[This is largely a rewrite of the earlier story. My wife -- my fiercest critic -- didn't particularly like the way it developed, so I decided to see if I could make it go in a different direction. For those of you who have already read the earlier story, this version is pretty much identical up to the point where Alice takes over the narration, which is about a third of the way in. If anyone has the stamina to read both versions I'd welcome any comments on how they compare.]
They say men think about sex every nine seconds. I don't know if that's true for other men, but when I was eighteen it was certainly true for me. One way or another sex filled my head. At school, at home, on the bus, watching a film, reading the back of a cereal packet, whatever, I either had a hard-on or was trying to get one. Of course, I hadn't had any experience of actual two-person sex by then, so my stimulation wasn't exactly based on memory. More on wishful thinking.
I'd just finished school and was still wondering what to do with myself. My dad was going away for the summer with my stepmum, but I was at the age when the last thing I wanted to do was have a holiday with them. My sister had gone off to the Amazon to help dispossessed Indians or something worthy like that, so I was on my own. That is, until Jenny turned up.
Jenny was an old friend of the family. After my real mum had died, when I and my older sister were little, my dad had used her as a babysitter a lot. I can't think why, but she seemed to like us. I suppose she had that teenage girl's liking for small kids, like younger ones have for ponies. She was only about ten years older than us, but to us she seemed as old as a third parent.
It seems she was trying to finish some book or other and couldn't do it at her own home because there were too many distractions. I knew what she meant. I'd only been to her house once, but once was enough. She was the middle of five kids and the other four were all nutters, mad as hatters. Her mum and dad were 'artists' -- or so they thought of themselves; they never sold a single painting as far as I knew -- and they thought exercising discipline over children was something only Nazis did. God knows how, but Jenny grew up the sane one.
Anyway, there she was on the doorstep with a suitcase in her hand telling me my dad had offered her the use of our house for as long as she needed. No word to me, needless to say. What did his own son matter?
To give her credit, she was embarrassed. She even asked if I minded and said she'd go if I didn't want her there. But what answer can you give to a question like that? 'Yeah, I want the place to myself. Piss off.'
So I had a companion for the rest of the summer. Actually, given that I spent most of my time out and the rest in my room, she wasn't much of one. She was busy on her book in dad's study. Occasionally we bumped into each other in the kitchen or outside the bathroom, but the more occasionally it was the better I liked it. Sharing your home with your ex-babysitter is a weird experience when you're eighteen. I kept half-expecting her to stick her head round my door and tell me to turn my light out.
The summer dragged on. My friends from school drifted off, some to new jobs, some on bizarre gap year activities like teaching Siberian peasants Shakespeare or building wallaby houses in the Australian outback, some just on holiday. Before I knew it I was on my own. I woke up one morning and I had no one to hang out with, nowhere to go.
So I thought of sex.
It was early -- well, 10.30 -- and naturally I had a hard-on. What better way to start the day? I masturbated at least once a day, two or three times if I had the opportunity, and though I say so myself I was getting pretty good at it.
It's funny, but up to that day I hadn't really fantasized that much while trying to make myself come. The physical sensation was enough. The pleasurable feeling of my fingers on my stiff cock was intense enough to blot out nearly all thought, other than just the hazy picture of a vague all-purpose girl who had no clearly defined features but with whom I was doing all sorts of exciting but unspecific acts leading swiftly to cries of pleasure, real on my part, sadly imagined on hers.
This particular morning, though, I never got to the cries of pleasure. Well, not immediately, anyway. With my hand working feverishly beneath my duvet and my eyes closed tight, I sensed rather than heard my bedroom door open.
A split second later my hand was a good yard from my cock. My eyes opened. Even so, I didn't really see Jenny. All I saw was the door closing. Then I heard a muffled 'Sorry' and hurried footsteps on the stairs.
I lay frozen with embarrassment for a good five minutes. Jenny had seen me wanking. Well, not as such. The duvet was over me. But as good as. By rights my cock should have deflated like a pricked balloon. But surprisingly it didn't. It stayed stiff as a poker. Whatever shame I felt, my cock obviously didn't share it. God, I thought with horror, maybe I'm an exhibitionist.
How could I look her in the face now? Say what you like, whatever your relationship with someone, to be seen masturbating by them changes it. Now I'd have to avoid her even more than I did already. I imagined her checking the laundry basket to look for telltale stains on my boxers. This was too much.
