My Brother Fucked Me Stupid

My Brother Fucked Me Stupid

Everyone here is over the age of 18.

The only thing you need to know about me is that I’m a straight-A student.

I take a large amount of pride in the fact that I get perfect grades. It started all the way back in kindergarten: I famously got A’s in both sharing and snack-time. I even earned an A+ in napping. I was a world-class napper.

For the rest of my life, I kept my perfect record. Elementary school, middle school, high school — nothing but ninety plus. A is for Always, after all.

Of course, by the time I was a junior in college, and had reached the age of twenty, the subjects were a bit more difficult. But I still held myself to the same standard. Top of the class, or bottom of the barrel. There was no in between for me.

Hearing all this, I’m sure you think I’m some stuck-up know-it-all. But the truth is, I know my grades don’t make me special. Anyone could accomplish what I’ve done. They just have to try. Personally, I think the world would be a better place if everyone put in the time to do things as perfectly as possible.

And when I say ‘the world’ here I’m mostly referring to my younger brother, Kevin.

Ordinarily, I didn’t care much about Kevin. Didn’t even think about him, if I’m honest. Even though I was at college, I was still living at home to save money. So, I did run into him on occasion. I’d pass him on the way to the bathroom or see him at mealtimes. But mostly, we followed such dissimilar orbits, we might as well have lived in different galaxies, rather than across the hall from each other.

It was because of that Saturday that I started to think that way. That was the fateful moment when, randomly, my little brother started bothering me. And that’s when the thought occurred to me, that if Kevin could be a little more perfect, my problems would be solved.

I was sitting at my desk in my bedroom studying, naturally. Kevin had opened my door (without knocking, I might add) and immediately started doing his best to be a pest. He was earning himself a different kind of A. As in Annoying.

“Please,” Kevin whined, “No one else can help me.”

My eighteen-year-old brother was wearing an oil-stained t-shirt, a pair of ripped jeans, and a dirty ballcap that kept his usual mop of brown curls out of his dark, chocolate eyes. Kevin was a sweet kid, funny, and my friends told me he was attractive. But he was currently keeping me from my textbooks and the only appropriate punishment for that was death.

Only he wasn’t taking the threat seriously.

“Just help me out for one minute,” Kevin said.

“Go away, Kevin.”

Until that moment, it had been a perfect Saturday. It was pouring rain out, gloomy as all hell, and my parents had gone away for the whole weekend. The ideal scenario for me to shut the door to my room and study till my eyes rolled out of my head. I had a big biology exam the following week and I intended to while away the hours while preparing for it.

“I promise I’ll make it up to you, Jacey,” Kevin said.

Jacey is me. My actual name is Jane-Christine, aka J-C. But everyone’s called me Jacey since I was little. I don’t mind it — it’s certainly much better than Jane-Christine; I honestly don’t know what the hell my parents were thinking.

“Come on,” Kevin continued, “You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t really important.” He danced back and forth in my doorway as he pleaded, like he had to pee.

“Let’s be clear,” I said, running out of patience. “You want me to put down my books and give up my precious study time so I can drive you to the auto parts store. Which you claim will take me all of how long?”

“Five minutes,” Kevin said.

I gave him a dubious look.

“Twenty minutes, tops.”

I held my stare on him. Finally, his eyes raced to the floor.

“OK an hour,” Kevin said, “Probably. But that’s not so bad. Then I can fix my car and leave you alone for the rest of the weekend.”

“We both know it’ll be at least 90 minutes,” I said, “All of which is time that’s being taken away from my studying. If I want to get into Harvard Med, I need to do well in this class. I’m not going to suffer along at some second-rate state school because you need a spark plug or whatever.”

“First of all, we both know you’re acing that exam,” Kevin said, clearly recognizing the best way to butter me up. “But even if you got a big fat F, and you won’t, you’d still be set for life.”

I snorted, but I didn’t say anything. Kevin wasn’t wrong. But it was the principle of the thing that mattered.

“I’m not like you, Jacey,” Kevin said. His face got all pouty: his thick, bow-shaped lips formed a frown, and his usually sparkling eyes went all sad. “My life’s not all set out for me. I need to get a job at a garage, and to do that I have to be able to drive there, and I can’t do any of it if I can’t get my own car fixed.”

“And you need to go to the store to do that,” I said, finishing his monologue.

“Yes!” Kevin said, looking relieved. “It’s like, if you had some piece of research you needed, you wouldn’t let anything get in the way of you hunting it down, right?”

