Pictures of Lilly

"I'd really like to give you something extra special for your birthday," said Mom. "But I don't know what yet."

We were in the kitchen, cleaning up after dinner. I had an idea what I'd like to suggest for my eighteenth birthday, but I wasn't foolish enough to say it.

"Socks are fine," I said, handing her a glass to put away. "I can always use socks."

"Socks my ass," she said, my exact wish.

For years now, since I had first gotten my first hard-on, I had craved after my mother. Obsessed over her is a better word. Once a week at least, I'd lay in bed at night, cock in hand, slowly stroking myself to mental images of kissing her, undoing her brassiere, unbuttoning her blouse, unzipping her pants. A thousand times I had made love to her in my fantasies, (oddly, I had never once dreamed of us having sex, not that I can remember), fondled her bare breasts, kissed the side of her neck, slipped my fingers into her wet inner reaches . . .

I coughed, and concentrated on drying the dishes.

"Eighteen is such a special birthday," she said, leaning back against the counter. "There has to be something you really want."

If you only knew,

I thought.

Mom was thirty-six years old, exactly twice my age. She had a few strands of gray in her blonde hair and her waist and hips were no longer those of a teenager; but she was still quite hot for a mother. An honest to God MILF, if you know what that means. She stood 5'7" in her stocking feet, weighed in the neighborhood of a hundred and forty-five pounds, and stuck out there pretty good up top. And she had a wonderful ass.

I looked into her ice-blue eyes and smiled. "A hug and a kiss and I'm yours," I said.

Laughing, she pushed away from the counter and took me by the shoulders. A quick dart in to land a kiss on my mouth, and then a tremendous hug and she backed away again. "You're too easy," she said. "Think of something else. Something extravagant."

She stood with her hands on her hips, head cocked slightly to one side, wonderful looking in a western-cut blue shirt and blue jeans.

"I don't need extravagant," I said. And to my absolute amazement--and horror--I told her what I did want.

She blinked. Her smile waned. "Excuse me? Did I just hear you right?"

"A kiss," I repeated. "An honest to God, for-real kiss."

She shook her head. "What kind of present is that?"

"The perfect present," I said.

She was silent a moment. "You're

serious

? A kiss?"

"An adult kiss," I said. "The kind a man and a woman would share."

"I'm not a woman. I'm your mother," she said, and we both laughed nervously. After a pause, she went on. "Why would you want to kiss your mother?"

"I have an Oedipus complex."

"Don't joke about that."

"I'm not joking," I said. "I told you what I wanted and you can decide if it's what you want to give me. I won't be upset if you don't," I lied. "I'm a big boy now."

She tapped her foot worriedly on the floor. "A big boy asking to make out with his mother." She crossed her arms, a classic defensive gesture. I had the feeling I'd just alienated her for life. "Do you know how this makes me feel?" she asked.

Frustrated and angry? Ready to yank your hair out?

"I don't want you to feel put out," I said. I'm just asking."

She blew air out the corner of her mouth. "Whew. This is unnerving. I never thought . . ."

"Never thought what?" I asked.

"Never mind."

I turned away. "Get me some shirts or something then. I don't care. An iPod would be nice."

She moved up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder. "You're an adult now, Peter. I'm an adult. Adult's have certain responsibilities. We can't go doing things on a whim because the moment struck us. And that's what it is, just a moment."

I turned back to her. "In two weeks I'm gone. Out of the state. I'll see you, what? Once or twice before Christmas? Thanksgiving? And we're talking four years, Mom. Who knows where I'll be after that. Dad wants me to move out to the West Coast with him."

She flinched, and I regretted having said that. "Anyway," I went on, taking her hands in mine. "What's a little kiss, between friends?"

She smiled and touched my cheek. "You are so full of it, young mister." She sighed, and crossed her arms again. "Okay, so say I agree. When do you want to do this?"

"My birthday's not until Wednesday," I pointed out.

"You expect me to wait till then? Worrying about my schizophrenic son? I think not, young man."

I shrugged. "Right here in the kitchen?"

"Well, it won't be in my bedroom," she said caustically. "Right here. Right now. Or you'll get your iPod."

She didn't wait for an answer. Stepping up to me, she slid her arms around my neck, lifted her face and waited for me to kiss her. I closed my eyes and put my lips to hers and experienced the warmth and sweetness of the woman that was my mother. It lasted perhaps ten seconds and then she stepped back.

