Auntie SparkNotes: Should I Tell My Brother He Drank Semen?!

Hi Auntie,

This is kind of a weird story. My older brother was at a party, and my friend was there too. She confided in me later the next day that, while at the party, she gave a guy a blowjob, used a water bottle for spit/to wash it down, and then lent the water bottle to my older brother as a prank.

She finds the whole ordeal hilarious, and she said I could tell him and that she doesn’t care. But should I?

On one hand, if I do, he will be MORTIFIED. It will really, REALLY bother him. I know if it were reverse, I’d probably start crying. I’d feel borderline sexually violated. However, I would be LIVID if he didn’t tell me or if he waited to tell me.

On the other hand, only one other person besides me and the girl know about it. I doubt the story will spread around or get back to him unless I tell him. And she won’t really see him (or me again, probably) after June of this year, so I am not worried about any….uh, repeats of the situation. I understand it may be wrong to keep this from him, but don’t they say that ignorance is bliss? Wouldn’t it be better to not upset him as much as I know this will?

If there were a possibility of this story spreading and harming him publicly, it would be a no-brainer. I would want him to be ready. But given the circumstances, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Please help, Auntie. I want to do the right thing. I know that he deserves to know about this, but I don’t want to traumatize him. Do you think I should just forget about it and let the situation pass? And if I do end up telling him, it’s already been a week after I found out (and it will be even later if/when you respond to my letter). How do I justify waiting so long?

Oh, my. You’re right, Sparkler: Much as this scenario seems pulled from the plot of a certain teen movie from the 1990s, this is serious business, and it deserves some serious thought. So excuse me a moment, while I go into the Auntie SparkNotes Fortress of Solitude for a period of deep and principled consideration.

[Laughs hysterically inside a coat closet for fifteen minutes.]

… Okay, I’m back. You, uh, didn’t hear anything, did you? Like the muffled sound of juvenile snickering? Because if so, IT WASN’T ME.

But all joking aside, and despite the fact that this is a particularly gross iteration of this particular type of problem, your solution is to ask yourself the following set of questions—which are the same questions you’ll ask anytime you find yourself in the awful position of knowing information about a loved one that the loved one does not know himself.

If it were you, would you want to know?
From what you know of your brother, would he want to?
And finally, what do you stand to accomplish by telling?

Only you know the answers to Questions #1 and #2. But it’s actually Question #3 that you’ll probably want to tackle first, because it’s bound to inform your answers to its predecessors.

So, what do you accomplish by telling? For one, there’s the part you’ve already anticipated: this information is probably going to really, seriously upset your brother. And of course, sometimes the harm of upsetting someone is an acceptable tradeoff for the future harm you’d prevent—which is to say, if you had any notion that your friend was stockpiling inseminated water bottles for future pranks, you’d definitely want to let your brother know that a) he should never under any circumstances accept a beverage from her, and b) the reason why.

But in this case, the damage (insofar as unknowingly drinking from a spunky bottle can be considered damaging) is already done. So when you say that your brother deserves to know about this… well, let me just ask: Is that true? Are you sure? Does he really deserve to be burdened with this knowledge, which is as useless as it is horrifying?

Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely circumstances under which your answer to that question could still be “yes”—like, say, if your brother is on the record as a proponent of brutal honesty, or if he’s been truthful to you in a situation where your respective positions were reversed. (Or, of course, if he’s explicitly told you to let him know if he ever imbibes from a bottle that once contained semen.) That’s why it also matters what your answers to the other two questions are.

But for the record, whether you tell or not, whatever decision you make will be the right one. You realize that, right? Not because of the outcome, but because you’re going to make it thoughtfully, kindly, and with your brother’s best interests in mind. And whether the truth comes out sooner, later, or not at all—and however your brother feels about it if and when it does—a person who loves you will understand if you didn’t respond perfectly to a hideous, unwanted piece of information being dumped in your lap. You say you’d be livid if the roles were reversed, but that’s not really true, is it? You of all people know how hard it is to know what to do in a moment like this. If you were to get angry at anyone, I’d hope it would be the jerk who played the prank rather than the poor sap who took on the burden of telling you about it.

And on that note: Even if you tell him something, there’s no law that you have to tell him everything. Or in other words, your brother can know that he drank semen without ever suspecting that you waited a month to tell him about it. Your secret is safe with us.

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