The Tangle

I don’t think it had ever entered our heads before that fateful evening, and even then we didn’t realise the tangle it would lead to.

When Ken died in that car collision, killed – or as see it, murdered – by that careless fool, my life came crashing down around my ears.

I’ve often heard it said that after a while couples begin to lose the initial sexual drive they had for each other. Well, that was partially true of Ken and me, but far from completely. After we had first made love in his flat he had said, “Diane, this is it.” I knew just what he meant. It hadn’t been like with the others who had only really fucked me, not made love.

With Ken I had felt his love right from the start. He didn’t even wait for me to announce that I was pregnant before he begged me to marry him. He hadn’t needed to beg because I too knew that, “This was it.”

Of course, at first we couldn’t leave each other alone. It was that exhilarating mixture of love and lust that drove us to be forever copulating. Eventually, though, we calmed down a bit, but neither of us could be certain when the other would begin some foreplay leading to coitus. That was one of the many nice things about our life together, the little surprises.

We had two children, David, the result of our pre-marital copulating, and Cindy. We loved making babies and would have had more, but somehow it didn’t happen, and after a while we gave up hope.

The kids had left home by the time Ken was killed. Cindy to a flat of her own and David worked for the Government Geological Department and at this early stage in his career went roaming around the inland with a team of geologists searching for all sorts of minerals and so on.

Cindy, always a bit diffident with me, I saw occasionally; usually when she wanted something. David would come home on leave sporadically and stay for a week or two. He never said anything, but I got the impression that during those times at home he was making up for the lack of female company during his inland sojourns.

On that that morning of his death, before he went to work, and with no one to interrupt us, Ken had taken me as I sat on the corner of the kitchen table. When we’d finished he’d smiled and said, "I love you Cindy,” kissed me, and left for work.

I’d wanted to get a few chores done before I showered, so I wiped the excess sperm from the outside of my vagina, and left the residue inside me until I showered. It was still there and beginning to run down my inner thighs when the police came to tell me of Ken’s death.

I didn’t scream or faint, I was just stunned. The police officers must have been startled because I made a grab for my sex organ, as if I would hold there what Ken had left inside me. For long after and when I had finally broken down, when alone I laid my hand on my vagina, remembering the times it had been Ken’s hand touching me – oh, so gently and lovingly.

Cindy came to stay with me for a few days, but she had been very close to Ken and was if possible more distraught as I was. She sobbed over and over again, “I loved him mother, I loved him so much,” and I said, “We all loved him Cindy, our gentle giant.”

David got a fortnight’s leave and joined me, and I think it was his strength that saw Cindy and me through the worst. He had Ken’s sensitivity and gentleness and I suppose it is true, mothers and sons tend to be very close. He sorted out my financial position, and although there would be some income it would not be enough on its own, and I needed to go to work.

It’s not easy when you’re forty and been out of the work force for years, to get a job. It was Cindy who came to the rescue. She worked as what is called a “Sales Person” in one of the big city stores. They were taking on part time staff to work about twenty hours a week. She virtually got me the job and I had my suspicions how she did that, but neither of us said anything.

When Ken had to return to work I could have wept and pleaded with him not to leave me, but I knew I had to face the aloneness some time, so I controlled my feelings until he left, and then I had a good cry.

For almost a year after his death I had dreams, or were they nightmares? Ken seemed to be still there beside me in the bed, and I called out to him, “Make love with me, Ken.” Then I would wake and find myself alone and wept for my lost love. I remember that twice I dreamt that Ken was ringing the front door bell to be let in, and I woke up and ran to the door calling out, “I’m coming Ken, I’m coming, wait for me,” but of course, there was no one there.

I suppose it was during the second year that the sharp edge of my grief finally began to abate. As I have said, Ken and I had conducted a fairly brisk sex life, and I started to feel the return of my libido. I could have gratified myself with a number of men, including the manager whom I believed Cindy had “persuaded” to give me the job. Unfairly perhaps, I measured them against Ken, and found them wanting, so the vibrator had to serve the purpose.

