The Legend of the Ditto Twins (39 page)

"May
I make a suggestion?"

"You
bet." In unison.

Jay
promptly produced a package the size of a window frame. Deftly, he pulled away
the brown butcher's paper to reveal one of the photographs he'd taken of Clark
and me in Berlin, now in a silver frame—a profile shot where we were staring
directly into each other's soul.

"I
thought you might like to give this to your folks for Christmas," he said.

"Jay.
You made us look..."

“...like
movie stars."

Jay
shrugged modestly. "Good models, good lighting."

Clay
managed to get out the word "magnificent" before adding, "and
evil. You are so evil, Babe."

Jay made
a Black Power fist. "Fuckin'-A right." He turned to us. "Do you
think Sissy will like it?"

"You're
really gonna let us give it..."

“...to
her? She doesn't deserve it."

Jay
patted our heads. "That's the whole idea. There's bubble-wrap and a roll
of red foil in the hall closet. You guys get it wrapped, and I'll send it off
FedEx tomorrow."

I
hesitated. "Couldn't we just keep it..."

“...for
ourselves?"

"Relax.
There's plenty more where that came from. Look at the proof sheets and pick out
whatever you want. Okay?"

"Jay..."
In unison.

"You're
welcome." Jay smiled and turned to Clay. "Now, it's your turn,
Babe."

"I
have a pre-Christmas gift for you, too." Clay opened the music cabinet on
the right and produced a videotape. "Only it pales by comparison. You
know, I'm on a lot of mailing lists, and I've never seen a catalogue I didn't
like. Anyway, the title intrigued us, and it's
a
bestseller, they say, so I ordered it. Thought you might be interested in it.
Jay and I were."

He handed
over the video box. Across the top in bold type were the words
The Hudson Twins.
Across
the bottom,
Double Jeopardy.
The rest of the cover was devoted to a bare-chested shot of
the very same twins we had met that first night we went to the disco. They were
smiling, all right, but they sure as hell weren't peddling toothpaste.

"We
know them. We..."

“...met
them at the club."

Lily
jumped up to take a closer look. "Oh, yeah. Didn't I tell you? After they got
fired from their toothpaste gig, no one would hire them except for porn. But it
all turned out okay, cause they were paid piles of money, I hear. Thousands of
dollars. I know this for a fact. Mario told me, and he got it straight from a
fuck buddy of his cousin's brother-in-law who's been to bed with their priest.
Can I watch it? I mean, after you do?"

"First
thing tomorrow," I promised. "Okay?"

"Is
that an exit line?" asked Jay, eyebrows raised.

"Well,
we've got a lot of catching up to
do..."

“...
on our cultural heritage,
y'know
."

The
moment we were in our room, I put the tape in the player and snuggled up beside
Clark under the The Rolling Stones throw. I'm pretty sure it was the first time
we'd ever watched a porn tape with our clothes on.

After the
credits, the Hudson Twins were first seen walking home from school. They were
as hunky as ever, and they smiled a lot, as if they were still doing a
toothpaste commercial. Only something was wrong.

"They're
not even dressed alike!" was the first thing I said. "How dumb."

A few
minutes later, when they began to undress in their bedroom, Clark commented,
"They look awful skinny to me. Do they look awful skinny to you?"

"Totally."

We
studied the screen intently. Both twins were now standing in a kitchen, wearing
nothing but jockstraps, declaiming how hungry they were. Pretty soon, one of
them made a phone call to order a pizza.

"Oh,
God, not another pizza boy scene," I groaned.

Clark
groaned too. "Lame. Totally lame."

Within
seconds, a baby-faced blond had joined them on-screen. He just stood there
holding a big red-and-white pizza box and grinning
selfconsciously
in his red-and-white uniform. Two lines of dialogue later, though, he was
stripping out of it, and each of the twins took a turn at kissing him, but they
never kissed each other, and there were no
threeway
kisses like the ones we'd shared with Helmut III back in Berlin. Weird.

Before
long, we flipped over on our stomachs and twisted around so that our heads were
now at the foot of the bed to study the tape more closely—like we had to write
a term paper on it.

When
their dicks popped out, Clark reared up on his elbows. "Why, they're
nowhere near as big as we are, right?"

I shook
my head. "No way. Not seven inches,"

"That's
for damned sure." He smiled happily. "Good."

