I’d heard about the Ganz twins—several people I’d called during my early research had asked, “Have you met the Ganz twins yet?” In Twinsland, it turns out, these sisters are legendary. Self-dubbed “ambassadors of twins,” they run a twins talent agency out of New York. In the 1990s, they founded and operated Twins Restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where all the waiters were twins and Debbie and Lisa Ganz were usually on hand to greet patrons. I introduce myself (it turns out they know my brother from the restaurant business), and they chastise me for not booking myself at the Holiday Inn, “where everyone stays.”
“We come every summer,” Debbie exults over a fitting song, “‘Same Time Next Year.’”
Lisa chimes in: “The great thing about it is, you could be coming here for twelve years, and you might know everything about the twin part of people’s lives, but I wouldn’t know if they live in a trailer park or a mansion. In Twinsburg, you can literally have two politicians sitting next to two pig farmers next to the prince of Saudi Arabia twins, and they’re all having a blast. Now in normal society, outside of this weekend, they wouldn’t be together. In Twinsburg, it’s our identity that’s actually in common. Not our demographics or our careers … I know twins that I’ve been spending weekends with for twelve years and I still, to this day, don’t know how many kids they have, don’t know if they’re married. But I can tell you everything about the two of them together.”
Debbie adds, “I also think that people are fascinated by twins because they don’t realize they grow up. They think twins are little, and then we grow up and go to another planet.”
“We’re like Disney films,” Lisa says. “We’re timeless!”
That night, back in my Courtyard Marriott, I flip through the hotel’s movie menu and one description catches my eye in the “Adult” selections: “Nympho Twins.” I tell myself it’s a valuable research tool and click “purchase.” The hotel’s summary of the film shows up on the screen, and it’s priceless: “Over 90 minutes long, this title is a great value. They’re real twins and they love to screw the same guy at the same time. Light story line.”
“Light story line.” (Not like some porn movies, known for their complex narratives.)
Lacey and Lyndsey Love (actual twins—I checked later) play the nympho twins; one is more sexually inhibited than the other, and the shier twin has a crush on her coworker. The more confident twin offers to get him warmed up while her twin waits in the bathroom; after a dose of foreplay, the twins switch places. As can be expected, there’s the inevitable confusion: When the timid twin replaces her sex-savvy counterpart, she asks the man to give her oral sex. “But I already ate you!” he says, confused—and then obliges.
Believe it or not, I didn’t watch the whole film.
By nine the next morning, a brilliant Sunday, the village green is crammed with cars and onlookers waiting to see the Doubletake Parade. Twins in sunglasses, flip-flops, even large butterfly wings, gather on the dew-damp grass. The smell of the soil reminds me again of Robin: how we used to gather on the muddy baseball field on Fire Island for day camp on summer mornings, how she and I always won the three-legged races on that field because we instinctively knew how to move as one person.
So many photographs from my mother’s scrapbooks remind me of Robin’s and my physical proximity, and how natural it was. One image shows us at eight years old, in a summer costume festival: We’re in bright clown makeup and identical red shirts, each of us stuffed into one leg of a pair of oversized yellow overalls. Another shot shows us making an arch with our arms, in matching white tutus before a ballet recital.
As the Twinsburg parade assembles, twins climb into vintage roadsters, pickup trucks, and an El Dorado convertible. Some carry parasols for the sun. One mom proudly wears a button: GOD GAVE ME TWINS.
A male pair in their fifties, Dana and Greg, are dressed in custom T-shirts that say NATURALLY CLONED IN 1956. Greg points at the wives. “They’re still mixing us up!” He smiles. “Yesterday my wife grabbed my brother’s butt in Wal-Mart!” Greg says that despite his perfect health, when Dana had a heart attack four years ago, Greg went immediately to the doctor. “The doctor said, ‘You look fine, but because of your brother’s heart issues, we’re going to CAT you.’” It turned out that Greg had exactly the same blockage. “I ended up getting four stents!” he marvels.
Dana and Greg drive off to join the parade line.