"Well?" She hadn't parted her lips, but I felt like I had French Kissed her for hours. My heart galloped.

"Swell," I croaked. "Just swell."

"Then we're finished?" She tilted her head again.

I tried to remember if her breasts had been against my chest. I couldn't recall. I couldn't breath.

"If it wasn't what you wanted, Peter, just tell me." She smiled grimly. "If not, we'll do it again. Can't stand to have you thinking I gipped you."

No one moved. No one said a word. Then, hesitantly, we closed the distance and her arms reclaimed my neck, my arms encircled her waist, I drew her hard against me, experiencing her entirely this time: the bulge of her breasts, the feel of her ribs below them, her hips where them pressed against my thighs. Her lips parted slightly and I felt the tip of her tongue.

"Mnnnnnmmmm," she moaned. Then she lurched away, swiping the back of her hand across her mouth. "How did I get myself into this?" she croaked. Her eyes were bright and a flush had spread from her chest all the way up to her hairline. Her chest rose and fell sharply. I realized it wasn't the kiss that had scared her away.

"Sorry," I said sheepishly. I didn't look down and she kept her eyes safely on mine, but both of us were thinking about that bulge in my pants.

She said, between labored breaths: "A mother should never do that to her son." With that she turned and stomped from the kitchen.

The next day, Monday, I worked. I got home at six p.m. and found her in the kitchen, chopping up celery. The rest of the salad was on the counter top, in various stages of disassembly.

"Can I apologize for last night?" I asked.

"For what?" she said, noncommittally.

"For being an asshole."

The knife went

whack-whack-whack

on the chopping board, spitting out thin slices of carrots. "Why? Did you do something?" she asked in a detached tone.

She was dressed in khaki shorts and a sleeveless white cotton shirt, with an apron about her middle. I walked over and stood behind her and put my hands on her hips.

"

No

!" she cried, and then suddenly she was in my arms and her mouth was attacking mine, and I didn't care that somewhere behind my back a knife was waving about. I cared only for her lips, her tongue, and those big soft breasts against my chest.

"Mnnnnn," she moaned.

I slid my hands up her back and let my left hand drift back down until it rested at the small of her back. Her stiffening told me that it had better stay there. But she didn't break the kiss and it when it did end, we were both breathless.

"This is getting too serious," she murmured. She remained in my arms, her arms still about my neck, her forehead against my chin. Then she straightened and looked pointedly at the kitchen window, through which could be seen the backside of the high school and the playing fields.

"You should be out there playing soccer," she said, nodding at the knot of teenagers chasing after a ball. "Not in here seducing your mother."

"Is that what I'm doing?" I asked.

"Aren't you?" she demanded.

"I'm just trying to get my birthday kiss," I said.

"Fuck you," she said, pushing me away. "Now get out of here so I can finish dinner."

A little after ten o'clock she appeared in my bedroom doorway. There was a book in her hand and her reading glasses were pushed up in her hair. She still wore the khaki shorts and the white blouse, although the blouse now sported a trio of spaghetti stains that marred its white crispness. She looked, if not depressed, then emotional. She leaned against the door jamb.

"What's up?" I asked.

"I want to talk to you."

"About what?"

"You know what."

The set of her mouth had an angriness to it. I turned from my computer and leaned back in the chair. "Okay," I said. "Let's talk."

"What exactly do you want from me, Peter?"

I looked down at my hands, began worrying at a fingernail. "That's difficult to explain, Mom."

She stood erect and crossed her arms. "Do you know, that when you kissed me this afternoon, that I haven't been kissed like that since my honeymoon."

I felt absurdly pleased and acutely embarrassed at the same time. "Thanks," I murmured, feeling my face go red.

She shook her head and walked down the hallway to her bedroom. Her door slamming shook the entire house.

The next day, Tuesday, the day before my birthday, I came home to find her in the basement, starting a load of laundry. One baleful look told me that I should go back upstairs. I left her a note on the dining room table saying that I'd be back for dinner and ran out to Blockbuster for a tape.

At dinner, there was barely a word spoken. After we'd finished she told me to go away, that she'd do the dishes herself. In the past four years, ever since she and dad had split up, this was the first time we hadn't shared kitchen duties, or if not, that I hadn't given her the night off. I went upstairs, feeling like I'd sunk with the Titanic.

