Meg

Part 2: Meg

We are walking along Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn on a warm fall night. My arm around her waist, my sister Maura leaning into me.

Heading home.

We have been lovers for a little more than three months.

She stops.

We are on the sidewalk under a streetlamp. Couples and knots of people flow around us.

She leans up and kisses me.

It's a kiss of startling avidity. The kind of kiss that girls bestow that tells the world around them,

I love this man

.

This one is mine.

Her hand slides down to cup me through my pants.

My sister is fondling my balls on Flatbush Avenue.

When she breaks away and lets me breathe again, that's when she tells me,

"Jim, we have to do something about Meg."

*

"OK, Branwell, how's life with Cathy?

"

Wild haired Meg, Maura's best friend in Brooklyn, who had done lighting for her show that summer, plopping next to me in a booth in a bar in Red Point. Me and Maura drinking with a bunch of friends, acquaintances, hipsters. Loose clothed Meg, breasts hidden beneath a perpetual sweater.

Me not knowing precisely how to answer her, what she might know, might intuit.

Avoid. Divert. Dissemble.

"I keep telling you, Meg. Heathcliffe and Cathy were characters in

Wuthering Heights

. Branwell's sisters were Emily and Charlotte. He didn't, y'know, with either of them."

"As far as we know."

"Yeah, as far as we now."

"But we don't know everything."

"Nope."

"And it gets dark and lonely on the moors."

"We're in Brooklyn, Meg. You know we're in Brooklyn."

She leans her head against my shoulder. Her tangled curls sweep against my face and neck. I catch Maura's eye. She is at the bar, grabbing us a couple of beers. Meg has been telling me I was in love with Maura since I first landed in New York.

Avoid. Divert. Dissemble.

"Meg," I say into her hair. "Have I ever told you you're the most beautiful woman I know?"

"You drunk?"

"Nope."

"Well I am. And I call bullshit."

She shifts to look up at me from behind a veil of hair. I try to look offended back at her. I feel her hidden breasts against my arm.

We are playing.

It is all in fun.

Branwell. Cathy.

But I am fucking my sister, Meg.

You think I am fucking my sister.

And I am.

I am fucking my girl under the stairs.

She is who I love.

Meg sits up, looks at me with calm grey eyes.

"Bullshit," she says. Drinks from a half empty mug. "Total, complete, utter and total bullshit. Look at me, Jimmy. What do you see?"

I tell her the truth.

"I see a very pretty woman, who dresses to deemphasize how beautiful she is. And who very occasionally -- really,

very

occasionally, actually touches a brush to her hair."

"That, James, is bullshit. The beautiful part. That's bullshit. Here's what you

should

see. I am a woman. I am twenty eight years old -- which means - and this is not atypical of women my age -- that I am starting, just starting, to actually think about actually wanting babies but there are no, repeat, zero, potential fathers on the horizon in Brooklyn in 2017 for those theoretical babies that I theoretically want. Professionally, I am a more than competent theater techie, thanks in large part to a father who didn't have preconceived notions about girls and wrenches. I do not like to comb my hair, that is correct. However, I also - though I do not like to make an issue of it - have boobs under my sweaters, and an eligible vagina, to which I (also occasionally) allow men access when

I

choose to do so and on

my

terms. Nobody else's. I am, contrary to what I believe to be your actual assumption, intensely sexual with men who turn me on. And moderately inventive in bed. And - now lissen, Branwell, this part's important - I am no more dissatisfied with what I see in the mirror every morning than the mass of women in this city. But I am not beautiful. Maude's beautiful. Jennifer fucking Lawrence is beautiful. I am not beautiful."

"Of course you're beautiful,"

Maude says, sidling back into the booth beside her, her and my beers in her hands. Foam sloshes onto the table.

"Aaaw," Meg says to her. "That's sweet of you to say that."

Looking back at me.

"From her I'll take that compliment. From you, I'm not so sure yet, Branwell.

Turns, asks Maura: "So, Cathy, you still wandering around the apartment naked?

Maura, lying with seeming ease ."Nah, not really. Not since the play ended."

"God, you 're disappointing me, you guys." She snorts her disbelief at us. "All just professional and done, now? Jesus."

I shrug at her. Look at Maura.

NotTrueNotTrueNotTrueNotTrue.

The night before, just:

In bed, in moonlight.

Maura's tiny breasts moving as she moved above me.

The soft, wrong, wonderful inside of her.

My hands gripping the pears of her ass, my fingers finding, probing the ridged skin around her asshole.

The whole glorious intimacy of smells, tastes, sensations: love.

