A Model Mother

A Model Mother

by Robert Lubrican

zbookstore.com Edition

Copyright 2019 Robert Lubrican

2^nd Edition 2025

License Notes

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Rights to use cover art purchased at istock.com

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Table of Contents

Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven

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Chapter One

I don't know if boys in general are dense as they grow up, but I was. I'm aware that's a pretty sweeping comment, but let me explain and perhaps you'll understand where I'm coming from and judge me less harshly.

What I'm actually referring to is a boy's reflection on his parents. In my case, it was just one parent, my mother. She was a single mother and that's all I ever knew her as. I had no idea who my father was, only that she'd never married him and deflected any questions or conversation concerning him. They say that familiarity breeds contempt. I think that's a little harsh, personally, but familiarity does cause one to view the other person in a bubble. When you're a kid, your mom is just … your mom. Other kids' moms might seem interesting, or exotic, or even hot, but you see your own mother so much that she just fades into the background.

My mom was a real estate agent. I guess she'd been a waitress when I was little, but she had her realtor's license by the time I was five or six. We were poor, but I didn't know the difference. She always found a way to put a roof over our heads and food on the table. It took until I was twelve or thirteen before I did the math and figured out that she'd had me when she was fifteen. It sounds crazy now, but back then, the fifteen-year-olds I knew seemed like grownups to me, so I didn't think a lot about it. Nor did I think about how hard it must have been for her to be pregnant and not even old enough to have a driver's license, yet.

Anyway, she did okay as a realtor. The income wasn't steady, which is why things sometimes got tight, financially speaking. Markets like that fluctuate, so you have to plan for the long haul. I knew she'd had second jobs now and then as I grew up, but I hadn't paid any attention to that, either. When she wasn't there, that gave me time to read comic books, and play on my Atari, which she'd gotten at the Good Will store. Like I said, I was a little dense. Or maybe just self-absorbed.

What I did pay attention to was my mother's opinion on how a man (or boy) should treat a member of the opposite gender. She was death on that. It was her firm opinion that If a man didn't respect women, and their wishes, then he was lower than whale shit. She made it quite clear, even before I entered puberty, that I was to be a gentleman. I was to listen to what a woman said, and always, always, always respect her. It didn't matter whether other people respected a given woman. I was to respect her no matter what. A prostitute has the right to say "No!" just like any other woman. And I was to respect a prostitute, just like any other woman. She didn't actually say that, but I know she would have if it had ever come up in conversation.

I was allowed to date when I turned sixteen. I did some of that, but I was pretty shy. I had to know a girl pretty well before I'd ask her out. It might sound counter-intuitive but by the time I knew a girl that well we were friends and had usually figured out dating each other wouldn't be as fulfilling as just staying friends. I felt the same urges other guys did but the girls I felt them about were mostly either out of my league or already somebody's girlfriend. So I fell into the category of group dating, for the most part. A bunch of us who liked each other went out and did things together. I'd recommend it to others, except that my sexual development took a somewhat odd path.

But that comes later. I managed to get by with usually quick, somewhat violent masturbatory sessions. The objects of my passion at such times were photographs of women who didn't mind if I saw them naked. That was obvious because they had posed for such pictures and let somebody put them in a magazine. I could have whatever fantasy I wanted about them without feeling like I was objectifying them. Men objectifying women was one of my mom's hot-button issues.

Mom managed to save up enough money for me to at least start college. I wanted to be a firefighter, and it just so happened that the vo-tech school in our town offered an associate's degree in fire science, so I was able to save some money by living at home. The rest of the guys in my class were away from home for the first time, horny out of their minds, and finally able to get drunk without a parent finding out, so they were a pretty wild bunch. I'm sure that if I'd lived in the dorm with them, the peer pressure would have caused me to do some of the same stupid things they did, but I was able to get away at night. It helped my study habits, too, which I had failed to build up in high school. It was close enough that I could ride my bike (helpful in the physical fitness arena, which was a big deal in the program) or walk if I had to.

On the other hand, living at home meant I couldn't bring a girl over and despoil her, like my friends bragged they did. Alas, I stayed a virgin. Of course I never told them that.

And that brings me to what started the train of my normal, ordinary, dense life to … well … derail. Or threaten to derail.

In my fourth (last) semester I had to take a humanities class as an elective, to satisfy a fine arts requirement. I chose Art 101 because I figured it would be easy credit. I mean art is subjective, right? So you can't screw it up, right? If my apples and bananas in a still life end up looking like coals and sticks, then I can just spin it and say it's what I intended, right?

