I Critique Mum

There is titillating nudity tension in an implied incest setting, but no sex, in this story. If you are looking for caterwauling and torrenting sex, this is not for you.

***

I am David. We were a family of four. We lived in the English south coast.

At the time when this happened, I was twenty-two. I was in the publishing business.

Mum was then fifty. Being in the Tech sector, she was IT savvy. Although age had stealthily crept up on her over the years, she still looked more than appealing in a lite Rubenesque way.

Dad was fifty-five. He ran a small successful business.

My elder brother was twenty-five. He was a Humanities lecturer in the local college. Related to his academic interest, he ran a freelance photography business providing events photography services and such.

On one occasion, my laptop-PC could not be booted-up. I had an immovable work deadline to meet that night. Shit happens!

Mum assessed my PC. She concluded that the hard disk had crashed. Mum setup her PC for my use. I laboured through the night.

At 4am, I emailed my work to my editor. I was done. I felt tired. And yet, I could not will myself to sleep. This was probably due to my having stared down at the glare of the PC screen for a blast of eight straight hours.

Instinctively, my PC mouse drifted to mum's photo folders. I traipsed fleetingly through the collection. The folder names were typical. Work. Admin. Finance. Family. Events. Travel. Fashion. "Intime" piqued my interest. In time for what?

I clicked.

Mum.

Nude.

Fifty shades.

Various poses and compositions.

My first instinct was to close the window, get outta there quicktime, shutdown the PC, and get to bed. Somehow, an invisible force appropriated my being into slavish mindless submission. I just couldn't not go down that rabbit hole.

I maximized the window, and initiated the slide show. When a particular photo buzzed me a warm tingle, if not a tremor, I was moved to capture the image on my cellphone camera.

Click.

The photos were artfully composed. Collectively, they carried an unlikely aura of professionally rendered, and yet, amateurish homey casual charm. Think the best taken, artistically-nuanced classy nude photos in amateur wives websites that showcase mature allure in good taste. In the photos which featured mum's nipples, and her mons pubis, her feminine bits were revealed tastefully without any hint of lewdness. Show, but tell subtly. Sublime.

It was at the crack of a new dawn when I reclaimed a semblance of my former self. I shutdown mum's PC. I fell into deep coma sleep.

***

The haze lifted.

I was on a pedestal, installed at some kind of town square. A piazza. A surge of people of many hues swirling, milling around the place, ascertaining this and that.

I couldn't move. An imposing force had rendered me immobile. But, I was acutely sentient. An odd sensation. Metaphysical. I became more self-aware. I was both subject and object in the same dimension of being.

I was David. Not the custom me I knew too well, but Michelangelo's David. That of Florence, Italy. Regally proud and yet vulnerably naked.

It was all rather Kafkaesque.

A lady in a breezy pastel summer dress drifted off the swarm of humanity, and stood alone before me. She studied me for a time. Parsed my every contour. Her eyes traced my muscles and sinews, once over, and then again.

She reached out to hold my manhood as if taking its measure. She was pedantic about the task. Gently, she cradled my sac like treasured artifacts. I was of marble. And yet, I sensed the warmth of her hand.

She peeked up coyly, tilting her sunhat a little to take me in. The dusting of freckles at her cleavage thinned out. I could see her face now.

"Mum!" I cried in silence.

A smirk.

***

Fast forward. Three days later.

I had a quiet breakfast moment with mum at the cliff edge of our garden, overlooking a moor of sea.

It was the weekend. Dad was on business travel. My brother was on a field trip with his students.

This was our banter.

Mum: Did you enjoy it?

Me: Huh? Enjoy what?

Mum: Me!

I gazed deep into her smoky gray eyes. I saw clarity. She knew. In the uncanny way that mums knew.

Me: I'm so sorry! I'm a wretch. A creep. You had kindly helped me with your PC, and I violated your trust and privacy. I don't have a good reason for what I did. I'm so ashamed.

There was a deafening pall of silence. The cosmos went on pause.

Mum: What were your first instincts when you opened the folder? Tell me... I want to understand what possessed you to do what you did.

Me: The luring pull of the forbidden. I guess my moral fence just caved in to the beckoning pull of the taboo. This is lame. But, it's the truth.

Mum (reflecting): Thank you for being so honest with me. You would've pissed me off royally if you had danced around in a mush of bullshit. Did it ever cross your mind to tell me about this? To own up?

Me: Honestly, no. It's counterintuitively difficult to do.

