Human Sister

by Jim Bainbridge

  “Okay, now. We can’t tear into this like a couple of famished dogs.” She shelters the pack with her left hand and arm and attempts to push the dog away with her right hand and arm. “Sit! Sit down, Rusty. Sit. Good boy. Now, stay. Stay!”

  The dog sits on its hindquarters. It exhibits a high level of attention directed both at the pack and at her. “Stay,” she says, pointing at the dog with her right index finger. The dog licks the finger. “Stay,” she repeats, directing a stern facial expression at the dog while she slowly withdraws her right hand toward the pack. She keeps her eyes directed at the dog as her right hand searches in the pack.

  She retrieves the brindled bread-like material, unwraps the clear film from it, pulls the brindled material into four roughly equal parts, and places three of those parts on top of the pack.

  “Okay, boy,” she says. “Lunchtime. Come!” The dog jumps up, sniffs, licks, then scoops up the food whole in its jaws, chomps, and swallows. While it does, she stuffs the other section of food into her mouth and chews.

  Still chewing, she forms a concave depression in the sand and lines the depression with the thin transparent film. She unscrews the cap from the cylindrical object and pours bluish-brown liquid from the bottle into the lined concave depression in the sand.

  The dog licks once at the surface of the liquid, looks up toward Sara, and extends its tongue out of its mouth three times.

  “Go ahead,” she says. “It’s not that bad. See?”

  She lifts the bottle to her mouth and appears to swallow twice.

  The dog licks the liquid again, then begins to lap rapidly. She watches the dog and smiles.

  The dog completes lapping up the liquid in the makeshift bowl. She pours the last of the liquid into the bowl, saying: “That’s it, Rusty. That’s all I have. We’ll have to see what we can find on the road home.”

  She screws the cap back onto the bottle, pushes the knuckles of her right hand into the sand and stands. The shadow of the boat covers the right side of her lower right pant leg and the right edge of her right shoe.

  It is 29 minutes, 47 seconds past midday.

  Sara

  After Michael was born, Grandpa told Aunt Lynh that he would no longer accompany me on my summer vacations because Elio and I tired him out. But, in fact, Grandpa had enjoyed our summer trips. His concern was for Michael, who, he told me, was even more fragile than a human baby and was too much for Grandma to take care of alone. Thus, the following summer, the summer of my tenth birthday, was the first of many summers that I arrived alone in Amsterdam to visit Elio and Aunt Lynh. It was also the first summer Elio and I had separate bedrooms.

  He and Aunt Lynh had moved into a larger apartment in the same building that spring. Aunt Lynh tried to explain to me in private that I was getting to be a big girl and should have a separate bedroom for my privacy. I didn’t understand, nor was I pleased, by this privacy business. Fortunately, Elio’s and my bedrooms were connected by a bathroom through which each night, after we’d been kissed and tucked in by Aunt Lynh and the lights had been turned out, I snuck, buck naked, into Elio’s bedroom and bed. There, as during each summer before, he wrapped himself around me, called me the best teddy bear in the world, and kissed me goodnight. He was smaller then than Michael; he fit better, I thought, when he held me; he was softer. And unlike Michael, he was warm, and he had something Michael didn’t: a small pouch containing two testicles below his penis, a penis which often got hard during the night. Michael’s never did. Neither one of them had hair anywhere except on the top of his head.

  It was also during that summer that Aunt Lynh began insisting that Elio call me his sister; so from then on, in front of her, he usually called me “Sis.” But when he and I were alone together, I remained “Sara.” She also wanted me to call him “Brother.” But although I thought of Elio as family, he didn’t seem like a brother. He was my friend. He was summer and freedom. He was my connection with the wider world. He was fun.

  And by three summers later, the summer I turned thirteen, he was so, so beautiful.

  After we met at Schiphol Airport, we talked and laughed, as we had during previous summers. But later that night, he locked the door while using the bathroom, and then, as I began undressing for bed in my bedroom, he came in wearing underpants and told me I should sleep in my own bed.

