Hi there!
My name is Emma and I’m 20 years old. I live on student accommodation, at a university in Perth, but I come from Kalgoorlie, a country town, about 6 hours worth of driving away. (Perth is a capital city on the coast of Western Australia for those of you reading this who aren’t Australian.) My parents live in Kalgoorlie, but my brother, Kyle lives in Melbourne, working with some sort of architectural firm, which is on the other side of the continent. This summer Kyle and I will both be in Kalgoorlie to visit my parents. I am excited thinking about it and can’t wait until the university semester ends to drive back into Kalgoorlie and see him. At the same time, I’m a little nervous. He has a girlfriend now, and I’ve seen pictures of her and she’s pretty. She’s staying in Melbourne though. I have only ever had a few real boyfriends. But last time when I saw Kyle which was three years ago and he was in Kalgoorlie for his twenty first birthday party; something very strange happened. This is my story of what happened two summers ago.
* * * * * * *
Kyle’s suitcase was still sprawled out across the wooden living room floor, with the top cover thrown open revealing various objects. Jocks, jeans, a bottle of cologne… I stepped my bare feet around the suitcase to find a trail of Kyle’s objects placed around my parents’ house. A notebook was on the table. I progressed through to the bathroom at one wing of the house that Kyle and I used to share between us when we were little kids. He’d unloaded a Gillette shaving cream bottle, an electric razor, and a serious looking toothbrush. He had basically invaded the whole house with his presence. The trail continued to my right hand side. On the floor was a thrown towel. I placed my feet on the floor and walked to the right hand bedroom. The door had a gap in it. I knocked, and then pulled the gap open wider. Kyle sat in the middle of his bed, with a book in his hands.
“Well, you know how to make yourself welcome,” I said, “I could tell you were at home without seeing you.”
Kyle looked up from his AFL (Australian Football League) magazine, as if he reading the final line of a football article came before acknowledging a presence in the room.
“Hey Emma!” he said, sounding excited to see me.
Kyle looked as he always had, but more mature. He wore glasses with a light square frame, making him look far more intelligent than I had ever remembered him being. There was an obvious resemblance between us. We both had heart like shaped faces, with misty blue eyes and large lips. His face always moved with explicit expression. Mine was more sober, but my smile was broad and lit up my whole face when I choose to use it. My hair was dark whilst Kyle’s was blonde streaked. Kyle’s hair formed messy, naughty curls, but not the tight crinkly type, making him look rather like a surfy, but he was actually a footy player. I was petite and slim for a girl, and he was reasonably tall for a guy, giving us a fair height differential.
A feeling of warmth came over my body. Kyle stood up and jumped towards me, putting his arms around me.
“You’ll have to tell me all about that Perth city of yours,” he snorted a little, “if you call that little place a city.”
“Hey! Perth’s as big as it needs to be!” I exclaimed, defending my city, reclaiming an arm from his grip for lightly punching his bicep.
He restrained my arm from repeating the blow by pinning it with his hand to my side. Then he distended his arms by his side, so that the veins extending around from his biceps to the knuckles in his hands became visible.
“How was Melbourne?” I asked Kyle.
Kyle motioned for me to sit on the bed beside him.
“Phenomenal,” he said, “I wasn’t sure I’d want to go and live in a big city; even Perth seems so big compared to this dump, but it was a good move. You should watch people there. They’re like rush, rush , rush…and the buildings…really originally designed…there’s a new performing art centre being built there…a bit controversial…I mean, things do look ugly half done…but I think it’ll be bigger than the opera house A lot more growth and opportunity. Not so sluggish.”
Kyle asked me how my studies were going.
“I was just about ready to pack it in,” I told him, “but only one more semester to go, then I’ll be working intern in a hospital for a year as an RN.”
“You should buy one of those nursing uniforms you can get in Barbarellos. You know those vinyl ones with the big red cross on the butt and the low breast line.”
“How do you know so much about nurses’ outfits?” I asked. “And wouldn’t you like to see me in one?”
Kyle’s lips bent upwards into a smile.
“All the nurses wear those at the Melbourne hospitals.”
“No they don’t.”
