Mother's Adulterous Affections (F/M+ cheat) I cannot escape the first searing and shocking sight of my mother compromised. The image is lodged in a particular archive in my brain where it remains with sharp clarity, though it has been lingering nearly 20 years. My life has been coloured by the incident. I will explain, and I can do that now because she died three months ago. As best I can, it's time to get rid of this stuff. The image is...hang on, wait a minute. It will make no sense unless I back up a bit and put it in perspective. I was aged 17, it was a Saturday afternoon and I had come home early from Scouts because I wasn't feeling well. As was my custom, I came around the back of the house to enter through the kitchen. As I looked through the window I saw my mother sitting at the kitchen table talking to a man standing in the centre of the room. I recognised him. He was what you might call a lesser friend of the family. My parents saw him and his wife occasionally and they lived a few streets away. I stopped to take in this scene and decide my course of action. He looked like he was leaving and I decided to wait. My mother was wearing a long-sleeved pink blouse. I remember it clearly. Now, that lasting image. She rose from where she was sitting and walked across to him. She was wearing nothing other than the pink blouse. My mouth fell open. I remember that happening, the slack-jawed feel of it. My mother's pubic hair was black. There was a lot of it. A hairy black triangle at the juncture of her legs. It was the first time I had ever seen a female naked from the waist down. Or from the waist up, or anyhow anytime, for that matter. And it was my mother. Bare-legged and bare-assed, my mother walked up to the man, reached up her head and pecked him with a light kiss on the cheek. He turned towards the kitchen door and I bolted away through the garden. I look back over so many years and I see it all so clearly. My mother was one of those women who do. I've run across versions of them. It's nothing you can put your finger on. It's all in the way she will meet your eyes and hold your gaze. The way she stands, the way she looks, the expression on her face. Something tells you she's willing and available. There's a certain flat and knowing set to the eyes, even a small amusement. Your eyes meet and stay for longer than they normally would, and there's a complex communication. A signal. It says: We could, maybe, get together and fuck. I didn't know all that about my mother from that first sight of her without pants and with a man who was not her husband and my father. But I knew it soon enough, because from that day I watched her closely. I stopped going to Scouts on Saturday afternoons and I found he was her regular Saturday afternoon lover. And there was another man who came on Tuesday afternoons just after lunch, though not every Tuesday, and he was her steady Tuesday lover. They both fucked her routinely good and proper. I knew this because I heard it and saw it. I would set off for Scouts and then duck back quietly. First I set myself up in the tree near her bedroom window. She and my father had separate bedrooms and it was a smart guess but a wrong one. When it became obvious she was entertaining Mr. Saturday inside the house but not in her room I climbed down, slid through the back door and crept around like a thief until I discovered she was using the guest bedroom. The door was shut but it backed onto my room and, with a glass pressed against the wall and to my ear, I listened and heard the sounds that could not be mistaken. It was muffled and I could hear no talk except for occasional dull conversational drone, but the bed sounds could not be misinterpreted. Pretty soon this glass-to-the- wall thing became unsatisfactory and I made further plans. But I'll get to that. You need to know a few things about my family. My father is a nice man but flawed. He lives in his own world. Did so then, still does now. He's a pleasant man who wouldn't harm a fly but he parks himself at a distance from the action. He's sold quality furniture all his adult life, first as a salesman and later as a store proprietor. He loves furniture and adores wood. Any wood. All wood. He is a big and friendly fellow with a please-don't-bother-me sort of manner and well considered in the community because of his work for charity organisations. I take more after my mother, with my tendencies to be secretive and circumspect, considered in thought and deed, and I inherited more of her dark eyes, hair and skin than I received physical characteristics from my father. I was an only child. My mother was almost pretty. She had dark black hair cropped to about jaw length, a solemn face with wide-apart dark brown eyes, and a wide mouth that rarely seemed to smile. She was of medium height with a trim figure and shapely legs. Her breasts, when first I saw them, were quite small but nicely shaped and topped with small brown nipples. She was an undemonstrative woman not given to extravagance in her dress. She appeared for all the world to be modest and