Next, the
onscreen trio moved into the oral action. First, the twins knelt to take turns
giving head to the pizza boy, and then the pizza boy reciprocated. It was all
very by-the-numbers, like calisthenics.

I pushed
the Pause button. "Clark, have you noticed? The two of them, I don't think
they've even kissed each other yet."

He sat
up. "Go back and rewind to the start."

We
watched the scene again.

"You're
right!" Clark snorted in disgust. "They never even kiss each
other!"

"Hell,
they never even touch each other!"

"You're
right! They barely even look at..."

“...each
other. And they got paid to do this?"

"It
doesn't seem fair, does it? Why, they're giving twins a bad name."

"Just
what I was gonna say." I kissed him on top of his head to console him.
"Want to watch the rest of it?"

"On
fast forward, okay?"

The
second scene, with a buddy from their swim team, was more of the same. The
third took place back in the kitchen, where they hid under the sink to watch
their older brother get it on with the boy next door. In this scene, the twins
just watched and groped themselves. Not each other—just themselves. Nothing.

"It's
almost over. There's gotta be a scene..."

“...with just
the two of them."

As if to
accommodate us, the twins were soon sitting at opposite ends of a couch, in
just their underwear, noticeably ready for action. We nodded hopefully and lay
back to watch what we'd been waiting well over an hour to see.

That's
when the doorbell rang—on-screen. It was their swimming coach, come to return
their goggles. At least they called him "Coach," though he looked
younger than they did. But the scene was just like the others: the twins took
turns kissing him but not each other; the twins took turns blowing him but not
each other; the twins took turns fucking him but not each other. Eventually,
the three of them sat on the couch like strangers in a doctor's waiting room,
until each of them delivered his obligatory orgasm.

I looked
at Clark. "What was that all about?"

He
nodded. "Nothing."

Just
before noon on Christmas Eve, while Clay and Jay were wrapping the last of the
gifts, Clark and I sat on the floor, looking at the proof sheets. To our eyes,
there wasn't a bad shot in the bunch, but as we studied them for the third
time, we decided that the photo Jay had selected to send to our folks was the
best of the lot. He agreed.

"I'll
make you another enlargement, soon as I can."

"Hey,
guys," interrupted Clay, "you ever gonna tell us what you thought of
the Hudson Twins' movie?"

Clark and
I looked at each other and hesitated.

Clay
roared with laughter. "Neither did we."

"It’s
a piece of shit," added Jay matter-of-factly.

We began
to laugh, too. "It sure is."

Jay
folded his hands over his navel in tutorial mode. "Okay, what's wrong with
it?"

I paused,
not sure I could find the right words but finally settled on: "Well, they
might as well not be twins."

"Exactly,"
chimed in Clark. "There's nothing happening between them. They..."

“...don't
even touch each other. It's like they..."

“...don't
want anyone to know how they really feel about each other."

I carried
it one step further. "Like they're going out of their way to avoid each
other 'cause folks are watching, so why make the movie in the first
place?"

"Very
astute," said Jay.

Encouraged,
I continued. "I can't imagine making a movie with my brother and not
touching him. No way."

"Me
either," added Clark. "If we ever make a movie, there's gonna be lots
of touching and kissing and..."

Jay
smiled slyly. "Well, well, well. Sounds to me like you've been thinking
about it."

"Thinking
about what?" we asked.

Before
Jay could respond, the phone rang. He picked up the receiver.

"Hello?
And Merry Christmas to you, only this isn't Clay. It's Jay." There was a
long pause. He pulled the phone from his ear and held it up so that we could
all hear the silence. "I guess she doesn't have anything to say to
me." He started to pass me the phone, then pulled it back. "Nice
talking to you, Sissy." And he handed me the phone.

"Hi,
Mom. What's up?"

Clark
eased the phone slightly away from my ear.

She
sounded all soft and tremulous. "I... I just wanted to call and thank
you."

"Oh,
it came already?"

"Overnight.
I'll bet that cost a pretty penny."

"Well,
we wanted to be sure it got there on time."

"Dad
and I, we've opened it already. Couldn't wait. It's... it's just
beautiful." Her voice began to wobble, even more. "You're growing up
to be such handsome young men." And then she was crying. "Regular...
demigods."