Starting Over

It started innocently enough. They were driving from the mall when Jessica asked her mother — it was in the context of something on the radio — if she’d ever had a lesbian experience.

Jessica was surprised when her mother, Ann, didn’t drive off the road, she half expected she would, but she didn’t, she just kept driving, and she seemed to be concentrating or thinking, Jessica didn’t know which, but soon she spoke, “I might have. I’ve often wondered if it was.”

Jessica didn’t show it, at least she tried not to, but she was shocked by her mother’s answer and it confused here, too, “Can there be a doubt? I mean, if you’re having one, isn’t it, ah, kinda obvious?”

“I don’t know?” her mother said with a shrug, “what’s a lesbian experience to you? A kiss? A touch? Something more, something involving fluids?

“Mother!”

“Well what is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Nor do I,” and a silence lasted all the way home.

It was a few days later when Jessica brought the subject up again, in the car again, but her question was more direct. “I’ve thought about what you said before, about lesbianism, when you said you may have had an experience but you weren’t sure. What did you mean, … ah, exactly?”

“I meant that I wasn’t sure if what I was doing could have been considered a lesbian act.” Ann thought her point had been self-evident.

“Yes, well, but what were you … ah, doing, exactly?” annoyed that her mother had made her be more specific.

“It was in college, in third year, like you, a girl, as you kids say today, came on to me and I sort of, well, I sort of let her. I don’t know if I was unusually horny that day or curious or what, but she came on to me and I guess I let her.”

Jessica waited for more details but she got only silence so she asked the question as casually as she could, as if she didn’t really care about the answer, “What did you actually do with her?”

When she spoke Ann Clark was surprised at how matter of fact her voice sounded and how relaxed she was in discussing something that, with exception of the co-participant, no one knew about. “We touched each other mostly, through our clothes at first, then under the clothes, on the bra, on the panties, that sort of thing, then a kiss or two before someone came into the room and we had to stop. That was my bout with sexual adventure, it took maybe 15 minutes then it was over.

“Were you sorry?”

“Sorry? Sorry I did it? Sorry it ended?”

“Both”

Ann thought for a moment before saying, “Yes and no, or more precisely, no and yes. No, I’m not sorry I did it, but really, what did I do? And yes, I think I may be a bit sorry that it ended so quickly,” she hesitated, then added, “I’ve always been a little bit curious about what might have happened.”

Jessica studied the rain on the car window and said nothing.

Well, nothing for a week or so when they were once again driving, this time Jessica was behind the wheel and she filled a silence by making a statement designed to shock her mother, “I’ve been thinking of having a lesbian experience, I’m really curious … too.” She was watching her mother from the corner of her eye and was disappointed not to see a reaction, instead her mother said,

“What’s stopping you?”

“Ah …”

“You’ve got lots of friends, statistics say that, what, 10 or 15% of them are lesbians or have had lesbian experiences, it shouldn’t be too hard …”

“Mother, I’m serious!” Her mother’s easy response, the statistics, the … encouragement, shocked her, even scared her a little, as if her mother was challenging her.

Ann looked at her daughter, a little surprised at the troubled look on her face, “Well I‘m serious, too. You’re no lesbian but if you’d like a lesbian experience I’m sure you can find a willing partner, especially at university.”

“Well you didn’t.” Jessica’s voice was defensive, petulant.

“I wasn’t looking.”

“You said you were.”

“No, I said I was always curious about what would have happened if my one tawdry tryst was allowed to take it’s course.”

Jessica stole a quick look at her mother, “Are you still curious?”

Ann Carter continued to look out the side window, there was nothing wistful in her voice, she sounded almost matter of fact, “Well, yes, I guess I am, I don’t think about it much, but ya, I guess I’m curious, that’s why I’m not freaking out that you think you want to experiment.”

Jessica felt a nervous fear grow in her chest. “Well I want to have one.” There, she had said it, but it was not all she wanted to say. Would she have the nerve to complete the task, to add the most important part, to say what she’s wanted to say to her mother for all of the past 10 years? Would she? Well, if nothing else, Jessica Carter had guts. She blurted out the words the very moment her mother spoke.

“Good for you, if done properly a lesbian tryst is probably healthy.”

“I want to have it with you.”

“What did you say?” Her mother was looking at her now.

“I want to have my lesbian experience with you.”

