Taboo: A Memoir
By Tom Hathaway
A true story of mother / son incest that lasted 35 years;
A unique drama that includes a justifiable homicide of the father.
Foreword & first three chapters
Foreword
I've had an unusual life, and now that the unusual part of it is sadly over, I feel the need to communicate it to others, although doing so will expose me to risk. My mother's and my memoir is sure to offend, even enrage, some people because it challenges a deep-seated phobia in our culture. The forces of repression and shame are strong, both within us and in the self-appointed watchdogs of our society who want to prevent change.
The love affair we enjoyed contradicts the establishment dogma that all incest is sick, dangerous, perverted, sinful. Although it had its stresses, this relationship was the right path for us, a powerful bond of mutual devotion and commitment and a radical opposition to patriarchy. We discovered that other people too are daring this forbidden love.
The reactionaries view this as a great threat. They know the next and most fundamental stage of the sexual revolution is beginning, and they are trying to stop it with scare stories and punishment, just as they tried in years past against masturbation, oral sex, premarital sex, and homosexuality.
These guardians of the status quo use the very real danger of child molesting to generate hysteria and blanketly condemn all incest. I agree with them that child molesting is inexcusable. Adults can do great harm to children by sexually aggressing them. Children aren't autonomous yet, they're not fully formed, so having sex with a grown up, especially a parent, can make too deep an imprint on them.
Incest between consenting adults, however, is a different issue, one of personal freedom, really no one else's business, especially now that birth control has removed the genetic risk. Once we get over the superstitious dread, it becomes another private preference, an activity that will appeal to some people and not to others. As with many matters, we can live and let live, love and let love.
An ancient myth is about to be exposed. As this boogie man fades away, we humans may learn to accept our basic but currently banned urge.
What you are about to read is the story of two people, both of legal age, discovering an irresistible attraction for each other. In short, a love story.
I have tried to reconstruct the past as vividly as I can, to preserve it in my memory now that I no longer have her.
Chapter One
"Do you want to go to the Rolling Stones concert tonight?" my mother asked with a smile. She stood in our living room, just home from work, holding two tickets in her hand. Long auburn hair cascaded over her boldly colored blouse. Tight jeans tapered down above a pair of leather sandals.
"Well...uh...who with?" I replied cautiously.
"With me, you toad. Isn't that good enough?" She slapped me with the tickets.
"Hmm...I guess...yeah, OK," I said in my teenage mumble. I loved the Stones and had never seen them live, but the idea of going with mom wasn't a thrill.
Diana's pert, lively face fell into a disappointed frown. "You don't seem excited." Her small white teeth sank into her crimson-colored lower lip.
"Yeah, well...like...."
She snapped the tickets into her purse. "I can go with someone else."
"No, it'll be fun." I backpedaled, not wanting to miss out on the concert. "It's just that...."
"Yeah, I know. Mom's a drag." She understood me so well that I couldn't hide anything from her. I was eighteen and she was thirty-six, but in some ways she was as much of a teenager as I was. Most of my friends' parents seemed to have forgotten what it was like to be young, but she remembered.
"Well...uh...." I groped for words. There was no point in lying. She could always tell.
"You want to go or not?" Diana put her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow in a way that said, Don't jerk me around.
"Sure. It should be cool," I said, getting more enthused. "Where'd you get the tickets?"
I could tell by her quick smile she was glad I wanted to go. "Allen at work gave them to me. We were going to go together, but one of his cases fell apart. Witness disappeared. So he has to stay late and track him down."
My mother had been dating one of the other lawyers in the Public Defender's office. I thought he was square, with his crew cut, tab collar, and Hubert Humphrey for President button. Mom—with her long hair, peasant blouses, and Angela Davis for President button—thought so too but said he was an "OK guy" and they were "just friends."
"The Stones will be groovy," I said. "Let's do it."
This was 1968; change was everywhere in the air; even our hometown of Denver wasn't dull anymore. It seemed that music, protest, and free expression would soon create a very different world. Each day brought new possibilities.
Diana let me drive her VW Beetle to the concert. She sat beside me and tried not to be a front-seat driver.