  Shocked, I just stared at him.

  “I’m not a little boy anymore,” he said with a dismissive wave. Then he turned and walked through our bathroom, shutting the door leading to his bedroom behind him. I heard the lock click.

  “This must be the type of pain Michael feels when I leave him,” I whispered to myself as I stood staring, teary-eyed, at Elio’s closed and locked bedroom door.

  The next morning, I woke early and quietly slipped out of the apartment to call Grandpa. Since Elio and I were supposed to have been sleeping separately during the past three summers, I had to be careful what I said to express my unhappiness with Elio’s behavior, so I simply explained that Elio had locked me out of the bathroom the night before and wouldn’t let me see him naked.

  “Elio is fourteen,” Grandpa replied, “and undoubtedly is exhibiting new primary and secondary male sex characteristics. He may be uncomfortable about his new body around you and desirous of heightened privacy. I’m sure you are curious about his new physiology, but I believe it would be a serious mistake to impose on the privacy he desires. I’ll prepare some materials. When you return home, we’ll have a sex education class.”

  I enjoyed the remainder of my time that summer with Elio, doing the usual things—talking, biking, swimming, visiting his friends—but he continued locking me out of our bathroom whenever he was using it, and the least he wore in my presence were underpants, which appeared astonishingly white against his dark skin.

  Grandpa began his sex-education class by giving me my puberty shot to protect me from all known sexually transmitted diseases. “You and your generation are fortunate,” he said. “Unlike in the days of my youth, sex no longer puts on its short skirts or tight jeans and solicits at the entrance to hospitals and cemeteries.” He laid the first syringe back on the top of his desk and picked up another. “This vaccination will inhibit the binding capacity of sperm to eggs. It should remain effective for about five years.”

  I felt another soft concussion of air against my upper arm.

  Grandpa put the syringes away in a drawer of his desk. From another drawer he took out a large book. In it, he showed me pictures of male and female human bodies in various stages of maturity and explained the transformation of breasts, genitals, and so on from childhood through adulthood. He told me about the physiology of male and female orgasm and concluded, “But making love has about as much to do with penises, vaginas, breasts, hair, and so on, as playing the piano has to do with hammers and strings. Of course, you need hammers and strings and your hammers and strings should be in good working order and well tuned, but real piano playing is about feeling, understanding, and technique. So it is with making love.”

  He leaned back in his chair, and took on a satisfied expression that seemed to say: There, now, you’ve heard it all. Let’s get back to your studies.

  But I was far from satisfied. I loved Grandpa, Grandma, Michael, Elio, and Lily; and all this love had nothing to do with penises, breasts, and hair as far as I was concerned. “Why is sex called ‘making love,’” I asked, “rather than ‘making babies’? I don’t see that love has anything to do with it.”

  “Now you’ve asked a question we can sink our teeth into,” he said, leaning forward again. “There are three main functions of sex: first, it is used to reproduce, one of its rarest and, considering the nearly nine billion people crowding the planet and the abysmal quality of most parenting, arguably one of its most perverse manifestations.

  “Sex is also used to give and receive pleasure and to express love. But you are not yet developed enough to understand such adult pleasure or love.

  “The third category, which
is of particular relevance for adolescents, concerns the ability of sexual activity to reprogram the web of beliefs and desires that emerge from synaptic recoding throughout our brains and bodies.”

  “Are you saying,” I interrupted, “that having sex will recode my synapses and change my beliefs and desires?”

  “And your allegiances and whom you love. In a word, yes. Humans are reprogrammed by having sex, especially by early sexual activity. Have you read about Ivan Pavlov?”

  “Yes. He was the scientist who rang a bell just before putting meat powder into dogs’ mouths. After several repetitions, he found a high positive correlation between the ringing of the bell and the dogs’ salivating, even when the meat wasn’t present.”

  “That was his famous classical conditioning experiment. But have you read about his famous accident?”

  “Accident? No.”