It turned out I liked art. An example of my denseness is that I spent years with my nose stuck in a comic book and didn't translate that into, "I like art." I'd never spent any time drawing, but I should have, because I had a talent for it. My teacher even thought so. After class one time she took me aside and asked if I might be interested in working with one of the college art partners. I didn't know what a college art partner was. It turns out that a local art gallery offered training above and beyond what the vo-tech could offer. They called it "investing in art's future." I would later learn that the theory is a little like American Idol, or The Voice, where tens of thousands of people are screened who might never come to the attention of a music producer, but who have raw talent. Not many will make the grade, but the few who do make a lot of money for the people putting on the show. What these art partners did was try to find talent that could make them money.

Anyway, it was part of what was called Art Lab. The owner of the local gallery came in as a 'guest instructor' and ran it in a studio at the college. It was only on Friday nights, which was good, because that wouldn't interfere with my fire science classes. It was three hours long, so students could spend serious uninterrupted time on major projects. Obviously, since it was on Friday night, only the serious people attended. If you were a pussy hound, or an alcoholic-in-the-making, you avoided things like art lab; especially since it didn't county towards your degree. I had taken out a few girls since starting college, but only those I already knew from high school. I didn't really have a lot of self confidence, or at least enough to approach the vivacious, independent girls I saw on campus. Actually, that was one reason I took art as an elective. I figured maybe girls who were into art might be into quiet, polite guys … like me. My point is that I didn't think losing Friday nights to art lab would cut into my social life. It was also a good excuse to turn down a party where, typically, alcohol would flow like a stream, leading to me trying to sneak into the house without my mother knowing I'd been drinking.

"So what do they do there?" I asked.

"They do different things each semester," she said. "I believe they're doing a figure study this semester."

"I guess I could try," I said. "Isn't drawing figures hard?"

"It is for some people, but as you already know, it's formulaic. We've already gone over the basics of that in class. Mrs. Gaskill will be providing advanced instruction. I think you could do it."

"Okay, then," I said. "Where do I go and what should I bring?"

It was a question … and decision … that would alter my life forever.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I arrived at the studio the next Friday night. It was in the basement of Ferrel Hall, a big two-story building, and you had to go down a long, empty hallway to get there. It was a little spooky because it was so quiet. And some the fluorescent lights on the ceiling flickered too. I only saw one other person in the hallway. I would find out that the veterans got there early, because Mrs. Gaskill provided donuts and coffee. She said you should never paint hungry. I found out you should never try to paint with sticky fingers from eating donuts, either, but that's another story.

If I had any doubts, they disappeared when I got my first look at Maureen Gaskill, who owned the Gaskill gallery in town. I'd seen it before. It had a giant stylized G as a logo. You couldn't really tell it was an art gallery from the outside, but of course that mysterious, huge "G" made everybody ask what it was.

Mrs. Gaskill was hot as a pistol. She exuded a raw, but controlled sexuality that made me want to be around her, even though I knew she was married and there was no possibility in the universe that I had any chance with her. She was kind of a real, live, Playboy bunny sort, who was good for uncounted fantasies, but that was all. She examined me when I came in, but I knew better than to stare at her. My mother had taught me better than that. She was practically obsessed about me being a gentleman and treating women with respect.

The atmosphere was different than the regular classroom. There were maybe fifteen other students there, and easels set up all over the room, arranged in a semi-circle around a raised dais that had a love seat on it, upholstered in what looked like red velvet. The easels all had blank canvases on them. There were some half-finished works propped against the legs of a couple of them, and some more leaning against the wall. Apparently last semester's project was drawing a machine of some sort. It looked like maybe an espresso machine, tall and shiny, with lots of other stuff around it, like maybe you'd see in a coffee shop. Also, apparently, lots of people hadn't finished the project before breaking for the holidays.

I was a newbie but nobody treated me like it. Maybe we were all newbies. I didn't know. Everybody seemed friendly and relaxed, which puzzled me a little, because I was worried that people would look at my work and laugh, or something like that. Then again, maybe they were all worried I'd laugh at their work. It turns out artists, at least beginning artists, aren't judgmental at all. Or maybe they're just polite about it. If they think something's awful, they just don't comment on it. If your bananas look like sticks, then they admire the sticks.

When it was time to start, Mrs. Gaskill called for silence. She folded her arms under her breasts. I knew better than to stare at them, too. That didn't mean however, that I wasn't interested.

"We're doing a figure study this semester. Our model will be posing nude, to give us an opportunity to work on the natural lines of the body, as well as skin tone, shading, and so on. You do not have to try for realism, but let's not do any cartoons, okay? It's your choice of media, but don't get too adventurous. If you're not already experienced with paint, then stick to pencil or charcoal, something a little more forgiving and easier to handle. This is going to be special, this semester. I'll tell you more about that, later."

I knew from regular class that most art is done in stages. In the case of doing bodies, whether human or other animals, the first step is getting the basics down while looking at the model; basic pose, form, proportions, and all that. That is done by making circles, ovals, squares and such like. Then you turn those shapes into body parts, adding details. After that you can either fill in additional components on your own, or finish the fine detail by looking at the model again. That's when you do things like create creases in the skin, wrinkles in the clothing, hair texture, shading, and that sort of thing. I wondered if the model would be male or female, but I didn't ask. I'd find out soon enough.

