Judgement on Mum and Young Lover

[Set in Australia]

Chapter 1

"Joss (Jocelyn), it's grave news, it's mum," Sharon wailed into her phone, filling her sister with dread.

Joss Hooper (54), a lawyer, was the cautious one of the family and waited for Sharon to announce just how grave was 'grave'.

In her early twenties, a former widely acclaimed go-go Sydney club dancer, Sharon eventually caught the eye of a divorced surgeon who financed her, as his mistress (before later discarding her) into establishing a successful modern dance academy. Joss was long-used to her emotionally-driven younger sister (50) grossly exaggerating the introduction when delivering a big announcement, dressing it with non-factual claptrap.

At seventy-seven, many surviving women of their mother's age might have one foot almost in the grave, but Kit (Catherine) Hooper, was as tough as a worn-out rooster and thus would be likely to string out her ultimate demise.

Sharon sobbed, "Mum has hinted she has a boyfriend and says it's only fair that we should know ahead of the spread of rumours."

"What!"

"Your mother, um our mother, aged eighty, has a fucking boyfriend."

Joss said sternly, "Our mother never has used the F-word out aloud in her entire life."

"Sorry Joss, it's just that I'm hugely stressed at the thought of all my friends saying our mum is being tailed by some codger who's not even an old codger."

"What! Sharon please, slow down. Your mind is in danger of running too far ahead of your mouth. I mean, a codger being a young codger, it doesn't make sense. By definition, a codger is a disrespectful word from an old man. So how old is our mum's boyfriend with mum who incidentally is only seventy-seven, not eighty?"

"He's forty-nine."

"For heaven's sake, he can't be."

"Mum introduced him to me before they left for a matinee session at one of the cinemas only an hour ago. I asked him how old he was and he said forty-nine. In shock, as I suspected he was lying about his age, I sneered truly and he replied, "Fair dinkum." Mum scowled at me and said, "Yes, Sharon. He's the same age as you and 12 years younger that Eric my oldest child."

Joss snarled, "For goodness sake, Sharon. And you let mum go out with him, you stupid clot."

"Stop calling me a clot and stop using the f-word in every breath Jess. For all your legal training and expensive body building, you weren't brave enough to deal with mum whether you confronted her for behaving irrationally. She'd threatened to shut you down by slamming your teeth down your throat and, oh boy, did you back-pedal and frantically."

"Okay Sharon, I apologise and we both know our mum is a tough old rooster. We know when mum is cross, she gets really mad, acting if she her father was a Staffordshire Bull Terrier. What do the boys say about their mum has a toy...?"

"Joss, stop!" Sharon yelled. "Mom told me to hint to you that she has a boyfriend who is, quote, a little younger than I am, ends quote, but if I and especially you were to even whisper that he was her Toy Boy, she would, quote, come after you and kill you for being so demeaning, unquote."

"Being what?"

"She said so demeaning. You ought to know what that means."

"Of course, I know what it means but I was unaware that our mother even knew the existence of such a word."

"Randy probably..."

"For fuck sake, who?"

"Mum's boyfriend told me to call him Randy because he doesn't acknowledge his given name of Andrew and regards Andy as being a totally wet diminutive for Andrew."

"Omigod."

"What, Joss?"

"From what you've just told me, I believe that this mother-fucker will be a force reckon with. Call your brothers and youngest sister to a compulsory family conference at Percival's Riverside Tavern tomorrow, Saturday, at 11.00 and that I command our brothers must attend or otherwise they face being disconnected from their manhood."

"Okay, but um, what does to be disconnected from their manhood mean?"

"You don't have to know darling. It just means every male's secret nightmare."

"Omigod, you mean attend or risk having their nuts nailed to the ancient wailing post outside the Riverside Tavern. But why chose that foul and sleazy place?"

"Tell the boys why this emergency meeting is being called and the venue has been chosen because a starry-eyed mother-fucker would never take his wench to such a demeaning place to accidentally stumble across our secret meeting. You have my permission to use that explanation in your message to our brothers."

"Sharon, I know that this foul family crisis will have upset you greatly but we rely on you to stand firm as our sole representative on the spot. Stand strong, darling and book a meeting room at that dump. I've already texted my PA to arrange a flight home for me in the morning as aircraft out of Sydney on Friday evening will be all over-booked as everyone goes home for the weekend. I suppose this guy is built like an Ox and has a penis a foot long?"