“Well, my ex-girlfriend always wore one around the house and she’s an RN.”
“I don’t’ want to know about your sex life.” I said.
Kyle poked me with a finger into my stomach.
“What about you? Don’t you have a boyfriend?”
“No. And I’m not about to get one.” I retorted. The one boyfriend in my sexual history had a fixation on his own cock and got off my wanking in front of me or the TV. I told him he didn’t need me for that. We never even had intercourse.
“What does it feel like to be twenty one in a few days?” I asked Kyle.
“Big,” he replied, “and I’m beginning to feel old, like it’s really time to think about my career and find a woman and start a family now. I’m excited about the party but.”
My mum entered the room.
“Well, I can see you two are catching up on stuff, but you can continue at the dinner table,” she said.
The dinner table was outside; a plastic table beside a barbeque. Kyle went and helped my dad turn take the meat off the barbeque.
I was watching Kyle. I was watching his arse, almost instinctively, but at the same time conscious and uncertain.
His arse was square and small, and fitted nicely into his slightly baggy denim jeans. They had a leather label stitched onto the top. His top hanged down to just below his belt line, it was a navy Rip Curl t-shirt with some darker bands around the arms. His body seemed tall; and athletic, as I watched his arms extend to reach the sausages on the barbecue. The messy blonde streaked hair looked good. And when he turned around, my eyes were then settled on the fly of his pants. There was a slight bulge, but I liked how the jeans went were baggy but clung onto his hips a little before flaring out. I turned my eyes away; now conscious of what I was doing. My mum’s pale cold eyes meet with me, and darted across in the opposite direction; as if she had somehow been mind reading and could tell that I had be observing my brother. Kyle sat opposite me around the round dinner table; and his eyes pinned mine down, and we exchanged smiles.
I felt disgusting. I knew that he could not possibly have any feelings for his younger sister, and I reasoned that I didn’t have any feelings towards him either. It was just in appreciation of the male form. And there is no genetic program not to. But now sitting opposite him, the squareness of his chest made me yearn to rest my head into it, and I yearned to feel his chin resting on top of my crown. And then a slight, but definite, tingle came between my legs. I felt ashamed again, and focused on cutting up the steak into square segments and pouring the tomato sauce over it in the most precise manner.
“That’s very neat,” my father commented, “all those immaculate little squares.”
I smiled shyly.
My father asked questions about Kyle’s job. My father was very much the man of the house, and liked the whole father-son bonding thing. Kyle was explaining that under his apprenticeship, he’d been looking at plans of future Melbourne estates; using various terminology I didn’t understand. Every time he laughed though, a band of white teeth showed, and his eyes lit up and his head tilted; as though tilting towards me. But I dismissed my ideas and thought it was just my imagination because I wanted his attention.
The mosquito candle my mum had placed on the table was melting, and there wasn’t much left as Kyle continued his stories about Melbourne and exchanged arguments about football. It is amazing how much and how long men can talk about footy. My dad, being a West Coast Eagles supporter, and my brother, being a Melbourne Demons supporter, had lots to talk about. My mother, obviously uninterested in their macho squabbling, began to collect the plates, and then as the flame died down completely and the mozzies reemerged, Kyle and dad went inside to watch the TV.
“I’m going for a swim,” I announced. In my old bedroom; which now seemed displaced, I found an old pink bikini. I had worn that since I was 16, and left it behind when I went to Perth. It was a pale faded pink, and had pink ribbon trims at the sides and holding the bra piece on. It went well with my pale skin and dark hair. I had a slim body; with quite long legs; but I wished I had a smaller bust. I admired myself in the length mirror in my room for a few minutes; thinking it was crazy that I was trying to impress my own brother with my looks.
Outside and beyond the pool gates, I turned on the pool light so that the water turned an luminous blue, and I could see the leaves of the palm trees my parents had potted in the pool side garden years ago. The air was still, and silent apart from the voices of people who must have been outside another house down the street somewhere. I walked over to the deep end of the pool. If I jumped in as fast, the coldness would be over quicker. I cautiously stood on the edge of the pool and dipped my toe in the water. Too cold. I stood gazing at the pool for a while.