So there I was, also relaxed and ready to get my first extended look at a naked body. I really hoped it would be a female body. I was ready for that.

It turned out the model was female.

What I wasn't ready for, when she came out of the dressing room, dropped her robe, and took up her position on the love seat … was that it would be my mother.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

There are events that you have no control over which sort of crash into you like a tsunami and change the face of your life forever. I had never thought of my mother as a sexual being. She didn't go out on dates and never had while I was growing up. I hadn't thought that was odd. None of my friends' moms went out on dates either. I was aware there was a category of woman labeled MILF but I'd never met one in person (with the possible exception of Maureen Gaskill) and I certainly never thought of my mother as being in that category. I knew she had breasts, because they pushed out her shirts and dresses and all that, but I hadn't seen them since I got nourishment from them. My mother didn't prance around the house naked, or semi-naked. Neither did I. And she was my … mom. I know most of you get what I'm trying to say, here, because most of you out there in reader land have never thought of your mother as a sexual being either. Or at least tried not to.

The problem was that, in those few seconds after I realized who the model was, that tsunami washed over me and everything changed. She had my mother's face, but I was suddenly unable to think of her as being my mother at all. Remember that raw sexuality I mentioned that Mrs. Gaskill has? This model had it too. She wasn't trying to be sexual. It was just unavoidable. First off, there wasn't an ounce of fat on her body. I knew she was thirty-four years old, but she had the body of a twenty-two-year-old gymnast. You couldn't quite see her ribs, but it was close. Her thighs were firm and full, but not heavy. There was no extra flesh on her upper arms, or neck. That neck looked long and thin, perhaps because her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. I'd seen her with a ponytail before, but usually only when she was doing yard work, or something like that. Most of the time her honey-blond hair was down. She kept it long, about at her shoulder blades, because she said it helped her sell houses.

Then there was … the rest of her.

Her breasts didn't look as big as I would have expected them to, had I ever thought I'd see them like this. I don't know anything about cup sizes or all that. All I can say is that they were in perfect proportion to the rest of her. They were distinctly round on the bottoms, but the tops sloped gently down until they suddenly tried to defeat gravity. It actually looked like her nipples might be trying to help pull the tips of her breasts upward. Those nipples looked stiff ... erect, based on pictures I'd seen of other breasts. They were a sort of maroon hue, set on little circles of the same color. Oddly, I was reminded of a ski jump when I looked at them. I'd seen pictures of saggy breasts. These were definitely not saggy breasts.

Her pussy - I guess vulva is the polite term - was the most shocking of all. It was shaved clean of any trace of pubic hair, and the lips looked like some kind of odd fruit that was split open, with the soft, inner-flesh bulging out through the split. Moms don't have shaved pussies. They just don't. Ask any kid if his mother's pussy is shaved and, after he tries to beat you up, he'll say, "No, you fucking pervert!" But this model's pussy was shaved. You understand how it was difficult to perceive her as my mom, right?

Except she obviously was.

All this was easily visible as her position, when she finally settled into it, showed it all off. She lay down on the love seat on her side, with her head supported on one hand, held up by her elbow. An odd cylindrical pillow was under her armpit to take up some of her torso's weight. She kept her lower leg mostly straight, but bent the knee of her top leg, lifting it to open herself to our view. The foot of that leg rested right behind the knee of the straight one. Her top arm was bent, with her wrist lying on her hip and her fingers dangling downwards, as if pointing at her sex. Her eyes seemed to be looking right at us … me. The look on her face was along the lines of, "Finally! I've been waiting so long. Don't you love me enough to come to me when I really need you?"

That tsunami I mentioned?

It was blood rushing into my penis, which created an incredible, rock-hard erection.

For my own mother.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Let's be professional, now," chided Mrs. Gaskill, as though she knew exactly what was going through my traitorous mind.

"Yeah, right," said one of the only two other males in the room.

"I'd kill to look like that," I heard one girl say.

The model - I just couldn't think of her as my mother - lay there still as stone, unruffled by the susurration of soft comments. It was as if she knew she was a Greek goddess and didn't expect anything else.

"I know this is a provocative pose," Mrs. Gaskill went on, "but your work this semester, should you choose to, may be submitted to an exhibition of erotic art scheduled at a major gallery in Phoenix, in April. They're going to reserve space for amateur works, and there will be prizes awarded. The grand prize is an invitation to display future works, which may lead to sales. Need I say more?"

There were murmurs of interest.

"Now, the erotic part should be easy," said Mrs. Gaskill. "Our model will be most helpful with that. I chose her for exactly that quality. It's counter-intuitive, but what you need to concentrate on, initially, is her face. I picked this model because she has the look we want - on her face, I mean - and it's critical that you capture that look. You can put any body on her that you wish, but don't pass up her face.”

