Machine Language

She shook her head. "I've never actually considered it, not as a lifestyle choice, anyway. Besides," she said, looking up at me and grinning, "that would only be running away from the real issue, wouldn't it?"

"Your inability to relate?"

"My inability to relate."

"Want to watch some porno?" I asked.

*

It was a joke, but when she said, Yes, actually, I would, I just looked at her.

"I'm serious, Michael," she said. "Go close the door."

I got up and closed the door. And locked it for good measure.

What it was, the sight of the blonde girl having sex with a machine intrigued her. Since she could no more rent, buy, borrow, steal a porno tape than she could blow a complete stranger on the street, and because of our sudden closeness, she opened up to me.

"First, and foremost," she said, motioning me back to my seat, "I will not have sex with you, Michael. Ever."

"Mom--" I choked out, more from surprise than from denial.

"You can't deny that's what you want," she said, as level-voiced as though we were discussing politics.

"But--"

"I've seen the way you look at me, Michael."

"But--"

"The way you were looking at me, just now, in the doorway."

"But--"

"Your eyes give you away. Don't deny it, Michael."

I needed a talk with my eyes.

"Listen," I started earnestly. I stopped when she untied the belt from around her middle, pulled the robe back over her shoulders, and began to undo the buttons on her pajama top.

"Mom!" I stood up too quickly, sending an avalanche of texts, notebooks, pens and paper--and the iBook, which damn-near fell into her lap--to the edge of the table. "Sorry," I said, scooping stuff back over to my side.

She reached down and retrieved my iPod from the floor, handed it over to me. "Put this someplace safe," she said, the eternal parent.

There was no place safe, not in this bedroom, I thought.

I sat down again, carefully, watching her carefully. "You made your point," I said. "You can--" I made wiggling motions with my fingers and she re-buttoned her pajama top again. Amazing, how the thing we want the most, can scare us the most.

"Then it's understood?" she asked, pulling her robe back into place.

"Perfectly," I said.

She retied the belt. "Good. Now tell me about that tape we were watching."

*

We watched the movie sitting side by side in the two chairs, and halfway through she had to excuse herself. She came back ten minutes later, not-quite composed, a tad jittery, and flushed-faced as though she'd run all the way.

"I just had to check on the kids," she said, nervously.

What she had actually done, I suspected, was dash right down to her bedroom, hurl herself on the bed and masturbate herself out of some of the arousal she was experiencing. Then she went and checked the kids.

Her hands were shaking, and I clasped her left one as she sat down again.

"This is really turning you on," I whispered.

"Yes," she whispered back. "It really is."

I pushed the Play button again and we resumed watching the DVD.

The blonde had been replaced by a petite brunette with a striking resemblance to my mother (the impetus behind her sudden departure, possibly), introduced to us by the improbable name of Butter. (The blonde's name had been a more believable Jennifer.) Butter was currently trying to adjust both the angle of the dildo penetrating her anus, and the elevation and pitch of her hips on the pillows on which she lay, stomach-down.

Mom's hand was clasped tightly inside mine.

"You see yourself up there, don't you?" I asked.

She blushed, but her head bobbed up and down.

Butter was having trouble on-screen. Despite her provocatively red baby-doll negligee, and the garter's and black stockings on her legs, Butter looked less like an experienced porno star than a woman being asked to fuck a machine. Her movements were tense and awkward, she was unsure of herself, unsure of the machine, and very rigid in her posture. She feared the machine more she than wanted it, I thought, although she wanted it also.

Finally, everything seemed to her liking and Butter used the hand controller to start the motor.

It was a decidedly homemade-looking contraption, this machine, with a large black motor mounted to one end of a thick board, and a bearing (I don't know what else to call it, except a sleeve maybe?) at the other end, through which pistoned a long shiny steel rod, sporting the dildo. On the receiving end was Butter's anus, buttered-up, if you'll excuse the pun, to accept the action.

"That must hurt," Mom whispered.

"I dare-say it does," I agreed.

She bit her lower lip and chewed on it anxiously. She winced slightly, then again, and, turning back to the screen, I realized that Butter had either, A) Misjudged the penetration into her rectum, or B) the speed that she could comfortably endure. Whatever the option, she was in obvious and startling discomfort.

"Ouch," I said.

"Ouch," Mom repeated.

I was surprised they had shown us this. I was grateful as well, because Mom related to Butter much differently than she had to Jennifer, which was not at all. Jennifer had fucked the machine with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader on a packed school bus after the big game. Butter was terrified.

A movement caught my eye and I saw that Mom had her right hand to her chest, and was unconsciously rubbing her breastbone.

I asked her quizzically: "Have you ever used a dildo?"

She started, then shook her head violently. "No. Never. Have you?"

I laughed and said: "What about a vibrator?"

She shook her head again, then shushed me. Butter had found an acceptable combination of both hip angle and pistoning speed, and the machine was running again, the flesh-colored dildo pushing in and out of her anus. As she grew more relaxed, and more accustomed to the action, she slowly crept backward to accept the dildo's full length. I heard Mom emit a tiny moan and that was it.

