"A Helping Hand" (circa-1966)
The full length mirror on the bedroom wall threw back an image of a fit and healthy eighteen-year-old man, boasting an impressive sculptured and toned physique.
Lifting the lid of the record player and carefully lowering the needle onto a black piece of vinyl, cursing when the needle missed the start and scratched the surface.
'In the chilly hours and minutes of uncertainty,' Donovan chimed. 'To feel you all around me,' he sang, letting the wet towel drop to the floor, smiling with admiration at the perfect specimen of manhood hanging in a gentle curve over his left thigh.
Some of his friends often teased him about the size of his penis. And when he was taking showers after playing football he noticed that compared to other boys of his age he had been gifted with an exceptional attachment.
Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan looked down from posters on the bedroom wall as he pulled on a pair of tight beige shorts and slipped a white t-shirt over his chest.
He looked into the mirror, checking his winning smile, his immaculate appearance and the orderly bulge straining inside his shorts.
With temperatures reaching into the high seventies it was only late morning and even with all the windows open his bedroom was incredibly hot and uncomfortable.
A generous splash of after shave and another glance in the mirror, making sure everything was perfect before he left the house and headed off to meet his best friend.
Strolling along in the sweltering heat he wondered if this year could get any better. England had beaten Germany 4-2 in the final of the World Cup. He was about to start his fist job as a trainee building surveyor with a local firm of architects and next week he was going on holiday to Barcelona with his best friend, Andy Dobson.
But football, work and holidays were insignificant. The only thing on his mind today was meeting Andy's mother.
Ruth Dobson lived with her son in a detached house on a private residential estate on the outskirts of Gateshead. In all the time he had known Andy and Ruth they had never once discussed or even mentioned the subject of her divorce, almost six years ago.
According to gossiping neighbours when Ruth discovered her husband was having an affair with his secretary - apparently a woman half his age with loose legs and firm young tits - he came home one night, packed a bag and walked out of her life.
During the early stages, Ruth was devastated and struggled emotionally with the circumstances, but time is a great healer and eventually she recovered from her ordeal and was able to get on with her new life. Some people said that when the time came she actually looked forward to the divorce.
The divorce settlement left Ruth financially comfortable which enabled her to pay for Andy's university fees and a new Austin Mini for his eighteenth birthday.
He often wondered whether his insatiable appetite for knowledge was driven by his own aspirations for academic achievement or more of a parental motivation to please his mother.
In the girls and sex department, Andy claimed to have lost his virginity to a girl he met when he was on a camping holiday with his parents in southern France.
He was still a virgin. Probably because he had been going out with a girl for almost two-years, who constantly reminded him that the Catholic Church advocated that sex before marriage was an unholy act. And definitely because her parents had an over-bearing disciplinarian attitude with their daughter's social life, both lecturing her about the merciless wrath that would befall her if she ever gave in to temptation and that boys were the evil seed of Satan and if she ever explored such wicked and unholy temptations, God would come down and pierce her eyes with fire.
But the day she let him touch her breasts for the very first time would be embedded in his memory for life. He wasn't sure whether it was her final pledge of endearment or just a parting gift, but there was an uncanny coincidence on that particular day.
Not long after he had fondled her breasts she told him that her parents were going to live in Australia and she would be going with them.
Up till now, sex had been nothing more than imagination and endless hours of masturbation.
For a woman in her early-forties Ruth Dobson was a beautiful, elegant and sexy woman.
Greeted at the door with an infectious smile and a soft kiss on the cheek was all it took to shape a growing lump inside his shorts.
"Come in Mark," Ruth invited, with a sweeping hand, a smile showing perfect white teeth, sipping a cool drink from a glass, a motioning finger pointing at the kitchen door.
"Andy's waiting outside on the patio," she said, her voice whispered in a seductive melody, her large breasts making a brief appearance through a gap in her blouse. "I've prepared cold drinks. If you come this way," she offered, heading for the door, his feet following quickly on her heels, his eyes glued to her shapely curves, her endless legs disappearing inside a pair of snug fitting white shorts, her pouting bottom lifting and lowering as she shifted her weight, waving invitingly from beneath the tight fabric, revealing shrouded hints of the alluring nakedness that lay beneath.
