The Best Day of My Life

by Rigby Taylor

'Blood's thicker than water,' Dad would say when I complained about Morris, my nine months older, slightly taller, heavier and stronger cousin. All through primary school he'd sit beside me in class, copying my answers, bewildered when I sometimes deliberately wrote a wrong one, then corrected it when he wasn't looking. I sort of felt sorry for him. He was my cousin so I had to help him—didn't I?

He's the sole offspring of Uncle George and Aunt Sybil; an unlovely pair of snobs who showered him with the best pencils, pens, shoes, clothes, toys, bikes… cementing his conviction that he was superior to me, because my parents kept me and my three sisters on relatively short rations. But if we complained about not getting the same as Morris, Dad would offer to let us go and live with him. That shut us up.

Morris is basically selfish. A typical example is when he wiped Miss Dickey's entire day's work off the blackboard during interval, so he could stick photos of his holiday all over it.

In our second year we all had to make an entry for the school flower show with something we'd arranged ourselves. Most of us made simple bouquets, buttonholes, patterns of flowers stuck into saucers full of sand, or arrangements in jam jars. Morris arrived with an exquisite crystal vase containing a delicate ikebana arrangement. Aunt Sybil happened to have been attending a course on the art of Japanese flower arrangement. Neither she nor her son could accept the judges' choice. 'Mine was the best,' he shouted to whoever would listen. 'I should have won!'

Convinced he had a beautiful voice, he said he'd been having lessons and insisted on singing a sea shanty in the school concert. The silly teacher believed him, so he was booed off stage before the first chorus. Undeterred, he kept demanding to be in the class plays we'd put on every week. No matter how I coached him, he could never remember the lines.

He'd write poetry full of errors and inscrutable words that may have conveyed something to him, but not to the rest of us, then stand in front of the class to declaim them; undismayed by a room of blank faces and sniggers.

He wasn't unpopular, just considered a bit weird; tolerated because he'd shout us ice creams if allowed to join in whatever we were doing.

Being strong and fit, he was good at sport and was often picked to lead a team in the games we invented. But popularity never arrived because of his bragging and win-at-all-cost attitude, which is probably why just about every weekend he'd arrive at my place straight after breakfast, stand and watch while I finished my chores—he never had to do any so never thought of helping me. Then he'd join in whatever I was doing.

If I said I wanted to be alone, he'd look so miserable that Mum would tell me not to be selfish. As we rode our bikes to the beach, the park or wherever else I'd decided to go—he never had any ideas—him on his latest 24-speed racer, me labouring along on Dad's old 3-speed work bike, I kept my temper by muttering, be grateful you're not like him.

He had his uses, though. I had to pass through a pretty rough area on my way home from school, and as we usually went together because his route home went past our place, no bully came near. He was fearless. Dad said he didn't have enough brains to be frightened. He'd fight anyone who asked, no matter how big and savage; afterwards proudly showing his cuts and bruises. When a ball got tossed onto the classroom roof, he was up there in a blink. Then when someone told him that if he flapped his arms fast enough he could fly down, he tried and cracked his head and broke an arm.

Our primary school was very small, fewer than a hundred pupils spread over eight classes, so everyone knew each other and could tell the teacher on you if you did anything to annoy them. There was a patch of forest at the back of the grassed sports field. When I was ten, three older girls—self-declared bosses of the playground, decided I was too pretty and dragged me into the trees and kissed me. I hated it, so pointed them out to Morris and said they really wanted to kiss him, but were too nervous. He raced over, grabbed each in turn and kissed them vigorously, giving one a bleeding lip and another a bruised waist.

Furious, they told Miss Williams. I provided support when he was called to her office, but she refused to accept the argument that because they'd kissed me when I didn't want them to, it was okay for him to do it to them. 'Girls are God's precious beings,' she said through pursed lips while nodding inanely. 'Boys must admire and respect them and never hurt them.' After an unimpressive silence, she hissed, 'Pick up every piece of paper in the playground after school! I will check thoroughly and if I see even one, you'll be doing it every day for a week.'

Of course I helped him, but at least that was the last time I was sexually harassed.

As we shared the same family name, seemed to be always together, and had similar coarse straw-like hair, people assumed we were brothers, so I started combing mine the opposite way. At the beach I could run faster than him and swim better, but he could piss further and easily wrestle my face into the sand and force me to let him go to the flicks with me and a couple of my friends on Saturday afternoons. They tolerated Morris if he bought himself a ticket, then as soon as the lights went down, opened the rear exit door to let us in for free.

At Christmas I'd get 'sensible' presents. He'd come round and show off his new bike, scuba gear, roller skates, hi-tech bow, electric train set with a hundred metres of track…. It was hard at those times to be pleased I wasn't him.

