ONE AGAIN

Camping trip, welcome to the backwoods of Suck Creek State Park, Tennessee,
welcome to me and sis, welcome to this: It's ninety degrees in the moonlight
and I'm practically dying. It's ninety degrees and I'm shivering like a
heroin addict, my sleeping bag drenched with sweat, my eyes dull and wide,
Reyanne wants to know what's wrong, what's wrong, what the fuck is wrong
with me. I tell my sister it's nothing. Panic attack. Happens sometimes. My
physician says high blood pressure plus too many hours at the office blah
blah equals stress blah blah, I don't know. Take a Valium. Take up
meditation. I don't know. My heart's a screaming flywheel. My hands are
seismic.

Clench my pillow. Stare up at the stars. Deliberately and willfully slow my
breathing. Panic attack, I need to remember how to relax, is this not why I
allowed my sister to talk me into this little wilderness trip?

"How long has it been?" Reyanne says.

Since the panic attacks started? I don't know. Six months? I endure an
average of three of these seizures a week. I tell her, They usually last
twenty minutes. I tell her, The night I had to cater the Coca-Cola's CEO's
retirement party, that was the worst, blah, blah-

Reyanne shakes her head. "No. How long has it been that you've... you
know..."

What? Since I've slept outdoors? Seen my doctor? Switched to a tasty
high-fiber low-cholesterol diet?

"Since ya boinked. Made love. Fucked. Did the nasty. Pick a euphemism, any
euphemism," she says.

What?

Um.

I tell Reyanne, me and Angie filed the divorce papers just under two years
ago. Do the math.

Reyanne says, "Two years?"

Yep.

"Two damn years," she says. "Jesus."

Well, working fifty-plus hours per week, not to mention at least two gigs a
week with my Southern rock band blah blah, I've hardly had time to date blah
blah, much less get into a serious and meaningful relationship blah blah
with a blah blah girlfriend that might blah lead to blah intimacy blah-

"Enough already with the blah blah bullshit," Reyanne says.

"You're starved for human contact, that's your problem, it ain't high blood
pressure," Reyanne says.

"We're not evolved to live like this," she says. "No wonder you're so fucked
up. Mammals need touch, contact, the warmth of another body."

I say, bullshit, my problem is hardly that I haven't gotten laid in two
years.

"Not laid," she says. "Just.. oh, for fuck's sake, I forgot, you're a man.
I'm sooo impressed by you, O He Who Does Not Need to be Held. He who cannot
cry, does not need to hear 'I love you'; have I missed any other stereotypes
here? I mean, you're practically having a nervous breakdown cause you're so
strong?"

I love you, Reyanne.

"Yeah, well, you have to say that, I'm your sister."

She unzips my sleeping bag, she crawls inside.

* * *

When I was six, there wasn't much difference, me and Reyanne. At the mall,
Mom drags us shopping, a dozen strangers asking-- "Are they twins? Are they
twins?" No, as a matter of fact, she is one year and five months younger
than me; yes, she's a little tall for her age; yes, we do happen to look a
lot alike, I understand it's not uncommon in these things called "families",
members of which share the same "DNA", etc, etc. Then she's thirteen, she
has breasts, suddenly boy parts and girl parts matter, suddenly nobody's
running around the house naked anymore. On to high school, on to college; by
the time I graduate from the University of Tennessee, I have had
full-fledged sex with seventeen women, heavy-petting with an additional
eight. None of them Reyanne. Many people's first sexual experiences occur
with a sibling? Not to mention, hey, me and Reyanne, we live in the South,
what about that whole incest cliche? Hah. Right.

I guess it never entered our minds, guess we weren't that curious as kids;
by the time I graduate college, Reyanne is a UT junior and I'm naive enough
to believe she's still a virgin.

Repeat: I was naive enough to believe she was still a virgin.

My wedding night, Angie (originally Reyanne's friend, originally introduced
to me by Reyanne), my lovely wife Angie reveals that as a matter of fact, my
little sister has had full-fledged sex with eight males. Virgin? Hah. Right.

And how I'm I supposed to react to that?

In my mind, Reyanne will never grow tits, will never stop being my best
friend, will forever be sexless, genderless, tomboy; I believe this
particular cliche is "sweet and innocent."

* * *

"It's not about sex," Reyanne says. We're together in my sleeping bag, she's
wearing nothing save a pair of plaid boxers, her usual nighttime outfit; I
wear even less. Arms wrapped around each other's backs, armpits damp, legs
snaking together, her breasts cool and alive against my sternum and oh yeah
it's not about sex.

I have a hard-on the size of Lookout Mountain.

"Of course you do," she says. "It's natural, it's nothing, it's meaningless.
Hello, I'm a female? Your body reacts to that fact. Your body doesn't know
who I am."

Earth soft and grassy below us. Sky vast and black above us. Insect
chirping, a constant background rhythm. They chirp to attract mates. Sex.

This is not about sex, this is me and my sister, naked together in the
proverbial primal forest.

This is my sister's hand, stroking my cheek, fingers through my hair, the
scruffy bristles on my chin.

This is my sister's teat, hard brown nipple, soft pale living cellular
tissue, squozen against my shoulder.

This is my sister's lower lip, fat and damp, fluttering along my jawbone.

