Introduction
"The next day, Gary, Fred, and I went for a walk down by the narrow stream that ran about two city blocks from their house. Ever since I could remember, their folks had admonished us against playing near the river ('Any nut might be hanging around there!'), and ever since I could remember, we'd always gone down to the river to play . . . returning home hours later, invariably wet, or carrying dead pollywogs in our pockets, denying vehemently that we'd been anywhere near the river.
"Since awakening that morning, I'd felt an especial closeness between Gary and me. Our 'secret' seemed vitally important, a blood-and-guts bond between us which no one-no one!-would ever know or share. It was Gary and me, all the way, against the world, forever more. Even if the lions were to attack me, the Nazis were threatening to torture me, or the Nam wanted to brainwash me. . . Gary would come to my aid, Gary would save me. We had a secret. Gary would die for me, and I for him. Children lead such simple lives when you think about it-there's either total commitment, or total disinterest. No halfway, no gray, no maybes or we'll see. It's either Gung Ho! or Drop dead. But my loyalty and devotion bubble was soon to burst. When we had reached the river bank, stretched out on the littered sand and dirt, Fred poked Gary in the ribs and they both snickered.
" 'Hear you two had a little party last night,' Fred said, leering at me and winking at Gary.
"Needless to say, my world of chivalry collapsed instantly. I'd been betrayed. Gary had broken our pledge of secrecy. And I began to cry. Yes. Cry. That's how crushed I was. I'd been deceived, led on . . . made a fool of. And for that moment, I hated Gary so violently I could have killed him. But Fred was smart, or perhaps just the factor of his being sixteen to my thirteen was enough. He began to placate me, telling me how he'd always wanted to see my titties too but had never thought I'd let him, how he could come better than Gary because he was older, and how he knew even better tricks. He cajoled and soothed until I'd stopped crying, but I was far from over my hurt. Then Fred began asking me questions: did I have my menstrual period yet, when was my last one, did I ever feel a funny kind of tingling down between my legs, had I ever stuck anything up there, and sundry other questions which, at that age, meant little to me. Yes, a week ago, oh yes, oh no . . . I nodded or answered but saw no connection, no continuity to his line of interrogation. I'd never heard of the Rhythm Method, so I took Fred's questioning in the same way as I would have taken Gary's before he'd betrayed me. Boys were curious about girls, and vice versa. And then Fred sprang the big one on me.
" 'Want to see my pecker, Iris? It's a lot bigger than Gary's. And I can do something that Gary hasn't found out about yet. Want me to make you feel real good all over, take care of that funny feeling down there in your cunt? I can do that, y'know. I can make you come too, just like Gary and me can come . . . 'cept that girls don't shoot all over the place. Want to find out how it feels? And this'll be our secret, then. Just the three of us. Swear to never tell anyone, Iris, you've got to swear to that!'
"By then, of course, I was burning from curiosity and my twat was twitching maddeningly. Yes, yes, a secret! We'd be the three musketeers then, the three of us with a common bond . . . yes! That would be even better-wouldn't it?-than just Gary and I sharing a secret that had very little meaning. Fred knew how to make me come too, how to get rid of that itch in my cunt. Oh, that had to be infinitely better than the childish secret which Gary and I had shared for so little time. I nodded and swore-solemnly. Had it been up to me, we'd have cut ourselves and let our blood mix, but I didn't have the nerve to suggest it to Fred. Gary might have done it, but Fred would probably have laughed.
" 'Okay then, Iris, let me see your titties,' Fred commanded and as I began to remove my blouse, he unzipped his fly and pulled out his penis. I marveled at its size! It was at least three times the size of Gary's, and it was still limp. What would it be like when it got hard? Thinking about it, and watching Fred toy with it in his hand, letting his other hand run across my breasts, the familiar aching feeling returned to my snatch; a lonely, hungry feeling of being incomplete and needing something-but what? Fred said he knew. And I wanted to know desperately.
"As Fred played with my tits, teasing my nipples, he told Gary to help me out of my jeans and pull down my panties. Gary readily complied, his face a mask of rapt fascination, his eyes glazed watching Fred's hand on my titties in the daylight.