But then my hand crept back to my cock, still stiff, still hard and needing to be dealt with. I pulled back the foreskin and started stroking under the crown. Bliss. I closed my eyes. Well, she was hardly going to come back into the room now, was she?
And it was then the strangest thing happened. In my mind's eye I saw Jenny. Jenny peering round my bedroom door, watching me, watching my hand stroke my cock. And she was smiling, encouraging me. The image was like a gun going off. I came instantly, almost without me realising it was going to happen. At eighteen you get orgasms like that. Bang. It's over almost before you know it's coming. Even so, it was still a great start to the day.
Later, when I knew she must have finished breakfast, I crept to the bathroom. I knew she'd be busy in dad's study til lunchtime, but I was still reluctant to make too much noise. She might think I was trying to scrub away the evidence of my misdeeds. Then I dressed, grabbed some cash and was out.
That evening we sat either ends of the sofa, careful to be as far away from each other as possible. I was trying to read a new Grisham, but it was difficult with her watching the 10 o'clock movie, some romantic bollocks about a silly woman not realising she loves the hero, then finally realising she does. My mind wandered.
Needless to say it wasn't long before I had a hard-on. I was lounging right back on the sofa, my legs out straight, the kind of position my mum hated me to sit in when she was alive. Unfortunately it showed my cock was stiffening to anyone who cared to look. Almost in direct line of sight to the TV, the bulge in my jeans looked like a mountain to me. I tried to think of something to make it go away -- politics, football, the film's drippy heroine -- but it stayed resolutely hard.
I shifted my weight, tried to raise the leg nearest to Jenny so it might hide my bulge from her without being too obvious.
'Can't you sit still? I'm watching this.'
'Sorry.'
It was like being a kid again. I remembered how my sister and I had often sat either side of Jenny on this very sofa while she'd read a bedtime story to us. Maybe once someone has that kind of authority over you, they never lose it.
But my cock seemed to grow with every minute. The bulge in my jeans was sticking up a good two or three inches. It was getting painful. I had to move.
There was a sigh of aggravation from the other end of the sofa. 'Well, are you going to deal with that or aren't you?'
For a moment I had no idea what she was talking about. 'Deal with what?'
She glanced disdainfully at my groin. 'That.'
I felt my neck go red and sat up hurriedly. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'
She turned back to the TV. 'Fine. Then stop shifting about and let me watch the film.'
That certainly had the desired effect. Within a minute my tent had subsided as if it had never been there.
With nothing to hide I stood up. 'I'm going to bed.'
''Night then.' But she didn't look away from the TV. I guess the drippy heroine must have been at a really crucial stage of her emotional journey.
'Enjoy the film.'
I was out of there. It was only when I'd finished in the bathroom and undressed I realised I'd left the Grisham downstairs. So much for grand exits. Now I'd have to reappear and leave all over again. I put on my dressing gown.
Though I was in bare feet I didn't intend to be quiet, but I guess I must have been, because when I came through the door to the living room Jenny jumped as if a ghost had appeared. And as soon as she saw it was me -- who else did she expect, for Christ's sake? -- a big pink blush spread right over her face as if she'd just been caught with her hand in the sweet jar. I must say it made a change her being embarrassed, but I didn't crow.
'Forgot my book.'
'Oh, right,' she mumbled. 'Yes, of course. It's over there.' She pointed to my arm of the sofa as if I couldn't see the book for myself.
I grabbed it and went to bed. I didn't give her another thought.
The next morning I was the first up for a change, and for the first time since whenever, didn't wake with a hard-on. After the embarrassment of the previous evening it didn't take a genius to work out why. I lay in bed thinking about it for a while, but the whole thing was too shaming -- an ex-babysitter passing a disparaging remark about a guy's erection -- I'd be surprised if I ever managed another. I got up and walked along to the bathroom.
I don't know what made me stop outside Jenny's room -- or rather, the room my dad shared with my stepmum. I never had before. Maybe it was a small noise, or the fact the door was open a little. Not that it hadn't been before, but it wasn't usually. Even so, it wasn't open enough for me to see directly in, but I could see a mirror that hung on the wall over the chest of drawers and in that I could see the bottom half of the big double bed. Jenny was still in it. I could see the outline of her legs under the thin summer duvet, one straight out, the other bent at the knee so her thighs were wide apart. Higher than her waist I couldn't see, because the angle on the mirror wasn't right. That was fine by me: it meant she couldn't see me.