"Like I'd change that body," whispered a guy standing next to me.

"Yeah," I replied automatically. There was no way I was going to say, "Dude! That's my mom!" even though that's what I was thinking. I remembered from my childhood some movie with that name, but I'd never seen it.

"Don't fight any passion the model creates in you," said Mrs. Gaskill. "Use it to inform your work. It's all right to be a little horny. Jennifer understands. I think she'd be offended if she didn't create those feelings in you. That is her purpose, after all, to imbue passion in the artwork you're going to create."

I blinked. Mrs. Gaskill was basically saying that Jennifer … my mother … was intending to be sexy … trying to get us all horny - even the women! - and that if she failed in that intent, she'd be disappointed!?

"No problem there," came a soft, feminine voice from off to my left. I looked, but couldn't identify who'd said it.

This was not my mother. Obviously, my mom had a doppelganger, right here in Flagstaff, who we'd never known about. She had to be a doppelganger, because there was no way in the world that my mother would do this.

It was then that the model's eyes drifted onto mine. They widened, and she blinked three times. Then she swallowed and opened her lips.

She looked away, though, and didn't say anything.

In those eyes, though, was the crystal clear message that she recognized me.

Dude! That was my mom!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"What just happened?" Mrs. Gaskill asked. I glanced at her and she was looking at … the model. "You're blushing like a newlywed. I thought you were ready for this."

"Sorry," said the contralto voice of my mother. "I was just thinking of something. I'll settle down and try not to do that again."

"To the contrary, it made you look amazing. It was the frosting on the perfect cake. Whatever it was, think of it as much as you can."

"I can't think about that for three hours," groaned Mom.

"I understand," said Mrs. Gaskill. She turned away and looked at us. "Let's get to work. Posing is difficult and tiring. Let's not make things hard on our model." she barked.

"I've got something hard for her," said the guy standing next to me.

"Don't be a dick," said a girl next to him. "She's probably somebody's mother. She might be almost old enough to be your mother."

The guy, who I would later find out was named Greg, didn't say anything else. He went to an easel and started going through the supplies on a little stand next to it. I did the same, going on autopilot, but I had no idea what I was going to do. That girl (whose name was Susan) was right. The model was somebody's mother - mine!

I honestly don't know how I got through those first three hours. I guess I could have left. I probably should have left. But part of me was no different than everybody else in the room. None of them would voluntarily walk away from getting to see that vision of loveliness. Part of it was that the only movement she made was the slight turning of her head, so that at intervals of maybe two or three minutes, she was facing each artist. When she did that, she looked at the artist as if he or she was the only other person in the room. The connection was palpable.

She didn't flinch away from looking at me. I'm quite sure it would have taken an expert in body language to see any difference in the way she looked at me and the others. That actually helped me though, when she was looking at me, I found it difficult to stare back into her eyes. I tried to work on her facial features when it was my turn to be under the gun of her blatantly sexual gaze. You'd think I knew my own mother's face like I knew the back of my hand, but that wasn't true. I saw things I hadn't paid attention to before. She had high, pronounced cheekbones, for example, that were a complete surprise to me.

If Mrs. Gaskill hadn't been there, I'm not sure I'd have gotten started at all. I was just standing there, pencil in hand, staring at … the model … when she came up beside me.

"Start with the head," she said. "Put it about a third of the way left of the edge of the page and get the basic shape and size you want down. Then the torso. Save the limbs for last. Don't worry about the couch until you like her body. You should already know this."

"Right," I said. We had discussed this in class, with my regular teacher. She probably knew that. I suspected she knew why I was just staring at the naked woman on the dais. I had an instant little fantasy wherein Maureen Gaskill reached to find and grip my iron-hard boner, and then said, "I thought so. You already like her body, don't you, you naughty boy." That's as far as it went, though. She'd shocked me into action, so I reached to put pencil to paper. She wandered on.

Mrs. Gaskill served another purpose, then. As I made the circles, ovals, squares, and so on that blocked out the couch, and body on it, I concentrated on thinking about my guest art teacher. It didn't feel odd, because she could also have posed for Playboy with no problem. I mean I hadn't seen her nude, but a woman who took the time to look like she did probably had a great body, too, right? And I'd thought erotic things about a dozen Playboy playmates. Not only was she a beautiful woman, she was comfortably used to invading people's personal spaces as she taught. She'd gotten close enough to me on several occasions that I could both smell her flowery scent and worry a bit about what she smelled coming from me. She wore a wedding ring, hence my knowledge that some man had already claimed her. That didn't stop me from coming up with this or that fantasy about how circumstances put us together in intimate ways. They were stupid little fantasies. Like, for instance, I'd had one where I imagined her husband was a Navy SEAL (he couldn't possibly be less manly than that) who was gone all the time. She loved him, but she had needs, and I reminded her of him. In another I was a UPS guy and I delivered a bunch of art supplies to her house. She answered the door in a loose robe and insisted I stay there while she inventoried the box. Somehow a wardrobe malfunction developed and she saw the naked (pun intended) interest in my eyes and couldn’t resist me.

