Uncle Nephew Incest Stories

Uncle Nephew Incest Stories

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Features

Nov 24, 2005 at 4:00 am

Uncles Are a Dying Breed. On Thanksgiving, Pause to Remember Your Uncles

Don't Measure Your Penis for Your Uncle
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Today's male siblings—brothers, they're called—are tomorrow's uncles. But Americans are having ever-smaller families. Most couples aspire to have one child, maybe two. So the uncle—that non-authority figure, that often drunk, childish, pseudo adult—is going extinct.
Growing up I had a dozen uncles by blood and marriage. My kid only has three uncles. When my son is an adult, he will likely marry someone who is also an only child, and their children—or their only child—won't have any uncles at all.
So it is only fitting that we pause on Thanksgiving to remember our uncles—good, bad, drunk, sober, morose, helpful, molestful, homicidal—because it was the one day a year when you could count on seeing your uncles. But soon we will live in a world without uncles, so it's important that we write down our uncle stories now, while we still can, while uncles still walk the earth. DAN SAVAGE
My father's brother, Uncle Chuck, was a man apart: apart from hygiene, apart from manners, apart from any social life outside of his addiction to dog-track racing and the creepy world of the United States Postal Service, where he worked. A confirmed bachelor, Chuck haunted our family holidays like a ghost wrapped in a foul-smelling, beige cloth.
Thanksgiving always seemed like the biggest holiday for Uncle Chuck: He would sit on our couch, which my mother would cover with a clean bed sheet before he arrived in order to save the furniture from his ripe and, at times, fungal smell. He would drink beer after beer, trying to egg my father on in matters of politics and religion. The football games would go on and on, and there Chuck would sit, beer in hand, irritating everyone, refusing to leave.
I remember my mother explaining the new plan to me, on a bright Thanksgiving morning when I was 5, and I remember Operation: Get Rid of Chuck kicking into action: at 8:00 p.m. sharp, we all retired to our bedrooms and put on pajamas, pretending that it was our bedtime. After my father had turned out the lights, Chuck felt awkward enough that he left. Then we all padded back into the living room, turned the lights back on, and watched TV until 11:00 p.m. or so, reflecting on the gaffes Chuck committed this year. It seemed to work, and though we never, ever discussed the plan again, we kept it up annually.
The last time this happened, I was 10, and, as Chuck had just left, we were watching the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special , and someone, I think it was Linus, said something about Thanksgiving being about traditions. I looked at my mother and father, sitting on the couch, which had been stripped of the bed sheet but still smelled strongly of Uncle Chuck, and said, "Is pretending to go to bed so Chuck will leave one of our Thanksgiving traditions?" Every year after that, my father would just tell Chuck when he thought it was time he'd best be heading out. That seemed to work just as well. PAUL CONSTANT
Mom always brought it up just as I was about to leave for a sleepover. She would allude to what happened to her, back when she was a kid, back when she'd slept over at her cousin's house.
The story—as I've pieced it together—is this: Mom crawled into her cousin's bed and fell asleep. A few hours later, she awoke to find her uncle staring at her, crouched beside the bed, his hand beneath the sheets. Her cousin woke up, locked eyes with her father, and told him—in a way that made it seem like she'd been through this before—to knock it off. Mom's uncle sauntered out of the room.
Mom never told us what happened under the sheets, or if he tried anything the next time she slept over. Mom did tell us that she ratted him out to her own mother, who slapped her and told her not to repeat the story. Her mother—my grandmother—sent her back to sleep over at the cousin's house many more times. Mom never forgave her for that, she told me the day after her uncle died, explaining why she'd refused to go to the funeral. My own uncle—Mom's little brother—had just knocked on our front door, imploring her to attend. Mom slammed the door in his face, and didn't speak to anyone in the family for weeks.
But Mom didn't need to divulge details of that night in her cousin's bed to drive her "uncles are not to be trusted" message into my brain. All she needed to do was raise her eyebrows when I'd come home from a sleepover at my own cousin's house. Worse, she'd put me through the third degree after babysitting a little cousin in a distant suburb. Under Mom's uncle-scrutiny, I started to believe that if I wasn't on guard, one of my otherwise wonderful uncles—the guys who taught me how to fish, play poker, swear, and hit a baseball—would do something creepy. If I found myself alone in a room with an uncle, I made sure I was a few yards away—a touch-proof distance. I avoided uncle hugs. I had a tough time falling asleep at sleepovers, until I could hear my uncle snoring in another room.
Being paranoid around my own family sucked. I'm not sure what my Mom's uncle did to her but he might as well have molested me, too. ANONYMOUS
We had no choice. Clearwater stood squarely between us and getting out of Florida, and on a road trip, you can't pass within 350 miles of relatives without stopping by. It's a rule.