There are maybe twenty twins under age five in matching T-shirts and black masks on a float meant to evoke the movie The Incredibles. A large sign on the front blares OUR TWINS ARE TWINCREDIBLE!
The pageant proceeds down Main Street, which is lined with spectators along the curb or sitting on porches. Some marchers toss candy to the waving children. Some sing “When the Twins Go Marching In.”
The two-mile route ends at the fairgrounds, which are set up with food booths featuring frozen bananas and chicken teriyaki on a stick. Nearby the science tents advertise their research projects: Genetic Basis of Skin Disease in Twins Pairs; Twins Day Gum Study; Facial Changes in Identical Twins.
I wander over to the crafts tables and start to interview random twins among the displays of bandannas, wind chimes, sandstone coasters, and crocheted hats.
Jessica and Jennifer, from New Orleans, are twenty-three and ebullient about Twinsburg. “It’s INSANE!” Jessica exclaims. “I LOVE it! All the TWINS! It’s just the COOLEST thing. I’m like a big ol’ tourist!”
“I was thinking, I feel less odd now,” says Jennifer, “because there’s so many others like us. You immediately have something in common with someone else. You’re huggin’ someone, and you don’t even know them. You say, ‘Hey I’m a twin! Where you from?’”
I ask them to try to describe their closeness. Jessica says, “I feel like that”—she points at her sister—”is just an extension of me. That’s me over there, experiencing something different. Like astral projection, kind of.”
“She’s my other half, you know,” Jennifer chimes in. “If something happened to her, I don’t know what I’d do. It’s like slicing part of you in half. No one can make me madder; no one can make me happier.”
What about the perennial twins question: Were they competitive? “Oh definitely,” says Jennifer. “I had to be better at it all, man.” She looks at Jessica. “I couldn’t let you beat me.”
They even liked the same boy, and Jessica ended up marrying him. “We were freshmen in high school,” Jessica recalls. “He flirted with a lot of girls.”
“He did,” Jennifer confirms. “He was flirting with me and he was flirting with her and I got mad that he picked her, but I was happy for her. The Lord brought them together.”
Complicating matters, Jennifer had to chaperone her sister and the boyfriend she’d lost on every one of their dates. “The poor thing had to be the third wheel,” Jessica recalls. “Because we were only fifteen when me and him started dating, and my Mom and Dad wouldn’t let us be separated. It was like, ‘No, she’s got to go with you.’”
Every date?
“Pretty much,” Jessica says, a little embarrassed.
“That wasn’t fun,” Jennifer says grimly.
I wonder if it was wrenching for Jennifer to watch her sister end up with her crush. “No, not at all,” she insists. “As soon as he asked her out, I’m like, ‘Okay, y’all were meant to be.’ I was the maid of honor.”
These sisters seem to be lucky enough to have found romantic relationships (Jennifer has a boyfriend) despite their twinship. But for some reason, Twinsburg seems to draw a number of twins—predominantly male—who have never been married.
“I almost married once,” says Sam Zarante, fifty-one, dressed neatly in a button-down shirt. “Marie, my fiancée, didn’t understand my being a twin. She thought my twin brother, Dave, and I were too close.”
“I’d be over, visiting, a lot,” Dave acknowledges.
“So it would be the three of us, not two,” Sam adds. “He’d be competiti
on for her.”
Because she was never going to match their closeness?
“She didn’t understand it,” Dave says.
“I loved her,” Sam states.
“I liked her,” Dave chimes in. “I liked Marie. She was a good one.”
“We did things together, the three of us,” Sam recalls. “But after awhile, it came out: a little resentment. She wanted me to be her number one, you see. And I understand that. But I liked having him around.”
I ask when Sam and Marie broke up. “Oh, it’s been awhile now,” Sam says.
Nineteen eighty-four. That was the last big relationship either twin had. For years, they’ve lived together in an Illinois suburb.
“Now, Abigail,” Dave says, addressing me suddenly. “I have to admit: I’m looking for someone to marry.”