  “One spring, a river flooded in St. Petersburg, inundating the basement of Pavlov’s laboratory where some of his dogs were being kept. By the time they were rescued, the terrified dogs were swimming with their noses at the top of their cages. How do you think this traumatic event affected the dogs?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “To his surprise, Pavlov found that the dogs had lost their prior conditioning and had to be retrained. Investigating this phenomenon, Pavlov found that isolation, starvation, or intense sensory stimulation can result in such unlearning. In humans, isolation and sensory overload have been used to destroy individual beliefs and preference structures—by religions, with their singing, dancing, and chanting to exhaustion; by fraternities, sororities, and military groups, with their initiation rights and boot-camp-style indoctrination; by sports teams, with their exercising to exhaustion and incessant harangues by coaches; and by other such groups.

  “But that is the difficult side, the unlearning side. The re-education side, the formation of new beliefs and desires, turns out to be remarkably simple. At the point of overload, the stressed individual will automatically form new preference and belief structures in line with those of whoever releases him or her from the ordeal or whoever offers some kindness during this period of emotional meltdown, even if—now get this—even if the releaser or the offeror of kindness, such as a coach or drill sergeant or police interrogator, is the one responsible for the meltdown in the first place.”

  “That’s called brainwashing, isn’t it?”

  “More commonly, it’s called social conditioning, becoming a team player, an infatuated lover, a dedicated parent, a devout whatever, and so on.

  “What is important for you to become aware of is the pattern this reprogramming takes and the power it can have over you. During adolescence, there are biologic impulses to distance oneself from one’s parents and family, and one often encounters the disturbing experience of having one’s closest friends acquire new interests and new friends, usually of the opposite sex. Adolescents often feel isolated when they discover old friends disavowing, perhaps even claiming to abhor, the pleasures and allegiances of youth.

  “Then, to top it all off, comes a flood of neurohormones released in conjunction with early sexual activity. These neurohormones were evolutionarily selected to break down established synaptic coding so that the young animal could easily be reprogrammed for pair bonding and parental responsibilities. In humans, the strain of growing up, combined with floods of neuromodulators, overwhelms the established synaptic coding in an adolescent brain, resulting in the commonly observed personality dissolution associated with that period of life.”

  Grandpa frowned, apparently disturbed by this last idea, then picked up a set of papers from his desk. “Take a look at this article later. It describes how prairie voles’ dopamine levels surge during their first sexual encounter, permanently recoding their brains, and they mate for life. In the studies described, virgin female voles given a single injection of dopamine immediately choose any nearby male vole as their mate for life. Scary actually, but that is how love is made—for prairie voles, at least.”

  I thought I understood everything Grandpa had said, but as far as I could tell, what he’d said wasn’t directed at what I was upset about: Elio’s recent strange behavior.

  “What I wanted to talk about, Grandpa, is Elio. I’m going to marry him when I grow up, and I think I’ll enjoy making love with him. So I think I should be able to see him naked, and he shouldn’t lock me out of the bathroom. Don’t you agree?”

  “I most certainly do not agree. I thought I made it clear when you called from Amsterdam that now is a time for you to respect his privacy. You’re not children any longer. If he feels uncomfortable being naked around you, then you accept that and don’t bother him about it. Besides, there certainly is no rush. You have your whole long life ahead of you. After you mature sexually in a few years, you’ll have plenty of time to be intimate with the boys you like. Furthermore, you should be aware that even though you feel you may enjoy making love with Elio, he might not feel the same way toward you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If what Aunt Lynh tells your mother is true, Elio enjoys making love with young men. I don’t know what he feels about young women.”

  Instantly, my chest felt heavy and tight, and a tingling nibbled at my arms and legs. “What does he do with those boys, exactly?”

  For a moment, Grandpa appeared stunned. “I don’t know what he does. That’s his business, not ours.”

  I gave Grandpa his own silent-waiting-for-more treatment.

  Finally, he sighed and said, “Okay, what do you want to know?”

