Grandmother's Sacrifice

"Coming of Age" stories. Cutesy tales of gawky, clumsy kids fumbling their ways through sexual rites of passage, only to emerge as better, wiser, more sensitive young men and women.

Such utter horseshit!

Let me just say this: For improbability and depravity, my "coming of age" story takes the cake walking away.

It took nearly three years of persistent nagging for my therapist to pry my story out of me. But when I finally did open up and told her just a fraction of what'd happened, she didn't know what the fuck to say. It was like I'd hit her between the eyes with a five mega-ton dildo! It's bad, let me tell you, when you can shock your therapist into speechlessness; it automatically puts you in the outer 3% on the weirdness curve.

Of course, she didn't believe me at first. But after she confirmed the basic facts by reading the police reports and digging through the newspaper morgues, then I think she started to believe me. That's when the grilling really started, her trying to get me to fess up all the juicy details. By the time I unloaded the whole story on her, she looked at me, slack-jawed. And what was her response? She said I needed counseling, for crissake! I said, "Hey, Doc, what the fuck you think we've been doing here for three years -- electrolysis?"

She knew she was way in over her head. I don't doubt she even discussed me with her other pinhead colleagues.

Anyway, she spent the next three sessions making me go back over all that crap again, making me re-live every goddamn thing. It turns out, see, I'm cursed with this uncanny memory for details. Once something's in my head, it's virtually impossible for me ever get rid of it. Alzheimer's may be my only fucking hope.

Anyway, my counselor tells me I should try putting it all down on paper. "Good therapy," she says, "purge your demons." She suggested I think of it like I was a soldier coming off some traumatic mission, who needs to debrief himself to get his peace of mind back. The difference, though, was my debriefing - if that's what you want to call it - was about ten years after my battle was over. But, what the fuck, I tried writing it all down, half a dozen times. But I always wound up chucking it in the trash. "Approach-avoidance", she called it, due to my "ambivalent emotions."

But maybe this time I can get through it. Just try to bear with me.

I was eighteen when it all went down. Until that point, I wasn't exactly sexually experienced. Oh, I'd made out with a few girls, did a little light petting. Got my lower lip snagged once on a girl's braces. That was pretty much the extent of it.

Then I met Audra.

We were both in our senior year of high school, sharing some of the same classes. She'd already been accepted to Sophie Newcomb in New Orleans where she was planning to major in Microbiology. I was planning to go Texas A&M to study Chemical Engineering. Audra and I were both looked on by our classmates as egg-headed geeks.

She was slender, had sandy blond hair, slim hips, cute butt, smallish breasts, and she wore glasses. She had a little overbite that I found sort of sexy. Audra first came across to me as very proper and a bit reserved. But she seemed to enjoy our being together. She laughed at my jokes. We started dating.

We were both insecure -- I doubt she was any more sexually experienced than I was. We helped each other overcome our shyness. We went on a couple of movie dates, followed by trips to the neighborhood ice cream parlor. She wore L'Air du Temps, a perfume that I found completely intoxicating. I was thrilled when we'd walk along, holding hands. I fretted the first time I put my arm around her, flop sweated over our first goodnight kiss, and projectile sweated the first time she let me cop a feel.

From there we spent many a thrilling hour after school, before her parents got home from work, making out. I still remember transitioning from feeling her up outside her clothes to putting my hand under her sweater, releasing her bra, and caressing her naked breasts. My God! What a thrill! She had wonderful, delicate pink nipples. They were very sensitive. I gave them a lot of attention.

We grew gradually bolder, until finally we'd lie on her parent's bed, both our tops off, our jeans unzipped and down around our thighs. She had this sexy flat belly, sensuous hipbones, and a delectable innie belly button that I couldn't resist tonguing. I remember the first time she let me get my finger wet, and the first time she jacked me off. She looked at my cock the whole time she stroked me, with this ultra-serious expression, like she was waiting for the teacher to hand back our test grades. She was oddly technical in her sex talk:

"Do you think you'll ejaculate soon?" It wasn't that she was impatient. It was more that she had a novice's lewd interest in male physiology.

"Yeah, pretty soon," I murmured, near swooning.