Working in the same place as Cindy I got to know more about her life than I had done since she had moved into her flat. Nothing was ever said to me directly because they all knew I was Cindy’s mother, but I caught whispers in the staff room to the effect that “Cindy’s an easy fuck,” in short, she was very promiscuous. I said nothing to her since I had not sought to interfere in her life since she had moved out of home. Such interference would have been rejected in any case.

For all her wild life she did not look happy and I was very troubled. I kept asking myself why this behaviour. It is true that I had had a couple of lovers – or rather, “fuckers” - before I met Ken; there had been no one else since then.

It was in the middle of that second year after Ken’s death that I got what I saw as good news. David would be spending less time out in the field, and instead be doing mysterious things with maps, chart and mathematics. It was agreed that at least temporarily he would be living at home again until such time as he got himself a place of his own.

I understood that like Cindy, David would want to lead a life apart from an overseeing parent, even if I had no intention of overseeing him it might look as if I was. Ah well, it’s not always easy being a parent, but I did realise he would want the privacy of his own place to bring a lover or lovers to, and not have the embarrassment of a mother overhearing their activities.

I have written, “What I saw as good news.” I loved the idea of David coming back home for a while, but it proved to have an adverse affect on me. You see, the problem was that as David had grown to maturity he had become almost the mirror image of Ken, but as Ken had been twenty six years ago.

The longer David stayed with me the more I came to see the likeness. It was a physical likeness, David being as tall as Ken had been and just as strong. His hair, eyes, mouth were so like those of ken it was almost uncanny. But it was in the little things; his cheerful smile, his manner of speaking, his gentleness so surprising in such a big man, that I noticed the longer he stayed with me.

At times I almost thought he was Ken resurrected, and all this seemed to revive my grieving.

I would look at David and wonder if he made love as tenderly as Ken, and there would come to me an overwhelming memory of that first time with Ken.

It was nearly two months after meeting him before Ken and I made love. We had been out to see a film and he was driving me home. I can’t recall the film now, but perhaps it had been a bit seductive, but whatever the case I know that as Ken kissed me goodnight I felt extremely stirred up. I clung to that kiss for a long time, and when I broke from it I said, “Take me back to your place and make love with me.”

I shall never forget that evening; how he stripped me so slowly and lovingly. He seemed to relish each new exposure of my body. When he had uncovered my breasts he paused, gazing at them and said, “I knew you’d be lovely, Diane.”

He bent forward and kissed each nipple in turn as if were some precious or sacred object. When I was finally naked he knelt in front of me and kissed my sex organ.

Like most of us I had never been confident about my looks, but Ken made me feel beautiful. He lifted me onto the bed and lying beside me, began to explore my body with his hands. His touch was so tender and his whispered words of love so ardent I could have wept with love and joy.

With the other men it had always felt like a wild scuffle as they tried to unload their sperm into me as quickly as possible. Ken was unhurried, as if he wanted to relish every part of me; my lips, my breasts – his hands and lips searched every part of me until I was nearly frantic for him to come into me.

I knew he must have been as needy as me since I was holding his penis and slowly stroking its foreskin of the crown, and I could feel his sticky pre-cum oozing out from the little slit, yet when he did enter me he was still unhurried. He slipped into my warm moist depths and when he had got his full length into me he paused for a while, gazing into my eyes, seeming to search for something. Perhaps it was my responsive love he sought there.

He began to move, slowly at first, then with increasing speed and power, pushing in deep as if he would pierce me to the heart. His hands came under my buttocks so I wrapped my legs round him, and as I did this I felt the first pulsating of my orgasm. I both dreaded and longed for its full force.

Ken must have felt my quivering and murmured, “Let it go, darling, let it go.” The moment of intense pleasure seemed scald through me with a force I had never known before, convulsing me with ever increasing violence, but it was not my climax that drew out a loud sobbing cry from me, but the first eruption of Ken’s sperm into me.

He gasped and pressed in deep with each new detonation and I was engulfed by waves of love for him. “If only it would never stop,” I sighed to myself.