"Yeah," I lied to Meg. "Done. All back to normal."

Another snort.

"Yeah, well, I just wanna know something."

"What?"

"I mean, you guys crossed this, like, naked Rubicon, you know? Don't you ever, like, just walk back from the bathroom and not bother? I mean, towel and all?"

I laugh, maybe more than necessary.

"No, not really." Maude says. "Okay, maybe once or twice. I mean, you know."

"No, I do not know. That's the whole point. I mean, I told you I think the whole deal with you two is kinda transgressive hot, you know. I've been reading about this. Siblings, separated for a long time, their bodies, like, recognize each other. They can fall in love."

For a minute, I don't say anything. She'd almost hit a bulls eye oo close to the bulls eye.

"So tell me the truth, you two, are you two fucking?"

*

Maude and I break apart in Brooklyn lamplight.

"Fuck that was intense tonight," I tell my sister "I mean, what the hell does she really know?"

"She knows I practiced with you."

"That's all you told her?

"Yeah, Jim, this was back during the show. There was nothing else to tell her when I was telling her, you know?"

"Just that you were hanging around naked in our apartment."

"Yeah, well, I kinda told her the other thing too. About the time you drew me. And I touched myself."

"Jesus, Mo. You didn't tell her that we're ..."

"That we're fucking? You can say it, Jimmy. I don't think they arrest people for this anymore."

"Okay, Mo. You didn't tell her that we're fucking. Did you?"

"God, Jimmy. No. I couldn't. I mean, we can't."

She leans into me again, kisses her way hard into my mouth.

Whispers at me,

"But maybe we should."

*

Another conversation, two nights later.

In bed. In moonlight. All the distant sounds of Brooklyn floating around us.

"I love you, Jimmy. I just wish I didn't have to lie about you. About us."

I am lying with my head between Maura's legs: her sex, her stomach my pillow. I watch car lights move across the ceiling of my borrowed bedroom.

I don't know what to tell her.

Sister-fucking isn't looked on positively in this world.

I have never loved anyone more than this woman.

"And I don't want to lie to Meg. Especially not to her. She's been like my sister since I came to New York. Lying to her ... about you ... just makes it all seem, I don't know, wrong. Dirty. Something. I don't want to lie to her about loving you."

I turn in the bed, kiss the stubbly mound at the base of her belly.

"I'm scared, Mo. I don't want this to, y'know, end. Just us, the two of us. It feels safe with you."

Her hand twining in my hair.

"Trust me, babe."

"I do," I tell her. "I trust you more than anything."

"You remember how we used to hide in the closet together?"

I do. Of course I do.

My girl under the stairs.

"Well, we can't stay there forever, Jimmy." Her hands caressing my head, my temples, my face.

"Sooner or later, we have to leave that goddamn closet, Jim."

*

Three nights later.

Knock on the door. Maura dressed in a peasant skirt and purple top, opening. Meg in the hallway, with a bottle of wine.

And still later, the take-out Indian (

Kurry in a Hurry!

) decimated on the kitchen table, Meg's bottle (and another!) emptied, Mo finally kissing the elephant in the room.

"Okay, Meg, we got something to say."

Meg looking at her, at me. Her face partly buried behind unruly hair.

"So?" she asks.

"So, yes."

"So yes, what?"

"So yes, we're fucking. Jimmy and me."

Pause. Smile. Bright, loud laughter.

"I knew it. Goddammit, you two. I knew it. I knew it I knew it. Since when?"

"Last summer. During the show."

She laughs more, harder.

To me: "Branwell, you fuck! You lied to me."

"I know. I'm sorry. Its, ...you kept asking and I didn't know. I mean, Jesus, it's incest, Meg."

My sister, beside me, her hand finding mine beneath the table. As our fingers twine , she brings it up onto the surface.

A closet door is opening.

"No," my sister says, "it's not."

Meg: "I get that, Mo. I think I do."

"Not yet," Maura tells her. "But you will."

She unwinds her fingers from mine. Gets up and moves around the table toward her friend. Our friend. Leans down and kisses her. From where I sit, I can see Meg tense, her arms stiffening at the sides in surprise. Small noises, a mix of fear, resistance and, slowly, slowly, a melting. Her stiff arms relaxing, hands coming up to find Mo's face. Meg and my sister touching each other. Kissing each other with an increasing intensity. With love.

And when they break apart, saying: "Oh fuck. Oh, Branwell. Oh fuck."

