The Maenad

'Here, you have it,' she said fiercely. She almost hissed it at me. 'You like this kind of thing, don't you? Take it upstairs. Use it! Masturbate with it! Enjoy yourself!'

I didn't want to take it but she pushed it into my hand. Her pupils were dilated. Her face was flushed.

'Take the bloody thing, Jeremy!" she said. And then she stormed out of the room.

I did take it upstairs. I took it to my room and looked at every page. I got an erection. But I didn't masturbate. I had a strange sensation in the pit of my stomach — a weird mixture of excitement and fear. I was probably trembling. And I was totally confused about what had just happened. I was trying to figure it out.

In the end, I thought I understood, though the explanation was weird. I thought Mum had been trying to make up for embarrassing me about the dirty picture I'd left on my computer. Perhaps this magazine was a peace-offering. Maybe, I thought, she'd borrowed the mag from a friend, or bought it through the Internet or something, and she'd left it lying around when she knew I'd come home and she wouldn't be there herself. (That was plausible, at least. I'd phoned in advance to let her know when to expect me.) So, maybe, I thought, I'd been supposed to bring the mag upstairs without saying anything about it to her. Maybe that's what she'd expected — what I ought to have done.

But if that was true, I'd really screwed things up by leaving it lying there in full view when Mum got home and asking her about it. Now I'd embarrassed her! So things were worse than ever.

I felt dreadful.

[CHRISTINE: That's really rather touching. But it's completely wrong, of course.]

*****

What happened next? Well, not much, beyond the obvious misery. We didn't talk again for the rest of the day. Actually, I did try to speak to Mum a couple of times but she just waved me away irritably. She gave me a meal in the kitchen in the evening but we ate in silence. The next day I got up early, said goodbye and left.

I masturbated a lot in that first term at Newcastle. I felt lonely a lot of the time — I don't make friends easily. I was homesick too. And the person I thought about most when I masturbated was my mother.

I phoned her a couple of times, but the conversations were always strained. She was coldly polite to me in the way she'd been polite to my father on the night they'd announced they were splitting up. I only phoned her to stop myself feeling guilty about not ringing her, but I felt even worse after I'd hung up. I once thought about masturbating while I was talking to her, but I didn't actually do it.

[CHRISTINE: That's odd - because there was a time when I wondered if he was wanking while we were on the phone. There was something odd about his voice. I wish he had been doing it. I was.]

I went back to London for a couple of weeks for Christmas, but I stayed with my father again. I might not have seen Mum at all, but Dad insisted I at least went to her house for Christmas lunch — he's very fair like that. So I dragged myself over there for the afternoon. Lisa and Aunt Linda were there as well, so it wasn't too bad really — but I felt excluded somehow. Nobody actually said anything directly, but I thought all three of them blamed me for not seeing more of Mum. Anyway, I got through the afternoon, and then I went back to Dad's place. I stayed there until the new term started, then I went up north again.

I didn't go back to London for the Easter break. I stayed in Newcastle. Then, at the start of the summer, I went off with two friends — I'd finally made some — for a trip round Wales. It was an all male affair — three smelly blokes in a tent. We'd planned to go for three weeks; we managed to last for one.

The main problem was the car. It was fifth or sixth hand and it broke down every other day. The final straw came when the sump sprang a leak and we had to spend a fortune to get it fixed on a wet Saturday night. By the time we'd paid for the parts and labour, we'd used up most of our money. So we decided to call it a day and go home.

I wanted to stay with Dad, but I knew he was abroad on business. So I had to go to Mum, even though I didn't want to. I tried to call her to let her know, but the battery in my phone was dead, and there was nowhere to recharge it.

(But maybe that was just an excuse to avoid ringing her? I suppose I could have borrowed a phone if I'd really wanted to. The other blokes had theirs.)

Anyway, that's why I arrived at Mum's house at about eight o'clock on Sunday evening, unannounced and almost penniless, and uncertain of my reception.

And that was the night that changed my life forever.

THE NIGHT

Thinking about what happened still gets to me. My stomach turns somersaults. I get a buzzing in my ears. What happened that night was the most wonderful, terrible event of my life.

Can an experience be wonderful and terrible at the same time? I think so. Yes.

What happened was this:

I let myself in at the front door and dropped my bag in the hall. I could hear the television in the living room. It was on quite loud. I went in there.