"Dunno, Joss but a foot long could be a fair guess. However, the guy has a weak chin, sloping shoulders and a skinny arse. With you being the consummate female shagger, you probably could send him to his grave simply by seducing him to engage with him in a one-night stand."

"Oh darling, have kind thoughts about your oldest sibling. Bye for now. Keep in touch"

Joss finished the call, licking her lips, and recalling spending the night before the final exams at law school when she took her two main male rivals competing with her to be top graduate of their class, to bed for 'a relaxing evening' on the eve of the finals.

During that all-night session, she admitted two of her older brother's hooker-quality former girlfriends into the room that had cost her a performance fee of 250 dollars each.

The three females over-stimulated both males into exhaustion to such an extent that they sat their final two papers with huge memory deficiencies and depressed alertness. Their marks were merely average, dropping them to only overall average performance rating whereas Joss's marks as usual, remained top rate.

The day after the exams, those guys, although still gaining the minimum marks required to pass easily, threatened to complain about Joss's under-hand tactics. But she calmed them by saying such sensational disclosure could shame their mothers to death and she added icing to the cake by selling them for 300 dollars each the contact details of those two masked women.

Sure, it amounted to unethical behaviour on her part, but she reasoned all good law students needed to obtain some experience in the dirty side to law and so graduated top of her class with her conscience clear.

In accepting one of the 11 recruitment offers that came her way, Joss decided to embark on a middle-of-the-road pathway in law to avoid her somewhat tainted but as yet still hidden shady past over that incident in burning off her two hottest competitors for final law school honours. Against strong advice for someone like her dripping with potential, she decided to specialize in divorce law.

She figured by staying away from her huge interest in criminal law, thereby missing out on the opportunity of being selected for engaging in criminal or international litigation that might eventually place her under the spotlight, if her performance was good enough, avoided having her past expertly screened to ensure no blemishes existed should she be invited to ascend to the bench (become a top-level Judge).

That proved to be a good move, because she was creaming in billings from her work without having to work body and soul for unrelenting clients. In divorce cases that ended up before judges, both male and female judges became interest in her appearances before them to see just how vicious and thorough she'd be in ripping her client's outgoing partner to shreds backed by weighty evidence she and her team had managed to scrape together. She soon gained the nickname of being called the 'smiling assassin'.

* * *

Joss arrived in Brisbane next morning, stepping from the cab at the posh hotel where she was booked to stay one night, with a smile that mirrored bad news for a certain mother-fucker because it mirrored a death-look of an assassin.

Later in the morning, Joss took a cab to a riverside 'drinking hole' on the smelly side of upper Brisbane River where some of the scum of the city habitually gathered to plan scurrilous misdeeds that the more upright citizens would be unable to imagine that could ever be considered even by criminals. But such misdeeds had to be planned from somewhere.

Sharon had texted Joss that everyone would be there at 11.00 and she should ask for directions to the Cellar Number 5 meeting room.

At that repulsive venue, a sweating guy in a buttoned dark-suit two sizes for him accosted Joss as she crossed the threshold and he sniffed and said, "How much for a 30-minute romp in the female toilets, baby?"

"I'm Kit Cooper's legal rep."

"Who the fuck is Kit Cooper?"

"She's perhaps better known as Princess Exterminator," Joss said inventively.

"Oh, crikey dick, apologies milady. Please forget I even spoke to you."

"Get lost, buster and I suggest you get tested for HIV. Your face especially around the eyes suggests you are infected."

The guy turned purple and faded out of sight at speed.

Smiling, being expert at telling her client's legal opponents exactly what they didn't wish to hear, Joss, wearing crumpled jeans and a blue sweater with the logo 'Bit Tits' covering her small boobs, opened the door of Cellar Number 5 Meeting Room and entered.

As expected, her siblings were dressed suitable for going shopping in Queen Street Mall. She sighed, thinking why expect her upright siblings to know how to dress inconspicuously for such a venue where they had gathered?

Chapter 2

Her siblings chorused "Joss!" as if she were the Second Coming.

For a couple of seconds Joss was puzzled, wondering why the older ones were not already attempting to assert the leadership role.

