Jacob Turner was like many young men of his age in that he had no faith in himself to seduce the opposite sex. He had never been on a date with a girl, nor did he possess any sexual experience. He was a high school senior, an eighteen year-old virgin, and lacked any confidence in his ability to acquire sex. The problem wasn't physical. Jacob wasn't ugly, or fat. He didn't have acne problems, or bad hygiene. His difficulties were social. Jacob was a shy and reserved young man who had trouble even talking to girls; he had no idea what to say or do in order to attract them, so he simply quit trying.
Jacob was the son of a single mother and lacked a strong male role model his entire life. This made him more sensitive than macho, more intellectual than athletic. He enjoyed comic books and games, reading and movies -- mostly solitary activities. He would rather watch
Game of Thrones
than a football game, or play
Dungeons & Dragons
rather than go to the park and shoot hoops. Jacob was fully self-aware his interests were geeky and completely outside the realm of what most girls were into, which only deteriorated his confidence in ever gaining a girlfriend.
And like many men his age, Jacob was always horny.
He thought of sex constantly, both his desire to have some and his inability to get any. In order to alleviate the constant urges, Jacob turned to masturbation. He masturbated a lot. A typical day in Jacob's life consisted of three or four sessions. He would masturbate in the morning before school, usually in the shower or bathroom. He would masturbate after school, before his mom got home from work. He would masturbate in the evening after supper, and once again before going to sleep. That last session late at night was always the best. Jacob would confine himself to his room, quietly lock the door, and take his time while watching pornography on the computer, confident his mother was asleep downstairs - completely unaware of his habits.
Jennifer Turner was a wonderful mother who devoted herself for eighteen years to raising her son. She was thirty-eight years-old, having given birth to Jacob when she was twenty. Jacob's father was never in the picture, he was a cowardly man who was scared of being a parent and disappeared before Jennifer was six months pregnant. The two never married; she raised her son alone.
As a career nurse Jennifer had provided her son with a stable, middle-class upbringing in a modest house within a safe suburban neighborhood of Phoenix, Arizona. She worked five days a week and always came home to make sure she and her son could have supper together. Jennifer helped Jacob with his homework, made him do chores, and tried to invest in him the morals needed to be a good, upstanding person. Jennifer adored her son and encouraged him often, advising him to pursue his interests whatever they may be. She was proud of the fact that he was a handsome young man who didn't do drugs, didn't get into trouble, and always received good grades at school. She was looking forward to his acceptance to a college or university, as it was the spring following his eighteenth birthday and classes would begin that fall.
But she was also concerned for him. Jennifer was well-aware her son wasn't involved with any females; Jacob never once brought a girl home to meet his mother. Instead of going out on dates, Jacob would hang-out with his male friends to play video games or watch movies with superheroes in them. She also knew he was masturbating a lot; it was obvious from the sticky messes Jacob had started leaving in his socks and towels. She worried he might be gay or struggling with confusion over his sexuality. Not that Jennifer would love her son any less if he was homosexual, she would support him no matter what, but she didn't want him to be alone or confused with no one to help him understand things young adults often struggled with.
She resolved herself to find out. Jennifer decided to confront her son as gently as she could. Maybe he was gay, maybe he was simply a late bloomer, but Jennifer loved him more than anything and thought she might be able to help him in some way if the two could talk about it.
Their home was a split-level house and Jacob's room was on the upper floor, down a short hallway with a bathroom and another spare bedroom. When Jennifer approached his bedroom door it was just after 10:30pm and she heard her son's voice, pausing her fist in mid-air instead of knocking.
"...Mommy... oh, Mommy, you're so hot..."
Jennifer's expression bulged with surprise at what she heard. Instead of disturbing him, she silently leaned closer to the door. Jacob's heavy breathing came from the other side, low moans mixing with the slick sounds of lubricated self-pleasure. He was masturbating!
"...uhhh... so sexy... uhn!... uhn!... oh, Mommy..."
Oh my god!
Jennifer thought, covering her mouth with a palm to keep from gasping. Was he fantasizing about her? Unwilling to interrupt and embarrass him, Jennifer hurried away as quietly as she could to her downstairs bedroom. The conversation she had planned would have to wait for another time, it would have been uncomfortable enough even without mixing in the topic of his masturbation.
Jennifer changed and crawled into her bed. She lay in the dark, her eyes wide open. Was Jacob really thinking about her when he was masturbating? Was that even possible? Was that normal? Many questions swirled in her mind and she wanted answers. But how could she get them? Jennifer worried that if she confronted Jacob about what she heard, it would certainly humiliate him and possibly drive a wedge between the two. She would have to find another way - the close relationship Jennifer held with her son was too important to risk.
Sleep came with difficulty and the following morning Jennifer's mind remained pre-occupied by what she heard through her son's bedroom door. As she was doing her best to stick to a daily routine and prepare some breakfast, she heard Jacob's morning alarm. Barely a minute later she listened to him enter the upstairs bathroom and start a shower.
Sensing an opportunity, she rushed upstairs, entered Jacob's room, and sat at his desk. She wriggled his laptop mouse and watched as the screen flashed to life. He hadn't turned it off or locked it, thankfully, and she was able to open a web browser. Jennifer felt guilty for snooping, but curiosity got the better of her. She opened the browser's history and saw the last page Jacob had been looking at -- a Facebook address. Clicking the mouse on the link, Jennifer's face twisted in confusion as a sub-directory of her own Facebook page loaded. It was a picture gallery from the vacation she and Jacob had taken to Florida only two weeks prior. The browser's memory automatically enlarged the last picture Jacob had been looking at and Jennifer's eyes went wide with shock. It was a picture of her, on the beach at their hotel, in a bikini.
He was looking at me
, her mind screamed,
my son was masturbating while looking at me!
Quickly closing the browser and pushing the computer's sleep button, Jennifer hurried out of her son's room and returned downstairs to the main floor kitchen. A mixture of confusion, worry, and flattery swirled through her emotions as she finished breakfast. "Well," she whispered to herself, "At least I know he's not gay."
=======
Jennifer had trouble concentrating on her hospital duties that morning as thoughts of Jacob's masturbation dominated her mind. During lunch break she sat alone in the hospital's cafeteria, setting her phone on the table beside a tray of food. Jennifer ate with one hand and typed into Google with the other. She found a psychological article about the habits of male masturbation and found it was not uncommon for men to fantasize sexually about their mothers. Unfortunately the article didn't offer any advice to mothers about what to actually do when catching their sons masturbating to such fantasies, nor did any other articles she browsed. What Jennifer did find was plenty of pornographic links to sites that advertised incestuous videos between mothers and sons and wondered if Jacob ever watched such things on his computer.
Of course he does
, she thought,
he's an eighteen year-old with raging hormones
.