The room was in semi-darkness. There was a table lamp on in the far corner, but the only other sources of light were the television and the open door at the other end of the room - the door that led into the dining room.

I glanced at the TV — and then it gripped me.

There were four naked girls doing things to each other on the screen: doing things with fingers, lips and dildos. Doing all the wonderful, dirty, slippery things I loved.

I can't describe the shock I felt when I saw that! I won't try.

I don't know how long I stood there, staring at the screen. Not long, probably, though it felt like forever because time had expanded now. Slowed down, I mean.

My mouth went dry. My face got hot. My heart was beating fast and there was that buzzing in my ears. It was as if I was somewhere else, on some alien planet. It was as if I was going to faint.

It wasn't just the porno film, of course. It was the fact that it was on there, in my mother's living room! Something very weird was going on!

My cock got hard. I was instantly erect. I was instantly guilty, too. It was like the time with the magazine, but more so. It wasn't my porn I was watching — I hadn't brought it here. But I felt so wrong for watching it. As if, somehow, it was my fault.

And then, because I was afraid of being caught looking at the dirty film, I turned round. And what I saw was this:

On the sofa there were two figures, embracing. They were hugging each other tight. One was Aunt Linda. She had her back to me. The other, I realised, was Lisa. Her arms were wrapped tightly round Linda's back. They were kissing — kissing deeply. It was the kind of kiss that goes on forever. They obviously had their tongues in each others' mouths.

Linda was wearing a pale green summer dress. The hem had ridden up to expose her long, smooth thighs. Lisa was all in black: a black dress and black panties. I knew her panties were black because Aunt Linda's hand was down the front of them, inside, her fingers moving rhythmically.

Lisa's hips were bucking as the fingers moved.

Neither of them had heard me come in. I suppose the whimpering and moaning from the TV drowned everything else out. They didn't look up. Aunt Linda went on frigging Lisa as I stood there. I felt invisible. I was excited and appalled.

And then this happened:

My mother came in through the dining room door. She was grinning broadly. She said:

'Well, girls, I see you've started without me. Someone's going to be punished for that, isn't she?'

And she shook something at them, mock-menacingly — a longish, pinkish thing she held in her left hand.

Then Mum saw me. Her face fell instantly. She just said: 'Oh!' It had that leaden, dull, flat tone I'd heard before, when she'd given up on me that time when she'd squeezed my shoulder in the kitchen.

It was as if her balloon had been burst. As if a cold wind had blown in.

And I was the wind.

*****

The room became suddenly still, despite the noise from the TV. I looked at my mother and I saw the way she was dressed. My heart lurched. The air turned glassy. It only took a split second to take everything in, but it'll take much longer to describe it.

My mother was wearing a shiny black leather brassiere, with little silver studs along the top. It was cut deliberately low. It barely covered her nipples. It pushed her breasts up. Her cleavage was a deep shadow between them.

She was wearing a leather suspender belt, too — also black. She was wearing black stockings. And she was wearing shiny, black, spike-heeled shoes.

But she wasn't wearing anything else. No panties. The suspender belt, the suspenders and her stocking tops framed her exposed sex: a little patch of dark hair above and the naked shadowed groove below it. I could see she shaved herself down there. My mother shaved down there!

As I said, I took all this in in an instant. I'd seen exactly that 'look' in fetish sites online — a bra, suspender belt and stockings exposing a naked quim. My mother had dressed up as a pornographic fantasy! My mother!

I looked at the thing in her hand — the thing she'd waved at the other two. It was long and thick and pink, with a blunted end — a heavy plastic object with complicated straps hanging from it. I knew what it was now. I recognised it with a lurch of excitement and terror. My mother was carrying a large strap-on dildo!

Aunt Linda and Lisa on the sofa hadn't noticed me. Linda's hand was still moving inside Lisa's pants, like a restless animal moving in a pouch. Lisa was whimpering and gasping. But that last flat 'Oh' from my mother gradually penetrated the haze of sex that enveloped them. I saw Linda's hand become still, and Lisa gave a mew of disappointment. Then Linda broke their kiss and slowly — very slowly — turned her head. She saw me, and a moment later Lisa opened her eyes and looked at me too. For a second they were frozen — fixed like that, both staring at me. Then Linda carefully drew her hand out of Lisa's panties.

But neither of them spoke. They simply stared.

So now I was the centre of attention, pinned by three pairs of eyes, like a rabbit in three headlight beams.