" 'Here, Iris, feel my cock. Play with it and I'll play with your pussy and make it feel real good.'
"I took hold of his member and weighed it in my small hand. In the light of day, I could see the tiny ridges all over the length of it, like little raised canals, or the veins on the backs of old people's hands. Bluish, some of them beet red, but all of them pulsing toward the large smooth knob at the other end of his shaft. The knob was almost like sponge rubber, soft yet hard, yielding yet resiliency firm. I figured out for myself that the tiny hole at the tip was where they shot their come, but it hadn't occurred to me that it was the same hole they peed through. Nor would I have cared at that moment. Fred was touching me down between my legs in a way that Gary had not; Fred was sending chills up my spine the way he touched me, played with me. Using just his fingers (unlike Gary who had grabbed me down there like a greased bowling ball) to tease my flesh. He seemed to be running just two fingers up and down the length of my cunt, pretending to be like a snake and writhing all over me down there, spreading wide the lips of my vagina and putting his forefinger only up against that part of my cunt and rubbing lightly, driving me frantic and not knowing why. I felt as if I had to pee, yet knew that I didn't have to; but the sensation was similar.
"Fred told me to stretch out and relax, to just lie there and enjoy the feeling, and to keep playing with his ever-growing cock. Gary had squatted down next to us to get the maximum view, and had already taken out his whang and was playing with it. After a few moments of just closing my eyes and giving in to the feeling of Fred's fingers on my aching snatch, I felt his fingers growing slippery and wet. I wondered about it, but I would never have broken our magic moment by asking. Then Fred began to just sort of slide around down there, and he began to pinch lightly at one spot of my cunt, up on top, and my pelvis jerked uncontrollably each time he did it.
" 'That's your clit, Iris, that's where you have the most feeling down there. Look here Gary, get a good look at it 'cause if you want to get a girl hot in a hurry, just play with that clit for awhile. She'll beg you to let her slip your dong up inside of her if you play with her clit long enough. Really turns 'em on!'
" 'Is that where you stick it?' Gary asked in an awed voice.
" 'Hell no!' Fred answered. "There's no hole there. That's just to make 'em hot, just to give them a hard on like we get. Here, feel it. See how hard it's getting? Just like a baby penis.'
"I felt Gary's hand upon my clitoris, his touch rougher than Fred's. But nonetheless my body responded and I couldn't help bucking at this incredible sensation, a feeling of boiling oil surging through my body.
" 'She's sure all slimy down there,' Gary said softly, as if I were a dying patient and he the doctor in conference with my surgeon. 'It wasn't like that last night.'
" 'Dummy, did you play with her? Did you get her all hot down there? What do you know anyway,' Fred summarized curtly and then I felt him changing positions, taking his huge cock out of my hand. I glanced down and saw how he was placing himself between my legs, stretching out his body so that his prick was poking at my cunt impatiently. 'I'm going to take care of that itch for you, Iris, and you'll know how good it can be to get fucked. I've got a man's cock and I know how to fuck girls real good. You'll like this, Iris, you really will.'
"With that, Fred lowered his head and began to kiss my nipples, his cock pushing at my snatch and driving me almost insane. My body just wouldn't hold still. I pushed my titties hard against his face, feeling his tongue on first one and then the other, and his burning rod pressing and poking at my snatch. I couldn't stand it, it was so intense a feeling. Instinctively, I raised my legs up and locked my ankles across Fred's waist. This brought his throbbing cock into a position where I could rub my entire cunt up and down on it, feeling my clit riding along it, and then I felt the head of his prick captured down toward my ass, felt the heat of it burning against my hole.
" 'That's it, Iris, that's it, baby! Fred's going to fuck Cousin Iris real nice, fuck her real good. Put it inside of you, Iris, take Fred's whang and stick it up inside of you-that's the way to get rid of that itch of yours!'
"I almost didn't have to be told. I'd already reached down to capture his cock in my hand and tried to push it up inside of my hole. All in all, Fred was being very gentle-but of course, I had no basis of comparison then. I felt the head of it penetrate my vaginal canal, spreading me open deliriously until I felt it hit something like a wall, and that hurt.