Mum: I can understand that... Do you look at me differently now, with the benefit of your new insights?

Me (reflectively): As a mum, no. As a woman, to be honest, yes. I can't help it.

Mum: And how do you reconcile that?

I paused, and pondered over the question. It was an apt philosophical question. A Big Question. Its answer would illuminate the way forward for us. I raised my eyebrows and looked wise.

Me: I'm not sure if there is anything to reconcile. You were my mum, and a woman, before I viewed your pictures. You're still my mum, and still a woman now. I think the only difference is that I now have a heightened appreciation of you, the woman.

Mum: You're too glib smart for your own good. Heightened appreciation, huh? I'm sure...

Me: I didn't mean to be cute.

Mum: I know. I've a cruel subterranean streak. I wanted to see you squirm some. Hmmm... the mum/woman dualism. You know, you're quite a philosopher.

Me (pondering philosophically): No. I'm no philosopher.

Mum: Let me have a think about what we've discussed. A lot to process. And I'm sure for you too.

***

The phenomenology of time. A week passed.

Mum and I again had our breakfast moment in the weekend tranquility of our garden. The passing of time had taken the edge off the nude photos matter a bit. But, that tension would emerge again shortly.

Mum: I mulled over our last conversation. Particularly the pseudo philosophical mum/woman dualism bit which resonated, not dissonantly, with my intuitions. If we extend the idea, there is correspondingly the son/man dimension. And if we analyze this at another level, there are the combinations of son-mum, son-woman, mum-man, man-woman. Then, stir in social conditioning juxtaposed against visceral impulses. An unwieldy simmering tensioned matrix brew.

Me: Wow! You've really rationalised this to a T. The pragmatic technologist in you.

Mum: I reckon we need closure to this matter, for us to move on. I guess you have stated your position with birdsong clarity. You must be wanting to hear from me. So, here goes. What happened happened. It was what it was. Nobody planned it. Nothing untoward happened. It's not like you saw me nude in rippling flesh. You saw an artful rendition of me. The man-woman impulses of the moment overwhelmed you. And I dare say the man-mum part fanned the embers to high glow. So, I can appreciate the heightened state you found yourself in. I value your honestly on this matter. Please maintain that always. I'm cool!

Me (relieved): Thanks mum for your understanding.

Mum (questioning look): Is there anything else I should know?

Instinctively, I looked away from mum. Mum read me like an open nursery school book. She wasn't sure, but now, she knew. A probing rhetorical question that had hit home.

Me (sheepishly): I don't know what to say. I took photos of some the images displayed on the PC monitor with my cellphone camera. I just couldn't help it. I will delete them now.

I took out my cellphone. I navigated to the photo album. There were ten photos in the stash. I hadn't rationed myself to ten. It just so happened that these were the ones which gave me the most compelling quivers. And they were the best representations of my most private imaginations of mum. I passed my cellphone to mum.

Me: Here. You delete the album. And then, empty the trash.

Mum took my cellphone. She surprised me. Instead of promptly deleting the album in a fit of disgust, she appeared to be viewing the photos. Curiously, she edged next to me, and positioned the cellphone screen before both our eyes. She gestured the slide show along. I could sense mum lightening up. There was no awkwardness in our viewing her nude photos with her sitting in the flesh, thigh-to-thigh with me.

Mum: The image quality is poor.

Me (sheepishly with guarded mirth): Well, desperados can't be choosers. And maybe my hands were shuddering.

Mum (pouting exaggeratedly): Only ten picks? That's rather economical on a base of fifty. Is your old mum so harrowing to look at?

I sensed a sea change in mum's demeanor. I perceived that she was angling for feminine validation. I would go along with this course.

Me: Like you observed earlier, it was difficult for me to take quality photos on the PC monitor. So, these ten were my picks under the less than ideal circumstances. If you must know, these compositions gave me the most vigorous of twitches.

Mum (in a mischievous mood): Twitches huh? So, a collection of mere pixels can move body and soul. That compelling, huh?

Me (stoically): That's about right.

Mum (in a reflective mood):

If this is not awkward for you, and it's not awkward for me, I would like to review the ten photos with you. I would like to hear from you why you picked them. A liberating catharsis of sorts. Your dad gives me feedback on my body. But, your dad is not the most aesthetically sentient of our species, a certified philistine, and he has seen my body since my twenties, so I take his comments with a lavish spatula of salt. I do get feedback from my sis and girlfriends, but that is from the female perspective. You're a young man with a discerning fresh eye. Your feedback will be useful input to my conservation project.