unassuming, and I had thought her to be so until I discovered her covert ways. She and my father slept in separate bedrooms. That in itself was not damning of their relationship, but when I came to think about it I could not recall any demonstration of physical intimacy between them. I watched and listened, and he did not go to her bed at night and she made no trip to his. They were relaxed and friendly together. But that was as far as it went. I listened for about a month to the stifled sounds of my mother grappling in the spare bedroom with Mr. Saturday every Saturday and with Mr. Tuesday a couple of times, and tried to screw up the courage to improve on my observations. I knew what to do. I had figured out where to drill the hole in the wall at a high point close to the ceiling, how to access it, and how to keep it disguised on my side at least. But I hadn't managed to progress emotionally to the point of doing the job. Then the picnic came along. It was an annual outing to do with one of my father's charity organisations. My father was running the hot plate for the steak sandwiches. He always did that. Even today he does it. I drifted around aimlessly and my mother chatted with the womenfolk. Until a bit later, when I saw her chatting with the menfolk. I drifted closer. She was leaning casually against the boot of a car and two men were standing close to her. They were smiling in an eager sort of way, as if trying to sell her something. I didn't know them. I tried to edge closer to hear what was being said but as I was sliding carefully between parked cars the three of them moved away. They headed away from the carpark, and shielded by the cars, crossed a small ditch and headed into the woods. If I hadn't been amongst the cars I would not have seen them go. I waited until they disappeared into the undergrowth and followed, heading away at an angle to prevent myself being discovered. It took a while to find them because I stepped quietly and carefully and had to cut back across the trail. I heard one of the men talking and that gave me the chance to edge forward until I had them in view through a dense shrub. I crept into the bush and lay flat on my stomach. It was the smallest of rough clearings about 100 metres in from the carpark and I could see very well. A man, the taller one, was kissing my mother. She was standing with her back against the broad trunk of a tree. The front of her dress was unbuttoned and her bra was unfastened and hanging loosely. The man had his hands on her breasts. The other man was standing to the side. He spoke and I could hear him clearly. "Get her to take her dress off," he said. The tall man withdrew from kissing my mother and stood back a couple of paces. "Go on, sweetheart," he said to her. "Why don't you take it off for us?" She stood with her back against the tree, her dress open to the waist and her breasts mostly exposed. She had that look on her face, serious, composed, expressionless but for the smallest hint of a smile on her mouth. She appeared neither bothered nor frightened. She looked from one man to the other and then back again. She straightened and took a step away from the tree, undid the remaining buttons on the dress, and shrugged it to the ground. She drew off the loose brassiere and stood facing them in a half-slip. "I can't be away too long," she said. She pulled down the slip and then her white pants and stood away from the bundled clothes. My mother stood naked in front of these two men I suspected she didn't even know before that day. She also stood naked before me. Looking back on it, I can make the observation she had a girlish figure. Except for the seriously thick black thatch of her pubic hair. She was 34 years old. No, she must have been just 35. I peered out from under the bush, amazed. What did she think she was doing? She did indeed know what she was doing. "We haven't long," she repeated, gesturing toward them with her hand. They took the hint and grappled with their trousers. They both kept on their shirts and they both sported exceptionally long and thick erections. Or I thought they did. Looking back, I realise they were pretty much standard issue. But I was 17 then and I thought they were gigantic. My mother moved to the taller man and put an arm around his neck. She took hold of his stiff dick, ran her hand along it, and sank slowly towards the grass, taking him with her. She was on her back and she spread her legs to accommodate him. I saw her hand guiding his penis and the length of it disappeared slowly and evenly inside her. He rested his weight on his forearms and looked at her face. She looked back at him, expressionless. His buttocks moved and then he was sawing into her, steadily and regularly. She appeared to do nothing whatsoever but lie back and accept him, her legs flat to the ground and her arms loosely around the sides of his body. After a couple of minutes he muttered incomprehensibly and threw up his head, jammed himself into her body and wriggled his buttocks around. He stopped and hung his head, his longish hair falling