When I was growing up, most folks I knew considered having sex with a relative—or at least a blood relative—as something horrid, disgusting, the province of perverts. And I tended to agree. My religious upbringing forbade such a thing and no one I knew would ever condone the idea. That's what I used to think, but looking back, the fact is the subject almost never came up in conversation, so it was really hard to tell what everybody actually believed (or did in privacy). I carried this viewpoint around with me until I attended college and was exposed to certain fallacies in the anti-incest argument, foremost being the obvious incest stores in the Old Testament.
Philosophical questions aside, the final proof for me was, as the saying goes, in the pudding, and the pudding was served the day my cousin Sally came to work at the newspaper. Sally was twenty-two, a recent college graduate, and she'd taken a job as an assistant editor on the City Desk. I was nineteen at the time, a gofer at the paper, and we would often pass in the coffee room or in the hall. We'd barely known each other before then, having grown up in different states and only visiting on the occasional summer vacation trip. She hardly paid me any mind at work, and it was obvious to me that the age and education difference presented formidable barriers to our becoming social friends. But one day, out of the blue, she asked if I could give her a ride to work from time to time when our shifts coincided. Her apartment was on my way, so I started picking her up whenever it was convenient for both of us.
Sally was thin, about five-foot-four, kind of tom-boyish with light auburn hair and big hazel eyes that gave her a waif-like look. She wasn't unattractive, but it was hard to tell much about her looks from a physical standpoint because she always wore loose-fitting slacks and frilly blouses that obscured any definition of her body. She also had a way of never meeting your eyes directly, which made it difficult to take in her face completely at any given moment. At first I had no interest in her other than as a friend, but after a few weeks of riding together in the car, things began to change.
The most interesting thing about her was that she reminded me a lot of my childhood girlfriend, Terrie, with whom I'd had my first sexual experience at the tender age of fifteen. The comparison was not in Sally's looks, but in her philosophy and the way she talked. Despite having gone through the tragic death of her parents in an auto accident only two years before, she was distinctly happy, but could turn serious on a dime when it came to subjects like politics or religion. Her favorite book was
The Feminine Mystique,
and she could quickly become angry over women's rights issues. Her anger was often spiked with a brutal, cutting sarcasm, and she easily matched wits with the men at work, often slicing and dicing them in debates until they slunk off in defeat.
After a while, I started inviting her home for dinner, and she eventually became close to the whole family. I even introduced her to Terrie. Terrie had moved to California a couple of years earlier and, to my great dismay, had subsequently decided she was a lesbian. We remained friends, however, often talking on the phone about our love lives. It was during one of those phone calls, when I was telling her about Sally, that she asked me to put her on the phone, and they hit it off so well I finally had to pry the receiver from Sally's hand before the phone bill got out of hand.
"You've got hold of a good one there, kiddo," Terrie said before we hung up. "You'd better not let her get away." I wasn't sure if Terrie realized Sally and I were only friends, but I agreed with her, figuring I would fill her in the next time we talked in private.
Privacy turned out to be hard to find, however, because Sally and I started spending more and more time together, and there was hardly a moment after that when she wasn't around. We talked a lot about all kinds of things, even sex, but always in a sort of clinical way, discussing subjects like domination and sexism and the arbitrary taboos of modern society. Occasionally the conversations would brush on more personal topics, but she always backed off before they got too detailed, and we never came close to being intimate, not even a goodnight kiss. And after she said how much she liked Terrie, I got the feeling she, too, might be gay. That possibility didn't bother me, but I was disabused of the idea about three months after we met, as we sat on her couch one Saturday evening.
We were talking about Terrie and lesbianism and Sally was trying to explain to me how women felt differently from men when it came to love and sex; how it was less of a physical thing for them, and how they could be attracted to other females for reasons that were complicated and hard for a man to understand. It wasn't a debate, because I was totally out of school on the subject; it was a candid conversation, and one I really appreciated because it gave me a better insight into how Terrie made her transformation. I was expressing my gratitude for this when she shocked the hell out of me.
"Would you like to have sex with me, Tim?" she asked.
My mouth must have dropped open because she started to smile, but I finally managed to get it working. "Where the hell did that come from?" I said with a chuckle.
"From my heart," she answered, and she placed a hand on her chest as if she were getting ready to say the Pledge of Allegiance. The gesture was so silly I knew immediately she was kidding, and I almost laughed. But she remained in that position, smiling at me and looking like the little waif I'd seen in her before. When she cocked her head, as if to say, "I'm waiting," I began to fear she might not be joking.
"You're serious?" I managed. "I mean, we...we've never... that kind of thing has never come up before." I watched her face for signs she was about to laugh, but her expression didn't change. Finally, I guess when she realized I had run out of words, she dropped her hand back into her lap.
"I know I'm not all that attractive," she said shyly. "And you're probably worried about the incest thing, but that's really a bunch of horseshit if you ask me. If we'd never known each other and had met, say at a concert or something, would you still be reluctant?" My tongue seemed to have gotten trapped in a thick ball of cotton, and when I didn't reply, she continued. "Whatever, I'm not going to rape you, so you don't have to worry. Actually, I'm not very experienced—sexually, that is—which could be another drawback. But I'm willing to learn, and you could put a bag over my head if you want."
I started to laugh, but when I saw her face scrunch up as if she were about to cry, I stopped myself. "Hey," I said. "Don't take that the wrong way. I wasn't laughing at you. I laughed because what you said about not being attractive was so funny—I mean funny because it isn't true."
"You mean," she said, almost in a whisper, "you don't think I'm ugly?"
"Good God, Sally," I said. "What would ever give you that idea?"
"Well, my mirror, for one thing. That and the fact that we've known each other for quite a while now and you've never even tried to kiss me. Anyway, I figured..."
This time I really laughed, and I reached out to touch her leg so she would know I wasn't laughing
at
her. A smile began to creep onto her face then, and soon we were both laughing uncontrollably.
"That's incredible," I gasped, trying to catch my breath. "You've always acted like a good buddy, and then there's the 'incest thing' as you call it. So I thought what you thought: that
you
weren't interested in
me
." By then she had taken hold of my hand and was looking expectantly at me. I took her other hand, and we awkwardly pulled each other close. It was a chaste, Victorian kind of kiss, with both of us holding hands and leaning toward each other until our lips met across the space. Even so, I had never felt such an intense spark. When I drew back, her eyes were still closed and she was smiling.
"That was nice," she said. "Do you think we could do it again?"
The rest of the evening was like a fairy tale. We were so careful and so slow, we almost seemed like kids on a first date. And we were, in a way, because for the longest time all we did was kiss and hug and talk about our lives. It wasn't at all like our earlier conversations; we were getting to know each other for the first time, learning to talk on a deeper level and share things from our hearts. Eventually false ego drained away, and the honesty in the room was so overwhelming it felt like you could cut it with a knife.
Without thought, I told her all about Terrie and me and how much it hurt when she left and decided she was a lesbian. Sally reciprocated with the story of her first and only sexual encounter with a man, and how grateful she was for it, because growing up she'd always felt like an ugly duckling, and was hardly ever asked out on dates. It happened during her last year at college, she said, and the guy was one of her career counselors. They had a long talk one day and he asked if she wanted to continue the conversation over dinner. She was shocked and scared and thrilled all at the same time, and when he suggested they go to his apartment, she jumped at what she thought might be her only chance to find out what sex was like.
He was gentle, she said, and he didn't protest when she told him she wasn't going allow full penetration. From her description, he didn't seem to have had much experience.
"I let him use his fingers," she said with a blush, "and it was nice, but nothing like I had hoped for."
