The Categorical Imperative

"I didn't expect you to do this," Jamie said, "I only came here...I don't really understand why...I just needed to see you and perhaps talk."

"Then I'm offering you more than you expected Jamie. Get down to some serious studying and you might make it to university, and of course, you will live here with me."

That was the moment for tears and embracing, and mother and son felt themselves to be once more united.

Gwen felt that she had obeyed the Categorical Imperative, although she wasn't quite sure why since she was soon to deny its validity.

* * * * * * * *

Jamie commenced his studies and made surprisingly rapid progress, but it was not only in matters academic he advanced.

With a good diet he filled out physically and having a little money to spare he spent time at a gym. These things, together with good clothing, he had become an exceedingly good looking young man, the sort that a mother could look at with pride.

In time, however, it was with more than motherly pride that Gwen came to look at Jamie. He had been twenty two when he had re-entered her life a bedraggled wreck. He had lived with her for two years, and she had become increasingly aware of him, not so much as a son, but as a very desirable young man.

At forty one she was still an attractive woman, and her awareness of Jamie as a virile young man awakened in her that which had lain dormant for a long time. Philosophy that had been the outlet for her energies, no longer sufficed.

Perhaps the ten years separation from Jamie had brought about changes in their relationship that might never have occurred had there been no separation. Whatever the case, Gwen began to have very definite sexual feelings about Jamie.

These feelings she at first denied, but the very denial only increased their power. They lurked inside her, demanding recognition until she could no longer deny them.

Even then she would probably never have given them physical expression if something else had not intervened.

That intervention was her growing awareness that Jamie reciprocated her feelings.

It began like the distant warning of a drumbeat. The embracing that became increasingly close; the kisses that hung on longer than might be expected of a filial kiss; the hand that brushed against her breasts and the feel of a hard penis pressed against her lower abdomen. It was indeed like a drumbeat – the drumbeat of her heart.

She pushed aside the Categorical Imperative and settled for the view that whatever gave her pleasure was the correct path to follow, but what was happening to her could hardly be described as pleasure – it was plain frustrating.

Yet she made no overt move to bring about their sexual union, and probably never would have if Jamie had not acted.

* * * * * * * *

When it happened it was without any great build up. They engaged in no philosophic discussion about rights and wrongs, goods and bads.

Soon after Jamie came to live with Gwen they had adopted a somewhat casual attitude towards dress around the flat. They had the habit of breakfasting before taking their morning shower, arriving in the kitchen wearing their night clothes and dressing gowns or, if the weather was warm, only their night clothes.

It was on such a warm Saturday morning when Gwen, washing something in the kitchen sink, her back to Jamie, she sensed him standing behind her. His arms came round her waist as he said, "You've been very good to me, mother."

"Just making up for lost years," she replied.

"Yes."

His hand rested gently on one of her breasts, and then raising her hand to his she pressed it close over the breast.

She felt his hard penis pressing against her buttocks and as if by reflex action she pushed back against it.

His hand dropped away from her breast and she felt the bottom of her nightdress being lifted and his penis pushing between her thighs.

Partly in weak protest, but also partly out of desire she gasped, "Oh, darling..."

Then his penis slipped into her vagina. She thrust back against him, taking him in deep.

"Yes darling...oh yes...yes...yes..."

She bent over the sink to give him deeper penetration. He took hold of her hips and dragged her ever more tightly to him. As he plunged back and forth in her the pent up sexual drive of years seemed to take control of her. She wept and mewled quietly at first at the sheer joy of his penis in her, but as the first signs of her approaching orgasm made themselves felt her cries rose in volume, "Faster darling...harder...deeper...oh God I'm coming...deeper...deeper..."

She felt him give a powerful thrust into her, he groaned, and then she felt his semen spew into her as he filled her vaginal tunnel.

As her orgasm reached its peak she let out a long wailing cry, "Aaaaaohwaa..."

Descending from the heights she gasped repeatedly, "I love you...I need you...I love you...I need you..."

When they were at rest he held himself in her for a while, and then withdrew. She turned to face him, and looking deep into his eyes said, "Thank you my darling, we have all day today and then tomorrow free."

* * * * * * * *

Released from the long night of her celibacy Gwen found in Jamie something akin to an ideal lover. With Stan sex had been fun; with Fielder it had been raw lust; with Jamie it combined both these things, but with something added. It was a love and devotion the depths of which she had never experienced before.

Jamie was not as casual about sex as Stan had been who, as I have said, saw it as a fun thing. Nor was Jamie as demanding as Fielder in that, much to Gwen's relief, he did not insist on anal sex, and gave as much as he took. With Jamie she felt her self loved and desired as she never had before.

If during the following months, she had any reservations at all, they were not to do with their mother and son relationship, but with age disparity. She had raised this with Jamie who assured her that this made no difference to him.

"We love each other," he had said, "and we're a perfect match sexually, so what point is there in worrying about age."

