Philadelphia, Texas

I don't believe that there is an actual town of Philadelphia in the State of Texas, if I am wrong, and there is, this story did not happen there. It is a work of fiction.

All fictional persons engaging in (or even thinking about engaging in) sexual activity are 18 years of age or older.

*****

I don't do alcohol. I don't do drugs. I don't have to. I do pain. My God in his limitless love gave me a gift more potent than the product of all the poppy fields of Asia. My body creates its own 'happy juice', a magical elixir, from pain. I ran cross country in high school. All the girls on the team, or at least all the serious ones were into pain. We slapped each other with wet towels. Breasts, butts, crotch shots were all fair game. We slapped each other, punched each other to make us tough.

Philadelphia, that's a hoot, it means city of brotherly love. But this was a town that was dying. I lost my whole, what was supposed to be freshman year of high school, to a teacher's strike, everybody lost a year. The town lost a quarter of its population, property values plunged. They are going to shut our school down if they can find someone stupid enough to merge districts.

None of us here in this locker room are going anywhere. Grown ups acting like little kids took that away. The state athletic association moved us up a class because everyone is a year older here than in Abernathy, Heckville or Becton, schools we used to compete against. We are running against schools in Lubbock with ten times our enrollment. Tech doesn't seem very interested in 19 year old runners who frequently lose to 18 year olds.

So the senior girls team is just for fun. A bunch of eighteen and nineteen year old jockettes who should be ditching college classes. But instead are bored stiff going to mandatory overcrowded high school classes. Taught by unqualified and often uncertified 'substitute' or 'temporary' teachers. In a district without money to hire anybody, buy anything or even fix what they have. Well, we have a pretty twisted idea of what fun is.

We had a crotch kicking contest once to see who was toughest. One sleepover at Donna's house we played a variation of spin the bottle. The 'winner' had to take her panties off and masturbate herself with the lubricated bottle in front of the rest of us. I lost my hymen to that bottle. Four of us were inseparable, 'the Gang of Four', hey it was the seventies after all. We got matching Chinese character tattoos and had our nipples pierced at a shop down in Lubbock.

I ran at a meet two hours after getting my nipples done. And won, against a HUGE school. I love pain. Pain loves me back. We passed around books made of 'unobtainium' like 'The Story of O' and 'The Happy Hooker'. I played with my nipple rings when I masturbated and dreamed of someone worthy of my devotion piercing my labia and putting a ring in it. Sometimes a pretty one with diamonds like Sammy Davis Jr. gave Marilyn, or one like 'O' received with her Master's name on it.

Sally Fullbright, our coach, she was a mean old lesbian, if you believed all the stories. Of course Philadelphia was a typical small town where everybody knew everybody else's business, while simultaneously not knowing their ass from a hole in the ground. She taught us to seek out pain. To control it, to embrace it, to revel in it. We had some damned weird talks in the locker room over the years. About childbirth and how we needed to be strong to bear the pain of an entire fully formed human being popping out our vaginas. Tearing us up as they emerged. Like I said, she was really, really weird. But as long as she just told bizarre stories and never touched she was alright. At least she cared about us. And, in spite of the many stories I never knew anyone who had first hand knowledge of anything that was said.

We learned to let our pain make us happy and invincible. "Oh yes, I am wise, but its a wisdom born of pain. Yes, I've paid the price, but look how much I've gained." I must have heard that song a million times in Sally's classes. I took every course offering that Coach taught before I walked for graduation. Two reasons for that. She was easy on her athletes and it made those annoying little boys think that I was a lesbian. So they quit asking me to let them grope me, or give them a hand or blow job.

When I say walked for graduation, I did, right off the gangplank and into the abyss. I set the school records for the 330, 660 and mile. But that was not fast enough to get an athletic scholarship anywhere. For most of us there was nothing after high school. Mom and Dad owned a working farm. We were what they called land-poor. We had land, but with our income it was a constant struggle to pay the taxes, the household bills, upkeep on the property and such while still maintaining a standard of living.

The farm was a study in chic entropy. The orchard's trees were past their prime and should have been replaced. The berry patch was out of control. Fence posts were rotten and the wire rusting apart. Getting the tractor going was an experience to behold. The roof on the little cabin by the lake was leaking, badly, rendering the structure uninhabitable. The barn walls were held in place by poles and cable stays.

To keep it going, and we had to keep it going, with the implosion of the Philadelphia School District, and its debt, and the pending settlements, you couldn't give property here away cheap enough. So, to keep it going Mom and Dad worked off the farm at times. First Mom worked in town while Dad ran the farm. The money sucked. Then Dad drove a truck while Mom and Christopher and Robert, my older and younger brother, worked the farm. Then as an eighteenth birthday present to Robbie, Mom and Dad took a job together in the oilfields down by Odessa, staying with dad's brother, uncle Mike.

Now Chris and Robbie and I run the farm. Or more accurately Chris and Robbie run the farm and I run the house during the week, with Mom and Dad driving home early Saturday morning and back to Odessa Sunday night. Adversity made us stick together. Chris worked very hard trying to keep everything together without our parents being there. His body would be sore from the physical labor he performed. I would try to work his muscles, try my hand, my hands, at being a masseuse.

