"What do you mean, you've got subscribers?" I asked Mom as she placed the coffee cup before me at her kitchen bench.
She laughed and it was nice to see her happy this close to her divorce.
"Just what I said," she giggled. "On the internet thingy, the youtubes."
I shook my head dramatically.
"What are you even talking about? When do you get on the internet?"
I considered my mother a luddite when it came to technology. Attempts over the years to have her enter the twenty first century had succinctly failed in every respect. To hear she was online and had 'subscribers' of all things was a bolt from the blue.
"Marjorie from the book club helped me," she smiled, sipping her own coffee. I knew the woman vaguely. Older than my mother's fifty five years, the situation was becoming more absurd the more I learnt.
"So how did this all come about?" I asked, actually interested and somewhat bemused.
"Well it was after the ice bucket thing we all did," Mom began. "All the girls were putting their videos on their public media websites..."
"Social media," I corrected her.
"Uh huh, and because I didn't have one Marjorie offered to set it up for me."
"Wait, what ice bucket thing?" I quizzed, now more confused. Sure I hadn't visited Mom in over two weeks but all of a sudden it felt like I knew nothing about her.
Mom threw back her head and again laughed.
"Oh goodness, I haven't seen you lately have I!?" She remarked as if reading my mind. "We all did the ice bucket challenge, the girls in the book club. It's for charity. You have a bucket of icy water poured over y..."
"Yeah I know what it is," I again interrupted. "I want to know how it is you've all of a sudden embraced technology."
"Well again, it was Marjorie," she explained, placing down her mug and heading across the room to her handbag. What happened next was nothing short of astounding as Mom pulled out a new iPad and brought it across to me.
"What's the deal with the iPad?" I asked, bewildered.
"Well, again it was.."
"Marjorie?" I chuckled.
Mom slapped me playfully on the arm as she came to a stop beside me.
"Yes, Marjorie helped me buy it. She said it was the most user friendly..."
The blank look on her face told me that 'user friendliness' didn't extend to helping my mother turn the thing on and I casually slipped it from her grasp and started up the tablet.
"And you've got a YouTube channel!?" I mused as I handed it back to her to fumble with.
"Mmh huh," she affirmed as she placed the screen back down before me and played the video.
The volume was down so I was unable to hear the first few words to come out of my mother's mouth as she laughed and smiled at the camera. Standing on the lawn of a nondescript back yard, my mother was dressed in grey ¾ leggings and a printed white t-shirt, the lettering of which I had trouble reading.
"Where was this?" I asked as she crept behind me to look over my shoulder for a better view whilst I raised the volume.
My mother about to answer, I once again butted in.
"Marjorie's!"
Mom mimicked strangling me, suggesting my assumption had been correct and as the video progressed, dropped her hands from my neck to rest upon my shoulders.
Finished addressing the camera, a younger woman entered the frame holding a sizeable bucket and without ado, raised it above my mother's head and tipped.
Apart from the sound of the icy water splashing the ground and my mother's gasping, cheering and laughter could be heard from behind the camera, but it wasn't what caught my attention. The white t-shirt had raised my eyebrows when I first saw it and now the water had had its effect upon it, I was justified in my concern. Completely transparent, it had turned. What looked to be a flesh colored bra underneath did nothing to obscure my mother's sizeable breasts, leaving her in a state that seemed nothing short of topless.
Mom laughed from behind, clutching my shoulders harder.
"Oh goodness, you have no idea how cold it was!" She explained but as the camera zoomed slowly in on her, the erect state of her nipples went some way to conveying.
It was uncomfortable. I was looking at my mother's breasts. She hadn't so much as worn a bikini in my presence for twenty years that I could recall and now here she was revealing herself in what was nothing less than a wet t-shirt contest.
"Look at my face when the water hits me," Mom enthused as she leaned over my shoulder and scrolled the video back a minute.
Suddenly her presence behind me wasn't so unobtrusive as her cheek brushed against mine and I felt the softness of what could only have been her boobs pressing my back. Innocently of course, but the fact I was looking at her breasts whilst also feeling them made it seem all the more intimate.
Again I watched the water turn her shirt transparent and I felt I had to say something.
"So what made you go for a white t-shirt?" I asked, seeking an answer as to why my reserved mother would choose an item of clothing she must surely have known would become see-through.
