I got a strange e-mail one day. Initially I dismissed it as spam, since I had no idea who the sender called "your_first_time" was. The subject line said "Would you be interested?"
I opened the mail, and well, it was porn. The writing was mediocre and the editing had some issues, but most notably it seemed to be about a mother having sex with her own son.
While that certainly wasn't my favorite genre, I couldn't honestly say I hadn't thought about it occasionally on a fantasy level. I didn't find my actual mother attractive in any way, instead my thoughts were always about pretty fantasy mothers guiding their boys in natural ways.
Because of this I thought it was unusual how the mom in the story had been described quite realistically, in a way which reminded me of my own mother. The strangest thing was how I still thought the story was really hot. Even the questionable writing and lack of storyline didn't matter when the action started.
I entertained myself with this text for a while and then saved it in my porn folder. You know, the one which everyone has on their computer even though they pretend they don't. Yet I had to wonder who the hell had sent me this and why? I could only think the author who had been trying to submit it somewhere and had mistyped the address so it ended up into my inbox instead.
I decided to respond to the sender and inform him that he had sent this thing to the wrong place. I might have felt awkward about doing so if my e-mail had any connection to my real name, but it didn't. I could imagine the author being quite embarrassed about his screw-up, but his address was made up too. He wouldn't be in any real trouble and he would get to submit his story properly.
I didn't think about the matter any further until a few days later I got an answer from the sender. I frowned and wondered what he could possibly have to say to me. Perhaps he wasn't embarrassed about his writing and wanted to thank me. The subject line said "Signal", and the message in its entirety read: "Wear red socks if you want to go all the way. Don't stress about it. Any time is fine for me, sooner or later".
I didn't, of course, own any red socks. Who the hell would wear crap like that? I thought about the message all day, until our family had gathered for dinner. For some reason the story made me occasionally glance at mom differently than before. I tried to shake that feeling away and concentrate on my casserole, but I was still thinking about those soft forms under mom's shirt.
Suddenly it clicked. My hand shook so hard my fork fell and clattered against the plate. Everyone turned to look at me, but I dismissed the event with an awkward smile and picked up the implement again.
I couldn't help thinking that perhaps I had been mistaken about the identity of the sender, and that thought sent chills down my spine. Whether those chills were nervous or excited, I couldn't be sure, but I do know the next day I went to the mall to buy a pair of red socks. I thought it would have been difficult to even find men's socks in that color, but the shops were full of even much weirder crap. Damn hipsters. I remembered why I usually shopped at Wal-Mart.
When the next day had arisen, I found I didn't have the courage to put the socks on, so I tossed them into a drawer and went downstairs to eat breakfast.
Mom was alone in the dining room, everyone else must have already left.
"Morning," she said, but she only momentarily glanced up from the newspaper she was reading.
"Morning," I said, but my gaze lingered on her longer than it usually did. I didn't normally pay much attention to my mom, or at least how she looked like. I'm sure that's the same for most people, but now I made note of how her brown hair curled over her shoulders, and how her breasts bounced slightly when they bumped against the table. She raised her head, so she must have noticed me staring.
"There was a wasp just about to land on your shoulder," I said and pointed to empty air behind her.
She glanced back and shrugged, seeing there was nothing there. "It must have flown out," she said.
Luckily the window actually was open, so there was at least a theoretical possibility for something like that to have happened. I had taken a peek at my mother's breasts when she had looked away. They seemed to be quite big, but they probably also sagged quite a bit, although I couldn't think of a reason why I should be thinking about something like that.
The day proceeded normally from there, as did the following ones. I found myself holding the red socks in my hand every morning, but every time I returned them back in the drawer. Eventually the tension became unbearable, because of quite improper images which were going through my mind with such intensity that they made it difficult to think about anything else. One morning I finally put the socks on before I went downstairs, not sure whether I wanted mom to be home or not.
Nothing special happened during the breakfast itself. If mom noticed the socks, she didn't say anything about them, or even pay any attention to them. That should perhaps have been a relief, but it only made a tingling suspicion arise within me. There's no way I'd normally wear socks like that, and they were so red they practically burned. She should at least made some kind of a quip about them, unless she was on purpose pretending she didn't notice them.
When we finished eating mom went to wash the dishes, her back turned towards me. After a while of silence she said: "Eight o'clock."
"What?" I wondered.
"Remember to be in your room then. Your father and sister will be going to grandma's for the evening," mom said. That explained very little, until I remembered the red socks and immediately broke into nervous sweat. I sheepishly left the room while mom's back was still turned. This couldn't really be about what I was thinking, could it?
The day felt long and I couldn't concentrate on anything. I didn't want to come home early either, because that would have felt even more awkward, so I tried to calm my nerves down with a movie. It worked so well I don't even remember what movie it was.
I was home by eight, sitting in my room. I hadn't seen mom when I had come in, but that meant little. She could have been in the garden or in the washroom in the cellar.
I heard a knock on the door and quickly turned to look. It was indeed mom. She didn't come to my room that often because I was officially an adult even if I still lived at home, and she wanted to respect my privacy.
She came in and sat on the bed. I swallowed nervously, and I noticed my hands were shaking so I put them down on my lap.
Mom smiled warmly. "Don't worry. You'll do fine," she said, "It's not as difficult as you think. It's a perfectly natural thing after all."
I was blinking and glancing towards my computer and then back at her.