“Maybe you’ll find her here,” I venture.
“Maybe.” Sam laughs a little too hard.
“We came here for the first time years ago,” Dave explains. “And my ma was thinking we’d be meeting some twins, you know!” He has the same laugh.
“Maybe that’s what you need,” I suggest. “Other twins.”
“Maybe they’ll understand.” Dave nods. “As a matter of fact, one year, we got the address of two girls, and they were in North Carolina: Bridget and Ingrid—I still remember their names. And we wrote them and they never wrote back!”
There are no data on whether identical twins are more or less likely to marry, but when it comes to divorce, research shows that identical twins are more alike in their patterns than fraternal twins. A 2001 Boston University survey looked at eight thousand identical and fraternal male twins (all Vietnam veterans) and concluded that genetics play a role in divorce, based on the finding that identical twins mirrored each other more often (that is, if one identical twin got divorced, chances are so did the other).
The survey’s author, psychology professor Michael Lyons, explained that identical twins might make similar relationship choices because they share traits that inform their romantic interactions. For instance, depression, alcoholism, or belligerence (all inheritable) can contribute to conflict in a relationship, which, in turn, can lead to a split.
Sandy Miller has her own theory: “A lot of times being a twin causes divorce because spouses don’t understand the closeness.”
There are clearly many happily married twins at this fiesta, but for some reason, the lonelier ones—the more twin-entwined twins—make a stronger impression. They’re reminders that the idealization of twinship, so common in our culture, can have chinks. The intense intimacy can saddle a twin at the end of the day, because he or she isn’t equipped for single life, because no one else has ever come first, because for so long, having each other felt like enough. Of course it’s possible for twins’ interdependence to morph smoothly into independence, but this was only my first hint of many that the transition is rarely uncomplicated, let alone smooth.
There are exceptions, like the Ganz twins, who make twin fusion seem not only joyous but profitable: They’ve made a business out of their impassioned twoness. Other twins similarly appear utterly grateful and unambivalent about having a built-in best friend. But some others remind me that, to varying degrees, twinship can cost a twin his or her self-sufficiency, and even his or her singularity.
After milling about the fairgrounds for hours in the heat, I feel queasy. It could just be the smell of Italian sausage, the sight of so many Doublemint pairs, or the simple truth that I don’t see myself in a sea of people like me. Maybe I envy their jollity; maybe I’m baffled by it. For whatever reason, I’m aware of a certain claustrophobia, unsure whether to stay for the twins talent show or head for the airport early. I call Robin, out of habit, not explicitly to seek her advice. She gives it to me anyway. “Come home,” she tells me. “Just come home.”
ABIGAIL: Do you remember Becky Greenberg’s Halloween party?
ROBIN: No.
ABIGAIL: Are you kidding? That was a major event for me: She invited you and not me.
ROBIN: Really?
ABIGAIL: You don’t remember feeling sorry for me?
ROBIN: No.
ABIGAIL: I don’t think you went to the party in the end.
ROBIN: Really? I boycotted?
ABIGAIL: I think you did. Thank you for that.
ROBIN: You’re welcome.
• •
GEE WHIZ
In January 2008, a British married couple discovers they are actually fraternal twins who were separated at birth. They are forced to annul their marriage.
In 2006, Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski make history as identical twin leaders of one country: They are president and prime minister, respectively, of Poland. The brothers avoid joint appearances so that people don’t focus primarily on their twinship.
In 1955, studies show that a tracking dog can find one identical twin once he has sniffed the other.
In April 2008, a biracial British couple gives birth to fraternal twins one black, one white, the odds of which, doctors say, are a million to one.
Elvis Presley’s twin, named Jesse, was stillborn. Presley never discussed it in public.
Identical twins Mike and Bob Bryan, age thirty in 2008, are doubles tennis champions known for chest-bumping each other after winning shots. They were NCAA champions at Stanford and have won every Grand Slam tournament at least once.
