It wasn't something that I had fantasized about, nor planned. It was one of those cause-and-effect chains that was obvious in retrospect, but not at the time. It probably had roots; at my sister's wedding my mother had pulled me aside and confided somewhat drunkenly, "You know, the way you dance really turns me on " I was sixteen at the time, and found her observation generally disgusting, not only because I was a lousy dancer; she was an old lady, I was a teenager.
Five years later, I was a young adult, and she was a middle age woman. We both loved my father; this happened despite that. It had nothing to do with psychological issues, or resentment, or sexual frustration. It was just something that occurred in the quiet of a three bedroom ranch house in the middle of the Great Plains, and while neither one of us expected it, neither one of us would ever undo it either.
The night began typically; I picked my mother up at her workplace after getting off at my own. We were sharing a ride that summer because it was convenient; we both worked twenty miles from home, but within two miles of each other. I was doing an internship for a venture capital firm before starting graduate school at Wharton in the fall. The rides to and from work were generally quiet. I wasn't big on small talk, and she didn't generally have much to say on the way home. Perhaps nothing would have happened at all if her blouse had been fully buttoned. But the fact is, the third button on her blouse was undone and gapping, and as we made the twenty mile drive home, it became somewhat of a game with me to see what forbidden fruits I could glimpse through the open tunnel.
I don't know whether to say my mom was pretty or not – she was my mom. You could tell she had been pretty as a young girl, and age had neither punished her brutally, nor been overly generous; she looked perhaps three or four years younger than her age, but still old enough to have a third child who was past twenty. She was blessed with centerfold breasts, a genetic predisposition that my sisters were both thankful for. She hadn't gotten heavy with age; nor would you ever describe her as model thin. When I actually saw her naked, she had a little pooch in her stomach that was rather erotic; it just made her look very real without making her look fat. She looked like a healthy woman, with all of the French curves in all the appropriate places. So I would never feel comfortable labeling her with an easy descriptor like "beautiful", or "sexy", or "hot". Her copper hair and perceptive eyes warranted a more nuanced assessment. "Attractive" fit and maybe even "alluring", but only for someone who had a particular fondness for her set of features. As we drove, I kept one eye on the road, but, couldn't help but glancing over every thirty seconds or so to check out the gap between her blouse buttons, and try to see what I wasn't supposed to be seeing, which was a significant portion of her right breast, enveloped by a brassiere.
When we got home, I fixed her a seven/seven (seven up and Seagram's seven) which was her drink of choice at the time. This was a ritual; she rarely began unwinding conversationally until after her first - and normally only - drink. This night was a bit unusual; my father was traveling out of town on a business trip, and it was just she and I. My dad didn't travel often; once every three or four months. I waited for her to change clothes to see what dinner plans were; we often ate different things - things my father didn't like - when he traveled.
She came out in jeans and a tee shirt, and her drink was almost gone. I asked her what she wanted to do for dinner, and her response indicated indifference. This was unusual - she almost always felt the responsibility to fix something for us, and usually had a plan to do so. I asked her if she'd had a bad day, and she nodded that it was both long and stressful, although she never did tell me why. She was the accounts receivable manager for a medium sized corporation, and sometimes badgering customers for money when they had none could be draining. Without any ulterior motives, I suggested that she go take a long hot bath, and I would worry about making dinner. It was a sign of her residual stress level that she readily agreed, because she knew my culinary capabilities at the time consisted of warming up pork and beans, and frying hamburger. She actually seemed grateful for my offer, and said that a hot bath would feel very nice.
Mom went off in her direction and I started thinking about what I might make for dinner. I looked though the pantry for several minutes for something to suggest itself as a meal. After examining the same four shelves for the fifth time, I realized with some mild guilt that I still had no clue what was in the pantry, because I was fixated on the stolen image of my mom's boob, and what both her boobs might look like if they were unencumbered. I had guilt because this was my mother I was thinking about, and I had grown up with the clear understanding that these thoughts were wrong. The guilt was mild because, over the course of time I had discovered that not only did these thoughts not feel wrong, they actually felt pretty damn good. Of course, with my father gone, and my mother sitting naked in a garden bathtub twenty five feet away, this was the perfect storm of the wrong time to be having thoughts like these. The devil sitting on my shoulder began whispering suggestions about coming up with a viable reason to barge in to the bathroom.