As I said, they were stupid, juvenile fantasies. My mother would have been horrified by them, because they objectified Maureen Gaskill out the wazoo. But I was only eighteen months past having been a juvenile, so I didn't feel bad. And thinking of her naked helped me not think of my mother naked. As I stared at my naked mother. This was my first real taste of just how complicated life could get.

Anyway, I did get through it.

At the end of the three hours, the model got up, put her robe back on, and disappeared into a tiny dressing room in one corner of the studio. The rest of us cleaned up and packed up. As members of art lab, we had access to the studio any evening the building was open, and Mrs. Gaskill talked about what we should do between now and next Friday night, but all I could think of was my mom, in that room, putting on panties and a bra and then regular clothes.

I took my time cleaning up. I was still stiff in my pants and my mind was whirling, which may account for the fact that I didn't see her come out of the dressing room and leave. So I was the last one out when I saw her waiting for me in the darkness, by the front doors of the building. My stressed mind supplied another fantasy, one in which she had stood there smiling and shaking hands, like people do with the pastor at the end of the service on Sunday. The students all told her how beautiful she was, or what a good model she was, and how delighted they were to be able to try to capture her sexuality, and she smiled and thanked them. I had to hand it to her. She looked as unruffled as could be.

"Bobby …" she said, in her deep voice.

"What the fuck, Mom?" I gasped.

"Let's talk about this at home," she said. "Do you want a ride?"

I'd ridden my bike that day, but I could come back for it later. It was locked up and would be okay in the rack. Tonight, I wanted to go home with her. I probably wouldn't be safe on the streets anyway. I was way too distracted to pay attention to traffic.

I didn't look around as we stepped out of the building. I was going on autopilot, just doing what she suggested I do. I had all these questions, but I didn't know where to start. Obviously my mother had a secret life I knew nothing about. For years I had read comic books about people with secret identities and hadn't known I was living with one in real life! I was staring at her just trying to make myself believe it was really her. At this point I kind of hoped she was a doppelganger, and that somehow this would all come to make sense.

It was because I was staring at her, that I didn't see three of my classmates coming towards us.

Don, Jerry, and Phil - it wouldn't add anything to the story to supply their last names - were going to be firemen, like me. They'd obviously been drinking and were in high spirits.

"Are we too late?" yelled Phil, alerting me to their presence. "Did we miss her?"

It turned out Don had a friend who somehow knew that the art lab that semester involved a nude study and that the model was "hot", in his words. So they, being constantly horny, had come to a decision while they were drinking, that they needed to go see this hot, nude model.

Panic seized my chest.

"Is that her?" yelled Don. "Fuck, man, she really is hot!"

"Go away!" I screamed, like a little girl.

Yeah I know. I'm embarrassed to admit it, even now. That's all I could come up with.

They stumbled on towards us. It was late, so the noise they were making didn't really draw that much attention, but my panic wasn't about who would see or hear them. It was about what they might see or hear when they got up to us. The last thing I needed was for these guys to find out that my mother posed naked for strangers. It would make an epic story, perhaps the most epic saga the fire science program had ever known, and the instructors told some pretty crazy stories about events that had taken place over the years.

"Are these some of your friends?" asked my mother, her voice as normal as the day is long.

It was like the train wreck the engineer sees coming but can't do anything about. We just stood there, and they kept coming. I felt my mother's hand on my elbow as Jerry surged ahead of the pack and lumbered up to stand, weaving slightly, in front of us.

"Dude!" he sighed, leaning forward slightly to peer at my mother. "She's fuckin' gorgeous!"

"Thank you," said my mother. I could hear it in her voice. She was about to laugh! How could she laugh at a time like this? This was the end of my life, for Pete's sake! I'd have to leave school. I'd have to go somewhere else, choose another profession. This story would end up bouncing around the entire industry!

Don and Phil caught up. Phil was the least drunk, apparently.

"Hey. Do you know her?" he asked. "Ricky told me the art class was painting some nude chick this year. Is this her?"

I understood exactly where that came from. She and I were the only other two people within a hundred yards and she had her hand through the crook in my arm.

"I … ah …" That's it. That's all that came from my throat.

"We're old friends," said my mother.

My head turned of its own volition and I stared at her.

"When I was fifteen and he was a baby, I took care of him," she added.

"You were his fucking babysitter?" blurted Don.

"Something like that," she said, smoothly. "He was such a cute baby. I couldn't help but fall in love with him, back then. And now he's all grown up!"

"This is fucking awesome!" groaned Jerry.

So you got to see him naked, back then," observed Phil, "and now he gets to see you naked." He grinned as if he'd said the most profound thing in centuries.

