Rob and I may have loved each other at some level, but as brothers we were the bitterest of enemies and fought constantly. I was thirteen months older and bigger and stronger, and he used his status as the baby of the family to always get his way, and anytime the shit hit the fan it was my ass that got swatted no matter who perpetrated the mischief. To add insult to injury, by the time I was nine years old he was taller than me, and also much lighter complected.

“My, what a handsome young man you are,” perfect strangers would say when they saw him, and most women couldn’t resist running their hands through his silky blond curls. They treated me like I was some kind of leper. Even our grandparents seemed to favor Rob and never missed his birthdays, although mine were frequently forgotten or celebrated with only a new shirt or some socks or such shit instead of the neat toys that they bought for him.

Being older, I naturally hit puberty first, and in addition to once more being taller than Rob, I also had something he didn’t and could do something he couldn’t, and I lorded it over him and reveled in the fact that he was a harmless little boy and I was a real-live functional man. My growth spurt petered out just about the time Rob’s was starting, and by the time I entered high school he was a head taller than me and larger in every other dimension as well. He nicknamed me “Stubby”, and like a rich kid flaunting his wealth he took every opportunity to strip down in my presence to show how I’d been cheated, and he even offered to let me jack him off and fondle his balls so I “would know what a real man is like”.

Looking back on high school, it was amazing that I didn’t pull a Cain on him. I became known simply as ‘Rob’s Brother’ and didn’t really have an identity of my own. I’d try talking to a chick and she’d say something like ‘Oh, you’re Rob’s brother. How’s he doing? Do you think he’d go out with me?’ He worked his way through his own classmates, and then started in on the girls in my class and I think he fucked them all because he even tried to borrow money from me to buy more rubbers. I didn’t get laid until I was a Senior, and even then I was the willing victim of a much-older woman seeking to relive her youth by seducing young boys.

By the time I graduated times were tough and there was no money for college, so I joined the Navy. A year later, when Rob got out of high school, our parents took out a second mortgage on the house so he could go to school.

I trained as an Electronics Technician and was eventually posted to the carrier Eisenhower, and during the last year of my enlistment we joined the Sixth Fleet in Naples, Italy. The Navy hadn’t yet gone co-ed on warships, and every time we pulled into port there was a mad dash as a shipload of horny sailors hit town trying to spawn.

Italian gals were supposed to be Hot Stuff, and I finally found one alone sitting beside one of the fountains reading. She was slim, dark haired, and her skin looked flawless and I moved right in and started chatting her up in the rusty Italian that I had picked up.

“I’m sorry,” she said slowly and loudly, “but I only speak English.”

“Oh, excuse me,” I apologized. “What I meant to say was would you like to have a drink or something with me?” ‘Or something’ meant ‘let’s go to your place and fuck ‘til our eyes pop’. A guy had to start somewhere.

“Navy?” We had moved to a sidewalk café. I was wearing civvies, but my hair was regulation short instead of the longish style of the eighties.

“Yeah, the Ike,” I answered, using the nickname of the carrier.

“Officer?”

“Petty Officer, Second Class,” I answered, hoping she wasn’t hung up on only dating Commissioned Cocksuckers. We chatted awhile and I learned that she was a year younger than me, from Omaha, and was spending a summer in Naples studying art and architecture, and she would just love to show me her apartment and fuck until her eyes popped. I couldn’t believe my luck: There were at least six thousand Navy guys on the make in Naples, and I landed a rich, beautiful American girl.

“Michelle, this is my baby brother, Rob,” I said, introducing my fiancé to my brother and the rest of my family. That first weekend in Naples had been fantastic, and was followed by more just as great. My enlistment was up at about the same time she graduated from Tulane, and we sealed our engagement three months after we met. Her family had greeted me warmly and seemed perfectly comfortable with their daughter marrying someone who was somewhat beneath her, and my family was enthusiastic about me marrying Michelle.

“Enchanted, my dear,” Rob said, gently kissing her hand as if he were a nineteenth century nobleman. That was the very second that I lost her; One look into the California-bronzed face of my golden-haired brother was enough, and a year later I had the dubious honor of being the best man at my brother’s wedding to my former fiancé.

