Pandemic Lockdown Intimacy

Preamble:

This is a light teasing, titillating story. If you are aching for wailing, caterwauling and torrenting sex, this is not for you.

***

Part 1: Thoughts And Yearnings

Part 2: Agency

***

Part 1: Thoughts And Yearnings

Grace is looking at the wildflowers in the vase on her coffee table. There is really no point trying to arrange them. The honeysuckle, the forget-me-not, the iris, they had tumbled into their symmetry.

Grace tilts back her chair a little, and surveys the photos, mementos and books on her shelf, as one might a life.

How often do we tell our own life story? Our life is not our life, even if it seems so. It is just a story we have told about our life. A story about our life told to others, but mainly to ourselves.

Grace thinks of everything that has happened in her life, and how little she has allowed to happen.

Grace is fifty today. She has been married for thirty years. One son. He is twenty-five years old.

Fifty is a quietly tumultuous time in a woman's calendar of life. A sort of existentialist angst sets in, maybe not so very different from the youthful version. Déjà vu? Yes, but not texturally different.

For the longest time, Grace could not figure if she was going somewhere, or just going. Now, she is decidedly launched on a trajectory arc, on the cusp to something novel and life-changing.

But, what precisely? Is it a journey? A destination? Or, more intuitively, a journey to an end destination? A longing to be accepted for her radical new aspirations, but too old to be seeking approval.

If there is a destination, where is that? Grace philosophises this in her swirl of mind. The destination is the end point. But, is it in reality? More pragmatically, the destination is that point of the journey when one passes the point of no return. The rest, beyond the hump, as they say, is freewheeling downhill all the way.

Grace has been reading erotic literature for about two years. It is only since the beginning of her menopause that she has felt a need or desire for new forms of stimulation. She has given herself the time, opportunity and permission to enjoy herself alone.

Grace chances upon a mature female English author, by the moniker of Saula, in a popular erotic literature website. She is caught up by the potential reality of Saula's stories, and the engaging way they have been crafted. Grace values well-written stories, imaginative language, beautifully described images, and believable situations and action. Saula's stories carry these elements. What Grace wants is to have her mind stimulated and excited, dancing, pirouetting dizzily on edge, and to imagine things more than meets the eye and mind. She likes the stories to focus sometimes on sensuality and tenderness. An unlikely brew of savage carnal tenderness. She enjoys Saula's stories for these very reasons. She can feel herself in the picture. Sees what the story character sees. She wants in on the story, and is admitted by the narrative force. Once in, that force will not let her out until the story, and hence she, is spent.

Grace particularly likes the stories about photo sessions, and a bit of mum and son taboo. She finds herself eagerly scheduling time to read yet another story in Saula's collection, or a second or third instalment of a story.

Outside of erotic literature, Grace has a particular appreciation for women writers. She enjoys Pat Barker, Anne O'Brien, Philippa Gregory and Hilary Mantel. Their historical work has given her so much pleasure, especially so because of their perspectives. The historical novel can be a backdoor into the present, which is very valuable.

Grace was first drawn into this realm by Philippa Gregory's 'The Other Boleyn Girl' of book, then movie fame. An unlikely story around a woman who is a footnote in history.

So too Pat Barker's war-themed 'Regeneration Trilogy'. War is terrible and never to be repeated. And yet, the experiences derived from the wreckage, after considered introspection, are of enormous value.

And Hilary Mantel's Cromwell trilogy. Twice Booker Prize laureate, with a shot at a third.

Grace thinks women do view the world differently and being able to express that difference, not necessarily in what is said, but in the way it is said, has given her enormous satisfaction and a sense of being part of the sisterhood.

And this applies to Saula in erotic literature too. Erotic literature is dominated by male authors, who focus too much on the animistic hump and grump, and graphic depiction, very much a man's lurid pleasure, when what Grace wants is stimulation and excitement at a subtle, more abstract level.

Grace has never tried her hand at writing erotica. She feels that she will not know where to start, or what sort of subject or genre her imagination should inhabit.

Perhaps a mature woman being seduced by a young man? Or two young men? Perhaps her son and his friend?