"I don't mean to shock you," I said. "But I have to do this." I released her hand, undid my belt, lowered my fly and struggled out of my underpants. She had seen me do this before, so it shouldn't be a complete shock, I told myself, and I guess it wasn't. But as I began to stroke myself, her eyes fixed on my hand in rapt amazement, her right hand still rubbing the spot between her breasts.

"You're so big," she whispered. "Your father was big."

"Brain-dead's father?" I asked, always Mr. Tactful.

"Not so big," she said, her eyes following my hand.

It was too much. I couldn't control myself. With a titanic contraction, the first streamer of semen spurted out of me and flew across the intervening six feet to the entertainment center, splashing vertically up the face of the DVD player.

"Oh, God," I groaned, getting my left hand there in time for the second gush. I exploded again, and looked over to find Mom with a gaping mouth and huge eyes, shocked gaga by what she was seeing. She reached forward compulsively with both hands and backed up my one hand, trapping my sperm safely.

"Michael," she said in wonder. "Oh, my God!"

My God indeed.

I came for a good twenty seconds, sperm gushing into my palm and overflowing into hers. I felt her shudder slightly at the feel of the hot liquid, but she stayed where she was, aiding me, until eventually the orgasm ended. I sat there, stunned and exhausted.

"Well," she said, still in the grip of shock. "That was unexpected."

"Yes," I said, laughing weakly. "For me, also."

"Are you done?"

"I'm done."

We sat there undecided for a moment, then she arose and, cupping her hands to keep from dripping me on the carpet, went over to the door. "A little assistance please?" she said.

I jumped up and ran over to join her.

"Put yourself away!" she hissed. "If your sister saw that thing. . ."

I looked down and assumed she wasn't talking about Brain-dead.

I did as I was told, one-handed, zipped my fly and held my other hand behind my back. Opening the door, I looked up and down the hallway, then decided this was something best left to me.

"Wait here," I told her.

She nodded, slipping behind the door while I snuck down the hallway to the linen closet for a pair of hand-towels. Upon my return, I wiped my own hands clean, and then cleaned hers.

"Thank you," she said, giving me a grateful, but sorrowful smile.

"My mess. My cleanup," I said.

We both knew it was more than that, something neither of us could put into words, and the moment passed.

The rest of the movie was easy for me. Mom never took her eyes off the screen, never varied her look of intensity: concentration personified. The entire time, she kept my right hand in her left, and alternated her other hand either to her lips, or to her breastbone. When the movie ended, she sat back with a sigh, rubbing her neck.

"That was . . . intense," she said softly.

"Very."

"Do you have any more?"

I laughed, but she wasn't kidding. "Like this one, you mean?"

"Yes."

I had to admit that I didn't. That David didn't. "The rest of them you wouldn't like," I correctly guessed. "But what I really think you want," I said, holding up the DVD case, "is this." I tapped, not the enormous red dildo, but the steel shaft holding it aloft.

"David!" She blushed madly, until I thought her skin would peel away, giving lie to any denial she cared to voice.

And that's how I came to buy her one.

*

It was easy, really. The kit came in knockdown form--not the bruiser from the film, but a more "sedate," manageable model, about which Mom still fidgeted and agonized over and kept worrying me with questions.

"But what happens if your sister finds it, Michael?"

"It comes apart Mom, into components. When you want it, we just put it together."

"But she'll recognize what it's for, won't she?"

"Knocked-down like this, could you tell what it's for?"

"But what about the . . .?"

"Dildo?"

"I hate that word."

"Put it in the dishwasher. She'd never find it there."

"Michael!"

"I'm serious."

The first time she tried it out, I was banished from the house. From the state, if she could have arranged it. I took Brain-dead and her sister to the movies and fretted the whole time. When I returned, she was already asleep.

The next morning, at the breakfast table, she gave me a tentative half-smile, avoided my eyes, and made a point of reading her newspaper between fussing at the kids. When she got up from the chair, however, I noticed that she winced slightly, and when she walked, there was a slight, but noticeable hitch to her gait. Either she had ignored my advice about going easy the first time, learning the machine and its ways, or the machine had gotten away from her. It was not something she chose to confide in me.

That was a month ago. I am now readmitted to her bedroom. This afternoon, while the girls labored in school but I had no classes to keep me from home, she appeared at the appointed time, helped carry the components up to her bedroom, undressed as I assembled the machine, and then very carefully, on her hands and knees on the bed, eased herself back onto the tip of the dildo.

"Ready?" I asked.

She looked at me in the mirror propped against her headboard. She smiled hesitantly.

"Ready," she said.

I inched the knob to the right and, slowly at first, and then with more conviction, the dildo began to slide in and out of her anus. It went halfway in with each stroke, about four inches, a depth and speed she liked to start with.

"You okay?" I asked.

"Okay," she confirmed.

I placed the controller beside her right hand and sat down on the chair to watch. Getting her started was a concession to my "never being able to fuck her."

Holding my eyes in the mirror, still smiling her hesitant smile, she very carefully, but very deliberately eased herself backward and the dildo began to fill her up. When she started a bit, and her eyes narrowed in pain, I knew she had found her mark.

"Bye, Mom," I whispered.

"Goodbye, Michael," she replied, And then, smiling at me one last time, she closed her eyes and laid her head down on the pillow. Controller in hand, she and her lover began conversing in machine language.

THE END