" 'That's just your hymen, Iris,' Fred reassured me, his breath coming fast and rasping, his face blanketed in sweat. 'We've got to push my big cock past your hymen, and that'll hurt for just a few seconds. You might even bleed a little, but no more so than you do with your period. And after that, Iris, after that you'll be in heaven. Are you ready?'
"I remember whimpering and nodding at the same time. I wasn't worried about a little pain . . . all I knew was that his stiff prick inside of me felt like something out of this world, that I wanted it all the way inside of me, filling me up to compensate for that hollow feeling I'd known for so many months, that feeling of being incomplete. If I'd only known about sticking something up inside of me before . . . oh my God! how delicious it was! Even with Gary's heavy breathing almost in my ear, knowing that he was jacking himself off, I was experiencing the most exquisite sensations ever imagined. And then Fred lurched into me. One quick, piercing lurch. I began to scream but Fred quickly covered my mouth with his, sticking his tongue into my mouth, kissing me until I quieted down. He didn't move his cock once he'd broken my hymen. He'd pushed it all the way up inside of me, and he'd left it there, letting me adjust to the size of it, to the feeling of a throbbing prick inside my burning hole. As he kissed me, his hands playing with my titties, I began to enjoy the feeling of his big dong up inside of me, the feeling of the head of it resting snugly almost into my belly, and I began to move my hips slowly, began to rotate them to feel his cock better. I had so little hair on my snatch that Fred's pubic hairs were tickling me and making me hotter, his bulging balls slapping against my asshole gently. And I could feel my clit as it rested against the base of his big shaft. I felt as if every inch of me were vibrating and afire; even the soles of my feet were burning. I'd never dreamed that anything could ever feel so good!
"And then Fred began to withdraw slowly. I whimpered again, but this time for a different reason. I wanted him back up inside of me, snug and captured, giving me that exquisite feeling of fullness and completeness. I didn't want him to pull out of me. I began to worry that he'd come already. Somehow in my ignorance, I wondered if a boy came by breaking a girl's hymen, and that this was something that one did over and over again . . . but then, I remembered that Gary had come without even going inside of me. So then I worried that I'd only come if I got my hymen broken. But then Fred began to ride me. Long, lingering, slow strokes as he filled my cunt with his cock, then slowly withdrew. And I recalled that when Gary had come, his thing had gone all limp again. So, obviously, Fred had not come. He was still in there, hard and strong as a steel rod! I heard Gary's mumbled 'Oh wow!' over and over as Fred rode up inside of me, back and forth, in and out, over and over again, turning my insides into liquid fire, making me squirm with pleasure and wanting more and more of his cock. I humped at Fred, my hands grabbing at his back, my nails raking into his flesh, wanting to shove him all the way up into me, feeling my hot sticky snatch clutching at his cock as it rode in and out. It became more and more difficult to breathe, and the feeling in my hole was driving me insane. My body writhed and twisted under Fred's, his mouth alternately kissing my hard little nipples and sucking on my tongue. And then, as if Fred knew what I was going through, he began to fuck me faster . . . and faster . . . harder, and harder. In and out, in and out, pistoning, pushing, pumping, humping, our bodies met and fought in a battle to culminate in supremacy, ecstasy . . . two animals threatening to devour one another with fulfillment. And then . . . and then-I can still remember it-the bursting, the lightheadedness, the screaming pulsating pushing throbbing blissful explosion of my first orgasm!
"We both fell into a limp heap, panting for air, and I was aware of Fred's prick shriveling up inside of me; slipping, slipping from within me. With an almost audible sigh, I felt it fall from my hole, that hot hole still pulsing with its recent release. I didn't know what to say, or even if anything was supposed to have been said. I felt tears running down my cheeks, but I didn't know why. I wasn't really crying, why were there tears? I felt too good to be crying, too grateful. Yet the tears ran freely down my face and onto the earth beneath me.