If she is really wicked, she might imagine a scene where her son and his friend cajole her to pose for them, for an art project or something artistically worthwhile in the creative sphere. She knows that the idea is not particularly original, but is exciting. Grace unconsciously writhes her body, and then realises that she is animating her story. Grace blushes shyly to her sentinel other self. But, she feels a stab of devilish pleasure in these private thoughts.

At a time when Grace is pondering the sensual order of her life, of what has been, and what can be, Saula's stories have helped in making her mind race giddily into yet uncharted dangerous and daring areas. The point of no return must by necessity be fraught with high hazards. Otherwise, it would not be a point of no return. A crossing of the raging Rubicon.

Menopause is a physical, and then, psychological marker. Since the beginning of Grace's menopause, she has been aware of so many changes. Much of it has been flowering in gratifying bloom. She feels that the linear constrained life she has led, and being hidden away under a shell is over. She is emerging from herself in a lush of reinvention. Appreciating herself much more. Affording herself time and opportunity to enjoy things more, to satisfy demands and desires that she has rejected or ignored for most of her life.

This has gone along with an increase in her libido. She senses a different heat of fire in her loins.

***

Fire. Grace mulls.

Physical, yet abstract. Literal, yet metaphorical. That is its elusive charm.

There are degrees of fire.

Gas stove fire. Placid parading beauty in symmetry. Order and discipline. Unity, harmony, unison. This fire is functional, purposeful, useful. Boils your water. Cooks your food. Simmers your meat in its own juices. Predictably well-behaved too. Best of all, you get to control it. Cut the fuel, and you conveniently snuff it out.

At the other end of the firelight latitude, there are houses on fire, forest fires. Wild, combustive, raging, ranging firestorms. Poetry gone rogue.

And then, there is the bonfire at the campsite, or by the beach. You are moved by kindling captivation in watching its dancing flames. It warms you even on a balmy night. That you do not experience from a gas stove fire. And when you douse the bonfire at the first light of dawn, its embers have a lingering stubborn persistence that defy the new light of day.

Grace remembers her schooldays chilling at the beach on moon nights. Those halcyon days. Salad days.

In Grace's mind, she tends a bonfire of driftwood, meticulously assembled into a rickety pyramid form. Once started, she watches the dance of flames intently. She wonders, when she sees the fleeting shapes that the bonfire makes, she feels kind of strange. It is like all of a sudden, she gets very clear about things, but short of a jolting epiphany. Watching the fire, she gets this deep, quiet kind of feeling.

A fire can be any shape it wants to be. It is free. So, it can look like anything at all depending on what is inside her. If she gets this deep, quiet kind of feeling when she looks at a fire, that is because it is showing her the deep, quiet kind of feeling she has inside herself. It does not happen with just any fire. It will not happen with a gas stove, or a cigarette lighter fire. It will not even happen with an ordinary bonfire. For a fire to be free, she has to make it in the right kind of place. Which is not quite so easy.

Can she do it?

Freedom is a bonfire. Try toasting marshmallows on a gas stove. And then on a kindling bonfire. There is something more going on.

***

And that is Grace's renewed libido. A crakling bonfire of tinder twigs, shaping and reshaping itself around a core of heat.

But, there is that essential extra stimulation to help Grace find that gorgeous high. The stoking. And that is Grace's quest...

***

Grace looks at a bit of porn. She initially treated porn with a sort of fascinated repulsion. But, it grew on her. Some videos have been a big help. The ones that suggest and imply, rather than tell and recite.

But, it is the written word that satisfies Grace most. This has led to her exploring all sorts of genres and concepts that she would only a few years ago been shocked by, and felt were outrageous.

She finds one of Saula's more popular stories, 'Induct Son And Bro To Nudism' enormously enjoyable and mercilessly titillating. She reads it a number of times, parsing the erotic scenes with relish at each new pass.

A husband regularly sunbathes nude with his wife in a desolate, secluded dunes and cove area in the English South Coast. Hubby has to inconveniently go away on an extended overseas work assignment, at what promises to be the high noon of a glorious summer. He has reservations about the safety of his wife sunbathing alone. He arranges for their twenty year old son, or her brother to accompany her. Hubby being a worrywart, the wife reluctantly agrees to the arrangement.