The drink was cold, his heart warming to the acquaintance of her elegance and captivating smile, watching her skipping around the patio, fussing over the two of them as if they were both her children, an accidental meeting of hands or the slightest touch of her womanly curves sending a shiver up his spine, leaving him with an iceberg of an erection straining inside of his shorts.
There had been numerous occasions when the heat from hormonal proximity was so intense that he had to sprint home to release the build-up of steaming contents inside his testicles, although there were times when his desire to masturbate was so urgent that he had to use her bathroom to offload a generous amount of seminal fluid into the toilet pan.
Thermometers were almost reaching boiling point, sending needles high into the eighties the day Andy and Ruth pulled the car to a halt outside his parent's house.
After squeezing his bag into the boot of the car and giving his mother and sister Victoria a hug, they were gone.
Their holiday to Barcelona involved a short detour to Ipswich to visit Andy's grandmother. While the two boys were away Ruth was going to spend some valued time with her mother.
Even with all of the windows rolled down the heat inside the Austin Mini was unbearable. Andy at the steering wheel, him in the front passenger seat, accepting the role of navigator, Ruth casually thumbing through a magazine in the back, a wide-brimmed straw-hat tilted on her head, her fingers playing with a silver pendant hanging on a chain around her neck, twisting the buttons on her blouse, the white summer dress creeping slowly above her knees, the slightest movement in the seat offering hints of the enchanting treasures that lay beneath.
"Would you two boys like a mint?" Ruth asked, searching inside a straw bag, the question giving him another excuse to crane his head and look back over his shoulder, a welcoming smile and a soft voice greeting his inquisitive eyes.
"Take one for Andrew," she said, fanning her face with the magazine, her summer dress riding high on her thighs, her white knickers in full view, his decadent subconscious flashing images of the buttons on her blouse springing apart and a surge of pure woman spilling out.
In the claustrophobia of closeness and the emerging heat of hormonal chaos, pulses throbbed, heart beats raced and genitalia stirred, perspiration and perfume teasing his nostrils, filling the car with the aroma of sex.
Was it the humidity of the afternoon sun, or was it the heat of sexually charged bodies, he thought.
Whatever it was it had left him with a throbbing nuisance inside his shorts and he wondered how many times he could discretely lower his hand and make an adjustment without making it too obvious.
It was almost six-o'clock when they finally reached Ipswich.
The imposing Victorian double-fronted detached house set in an acre of land, boasting six bedrooms and a large sun terrace at the rear leading to a gazebo bordering a small orchard at the bottom of the garden, was certainly impressive.
Although Edith Webster had recently suffered a stroke, leaving one side of her face and body semi-paralysed, she showed amazing courage to ensure that her disability wouldn't prevent her from the life she had cherished with her late husband Arthur.
The house held many memories of her late husband and Edith made it very clear to anyone who asked that she would only leave when heaven calls her name.
During dinner that evening, Ruth had been sampling the red wine a little too much and a little too often, and it was evident from her slurred speech that she was heading for a severe hangover the next day.
After putting Edith safely to bed and making a short detour to her wardrobe, Ruth walked back into the living room wearing a figure hugging red skirt and a blouse with too many buttons undone.
She smiled poured wine into a glass and lifted the lid of the record player.
The romantic voice of Frank Sinatra filled the room. 'Strangers in the Night,' she sang, a glass of wine in her hand, twirling on tiptoes to an imaginary waltz, a vision of wonder floating on air around the room. 'What were the chances, we'd be sharing love, before the night was through,' she harmonised with Frank, her curvy bottom swaying with the rhythm of the music, sweeping her tongue suggestively over her lips, blowing the occasional kiss from the palm of her hand when she thought her son wasn't looking.
Andy sighed, jumped to his feet and pointed at the clock above the fireplace.
"It's getting late. I think we should all get some sleep."
Andy's uncompromising stare was enough to prompt his friend to lift from the sofa.