"Not entirely naked," said my mother. "I was wearing lipstick."

My head swiveled all by itself again. She was smiling, like all this was some cute little game!

"Shit, man," sighed Jerry. "I'd give my right nut to be able to see my babysitter naked."

It suddenly occurred to me that my friends had foul mouths, and were apparently incapable of carrying on a normal, polite conversation.

"Watch your fucking mouth!" I blurted. I was suddenly angry. Somehow, things had flipped. I'd been worried about what they would think when they found out about my mother. Now I was suddenly ashamed of what my mother was finding out about my friends.

"It's been delightful meeting you gentlemen," said Mom. "But Bobby and I have a lot of catching up to do, so if you don't mind, I'm going to steal him away."

"She's going to steal him away," sighed Don.

"She prolly needs to change his diaper!" yelled Jerry, gleefully.

"I have to warn you," said Phil, leaning towards her, drunkenly. "His dick probably isn't much bigger than the last time you saw it." He laughed and then grinned like an idiot. That's because he was an idiot!

"We'll see," said Mom, as if he wasn't an idiot. "Are you boys going to be firemen, too?"

"Fuck yeah, we are," bragged Don.

"Well, then, you three take good care of him. He means a lot to me. I'd be devastated if he got hurt."

"She'd be devastated," sighed Don.

"We could come with you," said Phil, who seemed to sober up for an instant. "I'd love to hear stories about him as a baby."

"No, no," said my mother, squeezing my arm. "I want him all to myself."

"She wants him all to herself," sighed Don. "Fuck me to tears."

I was about to yell at them again when she said, just as cool as you please, "I don't think so. In my experience, drunk men don't make very good lovers."

She tugged my arm and led me towards the parking lot.

"You boys be good, now," she said, over her shoulder.

In our EMT training, we learned that some of the symptoms of shock are: rapid, shallow breathing, dizziness, weakness, anxiety, staring eyes, sweating and confusion. I had all those symptoms as my mother put me in her car and started it up. I didn't need medical treatment, though. I just needed time.

She drove for what seemed like twenty minutes before she said anything. I'm sure it wasn't that long. It's only a ten minute ride to our house from campus. Then again, we didn't go straight home. She stopped at a liquor store on the way.

"You stay here. I'll be right back," she said.

Yes, that's the first thing she said after we left the parking lot. There was no explanation, no motherly expression about how things would be fine and for me not to worry. Instead, the first thing she said to me was to tell me to stay in the car.

I finally had a chance to gather some thoughts. My heart rate slowed and colors looked more saturated, even though it was dark. She was back in almost no time, with the ubiquitous long, tall, brown paper bag clutched in her hand. She put it in the trunk for some reason and then got into the car. She didn't start it, but turned sideways to face me.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't think you'd find out."

"How could I not find out?" I asked.

"You didn’t tell me you were taking art," she pointed out. "You didn't tell me anything about what classes you're in."

"I guess not," I admitted.

"I know boys pull away from their mothers," she said. "It's still painful."

"I'm not trying to pull away from you," I said.

"Really? After tonight you must hate me."

"Mom, I couldn't possibly hate you," I said. Worry stabbed into me. My mom was the only person in the world who I really trusted. She'd taken care of me through thick and thin and I knew it hadn't been easy. She'd sacrificed unimaginably for me and I loved her more than anybody else on Earth.

"Not even after tonight?"

"I was just shocked, that's all," I said. "I'm still trying to understand."

She started the car and backed out. She didn't explain anything.

"Seat belt," I reminded her, after the dinging of the dashboard didn't seem to register.

She got her seat belt fastened and stared straight ahead. Home was only a few minutes away and there was still a strained silence as we got out of the car and went in. She pulled a bottle of sour mash whiskey from the bag and opened it. She took a hit straight from the bottle and I heard her gulp.

This was new. I'd seen my mom have a cocktail now and then. Usually she drank screwdrivers, and then only one, while she watched NCIS or something.

"Can I have some of that?" I asked.

"No," she said, automatically. "You're too young."

"But not too young to see you naked, showing off everything you have?" I said.

She sat down in her recliner and took another hit from the bottle. She was drinking way too much and way too fast.

"You must think I'm a slut," she said.

I almost laughed. Almost. The last person I'd think of as a slut was my mother. As far as I knew, she'd never been on a date in her life. She never brought men home, and never stayed out overnight unless she was at some real estate convention. Even then she called me every night. If she was slutting it up in some hotel, she wouldn't be calling her son while she did it, right?

"You're not a slut," I said.

"I was in high school," she said. "That's why I ended up pregnant with you."

She tipped the bottle up again.

"Mom," I said, gently, "give me the bottle. I'm not going to drink any. You're just going too fast. You'll get sick."

"I just wanted to make some mad money," she moaned. "I didn't think it would hurt anything. I almost chickened out, but Maureen said it would be fine."

