“Sure.”
She pulled off her shorts and her pink panties. I stared, but I didn’t see her. I didn’t want to see her.
Naked, she turned to Monty. “Now you.” And Monty did. He pulled off his shirt, pants, and socks. He stood before her, allowing her to look at his body. His underwear bulged out in front with his excitement. He pulled off the briefs. His penis was engorged and huge. It seemed an enraged exclamation, an appendage of anger. The thick swatch of pubic hair that engulfed it alarmed me. A dense, profuse tangle that stood out in coarse contrast to his other, sun-bleached hair. It looked obscene.
Her genitals were nearly hairless. Faint dark curls were only beginning to sprout in a discernible triangle shape. The lips of her vagina were smooth and discreet and somehow alien. My head began to hum and buzz, but not in the pleasant fashion of my romantic daydreams, but in an unpleasant, sickening throb. Denise lay on the floor and parted her legs as Monty approached, and I could see the pink flesh inside her. My head ached like a rotten tooth and wanted to crack open with the wasplike hum deafening me from the inside out. And yet, for all that, there was still a perverse excitement, and, I was ashamed to discover, a stiffening in my pants. I watched as my brother took her. The first girl to capture my romantic interest and to stir my burgeoning sexual desire. I watched as my brother took all of that away from me. He was rough, awkward, and there was blood. She bit back her pain and closed her eyes in grim determination. She was going to let this happen, no matter what the cost. She was going to let this golden boy have her. She was going to savor his wanting of her, his clumsy passion for her, yes, this passion directed at her. Tears streamed from her eyes and I could not tell if it was from happiness or pain, but I knew it was one of the two. She was wanted. And like the cruel taunts and teasing, any pain was bearable to be wanted. And to be wanted by such a boy as my brother.
Monty was quick. I watched as his back convulsed and he thrust spasmodically into her. He collapsed on top of her, resting his spent body on hers. And I saw her smile. He climbed off her, his penis still swollen and swinging lazily. Blood dripped from it. I could see more blood encrusted blackly in his pubic hair. He smiled at me and began to pull on his underwear, and all I could think was what would our mother say when she saw the bloodstains on his white briefs. He winked at me and said, “Wanna give her a try?” And the throbbing returned to my head and a flush heated my skin. I looked at Denise. She lay prone and naked in front of me. She stared back at me. Beyond her, through her bedroom door, I could see her braces scattered on the floor like the remnants of a metal cocoon. She smiled at me and reached between her legs. She parted her legs even further in a vile and drunken gesture of welcome. Blood was smeared between her white thighs like a violent inkblot.
I ran. I ran as fast and as hard as I could. And behind me I could hear them laughing. The two of them, laughing at me. The sex act had changed everything. It had changed the status quo. Now they shared a secret knowledge that I was no part of. It was a reversal. A damn good one. Perhaps it was here that my love of the dramatic reversal was borne. It’s as an audience member that the future playwright grows to admire the pureness of the drama. And I had been set up, sucker punched, left reeling. It should have been me and Monty laughing at her.
Our parents never found out. The effects of the gin had worn off by the time they returned late that evening, and if Monty and Denise had seemed a touch hungover the next morning, no one commented on it. Denise’s puppy love for my brother escalated after that episode, only, it wasn’t puppy love anymore, was it? They had shared a secret, an adult act. There had been no love involved, no sense of intimacy. It had been an act of drunken obscenity. Yet I knew that in her mind it had been intimate, it had been loving, and now she expected something more from my brother, and why wouldn’t she? In her mind it was a natural progression. But in Monty’s mind, nothing had changed. He continued his campaign of cruelty and, if anything, his taunts reached a new apogee in their ferociousness. He wanted nothing to do with the girl, but he couldn’t shut her out completely. After all, she might tell. She might tell how the young man entrusted to watch after her safety had drunk liquor with her. How he had taken her virginity, taken her innocence.
Monty had only one sanctuary from Denise’s ever-increasing need to be in his presence. The water. The lake was verboten for Denise. Her mother harbored a very vocal fear that Denise might slip and fall in the water and, unable to maneuver her metal-weighted legs, drown. Her mother was so adamant and never wavering about this fear that it had crossed over to Denise. It was second nature to her. She simply would not go near the water.
A raft anchored near the middle of the lake was Monty’s refuge. When Denise’s presence became overwhelming, he dove into the lake and swam out to the raft. It was made of weathered gray wood and was big enough for Monty to stretch out comfortably. As the summer wore on, most of Monty’s days were spent on the raft, in isolation, where he was drenched in sun and grew ever more golden. The raft was so far out that my still-skinny body could not carry me to it. I simply lacked the strength and stamina. I sat on the shore longing for Monty’s company and hating Denise, for she was the one who had driven him away from both of us. When I did see him, he smelled of his isolation. He smelled of the lake: dank, mossy, and earthen. It was a dark smell, and it did not suit him. It seemed more appropriate for me.
I don’t know what he thought would happen. How it would end. We’ve never spoken of it, not of the ending. Did he really think Denise would tolerate losing him? She was, after all, a smart girl. She had captured him in the first place, had she not? Did he really think she would concede so easily? I knew she would not. I would not have in her position. She played her trump card. She threatened to tell. This, for Monty, was unacceptable. In our parents’ eyes, Monty was unblemished. He was, after all, the immaculate child of beauty that they had created. They believed, as did we all, that he was sheer perfection, and he wanted them to go on believing just that. Anything less would not be tolerable.
This much I either witnessed firsthand or learned from Denise. The rest is sketchy. When he left our bedroom that late night, sneaking out through the window over the porch, there was no doubt in my mind that he was going to meet Denise. I could not prove this, but, as I say, there is no doubt in my mind. I assumed that she had finally coerced him into repeating their secret act. He was gone so long that my body betrayed me and I drifted off to sleep. My image of him when he returned is dreamy, sleep clouded. He shucked off his clothes and climbed into his bed. He whispered my name, but I did not respond. I sensed that that was what he wanted, for me to be asleep.
Her mother found her. It must have been the ultimate horror for her. Her greatest fear played out before her pathetic eyes. The screams awoke everybody but Monty, who had, after all, had a late night. Denise was at the water’s edge, face down, unmoving. Her leg braces were embedded in the mud and silt that shored the lake. The jet-black hair that I had once longed to touch was hanging, matted and lifeless, from her skull. There were no secret rainbows in that hair. There was only death. We were drawn by her mother’s screams, and I glimpsed the body before my mother covered my eyes and sent me back to the cabin. As I left, I heard my mother whisper to my father, “Thank God Monty didn’t see.”
Monty was in his bed, sleeping soundly, the covers pulled over his head. At the foot of his bed, I saw his shorts and T-shirt balled up on the floor. I picked them up and unwadded them. They were still damp. I smelled them. They smelled of the lake: dank, mossy, and earthen.
And I looked down at my sleeping brother. And I knew that I would let nothing deny me the pleasure of basking in his golden light.