Consequently, Liz and I found ourselves being quizzed on our educations by my step-uncle Jim. At the mention of my philosophy degree, Jim's eyes lit up. He leaned across the table, took my hands, and said, "Oh, so you love knowledge? You want to understand the world!"
Over dinner, Jim and Patty invited us to an "event." Liz and I exchanged nervous glances. "What kind of event?" I asked. "I think you'll be very interested," they told us. "It's only for a few hours."
At the Scientology center, we were given a tour, and then led into a small classroom. As Jim was leaving the room, Liz overheard him describe us to the lecturer as "prime age, prime property." We put down our soda and cookies. The more palatable tenets of Scientology were explained to us (no mention of our bodies being inhabited by millions of tiny space aliens), and then we were asked to split into pairs to "audit" one another. Amid the shuffling of chairs, we saw our opening and escaped.
That night, after everyone had gone to bed, I trolled the internet for the beliefs and practices of Scientology. What I found shocked me enough to wake Liz and we stayed up eyeing the intercom on the wall and searching for hidden cameras.
In the morning, Jim brought out a plastic device with several dials, a couple of needle-meters, and two silver cans attached by thin wires—an e-Meter. I politely insisted that I wasn't interested, but Jim persisted, pushing the cans into my hands. He asked me emotionally charged questions like "What is your earliest memory of your mother?" and "What is your greatest fear?" I answered with lies as he twisted the knobs and studied the gauges. I gently squeezed my hands to make the little needles jump back and forth to the tune playing in my head. Jim pronounced the readings "very interesting."
"We'd better get going," I said, putting down the cans. "Thanks for a really weird time!" ANTHONY HECHT
Stereotypically, tattoos are acquired while drunk, but my uncle Jimmy doesn't drink. So, stone-cold sober one overcast night in late November 1991, we went to a tattoo parlor on Lincoln Avenue in Chicago. This was just at the beginning of the ink-and-needle craze that has yet to fade in urban hipster culture, but no tattoo could be less hip than the ones we were getting: Chicago Cubs logos. This was something we'd half-joked about for years. Listening to the game on the radio in the kitchen or lounging on the couch watching TV—when the Cubs win the World Series, we'd say, we'll get tattoos.
Eventually, we realized two things: 1) the Cubs will never win the World Series, and 2) any bandwagon jumper can get a tattoo after such an event—true fans would get the tattoo after the team finished, oh, 20 games out of first place, as the Cubs did that year.
We spent some time looking at the flash—tribal, military, biker, gang, tits and ass—until a couple of chairs opened. Then the first snag: Even though this place was a 20-minute walk from Wrigley Field, they didn't have a Cubs logo in the place. We were even less hip than we thought. Uncle Jimmy saved the day, fishing his Die-Hard Cubs Fan Club membership card out of his overstuffed wallet. The artists—if you want to call tracing a corporate logo "art"—made transfers, and the pain began.
When I see my tattoo in the mirror I always think of my uncle Jimmy. The tattoo marks not just our unrewarded loyalty to a baseball team, but also our uncle-nephew connection. I have vivid memories of Jimmy: of him teaching me to wash my hands before dinner, of his rock band practicing in our basement, of raiding his stash of Playboy s in that same basement. He's a cross-country truck driver now, and I never see an orange Schneider National semi without wondering if my uncle is driving it.
My own nephews live all across America: New Mexico, Iowa, Seattle, suburban Chicago. Like most American families, we've scattered, and so we've lost the physical and psychological closeness we used to have. Because of this, I doubt my nephews and I will ever talk ourselves into getting tattoos together. BILL SAVAGE
Long before I had any clue that my uncle Cal was gay, I was drawn to him because he was wild. He didn't dress or act middle class or Catholic like everyone else in our family. Cal was fancy and urban. His hair was long. He called the Pope an asshole. He drove a van with a peace symbol stuck on the bumper. (My parents made him park the van in our garage, so it wouldn't scare the neighbors.) Cal's "friend" carried around actual hardback novels (not Reader's Digest compilations) and read from the books rather than making small talk.
I was painfully aware, growing up, that Cal was the butt of family jokes. He was an easy target. He watched soap operas and went to my mother's Ladies Home Journal s for decorating ideas. My father hated him and made homophobic remarks. Deep down, I knew that I was constitutionally and emotionally like Cal, but the truth of that, and the possible consequences of being considered strange at age 7 or 12, seemed terrifying. Fortunately, Cal ignored my father and kept blazing. He wore paisley silk shirts, and painted scenes from Wagner operas. He refused a practical career. My childhood home was full of canvasses Cal had painted and given my parents. They were proud of the paintings but believed that making art was a kooky profession. So they tried relentlessly to convince Cal to open his own Sherwin-Williams interior/exterior paint franchise. Cal said no thanks and no, and finally lost his temper. He didn't visit again for several years, during which time some kind of color, something as essential as red, seemed lacking.
