Attempting to write a shorter story than usual, I took twice as long and wrote possibly the longest entry I've submitted so far. That being said I think there's plenty to keep you all entertained throughout without biting the bullet too soon. Please enjoy and thanks for reading.
*****
1
I thought all mothers kissed their sons on the lips. Don't they?
From the very beginning when Danny was nothing but a squidgy little poop machine, right through school and right into adulthood, I always kissed my baby boy on the lips and his sister too. Granted, he died of embarrassment a few times outside the school gates, but I'll tell you something else. A kiss on the cheek is a custom between friends in Europe and a kiss on the cheek can lie.
But you have to be the worst kind of liar to kiss on the lips and yet to convince me that you mean it when you don't. My son grew to be completely honest and to honour his mother. And the few times we ever rowed or fell out, a kiss on the lips soon changed that. I can see in his eyes what he's feeling when he kisses me and what changes soon after. Just like him, it's a beautiful thing.
But, "it's weird," they said. "Nobody does that," they said. And yet it wasn't me who gave their kids cold sores, also known as facial herpes. Explain that one, Mr and Mrs Oh So Innocent...
Thought not!
Just like his dad couldn't explain the lipstick around his cock the night he threw his eighteen years of marriage away like my life meant absolutely nothing. I may have given him the benefit of the doubt a couple times, but I wore gloss and I certainly didn't pack his lunch before he returned to the office to get those things he forgot.
I don't quite know how it happened though; how those kisses became sexual. I know all too well the steps I took to go down that path. Maybe I just had it in me all along. Maybe my new friends are a bad influence. But you know what?
I don't even care. I love Danny in every way; even his faults. And I wouldn't change us for the world. This is my story!
2
My name is Cheryl and I'm now a divorced and single parent. I'm at the wrong side of thirty and the right side of forty. I'm a domestic goddess with a bona fide yoga butt, but with ample cuddly stuff, if you know what I mean.
The great thing about being a shorty at 5'3" is that my curves stay in the right places with a bit of hard work (of which I am no stranger to) and the better thing about being a middle-aged natural blonde is that the silvers creeping in don't show up unless you have a magnifying glass.
My son is my life and yet he's generous enough to leave me to my hobbies when I get into my reading or movie nights. Danny, now 20, swings between introvert and extrovert, one day living out of his bedroom and the next playing bass with his band.
He likes classic punk rock. It's loud and scary and out of tune but he looks too adorable, playing in his room dressed like a rag doll, for me to make a thing out of it. I just put in my earphones and listen to my own music until the trumpets of hell take a break for the night. I'm savvy like that. His father, who disapproved of everything, wasn't.
Before Danny introduced me to one of his closest friend's mothers, I'd lived a pretty straight-laced life. Sure I knew how to get drunk. I could drink any man under the table if the moment allowed, but I'd never done drugs of any kind. I was up to date on what drugs there were and what they did, as a concerned mother would be (so I should hope), but either I was naive or I was stuck up.
It turned out that I was stuck up!
Connecting with Kelly on Facebook, I was tempted into the world of political incorrectness, deliberate childishness and the kind of belly laughing that would make a mom think "wow, I might even be able to give up those hundred sit-ups a day here..."
What can I say? The world is in a desperate place and partly because it's forgotten to laugh at itself. God knows I'd forgotten how until I became the centre of Kelly and her kids' daily pranks. Nothing was off limits.
I think they horrified most of the in-laws away within the space of two weeks, all but for my sister from another mister - Jeff's sister and my one time sister in law - Jennie, who was the only member of that family who had always been the outsider.
I was liberated by the shameless. I didn't need to be asked to fall in with them. That came naturally. I needed to meet these people and it just so happened that they had planned a picnic, or more like a mass gathering of hippies, punks and goths, in the local park to celebrate the last heat wave of the summer.
I don't know about anybody else, but I can get pretty drunk on laughter alone. If I am faced with so much hilarity, my brain will seize with fits of hysterics and I won't be able to remember anything about what happened. Well that day I added a bottle of vintage cider and then Kelly offered me a bite of her magical cookie.
That's not a euphemism or a sexual innuendo by the way. Well, okay it was. But she wasn't offering me THAT cookie. I'd never tried marijuana in any shape or form as much as I was aware. Two hours after devouring a quarter of a very strange tasting chocolate chip cookie - safe as houses - my life was all giggles and hiccups wrapped in an invisible warm, fuzzy blanket of love and joy.
And to put the cherry on top, I absolutely didn't make a fool of myself in public, I didn't black out, I didn't turn gay, and I didn't end up in a gangbang or summon Satan. I did however get home to bed that night to the greatest night's sleep in a long time, followed by the most intense masturbation session the morning after. I never said I was a prude.
I saw Danny that afternoon. He'd slept in late. I let him, seeing that it was Sunday. Greeting him with a sheepish grin, I don't think he could still quite believe that his mother had done such a thing. I kissed him good morning on the lips and hugged him tight with my face buried in his chest, just to muffle my own laughter.
3
It was the next time we went to visit Kelly that things changed. Or do I say that they went a little further as I discovered a bit more about myself under the spell of this magical green plant I'd been introduced to so late in life.
There was a little gathering at her house. We started in the living room, but it was soon overrun by loud, chaotic teens. Kelly pulled me aside and took me to the kitchen where we opened a bottle of wine and shared stories of our childhoods, comparing ourselves to our kids. She ducked back into the fridge at some point and pulled out a block of something wrapped in cling film, which I soon discovered was called "magic fudge".
I love fudge. All I have to do is to breathe in its immediate vicinity, though, and I'll put the weight on. But again this didn't smell the same and it didn't taste the same. I had double the dose that was in the piece of cookie given to me the other weekend and it worked its way into my bloodstream much faster.
I spent much of that night cuddling Danny to the point of clinging onto him. All the while I'd disappeared into my own little bubble where all I could think was how nice it was to be pressed up against him while I looked up to him in adoration.
'You're going to give him mummy issues if you carry on like that,' one of his intellectual friends joked.
'Yeah no more wine for me, Kelly,' I declared.
'I don't think it's the wine,' she replied with a devilish chuckle.
'Oh I'm sorry, Lee,' Danny spoke up, grabbing me by the hips and pulling me back in close. 'Am I cock-blocking your efforts to woo my mother with Discovery Channel trivia?'
While everybody was laughing, I was thinking about how Danny had no clue what he had done to me. I may not have been dripping, but I'm sure that weird tasting fudge was making me horny. But for my own son, for God's sake?
Hysterics activated - night forgotten!
We were on our way home in the back of the taxi when I initiated another cuddle, tucking my head into his chest and wrapping an arm around his belly. 'You have no idea how much I missed these,' I told him.