And then she realized, none of them had a clue of how to deal with this undesirable family interloper short of beheading him or even more likely, running him down driving a stolen car while wearing gloves and a mask and newly purchased overalls and rapidly biodegradable canvas footwear.

"Hi, dear ones, lovely to see you all again," she said, adopting her best family smile. "We need to grab this farting-arse cur by the short and curlies (male pubic hair) and rotate our collective hand sharply and excruciatingly."

They all nodded approvingly as if thinking the problem had been solved already.

"Okay, that being so, how do we accomplish that?"

She was faced by four blank stares.

She picked on the oldest and the long-time bully of the family, Nicholas (61) a professional wealth consultant.

"Nick, as head of the family after Kit, what say you?"

"I say you have made a wonderful suggestion."

"And how do you suggest we accomplish it?"

"Joss, err, I need a little more time to come up with a bullet-proof answer,"

"I see," said Joss. "You are thinking of shooting him dead?"

"Christ no," Nick yelped. "That would be murder wouldn't it?"

"Yes. Continue with your problem-solving thinking. Now you Sharon?"

"My head is empty. You know as the creative person in the family dedicated to the culture of modern dancing, that I'm not attune to real-life thinking."

"No, I was unaware of that. You've always project as having an answer on everything. What about you Eric?

"Hi Joss. Long-time no-see. I go with whatever our big Bro decides."

"Hmmm."

"What does that mean?" Eric said aggressively.

"Exactly that it means, "Hmmm."

"I-I don't understand."

"That's what I'd thought, Eric."

He slid down on to a chair, looking totally confused.

Joss eyed Flo (Florence), at 19 the absolute baby of the family, the result of Kit's indiscretion with her male gynaecologist) who was completing her first year studying for a nursing degree. Joss wondered if she should involve the little darling Flo; but the kid outwitted her.

Flo asked, "How do you think we should move collectively to show Randy the prick to the door, Joss, with the realization that moving as a group gives us considerable defence against mum's anticipated wrath?"

Joss thought, wow, smart move, kid sister demonstrating perhaps that she was maturing with brains.

"Flo, do you approve of this Randy fucking our mum?"

"You're the lawyer of the family, Joss. What do you think?"

What the F-word. The kid at her young age was ignoring convention by answering a question with another question.

"I think knowing mum, she is probably having sex with him but, as a lawyer, I say where's the proof? My guess is Sharon believes mum hinted that she and Randy were having sex but, as yet, none of us has asked mum outright what relationship was she and this so-called boyfriend were enjoying or at least were having. She might say it was just friendship and nothing more and just might not be lying."

"However, for years mum has said to me, only a few times I admit, that since dad died, she's enjoyed a man of the moment swinging a leg over her and that, in most people's comprehension, means engaged in insertion sex, although not necessarily."

"Right fellow siblings, as a lawyer, here's how I see it and here's the punchline."

"If Randy is fucking mum, so what? It's her choice, being an adult of sound mind, although that's not proven but I'm prepared to bet that she's of sound mind."

"Hear, hear," said Eric and Flo.

"Secondly, tarring and feathering a deemed culprit and running him out of town has rather gone out of fashion and the law would likely seriously disapprove of such uncivilised behaviour today."

"Thirdly, murdering Randy, even if we had proof that he was balling our mother, is absolutely not recommend. In any advent, not involving a direct threat to the murderer reacting to saving his or her own life, in law is considered not warranted and definitely not legally accepted."

"The same applies to cutting off his dick or castration or even forcibly removing our mother away from him against her will, are all definitely no-noes legally."

"In short, our mother has every right to say to us get lost and stay out of her private business. So that's where we are on this entire thing. We could consider inviting Randy to have sex with mum in our presence, with mum's consent of course, to provide us with absolutely proof that he's a mother-fucker but, oh dear, so what? Nix. Nix and Nix."

"Any questions for your legal adviser?"

"Yes," Sharon said, close to tears. "Are you adamant in saying we can do nothing?"

"Yes, which is the purpose of this meeting so that everyone is informed of the situation."

"As far as Human Rights go, mum is entitled to have sex with whoever she likes and even if he were married, it is not criminally illegal in Australia to have sex with a married person."