After he got his air gun that looked like an assault rifle, we went a couple of times to the town dump to shoot rats, where my job was to admire him. Each time he'd grudging let me fire a few pellets, before saying I wasn't doing it properly and take it back.

High School was huge and anonymous—I loved it. Entrance tests placed me in the Academic stream, and Morris in what was politely called Trades. Two days later at a charity shop where Mum and Aunt Sybil both volunteered, she confided that the high school had phoned her and begged her to let Morris go into the top stream like me, but she and George decided there were too many unemployable over-educated people, while the economy was crying out for professional tradesmen. 'Morris will remain in Trades,' she announced with a self-righteous sniff, insinuating that I must have cheated, because it wasn't possible for the son of George's middleclass brother to beat the son of a wealthy and superior couple who lived in a grand mansion on the ridge with views of the ocean.

Without Morris cheating beside me, I could finally make friends with and sit beside guys who talked sensibly, thought clearly and shared some of my interests. Morris also made friends—but they seldom lasted, so he'd still too often tag along when I went to the flicks or anywhere else on weekends with Jeremy, a clever guy with curly dark hair and glasses that were constantly sliding down his impressive nose. Like me, he wanted to keep fit by having fun in non-violent, non-competitive, individual activities. We both played tennis poorly, but had great fun.

I spent a fair amount of time at Jeremy's place, jealous of his clever parents and their witty repartee. Not that my parents are stupid—they're sharp and focussed. Pragmatic and practical rather than theoretical. Peace loving freethinkers devoid of intolerance towards minorities. [Well, they try to be.] Live and let live is their motto. How two brothers can be so different is a mystery. I suspect it's their wives. Mum's a bit of a maverick, while Aunty Sybil's a bigoted and pretentious social climber.

One Saturday afternoon when Jeremy was away somewhere, Morris talked me into going to a gymnasium where he was learning to wrestle. The way he described it, it sounded a sensible sport—using every muscle trying to overwhelm, but not to hurt your opponent; the opposite of boxing. But when I saw the motley bunch sweating it out on a couple of mats—grunting, lumpy Neanderthals clearly doing their best to maim and disable their opponent, I decided against it. The somewhat handsome instructor was working on publicity to attract younger members, and after a quick glance to check we weren't overheard, whispered that he needed a photo of two guys who looked civilized enough to make others want to join. Would I pose with Morris? How could I refuse?

While Morris squeezed into his skin-tight wrestling singlet, I donned what looked embarrassingly like a vast pair of culottes with Wrestling writ large down the side.

The instructor told us to act naturally, like friends happy to be wrestlers. So Morris draped a proprietorial arm around my neck as if he owned me. For some reason that annoyed me and I couldn't raise a smile, but tried to look seriously butch with a closed fist ready to slam into his self-satisfied smirk. As soon as the photo was taken I dressed and took off. Not my scene.

Morris was given a new car for his sixteenth birthday [I got a new lap-top]. By then his outspoken homophobia and racism were really getting to me. When we were young I thought of him as a tolerable oddball—a carbon copy of his unlovely parents whose opinions had nothing to do with me. But every time I decided to tell him that I hated his opinions and didn't want to see him because of them, he'd sense it and tell me what a great guy I am, and that he'd never have got through life without me. So I'd decide not to hurt him and wait for a better occasion. Pathetic.

He arrived in a right state one Friday evening while we were having dinner, pleading with me to go with him that night to a party at someone's beach house. The parents would be there, so it'd be decently run—no drugs and stuff. He'd invited two girls from the wrestling club with the promise he'd bring a friend, but according to Morris, the friend had cried off, so I had to save his reputation. Dad and Mum, who were becoming concerned at my lack of interest in social activities, said it would be good for me and almost shoved me out the door dressed in my sexy best.

Makeup, perfume, and bleached hair didn't compensate for our dates' lack of interest in anything but pop music, themselves and gossip. The place was crowded. Dancing restricted to shuffling around in semi darkness, parents nowhere to be seen. Alcohol flowed. Someone chundered and the food was minimal. Morris and I cared too much for our health to drink anything stronger than bottled water, but the girls got mildly pickled and slightly embarrassing.

Instead of driving us home, Morris parked in a dark spot behind the cricket ground, and started making out with his girl. I was trapped in the back seat with a voracious man-eater who opened her mouth and tried to swallow my face. I pulled away before drowning in saliva, distracting her by fiddling incompetently with her tits. She undid my flies and failed to suck life into my cock. Undeterred, she grabbed my hand and shoved two of my fingers up her cunt—she wasn't wearing knickers. It was unpleasant, hot and sticky, and my fingers smelled of shit afterwards, although I knew they'd been in the right hole. She made a lot of noise. I couldn't stop yawning. After an eternity Morris ejaculated and drove us home. Before dropping off the girls, he arranged to meet them again on Sunday—we'd all go to the beach together.