Identical German twins Oskar and Jack were separated at birth in 1933; Oskar had been raised Catholic in Nazi Europe, Jack as a Jew in the Caribbean. When they were reunited twenty-five years later in 1979, they found they had the same speech patterns and had the same habit of flushing the toilet before using it.
Mothers of twin pandas often reject one infant, which means the favored twin survives.
In May 2005, Minnesota becomes the first state to pass legislation guaranteeing parents the right to say whether their twins should be in separate classrooms or together. Kathy Dolan, a Queens mother whose twins were forcibly separated, leads the charge to make sure other states follow suit.
Identical twin sisters meet identical twin brothers at Twinsburg in 1998, get engaged the same day, marry in a joint ceremony, and one couple gives birth to identical twin boys.
Becky and Birdie Jo Hoaks of Hoopeston, Illinois, who used their identical twinness and their youthful, androgynous appearance to commit crime sprees in small towns, are finally arrested at age thirty-three after sixteen years of swindling.
As of 2009, Massachusetts boasts the highest twin rate in America because it requires its insurance carriers to cover infertility treatments more generously than do other states.
Twins from Erie, Pennsylvania, lose exactly the same amount of weight—160 pounds—after gastric bypass surgery in 2005.
In April 2008, New York twins Kent and Kevin Young perform “telepathy art,” where they solve crossword puzzles onstage by one sending mental clues to the other.
Twin stars Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen become millionaires at age ten.
In June 2008, ten sets of twins are born in one month at a Salt Lake City hospital, four of them within the same twenty-four-hour period. One doctor there compared the hospital to Noah’s ark.
In 2007, identical twins Dan and Walter Christ, eighty-two, celebrate their sixtieth anniversary with their wives, identical twins Betty and Jane, seventy-five. The couples each have one daughter, live in the same house, dress alike, and walk everywhere, since none of them ever learned to drive.
Pop-rock duo Tegan and Sara, identical lesbian twins from Canada who have a cult following and have toured with Neil Young and Rufus Wainwright, say they need to live on different Canadian coasts to stand working so closely with each other.
In 1979, identical twins separated at birth are reunited at age thirty-nine and discover that their adoptive parents each happened to name them James, that they both chose careers in law enforcement, married women named Linda, gave their first sons the same name (one spelled James Alan, the other James Allan), div
orced their wives, married women named Betty, named their dogs Toy, drink the same beer (Miller Lite), smoke the same cigarette brand (Salem), and suffer the same migraines.
In 2002, seventy-year-old twin brothers are killed on their bicycles on the same road in northern Finland, two hours apart.
2 EMBRYO TO END ZONE:
TIKI AND RONDE BARBER
… we came into the world like brother and brother; And now let’s go hand in hand, not one before another.
—The Comedy of Errors, William Shakespeare
Tiki Barber, retired running back for the New York Giants, knows that he wouldn’t be so famous if he wasn’t an identical twin whose brother, Ronde, is a star cornerback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“Without even trying, people will take an extra look,” says Tiki, sitting in his office at NBC News, where he is now a correspondent for the Today show. Dapperly dressed in a striped pink-and-white shirt with cuff links, Barber is syrup-voiced and affable. “No twins have been as successful in professional football as we have. In sports, or any kind of endeavor, part of the reason you do it is for recognition; we got that notice by default, just because there’s two of us.”
I tell him his and Ronde’s looks don’t hurt (they were People magazine’s “Sexiest Athletes” in 2001).
“Yeah,” he says, smiling that brilliant Barber smile. “We take care of ourselves. We got a good education, we don’t get in trouble, and for many years we were both at the peak of our respective careers.”
When I meet Tiki’s brother, Ronde, a month later in Florida, he’s in his twelfth year with Tampa Bay. He saunters up to the family restaurant he’s recommended, dressed casually in jeans, a long-sleeved multicolored T-shirt, and aviator sunglasses. Both brothers are suave, obviously strong, and short for professional athletes—five ten. Both also appear guarded—a remnant, perhaps, of extreme childhood shyness, which they independently describe as paralyzing.
One and the Same Page 3