"This is bullshit," I said at ten o'clock. I got up, turned off the TV and paced the bedroom back and forth. Sampson the cat sat eyed me from atop the DVD player. I glared at him and he gave me a stare that would freeze water at eighty yards. At ten-thirty I went downstairs to have it out with her.

She was on the couch in the living room, her Stephen King novel propped against her chest, the reading glasses on her head. She was asleep and breathing restfully. I immediately felt my anger drain away.

"You are so beautiful," I whispered.

She wore beige satin pajamas beneath her robe. The pajamas were from Victoria's Secret, and I had admired her in them before, which was probably the reason for the robe tonight. In these particular pajamas you either wore your underwear, or you might as well wear nothing at all. I sat down on the arm of the couch opposite her and just watched.

When I was twelve, I found an archive on my dad's computer that I never should have seen. It was encrypted, and although it took me a month to crack the password--mom's goddamned name spelled backwards--I was driven by my hormones to keep with it until I won. The name of the archive was not cryptic at all:

Lilly Naked.

Lilly is my mother's name.

The archive's contents were hundreds of JPEG files. Some were shot from his digital camera, but twice as many were images scanned from Polaroid's, and actual lab-developed photos. (I guessed later on that he had found a photo-processing lab in some magazine that developed and printed personal pictures, word unsaid. Not sight unseen, because I've also heard that thousands of pirated personal photos showed up in USENET newsgroups back in the mid-to-late nineties, before digital took over the world.) There were pictures of mom all the way back to her teens, before I was born. A couple dozen, I think, would have gotten dad busted for possessing child-pornography--married to the lady or not. They chronicled mom's development from a very early teen to a full-breasted high-school senior. Four of the pictures showed her posing nude along with my Aunt Margie, a year her junior.

Do you understand my obsession?

"I have your pictures," I whispered to her. She stirred, and the book slid two inches down her chest, but she didn't awaken.

"Every one of them is on my computer," I informed her softly. "Locked up just like the day I found them, in an encrypted file." The file was no longer called

Lilly Naked

, however. Anyone seeing now it would pass it up as a system file.

I slid down off the couch arm and onto the cushion. She stirred again, but the book lost no further ground down her bosom. I folded my legs beneath me and crossed my arms over my chest and just sat there, content to stare at her.

"Sweetie?"

I jerked awake.

"What are you doing down here?" she asked.

My legs were asleep and so were my eyes. It took a second before they would focus on her. She stood bent over me with one hand holding the book, the over holding her reading glasses. Her robe was parted just enough to show me the swell of her white breasts. The hand with her glasses was on my shoulder.

I unfolded my legs and put my feet on the floor. "Man," I said, groaning. Pins and needles in my hip joints.

"How long have you been down here?" she asked.

Images of her smiling hugely, dressed in only her fingernail polish and ponytail holder refused to let me think. "Uh . . , since around eleven, I think."

"You were snoring," she said with a tiny grin. "You woke me up."

"I don't snore," I said. "It must have been the refrigerator."

"Then I'll have to get the refrigerator replaced," she said, "because it's snoring too loudly."

My right calf had the charlie-horse from hell. I rubbed at it but it refused to go away.

"Here," she said, and sat down beside me. Before I realized she had intentions of anything else other than massaging my calf, she had leaned in and placed her lips against mine. I swept her into my arms, leaned back against the couch arm, stretched out with her laying atop me. Her arms went around my neck and we were making out like a couple of teenagers.

"Mnnnnn," she moaned desperately. My erection was ferocious and she rubbed fiercely against it. She straddled me with her thighs and rode me with her genitals directly atop my erection, her back arching and her tongue down my throat. I had never had any female, older or younger than myself, react so violently to a kiss. She tore her mouth away suddenly and her head twisted back until I thought the tendons would snap. She was coming, riding an intense orgasm.

"Oh God, Michael!" she cried out. "I love you!"

I woke up gasping.

"Who the fuck is Michael?" I said angrily.

She was sitting bolt upright, blinking in confusion, book fallen to the floor and her glasses dangling in a hank of hair. I must have given her a heart attack, I thought.