When I finally spurted into the air and all over her hand, she looked pleased, like she'd just made a very good grade. In my mind, she was making straight "A"s.

One of our most daring stunts was the night we sat on the sofa in her living room, watching television, her father seated in his easy chair with his back to us a few feet away. Audra sat in a yellow sundress, knees bent, feet on the sofa. When she'd part her thighs for me, I'd keep my eyes fixed on the back of her dad's head and reach over and massage her sweet pussy through her cotton panties until the patch between her legs was sopping wet. Every time her dad began to turn his head toward us to make some comment about the program, I'd snatch my hand away, and she and I would both smile at him like two innocent cherubs. Once he'd turn back to the TV, back my hand would go to continue its covert ops. A few times, I'd manage to insinuate a finger through the leg hole of her panties, get in between the lightly haired cunt lips, and give her a naughty little finger fuck. Meanwhile, she'd be seductively squeezing and rubbing my iron-hard penis through my pants.

Life was good for Audra and me -- better than good - terrific! I was in adolescent Nirvana, that is, until one afternoon when her dad was at the office and her mother was out grocery shopping.

We were lying on her bed, heavy petting. We'd gone farther than we'd ever gone before. I'd gotten her panties off and was fingering her up to my last knuckle while she gently cupped and massaged the head of my cock with the silky soft palm of her hand.

We tongued each other's mouths. I began slow humping her thigh. Then I took my dick and played a dangerous game, sliding the tip between the moist rose petals of her pussy, and gently moved it up and down, stimulating her sweet little clit. She got plenty wet. She touched me and must've felt pre-cum oozing from my pecker. She broke off from our kiss.

"Oh don't," she moaned softly into my mouth, "You'll make me have a baby."

It was the single most erotic thing anyone had every said to me. I lost control; I admit it. The head of my cock glided down the slick inner surface of her labia toward her precious opening. She made no effort to stop me. I was within a blissful millisecond of entering her.

Then the bedroom door suddenly opened, and there stood her mother, still holding a bag of groceries, mouth agape.

And that was all she wrote for Audra and me.

So, like I already said, I'd just turned eighteen when all the shit I'm about to tell you about happened. Eighteen. The age when most guys are just one big walking hard-on, with hormones squirting out the ears. Nowadays, kids are a lot more precocious. You got baby boys strapping on a condom while they're still in the fucking nursery!

Anyway, my dad had just left for Belgium -- Antwerp, I think -- to supervise the installation of some new printing equipment. A few days after he left, my mom woke up in the middle of the night with this horrible belly pain and started throwing up. I drove her to the ER, scared shitless. Turns out she had a ruptured ovarian cyst and had to undergo emergency surgery with one of those scope things where they make a tiny incision in the belly button.

Afterwards, Mom was hurting pretty bad and was going to need help for a few days. I would've been fucking useless. But her mom, my Mehmah -- what all us grandkids called her -- she asked us to come stay with her while my mom was recuperating. There was plenty of room. Mehmaw had lived there with my grandfather for over twenty-five years. It was a pretty big house with a wraparound porch, a large living room, dining room, big kitchen, and five upstairs bedrooms. There were three bathrooms, I remember, one downstairs, two upstairs.

Mom wasn't up to climbing stairs, so Mehmaw made up the convertible sofa in the living room, then she got her handyman to drag an extra box spring and mattress down from the attic. She had him put it in the middle of the living room for me. Mom and Mehmaw shared the sofa bed.

We'd only been there a few days when they broke in.

Mom had just gotten off the phone from an overseas call from my dad. The three of us had just settled down in the living room to watch the Academy Awards when we heard a noise in the kitchen. I went to look. By the time I got to the kitchen, they'd already jimmied the door and were inside -- all eight of them! The biggest fucking prison break in Texas history, and these bastards had to pick my Mehmaw's house for a hideout!

The guy in charge -- Jared -- a big tall black guy, very dark-skinned, powerful build, salt and pepper hair and mustache (that's the way I described him later to the cops), he had a very cool, very smooth, relaxed sort of confident air about him. Soft-spoken. Never once did I hear him raise his voice, but the other guys did pretty much whatever he told them.

