These were complicated stories for us to write together -- they're embarrassingly honest at best, emotionally complicated throughout, and damning at their worst. Still, we both felt the need for some kind of mutual reconciliation and recognition of our experiences together, and a desire to lay these memories to rest. Therapy comes in surprising forms and forums, doesn't it?
We hope you enjoy these stories. The names and locations and dates have been changed, and you'll have to excuse a few embellishments and redactions where we felt necessary ... but on the whole this is the honest truth.
For the sake of avoiding any real and immediate legal complications, we have to stress that what you're about to read is about the experiences of two consenting adults. We were 18 when this all happened, and as you'll read, fully informed and capable of making our own decisions.
- Alex & Olivia
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The Twins
Aside from the minor differences in personal plumbing, they were obviously cut from the same cloth: a pair of skinny, cheerful, reasonably obedient kids who finished each others' thoughts and enjoyed similar activities. Thank goodness they had each other -- by the time they were ten, their biggest goal was getting away from their parents. Mom and Dad were troubled people who coped with each other by drinking, and woe be on the twins if they got caught-up in the mess. The twins never knew what they would come home to after school, but they had each other, and most of the time they knew how to play the game: do the chores, don't make a mess, stay out of the way, and flatter their parents to prop up their flaccid egos.
It didn't always work, of course. Alcoholism robs people of their memories and twists their emotions. Go look up "borderline personality disorder" and come back. That's their parents in a nutshell. To their credit, they never hit the twins or molested them, but there was a lot of screaming and crying and empty threats and slamming of doors. The family had to move twice -- once when they couldn't afford the rent, and once when they got kicked out of an apartment for being a disturbance. In any case, they all ended up in the little house where many of these stories are set, a small, split level ranch where the twins could retreat to their shared bedroom in the basement when the storm clouds mounted.
It's funny -- when you grow up in a mess like that, you don't have another frame of reference to compare it to, so you really don't know how bad it is. That was their kind of normal. Thank goodness they had each other, and the library.
The library was their refuge. Despite their moves, the family was never more than a fifteen minute walk from the library. It shared an old building with a small hardware store, and stood across the street from the high school. Their parents were good enough to understand the value of a library in a young person's life, and as soon as the twins were old enough, they would escape the house to indulge their insatiable curiosity in the relative safety of the stacks.
Their town was a small town, and no one outside the family paid much attention to them. They were a bit of a curiosity for being twins, but the novelty was fleeting. They had occasional friends from school, but no one really enjoyed visiting their dysfunctional household -- and being bookish introverts meant the twins were pretty happy keeping to themselves.
It wasn't until puberty that things started to change between them. Those minor differences in personal plumbing became more pronounced, and their conversations turned away from dinosaurs and castles, and toward crushes and pop stars. The advice they got from our parents was predictably bad. Olivia and her mom had a short talk about managing periods, always wearing bras, and staying away from boys. Their dad's talk with Alex was even shorter -- "use a condom and don't marry the first one."
Privately, they enjoyed talking about their changing bodies and peculiar developments. Their early sexual education didn't come from the abstinence focused curriculum at school, but rather from the books they found in the library on anatomy, physiology, and sexuality.
That said, their natural curiosity remained within the normal boundaries of modesty and privacy. They stumbled awkwardly, as everyone does, through their teens. They found refuge in supporting each other the best they could as friends, confidants, and siblings. They kept few secrets, and generally kept to themselves to avoid the small town social scene. They started nerdy, and surprising no one, stayed nerdy and a little socially challenged -- what romantic dates they had usually ended in disappointment, and they quickly learned the pool of viable partners in their community was very shallow. They were reluctant virgins -- and probably would have remained that way until college.
As fate would have it, their sexual fortunes would change -- and unexpectedly so. It all happened after they graduated from high school, during the hot summer while they counted down the days until they could pack their bags and leave town. They had both landed full college scholarships, and their parents spent the summer bragging about them to anyone within earshot how they would go on to do bigger and better things. And they did!
But these aren't stories about their academic successes. These are a different kind of story, and they start with a trip to the hot springs.
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The Hot Springs
One of their mom and dad's favorite activities (aside from drinking and bickering) was visiting the hot springs in the mountains. Despite being hot springs, they were quite pleasant in the summer, on account of the altitude and a constant, gentle breeze through the pine forests. They usually went a couple times every year, and while everyone always looked forward to the steamy soaking pools, driving several hours in a hot truck invariably put the parents in a foul mood.
This particular trip was no different. It was the beginning of summer, and a few weeks after their birthdays. When they finally arrived at the old lodge late in the evening, the situation played out as expected: the parents promptly disappeared into the room to drink and argue (and probably fuck) while the twins wandered around looking for a couple hours of peace.
There wasn't much to do at the lodge. It was a simple place, with simple rooms, a front desk, and a small dining area with long benches and an open kitchen that smelled like curry. It was at least fifty years old, and run by volunteers as a sort of communal retreat with spare rooms for tourists. The atmosphere was very chill, very relaxed, and almost exactly the opposite of the parents' high tension relationship.
The twins loved it, even if the resident volunteers were odd old hippies.
It was late in the evening when they set out to wander, and everything was closed down. They went outside to walk the gravel paths, the moon just bright enough to illuminate the woods around them. A refreshing evening chill had settled in the forest, and they walked and chatted in as they normally did, eventually coming to to the last soaking pool at the end of the mile long trail.
Being a hippy establishment, the rules were pretty clear: no clothes allowed in the hot springs. Ever since they were old enough to have a sense of privacy, this had been a mild point of embarrassment -- but with no one else around, the decision was easy. They stripped down and slid into the small pool of hot water, submerging to their shoulders.
The cool breeze, hot water, bare skin, and darkness was a perfect relief from a long, tense day. The moon shone through the trees, and a bright spray of stars painted the sky above them.
Their bodies relaxed, and after a few moments of listening to the wind in the trees and the quiet burbling of the spring, Olivia gently laughed.
"This would be pretty romantic if you weren't my brother," she said, smirking.
Alex looked across the water at her face, then up at the rising moon.
"Yeah, I suppose it would be."
They sat in silence for a few more moments.
"So," he said, cocking his eyebrow, "who gives you _romantic_ thoughts these days? Still have your heart set on Jeremy?"
"Ugh, no." She made a disappointed face. "I mean, yeah, I was crushing on him for a while, but he heard about it and sent me a dick pic." She sighed. "What an ass. Don't ever do that to a girl unless she asks for it."