" 'You sure that was your first time?' Fred asked, rolling off from me and zipping himself up again. He noticed the blood on his cock, nodded to himself, and then, grinning at me, he patted my belly. 'Well, you're a damned good lay, Iris, I'll tell you that. You're going to make a very good wife someday!' Then he stretched, glanced over at the drooping Gary, and exclaimed, 'Come on, let's go get something to eat . . . I'm hungry as all hell.'
"And that was that. That was my introduction. Most girls look forward to their first kiss, then to maybe letting their steady feel their breasts-but I'd had the whole ball of wax in one brief afternoon on the edge of a dirty river . . . with my cousin."
There are only sixteen states in the Union that do not have laws against marriage between first cousins. In all other states, the laws against incest include cousins, and the penalties for incestuous coitus range from one year's imprisonment to a maximum of fifty years.
In other words, if such august personalities as Queen Victoria and her consort, Prince Albert, had lived in our country, they would have been picked up after their wedding as felons. Albert and Victoria, needless to say, were first cousins.
Incest is the crime of sexual intercourse between two people who are either related by blood or by marriage within the degrees dictated by society in which marriage between these two people is prohibited.
The Mosaic Law from which we derive our abhorrence for incest was very specific concerning the degrees of relationship within which all sexual relations were forbidden. These degrees are, to a certain extent, incorporated in most of the felony statutes of our fifty states.
In Leviticus 18:6-18 we can read:
None of you shall approach any one near of kin to him to uncover nakedness. I am Yah-weh. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother; she is your mother, you shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife; it is your father's nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister, the daughter of your father or the daughter of your mother, whether born at home or born abroad. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your son's daughter or of your daughter's daughter, for their nakedness is your own nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife's daughter, begotten by your father, since she is your sister. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's sister; she is your father's near kinswoman. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's brother, that is, you shall not approach his wife; she is your aunt. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your daughter-in-law; she is your son's wife, you shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother's wife; she is your brother's nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of a woman and of her daughter, and you shall not take her son's daughter or her daughter's daughter to uncover her nakedness; they are your near kinswoman; it is wickedness. And you shall not take a woman as a rival wife to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is yet alive.
The Biblical penalties varied according to the closeness of the incest. It was either burning to death or being stoned to death or being banished into the desert without any means of support. When viewed in that light, today's laws against incest are positively mild. In addition to the penalties of imprisonment, the incestuous marriages are regarded as void and the offspring as illegitimate.
However, if viewed against the standards of many other crimes and their punishments, the laws against incestuous intercourse are extremely harsh and the inclusion of first cousins is positively ridiculous. There is absolutely no scientific evidence that incestuous marriages are degenerative, bringing out the worst traits of both husband and wife. A marriage between close relatives may result in the strengthening of bad traits as well as the good ones. Laws against first-cousin marriages are based on emotion, myth and superstition, rather than on hard facts and scientific proof.
In his book, Sexual Behavior and the Laiv, Samuel Kling states:
The most plausible of all explanations is that allowance of incestuous relations between mother and son, father and daughter, and brother and sister, would disrupt the unity of the family, and on these grounds, and on these alone, there is logic for the present condemnatory attitudes. But there is no logic for nearly two-thirds of the states to condemn first-cousin marriages and one third to allow them, especially when all the scientific evidence available indicates that first-cousin marriages do not produce any more degenerative diseases than marriages between non-related couples.
We do not know where the many prohibitions against incest which have existed in many societies throughout the ages come from. At least, we do not, in our scientific age, understand the logic and the rationale. Religious injunctions, superstitions and myths are singularly devoid of logic, and most customs and morals are a trial-by-error method, designed to keep peace in the family.
Biologically speaking, man is an animal. Physically, we share many traits with our fellow mammals. From experience we know that some of our finest cattle, our best race horses, our super-specialized "best friend of man," the dog, are the result of inbreeding-incest, if you will.