Cal came out to me when I was 17. He was too tired to wait any longer. He told me all the stories he had been saving up in great detail, beginning with the first time he went cruising for "fairies" in Echo Park in L.A. He had worn a three-piece suit. Then he got smarter: He bought himself a pair of Levis. He slept with Montgomery Clift twice and some lesser movie stars, but mostly with strangers. He told me in graphic detail about all the sex he had in public bathrooms, and in bathhouses, and in that van. Several times he was beat up by police. One time he came close to being involuntarily committed, back when homosexuality was still considered a mental illness.
Cal also introduced me to art and music, architecture and travel.
"Try everything," he said. And I'm still trying. TRISHA READY
My uncle Lenny visited our family in Baltimore before he shipped out to Vietnam and it completely terrified me. I was 7 years old. Suddenly I saw what my future would be. I'd turn 18, I'd be drafted, I'd go to Vietnam, and I'd be killed. Since I was so terrible at sports, I figured I'd be terrible at war, which just seemed like sports with guns. All that running around in the old war movies. You ever notice that? I was chubby and a terrible runner and I was sure I'd be dead by 19. This is what went through my head all the time in elementary school, thanks to that visit. I'd lay in bed at night and try to picture the universe continuing without me—people doing stuff and having dinner together and inventing new things and going into space—for all of eternity, and I wouldn't even exist. It wouldn't even matter that I'd existed.
There's a picture of me and Uncle Lenny from that day. I think my dad got out the charcoal briquettes and made hamburgers and hot dogs outside. I remember the adults acting like everything was chill and nothing to be upset about but I cried and cried. The fucked-up thing was, I wasn't even close to Uncle Lenny. For most of my growing up, he was away in school in Michigan. I didn't even know him that well. But after that visit, I was crying all the time. Which surprised my parents. They figured I was worried for Uncle Lenny, and I was, I guess. That was part of it. But I was mainly worried for myself. And my doom. Funny how we usually don't think of kids having such selfish thoughts.
When Uncle Lenny came back from the war he was a different guy. Not in the clichéd Vietnam vet way. He wasn't spooky or anything. He was just... Great! Everything was always Great! Nothing was ever less than Great! He became a plastic surgeon, moved to Southern California. For a while, my mom said, he did so much breast surgery that people called him the Titty Doctor.
Me, though, I still laid in bed and tried to imagine my own coming extinction. That's the main thing I ever got from Uncle Lenny. Not that he intended to put those ideas in my head. How we affect little kids can be so different than how we mean to affect them.
And I still don't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing to be thinking about death all the time at that age. Probably a good thing to come to grips with at some point in your life, I guess.
I definitely still carry it with me, that feeling inside that I'd get while in bed at night. Knowing, absolutely knowing, that the world would continue forever without me. That I am an unimportant speck. That I would be crushed out. IRA GLASS
Ira Glass's radio show, This American Life , is heard weekly on KUOW and KPLU.
My great-uncle Squint was a lousy drunk. He was dead by 1975, which left me zero chance to know him, but his legacy looms largest out of anyone in my stereotypically huge Catholic family. If for nothing else, I will always admire my great-uncle for his remarkable problem-solving skills. He lived at home sauced for most of his brief adult life, and his parents, my great-grandparents, did all they could to keep him away from booze. Squint could recognize a fix in just about anything. If there was no Jim Beam to be found in the house, he'd raid the medicine cabinet. Listerine and rubbing alcohol were two of his most common alternatives.
Deep into his cups, Squint would fight or pass out. The frequent combo of both left him without a driver's license, confining him to his parents' home. They lived out in the country, 15 miles from the nearest town. If he couldn't drive, he'd hitch a ride, but that didn't always work once the neighbors caught on. A few times, he turned the shotgun on my great-grandmother, demanding the car keys, which she also kept stashed away.
But while drunkenness was the leading cause of his indiscretion, there were times when his one-track mind gave itself to fits of unparalleled genius.
One afternoon, lying at home sober and belligerent, Squint dialed the county ambulance, claiming his parents were having simultaneous heart attacks. The ambulance rushed the several miles from town, across the river and out to the country only to find the old folks in perfect health, planting potatoes in the garden.
"Do you realize the resources wasted on false alarms?!" the driver's scolded.
Squint hung his head in shame. He knew he'd done wrong.
"You're right. I'm sorry, boys," he said sheepishly. "But hey, since you're here, would you mind giving me a lift to the bar?" BRIAN J. BARR
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