"Oh that's just our book club t-shirt," she dismissed, again laughing at her response to the water being dumped on her.
I forced myself to look closer at her chest and could now make out the words, 'readers do it with the lights on' plastered across her tits.
Again the video came to a close, pausing on an image of Mom, her hair wet and plastered to her head, the front of her leggings saturated as if she'd peed herself and her breasts clearly visible. I'd never, ever, seen her in this light. It was almost as if I looked upon a different woman altogether.
I didn't quite know what to say and thankfully it was Mom who broke the sudden silence as she took away the iPad and moved to the other side of the bench with her coffee.
"Oh wow, I've got another five hundred subscribers!"
"What?"
To prove it she turned the screen to display the evidence and my jaw dropped. Two and a half thousand people had subscribed to her channel, the video displaying more than fifty thousand views.
"People must think I'm funny!" Mom deduced.
I didn't know how to put it to her. That it probably wasn't her humour that the video was becoming so popular.
"You don't think there's another reason they're subscribing Mom?" I hinted and her furrowed brow told me she had no idea.
I gestured down at the screen.
"Maybe what you're wearing, I don't know, your um..." I made a sweeping gesture aimed at her torso and her eyes followed to her breasts, currently hidden behind a red wrap dress that was all of a sudden a little too figure hugging.
"Oh no! Don't be silly," she opposed but looked again at the screen, possibly paying a little more attention to her attire. "No," she repeated but I noticed her blush ever so slightly around the neck. "I mean it's not as if it's on one of those adult stations."
I figured she meant websites but finishing my coffee didn't hang around to correct her.
"Whatever you say Mom," I added, rinsing my cup in the sink and moving back beside her. "I've gotta get going." I gave her my usual peck on the cheek and her hand touched mine as she lifted her eyes from the paused shot at the end of the video. There was something behind them; deep in thought she smiled a goodbye to me and I departed, leaving her to dwell upon my revelation.
*
I lay in bed looking at the crack of moonlight around the blinds. How long I'd been attempting to fall asleep was unknown but what was known was it wasn't working. I reached for my phone to look at the time and wasn't surprised by the late hour. The YouTube app drew my eye and absently I opened it up and without putting much thought into it searched under a few key words.
Mom's video wasn't hard to find.
It felt wrong from the moment it happened. With the anticipation of what was to come, I studied her clothing, noting aspects I hadn't caught earlier. A pronounced pubic mound. "Jesus," I whispered to my empty apartment as my eyes focused on the crevice at the top of her thighs, a cameltoe I'd probably ogle at if seen in the street on any other woman. As I said, when my cock began swelling, it felt wrong. When the water splashed down upon her and I took my erection in hand, guilt was my dominant emotion. And as I paused the video on her clearly visible breasts whilst I came upon my stomach, the pleasure of my orgasm was replaced with an almost disgust at my actions.
As was usual, sleep then came pretty easily and as I drifted off, my last thoughts were of kissing my mother's cheek, her hand upon my own.
*
"They want more videos!" My mother ecstatically chimed down the phone line.
"Who does?" I asked, leaning back in the office chair of my cubicle.
"The subscribers," she elaborated. "They're having conversations in the comment section as to what I should do next."
"What do you mean do next?"
"Challenges and...other stuff!"
"Slow down, challenges? What are you talking about?"
It had been over a week since seeing Mom and apart from my middle of the night weakness, I hadn't put much thought into her. As she spoke however I opened YouTube on my work pc and found her channel. Two videos now. Ten thousand subscribers. In my ear she began describing how Marjorie (again) had convinced her to upload another video; suggested she just record herself doing something around the house, cooking or cleaning. I opened the video titled 'Ironing' as Mom detailed what she had recorded, in effect giving me a directors commentary of her movie.
The ironing board set up in the living room; the camera placed such that it showed more of her than her task, I watched as the normal act of Mom doing the ironing was turned into a voyeuristic exercise. Knowing well the layout, the camera was sitting on one of the couches and looking up at my mother from behind. Wearing a dress I was also familiar with, each time she would procure a new item from the basket the viewer was given an unobscured up-skirt peek of her underwear.
"...I mean what else do I know better than housework?" Mom continued as I tried to come to terms with what I was watching. Scrolling through the unedited video, Mom awkwardly picked up the camera revealing a close-up of her cleavage before placing it down on the ironing board itself and to my shock began folding a small stack of her panties.
