"You know," she said, smiling, her eyes meeting mine over the rim of her coffee cup, this one with a cartoon frazzled cat and the caption
I'll be with you as soon as I finish my first cup of coffee
on it, "it wouldn't be such a bad thing."
"What's that?" I asked, taking a sip of my own coffee, strong the way I like my morning caffeine hit.
She put the cup down, leaned forward, touched my hand with her fingers, and said, "If he learned from someone who cares and who wouldn't come home knocked up."
The subject of this conversation was David, her son, and my conversational partner was Mary, his mother. We had fifteen years of history since she moved in next door, a young divorcee with a three-year-old tagging along behind her. Over the years, we became friends and, in the way that can only happen between two women with a three-decade age gap between them, intimates.
She would tell me things she could never share with someone her age.
Mary was the classic "bad luck girl" when it came to the men in her life. The husband she had divorced when she moved in as a 19-year-old high school dropout with a three-year-old in tow was ten years her senior, had married her to avoid prosecution for statutory rape, and left after a year, telling her in no uncertain terms that he found her fat body "disgusting." She lived with her parents for two years after that, under their disapproving eyes and steady reminders of the burden she was putting on them.
She got lucky with a social worker who got Mary support to go to school and then Section 8 rent support which accounted for her being my next-door neighbor.
Over the years I became Mary's confidant and David's surrogate Mom much of the time. Mary worked, first part-time jobs while she went to school to become a nurse, and then as she worked those terrible hours to which young nurses are subject. I was retired and, well, comfortable after the insurance settlement, and it was kind of fun having a kid around.
The second time she came home from a bad date, and I mean a seriously bad date with a fat lip, black eye, and a bruise low on her back that had me worried about kidney damage, I held her and before the night was over we shared my bed and our bodies. We were, from then on, if not exclusive lovers, very intimate friends.
She reminded me of things I had forgotten. For the first time in years, I felt that wonderful pressure in my belly as I got sexually aroused. I felt the heat of swollen labia as I got excited. I felt that wonderful agony/ecstasy of an orgasm and then a second and third leaving me laughing and crying as I gasped for breath.
I like to think I gave as good as I got. She seemed pretty damn breathless too when we would spend a night together.
Don't get me wrong. I hadn't started playing for the other team or anything, nor had she. But two women living alone, well, it was a special relationship.
So here were were, old friends, sometime lovers, talking about her son's growing interest in women and sex.
"You really think he's still a virgin?" she asked.
"Mary, he tells me things he can't tell his mother," I said, "And yeah, I'm pretty sure he's still a virgin."
She giggled.
"God, an eighteen-year-old virgin, do such things really exist?" she asked, "I thought that ranked up there with unicorns."
"He was close with Lois," I said, smiling at the blank look on her face and adding, "the girl he dated for a while before Sammee, the one he took to prom."
She nodded.
"But, as he put it, she was reluctant and he's not a rapist," I said.
And that's when she shocked me.
"You know," she said, smiling, her eyes meeting mine over the rim of her coffee cup, this one with a cartoon frazzled cat and the caption
I'll be with you as soon as I finish my first cup of coffee
on it, "it wouldn't be such a bad thing."
"Are you serious?" I asked, holding her eyes, not really sure how I felt.
"Cleo," she said, and using my name drove home how serious she was, "yes, I'm serious."
She took a drink from her coffee and a deep breath and went on.
"Here's the thing," she said, "whenever I read an article, you know, some teacher somewhere is being sent to prison for having sex with a student, I think - - not one time in the history of the world, hell, in the history of the damn
UNIVERSE
, has a human being with a functioning Y chromosome been harmed by too much sex with a mature woman."
She took another drink, I think giving me time to let that sink in.
"And?" I asked.
She smiled.
"You love him, don't you?" she asked.
"You know I do," I said.
"Would you ever hurt him?" she asked.
"No," I said.
"So what I'm saying," she said, pausing to take another sip from her cup, "is it would be okay for you to teach him what a man needs to know."
I couldn't help the giggle that escaped.
"You're pimping me to your son," I said.
"Well," she said, "I've seen you act pretty fucking whory,"
"And you enjoyed every second of it, Slutterella," I said, standing and letting my robe fall open.
She stood, smiling, and slipped her hands under the robe, her palms tracing my waist around to my back to cup my ass.
She kissed me and then whispered, "Take me to bed now, make me cum like a garden hose, and then we'll talk about teaching my son to be a good lover."
I glanced at the clock on the stove.
"Well, it's 7:42 so we have a couple of hours before your lazy son will be up," I said, taking her hand and leading her inside. I giggled and almost fell when her hand slipped under my robe as we went up the stairs and she goosed me.
"That's gonna cost you," I said, continuing up the stairs.
In my bedroom, I turned and kissed her.
I enjoy our mornings together. There's something about me being fresh and her being tired after twelve hours at the hospital that, somehow, equalizes us. When we make love in the evening, her energy overwhelms me.
But it was morning and, especially after her suggestions regarding David, I was very much in the mood.
Per hospital requirements, she was dressed in scrubs, that simple outfit, almost pajamas, that at some point had replaced the white dresses I used to wear as a nurse's uniform.
I was proud of the steadiness in my hands as I reached up and unbuttoned the top of her scrubs. I kissed her again as I worked it down her arms, holding it when it was at her elbows, hobbling her arms as I leaned forward and took her earlobe between my teeth and bit down, drawing a cry from her.
"Toldya you were going to pay for that," I said, giggling and then kissing where I had bit her and then below her ear, right at the hinge of her jaw.
"I know, Cleo, I deserved it," she said, her head leaning to the side, offering me more should I want it.
I reached around and unhooked her bra, all four hooks of it. She's a heavy-chested woman and needs a heavy-duty bra. When I pulled the bra her big pancake boobs sagged. She overflows her 38D bra but she's one of those women whose mammary glands just shrunk to nothing when she quit nursing. Her areolas were large, the size of tan coffee cups, her nipples small, little pink pencil erasers centered in the areolas. As I watched the areolas tightened into wrinkled cones and her nipples stood out.
We had enough history that I knew what she liked. I kissed her, our lips meeting with the right amount of pressure, our tongues fencing playfully, while my thumb and forefinger pinched and rolled her nipple drawing a soft gasp from her.
I inhaled her gasp and more, taking her breath into my lungs and savoring it like a hit from a pot pipe.
The kiss lingered while I tormented her nipple and we shared that single breath until we had the oxygen depleted and were starting to get light-headed.
She broke the kiss with a sharp intake of breath, sucking air like a swimmer who had been underwater a little too long, and her hands went to my shoulders to push me down.
We had enough history that I knew what she wanted and, well, if I'm being honest here, what I liked giving her, so I started kissing my way down her body. I lingered at her breasts, sucking each nipple before nipping it hard enough to make her yelp, and then working my way farther down.
My slightly arthritic knees objected with the final six inches to the floor, but not too badly, as I kissed that line where soft skin met the hard bone of her ribcage.
On my knees, I pulled the bow knot of the drawstring of the scrub pants loose and then pulled it tight, forcing a slight roll, a muffin top, before retying the bow and lifting first her right and then her left foot into my lap to untie and remove the expensive, soft-soled shoes, a nurse's trademark footwear.
I got her shoes and the heavy cushioned athletic socks off of her, her hands on my shoulders for balance, as I massaged her feet, using my thumbs to dig in, providing relief I understood. My husband had done the same thing for me when he could and I knew how good it felt.