*

She is as different from Maura as night and day. Where Maura is all bones -- silk skin stretched over ribs, with sharp hips and tiny boyish breasts cuppable in the palm of a hand (my hand!), Meg is small, round, a creature of curves and sweet flesh, not heavy, but beautifully, comfortably

zaftig

. Where Mo, in sex, is fierce

and angular, thrusting hard to meet my body as I enter and plunge into her, Meg is a woman who surrounds, envelops, takes me into a world of soft and pillowed loving.

I move against her, my penis shocked by the tenderness of her thigh. My sister behind me, her arms around me, the familiar bones and softnesses of her making my flesh electric.

I am as hard as I have ever been. I am on fire, I am in love, strangely, wonderfully, with two soft avid bodies.

Maura.

Meg.

I am surrounded by women.

Two women are an ocean.

How did we get here?

*

This is how:

"Will you?" Maura standing beside her friend, the woman who is like her sister. Both of them rough breathed from the their just broken kiss. Meg's mouth open, I am looking at the round fullness of her lower lip, learning, (already!) that she is a woman whose lips seem to bruise and swell from kissing. Mo's hand still lost and moving in Meg's hair. Looking down at Meg. Meg staring at past her. At me.

Asking: "Branwell, did you know about this?"

Me shaking my head.

"Not lying this time, are you?"

I do not answer right away.

Instead, I think:

My sister is taking me somewhere/

I don't know where she's taking me.

It was my sister who touched me first.

"No, Meg." I finally tell her "I'm so not lying."

Maude adding, " He isn't."

And saying, to both of us:

"This is what I want. To be with both of you. Because I love you both.

Me realizing:

I want this too.

And saying -- out loud -- to the stunned and bruise-lipped woman who is sitting at our table with my sister's fingers twining in her unkempt hair.

"It's alright, Meg. She's right. This is exactly what we all ought to do."

Meg looks at me. At Maura.

When she speaks next (

words drifting through her sweet and swollen lips

), her voice is damp with some emotion I can't fully comprehend (

I do not know her yet; I am not yet her lover

).

She says to me, to Mo, to the universe, to herself:

"God, you two. This is so, I mean, perversely hot. Are we really gonna do this?"

"I think so, Meg," I tell her.

And Meg, whispering: "Yeah, Meg, we so are."

And Meg answers her, not speaking, speaking with her body only, her hands reaching up to find my Maura's face and, moving, nervous as twin hummingbirds, across ears, eyes, lips. Her fingers tracing Mo's cheeks with the surprised, surprising intimacy of a first time Caressing their way at last behind my sister's head, the tender jointure of skull and neck. She stands so suddenly that our rickety first-apartment chair falls over behind her, clattering on the floor.

We ignore it. We ignore everything

as Meg's fingers lock into Mo's long auburn hair (

Meg

sitting beside me

in the dark as she pulls up lights on the stage and my sister is sitting at another kitchen table, naked, moving her hand in feigned languor across her pussy

)

and pulls Maura toward her into a rich and quiet, moaning and voracious kiss.

My sister's hand extending toward me across a litter of abandoned curries. Her fingers move, inviting me into the circle of their touching.

*

We undress each other, standing at the table. Meg lifting Mo's small sleeveless shirt up over her shoulders, then turning, finding the buttons of my shirt.

Maura and I murmur around her, reassuring, inviting her, giving her the first pleasure.

She shudders as I kiss her neck, then pulls away as Mo lifts her sweater.

Meg leans into the undressing, her tousled hair emerges from the sweater bottom.

"Take off my bra," Mo tells her.

And she does.

I kiss her, kiss Maura, Kiss Meg again.

Meg's mouth is soft. Her tongue is made of wine and curry.

Her hands are inside my opened shirt.

Her palms against my chest, my nipples.

Saying, "Oh, Branwell."

Her face is a swollen-lipped smile.

Mo's shirt is off, her bra is gone. One of my hands finds the familiar country of her ribs, a breast. I know the way her nipple stiffens against my palm.

(

How many times have we made love in three short months? Dozens? A hundred? And now this. Now Meg

.)

I let my hand slip off her and kneel to begin undoing this new woman's belt and jeans. He t-shirt has come loose. Mo draws her hands down across words printed on the front (

Antimatter goes Boom!)

and pulls it upward

.

And I am seeing, touching Meg's body -- the gift of her skin -- for the first time

.

Her legs, as I draw her jeans down, are full, soft, downy. My thumb traces the long bone below her knee, she puts a hand on my shoulder to brace herself and steps out -- left, right. She is barefoot now, black bra. I kiss her mound through red cotton panties, then turn and help my sister from her skirt. Mo slides her underwear off in the skirt's wake. I cock my head so my tongue can find her. Between her legs I find a vast and salty wetness.