forward. "Damn," he said clearly. "You got me too excited." The other man tapped him on the shoulder. He was standing close by, holding his stiff penis in his hand. The first man withdrew from my mother and stood up and the second man moved in immediately to take his place. Again she reached down to take hold of his dick and guide it inside her. He was much more vigorous and started pumping away furiously. I think she liked it better that way because she lifted her legs and wrapped them around his hips. He maintained the rhythm for quite a while and because she had raised her legs I could see clearly the way he was ramming into her. Then he too reached his climax and slumped on her body. He looked tired. The taller man, now dressed, carried my mother's clothes to her and the shorter man backed away on his knees and stood up. "I'm keeping these," the taller man said to my mother, still on her back. He was waving her white pants. "As a souvenir." The shorter man reached across and grabbed her bra. "I'll take this," he said. He pulled up his trousers and buckled his belt while the taller man helped my mother to her feet. She said nothing. She drew the half-slip up her legs and put on her dress. When she had buttoned it she moved to the shorter man and reached up into a quick hug and delivered him a peck on the cheek. She repeated the gesture with the taller man. It seemed incongruously polite. I learned from these and later observations that she always did this to men who fucked her. The three of them straightened and brushed their clothes, then walked out of the clearing and back towards the picnic area. I caught up a little later. My mother was talking to three women. I looked around for the two men who had just fucked her in the bush clearing, and I saw them some distance away laughing and talking to two other men. All four turned and looked at my mother. She saw them looking and quickly turned away. They laughed and I saw the taller man had her pants in his hands. She found me soon after. "We're going home now," she said to me. "We're getting a lift with the Bensons." I sat in the back seat of the car, my mother beside me. I was acutely aware she was wearing no underclothes under her dress. When we arrived home she went straight to the bathroom and ran a bath. Later she joined me at the kitchen table, wearing her favourite bathrobe. She sat at the table, looking idly at a magazine. The robe gaped open and, sitting beside her, I could see a breast and its nipple. She looked up suddenly and caught me looking. Her eyes roamed across my face. She had that odd flat look in her eyes and she smiled faintly as she tightened the robe around her. My resolve to spy on my mother strengthened. This was better than television. This was better than anything. I drilled the hole in the wall as planned and covered it with a movie poster. The following Saturday, perched on a chair placed atop a chest of drawers, I looked down on Mr. Saturday as he fucked my mother on the bed in the guest room. They were easy and matter-of-fact about it, almost polite. She undressed and so did he and they kissed for a moment and got on the bed. And then they just talked for a bit while he fiddled and twiddled absent-mindedly with parts of her body. Finally she took him in hand and they got down to the fucking business. She guided him into her like she had with those men at the picnic and then he was fucking her steadily. She looked over his shoulder and up at the ceiling with her own little quiet smile on her face. He finished before too long and she held him to her with her arms around his back and stroked him gently. After another few minutes he rolled away and got off the bed. He dressed and they talked again while she lay back, naked and relaxed. When he was ready she rose herself and went out the door with him, still naked. I climbed down from my observation post, oddly dissatisfied with the lack of drama in what I had seen. There seemed not much thrill in what they had done. My expectations had been much higher. I waited for about 20 minutes until I heard my mother go into the bathroom. Then I crept out of the house. For four Saturdays I watched Mr. Saturday in action and twice I watched Mr. Tuesday perform on Tuesdays, which was enough to bring me to the view that my mother was more appreciative of Mr. Tuesday's performance than she was of the repertoire of Mr. Saturday. I think she achieved orgasm once with Mr. Tuesday. It was hard to tell because she seemed quite passive and not at all demonstrative, but looking back with the wisdom of experience, I think she did. Once. And another time, later, and I was certain about that time, but I'll come to that. It was the fifth consecutive Saturday I watched Mr. Saturday when I was discovered. I was standing on the chair set on the chest of drawers and stretching just a little to put my eye to the peephole. They had finished their business and were moving about the room. I waited to see if there was a second chapter, because sometimes there was, when out of the corner of my eye I saw movement to my right and