Ann Carter had always prided herself on being, well, contemporary: she kept up on the news, read many of the more popular novels and genuinely cared about social trends and followed them closely. To her, cultural evolution was mystical and fascinating and something to be embraced and that’s why she didn’t dismiss, out of hand, her daughter’s proposition. Instead, she simply said, “Now there’s a startling proposition,” and she let it go, changing the subject, cleansing the thought from her mind. She knew her daughter was a trifle immature, she blamed herself, it was an immaturity brought on by overly-protective parents, and she chalked it up to that.

But a tantalizing proposal has a way of lodging in the darker recesses of the mind, and Ann did think about it, a few-times-a-day think about it and she even started to sneak peeks at her daughter, with thoughts that were very, very disturbing, but even so, she was prepared when her daughter brought up the subject again a few days later.

“That is a monumentally dumb idea, Jessica.” Her words were meant to sound censorious, to signal to her daughter that the subject was closed, but they didn’t, they simply inspired a question.

“Why?”

“Need you ask?” Her words dripped with derision.

“Yes, why?”

Let me count the ways, Ann said to herself, before saying, “I refer you to a variety of references on the subject including the Bible, the Law …”

“The Bill of Rights?”

Ann laughed at the rejoinder, surprised she was enjoying the conversation, it was kinky, but it was interesting, too. “What’s the Bill of Rights got to do with it?”

“I’ve got the right to do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it, as long as I don’t hurt anyone in the process, and so do you.”

Bingo. “Now there you’ve hit on the problem, well one of the problems. Hurt. I’d have no problem with something like this if there was a guarantee of two things, one that it was a loving experience and two that no one got hurt.”

Jessica’s knuckles whiten on the wheel, her eye’s locked on the back of the blue van ahead. When she spoke, her words were combative. “Then we can agree there’s only one problem, right? Because there’s no doubt that we love each other.”

Ann was silent.

“Right?” Jessica insisted, she sensed a winning argument.

“I see where you’re going with this, Jessica and fine, you’re very clever, but it’s not going to happen.”

“Yes, it is!” There was utter conviction in her words. She had waited 10 long years for this confrontation and she wasn’t going to fail.

“No it’s not.” Ann said the words, and she believed them, she just wonder why she had to say them.

Who was right?

It took about three months of talk, call it negotiations if you want, but they finally agreed to go away for a few days to someplace where they could have fun and, it was Jessica’s take, if something happened and there was every assurance that no one would be hurt, well, then, c’est la vie; they were both very curious.

And they were both a little nervous when they got out of the car at the Riverview Health Club and Spa. But it was a wonderful place, a beautiful, tasteful lobby, attractive, attentive staff — a bright, clean, even fresh space, the kind of place that will sooth even the most ragged of nerves. And their room was perfect, too, identical to the one in the brochure they had studied together, except this one had only a single bed, a rather large single bed, but everything else was the same, the large balcony, the plants, the flowers, the pictures, the Jacuzzi, the couch and chairs. The room was beautiful and the large wet bar allowed Ann Carter to enjoy a glass of wine the moment she sat down, sat down across from a daughter who looked at her mother with such eager, child-like expectation that she could only pity her, so she motioned her over and pulled her near to her, hugging her.

“God I’m happy, mum,” she said, as she pressed her face into the nap of her mother’s neck, a place she had been many times before.

“I can hear your heart.”

Jessica laughed, and hugged her mother, “That’s not mine, mum, that’s yours.”

And it might have been.

Jessica’s words seemed unusually cryptic. “I don’t want to be your daughter here, mum,” she spoke the words softly, into her mother’s neck, “I want you to be my mum, but I don’t want to be your daughter.”

Ann cast her eye’s down, as if trying to read what was in her daughter’s head, “And me? I’m mum to me, but who are you?”

“Who ever you want me to be.”

The thought scared Ann so much that she gently pushed her daughter away and struggled to get up, “I want you to be my daughter, Jess, just like you are, OK? And I want my daughter to join me in the Jacuzzi.”

There were two bathrooms in the suite, they both claimed one and met at the Jacuzzi, each admiring the other’s bathing suite, newly purchased for the trip.

But neither suit fully conceal their nervousness. If the water was warm, the air was charged.

Ann poured the wine into her daughter’s glass, then topped up her own. When she spoke her words sounded almost business-like, “I’ve always been very proud of you Jessica, always. I got lucky. One child, one perfect child. I’m not going to ruin that.”

“Improve on it.”

She didn’t think that was possible and said so.

But Jessica wasn’t listen, “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, mum and I know there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for me.”