"You know Mrs. Gaskill?" I asked, taking the bottle from her fingers. About a third of it was gone. Turns out my mother can knock them back with the best of them!

"We're in Pilates together," she said.

I knew my mom belonged to a gym. She'd gotten a deal because she sold the owner a house. I knew she went religiously, and I'd known it kept her in shape. Now I knew just how much shape it kept her in.

"How about that," I said. It wasn't a question.

"So you don't hate me?"

I got down on my knees in front of her chair.

"Mom, I love you. I'll always love you. Stop worrying about that."

She scooted forward and I got a somewhat awkward hug.

"You're the best thing that ever happened to me," she said. And suddenly she was crying.

If you want to destroy a big, tough fireman, just hug him and cry. We turn into bunny rabbits. Or something. Something soft and weak.

"He was such a bastard," she cried into my neck, "but he gave me you."

I realized she was talking about my father. This was something else new. She never talked about my father. I'd asked her about him several times, and each and every time she replied, "I don't think about him, and I don't talk about him. He will never be in your life."

"What about my father?" I asked, thinking she might be off guard enough to let some kind of information spill.

What I got was a gentle snore in my ear.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I had enough experience with alcohol (unknown to my mother, of course) to realize that a third of a fifth of whiskey on a basically empty stomach is a recipe for … well, for passing out.

She was breathing okay, so I practiced my fireman's carry and slung her over my shoulder. I carried her up to her bedroom, aware of her body pressing against mine. Those perfect breasts I had stared at for hours that night were touching my back. Her perfect ass (I hadn't actually seen that, but I was sure it was as perfect as the rest of her) was cupped in my hand. I gently laid her on her bed and those perfect legs landed more or less straight, feet apart, forming a natural inverted Vee that led to the good parts.

She'd let her hair down and now it was covering her face. I brushed it aside, to make her more comfortable, and I still think today that's what gave me the idea to remove her clothes. I didn't do it to ogle her. At least not exactly. I really did think she'd be more comfortable without them on. Somewhere along the line, though, I guess I got a little creepy. After I got her blouse off, which wasn't too hard because she was as limp as a noodle, I worked at getting her jeans off. They were a lot tighter and in the process of jerking and tugging them, they pulled her panties down with them. Those panties were powder blue and they were bikini style. If you'd have asked me what kind of panties my mother wore, assuming I didn't paste you one for asking, I'd have probably said they were granny panties or something. Seeing these wispy, sexy things, though, didn't seem at all odd anymore. Not after seeing what they covered.

That left her in only her bra. Getting things off of her had been difficult enough that I didn't want to try to put PJs on her. I stood there, thinking, trying to imagine her waking up and discovering she was wearing only her bra. That would be distinctly creepy, at least to me. I picked up the panties, thinking about putting them back on her. Then it occurred to me that I'd seen her naked already. Nobody would be more aware of that than her. So I just took her bra off and tucked her in.

I confess I stared at her for a while before I covered her up. That's the creepy part.

Or maybe the creepy part is that I got another boner while I did it.

At least I went online and stared at some anonymous porn while I jerked off to get rid of the erection.

Chapter Two

I didn't set my alarm because the next morning was a Saturday. When I woke up I smelled bacon. Mom liked to make pancakes, bacon and eggs on Saturdays. It was kind of a tradition. The fact that I smelled that made me feel better, because that meant my mother was not cowering in bed and was at least trying to act normal.

I think the normalcy of that bacon scent is why I did what was normal for me, too. That was to bounce out of bed and, wearing the boxers I already had on, went to get breakfast.

Mom was there, wearing her Oriental kimono robe, which was made of silk and had pictures of cranes on it. Birds, not machines. I'd seen it a hundred times, but this time I realized how short it was, and how well it showed her legs off.

"Where did you get that robe?" I asked, without thinking.

"I sold a woman a house and she gave it to me as a gift," she said. "Good morning."

"Hi," I said, suddenly awkward.

"Thank you for taking care of me last night," she said.

"No problem."

"I'm sorry you had to see me like that."

I decided to try to lighten the mood.

"You're not that hard on the eyes, for an old lady," I said.

She blinked, the spatula dangling from one hand.

"I meant the drinking part," she said.

"Oh." It was awkward again.

She turned back around and finished cooking the bacon. The pancakes were already stacked up, with the eggs next to them.

We ate for a while before either of us spoke again. She stared at me a lot. She kept looking at my shoulders and chest, for some reason. She was the one who broke the silence.

"There is no room in our budget for frivolous things," she said. "Once in a while though, you just need to go buy something … frivolous. The occasional luxury is your reward for doing all the hard stuff. That's why I let Maureen talk me into posing. It pays surprisingly well, as it turns out."

I knew that income in the real estate industry could be spotty. If you didn't sell, you didn't earn. The market wasn't something the agents could control, either. So in a hot market, the smart agent set something aside for the lean months that could come without warning. And, in the lean months, you may have to moonlight sometimes.