behind me. I whipped my head away from the wall and saw my mother standing in the doorway to my room, her hand on the handle. It couldn't have been worse. I was perched in a balancing act high up the wall of the room, my shorts around my ankles, and my hand wrapped around my stiff organ. She stood there, naked, looking at me steadily. I froze. What seemed like an eternity passed until she stepped back and closed the door. I climbed down, pulled up my shorts, and sat on the bed. A little frozen ball of ice lay trapped somewhere between my lungs and my stomach. A while later, not long I think, she opened the door and came into the room. Her dress was buttoned and proper. She sat beside me on the bed. She sighed. "I knew you were watching," she said calmly. "I could sense it. I looked up and saw the hole in the wall and I knew you were there and I know it's not the first time." She turned her head and looked at me. "How long have you been watching? I want the truth." "About a month," I whispered. She just nodded. She stood up. "My bath must be nearly ready," she said. She reached out and took my hand. "We can talk in the bathroom," she said. I looked up at her quickly. She raised an eyebrow at me, which was one of her versions, however ironic, of a smile. "Oh come now," she said. "After what you've seen, seeing me in the bath is practically nothing." But it wasn't practically nothing at all. Secretly watching her getting screwed by different men, spying on her, was one thing. Standing beside her in the small bathroom while she took off her clothes was completely another. I had grown to just about her size. In fact, standing shoeless beside me, I found I had actually surpassed her. She stripped off her clothes methodically, her eyes flicking across to me, talking in what I thought were unconnected sentences. "You'll be needing an explanation for my behaviour," she said, dumping her clothes in the wicker basket. She turned and faced me, naked and unconcerned about it. "I would have thought you were too young." She flicked a glance at my crotch. "But you're old enough to masturbate. You grew up that last little bit without me noticing." She turned aside and reached down to test the bath water with her hand, her breasts hanging with gravity, small though they were. Satisfied, she stepped into the bath and I saw how her black hair curled under and filled up the space between her legs. She lowered herself carefully and stretched out in the water, nipples breaking the surface and pubic hair lapping gently. She closed her eyes and I looked down at this woman's body, this woman who was my mother. With eyes closed she patted the rim of the bath. "Sit here," she said. I sat dutifully and waited, watching. "I am a woman who needs regular sex," she said suddenly, her eyes open and looking at me. "Your father does not sleep with me. Has not done so for years." I saw her calculating. "Six years. God. That long?" She mused about this for a while, her eyes drifting away. "I don't really know why. He just seemed to lose interest. We have never discussed it." She focused on me again. "Anyway, the important thing for you to know is that he knows about my..." she paused, searching for a word, "...dalliances." She was looking at me keenly. "I am not sneaking around behind his back. He knows. He does not know details and he doesn't want to know. By not talking about it, he gives tacit approval. Do you understand anything about what I'm saying?" I nodded in dull adolescent fashion. She was saying she wasn't being unfaithful unfaithfully. Or something like it. "He's just one of those men who doesn't seem to want or need sex," she said. "Even when we did sleep together, he was never all that eager for it. It seemed like a duty. So gradually I began to become available to other men. I try to be discreet. Your father is one of the nicest and kindest men in all the world and I would never knowingly hurt him. If ever he were to come to me and ask me to stop, I would. He knows that. He allows me the freedom I have. Do you understand?" Again I nodded mechanically. I did and I didn't. Well, yes, she had a discreet lover or two. But what was that stuff at the picnic with a couple of strangers? "Good," she said. "Things are not going to change just because you've been spying on me. At least, I won't change. But you definitely will change, because you must promise me here and now that you won't spy again. If you promise me that, I won't be angry at what's happened so far. I can understand a growing boy's curiosity. But now that I know, you must not do it again. Can I have your word on that?" I nodded but thought it might not be enough. "Yes," I croaked. "You have my word." And I kept it. For six months or so, anyway. I didn't spy on her through the hole in the wall which she had not, for some reason, ordered me to cover up. I guess she just knew, in the way mothers do, that I wasn't there. I didn't spy on my mother again until the night of the annual dinner my father threw for his best customers at a German restaurant that bought his dining chairs. Even