Perhaps one thing set apart this coupling from the others I had experienced. The other men had closed their eyes as they fucked me, as if they had gone off into a world of their own, perhaps fantasising some ideal model they conjured in their heads. Ken looked at me the whole time. It was me…me he wanted, not some fantasy, but me.

I would have spoken words of love to him, but I could only cry out incoherently.

It is easy to feel love in the throes of a sexual intercourse; the real test comes afterwards when the partners are replete having discharged their libidinous energy. Is there still love, or had their union been only inspired by lust? In the moment Ken said, “This is it,” I knew, and although I said nothing I echoed his words in my own thoughts.

I have often thought that Ken made me pregnant with David that first time. Maybe that is fanciful, but it must have been during one of our couplings soon after. What we were to do about it was never in doubt. We married and I had twenty five wonderful years with Ken. We were lovers always.

And so it was that David’s presence in the house was a constant reminder of Ken and those years of love.

My feelings about David’s presence were ambivalent, rather like a woman, dreading the coming of her orgasm that would put her on the rack of pain and pleasure, and crying out to her lover, “No…no…no…don’t make me come,” but once in the grip of her climax changing her words to “Yes…yes…yes…”

If David stayed I would have the ghost of Ken always with me; if he left I would be wretched. The truth was, despite what seemed like my earlier recovering from grieving, I was really still trying to hang on emotionally to Ken.

The effects of this situation must have started to show on me physically. David began to enquire if all was well with me, and for a long time I told him I was quite all right, but it couldn’t last.

One evening after our meal David asked to join him in the lounge; “I want to talk to you, mother.” It was all very serious and solemn as we sat opposite each other.

Having got that far David did not seem to know how to proceed. He sat looking at me and finally it was me who had to open things up.

“Well, darling, you’ve got me sitting down, what is it you want to say?”

“Mother, I’m…I’m concerned about you. You look so unhappy and I’ve noticed…I’ve seen you…well; you stare at me as if you’re seeing a ghost. What is it, what’s wrong?”

I made an effort to put him off, but at that moment, the way David was speaking, the look of concern on his face, the image of Ken was more forceful than ever.

“There’s nothing wrong, darling I’m just a bit tired lately.”

David was not to be deterred. “Its dad, isn’t it? You still haven’t got over him, have you?”

“I’ll never get over him,” I whispered and began to sob.

I had cried many times before for my lost Ken, but now everything seemed to sweep over me in one great wretched heap of misery. “I loved him…I loved him so much,” I howled. In my misery I slid to the floor, kneeling there as if in prayer.

I must have distressed David badly, and I added to that distress when I cried out, “I see him every day in you; why must you be so like him…why?”

David came and knelt before me, putting his arms round me, holding me close as I wept my heart out.

“It’s the way I am mother. If it’s so painful for you to have me here, perhaps I should go away.”

I was torn inside; I wanted him to go and wanted him to stay. I gabbled on about loving him and loving Ken in him; I hardly knew what I said but whatever it was I doubt if it made much sense.

Looking back now I can now see it was the crisis point for me. I had to acknowledge at that moment that ken was dead, really dead, and David was alive and was not Ken, however much he resembled him. I loved David and if he went away it would be another loss.

As I continued to weep and David to hold me, some of the mists of confusion began clear. It may sound both obvious and ridiculous to write this, but in my head hammered the words, “David is David…David is David.”

I either accepted David for who he was and loved him as such, or I carried on in my world of illusion and its consequent misery.

David was real; I could feel his arms around me, his lips pressed to my forehead, his body close. Here was a warm vibrant human being giving his love, seeking to comfort as best he could. As he held me close I thought I could feel his heart beat and his warm lips began to press against my tear stained face.

I moved my face so that our lips touched and they held together. It was as if he was no longer my son, but simply another human being and I was responding to his embrace and kisses. I was experiencing the first signs of sexual arousal, the wetness between my thighs, the hardening of my nipples.

I could feel the quivering of desire coursing through his body and I opened my lips, and instantly his tongue was in my mouth.

