One In The Same

It was all very likely inevitable anyway.

After all, Maggie and George lived in the same townhouse. Downtown and a mile north of the theater district, they owned the old stone upright outright, were its only occupants, and so had the entire place to themselves. They lived in the same building but in separate apartments, on different floors, as a reluctant and ill-defined nod to propriety; she on the 2nd floor and he on the 4th, with the 3rd floor between them sound-proofed and dedicated as a studio and the ground floor empty and closed off to all but the property’s sole tenants. Maggie as well had a key to her brother’s door and occasionally liked to wander around inside and for hours while George was either in the studio or on the rare occasion outside altogether. In his place alone, sipping cold wine that he kept only for drinking with her (George always ordered out for food; one cupboard held surplus whiskey and cartons of cigarettes, and within the refrigerator the balance of room around the wine bottles was beer), Maggie would tune in an oldies station through the stereo and smoke kools and roam around the furniture from room to room, half-listening for the songs she and George had once recorded and lazily snooping through drawers and cabinets as a lover, albeit unconsummated, looking for evidence of infidelity.

§§§

George Lawrence & Geraldine Margaret (Maggie) Satellite were fraternal twins, rich and once celebrated, inarguably talented and intelligent if not particularly schooled, still young and, especially Maggie, attractive. Tall and solid at 5`10`` and 137 lbs., heavy breasted and bouncy, with a trim waist and a taut, meaty behind, Maggie moved with a graceful strength and sensuality that all men longingly noticed – rolling her buns with a provocative rocking tick-tock away from all whom she parted company, always happily unescorted. She was of gorgeous, Amazonian voluptuousness and she knew this (her face was by contrast only melodious: large, inviting eyes and a straight nose were all that were notable, her mouth unremarkable save for an a appealingly toothy smile). Maggie had never really abandoned the breezy, cosmopolitan fashions of her adolescence and, favoring hoop earrings and clear fingernail polish, often barefoot and wearing her blond hair straight and waist-length above the beltline of cinching, threadbare denims, her dress complemented a serene cerebral posture – and yet she was proud of and notorious for being recklessly but casually demanding and a harsh and seemingly omniscient judge of character. She was coolly contemptuous of men for their puerile, simpering advances and dismissive of their women for their envy.

As Maggie was an alluring physical symmetry of plush curves and warm promise, George’s handsomeness was by comparison, and defeating the genetic advantages he shared with his sister, all lanky straight edges and points and corners; with the lean, rawboned strength of corded steel or re-bar and murderously dark half-moons underscoring a starved, vacant countenance, his features were largely honed sharp by hard drink, lost sleep, and an often black moodiness that lent him the irresistibly dangerous beauty of the haunted and damned. 

Nonetheless, Maggie had always loved her Georgie, desperately and protectively, and George as well loved Maggie – and would have gladly killed in her defense, to safeguard what was his – however heavily veiled his avarice. Indeed, given their affluence and influence, their beauty, and the requisite intelligence to rationalize any indulgence (or sacrifice) – that they at best were politely considerate of outsiders and all but worshipped themselves and each other; as one was the synonymous, opposite-sex approximate of the other and that they had long fought a peer-sibling rivalry as to whom would possess the other – it all may very well have been merely a matter of time.

§§§

Of course Maggie loved her brother, and was even in love with him, she supposed (her twin brother, she’d fondly emphasize, suggesting to herself a cosmic simpatico between them she hoped would absolve her of the stigma of her creepy lusts) and had so much as vaguely entertained a crush on him since they were teenagers; a seemingly innocuous crush that their fans and the media continued to dismiss, to her relief, as just the mutual affection of a brother-sister music act – just a couple of cute kids – still now and despite their maturity; a caress, a teasing squeeze, a quick kiss on the lips – the flirty, spirited one just being affectionately supportive of her brooding, reclusive brother (backstage before one performance many years ago, as the club emcee tried to assuage a half-drunk and rowdy, almost violently skeptical house – really, these kids rock! – a beered-up George gave Maggie’s ass cheek a lingering little squeeze and whispered to her “wish us luck …,” a gesture from then on that Maggie outwardly allowed with a smile but secretly welcomed). However, for the years since they last toured and having settled surely and amiably into the “Hey, didn’t you used to be …?” genre of obscurity, Maggie had been of the disturbing certainty that she harbored a lust for her brother that was unsettlingly sexual, far more than mere familial possessiveness. And the long evenings spent together in his apartment – now and then, at first, and each party propped up on separate furniture, just lounging about, drinking and talking and watching t.v. – had become inordinately frequent and decidedly more intimate with Maggie cuddling with George on the overstuffed sofa, lying back against his chest and cradled between his legs, his arms draped loose about her midsection. He had begun resting his hands under her shirt and playing with her navel and sometimes softly and unexpectedly kissing her throat and neither, least of all George, minded. These evenings had thrilled them both but despite their tacit practice of being always direct with each other, professionally and personally and regardless of how cruel the honesty –

“Try not to re-write ‘Imagine’.”
“Big talk, coming from the Cute Beatle.”
“Genius is knowing ‘She loves you, yea-yea-yea’ works; you’d have written ‘She loves you, indeed’. And Lennon wasn’t a hillbilly.”
“Your feet are dirty, Your Highness.”

