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All characters featured herein are at least eighteen years of age, even if not expressly stated. Any resemblance between actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
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*
Denise and I were actual kissing cousins when we were young.
Our moms, my mom Linda and my Aunt Lisa are identical twins. They married two brothers. John, my dad, is the elder of the two, being almost two years older than Uncle Jim. But then of course my mom is the eldest of the twins. By all of six and a half minutes.
My dad and my Uncle Jim were partners in a small contracting company. Robinson's Plumbing and Heating. They're semi-retired now.
Denise is twenty nine days older than me.
I have a brother Daniel. He's four years younger than me.
Denise is an only child.
She grew up three blocks away from our house. Naturally our moms did everything together, including carry Denise and me. She was more of a sister to me than a cousin. Not surprisingly, we even look the same.
In grade school she was in pretty well half of my classes. We ran with the same group of friends. Little kids tend to separate off and do little boy things like play army or sports, or little girl things like playing with dolls. Denise and I wouldn't do things like that, we were always together. At least I don't recall playing with dolls. On our bikes, we'd be everywhere. We'd play tag, climb, watch TV together, play pretend, 'house' she would call it, and just hang out with the pack of kids in the neighborhood. It seems to me that I ate lunch at my Aunt and Uncle's house just as often as I ate at home.
When we were ten or eleven Denise and I did what every healthy, curious child did. We explored each other's bits. Nothing sexual happened, but from that moment forward there was an understood familiarity between us. Nothing in our lives could or ever would remain hidden from each other.
We shared a first kiss together. Practice for the real thing of course. I recall practicing a lot that summer. The first kiss was on the Maid of the Mist. She had cornered me on the boat when our parents couldn't see.
We landed up going to different high schools. It was just the way the school districts were drawn up. We still saw a lot of each other and many of the kids in her school were part of our original gang. Similarly, she knew a lot of the kids at my high school. Nevertheless socially we drifted apart, to a degree at least.
I was her high school prom date. She was devastated when her boyfriend, or rather the boy that she coerced into taking her to the prom, was admitted to the hospital that very morning with severe appendicitis. Both of our parents railroaded me into standing in and taking Denise to the prom. My dad paid for the corsage.
It was a little awkward; everyone knew that we were cousins. Also it was embarrassing for me because I landed up wearing the only suit I owned, a brown one with the sleeves and trouser cuffs too short. Short enough that everyone could see that I'd grown out of the suit. It was a night of snickers and leers. We went to the parties afterwards. Both sets of parents threatened me with my life if I had a drink like the rest of the kids. There was of course nothing untoward that we did that night, unlike some of the other kids.
Until I drove her home. She insisted that I give her a proper good night kiss. I complied.
We went to separate universities. She, in town to study actuarial sciences. I, out of town to get my Mechanical Engineering degree. It was what I knew, plumbing and heating.
We were twenty when she confided to me one summer that she liked girls. Really, really liked girls. I was the first in the family to be told.
It didn't surprise me in the least. The hours that we spent through high school and since talking about how 'that girl's so hot', or 'she's a skank', 'did you see so-and-so in a particular movie or TV show?' At the time I hadn't thought anything of it. It was her just being honest, expressing an opinion that I thought was universally understood. That there was an underlining sexual desire there the whole time, was a recent revelation to her too. In the final analysis, it seemed to me that Denise was a whole lot more like me than I had previously understood. It was comforting. Not only did we look similar, the Robinson genes are strong, but we thought the same, we shared the same histories and our sexual appetites coincided.
We got along fine. We were two peas in the proverbial pod.
After graduating we both landed up living at home again. She found a job with a large insurance company downtown and I with an engineering firm, also downtown. We tended to hang around with the groups of friends we'd made in university but I'd still see her. Sometimes at family functions, sometimes we'd catch a movie together or we'd just hang out together.
After about two years we both independently decided to move out and find an apartment. Separate apartments. Like all young adults we had social lives and sex lives that needed to develop beyond what the confines of our parent's homes could allow.
It became apparent to both of us as we compared apartment listings and rent prices that if we shared an apartment we could get way more bang for our combined buck.
We rented a really nice three bedroom unit. We each had a bedroom and the third bedroom was our computer room. A study. It even had two bathrooms. It was perfect.
Our parents approved. None of them were happy with Denise's lifestyle choice but they grudgingly accepted it anyway. With us sharing an apartment, they were at least content that I would be there to look after her and that she could look after me. She was older after all. In our family six and a half minutes is enough to qualify as older and therefore wiser.
For us it was perfect. We carried on our independent social lives. Interactions between us at the apartment were amicable. Although we both had to work at not being slobs, we never got in each other's way. In fact we spent more time together than pursuing our separate circles of friends. After a while our social circles started to blend together. We were almost like a couple. Or brother and sister.
When I would bring a girl to the apartment my date would invariably wonder who that other girl was.
"It's my gay cousin," I would answer. It was true.
Sometimes she'd bring home a very hot looking woman. I'd lay in bed and wonder what the source of the noise was from across the hall. I'm sure it worked the other way around too.
Occasionally, she would bring home a guy. She wasn't exclusive to one team.
Then I brought home Anna.
Denise and Anna took a shining to each other right away. For several months Anna had a wonderful time. She would simply flit from one bedroom to the other.
Anna suggested that the three of us should drop the tomfoolery and share a bed together as a threesome.
Denise was game for it.
"It's just not right," I said.
That was twenty two years ago. I regretted that decision. But it was the right decision. What would have happened? Anna would eventually leave and I would continue to have sex with Denise. Where would that have put us? On the road to a deformed baby is one possible outcome. Inevitable and unavoidable heartbreak is the other.
We lived together for a total of three years. Eventually Denise met a wonderful and beautiful Chinese girl named Grace. They moved in together. I had to find a cheaper apartment.
After a few years Denise became pregnant and had a baby boy. It had all been set up and planned by Grace and Denise. It was their child. The unwitting donor was Chinese. Young Tommy had two moms.
He's named after his favorite uncle. Me. We are both Thomas Robinson.
I never married. I could never find a girl that I could be as comfortable with as with Denise. I was engaged once and had a number of longer relationships, but they were all lovers. Not friends. Not deep, deep friends like Denise and I were. Not love you like my sister friends.
Grace died last year. Breast cancer. Aged forty two years.
It was devastating.
*
I was having dinner with Denise at the modest bungalow she and Grace had bought. She reached out her hand and placed her manicured fingers on my hand. She looked straight into my eyes.
"Tom needs a father," she said.
I had always thought that too. There's only so much an uncle could do. I curled my fingers into her palm. I pulled her hand to my lips and kissed her hand.
"Then go and find someone, someone you can love, someone who will be a good father to Tom and marry him." She pulled her hand from mine.
"It's not that easy."
"Who said it was going to be easy?"
"A single woman with a son who's nearly seventeen is not going to find a man that will all of a sudden jump in and become daddy. A single mom with a lesbian history doesn't have a chance in hell."