Me: So, are we talking son-mum, or son-woman or man-woman worldview here?

Mum pondered.

Mum: For this to be useful for my purpose, I guess it has to be man-woman. Be candid. Be brutally honest. But, no lewd or lusty comments, please. Let's keep this on a civil aesthetic plane. And you're a red-blooded young man. If you get a buzz from this, I will understand. Actually, it would be flattering, and a validation of sorts. Just go with the flow.

Me: I hope it doesn't come to flow!

Mum: Don't get ahead of yourself.

Me: Hmmm... not just yet, working on it, he he!

I moved my hand to take my cellphone from mum. And that was when I had my second surprise of the morning.

Mum: Oh no! We are not going to strain our eyes on these abysmal quality images on your small cellphone screen. They don't do justice to who I am. If we have to do this, I want to do it properly.

Mum beetled to her bedroom. Her pert rump orbs marched rhythmically, clenched, released, clenched, released, with an undulating strut that would dislocate the hip of any person except top-flight runway models. I observed her movements till her last sway, and took her sensual measure. My heart leapt out of my chest in anticipation.

But, it was not to be. Mum emerged with her laptop-PC. She fired up her PC on the lounge coffee table. We were seated on the sofa. The thumbnails of her fifty photos sprinkled on the screen like scintillating stars illuminating the wondrous night sky. Never in my wildest dreams, and I've had a few in recent history, did I imagine that I would get a second viewing of this photo suite. And with the spasming live model right next to me to augment reality.

Mum (grinning coquettishly): Not expecting this full-feature rerun, huh?

Me (cheekily): No. I'm just so happy to be privileged to contribute to this body of work.

Mum (smiling, and then winked): I'm sure... We'll slide show through the fifty photos, and cross-reference them to your cellphone photos. You'll critique each of the ten as we navigate through.

I summarily denounced my atheism, and prayed to the heavens that one of the ten would be photo number fifty in the album. Perversely, as if plumbing and reading the murky depths of my mind, mum pivoted to me with a devilish grin.

Mum (smirking): If you're lucky, one of your ten picks may be photo number fifty in the album.

Me (emboldened): It has crossed my mind. But, you know, my luck is in your hands. I think they call it Lady Luck.

Mum (sagely): We'll see...

The slide show began. And just as we started, mum stopped dramatically.

Mum: We can't do this!

My heart dropped. Mum had come to her motherly senses.

Mum cabled up her PC to the widescreen TV monitor.

Mum: No sense in squinting our eyes on the PC screen when we can view this in high-definition cinematic splendor. Bring every pixel to the fore.

Me (jocularly): Bring on the popcorn!

And that was my third surprise of the morning.

Initially, we struggled somewhat to match the photos because some of the compositions were not so different from one another. The pose variations were subtle. I didn't mind. Mum didn't appear to mind. We had time. We matched the first of the ten.

***

Photo number one.

Mum: Here we go. Numero uno. Perversely, we start at the end. A perspective of my back.

Me (playfully): I spy with my little eye. I spy an enticing expanse of lush form, artfully defined by soft curved contours. A luscious pear shape whose appeal is nailed down by two sacral dimples.

Mum: My behind?

Me: Your buttocks are curvy without being assertive. Each orb is well-defined, carrying an identity and personality in its own right. A woman's tail, curvaceous, and a little longish. In contrast to a singular mass of blubber borne by most ladies of your age range. And at the other end of the spectrum, in contrast to the crass inflated bubble butts of porn princesses.

Mum: But, you're so biased.

Me: No buts, mum.

Mum decided not to rebut me, and moved on.

Mum: And my legs?

Me: Ah! Know that I am a leg man. A connoisseur. And at another level, I'm particularly enamoured of thighs. An aficionado.

Mum (unconsciously stroking her right thigh): Why the obsession with thighs?

Me: Thighs are the largest muscles on human bodies. They are powerful. They are also quite close to our genitals. For a woman, the curvature of her body is tied to her thighs. Too much thigh makes a pear shape, which may not be as attractive. Too little thigh may be too manly of a figure for some.

Mum: Wow, you're serious...

Me: And thighs fulfill a communication purpose. When a man places his hand on a woman's thigh, it is a gesture of intimacy that he feels between them. It is a pleasant and convenient place to touch when sitting on a sofa next to each other.