When I told him to count me out, he laughed and said I must be joking. I'd been a virgin too long. He'd call for me at ten o'clock and not to worry, he'd provide the lunch and condoms.

On Saturday afternoon when I met Jeremy and described my night of lustreless love, he couldn't stop laughing.

'The poor girl offered you her most precious possession, and you were bored!'

'It's no joke, Jeremy! He's coming round tomorrow morning to pick me up. What'll I do?'

'Don't ask me, you got yourself into this mess by letting Morris manipulate you. If you recall, I stayed clear of you for the first year because you seemed so friendly with that homophobic, racist idiot.'

'Yeah. I know. But then you realised I'm the opposite. So what'll I do? You've got to help me!'

'He clearly thinks you're just like him, so you'll have to disabuse him.'

'How?'

'What's the main thing you disliked about last night?

'Feeling up that slag in the car. And tomorrow I'll be expected to actually fuck her! I feel sick. I'll never get an erection! Save me Jeremy!'

'Did you hate it because she was unpleasant, or because she was female?'

'What're you getting at?'

'Would you feel the same about kissing a boy and playing with his erection?'

My heart leaped into my mouth, pulses hammered in ears and I was on the point of punching him for insinuating I was queer when I looked at his face. He was serious—not trying to make me feel stupid. So I took a deep breath and shrugged. 'I've no idea and no way to find out.'

'Yes you have. At great personal sacrifice, I'm prepared to offer my own pristine body for you to experiment on—purely for scientific study, you understand, not because I think either of us is in any way queer.'

'You won't tell anyone about this?'

'And incriminate myself? I'm not that stupid.'

My heart was again racing, wilder than ever, but this time in anticipation I tried to conceal. 'Where?'

'Is there a lock on your bedroom door?'

'Yes.'

'Then your place it will have to be.'

Twenty minutes later we were naked on the bed, gazing in terrified delight at each other's body; tentatively touching, stroking, feeling, squeezing, admiring… and then we kissed. Lightly. Lips closed. No dribbling saliva. And my whole body tingled. And then we kissed every part of each other as if starved—which we were I suppose—of intimacy and sex. And then we lay on our sides, facing and gently masturbating each other. Weightless in the knowledge that it was okay; it wasn't rude or nasty, or wrong… but deliciously sexy and right! And the orgasms were mind-blowingly better than when I ministered to myself.

After a very long time, the sun began to set and we ran out of energy for more. Time to concoct a plan.

My bedroom used to be the laundry, so it has an outside door. Dad made a brilliant job of the conversion, and despite Mum's demands to close off the door, left it because it would give me more privacy as I grew older. I could come and go as I pleased—something they didn't want their daughters doing!

A couple of minutes after ten the following morning, Morris burst in without knocking, expecting to find me doing homework as usual. Instead, Jeremy and I were locked in passionate embrace on the bed, visible erections being gently manhandled, lips glued together.

I looked up, smiled sweetly and said, 'Gosh, is it that time already?'

Jeremy nodded a cool greeting, before beginning a delicate fellatio.

'What the fuck!' Morris howled. 'You fucking queers! Fucking disgusting! I feel sick! You fucking perverts! I'm out of here!'

He slammed the door so violently it bounced open again and we subsided in nervous giggles—relieved his attack had only been verbal.

A few minutes later, when Dad silently poked his head around the door we were still sprawled over the bed, grinning at each other from the feeling of lightness and release that comes when a dread secret is exposed and there's nothing left to hide.

'What was that loud bang?'

We both jumped. Jeremy scrabbled ineffectually for his clothes. I decided to brazen it out.

'Morris saw something he didn't approve of.'

Dad gazed theatrically around. 'Can't imagine what that would be.' He grinned at Jeremy who'd given up trying to conceal his bits. 'I hoped you'd be here, Jeremy, I've got a job for you both. I forgot to include a packet in a delivery up the coast. They rang and complained, so I promised to deliver it today. But Mum wants me to go somewhere with her, so I hope you'll do it for me. The car's full of petrol, and there's no need to hurry home. You can buy yourselves lunch when you get there and spend the day at the beach.'

'Are you sure you want me to go too?' Jeremy asked nervously.

'I won't let my weak-minded son go without you—he needs your commonsensical brain.'

It all seemed too easy. I had to be certain, so asked nervously, 'You don't mind about Jeremy and me…?'

Dad threw his head back and laughed softly. 'I'm relieved you've finally realised.'

'You knew?'

'Your mother and I are not as thick as you think we are, Geoff. Anyway, here's a debit card with five hundred dollars on it—try not to spend it all.' He turned at the door. 'Clear it with your parents, Jeremy, while I get Geoff organised.'

'I wish my parents were as practical and sensible as yours,' Jeremy said softly.

And so began the best day of my life.

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The Best Day of My Life

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