My mom was up on a ladder with a watering can, replacing the sugar water in the hummingbird feeders hanging from the banyan tree in our backyard. I was stabilizing the ladder from below.
I was 18, a high school senior, and my mom, who had me when she was my age, was a young-looking 36. She owned a successful yoga studio, and her years-long practice of yoga had molded her body into a harmony of supple curves. We both had jet black hair and blue eyes, from our "Black Irish" heritage, and strangers sometimes thought she was my older sister.
Being raised by my single hippie mom had not been so bad. An overload of tofu and brown rice, and a prohibition of football and "violent sports," but we were true friends; we could talk about anything. A couple weeks ago, I brought up the topic of sex. I would never admit it to my buddies, but I confessed to my mom that I was still a virgin, and I was anxious about my first time - if ever that would finally happen - because I wouldn't know what to do with a girl's body.
With no dad in the picture, my unabashed mom took it upon herself to tell me everything I needed to know about a woman's sexual anatomy, going online to show me anatomical diagrams, making sure I was not ignorant of "the wonderful clitoris," the magical G-spot, the mysterious A-spot, and other important stuff. She went so far as to draw me a map of 14 erogenous zones. It was a needed education; I hadn't even known the word "erogenous" before my crash course in how to satisfy a woman. Okay, I could have guessed lips and nipples and inner thighs, but inner wrists? Behind the knees? Earlobes? Scalp? Armpits? I was amazed.
She also told me about the P-spot, the prostate gland in men, which was news to me.
"But if it's that deep inside the body, how do you massage it?" I asked.
She gave me a look and smiled.
"What?" I wasn't picturing it.
"Through the anterior wall of the rectum."
"Oh." I said, and blushed. "You have to be gay. Wait... You know I'm not gay. Right?"
"I would love you the same if you were. But no, you don't have to be 'gay.' Don't worry about putting labels on anything that brings you joy. Labels just limit. As long as it doesn't harm you or anyone else, 'If it feels good, do it.'"
I couldn't wait for an opportunity to put into practice my newfound knowledge. I frequently looked over the map of the erogenous zones my mother had charted, and I was finding myself feeling way hornier than usual - which was saying a lot.
Last year, my mom appeared on the cover of
Yoga Journal
. Soon afterward, a photographer had approached her to be the principal model for a coffee-table book,
Nude Yoga: The Body As Temple.
The book had just been published last week. And though my mom saw herself as an "Earth Goddess" - a celebrant of nature and the human body and sex - she deemed it inappropriate for her teenage son to view the photos, so she kept the book locked in a decorative silver box sitting beside the toolbox-sized quartz crystal on the altar in her meditation room.
That box seemed to me like a treasure chest, hiding secrets of The Feminine that I badly wanted revealed. I loved my mom. She was the most beautiful woman in the world, and I wanted to see her in all her glory. The lock was a cheap little thing, and on my first try I was able to pick it with a hairpin.
I gawked at the large-format photos of my young mother, completely naked, doing poses like Dancer and Downward-Facing Dog. Her skin was smooth and bronzed, without suntan lines. She had a small scar on the back of her left thigh where it met her butt cheek; I had seen it before when she sunbathed in a thong. A nickel-sized purplish birthmark spotted the inside of her right thigh, near her pussy. I'd not known about that birthmark; it seemed a most intimate discovery.
I found the photos indescribably beautiful, as I knew I would. What I had not been prepared for was the insistent erection that nosed upward in my boxer briefs. One pose, in particular, shocked me with a jolt of sexual arousal. The photographer obviously appreciated the photo's power, because it was the centerfold of the large book, covering two pages. She was lying on her back, folded in half with her lower legs locked behind her head. Her heart-shaped pussy, framed by dark pubic hair, was openly displayed like a centerpiece of artwork. I stared at the photo for minutes, loving the contours of her womanhood.
That's where life comes from
, I told myself with awe.
Life is a miracle.
But my spiritual epiphany was accompanied by a terrible lust, and I retreated to my bedroom to take care of my heavy need.
That happened just yesterday. Now I was standing at the base of the ladder. My mom was wearing a tie-dye minidress, and just by looking up, I was gazing straight at her pink lace bikini panties. Black pubes peeked out from the edges of the leg holes. My cock stiffened in my bluejeans; even my belly felt hard.
I knew that just beyond the thin cotton stretched over her bubble ass, her pussy was exactly
there.
l badly wanted to reach up and touch what I had studied for long minutes in the centerfold. My cock was lightly pulsing.
"Coming down," my mom said. She moved down past me, faintly smelling of sandalwood oil. "Move the ladder, hon. Next feeder."
We moved over to another spot beneath a hanging limb. Up she went. I put my hand on her butt to help her up. Her ass muscles rolled under my hand. My cock pulsed. My hand returned to the ladder rail. She poured sugar water into the feeder that sprouted bright red plastic flowers.
She climbed down. "Nine to go. You okay? Your face is a little flushed."
I didn't say a word, just moved the ladder to the next spot. My hand went back on her ass cheek - her skin was so warm! I gave a squeeze as she climbed.
She froze. I didn't take my hand away.
"Jackson." That's all she said, just my name. I was called Jack until I did something wrong, or she wanted me to carefully listen to her, then I was Jackson.
My hand was on her warm, muscular ass. I didn't move my hand and she didn't move away. My breathing quickened.