though I was 12 places down at the unimportant corner of the big table, I could see she and a new customer were getting along well together. Nobody else might have come to that conclusion but I knew it because I knew my mother and I recognised the signs. They weren't having an animated conversation. Nothing like it. In fact you could be mistaken for assuming they weren't even aware of each other. But I could feel the tension from where I sat and then there was the dead giveaway - that funny little flat smile she had on her lips. I slipped away from the table for a moment and stood behind them, over near the wall and out of the way. The man had big shoulders. He was about her age, as far as I could tell, and his younger wife was sitting across from him, heavily pregnant and with wildish corn-yellow hair tumbling around her shoulders. She was vibrant and blooming, bursting out of her low-cut dress, and three or four men kept looking down her spectacular cleavage. I hadn't been able to stop looking at her myself. She was an hormonal sunburst. My mother, as usual, was dressed conservatively in a dress that came below her knees. Well, it would normally, but it was bunched up on her thighs and the man with the pregnant wife had one hand on her legs. I could see that when I crouched down to look beneath the level of the tablecloth. As I watched she pushed back her chair, stood up and left the table. She walked towards the washrooms but at the last moment turned aside and continued out the back door of the restaurant. Nobody saw but me. The man also stood up, excused himself, and slipped out the side door. I waited four or five minutes and opened the door slowly and cautiously, mindful of my mother's instructions about spying but only as far as not getting caught. I slipped out quietly and crouched in the darkness. Nothing. Where was she? I found her further than the gloomy alleyway, up by the wall behind a rubbish skip, and the big sandy-haired man was with her as I knew he would be. I was hunched down to the ground and I could see little but I could hear them. The man was grunting. He was fucking her right up against the wall. "Hurry," I heard her say. "We have to get back before we are missed." He grunted louder. "Hurry," she said again, and now she seemed to be panting. "Hurry, hurry, hurry," she gasped, in time and in tune with the man's grunting. I backed away, low down to the ground, and just before I ducked back into the restaurant I heard her cry out a word. "Hurreee," she said, trailing it away from a high pitch. Soon they were back at the table. Nobody had noticed they were gone except the corn-yellow pregnant woman. She looked up at her husband resuming his seat and the laughter in her voice and eyes faltered for a moment. Then she turned animatedly to resume chatting to the man beside she. Her husband, whose name was Eric Hoffman, became my mother's most regular lover. Whatever it was he gave her she wanted more and again. For several weeks she appeared to lose her normal reserve and restraint. Often she took off out of the house without explanation and stayed out late. My father, though, said nothing. Mr. Hoffman came to visit one Sunday evening as my father worked the hot plate for a few friends and neighbours. He shook my hand heartily and introduced his corn-yellow wife, Hilda, now so big with child she was waddling around with an arm supporting her stomach. She sat heavily with legs spread wide on a chair next to me in the garden and flattered me enormously by flashing her strong white teeth and appearing to take considerable interest in everything I knew and did. I was telling her about my Balinese-style fishpond experiment with its trickling water and bamboo pipes, hoping to get her to look at it, when she clutched my wrist with a strong hand. "Now you've done it with that water talk," she hissed at me, but with a cheeky smile dancing in her bluest-blue eyes. "I have to pee in the most urgent way and there's a queue at the toilet." I looked and two women were indeed waiting patiently outside the door. "There's another upstairs," I offered. "Too far and too difficult in my condition," she said, now looking quite agitated. "Take me to nice dark and quiet place in this lovely big garden, and hurry!" Away behind the gardenias I kept watch, my back to her, as she squatted and let loose a stream astonishingly fierce, long, and loud. "Whew," she said when she was back on her feet. "This baby sure does insist on making me pee." I took her hand and headed for the fishpond in the far corner, but people were there already. Two people. Her husband and my mother. She was flat on her back on the grass and he was pounding into her. I froze for a moment and then turned away quickly, dragging Hilda with me. But she held like an anchor and then drew me to her. "Hush," she said quietly into my ear, watching the two of them on the grass. She folded her arms around me and her big tummy was as warm and solid as a sun-baked boulder. They finished almost immediately and Hilda pulled me quietly away, back the way we came. "Don't