This little story arose out of an email sent to me by a lady who ended by asking, âWhat do I do?â She had found herself sexually attracted to her son, and believed that he was similarly attracted to her. She also intimated that she had the additional desire to become pregnant to him. Her dilemma was how to test the situation to discover whether her feelings were reciprocated. I replied to her email making a few suggestions on how she might proceed.
The story in no way reflects what actually happened in her situation and is purely my imagining that arose out of her question. The names of the two characters are also fabricated.
âWhat do I do?â That question beat in my head incessantly. It had been beating forâŚI donât really know but it had been there a long time and its clamour had increase with the years.
If I had to pick a starting point for the emotional confusion that plagued me I would say it was the time I saw him showering. It was when Ryan was sixteen and I was on my way to bed and wanted to brush my teeth.
Ryan was showering so I knocked on the door and asked if it was all right for me to come in. He yelled back, âSure,â so I entered.
The shower alcove is one of those with lightly frosted glass and I could see his outline clearly. I had not seen his body since before he entered puberty, when, like a lot of young people, he became shy about being seen naked. Now I had this tantalising view of him through the frosted glass.
After the first glance I turned away to brush my teeth, but then found myself turning back to take another look. He was in profile to me and I thought I dimly saw his erect penis. Probably it was the relaxation of the shower that had hardened him.
If I was seeing what I thought I was seeing, then I was momentarily taken aback. The last time I had seen his sweet little sex organ it had been just that, sweet and little. What I now seemed to be seeing was a very, very well developed example of manhood. I felt a thrill of excitement course through me.
I looked away and tried to concentrate on brushing my teeth, but my eyes were constantly drawn back to Ryan and the hazy vision of his nakedness reminded me that it had been a long time since I had been in the presence of a naked man.
This perhaps requires some expanding on. My name is Barbara Martin. I became pregnant to Rod Martin when I was seventeen. I gave birth to Ryan and eventually Rod and I were married and also eventually we divorced after ten years. As so often happens with young marriages, it just didnât work out.
After the divorce I was left to bring up Ryan more or less on my own. At first Rod kept up the contact with his son, but after a while that began to fade, and once he got himself another woman, that ended all effective contact. In fact neither Ryan nor I have seen him for several years.
It was a bit of a battle trying to bring up Ryan on my own. I had taken the trouble to qualify as an accountant and was well entrenched in my work, so I was the struggling virtually sole parent trying to fit in being a mother with my work.
And so back to the vision of my sixteen year old son showering behind that glass partition.
I have to frankly say that the sight of him sexually aroused me. If I have to justify that, then remember, I hadnât seen a naked man for years, and had not engaged in any sexual activity apart from masturbation.
When Rod and I broke up I went into defensive mode where men were concerned. Apart from my own reluctance to risk another relationship, I didnât want any âunclesâ in Ryanâs life.
You might conclude from this that I have a very weak sex drive; you would be wrong. There are times when I become quite overwhelmed with sexual yearning. As I have pointed out, I sought relief in masturbation, but there comes a time when that is not enough.
The incident of observing Ryan in the shower I think was a turning point in my way of relating to him. During his childhood, as is the case with most boys and their mothers, we were very close. It was a warm loving bond that helped sustain me when Rod left. This, however, tended to modify when Ryan entered puberty.
Ryan seemed to withdraw from me which I suppose is the first signs that the boy is moving towards mature manhood. Another factor, I believe, was my failure to adequately discuss his sexuality with him. Hence I think that his masturbating was something of a guilty secret to be kept from me.
Of course he masturbated as I did myself, and looking back I feel rather sad that I did not initiate talks with him on the subject, but I suppose thereâs no point in regretting what is past.
With that shower incident and my consequent sexual arousal at the hazy vision of him, there began to lurk in me what might have been there for the past two or three years, but which I had buried away somewhere in my head. It did not happen all at once, but crept up on me gradually.
If he thought I was still awake when he went to bed, Ryan had the habit of coming into my bedroom to say good night to me. It was no more than a peck on the cheek and a âGoodnight, mum, sleep well.â
On the âshowerâ night after he had given me my goodnight peck, I set about tackling my sexual problem, and while climaxing, for the first time I fantasised Ryan entering me. It came not with a conscious effort on my part, but seemed to well up from some hidden depths in me.
The next day at work I kept getting flashbacks to that vision of Ryan in the shower. I tried telling myself not to be so foolish; âDamn it, Barbaraâ, I admonished myself, âYouâre his mother and eighteen years older than he is. What woman in her right mind sexually desires her own son? You must be thoroughly depraved to think about Ryan sexually.â
Castigate myself as I might, it did not stop the growing sexual appetite for him. Every time I masturbated it was Ryan who was my fantasy. I increasingly began to make excuses to enter the bathroom while he was showering just so I could get a glimpse of his body, however dimly.
Lying in bed at night gently pressing a breast with my hand and circling my clitoris with a finger, I would listen for signs that Ryan was masturbating on the other side of the thin partition wall between our rooms. Occasionally I thought I heard a groaning cry as he came, and I pictured his thick young sperm exploding into me.
For three years I suffered increasing torments of desire for Ryan. The pangs of sexual desire seemed in the end to be with me all the time. There was an almost permanent dull ache in my lower abdomen, as if it was infused with blood, and my vagina seemed always to be swollen and wet with my lubricant.
I remember that in the biblical story of Job, when Job was in the deepest misery, his wife said to him, âCurse God and die.â I cursed God, but did not die.
I cried out to him, âWhy give me these feelings, this agonising hunger and deny me satisfaction? Why give me this desperate longing for my own son when it is said to be evil? You give the desire and deny the fulfilment.â
God had eventually answered Job, but he gave me no answer. No doubt I wrongly inveighed against the deity for my hopeless plight. I was vilifying one who had no part in leading me into this situation, but I had to cry out in my misery to someone, and all other avenues seemed to be closed to me.