"You're a grown woman," I said. "There's nothing wrong with what you did."

"But my baby saw me like that," she said.

"I'm not a baby anymore, Mom," I complained.

"No … you're not," she said, looking at my chest again. "When did you grow up into a big, strong man?"

"When did you turn into a smoking hot woman?" I asked, again, not thinking before I spoke.

"I'm not … that," she said.

"Were you not paying attention when my three ignorant friends accosted us last night?" I asked.

"Them?" she almost sneered. "Typical males. They'd want to jump anything with breasts."

"True," I admitted. "I think you overwhelmed them a little bit."

"Men are so disgusting," she growled.

"That's a little harsh," I said.

"No it's not." She put her fork down and stared at me. "Maybe it's time."

"Time for what?" I asked.

"I've never talked about your father," she said.

Now I put my fork down. I also leaned forward.

"I wanted to wait for the right time," she said. She frowned. "But there never seemed to be a right time. Maybe I should just get it over with."

"Yes," I agreed. I bit my lip. I shouldn't have said anything. She was talking and I should just let her do that without interruption.

"When I finally got to high school," she started, "I was so happy. I wanted to be a cheerleader. It's all I could think about. I had practiced for years, and I made the varsity squad, just like I had dreamed of. A lot of other girls were jealous of me, but all that did was make me proud. It never occurred to me that some of those girls would be so spiteful they might set me up for failure."

I stayed silent. So far, this didn't seem to have anything to do with my father, but she was still talking.

"There was a party," she said. "The quarterback was paying attention to me. He was a senior, and for him to want to dance and talk with a lowly freshman made my head whirl. I didn't intend to drink any alcohol but some girls put Everclear in some fruit juice and I didn't know it."

I had experience with Everclear. Every college kid does. It's a cheap drunk when you mix it with fruit juice, or Kool-Aid or whatever. I've heard it called jungle juice, among other things. It's potent, not only because it's a hundred and ninety proof, but also because you can't taste it and you therefore drink it too fast.

"They got me in a bedroom with the quarterback and helped him take my clothes off. I kept wanting to tell them no, but I couldn’t. And then he said he loved me and he had sex with me. After that he told people we were going together. He wanted to have sex … a lot. I didn't know anything. My parents never talked to me about sex. I thought you had to want to have a baby for that to happen. You've heard people say they're trying to have a baby, right?"

I nodded, still unwilling to stop this unexpected torrent of information.

"When I got pregnant, he walked away. His parents were rich, and they threatened to sue my parents for defamation if I kept insisting their son was the father. He denied it all, of course. He had the balls to claim he was still a virgin."

"Fuck," I muttered. I didn't mean to speak. It just leaked out.

"My parents home-schooled me after that. So I had you, and moved on and never looked back," she said.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that," I said.

She looked at me and blinked a few times, as if she had just realized how much she'd told me.

"Is that why you've never dated?" I guessed. She leaned back in her chair.

"Men hit on me all the time, Bobby. They always have. And they all just want one thing, the same thing your father wanted. All they want is sex. They don't care about what the woman wants. They don't care about how what they do can affect a woman for the rest of her life, even destroy her life."

"Maybe not all men," I said, gently.

"You're not like that, are you Bobby? Please tell me you don't love a girl and then leave her."

"Mom, I'm still a virgin," I said. Nobody could have been more shocked than I was at that admission. Especially since it was to my own mother! Then it occurred to me that my father had claimed to be a virgin, too. "I mean I really am a virgin," I croaked. "I've never done anything with a girl other than kiss a little bit."

She leaned forward, putting her elbows on the table, and cupped her face in her hands.

"What have I done?" she moaned.

"Nothing!" I said, maybe too loudly. "You didn't do anything wrong, Mom."

"I ruined your life," she moaned.

"How?" I asked. "By posing nude for an art class? That didn't ruin my life. If anything, those guys you met last night will have made me a legend by now."

"What?" Her head came up.

"I guarantee you they've spread it around about what a hot babysitter I had, and how I still know her. Even better, now I get to see her naked!" I grinned.

"This isn't funny," she said.

"I know," I said, getting serious again. "But it also hasn't ruined my life. I still love you. I just get to see more of you than the average son does."

"It sounds like you're going to keep coming to class," she said.

"Of course I am," I said.

"Even though it's … me?"

"It's not you," I said. "It's my hot babysitter … remember?"

She leaned back again and stared at me.

"The average kid doesn't put his drunk babysitter to bed," she said.

"Well … I owed you," I said.

"I was naked when I woke up this morning," she pointed out.

"I thought you'd sleep more comfortably that way," I said.

"And you'd already seen me without a stitch on."

"True."

"And it wasn't … weird?"

"It was definitely weird," I said. "But not because of anything you did."

She just stared at me.

"You are a man, now," she said.

"I try," I joked.