“Oh, there’s one thing,” Ann said, with an empty laugh.

“What?”

“Break a rather fundamental taboo.”

“It’s no taboo to me,” there was anger and defiance in Jessica’s voice, she was beginning to see her plan might fail. “I’ve been thinking of this day since I was 12.”

Ann’s eyes opened wide with surprise. “You have?”

Jessica hadn’t moved her eyes from her mother’s, “I lied to you, mum, I’ve never wanted a lesbian experience, I’ve only ever wanted an experience with you.”

Ann’s wide eyes narrowed in fright, “But why?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care. It’s not that you’re pretty, you’re smart, you’ve got a great body, you’re funny …” Her mother tried to interrupt her but she talked over her, “it’s none of those.”

“Then what is it?” said Ann, trying to understand.

“I love you, mum, I love you so totally that not to be here is simply unthinkable and you know what? I’m not surprised you’re here, either, because you’re just that cool.”

“Or stupid.”

“Cool,” she said, as she moved across the Jacuzzi to sit beside her mother.

Ann Clark suddenly realized that somewhere during this brief exchange, this harmless verbal flirtation as she thought of it, her daughter began to take control. The realization was a shock, a profound shock because this was no longer an experiment where she could call the shots, where she could sooth her daughter’s expectations and deflect her childish fantasies. When the conversation turned, she could feel herself being pulled into something that reminded her of how an unwitting bug is captured in a spider’s web, not that she was a bug, not that her daughter was a spider, but she did seem to be spinning a very alluring, very sticky, very tangled web. So she drank her glass of wine and contemplated leaving the tub when her daughter, the spider, kissed her on her shoulder and took her by the arm.

“I can’t begin to tell you how glad I am you’re here with me, mum, that we’re together.”

Ann grew tense, even frightened, it was the line of a seductress and she nudged away from her daughter, just a little, imperceptibly — seeking some distance, however little, from the body and the soul, and she smiled at her daughter, a motherly smile, and was about to give a motherly response when her daughter kissed her on the lips, lightly, without passion, but leaving her lips there, lingering, perhaps waiting for a response, testing her mother’s resolve, tempting her, playing with her, teasing her, but it scared Ann so much that she pushed herself out of the Jacuzzi and almost ran to her bathroom.

At dinner, the food was far better than the conversation, that is until the main course came and Jessica, frustrated with her mother’s obvious discomfort and aloofness, laid her cards squarely on the table. “I think of you at night, mum, I think of you in my arms. I kiss you and touch you and taste you and smell you.”

“Jessica!” No words could have shocked Ann Carter more.

But the daughter was just beginning, “Did you think I was kidding about wanting to be with you, about wanting to come here with you?”

“God, Jess, I never really thought it through. Obviously, I love you and love to be with you, coming her was a great idea, but that kiss …”

“Yes?”

The fire in her daughter’s eyes almost made Ann flinch. God, I wish she wouldn’t stare into my eyes, she has the look of a predator, eyes locked on the kill. “It was just so, I don’t know, so unsettling.”

Jessica got to her feet, “Come on, mum.”

Ann looked at her plate then looked up at her daughter. “But the food?”

“Are you hungry?”

Ann looked away from her daughter a little afraid, “No, I guess not,” and she got to her feet feeling like a dutiful child.

They didn’t talk as they walked back to their room, and Ann didn’t protest when her daughter took her hand and held it insistently, rather like a policeman would, and she didn’t protest when her daughter threw her purse onto the couch when they got inside their room, but she did protest when her daughter angrily pushed her onto the bed.

“Jessica!”

Jessica’s face was white with anger, her eyes wet with tears. “This is supposed to be the best, the most exciting day of my life,” tears now flowed down her cheeks, “and you’re making it the most miserable.” The mother was about to say something but the daughter stopped her. “I’ve waited years to have you alone like this, and I’ve dreamed, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dreamed of being with you like this, of having you touch my skin, touch my breasts, kiss my lips, my stomach and feel me, like I want to feel and touch and kiss you. But you shun me, you shun me as if you …”