This is my sister's little diatribe, Reyanne the psych undergrad, Reyanne
whose master's thesis is something incomprehensible involving chemically
overstimulated chimpanzees:

"...we're born blind, think of newborn babies, their eyes can't focus much,
and sounds make negligible sense to them. Touch is the first sense, the most
essential. The mother cradles her child in her arms-- our earliest memories
are of the safety and the security that is to be held, to be pressed against
another human being..."

Deliberately and willfully count my breaths, pace down my heartbeat,
visualize a calm and sandy fucking beach or whatever.

If this were a movie, the director'd roll credits here. The panic attack
fades, they always fade, it feels like I've been nailed into a crate and
then the crate gets tossed into a typhoon, HOWL, CRASH, SMASH. But the
waters always calm. The average seizure lasts twenty minutes; Reyanne warm
Reyanne helps me end this one in a record fourteen minutes and nine seconds.

"This is good," she says.

This is my palm, flat against her back, massaging her bare skin, her
gooseflesh. It's ninety degrees and now she shivers. Fingers find her spine,
playfully tickle the extra-sensitive spot to the left on her lowermost ribs.
Cup her butt, give it a squeeze, then giggle, then we both shake our heads.
She makes a face and pokes my belly. "Stop playing with my ass." Sorrrrrry.
"I'm your sister, mister." Yeah, and you're a poet and you didn't even know
it. Squeeze her butt again, sorrrry, so sorrrrry, it's a force of habit.
Like she said, my body doesn't understand the mostly naked female here is
Reyanne. See her in shadows, see her in silhouette: long thin torso, long
thin legs, electric flesh; thick shoulder-length auburn ringlets; dangly
acorn-shaped breasts; taut tanned belly, the tiny brown mole beside her
navel; mmmm, here's her earlobe, let my stupid goofy kisses follow her ear
to her face. Nose slightly crooked, nose too big, a face all sharp angles,
high arched eyebrows, yes, yes, we still look a lot a like. Her skin smells
like mine, a particular familiar sour-salty sweat.

My left thigh presses between her legs. Feel her pubic mound, the soft
scratchy fuzzies beneath the crotch of her boxer shorts. This is purely
involuntary, this is meaningless. This is my dumb blind erection. This is
what happens when one goes for two years without getting laid-- or, as
Reyanne might call it, an episode of meaningful tactile contact. I don't
know. I don't know. My hands know.

Squeeze her tummy, squeeze it harder, make her poot, isn't that cute. Grin
and giggle and goddamn giggle, say something moronic. Make a joke of the
whole thing. We're kidding, kidding, we're all grown up and yet we still
look so much alike. No one would ever mistake us for anything other than
what we are, siblings. Siblings don't make out. I'm only joshing, isn't it
hilarious the way the way my hand keeps finding its way back down to her
ass?

She understands, she says "And when we were, like, ten, whatever, we used to
have those tickle wars, remember..."

* * *

She says, "It's not about sex, goddamn, I'm serious," she says this as she
pulls down her boxer shorts. It's not about sex, sure, right. It's about
having an episode of total and deep complete tactile contact. The most
sensitive part of my body slips into hers. One single thrust, one swift
glide and I am inside. First I climb on top of her, then I'm IN her, she's
damp as a swamp. Okay, now what?

"Nothing," she says.

Nothing?

"Yes. Now nothing. Now lie still enjoy being one with me again."

One? Again?

"Well," she says, "we do happen to come from the same womb-"

Which, I must point out, we were hardly gestated in at the same time-

"Listen. I've known you literally my entire life, bro. Besides us sharing
DNA and most all our significant life experiences... shit, I don't know, I
mean, when we were kids? It was like, we were practically the same person.
We slept in the same room, we bathed together, ate together, baby-talked in
our own secret language, I... fuck, could I possibly sound any cheesier?"

No, it's cool, I think I get it.

"We were one. Then we weren't. Now we are again," she says.

Sure. Er, in the most twisted sense of the word "one."

"According to your ex-wife, you're a fairly twisted guy."

Okay, fine, we're not fucking. I am not fucking my sister. I am not boinking
her, or making love to her, doing the nasty with her, pick the euphemism. I
am simply lying very quiet and very gentle and utterly motionless inside
her.

"This is better than sex. It's about a billion times more intimate."

Yeah, Reyanne, why on earth didn't you think of this before?

"Shut up."

I love you, Reyanne.

"Then shut up. Be calm."

Should I put my mouth over yours, Reyanne? So we can share our oxygen too?
Two bodies, connecting, connected, one heartbeat, one mind, one breath?

"Quit making fun of me."

Oh, come on, I am enjoying this. It's goofy as hell, it's kinda nice, I feel
closer to her than anyone else on earth. Maybe I always did, or should have.
So... now what?

"Now nothing. I told you. We're one again. There is nothing else."

And I have to admit, as I lay my head between her breasts, as I listen to
our heartbeats synchronize, as I borrow the slow rhythm of her lungs, I have
to admit I can truly breathe. Eyes closed, hands calm, fingers laced into
her hair.

I love you, Reyanne.

And, after two hours of resting atop her--we're silent, we're as still as a
scultpures, my penis perfectly snug and flaccid inside her--after two hours,
her dampness is cold. I'm verging on a snore and then WHAM BAM BOOM I
achieve spontaneous orgasm. My orgasm rushes so sudden and unbidden that it
scares me as much as her. I've barely seconds to pull out and cum in my
hand. She's on the pill, but that's not foolproof; and I don't think either
one of us is crazy, here.


Copyright (c) 2000 Edward Mueller