They left for a Maui honeymoon, and I drove back home and pouted. Military service is like school, and I’d seen enough guys my age naked to know that I was normal and that Rob’s oversized cock and pendulous balls were the aberration, and the idea of him copulating with my former fiancé made me physically ill. Michelle hadn’t been a virgin when we met and there was no reason to believe that she and Rob hadn’t yet screwed. She was definitely lusty, but I wondered how she could possibly accommodate all of that meat; much less enjoy it.

“Hey, Peterson, what the fuck are you up to?” The phone call came late one Friday night.

“Randall?” I hadn’t heard that voice in over a year, and I wasn’t sure who was calling.

“Who else, Dumbfuck?” I’m in town, let’s go grab a beer somewhere.” Randall had joined the Ike about the same time as me, and we had become good buds. He was from Philadelphia and was a genuine hard ass. He claimed to have knifed another kid while in high school over a dispute about a girl, and he had a reputation of not taking shit off of anyone. A lot of guys like that are all loud mouth and bluff, but I had watched Randall back down two Italian Marines with nothing but a penknife and I knew he had balls enough to tackle anyone. “Bring your wife along,” he added, “I’d like to see her again.”

“Michelle’s out of the picture,” I explained after he had enquired about her absence. “She fell for my brother. They’re still on their honeymoon.”

“Son of a bitch!” He remarked, then lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “You want her to be a widow?” Randall had once gotten himself jammed up with an officer in the air wing, and I had bailed him out and possibly even saved him from a dishonorable discharge, and he still felt indebted me. He knew about the history between Rob and I and he had the type of mentality that would allow him to murder a friend’s brother.

“No,” I answered, “I don’t want that. I want Michelle to be happy, it just burns my ass that it had to be Rob.” We spent the evening drinking and bullshitting, and he left for the coast the next morning.

The call from Mom came three days later: She was nearly hysterical and I had to listen to her carry on for fifteen minutes before I figured out that Randall was in the hospital as a result of an assault. I tied to call Michelle, but got no answer and elected to drive out and see for myself what was going on.

Rob had just walked into the apartment when two men wearing masks jumped him. They tied him up and ransacked the place before pulling his pants down, applying a tourniquet to his scrotum, and castrating him. Fortunately, Michelle got home a half hour later and rushed him to the hospital, where it was determined that they had also stabbed him several times in the groin. The surgeon removed Rob’s prostate and reported that the perineum, a delicate nerve center, had also been severely damaged and that while Rob would eventually regain control of his bladder he would be permanently impotent regardless of any know hormone therapy.

The magazines by the grocery store check out stands seem big on how most women don’t really need sex, and would be perfectly happy if a partner would just hold and hug and fondle and kiss. Michelle wasn’t like that at all; she liked it hard and often, and she felt cheated if not allowed her orgasm. We had been intimate long enough for me to know that she’d been perfectly happy with my performances, and I started hitting on my brother’s wife while he was still in the hospital recuperating from his castration.

“In a way I know how you must feel,” I consoled her. “After all, I was getting pretty used to all the sex I wanted too, before our breakup, that is.” I gave her a big brother-in-law hug, kissed her cheek, the gently slid my hand down her back before I left. Three days later I fucked my brother’s new wife, and by the time he got home from the hospital it had become a four times a week habit, and even though I could never match my brother’s dimensions I like to think that I made up for it in enthusiasm.

“You have a choice,” Michelle told Rob, taking his hand in hers. All three of us were calmly discussing the situation. “You can file for divorce and I won’t contest it, but you’ll have to support yourself.” Her trust fund allowed an extremely comfortable standard of living. “Or we can go on as we are, married, with Rick contributing his part to our union. I won’t live like a nun.”

Rob was beat. He didn’t have the motivation or skills to go out and get a job, and as grievous as his injuries were he’d be even worse off alone. I always left the bedroom door open while his wife and I were going at it, and he eventually got up enough courage to come in a sit quietly in the corner while I pleasured his wife. I even invited him to hold my balls while I fucked, so he could maybe remember what a real set felt like, but he declined.