Ann could feel her daughter’s misery and succumbed to the mother in her and she opened her arms and asked her daughter in, and they were together, together on the bed holding each other, not moving, just squeezing and crying, little sobs, sobs that can easily turn to laughter, but they didn’t, not this time, instead they turned to kisses, violent, muscular, even angry kisses and then Jessica was tearing at her mother’s dress, not caring about the rips and tears, not caring that her mother had curled in defense, but she had it off the breasts that were now covered only in a thin black bra so flimsy that it easily broke and seemed to sail from the bed and then the mouth was on the breast devouring it, sucking on it, swallowing it, seeming to lock it in her throat and tugging on it. But it was the sounds that really scared Ann, the animal sounds, primordial sounds, bestial grunts as frantic as the action and then her daughter tired of the breast and yanked up the dress and tore down the pantyhose and she clamped her mouth on her mother’s pantied sex and burrowed as she thrashed her pelvis on the inert, unresponding bed, as inert and unresponding as the mother. And then, but for the whimpers, it was over. She lay there, fully clothed, her body curled around her hands locked together between her legs and she shook gently as she cried, a mournful cry, a cry her mother had never heard before, a cry that shocked her, shocked her into action. She pulled her daughter, her almost catatonic daughter, into the centre of the bed and she put a pillow under her head which she stroked, gently, soothing strokes as she cooed the words she wasn’t sure were true, “It’s OK, Jess, it’s OK.”

But the daughter didn’t move and the sobbing didn’t stop so the mother lay down beside the daughter and took her in her arms, but from the rear, it was easier there, smoother, she could fit her body around the quivering frame, to hold it, to reassure it, to stroke it along the arm and along the hip and the head and the hair until gradually, like a flower coming to life, the body opened, opened in response to the touch and soon the mother could feel the face, the chest and the stomach, dragging her fingers along the silky fabric, along the young body, so hot and so sad.

Her eyes were open now, red from tears and hollow from shame but they pleaded for understanding, for sympathy. ‘You don’t know what I’ve been through,’ they said and her mother didn’t, she didn’t understand and she couldn’t, she wasn’t the one who had waited ten long years only to be rejected, to be shunned.

Later, she would have no doubt where she crossed the line, the line between the soothing care-giver and the seeker of pleasure, the line between the mother and the lover. It was when she gently moved her daughter so she could drop the zipper and pull the dress from the body, then the pantyhose. She was on her knees now, with her ripped and torn dress bunched around her waist and she lovingly, soothingly dragged her fingers across her daughter’s nose and lips, along her chest and her belly to the panties, then she bent down and kissed her daughter’s belly, gently, dragging her tongue, listening for encouragement. But such was the shame of the daughter that there was none, only whimpers and a body immobile, a beautiful body, healthy, brown, downed with tiny white hair and fragrant, a special fragrance, unique, her own.

There was little overt response from the daughter when she removed the silken bra, but the nipples were erect and she bent down and sucked on one of them and then bit the stiff nub, nibbling at it gently, then as she played with it with her tongue the mother began to pant and moan, slightly at first but then more noticeably as she sucked on the breast, taking it into her mouth, just as her daughter had taken hers, but tenderly this time, lovingly so the pleasure would flow to them both, the daughter and the mother. Then she sat back on her heels and studied her daughter whose eyes were lightly closed as if she was dreaming and the mother ran her hand down her daughter’s body, tracing a finger across her stiff and slippery nipple then down across the trim and trembling belly, slowly, allowing the fingers to feel the heat, the youth and the exquisitely twitching muscles until the fingers were on the panties and the knees moved out, slowly at first, almost imperceptively, and then the legs opened as the daughter moaned.

“You’re so pretty, Jessica, so beautiful.” The mother kissed her daughter’s belly, her face nestling in the soft heat, the mouth drooling and the tongue licking while she studied the mound that rose between her daughter’s legs. It was such a pretty mound, red and delicate, the panties only hinting at what they hid, the juices of love and the scent of anticipation and then she smelled it, the sex in the air, it washed over the mother like a delicate wave, it smelled so like her own, so like her own that the fragrance drew her mouth along the belly, across the panty to suck on the wet heat of her daughter’s sex, to suck in her flowing juices, to breath in her pungent scent, the intoxicating odor of her sexuality and then she lost all control and tore at the panties, just as her daughter had torn at her dress, and she buried her face in her daughter’s pink gash and pushed her tongue into every crevice, every exquisite crevice of her cunt while all the time drinking and sucking and smelling, particularly smelling, inhaling her daughter, sucking in her sexy stink through a nose wet with juices, and then the orgasm she didn’t want hit her, feeble and limp but enough to break the moment and she lay down, with her face in her daughter’s crotch and she rested, happy, the cum on her lips and the scent in her nose, so familiar, the signal for sleep.