"We all could ask her not to have sex with Randy or not allow him to have his way with her but we could be accused of interfering with her rights and if too much pressure were applied, we could be accused of unacceptable verbal abuse and become liable to legal action."

Eric: "So we are stuffed?"

Joss: "Yes."

Eric: "In that case Sharon, you booked this room for an hour and we have occupied the room for no more than 40 minutes. I suggest you hand the key back to management, and ask for a receipt an take the equivalent amount paid from mum's petty cash back in the kitchen, leave the receipt in the tin and I'll be she'll laugh at the irony of having her house-keeping money raided for such a family expense. And now we all head for a bar in a much nicer venue for a drink. I suggest a beer garden."

The siblings decided to stay on for lunch at a beer garden and Joss asked Sharon called their mother to join then as her children had gathered to discuss her being involved with a much younger male.

At Joss's suggestion, Sharon didn't invite Kit to bring along Randy but when their mother asked could be bring along Randy to meet her family, Sharon checked with Joss who nodded and Sharon said, "Yes, we all would like to meet him. Bring him along with you as our guests for lunch."

During the wait for the couple to arrive, more drinks were ordered and Sharon said, "I don't think mum being eighty would be the slightest interest in having sex."

"Mum is only seventy-eight," Joss sighed.

"I could be interested in having sex for as long as I can lubricate naturally," Flo said emphatically.

"Fuck, this is becoming too much for me," Nick said, looking a little wild-eyed and his voice sounding shaky. He appeared ready to flee.

"Right guys," Joss said with authority. "I appear to have become the de facto chairperson of today's meeting as no other person appeared willing to step up to exercise leadership, and I say this: No more discussion about bodily functions and definite no questions to Kit or Randy about actually having sex. Questions about whether they like one another and how they met are okay, but nothing approaching actual intimacy, right? Let's act like adults. Are we agreed?"

"Yes," chorused everyone."

"Joss, are you still having sex these days," Flo asked.

"My answer is confined to this: Yes, I'm enjoying a perfectly balanced life, thanks for asking, Flo."

"Answered like a fucking lawyer," Sharon moaned, and everyone laughed.

Chapter 3

Kit, wearing her best dress, arrived with her young guy in tow as if she was leading her Toy Boy into a family Judgement Day, and that would be fair summation.

"Hi everyone, I'm your mother Kit and I say that in case any of your might be considering disowning me over some piddly little thing that's worming up your left nostril."

"Good heavens mum, have you been smoking weed to be so worked up over something like associating with a guy almost young enough to be your grandchild. Flo hands over your ears as you are too young to hear this," said Joss, sounding as if she was addressing the United Nations Assembly appealing for the world population to control errant mothers.

"Mother dear, we others of your children are adult enough to accept that you occasionally have the urge to grab a bit of nooky now and again to ensure the pipes remain in working order as every female 30-plus feels the urge to cling on to her ageing womanhood."

"Therefore, it's no big deal with us, based on our unanimous decision of we siblings at our emergency meeting this morning. As far as we are concerned, you can start allowing every male over the Age of Consent and up to the age of forty-nine in Brisbane to bang you at will, since it's obvious you have already started the ball rolling."

"Joss, you devious, sarcastic. demeaning, brutalizing, exaggerating, demented, insulting bitch. I ought to knock your fucking expensively maintained and overly-even and overly-white teeth down you fucking throat."

"Ooh," murmured the siblings en masse.

Everyone including Toy Boy now eyed the elder daughter who'd unexpectedly launched this duel.

"Mum, if you dare touch me aggressively, I'll commence the process of you being carted away in a straight-jacket and incarcerated on a court-backed order quicker than you can say 'That's enough for tonight dear'. All I ask is for you to be lovely to all of your children and to avoid being controversial."

"Mum, should you decide to depart from your usual behaviour in any way, be up front with us instead of scaring the crap out of us in attempting to start as rumour within your family about your departure from the norm and attempting to smart-ass even me with threats about what can your expect if we attempt to demean you."

There was silence until Kit said, "Is that your finished, Joss."

"Yes thanks, mum."

"Well Joss, your attempt to lick me into shape has succeeded. I throw in the towel and agree to continue to live by the norm, whatever that means, with the one exception being that I'd like to keep on with Randy for a while."