worry on my account," she said to me. "I already knew about it and I don't mind so much. Eric was always going to do something like this. What about you?" "I knew too," I said. "Don't worry," she said confidently. "Nothing will come of it and it will all be over soon." Hilda had her baby less than a week later, and after it was born my mother spent two nights with Mr. Hoffman entirely away from home, which was unprecedented. Some weeks later she had me dress respectably and took me to the Hoffman house in a taxi. Hilda wanted to see me, she said. "Don't be concerned about her," Hilda told me after my mother and Mr. Hoffman had gone off together in his car. "We've had a nice long talk and she knows it's coming to an end. Pretty soon now Eric will become interested in me again." She spoke with absolute sincerity and flashed her dazzling smile. "I'm nearly ready to do my thing again and he won't want to stray when I do." She looked tired around the eyes but still wonderfully sunny and healthy. The baby, a girl one month old, was asleep on a soft blanket on the carpet. Hilda asked me to keep an eye on the little one while she took a shower. But the baby started crying. I fussed about but she had momentum going and was getting into loud and jerky bawling. Hilda reappeared, hair wet, in a dressing gown. "It's okay," she said to me, because I was near panic. "She just wants to be fed." Relieved I hadn't allowed the baby to come close to death, I sat down on the couch. Hilda picked up the baby and she quietened instantly. "There there," she said soothingly. She sat down on the couch beside me, cradled the child, and slipped open her robe to expose a large, white, nipple- heavy, blue-veined breast. She brought the baby to the nipple and turned her head to smile at me. "That's all she wanted," she said. I was 18 and no doubt I was sitting there glassy-eyed and slack-jawed gazing at her tit, because she smiled so widely she started to giggle. "Ah Jimmy," she said. "Not seen a woman breast-feeding her baby before?" I shook my head, fascinated by the little mouth puckering at the nipple. "Well then," she said. "I guess we can call this lifeclass education. Look, she's already dozing off and she's only had a tiny bit. I'd better switch her over because I have two tanks that need emptying." Hilda drew the gown from her other shoulder and exposed her right breast. She shifted the baby across to the other nipple and she fastened on immediately. Her left breast was now bare, next to me as I sat beside her on the couch. The nipple was pink, wet and turgid. "I don't mind if you look," she said. "It's only natural." The baby didn't have her mind on the job at all and soon she was asleep, mouth open and head fallen back. Hilda stood up and leaned over to put the child back on the blanket. Her big breasts hung down in front of me. She sat back on the couch and made no attempt to close her robe. She picked up her left breast in her hand. "It's full of milk," she said, showing it to me. "Much more than the baby needs. Only it's not really milk, more a sort of glucose." She wiped a finger across the nipple, collected a bead of clear liquid, and held it out to me. "Want a taste?" I opened my mouth like a starving bird and she inserted her finger, smiling and twinkling at me with her eyes. I closed my mouth and licked her finger with my tongue. There was a taste, a nothing sort of taste but not unpleasant, and a little sweet. "What do you think?" she asked. She appeared genuinely interested. I said it was quite nice. Well, I croaked it. I was feeling very tense. "You could have more of a taste," she said. "If you want. Actually, it would help me out. Otherwise I'm going to have to express." To demonstrate, she scissored her fingers against the nipple and milk oozed from it. "I have to do that when she doesn't take enough." It dawned on me that she was offering her breast to my mouth. I gazed at it in awe. "Come on then," she said, urging me with a hand on my shoulder. "Put your head in my lap." I wriggled into position and she cradled my head, looking down into my eyes with a broad smile on her mouth. "Just do what the baby did," she said, lifting my head towards the pink nipple. I craned forward and the nipple brushed my lips. I opened my mouth and took it in, feeling it with my tongue and then involuntarily starting to suck at it gently. Liquid came into my mouth and I swallowed. I was nursing like a baby and it was incredibly soothing and relaxing. I closed my eyes. I don't know anything about being female. I just know what I'm told. She told me later, in that frank and open way she had, that breastfeeding was erotic. I particularly remember she said it made her toes curl. She said she didn't know what it did for other women but it sure did it for her. I throw in this little piece of information by way of explanation for her. I think. It was also true she needed to empty some milk. Hilda said that too. I can put the bits of it all together now, more or less. Back then, however, all I did was nurse peacefully. Until she put her hand on the