Grace is particularly piqued by the first time revelation of the strapping lad to his mum. And conversely, the mum's maiden exposure to her son. The revelation of the mum to her son, of her most intimate. Her first touch of his fledgling manhood. These move Grace. The words are seared in the video of Grace's mind...

***

The tender carnal drama narrative...

I run my fingernails experimentally up and down his penis slowly, softly. My first touch. Then again. On one side. Then the other. I trace an imaginary axis line up to his bulbous head.

Mum: You are pleasing to the eye.

I examine him closely. I bend down to look. I touch it.

Mum: This is so hard.

Son (jocularly): What is this? Biology lab?

Mum: You had your anatomy class. I have mine now.

I take it all in for a moment. I squeeze his penis a little. Stroke it. Feeling all around.

Mum: I love the way your skin stretches as you grow. The way your head gets bigger and bigger. Those first little drops of excitement. And the way your balls tighten up.

I cup them like treasured objects with one hand.

Mum: Then, they loosen again, hanging down and swinging. Then tightening up.

Son: I didn't know you can be so poetic. On the subject of balls.

I deftly use a finger to move them back and forth, fondling them, just slightly swinging them as if they are bells. All in slow motion. No hurry.

I grasp his penis with my whole hand. I hold it. Feel its thickness and hardness. Take its measure. I squeeze it ever so slightly every few seconds.

I am driving my son closer to the edge. But, I am just getting a sense of his physicality. My feeling is indescribable.

With my thumb and index finger, I encircle his penis. Grab it right below his head, ascertaining its circumference.

Mum: Marvelous. A work of art. Visual art.

Son: Now, you are making fun of me.

Mum: No. No. It is so beautiful. A life all its own. You can will it, and yet, it has a stubborn persistent will force of its own. Kind of like our free will. We have it for all intents and purposes, and yet, do we really? It is so you, and yet, not you. Spasming. Swaying. A poetic beast. It takes my breath away to watch how fabulous your body is.

I touch the tip of his penis with my index finger, teasing more drops to seep out. I roll my finger in the liquid. I lightly spread the moistness over the head of his penis. Coating it. I lean over for a closer look.

My son loves watching my breasts with my every move. My undulating arcs. My nipples. Hard and pointed. Like my son's penis, they too seem to have a life of their own.

I hold his erection straight up, at a ninety degree angle to his stomach. I am beside myself. I wrap my fingers around it. I begin stroking. Then, slowly pumping up and down. He is slippery from his own fluids, and is in such a state. I bend over closer, my face hovering above the head of his penis. A saliva drop. My finger smooths my saliva around his head. Not that he needs extra lubrication. I am just having fun.

I pump more. Up and down. Then, with my hand firmly at his base, I hold it there, strangle it a little. His shaft sticks straight up, like some spire. His penis wavers a little, leaks even more, the drops dribbling down his shaft. This will not take long. More pumping. His body jerks. He groans. I freeze. I stare at it. He spurts, straight up. Then, a second, even higher, falling down and landing on my knee. One or two more follow, falling back on my hand. He stops at last.

A wave of unease sweeps over me. It is not supposed to be like this. This is supposed to ease our tension, not heighten it. And certainly not bring it to boil.

Mum (climbing down to earth): Son, I am so sorry. Yours is my second manhood. I got carried away. I crossed a line.

***

Grace's mind flashes back to an instance in time when her son was nineteen. She cannot remember the details. And yet, the experience was like it played out just yesterday. History, the interpretation of it, and then maybe a little historical fiction emerges.

It was something about body hygiene and its upkeep. Cleanliness is next to godliness. Grace was next to her Son.

Her son was naked from his waist down. His penis was extending out at her eye level. His crotch was pristine. Simple elegant clean lines. Like a pencil line drawing on white art paper. It accentuated his youthful maleness beyond his age.

Her son was uncircumcised. Hooded entirely by his delicate sheath of foreskin, right up to his cute tapered tip.

Grace picked up the hand cloth. Lightly wrung out a little water from it in drips. A little intentional damp to soften the harsh rawness of the fabric.

Grace proceeded to wrap the cloth on her son. Running the cloth ever so gently over the brittle bone china in a slow soothing silken motion. The copious warm water dripped back to the metal basin receptacle. She did this repeatedly with determined pedantic discipline.