I placed and pressed my hand over mum's dainty hand. I spread out my fingers, tips touching her thigh. Mum heard my male breath. Mum moved her hand, thus moving mine too.

Mum: My Day of Judgement! I can't wait. So, tell me.

Me (hand on chin in scholarly contemplation): Well-turned legs. Slim and sylphy. I love the lite muscle tone in your thighs. Gentle arcs of calves round out a pair of beautiful legs. Not a blemish. Your legs flare up nicely to well-formed hips.

Mum (coyly): Señor Aficionado, please, please, tell me more about my thighs.

Me: They tick all the boxes. Smooth. Soft muscle definition. Nothing is hotter than lean, defined muscles shaping a woman's thigh. Your thighs are gorgeous with chiseled definition at the quadriceps. But, this I can't tell from a static photo. The biggest appeal for me is the way the muscles ripple gently when a woman is walking towards me.

Mum extended her legs. She posed them this way and that, flexing, as if to validate my critique. Her skirt rode up to her upper thigh. She heard my male sigh. She seemed satisfied. Affirmed.

Mum: Now, let's get down to business. Tell me about my flabs and sags.

Me: Subtle hints of flab and sag. They are there for sure. But, they defy specific identification. They blend seamlessly into your total torso form, to conjure a sexy image whole.

Mum: Hmm... Looks like I raised a diplomat. And an inveterate liar. And I love, love you for that.

Me: Seriously, if you are honed lean and mean, you'll carry the devastating look of sculpted machinery. The kind you see in plasticky impossibly perfect models, or female body builders. The kind of unsatisfying varnished image where you parse photoshop from reality.

Mum: Give me one word.

Me: Comely

Mum: Are you describing yourself or me?

Mum appeared particularly pleased that I uttered the magic word spontaneously.

Me: And mum, since you mentioned earlier about being OK if I get a buzz, just so you know, I am deeply aroused by this. I don't know if it's just this photo, or it's the sensual aggregate of this imagery, my sitting next to you the model in the flesh, and then, our discussing your most intimate features. There, I said it!

Mum: I'm flattered that my venerable body can still stir senses in a strapping young man. Pace yourself. This is only the first photo. And it features only my back.

***

Photo number two.

Mum: A profile shot.

Me: A study of balance.

Mum: Balance? But, this is a profile, not a frontal shot?

Me: Let's begin with biology.

On the upper half of the body, there are these roundish protrusions that owing to their weight, exert an uncomfortable force straining the lumbosacral joint. The body's midpoint separates the top half from the bottom half. There must be some sort of counterbalance to keep the lower half in line with the upper, to maintain a consistent center of gravity. So, the larger more rounded bumps on the back side of the female serve as a counterbalance. When the front half is balanced by the back half, ooh la la, such a wonderful aesthetic prize.

Mum: Wow!

Me: There's more.

Mum: There is?

Me: Less obviously, the long forward gentle curve of the thighs, yet another sensuous French Curve, is counterbalanced by the shape of the calf going the other way.

Mum: Your verdict on your august mum?

Me: It's best I illustrate this.

I got up to the TV screen. Mum was facing left in the image.

I pointed at mum's nape of neck. I slowly traced an S-curve from her breasts to her hips, and then crossing over, to her arc of buttocks.

Me: A delightful S. Now you know why a buttock is called an ass.

Mum: We learn something new everyday.

Next, I pointed at her hip, traced the profile outline down her thigh, to her ankle, and then rounded up the arc of her calf.

Me: Clean lines. Sleek and very sexy, particularly behind the knees.

***

Photo number three.

Full frontal. Mum perched totteringly on fuck-me heels.

Medium top. A hint of sag, and soft rise of belly added interest to her contours. Her legs were together, in a defensive coy posture. An artful delicate caesarean section cut filament line ran just above her mound.

Mum's mound, bracketed by womanly hips, was pristine. Nary a hint of pencil shading. An Alpine ski slope. It was unclear if she was mown, or this was her normal state.

Her most feminine secret was hushed low, under the curve of her mons pubis. A naughty peek intimation of cleft was all that was evident. You almost had to look for it.

Mum: Our first order of business of the day. We front reality.

Me: Mum, you're a sight to behold!

Mum: Tell me more...

Me: Mum, you're an attractive woman. There is a touch of maturity in your figure, nicely rounded, but firm. Neither overweight nor skinny. You show signs of taking care of yourself without being obsessive over it.