Fast Times in the Summer of '86

She met my shit-eating grin with the chariest of expressions. "Funny, she didn't tell me about that. Mom and I are big gossips with each other. But, I guess she doesn't tell me everything that goes on in her life." She relaxed her shoulders. "Anyway, so far, you've shown me that you are that someone, a successful guy, one that just made beautiful love to me. Damn good-looking besides. But most important, someone I can trust."

If she only knew, I thought, feeling somewhat like an imposter myself, not the man of virtue I once claimed to be. My rush to grab the gusto had got the best of me. In fact, it was still getting the best of me because Madelyn wanted more and, truth to tell, so did I.

When I told one of my cycling buddies about the situation, he laughed. "Poor Kerry, we should all have your problem," he said. "Maybe you can do them both. At the same time." He was only half-kidding. No matter, the idea of a threesome never appealed to me. Tiffany would have never gone for it and Madelyn, middle-age sexpot notwithstanding, didn't seem the type.

After my "first time" with Tiffany, Madelyn called, and what she said confirmed that she and Tiffany did indeed trade gossip. "Tiffany raved about what a great lover you are," she said. "Of course, I already knew that. Just save some of that energy for me," she added with a laugh.

Things were getting curiouser and curiouser. I felt like Kerry in Wonderland, fallen into a rabbit hole of my own making. Madelyn appeared happy that her daughter had found someone "nice," yet had no qualms about sharing, so long as Tiffany didn't know. "What she doesn't know won't hurt her," she told me. She scoffed at the notion that what we were doing was tantamount to betrayal. "As I've said, I'm not trying to steal you away from her," she insisted. "Like the song goes, 'girls just want to have fun.' And when you hump your young, athletic body into mine, you, Kerry Couture, make me feel like a young girl again." Such were our different perspectives. For me, it was Madelyn's older woman, middle-age sexiness that drew me to her, while she grooved on my youth, and all that came with it.

As July spilled into August, I continued to perform this crazy, mom-daughter juggling act, dating Tiffany and banging her mom in between. Tiffany had become my "conventional" girlfriend. We'd see movies like Top Gun, meet for romantic, candlelight dinners, ride our bikes (she was dropping weight and improving her climbing ability), double-date and sometimes make love late at night on a blanket in a remote part of the region.

With Madelyn, it was pure lust with a capital L. As she had said, I fulfilled her in ways that Frank didn't. She not only liked me for what I did for her in bed, but also because of what I did for Tiffany. "She's happier than I've seen her in quite a while," she said. My bedroom was our only venue for our trysts. She'd "sneak" in when Tiffany was someplace else. She never did stay overnight, something we both knew was unworkable given my involvement with Tiffany.

I felt like the proverbial spoiled kid in a candy shop, free to sample what he wanted, as much as he wanted. But, as we all come to realize, too much of a good thing isn't such as good thing. Tiffany and I were getting closer. Words of love, soft and tender, WILL win a girl's heart (sorry Mama Cass), and a guy's heart as well, as said words from Tiffany did. She had become my main squeeze, my only squeeze, save for those romps in the sack with her mom. However, those romps, while still fun and exciting, began to drain me emotionally. It was time to climb out of that rabbit hole, I decided.

Madelyn took it well when I told her. "I understand," she said. "I can see how close you and Tiff have become. If we carried on much longer, she'd find out. She'd be deeply hurt and our mom-daughter relationship would suffer."

Little did Madelyn know. Little did I know that Tiffany wasn't totally blind to the affair. She told me during our beach trip to Ocean City in late August. We were relaxing on our chaise lounges, enjoying the nice weather, talking about how far we'd come as a couple since that day she asked me to tru her wheel. Then, out of the blue, she said, "If I didn't love you so much, I'd have ended things weeks ago."

"Huh?" is all I could think to say.

She pulled down the strap of her black one-piece to check her tan line, then did a half turn on her lounge to face me. "Look, all I want to know is, is it over?"

At that point, I had no idea what she meant. "Is what over?"

"The affair between you and my mom. Or are you going to deny it."

My jaw dropped. "Um, how did you--"

"Find out? I didn't. I just suspected it and you just confirmed it. You know, Kerry, you really ought to change your bedding between women. I know what my mom smells like."

Oh boy. Momentarily, words failed me. I just looked at her, looked at the few freckles on her lovely face, her adorable turned-up nose, the beads of sweat on her forehead and the tears that began to fall from her beautiful but sad eyes. Telling her I was sorry, I knew, wouldn't cut it, would ring hollow because getting "caught" was the only thing I was sorry about. Finally, I said, "Yes, it's over. And there are no other women. Did you confront your mom?"

She reached for a tissue and blew her nose. "No, not yet, but you can bet your ass that I'm going to. I wanted to confront you first. I knew she had sexual needs that Frank couldn't provide. I just never thought she'd pick one of my boyfriends to provide those needs."

I gazed out toward the ocean's hazy horizon, struggling to say something that could make things better. Finally, I did apologize for hurting her. "I was a jerk," I said. "I know it might be impossible for you to ever trust me again."

She wiped her eyes. "It won't be easy, that's for sure. I wasn't going to say anything until we got back home because I didn't want to spoil this trip. But when the conversation turned to our relationship, I couldn't hold it in any longer."

I told her I loved her. "I know you must find that hard to believe."

She shook her head. "No, I can feel that you do. And I also know that guys your age find my mom hot. But I'm still hurt and yes, it will take some time before I can trust you again, if ever. My mom, well, she's a different story. I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with her. She crossed that line that I thought she'd never cross."

No surprise, this put a huge damper on our beach trip. Nor were things ever the same between us when we returned home. We continued to date into the fall. But Tiffany could never reconcile what happened, nor could she fully trust me. We broke up over the Thanksgiving weekend. She did find a way to forgive her mom. "We're joined at the hip," she told me. "She'll always be my mom, my one and only. I can always get another boyfriend." Even so, the tension between them prompted Tiffany to get an apartment with two of her girlfriends that January. Not long after that, Madelyn sold her house and moved.

As for me, I found a new love the following year and married her on the Saturday before the Sunday that my hero, Greg LeMond, won the 1989 Tour De France by a margin of eight seconds, the closest margin to this day. A couple years later, we moved from Glen Keith Village into a single-home suburban community. We're still married, with two grown boys.

On occasion, my travels take me past my old house. And when they do, my memory forms snapshots of that outrageously wild time, in that outrageously wild summer of 1986.