I had gone out with a boy or two, and I knew they came with penises, standard equipment. I knew that all penises liked attention. I saw Chris working so hard to keep us going. No time to go out, no time to have fun. Now that I had graduated, and was almost twenty, ok, it is six months away. I felt, guilty, I guess. I watched Chris do all the hard work so that Robbie could do school stuff, go out with friends and the like. It suddenly dawned on me that while I was out having fun with the girls senior year, Chris was the one picking up my slack as well.

Chris was always so nice to me. Telling me that I was smart and that I was pretty. Telling me that I was too good for (fill in the blank). So one day I decided to take the preacher's words to heart. To put them into action. "For as we have many members in one body, And all the members do not have the same function." Mom and Dad, they owned the place, were keeping so that one day it would be ours. Living away from us and it to earn money, well for us. Christopher worked the farm, pretty much kept it going himself. I cooked, did laundry and a half-assed job of cleaning up. Robbie was going to school and helping Chris with the farmwork. But I knew I could do more, Specifically I could be the one keeping Chris going.

Joey Wilson, whose father ran the Coop, suggested I blow him as a incentive. Of course I didn't. Why on earth should I. He did not care about me or Chris or Robbie. He was just using his dad's job and marginal influence to get his rocks off. He lived in his dad's house, drove his dad's car, spent his dad's money. What a fucking loser. In fact worse than a loser. The loser generally showed up and competed. Joey did not exist at all.

Christopher truly cared about, and for, Robert and I. Two days after that loser Joey asked me for a BJ, I was rubbing Chris' shoulders as I had so many times before. I suggested that he take a warm shower to help get the knot out. I helped him take off his shirt. I unbuckled his belt. He said he could do it. But I said I should do it, because I did not want him to move his hurt shoulder in order to get into the warm water.

We, my bothers and I, have never been particularly modest around each other. Being into sports I did not mind having people see me naked, or nearly so. Some of the best times in my life were in locker rooms. When we were younger we took our baths together. Growing up sharing a bathroom we often walked in on each other. "Nothing to see, just move along folks." When we swam at the lake by the cabin, we usually skinny dipped to preserve our dry clothes.

So when I stripped to my bra and panties and got into the shower with my naked brother, it wasn't odd. When I sprayed Chris with water and lathered him up, his chest, his neck, his arms, his back, reminding him not to move his shoulder, it wasn't weird. I was just caring for him, keeping him from moving his arm. Then I stepped from the water. I took off my bra and panties and returned to the shower with a hand full of hand cream, and started to very gently massage his penis.

Well, I had just crossed the Rubicon. He was so startled that he actually jumped, I grabbed him to keep him from falling. This had been a bad idea. No, not the massaging my brothers penis idea. He deserved it. The doing it in a shower where he could have fallen part, that was a bad idea. As I held him very tightly, I slowly released one hand and pushed his head down and onto my shoulder. I asked him to close his eyes. I asked him to imagine the perfect woman. His dream girl, to imagine it was her hand on his penis, making it hard. And it was getting hard as I touched it again.

He moaned softly and said "My dream girl is playing with my penis."

"Yes just keep your eyes closed, your dream girl is making you hard."

"Ohhhh, she is."

And then, while my hands held his back and his penis. He moved his hands to the sides of my head and turned it slowly just a bit and gently tilted it up. Chris' eyes were wide. And he stared into, no through my eyes. Into my very soul, and said, "Yes, yes she is". Still holding my head, he kissed me deeply. With more intensity than I had ever been kissed before.

He held me tightly as I masturbated him. He came, and he dropped his hands to my back. I gently washed the cream from his member. Thinking to myself I know the purpose of this member. He kissed my neck, my shoulder bones, my breasts. He flicked his tongue across the little barbell studs in my nipples. Pushing the jewelry side to side and sending electrical pulses down my spine. I moaned, then, oh my, I came, just from the nipple stimulation and his hands fondling my ass.

He held his hands in mine as he kissed my belly and my hips before releasing my hands and returning to my ass. I dropped to my knees and took his gorgeous penis into my mouth and made him hard again. I probably was not very good that first time. But Christopher said I was perfect. Our shower came to an abrupt cold water ending, and we toweled each other off. We looked at each other. He began to speak. I placed one finger vertically on his lips as I said to him, "I want to be yours, forever". Then I replaced my finger with my lips and I kissed him.

Now I have a new job. I must teach Chris how to manage pain. He would be sore from working the farm. Robert too. They needed to integrate that experience with pain, to accept it and to enjoy its benefits. I will teach them what I know. Edge them. Make their sister their reward. I will devote myself to my men. Women are stronger in terms of endurance than men. As Coach Fullbright would say, we have to be. As the preacher would say we all have different functions. Having two studs is heavenly. Both Chris and Robbie love me, and they love each other, how could one possibly deny the other the pleasure I will bring them.

So, maybe Philadelphia really is a town of brotherly love.

Except,

We live outside the corporate limits.

Lisa Ann