Her eyes lasered in on what she was methodically doing. She muttered something instructive about the importance of personal hygiene at every bodily level. This was as much demonstration as education.

All through this, her son stood relatively still, if not tensed, statuesque, peering down intently on his mother's measured pattern of motion. Except that his penis quivered ever so slightly, each time her hand slid off the hand cloth, to rinse it in the basin.

She could not tell whether it was from the hand cloth slide-off motion, or his natural youthful reaction, that caused his shuddering movement.

Grace was focused on her ministrations. Her perfunctory dutiful cleansing of her son.

After what seemed like an eternity of five minutes, she detected a look of mild discomfort on her son's face. A fleeting grimace, not quite amounting to agony.

The hand cloth slid off her son's penis as usual. She noticed that his penis, though still fulsome, had flagged somewhat from its stark horizontal position, to an oblique down-pointing orientation. The knob head, though not big, looked less intimidating than before. His foreskin appeared less taut, having crept foreward some, to reclaim a little of his raw pink head.

Grace stopped her ministrations. She said in a soft tone that he had a lot of grime. Her son did not know what she meant. He had just bathed that morning.

She laid down the towel on the basin.

This time, she ran her bare hand up and down him in a slow motion. He stiffened. He grew out farther. Much farther out than he has ever extended. His foreskin receded to reveal more of his head. He was wondering in his mind how cleaning his penis with her motherly hand could be more effective than hand-toweling it.

Grace ceased her hand movements. She paused, then gingerly peeled back his skin, gently, ever so slightly, as if reading his fear of tearing, if not painful rupture. Beneath was grime, caked over time, clinging to the circular recess between his shaft and budding knob head.

Grace intimated in an educational tone, "There's the grime. Caked. You see it? Alot."

Grace gently, gingerly used her finger tips to scrape the flakey grime off. He felt a warm charge of raw tingle with each delicate scraping motion, heightening, as she was finishing up, loosening and clearing the remnant speckled dirt that was still nestled in the crevice ring beneath his penis helmet head. Grace was pedantic in her cleansing.

He grew stiffer.

Grace finished up with the hand towel. It was then that her son had his ejaculation, although it was all very understated and undramatic. It happened in a flash, under the cover of the hand towel.

Grace continued with the motion oblivious to the change of her son's body state. After awhile, she declared that he was clean.

***

The breaking of taboos is so sexy. Just the thought of the possibility gives Grace all sorts of things to think about and imagine.

***

Grace discovers that being naked around the house is wonderful. When her husband is out, she enjoys doing house chores naked. Wandering nude around the house is quite thrilling. In the hallway, there is plenty of see-through glass on either side of the door that leads to the street. The curtains in her sitting room are open.

In the beginning, getting habituated to the pleasant sensation of soothing air caressing her private skin, the tingle of naughty nakedness was overwhelming. She would get moist. That would soon build up deliciously to copious dribble. She would have to wipe herself.

And soon after, a noticeable wet spot would build all over again. At first, she used tissues. One day, she ran out of tissues. She used her panties as wipes instead. The sensation of sheer material grazing her delicate nether flesh created as much fluid as it soaked up.

And there are other sensual innovations to fire up little pleasures.

***

Grace is tidying her son's room. She is nude as usual. He has his own apartment. But, her hubby and she maintain a room for him, his former room, for him to use on days when he stays over.

There is a large portrait of her son on the shelf. An artfully posed intent, a little brooding, sort of observing look, yet softly engaging. Grace just cannot suppress the impulse to reposition the picture a little each time before she begins to clean the room, so that it surveys the room, his room, properly.

Grace is tidying, ordering his drawers when she discovers a stash of briefs. Male thongs to be precise. Effectively cock socks, she muses in muted wonder.

Is he a hipster? Or, maybe gay? Or both? Grace does not follow male fashion fads, let alone male intimate wear. She does not know. It does not matter. He is who he is.

Hmmm... so this is his male measure. Is it sized to full flourish? Or, sedate normal form? The charm is in not knowing for sure.

For some inexplicable reason that is too abstract to unpick with rational precision, Grace is moved from moist to flow. Instinctively, she picks up one of his thongs to soak up her piquant excitement. She instinctively gazes guiltily at her son's portrait picture.