"I--I don't know any Michael," she stammered. Then she realized where we were and some of her confusion died away. She untangled her reading glasses from her hair, set them aside on the end table and closed herself up tight in the robe.

"What are you doing down here?" she asked.

I snapped: "Didn't we just through this?" My hips ached hugely and I dreaded unfolding my legs.

"You don't have to talk to me like that," she said angrily. "No one told you to come down here."

"I didn't come down here," I said stupidly. "I just . . . never fucking mind."

She glared at me, her mouth a severe, lipless crescent, her face blotchy and red. She wanted to speak, but didn't trust herself to remain civil. I should have followed her example.

"You're nothing but a fucking tease," I said.

"

What

?"

"You get me all hot and bothered and then go fucking crying out for some guy named Michael."

She was incredulous. "Are you insane? You're talking about a dream? What kind of fantasy world do you live in, Michael?"

"

My name's not Michael!

" I screamed at her and she slapped me.

It was half-an-hour later. We had both calmed down. I had explained everything to her: the pictures, the six intervening years of obsession, the dream I'd just had.

"I honestly don't know any Michael," she said. "None that I would cry out for in lust, anyway." She touched my forearm and then rubbed it lightly. "Honestly, Peter. What are we going to do with you?"

"What are we going to do with

us

?" I corrected sadly.

She sighed, looked away for a moment, then up at the clock.

"Happy Birthday," she said.

"What?"

She nodded at the clock. "Eighteen years ago, I was screaming obscenities at your father and beating him with my fists."

"What's changed in eighteen years?" I asked.

She laughed. "Nothing much." She placed her hand back on my forearm and rubbed it slowly up and down. "You are more like him than a clone would be," she said. Her hand left my forearm for my hair, which she ran her fingers through gently. "I just wish you hadn't found those damned pictures of me. It's amazing you haven't grown up schizophrenic."

"Who says I haven't?" I asked.

She laughed lightly. "It would explain a lot."

She got up and crossed to the end-table lamp and turned it off. The only illumination came from the stairs leading to the second floor and what shown in through the windows. She sat down next to me and took both of my hands in hers.

"How do I reconcile this?" she asked. "Being in love with my son?"

I just sat there, swimming in the depths of her admission. "I don't think you can," I answered finally. "No more than I can reconcile being in love with you."

"But it's so wrong."

"I can't deny that."

A car passed by outside and I swear I heard every tread crossing the pavement. The refrigerator's compressor kicked on, and roared deafeningly. The wall clock counted the seconds off

tick-tick-tick,

loud enough to shake the wall. We held hands and looked at each other in the moonlight.

"This can't happen again after tonight," she said.

"It's been happening for years, Mom."

"That's not what I mean," she said, looking at our hands.

I removed my right hand and slipped it carefully inside her robe. She stiffened, but she didn't resist me when I cupped her left breast. Her breathing quickened and a mild shiver ran up her spine. I moved my hand up to her shoulder and pulled aside the pajamas enough to kiss the base of her neck where it joined the shoulder. She moaned, and I kissed her up and down her neck and then along the top of her shoulder to the point. A moment later my fingers located the top button holding together the front of her pajamas, and one by one I unbuttoned them. I reached inside.

"Don't!" she said, grabbing my hand away from her breast.

I let her hold it away. "I won't do anything you don't want me to," I told her.

She let go and drew her robe closed around herself, clutching it together at the top with her right hand. "I'm not ready for this," she whispered hoarsely.

But she was ready for it, I knew, reacting only from inertia. I couldn't blame her for that; her son had just bared her breasts. But then she surprised me by leaning forward and finding my lips with hers and kissing me hungrily. Within seconds her lips had parted and her tongue flicked inside my mouth, searching for mine. I kissed her deeply, our tongues performing a slow dance.

"I am so Goddamned aroused," she moaned when we broke the kiss. Her forehead was against mine and I felt her breath on my mouth. It came and went in shallow gasps. She squirmed, and groaned, and I knew that she was wet between her legs. It had to be a terrible embarrassment for her, but it made me want her even more.

I took her hands and very deliberately placed them at her sides. I pulled apart her robe, the front of her pajamas top and pulled them down to her waist. She shuddered violently, gasped in a ragged breath, but didn't fight me. Instead, she withdrew her arms from the sleeves and put them around my neck again and we kissed. There was no resistance when I put my hand on her warm breast.