AUTHOR'S NOTE
- I want to thank my editor Ditee for all that she has done. She makes my mess readable.
All characters in this story are at least eighteen years old.
Chapter 1
"I wont have it!" She said to John "It's not going to happen."
She was pretty for her age, petite, bleach blond (for him), just slightly overweight and with large breasts that she showed off in tight, low cut sweaters (also for him). John just rolled his eyes in frustration. They had been down this road so many times before. He didn't want to have this conversation again.
"He took the oath, and as far as we know, he was true to it."
"I don't care," she said smugly.
"He's expecting it."
"How do you know he's expecting it? I never said anything to him. Did you say anything to him?"
"I never said anything to him. It's just assumed."
"He's assuming the wrong things. He's my son, and I never gave my permission for this." John didn't say anything. They had been over this so many times before.
"Besides it's barbaric," she added.
"It's not barbaric. I had one myself."
"I know you did. All of your brothers did too. It was probably the same woman too."
"No! You know that that's not true. For me and Kevin it was my mother's cousin, but Jimmy had someone else"
"And you don't think there's something wrong with that?"
"No I don't see anything wrong with it." He thought about his mother's cousin and smiled. She was beautiful.
"It's not funny John. This is one giant fraternity stunt to you men. Isn't it?"
Oh my god, he thought, she is so narrow-minded. Her whole family was like this, but their parents had only had girls, and girls just don't understand.
"Do you want him to get the disease?" He couldn't even call the disease by its name. No one did. It wasn't the only disease left, but it was the only one that mattered. "And what about the 'Moral Codes,' do you want to see him taken away in handcuffs?"
"My God no! How could you say that? He's my son. But this tradition is not the only option."
"It is if he's taken the oath."
"Who did he make this oath to? Not to me. I don't remember discussing this oath. The next thing I know he took it, and we all have to abide by it."
"You know when he took it. All the boys in the class took it together in their freshman year. Katie, this is 2020, we live in a very Victorian age, and we all have to make some adjustments. It's not like when our great grandparents were young."
"Don't preach to me John, and don't treat me like an idiot. I know the necessities of modern life. I don't live in a cave, but it seems to be skewed to a certain proclivity of men."
"Nonsense."
"What if we had a daughter instead? Would you be so eager if she took the same oath?"
"There is no oath for girls."
"That's exactly my point. It's a double standard."
"That's not your point. You're not against a double standard. You'd be against it if there were an oath for girls too."
"Yes I would, because I think it is wrong and perverse."
John loomed over her. It wasn't the fact that he was tall, because he was just slightly taller than normal. It was just that she was short, and she would be shorter still if she weren't in high heels.
Still she wasn't afraid of him, in fact she tended to boss him around, but she couldn't bully him on this subject. He was adamant. Despite his denials, she knew he had promised the boy. Maybe not overtly but tacitly, and she knew that he was going to make good on that promise.
"You are only indignant because it's Justin that's involved. I don't remember you protesting so loudly when it was other people's son's."
"You're ridiculous," she said as she stormed off indignantly.
He was right, and she couldn't deny it. She just couldn't envision he son being defiled this way. Not her son. Not this way. There had to be an alternative.
The fact that it was a beautiful day outside was of no consequence to Justin. He was hung over, and the sun, which was peering in through his window, hurt his eyes.
It was June twenty-ninth, his eighteenth birthday, and he felt all eighteen years of it, at least in his head. He rolled over so that the sun was off his face, and his hand instinctively migrated to in his crotch.
Like any eighteen-year-old boy he had an erection this morning, and although he kneaded it beneath the sheets, he knew from experience that his mother would be knocking on his bedroom door soon, and that was all he dared to do.
Slowly, as he remembered the events of the previous night, he began to smile to himself. Nothing much happened, but he was with his best friends, and they drank an inordinate amount of beer. Beer remarkably supplied by his father.
Now that he was eighteen, and had fulfilled his part in the oath, he was allowed certain "liberties". He was now a man, and yet still a virgin, a feat that would have been embarrassing several generations ago.
To Justin, and his peers, it was not only laudable, but a necessity for survival, at least statistically. They lived in an age when, if you were not a virgin on your eighteenth birthday, you would probably be dead, or in jail, by your twentieth, if you weren't dead already.
Underage drinking, though still technically illegal, was tolerated, if there was parental supervision, and all of the imbibers had completed the oath.
Justin stopped stroking his cock as he heard a knock on the door.
"Justin honey, are you up?"
"Yeah mom I'm up."
The bedroom door opened up and his mother peered around it.
"Oh my God. What died in here?" She exclaimed as she entered his room.
"Mom!"
"I can't stand it in here. I have to open up a window."
"Mom you'll let in all of the hot air."
"I don't care. How can you live in this stench?" She said as she threw open the window next to his bed. "Were you drinking last night?"
"Mom!"
"You know I don't approve of that. Who bought you the alcohol?"
"It wasn't alcohol. It was a few beers, and dad and Mr. Collins bought it for us."
"Timmy's dad?" She asked as she started to pick up the clothes off his floor.