Reassured, Gwen gave herself up to the relationship in which, despite her frequent approaches to him, Jamie's potency was able to match her sexual needs.

Gwen felt she had found her way into Elysium.

Her joy was raised to new heights when, beyond all expectation at her age - now forty four - she discovered herself to be pregnant. This was the fruit of their love, and when she told Jamie he seemed to share her happiness.

* * * * * * * *

One afternoon, returning from her lectures, without surprise she found Jamie absent. She knew that he had a lecture to attend, but what did surprise her a little was to see an envelope lying on the kitchen table addressed simply, "Gwen."

Curious, she opened it and took out the letter it contained and commenced reading.

My Dear Temporary Mother,

I have so much to thank you for - your kindness for taking me in when I was homeless; the generosity in paying for my education; for letting me share your bed and body, and so much more.

I hope that I have in some measure given something of worth back to you, and certainly I would have gone on giving had it not been for you're becoming pregnant. That condition indicates the parting of the ways since I have no wish to have responsibility for a child.

So I am leaving, or, by the time you read this, I will have left.

If you should think to try and find me, then you had better know that my name is not and never has been Jamie Frobisher. What it is I shall not reveal.

I met Jamie at high school up in Queensland. We became friends and he told me a great deal about you and what had happened. Somehow the details of what he told me stuck in my memory.

It is true that I left school at sixteen and had a pretty hard time, especially since I'd been chucked out of home for having a drug habit (a habit which I afterwards kicked).

You made a mistake in not keeping track of Jamie, but he and his father kept track of you. When Jamie told me that you were doing okay as an academic and that you had no interest in him, it was then I decided to test that, and conceived the idea of impersonating him, just to see what happened.

People had sometimes commented how much Jamie and I looked alike; more or less the same physique; same eye and hair colouring and, well, after ten years not seeing Jamie?

When you first saw me I really was, as they say, "Down on my uppers." No money, nowhere to go, and no future prospects. You have kindly provided all that for me, and now I can look forward to a worthwhile future, and so quite sincerely I thank you again.

You will no doubt be angry that I duped you, but you'll have to admit I played the part well.

It will no doubt anger you still further when I say that for an intelligent woman you can be incredibly stupid, or alternatively, extremely callous about the welfare of your son.

At any time over all the years you have been separated from him you could easily have checked on his whereabouts and welfare. In that you did not do so, it can only mean that you never wanted to, being too much involved with your own ambitions to be bothered.

I hope you have a bit more concern for the child you are presently carrying.

If it's any consolation to you after all these years, I can tell you that Jamie and his father are doing extremely well, although no longer living in Queensland. Where they are living I leave you to discover if you wish.

A word of caution; if you do discover their whereabouts and contact them, I don't think you will find the contact very welcome. Jamie always said that he never wanted to see you again because of that man Fielder, and Stan is living very happily with, for her age, a rather nice looking buxom nurse.

I can assure you that my suggestion that Stan was noncompos mentis was entirely false. He never did become a serious drug taker and like me kicked the habit, such as it was.

I think there is nothing more for me to say, so I thank you again for your kindness. I wish you well, and please, take care of our offspring.

The sex was great and I shall miss it.

I shall remember you with affection

Your transitory son.

* * * * * * * *

Gwen felt the room spinning, bile seemed to rise in her throat and then she was vomiting into the sink.

When she finished retching she clung to the edge of the sink, gasping and weeping.

Stan had left her, Fielder had dropped her, and now Ja...no...who was he? Who was he who had entered her life, become her son and then her lover, and now the father of the child she carried within her.

The loss of this bogus son was more heart rending than anything she had experienced with Stan and Fielder.

"I loved him...I loved him...," and a voice beat in her head, "What do you mean by love? Define your terms...define you terms..."

She laughed hoarsely, bile still lingering in her throat.

What use philosophy now?

She recalled a verse from a long unremembered poem; "Myself when young did eagerly frequent/doctor and saint and heard great argument/about it and about: but evermore/ Came out by that same door where in I went."

* * * * * * * *

Tranquillizers were prescribed for her. She swallowed the lot at she sat on the seat of a women's toilet in the Philosophy Building. They proved insufficient to kill her and she was discovered after a cleaner became suspicious when she noticed the toilet stall had been occupied for two hours.

It took a long time before she made even a partial recovery from the bitter blow that had been struck her.

She found some consolation in the daughter that was born to her, but this time her libido went into permanent hibernation.

She completed her doctoral theses and eventually got a professorial chair at a New Zealand University.

Her one time speciality, morals and ethics, she barely touches now, having concentrated on epistemology instead; she feels that this is safer than ethics, even if no less tangled.

She lives quietly with her daughter.

* * * * * * * *

Although not originally applied to philosophy, I think the following quote sums it up:

"A blind man in a dark room – looking for a black hat which isn't there."

(Lord Bowen)