Brother
by Laurie Stone
My brother was the catcher, and we were having sex. I was waiting to be scared. In our act, he would swing upside down from the bar, hanging by his knees, his arms extended, and I would fly into his chalky grip. We would sway together while I shimmied up his body for our extension tricks. Sometimes he became hard and called me goddess. I laughed and called him punk. He was wearing his hair in a Mohawk in those days. We were 7 and 9 the first time we explored, 13 and 15 the first time we went inside each other's bodies. Now we were 20 and 22, and each time the circus moved to another city I wondered if I should take off. As soon as we were separated, I wanted to return. At the kitchen table, eating buckwheat pancakes with raisins, he said, I don't see other women. I said, You are just lazy, feeling the nauseating dizziness of trapeze. Other kids noticed the odd way we would split off. Jed was always lingering somewhere nearby. We would hear soft laughter behind us when we left a room. It was almost romantic. Whatever people thought they knew, they didn't know. At the table, I licked a dab of mayonnaise off his nose, left from making tuna sandwiches. He was bare-chested in tights, and I looked at the shadowy contours of his belly and ass. His legs were pillars. We had the same coppery hair, the same broad hands. I said, No one will measure up, but some day we will have to leave home. He took my braid in his mouth and bit down. I still feel the tug at the back of my neck. When I close my eyes, I see him on a bench before an unglamorous stretch of river, his hair flying, his face quizzical and refusing to suffer. Each morning when I wake up, I wonder if this is the day the fear will start.
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Author's Note
Susan Nordmark was writing daily flash fictions during July 2013 and posting them on Facebook as well as prompt words she culled from songs. These were plucked from Frank Zappa's song Electric Aunt Jemima: goddess, buckwheats, punk, raisin, mayonnaise. I gave it a shot.
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Dangerous doings. Taut, riviting. *
Many thanks. This is my first day on the site.
This is a lovely piece of prose. *
Many thanks, Chris. The prompt words sent it flying, as it were. I was in London and became enraptured by a trapeze school I visited every day in Regent's Park.
It's risky in a way similar to Cherise Wolas' Sisters story, yet hers is a story like this about sisters, so I am asking myself how sibling sex (incest) can come off egal, without regard to the usual categories? As Chris said, lovely prose. *
I admit to a bit of recoil when I read this but it's very well written. Who wants to only read about kittens and rainbows anyway? You've inspired me to think about posting some riskier pieces here.
Thanks, Ann, for your comments. I had been watching Game of Thrones on Netflix shortly before this story materialized, and certainly the brother-sister incest in that story is one of its central engines. I think sex between siblings has a different feeling to us than intergenerational incest, more, as you say, a feeling of equal power between the partners. I expect in real life a situation like the one in the story would generate lots of other emotions in addition to those depicted here. Guilt and more . . . but I was focusing on feelings of attachment, attraction, and trust, given the siblings have to fly and catch each other.
Charlotte: Thanks for your response. I am a newbie on the site.
Great source for the prompt words. The writing is sharp. Very direct. I like it -
"When I close my eyes, I see him on a bench before an unglamorous stretch of river, his hair flying, his face quizzical and refusing to suffer."
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Laurie, this is astounding, feels like speaker is walking a tightrope.
Sam: It seems to me we are participating in a strange new collaborative form a little like a network of exquisite corpse pieces, that is taking the prompt words tossed out by one writer and sharing the various versions that emerge. This story would not have sounded the way it sounds had I not been weaving in words and the images they conjure provided by someone very different from me. It inclines me more toward fiction and less toward memory because these are not my words.
Lillian: I love your image of the tightrope. Many thanks.
WOW!
Lxx
"Sometimes he became hard and called me goddess."
Wonderfully edgy writing.*
Sex and danger, sounds like the circus. Catchers love their catch.
This is absolutely excellent.
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Really terrific work. Riveting from the first sentence.*
I was nervous about reading on, since my stomach started to churn. Glad I did. You captured the raw connection between the trapeze adrenaline rush and the one you get from doing something taboo/forbidden. *
Laurie,
Welcome to fictionaut!
This is an amazing piece. So powerful and darkly magnetic. I was immediately pulled in, and vividly experienced the churning of lust and fear and exhilaration... Wow! Thank you. :)
D
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Dear Deborah and Joanne, Many thanks for the warm reception to my work. I'm delighted to be part of the site.
My comment above is too ambiguous as I phrased it. I meant to indicate my sense that sister-sister incest and brother-sister incest equate more naturally in the reader's (this reader's) mind than lesbian and heterosexual liaisons automatically do otherwise. I hope in clarifying what I meant, I did not add confusion. There is a power differential and an outside secrecy code at work. The circus motif and plot elements add a further embedded, deep layer to the story. (*)
Visceral in a dangerous way, but fascinating.
Thanks, James, I have been enjoying the benefits of allowing plots to develop by implementing lists of prompt words imported from other writers . . . using words that aren't mine generates scenes and events that aren't mine. What a break!
A great approach to a topic teetering on the edge without a net. FAVE
Christopher: Many thanks for your response.