Unless in my deep self I had harboured incestuous thoughts about David, thoughts and desires that I kept hidden even from myself, I had never felt a physical desire for him, never been aroused by his nearness. But now all my frustration and pain came welling to the surface to take the form of physical desire for him.

I ended the kiss and whispered, “Make love with me, Darling. Just this once…make me feel like a whole woman again…even if it doesn’t mean much to you it would mean so much to me.”

There was no foreplay. As if I was some piece of fragile porcelain David laid me back on the carpet. I felt him remove my panties and pull my legs apart.

Although there was none of the delicacy that I had experienced that first time with Ken, none of the slow undressing and devoted gaze, David had the same gentleness as Ken. Our circumstances were different. David was like one giving first aid to the injured one; Ken had been more like a caring nurse in a hospital.

I saw David come over me, and felt his penis probing for the entrance to my vagina. I reached down and took his penis into my hand; it was hot and throbbing.

“My God, he wants me as badly as I want him,” I thought. He slid into me and in that moment I had a frightening thought. I began to cry out for him to stop, but it was too late. He was deep in me and I hadn’t the strength or desire to resist. Come what might, I would have him.

Like Ken he looked at me the whole time of our union.

“I love you, mother,” he said softly, and I drew his head down and kissed him hungrily. This caused him to move in me forcefully. I could not hold back. All the repressed libido, the long months of deprivation, burst their bonds and I screamed as my orgasm mounted in me, shaking my body and sending my mind into a whirling vortex.

David cried out, “Oh mother,” and he was emptying himself into me. I had said, “Just this once,” but now, even in the midst of our now wild union, I knew that I had started something that we would not stop. It was too intense, too filled with love, for it to stop.

How long David had harboured a passionate love for me I did not know, and still do not know. Until this very time he had never outwardly shown any sexual desire for me and perhaps like me he had kept it hidden from his conscious self, but now that desire was out in the open, and could no longer be denied.

His need for me was further proved when, having finished his ejaculating within a few minutes he was taking me again. When he had finished I said to him, “Darling, let’s shower and go to bed, and we can make love properly.”

After that night David became my permanent bed companion and lover. But bed was not the only place for loving, and we copulated all over the house, and in all sort of positions.

It was about a month after our first sexual union that, having learned so much about each other’s needs and desire, we were to learn the effect that our new relationship could have on someone else.

We were in the kitchen and I was seated on the very corner of the table where Ken had taken me on that last morning. We had flung off our clothes and David was penetrating me. With one hand fondling my breast and the other clasping me to him, I could feel his ejaculation beginning and was working with him to get his sperm into my depths as my own orgasm approached.

David had his back to the outside door but I could see it open, and Cindy was standing there. My own orgasm froze, but I let David finish before hurriedly pulling away from him.

Cindy had called in that morning, and as she entered the kitchen she started to say, “Mum, I left my…”

She got no further as she saw what David and I were doing. David, probably being lost in the upheaval of his orgasm, did not hear Cindy’s voice. It was not until I gasped out, “Cindy!” that he realised and turned to see her.

For almost a minute we were like a frozen tableau. David and I naked, and Cindy standing there, white faced and seemingly aghast.

It was Cindy who broke up the scene. “You…you…you can’t…you…”

David and I made a dive for our clothes and began to drag them on. The situation was bad enough, but naked we felt totally vulnerable.

Cindy, fists clenched and quivering with rage found her voice again. She screamed at me, "You…you had to…you had to didn’t you! You had to have them both! You couldn’t be satisfied with just one of them, you wanted them both.”

I couldn’t understand what she was talking about and I managed to stammer, “W-w-what d-d-o you mean?”

“You know what I mean; father and David, you had to have them both.”

“David and I…I was distress and…and he comforted me….I….we…”

“Ah, was that what he was doing just now, comforting you?”

David was not being included in this verbal exchange. It seemed that I was the target of Cindy’s wrath. Had she attacked us for our incestuous behaviour, had she expressed disgust, I could have understood, but that didn’t seem to be what she was lashing out at me for.