I'd caught them, hadn't I? I'd caught them in some kind of perverted orgy — just like the one still playing loudly on the TV.

But they didn't seem ashamed. They just stared at me accusingly. And I realised, once and for all, that I really shouldn't be there in the house.

That I was at fault for coming. That I was an intruder.

I realised that, somehow, they'd caught me.

My face was very hot. I looked at Mum and ducked my head. I stammered: 'Sorry. I ought to go.' And I turned and shambled awkwardly towards the door.

But Mum shouted: 'Stop! Stay where you are, Jeremy! Come back here immediately!'

So I stopped in my tracks and turned round. I was trembling with embarrassment. I was vibrating with lust. My cock was hard. I knew it was obvious. I knew she could see. I could hardly look at her.

Mum snapped the overhead light on and suddenly everything was brightly, cruelly lit. She picked up the remote from the coffee table and muted the sound on the TV. The glowing, pink-blonde girls continued to moan and penetrate each other, but silently.

Then Mum snapped: 'Sit down. Sit over there.' And she pointed to an armchair.

I did as I was told. I sat down on it.

Mum took a couple of steps towards me. She was still holding the strap-on dildo. She was slapping it hard against the palm of her left hand. The straps swung and jiggled every time she did it.

When she was only a couple of feet away from me, she said:

'How dare you try to run away again!'

She slapped the dildo against her palm repeatedly, to emphasize the words.

Her face was wild. There was so much anger in it! — But she was somehow also on the edge of tears.

'How dare you!' she repeated with a hint of a sob, still slapping her palm with the dildo.

I blushed and turned my head away. I couldn't look.

She came at me like a tiger, lunging towards me and grabbing my jaw hard with her free hand — pinching my lips together.

She dragged my head round, to force me to meet her eyes.

'Look at me!' she shouted. 'Bloody well look at me!'

Then: 'I will not let you spoil this, Jeremy! I will not!' she said.

And Aunt Linda said softly, but very urgently, from across the room: 'You're going to have to face up to a lot of things quickly now, Jeremy. You really are.'

I nodded dumbly, still held in my mother's grip. I was completely baffled. And afraid. My bowels turned liquid.

Then Aunt Linda said: 'Chris. Don't be too hard on him. This is a big shock for the boy, and he doesn't know anything, does he?'

Mum let go of me and took a step back. She was breathing very hard.

'No, I suppose not,' she admitted. 'But — oh!'

And she threw the dildo down hard on the coffee table — so hard that it bounced and fell on the floor. There was pure rage there.

'I will not give up on tonight!' said Mum. 'I won't sacrifice this! I've been so desperate for it! I won't let Jeremy and his hyper-sensitivity get in the way!

'I won't let him fuck up my life!'

The words echoed in my head. I don't think I'd ever heard my mother swear before. The meaning sank in slowly. I was hyper-sensitive, was I? I was fucking up her life? I'd never known.

'No,' said Aunt Linda, soothingly. 'I want to go on with it too. We must, darling. And there's no reason why Jeremy shouldn't ...' Her voice trailed off. Then:

'But you'll have to explain it to him, Chris. You'll have to tell him what's been going on.'

Mum went to the other armchair and dragged it closer to me. She swung it round so it faced my own chair, then she sat down. She sat unselfconsciously on the edge of the seat, with her legs apart, leaning forward, her hands braced on her thighs. I found myself staring at her exposed vagina — at her centre. I couldn't help myself.

'Linda's right,' she said, roughly. 'It's not your fault. Not really. I just wish you weren't so bloody wet when it comes to sex.'

I stared at her, astonished. It was all I could do.

And Lisa said: 'Jeremy, Mum's going to tell you something important. It'll come as a shock, but you must listen. And if you listen properly, it'll help a lot. It's wonderful really.'

She smiled. She sounded very calm, like the doctor she was going to be, in her surgery with a patient.

Mum was staring at me. She followed my gaze downwards, between her legs. Then she put her hand down there and groped herself. Deliberately. Crudely. Obviously.

She took the hand away so I could see.

'What's this, Jeremy?' she asked, pointing to her slit.

I protested weakly. 'Mum,' I said, 'I don't want to ...'

'Tell me what it is,' she hissed.

'It's your ... It's your vagina ...' I told her.

She laughed — an explosion of scorn.

'Is that what they call it on the porn sites you visit? A vagina? Do the girls say: "Come on, you big stud, put your penis in my vagina?" Is that it?'

