes come together. Literature is full of examples. Passionate sex often leads to revenge sex. In some cases, a person entices someone with revenge sex when what they really want is to lure someone into a passionate relationship. Or, revenge sex morphs into the purest of pleasures.
I won't bore you with the examples used in that paper. My own story makes a far more titillating tale to read. Well, it's not my story alone—it's as much my brother's story as it is mine.
My brother, Brandon, exacted revenge on his best friend for dumping me by shattering his leg during soccer practice. Revenge begets revenge and yada, yada, yada, my brother and I ended up screwing each other's brains out in one of those moments when your little brain does the thinking for your big brain.
Incestuous revenge sex may have made sense to our little brains at the time, but propelled us into a cycle of revenge that left my life and my relationship with my big brother almost as badly shattered as my ex's leg.
After our revenge plot brought a hurricane of disaster raining down on us and I wanted out, to end this cycle once and for all, that's when my brother came up with his brilliant idea for seeking revenge. I hung on his every word.
"What if I can't do that?"
"The beauty is, you don't have to do anything. I will do everything; you are only the lure."
"I don't like it." Not at all.
"Why not?"
On this, I invoked my 5
th
Amendment right to remain silent.
"It's perfect. I have the sex and you get the revenge. What's wrong with that?"
"Really? You don't see the problem?"
"It's a really good plan." It was a great plan, but I could not tell him that. The thought of my brother screwing someone else made me physically ill; the fact that he justified it as fucking for me only made it worse.
None of that I could tell him. "Let me think about it."
#
I should have had a problem with Jenny Mendleson, but didn't feel anything for her. I didn't know her, so she didn't owe me anything. Don broke his promise to me when he dumped me for her, but she never promised to be faithful to me. She chatted with friends over a lunch of burger and fries in the dining hall. Don will not be joining her because he was busy learning how to walk again in rehab, and rumor had it, planned to withdraw this semester due to another scheduled surgery.
We watched from three tables away.
One thing I must give my brother credit for: when he fucks something up, he fucks it completely up. "She's not that pretty, is she?"
"Not compared to you," Brandon said. He meant well, but somehow made it worse on at least two levels, so I struck back.
"Not as pretty as Tammy, either, is she?"
"That's harsh."
"It's probably better if you don't talk about how I look."
"Is it better for me to be dishonest, leaving you wondering what's really on my mind?"
"Is it appropriate for you to talk about how hot I am?"
"Yes. Particularly when you are fishing for compliments. Plenty of things in my head are inappropriate, but the fact my sister is pretty is nothing more than a fact. Facts are never inappropriate."
"Now you're just talking nonsense. Plenty of facts are inappropriate."
"Name one fact that is inappropriate."
"My left butt cheek is bruised in the exact shape of my brother's hand."
#
Meeting Jenny was not hard. Nor was directing the subject the way we planned it. As Brandon correctly guessed, these were on her mind, too. I found her at the mall and them minutes later, we were drinking lattes at Starbucks.
"Why doesn't he just call Don then, if he feels so terrible about it?"
"Have you met my brother? If a more stubborn person has ever been born, I've never met them. Besides, he is afraid of Don's reaction. It's hard enough to apologize when the person might accept the apology, but when you are sure he won't accept it, well..."
"I get it," she said, falling for it. "So, how do we change two such stubborn guys? Because, if we figure that out, we can write a how-to book and make a million dollars."
Hook, line and sinker. "There's the rub. I don't know. [sigh] We could...no, that's no good."
"What?"
"Never mind; it's stupid."
"Tell me."
"Oh, okay. Are you free some night this week?"
"How about tomorrow?"
"Perfect! Come to think of it, that is the only night we have free, too!"
#
Turns out, it was a good idea for Brandon to remain friends with Jenny when they broke up. They never got serious, he claims, but did sleep together, so it was something. But since they broke it off on good terms, she had no qualms about going with me to his apartment and walking right into our trap—or about helping drain the 1.5 liter bottle of wine I brought with us. Hard to believe she never suspected Brandon bought it for me, because I was barely 18.
Brandon displayed believable regret while keeping the wine glasses topped off so Jenny didn't notice how slowly we sipped ours. Don't get me wrong—we drank, just not as much as she did. He had his own supply of wine, which he tapped when we finished that first bottle. Jenny was fun and I could see why Brandon dated her. Why Don picked her over me was hard to swallow.
She was cute, though. A couple of glasses in, she began reminding me of that hot actress Diane Franklin, with the same gorgeous long, black curls, bright blue eyes and pale skin. As my head grew light and the three of us started laughing at everything anyone said, Natasha from the Boris & Natasha cartoons popped into my head, and tested my self-control to keep from calling her that. Even her high, little-girl voice didn't stop me from calling her Natasha in my head every time she spoke.
When drunk, she became unnecessarily apologetic. "I told you how I didn't mean to hurt you, didn't I?"
"Several times," I said.
Tears pooled in those pretty eyes of hers. "I mean it."