The Kind You Know Forever

I had just met them—the brother and the sister who had fucked each other to see what it would be like. And then they said—either he said or she said—that it was like fucking a brother or a sister, so they never did it again.

That they had fucked each other was gossip intended to warn me away from the brother at the party where I watched the sister spread her legs carelessly, so that anyone—for instance, me—could look up her skirt to see darkness when she was sitting on the sofa.

Her husband was next to her—a thick man in a suit which was too small for him or was just under strain. The suit was ripped, I could see, under the arm at the seam. He had his arm up and around his wife, the sister who had fucked her brother.

I wondered if the husband knew, if he knew every­thing about her or not. I wondered as I watched her legs, her knees bump together, and then spread apart, and I kept my eye on him, while we were sitting around, but I forgot about the husband altogether while we ate. It was a fine meal we had.

And after that meal, the woman who had tried to warn me away from the brother took me aside. We went together from her kitchen to her bathroom. It was her party, and she led me there, and she closed the door. She said, “Look, you be careful.” She said, “He’s knocked up six girls.”

And I said, “What does that mean?”

Then I saw how her long dark hair moved back and forth on either side of her head while she was moving her head, while her eyes were moving around, but not looking at me, while she was figuring me out. She said, “He got them all pregnant.”

And I said, “And he didn’t care what happened to them?”

“Yes. That’s it,” she said. “Now you be careful.”

She must have known then her party was almost over, because there wasn’t much time left after that. She handed out little wrapped gifts in such a hurry at the door, when we were all saying goodbye—it was such a hurry—I didn’t get to see where she was getting all of her gifts from. All of a sudden there was just a gift in my hand, as I was going out the door. At the end of a party, I had never gotten a gift before, not since I was a girl, and then we thought we deserved those gifts. So now, something was turned around.

The gift she gave me was a cotton jewel pouch, in a bright shade of pink, made in India, which snapped shut.

I left the party with the sister-fucker. It was logical. We were near to the same age and we were both pretty for our kind, which must have mattered. Let me not forget to add that his sister was pretty, and that her husband was handsome, and that the woman who gave the party was pretty, and that her husband was hand­some too.

The sister-fucker and I had both come to the party alone, and it was his idea that we should leave together. First we stopped at a bar, where we both had some drinks. I held onto a matchbook. I turned it by its four corners while he told me everything he was in the mood to tell me about his life, so that I felt I had known him forever.

Then I told him everything I was in the mood to tell him about my life—everything that mattered. I couldn’t say now what that was. Then he said, “Write your phone number on the matchbook,” which I did.

I asked him, “Should I write my name too?”

And he said, “No, not your name, just your num­ber.”

We were at the door in darkness ready to leave the bar when I gave him the matchbook. He gave me a kiss. He pressed hard on my mouth for the kiss and then I was waiting to see what would happen next.

I still see him backing away covered in the shadows. Then he pushed his hands up into his hair. One of his hands was still holding the matchbook so that the whole matchbook went up into it too, sliding under. He was pushing so hard up into his hair with both hands on either side of his head, that he was pulling the skin of his face up and back. He was turning his eyes into slits. He was making his nose go flat. His mouth at the corners was going up.

I didn’t know if he was playing around with me, if he was angry, or if he was trying to figure something out. I didn’t ask, What does that mean? Now I think it meant he really cared, but it never made a difference. I have fucked him and fucked him and fucked him, and I have felt all that hair on his head in my hands plenty of times.