The (Horribly True) Story of my Life

Is it Incest if You're not Related by Blood?

Well. Well, well, well. Here we go. I'm just going to dive right in and say I had no idea what was going on when this happened, I was barely eleven years old at the time. My aunt—well, I call her my aunt but she's actually my step dad's sister, so there's no relation—has a son the same age as me. When we were younger him, my stepbrother and I all used to play together. Our parents thought nothing of it . . . That is, until this fateful day.

I was about eleven, so my stepbrother would have been about eight. We were upstairs at my aunt's house playing truth or dare in my cousin's room. How do kids that age know such adult things? I'm not sure, but we did. Here's an example of one of the dares: hump this inflatable giraffe floaty.

Yeaaahhh . . . Not my shining moment. And, okay, that wasn't my idea, I was dared to by my cousin. Why was I so scared to say no? I could have easily told him to kindly go fuck himself, although I would have used other words. It would have been more along the lines of, "Screw you, what the heck kind of dare is that? I'm not doing it." Anyways, I could have and I should have. But I didn't.

Needless to say, things got quickly out of hand. What did my cousin do for our next dare? "Kirsten, I dare you to kiss me." So I guess technically that was my first kiss, although if you ask me I would never admit it. I mean, what the fuck? Who dares their cousin to kiss them? I'd like to say that I hesitated, but I honestly don't remember. All I know is that my stepbrother witnessed it.

We stopped playing truth or dare after that and started to play house. Yes, I still played house at that age! Tell me you didn't, you're lying to yourself. I don't know where my stepbrother went, but I guess he went back downstairs and it was just me and my cousin. I was invested in this game of house, so much so that when we were pretending to sleep, my cousin said I should wear my shirt like a bra. You know, taking the hem and pulling it through the neck hole? Yeah, like that. We were playing, I thought. He was my cousin, I didn't think anything of it. Also, I was eleven. So was he, but I guess I was a lot more innocent than he was.

Anyways, his mom, my aunt, walked into the room while we were laying in bed whispering to each other, my shirt still tucked up exposing my stomach and . . . Well. Let's just say there was a lot of yelling.

It turned out that my stepbrother had ratted us out for playing truth or dare and my aunt was coming to check on us. What she saw was enough to let her know that I couldn't be left alone with my cousin and stepbrother again.

When we got back to my mom's house, she and my stepdad wouldn't let my stepbrother and me play with the doors closed anymore. Listen, the reason we closed the doors was to keep our little sister away. She was three, and a nuisance when we had all of our littlest pet shops (I can hear your judgement so stop it) spread across the floor. They ruined that for us because they didn't trust us.

I want to state that I never liked neither my stepbrother or my cousin like that, so the fact that I had to suffer as a result of some creepy little incest fantasy of my cousin's was totally unfair to me. Eventually, my mom forgot about it . . . At least I hope she forgot about it. I don't want to bring it up in case she starts teasing me about it. I know my older brother would, so I'm not going to take any chances.

There's more, though. A little while later was my step dad's family reunion. We always go to them, there's one in the summer and one at Christmas time. This one was in the summer. All the kids were playing at a park beside the venue, and none other than my cousin was stalking more of his prey.

Another one of our little cousins was there and she (I don't know how because they were actually related by blood) fell for my cousin's creepiness. He was chasing her around and trying to get her to kiss him . . . And then he saw me, and he tried to do it with me too. Except, I had fallen for it before and took the fall and blame already. I wasn't about to get into that mess again.

I told the girl not to do anything with him because it was gross and wrong, and because I was older she listened to me. Thank God! I don't think he's done it since, but I think he also stopped coming to the reunions. I don't even know if he remembers, or if my stepbrother remembers. But that's not important, I think I just needed to say it out loud. Or, write it down for other people to read.

It's real, it's true. I didn't make any of this up. This is the (horribly true) story of my life, and I'm not proud of it, at least not this part of it, but it happened. What's the sense in keeping that bottled up?