He explained to us they were going to hold up in our house for a few days until it was safe to move on. He laid down all the typical bullshit you'd expect about our being okay, so long as we behaved and didn't give them any shit.

Jared had his men unplug all the phones in the house, except the one in the kitchen. There would be no calling out, and no one was to answer the phone unless Jared himself was there to listen in on our conversations.

As he laid out all these ground rules, his guys meanwhile had grouped around the TV in the living room, or were listening to the radio in the kitchen, to check the latest news about their breakout. The other inmates, it turns out, had started a riot as a diversion while these guys were smuggled out inside a dumpster. One of the guys' brother-in-law had the state sanitation contract.

The State Police and National Guard were called out to put down the riot. You could tell from his interview on the tube the Warden was fucking clueless -- he wasn't even aware yet anyone had actually escaped. Still, he was cautioning the public to report any suspicious persons in the area. In the meantime, the cops were going to blanket all the surrounding neighborhoods and put up roadblocks. From the way things were shaping up, it was obvious these escaped cons were going to be with us for more than a couple of days.

The men showered the dumpster stench off themselves, and Mehmaw got busy doing several loads of wash. Then a couple of the guys started raiding the fridge, but Jared put a quick stop to that. He made an inventory of all the food in the house, then set up a rationing system to make the food last as long as he thought they'd need.

Gradually, the guys began gathering in the living room. They acted like they were interested in the news, but I realize now they were mostly scoping out my mom. Even lying there on the sofa, sick as she was, she must've looked pretty fucking good to a bunch of guys who probably hadn't been near a woman without glass and wire separating them for months or probably even years.

My mom was about thirty-eight at the time and had beautiful blond hair and a peaches-and-cream complexion. She was a real beautiful woman. Nice full bust, beautiful long legs. She had deep green eyes, full lips, and pearly white teeth. She had this little black mole to the right above her top lip that my dad always said he tried to kiss off her. Anyway, you could see these guys leering at her. I overheard a couple of them making none-too-subtle remarks about what they'd like to do to her given the chance.

None of this eluded my grandmother. She went up to Jared and told him in no uncertain terms he'd better keep his men on a tight lead, explaining that my mom had just had surgery and was in real frail condition. Actually, Mehmaw made my mom sound a lot worse than she really was, to protect her. Jared took it all in, but he looked worried. After all, he was in charge of all these horny guys. I guess he wasn't relishing the idea of having to lay down the law to them about keeping their peckers in their pants.

When Jared called them together to tell them Mom was off-limits, several of the guys began grousing. When one guy - a Columbian, I think -- started showing his ass, Jared pulled him into the hall and shoved him up against the wall, and the guy suddenly became all docile and shit. But you know Jared had to have been trying figure out how he was going to keep all these guys in check.

That's when I noticed him turn and look at my Mehmaw. She was seeing to my mom, and it looked like to me he was sizing my grandmother up now in a whole different way.

My mom got her good looks from Mehmaw, who was what they used to call "a fine figure of a woman". She was about sixty-three years old at the time. She was fairly tall - about five-seven -- with bright blue eyes, square jaw, nice straight teeth and pretty aquiline features, with high cheekbones and a full mouth. Her hair was a pretty silvery gray that she liked to keep cut sort of short. I always thought it made her look a little stern and intimidating. Her hair and make-up were always just so. She went to the beauty parlor every week, and went to church at least twice a week. Her daddy -- my great grandfather -- had been a Presbyterian pastor.

She had his same prim, proper ways. Although she was tending a little toward the heavy side, she was still a real looker, my Mehmaw. She had this really huge bust that jutted way out that I myself had a hard time not staring at whenever she wore anything the least little bit revealing. Let's be honest, most guys will check out nice cleavage, no matter who it belongs to. I once overheard one of my younger uncles, who was known to have an eye for the ladies, tell my dad they should've named Mehmaw "Biltmore", like the hotel, because she was "built more." She had wide womanly hips that had carried six babies, and a nice large rounded butt. She was a real statuesque beauty, my grandmother. She had an almost a regal air about her. And you'd know that when she'd set her mouth a certain way -- what my Paw-Paw used to call "getting her Irish up" -- you'd best back off, and I mean fast, if you knew what was good for you.