The empty seven/seven glass was my inspiration. I refilled it, walked to the bathroom door, and hesitated. I listened to make sure I could hear the sounds of my mother splashing. I started to knock, and stopped. I started to open the door, and chickened out. I took a calming breath, and then, like leaping into a swimming pool even when you know the water is going to be cold, I just turned the door handle and walked in.
My mom's reaction was both indignant and curious. I caught a brief impression of her red pubic bush before she threw a washcloth over it, and she folded her left arm across her breasts, covering most of them. She looked at me curiously. "Do you need something?" she asked neutrally.
I held the seven/seven in front of her at arm's length. "I brought you another drink," I explained. Her expression softened, and she smiled. "Thank you," she replied. "I would like that very much. Just put it there on the side of the tub."
This was a turning point. I hadn't gotten what I came for – a good look at my mom – nor had I thought things through enough to know how I should respond to her common sense instructions. I froze like a marble statue and did nothing. My mom's smile faded, as she looked me in the eye. With a brief look of disappointed resignation, she extended her left arm for the whiskey. She took a sip, then held the glass in both hands and rested it on her stomach. She closed her eyes, pulled the washcloth away from her bush, and sighed contentedly. "That's good," she conceded.
I don't know how long we remained like that – ten seconds, thirty seconds – but she gave me a generous amount of time to appreciate the way she looked before she changed tones. "Okay," she said parentally, without opening her eyes. "I'm taking a bath, and I would appreciate some privacy. Is there anything else you need?" Her tone of dismissal was unmistakable.
I remained leaning against the bathroom vanity, unable to respond and unwilling to leave. Her breasts were definitely large, but they were perfectly proportional to the rest of her. They were full without being fat. Sitting with her back inclined, they touched each other, sagged a little, and swayed slightly when she breathed. Her nipples were brown, and seemed as big around as one of my fingers. She took another sip of her drink and placed her arm up on top of her head. The faint rust shadow of emerging stubble showed in the hollow of her armpit. She opened one eye and looked at me staring back at her. This time she spoke with clear irritation. "Please don't tell me that I am so failed as a parent that my only adult son is morally bankrupt and unnaturally attracted to the sight of his naked mother?"
That broke through my mental fog. "No," I stammered. "No. Sorry. I...just....got distracted..." I gulped. My voice was working but my feet still weren't. "I'm going." I looked again at her entire length, her knees poking up from the bathwater, the bathwater just covering her navel, small droplets of water glistening off her breasts, the look of relaxation on her face, and I forced my feet to come unglued from the floor. I opened up the door and was halfway through when my mother spoke again. I stopped with my back to her. "This is a very odd feeling," she said, the irritation gone, replaced by a tone she normally used with friends and peers.
"Drinking in the bathtub?" I asked, without turning.
"No." She gathered her thoughts briefly. "I should feel disgusted at the way you were just looking at me, and instead, I have butterflies in my stomach. It's been a long time since someone looked at me with that kind of desire" she replied.
My blood pressure skyrocketed to about 180 over 120. "I'll go work on dinner," I said, pulling the door closed behind me.
My mom emerged from her bath twenty minutes later. She was wearing a heavy pink terrycloth robe, belted securely at the waist. Her hair was combed out, but still damp. She smelled clean. "What did you decide on for dinner?" she asked, sniffing the air experimentally as she walked into the kitchen. She put her empty drink glass in the sink.
"Tacos?" I responded as both a reply and a question, hoping she would indicate her approval. "Even I can brown hamburger, and that's about all you have to cook. The rest is just chopping up stuff."
My mom smiled, either at my accurate assessment of my kitchen skills, or in approval of my choice of entrée, but either way, she said, "That sounds fine."
I pointed at her empty tumbler. "Can I make you another?" I offered.