Mum grinned at me fiercely.

'It isn't a fucking vagina! It's a cunt! It's my cunt! Say it! What are you looking at?'

I swallowed hard. 'At your c-cunt, Mum,' I said, my voice shaking.

'That's right,' said Mum. 'Exactly. You're staring at my cunt. And you like it, don't you? But that's all right, Jeremy — it's perfectly all right. Because I like it too. Do you understand that? I like it very, very much that you're staring at my cunt.

'And I wish you'd been able to see it a long time ago.'

She put her hand down there again then, back between her legs, and inserted two fingers into it — into her cunt.

She gave a deep grunt of satisfaction. It was shockingly crude.

She moved her fingers in and out, plunging them in deep, beyond the knuckles, then drawing them out almost to the fingertips.

'So now you're watching me fuck myself, aren't you?' She smiled at me - but it wasn't a friendly smile.

'I've been doing this for months and months,' she said. 'Ever since your father left. Before that, in fact. When the girls weren't here, this was all I had.'

She pulled the fingers out of herself and held her hand up. 'This and my sex toys', she said. 'Do you know how much I masturbate, Jeremy?'

I shook my head.

'At least four times a day. I've counted. Sometimes it's ten times. It has been more.

'So what do you think? Do you think I like sex? Do you think I need it?'

'Yes,' I said, obediently, trying desperately to placate her. 'Yes. I think you need it, Mum.'

She held the fingers that had been inside her out to me, underneath my nose.

'Sniff them,' Jeremy,' she said. 'That's the smell of cunt. The smell of my cunt when it's hot and wet. Isn't it exciting? Isn't it sexy?'

It was like an assault in my open nostrils. I'd never smelt that scent before. It was wild, raw musk with a hint of rank fish in it. It was intoxicating. It went straight to my brain like a drug. It went straight to my cock. It was a scent to drive me mad.

'Tell him, Chris,' said Aunt Linda. 'Tell him quickly.'

But Mum leaned forward and pushed those two fingers between my lips, into my mouth.

'Taste my fucking cunt!' she said. 'Tell me it's beautiful!'

I nearly gagged on those fingers. When she pulled them out, I drew an enormous, shuddering breath. Then I said:

'Yes. Your cunt is beautiful, Mum.'

She sat back in her chair, apparently satisfied.

'OK. Now that we've got that clear, I can tell you the story.

'Are you ready, Jeremy?' she asked. 'Are you ready for Listen with Mother?'

I nodded dumbly. It seemed to be enough.

'The first thing you need to know,' she said, 'is that Linda and I have been lovers for ... well, for a long time. We were having each other before I met your father. In fact, the night I met him, we were together and he had us both. Or we had him, I should say. I was at university, at a party. Linda was visiting. We took him home and ravished him. He loved it.

'So, your father wasn't averse to a little ... incest then.' She hissed the word, like a snake on the attack. 'It turned him on,' she said, 'having two kinky sisters.

'But after we got married, after Lisa arrived, he got a bit repressed. Or responsible. Whatever you want to call it.

'He couldn't stop me having sex with my sister, but he wanted the children kept out of it. It had to be a secret. We had lots of rows about it, but in the end, I gave in. I agreed.

'We said we wouldn't tell either of you about my sex life until you were eighteen. That's a long time to keep a secret. But I did it.'

'It was horrible,' said Aunt Linda. 'All that skulking about. Having to hide from the two of you every time we wanted to have some fun. Being furtive all the time.'

'And that's why your upbringing was so bloody repressed,' Mum said. 'That's why we never said the word 'sex' in front of you. That's why you never saw us naked. That's why we never even told a dirty joke while you were around.

'I'd promised your father and I kept my promise. It was like a contract. Do you understand?'

I nodded.

'I kept my promise,' Mum repeated. 'I didn't tell Lisa anything until she was eighteen.'

She turned to Lisa. 'Did I?'

Lisa smiled.

'Tell him what happened next,' said Mum — and Lisa took up the story.

'You told me on the phone,' she said, 'because I was staying at Aunt Linda's house at the time.'

'We thought that would be best,' Mum said. 'To give you a bit of distance from me, in case you took it badly.'

'But you didn't know I was already gay,' said Lisa, and she chuckled. She glanced at me: 'Well, pretty much, anyway,' she added. 'But you know, Jeremy, it'll be alright if you ... You know, if you want to ...