“Kevin! I’m genuinely impressed by this well-reasoned and cogent argument,” I said.

“So, you’ll help?” he asked.

“Certainly not,” I said.

*

“I really appreciate this, Jacey,” Kevin said for about the hundredth time.

We were sitting in my car on the highway, inching forward through horrendous traffic. The storm roared around us like an angry god. We’d been sitting for so long, it felt like the whole day was already burned away. The combination of a busy shopping Saturday morning and the torrential weather had turned the two-lane road into a parking lot. Transformed every second into an agonizing hour.

I’d agreed to drive my brother (of course I agreed), but this was already way outside what I’d been promised. And every time Kevin repeated his thanks, it was worth even less.

As we sat there — staring at the same shopping centers on either side of us and wondering how many different Burger Kings one stretch of road needed — all I could think about was my poor, precious books. Calling out to me in unstudied pain. Kevin may have thought I could get an A just by waking up in the morning, but I knew the truth. It took time. Time that I was currently wasting.

Kevin, meanwhile, seemed perfectly happy to sit in my sedan. He turned up the music and bounced his leg. He was so unapologetically dopey as he sang along. Like, he took pride in just floating through life with no plan.

“You look like a doofus,” I told him, “Dancing around like that.”

Kevin grinned at me. OK, so maybe sometimes I could see the whole ‘handsome’ thing about my brother. If he wasn’t such a slouch.

“Well, you look dumb, um, breathing like that,” Kevin said.

I gave him a disdainful look. Clearly, I looked quite proper. I was wearing a perfectly sensible outfit for my thin frame: a dark green sweater and black jeans that were both totally functional yet complimentary. I had my brown hair held back with a clip so that it never got in the way. My wire-framed glasses were the perfect allegory for my personal philosophy: the bare minimum of fuss that was needed for things to be functional.

Kevin wilted under my glare. “Fine, you actually look really cute,” he said, then glanced away. I knew he was trying to be nice, but it only made me angrier.

Cute. That word haunted me like none other.

No matter how hard I tried, it was hung on me. I’d had boyfriends in high school and college. Not one of them ever called me sexy or hot or beautiful. But cute? I had more of that than I could spend.

And I’m sure you’re saying, what’s wrong with cute? It’s way better than fugly, right? And, sure, I guess. In the same way that a C+ is clearly better than a D. But that doesn’t make it something to aspire to. Cute is for children. Puppies and kittens are cute.

I’ll admit that my body wasn’t doing me any favors. I was only a bit above five feet and I was skinny all over the place. One time, some drunk frat guy had called me a ‘spinner’ and I knew enough to be insulted. But as much as my body wasn’t all that, I didn’t look like some pre-teen either. I had tits (An A-cup, of course!) and my butt stuck out in a way that I thought looked pretty good.

I just wanted to be seen as something more than ‘cute.’ I was clearly a woman and not a girl. But it didn’t stop people from treating me that way. And it made me want to throttle them with my adorable little fingers.

Back in the car, Kevin must have noticed my reaction because he tried again.

“I mean, you’re good looking,” he said, “Sexy. OK not sexy. It’d be weird if my older sister was sexy. You’re hot. Um, attractive. Oh dammit.”

OK, so maybe my brother was better off sticking with cute.

“It’s OK,” I told him, “I get what you’re trying to say. You’re not too ugly either.”

“Gee thanks.”

“Come on, I know you have girls all over you,” I said.

Kevin blushed and looked away. He wasn’t a mimbo or anything. In fact, I’d never seen my brother bring a girl home. But I knew how women saw him because I’d watched my own friends moon over him.

“I just wish you’d take things seriously once in a while,” I said, “I get that college isn’t for you. But there are tons of other options. You can’t spend your whole life laughing. Trust me, eventually you turn into the joke.”

“I know,” Kevin said, “That’s why I’m doing all this. I want to make it happen, Jacey. I really do.”

Eventually, finally, we got to the auto parts store. We raced from the lot and into the building, the rain pouring down like it was trying to drown us. It beat on my umbrella so hard; it sounded like a drum solo. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if I didn’t have it.

The store was warm, and it smelled like oil grease. Kind of weirdly comforting, actually. It took Kevin forever to find what he needed. And the line at the front was worse than Disney World. But we left the store triumphant.

Going home, the traffic was no better. We inched forwards for what felt like hours. I swear every moment that passed in that car felt like flaying a piece of my skin. Death by a thousand seconds. I tried to make myself calm down.