front of my jeans, first patting and then gently squeezing my erection. My eyes snapped open and she was smiling down at me. "Should I?" she asked. "Very naughty, but I haven't been naughty in an age." Without waiting for an answer, and I was too stunned to respond other than to fall into the pool of her eyes at close range, she undid the metal button on my jeans and slid down the zipper. Her hand snaked into my briefs and closed around my penis, already throbbing and jumping in anticipation. So cool was her hand that my whole body jerked. "Shh," she said soothingly, as if to her baby, her eyes never leaving mine as I continued to suckle at her heavy breast. Hilda pushed down and spread my clothes and coaxed my hot and hard penis into the open air. Clearly amused and still looking into my eyes, she started to give me a gentle and unhurried handjob. "Shh," she said again. "Don't worry about a single thing." I was as swollen as a beach creek at full tide. In no time at all, as I whimpered from the intensity of it, the stuff was flowing out of me and all over her hand and my stomach. "Ouch," she said sharply. "You bit my tit." But she continued to pump slowly and even more oozed into the sticky pool of it. She eased her cradling arm away from my head and I slumped back, dull and stupid, from her breast. She leaned forward and cleaned me up with the sleeve of her bathrobe. Then she held her hand in front of my face. "Look at all that," she said, turning it so I could see my sperm on the back of her hand. Waggling her eyebrows at me mischievously, she stuck out her tongue and dipped the point of it delicately into it. But then she burst out laughing. "Oh no, look at your face," she said, gasping. "I just knew there had to be a reason women shouldn't mess with young boys and now I know what it is." She laughed again. "Poor Jimmy is so shocked at my wickedness." "No," I said hoarsely. "Honest. I'm just amazed at what's happened." She shrugged the gown back over her shoulders and I got to my feet and straightened my clothes. "Well, so am I," she said, tightening her belt. She thought for a moment and then smiled brightly at me. "It just seemed like something I should do. Still friends?" "Hell, yes," I said. "Then let's stay that way. Which means it is our little secret." And it was. I have never told the story until now. But, sadly, we didn't stay friends. From almost that day Mr. Hoffman stopped seeing my mother and that meant I didn't see Hilda. A couple of months later I heard they'd sold up and moved away. I thought I would be heartbroken but it wasn't so, because pretty soon after Hilda I got a girlfriend. Or maybe she got me. My mother didn't like her. A waste of my time, she told me candidly. I wouldn't get anywhere with her. Mother was right, of course, although I tried for a while. But she liked fine the next girlfriend who followed soon after. "As long as you don't do anything to scare her," my mother advised, "this one will reward you in due time." I wasn't certain what she meant. But dark and serious Deborah became the girl who first gave her all to me and my mother knew it had happened without asking and nodded at me approvingly with her flat and wise smile. I know it sounds odd but that's what happened. My mother was going through withdrawal symptoms and she missed Eric Hoffman sinfully. Not that she said so. But she stayed at home and Mr. Saturday and Mr. Tuesday didn't come around any more. She just didn't seem as available as she once was, and not interested. She was interested in my girlfriends, though, and uncanny about picking whether or not they would have sex with me. She would always tell me after just one meeting. Obliquely. Indirectly. But once I learned how to interpret the message properly I was in no doubt. After two years of this I sat down with her at the kitchen table and sought to know. "How do you do it?" I asked. "What's the secret?" "I just know," she said. "Some women, young or old, are more interested in sex than others. I am one myself, which you know." "But you aren't any more," I said. "You stopped." She sighed. "It was time to stop," she said, and got up and walked out of the room. The following year I went away to a university specialising in veterinary science. On a long weekend I returned home, bringing a new friend with me. Steve was a shy boy from the country who'd never been with a girl and didn't know how to begin to tackle the problem. We put him in the spare room. In the night I woke in my old bed and wondered why I did. Then I thought I heard a noise coming from the next room, the spare room. I listened with my ear to the wall for a moment and then climbed up on the dresser like I had not done in many years. I peeled back the poster and looked through the peephole. The bedlamp was on, and my mother was on top of Steve, and the bed was creaking as she sat on him and fucked him to his first climax inside a woman. He lay back with eyes closed and arms spread wide, and as I watched she looked up suddenly, directly and pointedly at the peephole. She smiled her little knowing smile.