We must look, therefore, not for a biological reason, but for a cultural one. And culture, by definition, is an invention of man's mind. Some backward and primitive societies have incredibly complicated rules against incest. The Australian aborigines of Arnhem Land, for instance, recognize over seventy different degrees of kinship-some of them so intricate that we do not have a word for it in the English language-where any form of touch, let alone sexual intercourse, is strictly forbidden. One taboo even extends to the younger sister of a mother-in-law who is forbidden to look upon the cousin from the father's side of her sister's son-in-law. Under those circumstances one can only marvel there are any Australian aborigines at all.
However, we must not forget that the Australian blackman believes his taboo as much to belong to the "natural order of things" as most people here are firmly convinced that breaking laws against incest of their state is tantamount to going against the Laws of Nature formulated though they are by man.
Richard Lewinsohn, in A History of Sexual Customs, writes:
Alexander the Great's successors, the Ptolemies (a Greek dynasty), practiced marriage between brother and sister for three hundred years without noticeably bad physical effects. This practice has been derived from religious roots, in particular from the cult of the divine pair, Isis and Osiris, whose generative power survived death. But many religions know precedents of this kind, and they have not given birth to political institutions. Any family tree, divine or human, that traces its origin back to a pair of first ancestors, must assume incest between parents and children or between brothers and sisters. Cain and Abel had no other way of reproducing their kind.
Clearly, we have here an exact reversal of the incest taboo. Not only the Egyptian royal families practiced incest, but the Incas of Peru had a similar brother-sister marriage system. Many of the most noble families of Europe practice incest, especially through first-cousin marriages. The rationale behind this practice is one of keeping as much property as possible within a family or clan.
A point of view which is relatively recent, and thus still hotly debated, is that the most important drive in all animals-including human beings-is the acquisition of territory. In Nature, only those male animals are ready and capable to mate that have acquired a certain territory which they will defend against any other intruder, except females of their own species. The females, in turn, will only accept coupling from those males who are clearly and visibly "property owners." The male animals who are not strong enough, or not old enough, to conquer and hold their own territory may be very willing to mate, but they are not given a chance. Either the females ignore them, or the stronger males will chase them away. It follows therefore that, although many young animals have different mothers, in effect they share the same father. Yet, once grown up, they mate amongst each other. Since these animal groups usually live all their lives within "walking distance" from their respective birth places, it follows that most future matings will be between half-brothers and half-sisters. Nature itself, by selective breeding (i.e., inbreeding) practices incest on a grand scale.
The theory can therefore be offered that primitive man led lives similar to that of his nearest kin, the great apes of Africa and Indonesia. One strong male had several wives. The wives had babies, male and female. The male youngsters, though they may have had intense sexual drives and a willingness to copulate with the nearest female in heat-their mothers and aunts -did not have a ghost of a chance. First, they had no territory of their own, and second, the strongest male of the group-their father-brooked no infringement of his property. Consequently, upon having reached adulthood, the young males would go out on their own to establish their territory so that they could attract females. On occasion it happened that they abducted a young female-their sister or half-sister-from the original clan.
It is not too far-fetched to assume that a similar condition existed in pre-historic man up to the time that thought began to take precedence over instinct. It was probably at that moment that the impulse of instinct had to be rationalized. This must also have been the moment that religion had to be invented in order to give divine sanction to the rules and regulations, the taboos and exhortations, the various rites, customs and morals that kept a society together.
Although we now believe to be in a position where we can rationalize, criticize and freely discuss those matters which, a mere generation ago, were strictly taboo, we must recognize the fact that a majority still clings to the old taboos. The taboos themselves have not changed. The moral justification for having them has changed with our religion. And even those who do not profess a religion are still bound by the religious morals and customs that permeate their society. Our society happens to be strongly influenced by the Judaic religion, of which Christianity is an-albeit very large-offshoot. The taboo against incest is so strong in our society that anyone who engages in a sexual relationship with a person next of kin cannot help but have strong guilt feelings.
As has already been stated, the crime of incest carries heavy penalties in all states of the Union. But we are not discussing, in the five case histories that follow, the penalties imposed by the law. We shall see that in almost all cases the persons under discussion punish themselves. The guilt, engendered by the incestuous relationships, inflicts the most cruel penalty of them all: mental anguish.
Even if the partners are only first cousins.