  “I told you. I want to know what he does when he makes love with those boys.”

  Enduring my repeated interruptions to find out exactly what certain named acts entailed, Grandpa proceeded to tell me what he said were activities men typically enjoyed doing when they made love with other men.

  It seemed odd to me that people could get pleasure out of doing such things, but I believed Grandpa implicitly, all the more so upon considering Lily. She moaned with pleasure whenever I rubbed her tummy or scratched behind her ears, and that seemed a bit odd, too, because when I rubbed my tummy or scratched behind my ears, I wasn’t transported to moans of pleasure. So, if Elio liked to have his penis massaged… well, I figured I’d enjoy doing that for him just as much as I enjoyed scratching Lily’s ears.

  That autumn, I woke one morning on a sticky bloodied sheet. I didn’t want to frighten Michael, so I pulled the sheet off the bed, bunched it up, and took it out through Gatekeeper. My ovaries had dropped their first egg—like a furled seedpod from one of the locust trees, Grandma said.

  Sara

  Two summers later, Elio lifted his chin off the top of my head and asked, “Would you like to go to a club tonight?”

  We were sitting in early afternoon shade on the steps of his apartment building, watching children play in the park. He was sixteen, tall, and handsome in his short-sleeved pink shirt and tight-fitting blue jeans. He sat on the step above me, his arms over my shoulders, hugging me, his legs pressing against my sides. Never had I felt so much a part of him, never so calm, so yielding, yet so awakened and full of joy.

  “What kind of club?” I asked.

  “A place to dance, talk with friends.”

  “Okay. I’d love to go.” I tried to sound more excited than I was. I’d never been to a club. I didn’t even know what a club was, or how to dance. Would I appear awkward and embarrass Elio? Would his friends be there, his boyfriends?

  “Well, if we’re going,” Elio said, “you’ve got to get some new clothes, something other than those old farmer-boy clothes you always wear.”

  He had me stand in front of his Vidtel to record images of me that he entered into a shopping program. Over the next hour, he seemed to take pleasure dressing my likeness in many wild, colorful clothes from designers all over the world. But we finally settled on shopping at a local discount store because we needed the clothes for that evening. He picked out a white camisole, a ruby-colored
cotton long-sleeved shirt, and a pair of black slacks. I felt self-consciously feminine in the silky-smooth camisole—the first I’d ever worn.

  Later, after dinner and before Elio and I left to go to the club, Aunt Lynh made us promise to be home by midnight. Though her request—“Elio, I want you to promise me that you’ll have your sister home by midnight”—didn’t seem significant to me at the time, events of a year later would revive in me a distinct memory of her words, her stern tone, and Elio’s subsequent funk.

  After taking a bus to an area near the University of Amsterdam, Elio and I walked several blocks before turning into a narrow alley lined with old red-brick buildings. About halfway down the alley was a small yellow sign, and on it, the image of a red dog.

  Under the sign was a black metal door with a brass knocker that squeaked when Elio raised it to knock. The door opened part way, letting out a blast of music. A huge man with the biggest muscles I’d ever seen scanned Elio’s membership card, then looked at me in an unfriendly manner and grunted something. Though I’d picked up only a few Dutch words during prior visits, “no card” I understood, and “little chicken.” It was clear that the huge fellow wasn’t going to let me in. But when Elio handed him several bills, the man stuffed them into his pants pocket, and the door was opened to us.

  I followed Elio into a room filled with smoke, flashing lights, and oppressively loud music. In the center of the room was a circular dance floor on which moved a sea of strobe-lit dancers. Some women were topless; some men wore only underpants. Several of the dancers had holographic partners. Around the circumference of the dance floor were columns of flashing lights that extended from the floor to the ceiling three stories above. Hundreds of people watched from a second-story balcony.

  Elio took my hand and led me through the crowd to an area in which there were tables and a bar. I recognized his best friend, Luuk, who was waving to us from one of the tables near the back. He, Elio, and I had played football and video games together in prior summers.