The Legend of the Ditto Twins (3 page)

"'Bout time." Clark cuddled
up beside me on the couch, and before long he'd put his head in my lap.

An hour later, in our room upstairs,
I fumbled in my backpack for the red Bic lighter I had recently acquired for
just such a night as this. Clark opened the windows on either side of our bed.
We slipped off our T-shirts and jeans, then peeled out of our briefs.

"I hate underwear," he
announced.

"Then don't wear it
anymore."

"Okay."

And that was that.

I climbed onto the bed, a Marlboro in
one hand, the lighter in the other, as Clark joined me. Both on our knees, we
faced each other. I lit the cigarette, blew a puff of smoke in the general
direction of a window, and passed the cigarette to my brother, who followed my
lead.

"Huh," he murmured. "I
thought I'd cough."

"Well, we didn't inhale."

"When did you learn to
inhale?"

"I haven't yet," I said.
"I was waiting for you."

"Do you know how?"

"Well, I've been watching guys
smoke, and I think I've figured out how to do it. See, first you suck in a
mouthful of smoke, and then you open your lips and take a deep breath, and the
smoke goes down into your lungs. I think that's it. You wanna try it?"

"You gonna?"

"Sure," I said.

"Well, then, so am I."

I followed the ritual I'd just
described and felt the raw, acrid smoke plunge down into my lungs, but somehow
I managed not to cough. Pleased with my own adult response, I exhaled
cautiously. Okay, I felt a little lightheaded, but I was pretty sure I'd done
it right. Already I was beginning to feel like a real Marlboro Man. Very
mature. Very masculine.

I took another drag, inhaled, and
passed the cigarette to my brother.

"Now don't take too much at
first," I warned him as I watched my words float out on a stream of smoke.

He nodded and brought the cigarette
to his lips.

"You're gonna feel a little bit
dizzy, but that's okay. It's kind of an interesting feeling. Trust me."

"Okay." Clark duplicated my
demonstration, but hard as he tried not to, he did cough.

I touched his shoulder. "Not
bad. You only coughed a little. Try again—you'll get the hang of it."

Clark nodded and obeyed. This time he
didn't cough. With a big grin, he exhaled, smug as all hell, took another drag,
inhaled, and handed the cigarette back to me.

"That was nice." He slid
back against the headboard. "Kind of cool. Being dizzy, I mean."

For the next few minutes, we passed
the cigarette back and forth until the burning ember reached the filter. I took
one last drag and started across the room to flush the butt down the toilet,
but I guess I was dizzier than I thought, and I grabbed for the chair at our
desk to steady myself.

Instantly, Clark was off the bed and
wobbling toward me, his face pale with concern, but he was a little woozy, too,
and we fell into each other's arms giggling.

"
Shhh
,"
I whispered, hugging him. "I'm okay. You?"

Clark nodded, steadied himself, and
followed me into our bathroom where the telltale evidence was promptly disposed
of with a flick of the toilet handle.

"You still dizzy?" I asked
as we tottered back to bed.

"Not too much." Clark
flopped down. "We're quick learners, huh?"

I looked down at my shirt on the
floor where I'd flung it. The pocket with the other Marlboro was in full view.

"Want to smoke the other
one?" I asked.

Clark considered the matter awhile
before speaking. "Uh... Let's save it for tomorrow night."

"That makes sense. Make things last. Right?"

"Right."

We crawled under the covers and into each other's arms,
automatically wrapping our legs around one another, crotch to crotch, and dozed
off. Just before I fell asleep, I vaguely remember thinking that this was the
first time we'd ever forgotten to say our prayers. And another thing: in all
the excitement of buying our first cigarettes, we'd also forgotten to find out
what "jerking off" was.

The thing
we hated most about Junior High school was gym class. There were lots of
reasons. First of all, it seemed as if we didn't do anything but calisthenics
and limbering up exercises
—Coach Riley's prescribed regimen for
physical education. We hated it.

At the
end of each class, everyone was ordered to take five laps around the cinder
track that encircled the playing field, and one day, Clark somehow had gotten a
bit ahead of me. I watched him jogging along, his blond hair streaked with
sweat, his long legs barely touching the ground, his firm little behind
bouncing in his navy blue running shorts
—and for a moment I
wondered if I looked as good as he did. The thought only lasted for a
nanosecond, for I knew that I did—we look so much alike that no one could tell
us apart except Mom and Dad. In a flash, I realized that I must therefore be
equally attractive, and I surged forward to keep pace
with
him. We finished the last lap in a dead heat and headed for the locker room in
perfect lockstep.