– for the first time in their lives they only jokingly addressed what they were really doing and how it made them feel. George would remark how her nipples poked ridiculously prominent from behind her shirt, even through her bra, and Maggie would disingenuously note that she’d complain of his erection against her lumbar if the boorish lump weren’t so small, and in the wee a.m. hours they’d sleepily disentangle, yawn, listlessly mumble their goodnights to each other, and Maggie would go downstairs to her apartment and George would pour himself a nightcap or four to calm the nervy charge running the length of his body.

In time, their game was not so platonic. Languidly draped over one another on the couch, George would fondle Maggie’s breasts until, finally discarding any pretence of innocence, he one evening put his hand between her thighs and scrubbed at her vagina through her bluejeans. She drew up a leg in acquiescence and he scratched and dabbed at her clitoris through the denim while she ground her hips between his legs, neither of them watching the television they were looking at, his erection threatening so much greater now than when they were kids; when they were both thirteen and George was outweighed and out-muscled by a coltish, teenaged Maggie and she could, and would regularly, wrestle him down at will; when he was still unaccustomed to wet dreams and a thought of sex, or arithmetic, or Spring, or the wind equally could make his penis stiffen, and Maggie’s breasts were still just blossoms and her cupcake-butt only boyish as his, and rough-housing with his boy-crazy sister at night in front of the t.v. always happily resulted in her playfully dry-humping him through their nightwear during commercials and they had enjoyed each other’s company alone those evenings far too much for even their own comfort. This evening though, years later and each overtly predatory of the other, she arched heavily and agreeably against her brother, her head thrown back on his shoulder and her face to his throat. He rubbed and tugged at her harder and then whispered to his sister in a once-ambiguous lyric from one of their own songs a particularly unnatural desire of his for her and she abruptly crushed back into him in one violent, involuntary writhe: an ‘uhuh’, and then a trembling rush of breath past his ear, Maggie came and her crotch went damp, the sky-blue cotton between her legs darkening, and she dissolved back again against George. She kissed the underside of his jaw line and they continued to cozy, watching the news and comfortably saying nothing. 

An hour later, before leaving for her own apartment and still without a word between them regarding her glow, they bid goodnight with a loose embrace and an unhurried kiss, their tongues slowly swirling about at the heart of their incest.

§§§

Maggie found George’s porno stashed in an otherwise empty third drawer of a dresser set back against the far wall of his walk-in closet. She stood inside over the open drawer, among his clothes and amusedly thumbing through a back-issue of Abased Babes, a fringe publication of explicit photos exclusively of popularly pretty college girls being boned in the ass: triple-x still-frames from motel room productions of anonymous cocks rooted up the butts of ambitious co-eds, too fabulously fast-track to wait tables – moonlighters, going for the bonus pay, first-timers – hastily buttered belly-down over a pillow and put to the white-knuckle work, their expressions wide-eyed and focused acutely on an unseen astonishment.

“Eeew-yuck goddamn, Georgie,” she lamented, laughing, out loud and un-sticking some of the magazine pages and imagining her critically-acclaimed brother masturbating over these pictures – her masculine twin, bug-eyed and hunched over his poor wiener, squirrelly self-absorbed and tossing-off over this vacuous loveless-ness – and she quickly ignored an arrantly jealous annoyance with him for not approaching her with his need, however inconceivable the concept. Taking a long pull from her cigarette and then a longer swallow of wine, she set the magazine aside and pulled from the drawer from beneath some videotapes a framed photograph of herself.

It was an 8x10 inch glossy original of her modeling an indiscreet blue bikini for the celebrity swimsuit edition of a sports & fitness magazine last summer on a remote South Pacific island shore 2 minutes after sunset: she was spread wide and low on froggy all-fours and pointed toward the ocean and tropical twilight – her knees planted firmly in the sand and granules spilling through her fists, holding onto the planet and the soft crack of her luscious tush a gaping shadow beneath the sheer blue fabric of the tiny bikini bottom. Loop earrings shone like small halos and her hair hung pooled at her breasts brushing the beach. For good measure, she was gazing over her shoulder and smiling dreamily into the camera. A string of murky spots diagonally dotted the glass pane covering her image.

Maggie’s heart began wildly thumping and her knees were wobbly with adrenaline; the shirts and slacks and jackets that hung about her and packed close on their hangers suddenly smelled so strongly of George that he might just as well have been present. She reached back into the drawer and removed with one grasp the three boxed videotapes that had been stacked on her portrait: Anal Blondes – Vol. 7, Poop-Chute Cuties (8 Ass-Blasting Scenes! Blonde Voy`age!) and, somewhat incongruously, The Art Of anal sex.

Maggie’s breathing had condensed to coarse, rapid pants and with considerable effort she inhaled a roomy breath to clear her head and slow her pulse. Reflexively, still unable to think anything, she took the plastic videocassettes from their boxes and placed them aside, returning the shiny cardboard, the off-Hollywood rag, and the photograph of herself to the back of the drawer. Reconsidering, she reached back into the drawer and, retrieving her portrait, she as well discovered an unopened 13oz. squeeze-dispenser:

Pipe Grease?
Petroleum-Based Anal Lubricant
Active Ingredients: Benzocaine (Topical Anesthetic) 11%

Maggie gathered the videocassettes, the photograph, and the tube of lubricant together and carried them out to the main room and dropped them into her tote bag on her way out the door and back downstairs to her own apartment.