After talking things over with his men, Jared took Mehmaw aside and he spoke to her in a hushed voice. During all this, she stared at him with her usual frosty expression. I don't know what he said, but he must have said something that shocked the shit out of her, because suddenly her hand flew up to her face and she gave a little outcry that my mother didn't notice -- but I sure did. It wasn't she just appeared flustered. It was something I'd never seen in her before: fear.

She looked from Jared to all those mean, skuzzy bastards, and then back to Jared again. He cocked his head first toward his men, then toward my mom, like he was giving her some sort of ultimatum.

Mehmaw ordered him to come with her into the kitchen so they could talk it over in private. They were too far away for me to hear what was said, but you could tell from their body language that they were having a real blow out. Mehmaw was trying her best to talk him out of something. But Jared - well, he just wasn't backing down. She glanced back again at all those guys, then at my poor mother who was lying on the sofa, looking so pale and weak. Then, Mehmaw looked like she was desperately pleading with Jared, but he was stone-faced.

Mehmaw sank down on a kitchen chair, like all the strength had suddenly left her legs. Then she lowered her eyes and, after a long moment, nodded. She'd obviously given in to whatever it was he was demanding of her.

Jared came back into the living room alone, took his men into the hall, to explain things while Mehmaw sat there in the kitchen, staring off into space, looking, well ... devastated.

Everything seemed to go uneventfully the rest of the day, except that Mehmaw seemed unusually distracted and jittery, especially whenever she had to be around those men. You could she was trying to give them a wide berth. I helped her fix dinner and set everything out on the table. Afterwards, once the dishes were done and things put away, my mom and I played a few games of Chinese checkers while Mehmaw took her normal before-bedtime shower.

At about ten o'clock, Jared came in and announced it was time for everyone to go to bed. He seemed very gentle -- even solicitous -- toward my mom, making sure she took her pain medicine. In fact, he even insisted she take double the dose, and she did because she'd been hurting all evening. She also took something the doctor had given her for nausea, which always made her very sleepy, and on top of all that, she took a sleeping pill. I was surprised when Jared told her to take double the normal dose. Then Jared told me to take two sleeping pills, too. I took them from his hand and put them in my mouth, but when I went to take a sip of water, something told me not to swallow the medicine, so I pocketed the pills in my cheek and then later spit them out and flushed them down the commode when I went to brush my teeth. I didn't want to be doped up; I wanted to be on my guard.

I started to head for the bed in the middle of the room, but Mehmaw told me I'd better sleep with my mom tonight. Trying to hide her nervousness, she got my mom and me all tucked in, gave us both a good night kiss, then went over to the box springs and mattress in the center of the living room and sat down to undress. She looked preoccupied. She'd started to reach back to get the zipper of her dress, but then realized that Jared was still standing in the doorway, watching her. She stared back at him with pure hatred until finally he turned off the overhead light and left the room.

I could hear the sound of the zipper and then the rustling of material as my grandmother pulled her dress off. In the dim light from the hallway, I watched as Mehmaw rolled down her nylons and slipped them off her legs -- nice looking legs, I thought, for someone her age. Then she reached around behind her to undo her bra. I'd never seen her get undressed before. As she slipped the bra out from under her slip and bent over to lay it on the floor, I could see her massive breasts swing free, making their huge imprints on that sheer silk. I saw her breasts shift around as she lay down in bed, mounding up on her chest like big throw pillows. Then she pulled the covers extra tight up under her chin. A moment later, someone turned out the light in the hall and everything was plunged in darkness with just a little illumination coming from the upstairs hall light.

It wasn't long before Mom was softly snoring beside me. She was really zonked from all that medicine. I just lay there, wide-awake, feeling kind of nervous and excited, sensing something weird was about to happen, but I didn't know what. Slowly my eyes adjusted to the darkness. I must have lain there a good half-hour, shifting my eyes back and forth from the doorway to my grandmother.

I was just about to dose off when suddenly I heard something in the hall. I strained my ears. I heard it again -- the sound of bare feet scuffing along the hall rug. Occasionally, there would be a small creak from the wooden floorboards. I looked over at Mehmaw to see if she'd maybe gotten up, but I could see her still lying there in bed.