Human Sister

bit, he asked me to go back in the story and concentrate on seeing Elio naked in bed. I did. He asked me to try to see and feel as much as I could about that first sexual experience, and as I did my nipples became erect. He bent over and looked at them closely. “I read about this. And you’re flushed and breathing heavily.”
    “Yes, well, remembering and describing all this is sexually arousing for me.”
    “I know all about it. I’ve been studying. I also read that people masturbate to give themselves pleasure. I’d like to experience masturbation while we’re connected.”
    “I’ve never done it by myself. Only with Elio.”
    “But humans do this—usually alone. Couldn’t we do this alone?”
    I had agreed to share my life with Michael, but I’d been only eight at the time. I hadn’t known then that one day I might want something only for myself.
    I looked at Michael. He was so obviously eager for us to share this human sexuality, as we had shared everything before. For him, I was a confluence of many roles: mother, sister, teacher, friend—and I was a vitally important instrument for his ability to sense and feel, especially relating to activities in the outside world. And I loved him, loved him in a way that our special circumstances required, which meant, I felt then, that I had to share myself with him and had to try to be whatever he needed whenever he needed it, for how else could he obtain it?
    “Okay,” I said, “but it’ll be more comfortable for me if I lie on my bed.”
    Michael sat beside me on the bed, and I began doing what I’d never done without Elio—without his hands on my hands, his fingers atop my fingers, guiding them, pressing here, stroking there, releasing exquisite pleasure that shimmered magically over a river of contractions and moans. But though my fingers were in the remembered places doing the remembered things, they failed on their own to conjure up the shimmering pleasure.
    “I don’t see or hear a story,” Michael interrupted. “From what I’ve read, aren’t you supposed to tell yourself a romantic story while you touch yourself in the right places?”
    “Like what?” I said, trying not to think—for my thoughts he too would think—that the problem more likely was his presence studying me.
    “Well, like about making love with Elio on your birthday. That aroused you before. It’s a story I already know, so I should easily be able to sense its many nuances.”
    With my hands once again busy on my body, I began silently recalling the events of my birthday, when I found to my surprise that I merely had to evoke, in the manner already described, Elio’s body smiling at me to satisfy Michael’s curiosity and my sudden desire.
    Michael stared at me without expression. Then he exclaimed, “Wow! That was amazing! The rising heartbeat, the tension, the crescendo of neural activity, the release—all that stimulation surged through our brains, crushing every conscious thought. I read about it, but I never anticipated such an experience.”
    Yes, I thought. Words can only point, as the fingers of spectators point toward but can never give the experience of the blossoming of the event so many have come to see.
    He reached over and touched my right breast near the areola, then jerked his hand back as if he’d been jolted by a spark of electricity.
    “Ah! My fingers feel so cold!” His voice and manner seemed half-startled, half-despondent, and I instantly felt his or my—or our—pain.
    “I like your cool touch,” I said, reaching over and taking his hand in mine. “It’s just that… perhaps my breasts are hypersensitive right now.” I became conscious then of the problem of someday finding someone who would long—in the way a lover longs—for Michael’s cool touch, his touch that was loving in every way but lacked mammalian warmth.
    “Do you miss Elio?” he asked.
    I nodded. “He might be coming to live with us in a couple of months. He wants to live here and commute to school at UC Berkeley.”
    “Live here? With us? In these rooms?”
    “Yes, if you don’t mind. And if we can get his mother to agree.”
    Michael’s face lit up to its maximum expression of happiness. “That’s wonderful! We can play and talk and study together. And I can feel your sexual feelings for him, too.”
    I thought for a moment. “Yes, it will be wonderful. But I would like you to wait awhile before you ask to feel my sexual feelings for him while he’s