Dorsai: Friends and Lovers

My name is Daniel, and I have a fraternal twin sister named Janet.

From the time we were born, we were friends. Then, shortly after the two of us hit puberty, we willingly became lovers -" though we didn't actually consummate our relationship until we were just shy of 15 years old.

I know that the kind of closeness that Sis and I had as we grew up wasn't anything like most kids our age; but then, we grew up in an environment that was so different than anything most other kids had that no comparison is really possible. You see, not only did our parents have a kind of love for each other that was so much more than any other parents that we ever met, they also shared that love with five of our Moms friends, along with a few others.

Maybe I should explain a little – Our Dad is Dan Marshall. He met our Mom through a friend of hers, Janet (who Sis is named after; my middle name is from Dad's best friend), when Mom and her friend were still in High School. Dad was able to help Mom and the others learn and understand something he'd been able to figure out: how to truly*love* other people. As a result, Dad ended up marrying Mom -" and indirectly, all the rest of Mom's friends, too. So when Sis and I were growing up, we had not just our biological parents, but Mom's friends, as well. In effect, we had one Dad, but six mothers. And on top of that, there were a few years when we had another of Mom and Dads friends taking care of us: a girl from the Philippines by the name of Marilyn.

But the real clincher of the whole deal is that not only were all these people sharing the love they had in their hearts and minds, but their bodies, as well.

As a result, while we were growing up, Sis and I never had any reason not to think that making love and nudity and all that were anything but perfectly reasonable and normal. In fact, when I started sprouting pubic hair, I was proud to show it to Sis; when she began to develop breasts, she was just as proud to show them to ME. It was when I discovered the results of masturbation that Sis and I became friends and lovers, as I said before.

It wasn't until we were in High School, though, that the intimacy that Sis and I shared with each other expanded to include other people, as well – Up through the end of middle school, Sis and I both had the usual assortment of friends: there were the people that we were willing to hang out with at school, a smaller number of people where we were comfortable visiting each other's homes after school, and a much smaller number of people that we were close enough to that we'd spend the night with.

Through the vagaries of the educational system, the people in each category shifted dramatically when we made the transition from middle school to high school. For one reason or another, Sis and I both lost the kids that were "overnighters" -" most ended up going to a different high school, and a few moved away completely. That meant that for both of us, we ended up becoming better friends with some of the kids in the middle category while we were getting to know the people at the new school.

Something else that happened was that Sis and I didn't have any classes together, and had different lunch periods (the school had 2 because the number of kids was so much greater than the cafeteria capacity). We still had time to visit a little bit in the halls between classes, but that was about it.

On the plus side, because of how close we were with each other, we didn't feel the pressure that a lot of the other kids did to find a friend of the opposite gender to match up with. Of course, some of the new people that we met were thrown a bit by how well Sis and I got along, but when they learned that we were fraternal twins, that seemed to settle it for them. The friends we still had from middle school knew that we got along a lot better than most people would think, but not _how much_ better.

I suppose I should have expected that there would be a few bigger kids that just*had* to show off what tough guys they were in Gym class by giving me and a couple of the other new students a hard time. I didn't try to take them on, but I didn't try to run away from them, either; before they got too far into bullying me, the teacher got everybody started on what he wanted us to do that day.

After school ended, Janet and I were walking home when the three guys that had been picking on me came out of a convenience store as we went by. One of them recognized me, and that was enough for them to try and pick up where they'd left off at school.

That proved to be a bad idea on their part, for a couple of reasons. First, there wasn't any teacher around to break things up if it got out of hand. Second, they didn't know that Janet and I had started taking martial arts classes a couple of years before; while I was learning Aikido, Janet gave in to her more violent side and started taking Tae Kwon Do. So when they got tired of berating me, and started getting physical, I simply began defending myself. Not being overly bright, they considered their inability to push me around or hit me to be justification for getting even more physical -" which left me no choice but to start hurting them. One of them finally took a swing at me, and kind of got redirected into a wall of the store – face-first, breaking his nose. While I was trying to tell him that I just wanted to be left alone, I heard a commotion behind me, followed by Janet demanding "You want some, too?"

When I turned to look, I could see that another one of them had apparently thought to do something while I wasn't looking; Janet had taken care of him with a strike of some kind to the solar plexus, leaving him laying on the ground as he gasped for air. Her question had been directed to the last one, who was standing there looking as though he couldn't believe what had just happened -" while Janet stood there in what was obviously a martial arts defensive position, clearly ready to clobber him if he tried anything.

Turning back to the one that I'd already had to deal with, I told him "Listen, I'm not looking for trouble – but I'm not going to be pushed around, either. You guys should give it a rest before somebody" -" I said "somebody", but he knew I meant him and his pals -" "really gets hurt."

I could see that he was afraid of me then, and he slowly nodded as blood streamed down his face from his nose. Keeping an eye on him, I told Janet "I think we're done here. Let's go home, Sis."

The rest of our trip home was uneventful, and even after Mom and Dad got home and asked us how our day was, neither of us said anything about the "fight" -" not because we were afraid we'd be in trouble (we knew we wouldn't, since we'd been defending ourselves), but simply because we didn't figure it was worth telling.

The second day after that, one of my friends told me that a couple of other kids had seen what happened, and the whole school knew that Janet and I had "kicked the asses off" the three bullies. When I heard that, I figured I was going to have to deal with the three dummies again, or their friends, or somebody else that wanted to be a hard-ass. Nothing ever happened, though – other than I was left alone in Gym class after that. Oh, and*nobody* ever bothered Sis!

As the rest of the school year progressed, a couple of our respective friends went from being good friends to best friends, and spent the night with us a few times. They were uniformly surprised to learn just how much "looser" the rules were at our house than at theirs: neither Janet or I had any qualms about going from point "A" in the house to point "B" in our underwear (worn out of consideration for the guest; otherwise, we likely wouldn't have bothered with even that much). Of course, they were somewhat amazed; but because Janet and I didn't think anything of it, they quit paying attention, too. After that, they got to the point that they were willing to follow our example. Naturally, the two of us followed the local customs whenever we were visiting someone else's place -" as we'd heard Dad express it, "My house, my rules; your house, your rules."