She moves from me, the ballet of our bodies brings her around behind Meg's back. She pulls a clasp and fabric falls away. Initially Meg's hands move to cover her breasts- an automatic modesty occurring even as she is being undressed by two incipient lovers. Then she stops, her hands fall away and instead find me and pull me against her belly, my forehead touching the bottoms of those unseen breasts. Below my chin, there is the soft red fabric which my fingers find and peel away from her, and down. She is trimmed but not shaven where I kiss her. And then she is naked, Mo is naked and, standing, I let them undo me, belt and buttons. I kick my shoes off and let them -- my friend, my sisters, my lovers, my loves -- make me naked as they are.

Our clothes are a jumble of the floor around us.

I am, inevitably, intensely erect. And this time it is Meg who touches me first.

"Well, Branwell," she says to me as she wraps her fingers around me, palming me slowly. "Whaddaya know?"

*

We engage then in a gentle choreography.

Eventually, I will learn that threesomes are by nature gentle. There is too much shifting of focus, the giving and taking of pleasures from more than one body, for it to be anything else. If fucking is a closed circle, then three people making love is an amazing triangle -- a sweet fluidity of touching and being touched that

opens

to a world beyond your body into amazement. I am stunned as we cross the room, our limbs wrapped, our bodies moving - clumsy at first, then with the beginnings of a shared rhythm - into and against each other. I feel us break apart for a moment only to fall, like waves on a beach, onto Maura's bed -- Maura's and my bed -- the bed that that suddenly no longer belongs to us alone, but to us and

this tangle haired zaftig woman

who is kissing me on the underside of my shaft and

taking the crazy-sensitive skin of my balls between her teeth, tugging softly more than softly, while one of my hands finds her face, he neck, the soft sway of her breasts in air, the rich, furred bottom of her and meanwhile, I am touching my sister's jaw, lips and leaning to kiss her familiar, thin lips, my tongue brushing against her teeth, finding and twining her tongue; and then

it is Maura, my sweet love, who breaks from me and

positions her face, her mouth down at the jointure of Meg's legs and stomach, to touch with her lips and tongue, Meg's furred mound, her sex; and then, to part Meg's swollen labia with tongue and fingers and fill her up with liquid, moaning pleasures. Meg arches at, and then in rhythm with my sister's tongue, her head falls back against a knotted coverlet and sheets. She makes a noise that is a close mouthed moan, while Maura repositions herself to kneel on fours above her suddenly ecstatic body, and by doing that, gives me access to her own sweet softness that I have spent three secret months loving and making love to and I give to her what she is giving to Meg, and now the room is full of the song of women's voices, moaning, murmuring, my sister's legs move and clasp around my ears and the world becomes more quiet and I am aware of a warmth that is Meg's mouth surrounding me and we are, for a moment a perfect pythagorean structure built of skin and nerves, sensations, loves, newness and familiarity and everything that is animal about us; and everything that is human.

And then Meg comes, shaking, mouthing both of our names, Jimmy, Maura, - and Cathy, and Branwell - and the moment when the lights came up on my naked sister and the moment when my sister pirouetted naked in our apartment, spinning in dust motes as I watched, and the moment when Mo slid down my body, taking me (embarrassed, aroused) in her mouth, and whispered at me that what was wrong would be alright have all flowered into something, someone new. And my hands find Meg, touch softly the skin and swell of her breasts, her browned and swelling nipples. While Mo, shudders, coming quietly against my lips, my tongue that has been moving without thought in and out of her. And Meg is suddenly leaning into me where I am throbbing, hovering just at the edge of release, and presses herself against me, her faced mashed into my legs and my penis held pinioned, motionless, against her breasts until the need to come subsides a little.

And Meg, our new lover, whispers at me, at us:

Not yet, Jimmy. Please not yet.

*

So this, then:

Maura sitting curled around Meg's head and shoulders, stroking, caressing her forehead with one hand, her breasts with another, while I lower myself, invited, down onto her. I feel her folds at the tip of my penis, and she is glorious and I am alive with the feel of her, it is as if for a moment, my whole body exists in the few millimeters of flesh where I am meeting the inside of her for the first time. And Meg moves slightly toward me, taking me, guiding me with her hand into the edge and then the rich interior of her, her sweet, her utterly

eligible

vagina. She inhales at the shock of my entry and, tensing, clenches me, squeezes me and I move into her, so deep, so enveloped by her that I think I can feel her cervix.