(I should like to remind readers that this is a work of fiction - non-consensual sex is never right. Women should not be used for sex. Nor should drugs be administered for the purpose they are in this story.)
I had just finished school, a skinny, somewhat introverted eighteen year old, still plagued by acne and a stammer - all the foregoing caused me to be friendless and somewhat introverted. The physical aspects could be blamed on my age and to a lesser extent maybe my genes: but the stammer could be blamed fairly and squarely on my parents, the name they had given me. I was the complete outsider in that day and age, in our village boys left school at the earliest age allowed (fifteen) with no academic qualifications. Whereas I had passed my eleven plus, attended the local Grammar School, at the time I am writing about I was waiting to go up to University.
This was 1960’s England, I was born in 1948 and they had named me Karole! There was a middle name also, but that one to this day I cannot say without my throat muscles contracting, my voice dropping to a strangulated whisper and my having to take a deep breath or else my banished stammer reappears: indeed my fingers even refuse to push the letters of the keyboard. When I started school, I said my name for the first time and endured the ignominy of all the Thomas’s, Richards, and Harry's bursting into fits of laughter. Mother always said that she gave me the names because she thought they were musical. Maybe they would have been accepted in Hampstead or Chelsea, but in a Cornish fishing village - no way. Mother did not fit in either, a leading light in the local amateur drama society, she said that before marrying she had been an actress.
Which brings the story back to this last summer at home. The hormones were rushing and daily I would be masturbating over the pictures in a somewhat tatty copy of "Health and Efficiency". This magazine was supposedly a naturists’ magazine, the nearest thing to soft porn freely available in those long gone days. The censorship laws were beaten by showing, either women with shaven pussies or the genital area was air brushed into the sexual blandness of a doll.
Even better I had a somewhat battered paperback copy of Frank Harris’s "My Life and Loves", early on I had discovered words were more stimulating than the airbrushed photographs my peers treasured. It is I suppose little wonder my peers thought I was either a snob or gay, or both. I did not fit in with the dominant culture of a fishing port.
This story begins on the spring day Mother sent me into the attic to find some playbooks, which she was going to lend to another drama group. Torch in my hand I opened box after box working my way further and further away from the hatch. Boxes filled with plays tied in bundles, photographs of productions, some with press cuttings attached to them. There were also boxes filled with old costumes and props. I could remember seeing many of these plays, indeed I had played juvenile bit parts in some. Tucked at the back I found an old scuffed case. Opening it I saw it contained no plays, there were some bits of costumes most made of gauze and feathers, there were also two hard backed scrapbooks.
I should have closed the case and carried on looking elsewhere, but teen-age introverts even if they are boys can be incredibly nosy. I opened the scrapbooks, even by the yellow torch light it was immediately it was apparent that they related to her career before she married. I wanted to see more, but the torch was too dim and the attic too uncomfortable. Carrying the scrapbooks I crept back to the hatch. Listened - the coast was clear, I could only hear voices downstairs. Sweating with fear at being discovered I silently descended the attic ladder, opened the bedroom door and put the books under my bed.
It was not until later that evening that I was able to examine the books. The glossy monochrome photographs immediately revealed to me mother had done a lot more dancing than acting. There were photo’s of her in high kicking Music Hall chorus lines. Some of the scenery and costumes were sumptuous and others distinctly run-down and to be frank tacky. In the back of one book was a dog eared brown envelope - the type with a stiffened card back. I opened it, tipping its contents onto my bed.
What spilled out literally blew my mind. There was my mother dancing and posing in the buff - stark naked. There was no retouching, the black thatch of her pubic hair clearly on display. Mother sitting open legged on a swing shaped like a crescent moon. Excitedly I went to the chest of drawers where I kept my stamp collection, (a popular hobby in those days when in the UK we only had two T.V. channels), and got out the magnifying glass.
Focusing the glass I could clearly see her open slit, and the bits I had heard smutty references to but never seen. Now the mythology of the playground and Frank Harris’s accounts were becoming reality, I could see the fleshy lips of her labia and even the nub of her clitoris.
It is difficult to have a wank when you are trying to keep a magnifying glass focused but I can assure you I did just that. When I came the thick creamy essence shot everywhere. First I mopped the precious photo clean, then turned my attention to my trousers and shirt, then the candlewick bed cover. There were never any tissues in the house, maybe they were not available in those days, so I always used my dirty socks. My reasoning being, no one looks too closely at a sweaty sock they just get chucked in the washing machine.
Over the next few days I reappraised my mother. I had previously not paid much attention to her, she was just Mum - now she was a sex goddess. Many times I had seen her stripped to only her bra and panties, when I was really young I had changed in the improvised women’s dressing room back-stage of the church hall when I had a part in a play. Thinking back Mum’s figure was pretty trim compared to her friends, who all seemed to have; drooping tits, thick waists and sagging barrel round bellies. Even now I often heard her friends saying things like, "I wish I had your legs …" or "of course with your figure you can wear that!"
With my discoveries about mother my dirty socks were getting so stiff that they could have walked into the washing machine, I was wanking three or four times a day. The photos were all right but I wanted to see the real thing. The obvious place would be to see her in the bath, the question was how. I considered just bursting in and rejected the idea - a one off quick flash was the best I could hope for.
I retreated into the attic, if I lifted a board I could see the ceiling, a hole in the ceiling would allow me to see all when she lay in the bath. The next problem was how would I ensure that the hole was not seen. Back into the bathroom, I lay flat in the bath and surveyed the ceiling, it was smooth, I was confounded. Then fate stepped in, a chunk of the Kitchen ceiling plaster fell out. (Thinking about it, probably caused by my violent wanking in my bedroom above.) Mother told Dad, who said leave it he would fix it when he had time. Dad was away fishing five or seven days at a time, home to sell the catch, take on fuel and supplies and out again. This meant that when the weather held he was never at home, little jobs like the kitchen ceiling went on the back burner until the storms of January through to March. When I went to University in September Mum would be at home totally alone.
I made sure that Mother was out, before I picked up my gutting knife. I went into the bathroom, carefully I cut a triangle shape into the plaster, each side about two inches long, a little levering and a chunk fell away exposing the open lattice of the lathes. To conceal the cuts I hacked the edges rough, then scored and thumped the plaster to make a tracery of cracks. I left the debris in the bath for mother to find.
"This place is falling down." Mother said to me that evening. I responded by looking at her quizzically - her acting lessons were paying off. "The bathroom ceilings falling down, and it will wait forever before your father fixes it." Dutifully I went upstairs to survey the ceiling, for her benefit feigning surprise.
The next day I was up before her - not an unusual event. She was still asleep when I entered the attic, hoisted the ladder and closed the hatch. I waited for hours in the dark. I heard her calling me, go into my room, she would assume that I was out doing something - out in my open boat, long lining or up on the cliffs, birdwatching.