The concert was one of those Happenings that haven't been duplicated since that era. The crowd was half the show, all these new freaks with their long-suppressed weirdnesses coming out, finally able to show their hidden sides, still tender and fresh. Everyone greeted one another with open, accepting eyes. The mood was peace and love, but spiced with the high-energy mania that the Stones do so well. Mick pranced around in tight pants showing off his buns and singing, "I can't get no satisfaction."
I could identify with that. I was still a virgin, which is now a rarity but back then was a normal teenage affliction. Although curious and eager, I had so far been unsuccessful in convincing any of the fair sex to share theirs with me. The music roused my frustrated lust.
The crowd was awash in marijuana smoke. People were passing around an endless stream of joints and offering tabs of acid. Diana and I declined the LSD but toked on the grass pretty heavy. We had both smoked before but never together. She hadn't wanted to encourage me, but here it was unavoidable. It was also super strong, a blend called M&Ms, Michoacán mixed with mescaline into a psychedelic cocktail that took us high-higher-highest. We floated through the rhythms and melodies as if they were the protoplasm of our cells. The music, the whole universe even, seemed to be coming from inside us. We found ourselves holding hands, overwhelmed. After the last encore, Mick mooned the crowd and scampered off.
Royally stoned, neither of us could drive, so we rolled home in a cab and headed straight for the fridge, munched out on rocky road ice cream. We were having a great time, giggling like kids, more relaxed and free than we'd been around each other in years. We were really whacked out of our skulls.
We started talking about the great songs they didn't play, and dragged out their records. Soon the stereo was blasting. The Stones' music is, of course, solid sex, the lyrics and beat obsessed with Eros. That made us more nervous here alone than it had at the concert. Since it'd been a sit-down event with no dancing, we had a pent-up need to move and burn off tension.
While Mick sang, "Let's spend the night together," we kicked off our shoes and boogied around the living room, both of us in jeans and multi-colored shirts. We didn't have the same dancing style, and we were too bombed to be very coordinated, but that didn't matter. The important thing was to have fun shaking it to the music.
At first we were each more into ourselves, woozily bopping and grooving. Then our eyes met more often and we started getting into dance as communication between us. We laughed and did little routines together, twirling around, bumping shoulders. She flipped her auburn ponytail in my face. Each time we looked at each other, so many emotions poured between our wide-open pupils: shyness, apologies for old hurts and harsh words, fear, nameless yearnings, defiance, and strongest of all—love.
The slow tempo of "No Expectations" brought us into a ballroom pose, like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. With me a millimeter taller, we glided around trying to be elegant, but she hiccuped from having eaten the ice cream too fast, and we broke up. While Mick crooned, "Never in my sweet short life have I felt like this before," I held her manfully and bent her down into a low dip, my leg between hers. I could feel her warm midsection pressing against me and see the bulge of her breasts beneath her Mexican blouse. I almost dropped her, but managed to raise her back up. She must've felt something in my middle too, because she skittered away.
The next song caught her, though, and we were off on a fast one. To not fixate on her jiggling chest, I focused on her eyes. They were the same shade of brown as mine, but seemed flecked with sparkling gold.
With the psychedelic vision, it was as if I could see into her personality, all the churn of her thoughts and emotions, and then beneath that even to her soul. Before, I'd just seen her as Mom...or a Lawyer. Now I could look through that surface to her feminine essence—the most beautiful and desirable woman I'd ever imagined. Her female core drew me like a magnet.
I could tell from her surprised, embarrassed glances that she was seeing me as a man.
We played eye games, staring into each other's and dancing closer and closer as if hypnotized, until it got too intense and we darted away. Finally we found ourselves just standing there two inches apart gazing into each other through a great silence. The song was over and we weren't dancing.
The next cut snapped us out of our reverie, and we were off again. "You're ten thousand light years from home," Brian Jones sang. As we danced, we continued watching each other. It was as if we were each the first human being the other had laid eyes on. We were similar but different, familiar yet strange. Our seeking eyes glided over skin, taking the other in.
When the record ended, I needed to look at something else, so nervously I picked up one of the jackets,