Another
thing we hated about gym class was showering. All that horsing around really
bugged me. Plus, all the guys kept calling each other "faggot" every
two minutes. (I made a mental note to ask The Go-To Guy precisely what that
word meant, too. All I knew for sure was that faggots were something dangerous
and therefore... well, fascinating.)

For some
reason or other, my brother and I always stayed on opposite sides of the room
under separate shower heads and avoided
looking
at
each other.
I wanted to
be
beside
him under the jet of hot water that
was cascading down his slim, smooth body, but it didn't seem like a good idea,
so
I
always
stayed
where
I
was.
I
don
't
know why.

The water
was hot;
I
was
cold. It was weird.

In short,
P.E.
was not
much fun,
and as we left class the day after our first Marlboros, my thoughts shifted to
how much I wanted to run home, get out of my clothes, and smoke that cigarette
we had hidden underneath the mattress of our bed. I hated trying to be a jock.

"Me, too," said Clark.
"All that running around in circles, getting nowhere. My legs ache and my
balls itch."

"Tell me about it. I hate
wearing a jockstrap," I admitted. "It just hangs on me like it was
two sizes too big."

"Relax." Clark gently
bumped my shoulder with his. "We're late bloomers... We haven't hit
puberty yet. Remember what Dad said—things start changing when you're thirteen.
So that could be any day now." Sometimes Clark got to the heart of the
matter so quickly. "Before you know it, we're gonna start to grow and fill
out our jocks like nobody's business. Dad promised."

"Yeah," I sighed. "But
when? What about now? I don't like taking showers with all those retards
staring at us and snickering 'cause we don't have any hair down there around
our Little Fellas. Doesn't it piss you off, too?"

"Hell yes." Clark shifted
his backpack from one shoulder to the other. "And while we're at it—I
might as well tell you: I don't like watching you soap yourself up. That's my
job."

"Yeah, I think about that,
too." I stopped. "Maybe we could get a doctor's excuse to get out of
gym class. Or better yet, why don't you write one for us—you have beautiful
handwriting. And we could print out a fake letterhead on the computer over at
the library."

"Okay," he said.

We never went to gym class again.

After dinner that night, we started
to clear the table.

"I'll do that," Mom
offered. "You go take your baths."

My father looked up from his coffee.
"Baths are for women and kids. A man should take showers. Maybe I could
rig one up down in the basement."

"If you want to," I said.
Even though I knew the tub seemed to be getting more and more crowded lately, I
guess it really bothered me to think we were outgrowing Bath Time.

"Yes, down in the
basement," my father was saying. "Across from the washer and dryer.
There's a drain right there, and I could probably do the plumbing myself."

Neither of us answered him. Clearly,
we were thinking the same thing, but nothing more was said until we were on the
way upstairs to our room.

"I'm gonna miss Bath Time,"
Clark whispered.

"Me, too," I said.
"But you never know. Maybe Shower
Time'll
be
even more fun."

In our room, Clark quickly opened the
windows as I retrieved the leftover Marlboro and red lighter from under the
mattress. Without a word, we stripped down and were both naked before Clark
came to an abrupt halt.

I looked at him. "What?"

"Should we stuff a towel under
the door?"

"I don't want to wait till they
go to bed."

"Okay. Then the towel." He
headed into our bathroom. "Besides they never come up here after dinner.
Relax." He returned, fixed the towel, put a strip of Scotch tape over the
keyhole, stepping back to admire his handiwork, and climbed onto the bed.
"It's too bad we've only got one cigarette."

"Yeah," I agreed. "I
could get used to this."

"Me too. But, Mark, we can't
just run down to Walgreens every week or two and buy a pack. First, there's the
question of money. Second, Mr. Johnson probably wouldn't even sell ‘em to
us." He sighed and collapsed on his stomach. "There must be a way to
make one cigarette last."

I threw myself face down on the bed
beside him and groaned. "Tomorrow, we've got to find what's-his-name, The
Go-To Guy, and get him to show us how to swipe cigarettes."

"Okay. But that doesn't solve
the problem of tonight. Shit."

"Double shit." Then I began
to laugh. "We sound like a couple of junkies."

"Maybe we should stop
smoking."

"Clark, we've just
started."

We lay there in silence for several
minutes, our shoulders touching, before my brother broke the impasse.

"Junkies," he whispered, as
if it were a password.

I sat up. "That movie we
saw..."

He sat up. “...where all those stoned
out hippies were sitting around in
a
circle..."