Tuesday

Tuesday

The din of the cars outside was constant. He let his mind wander as it was a novelty when it did. The oft repeated phrase from Thoreau, echoed in his mind: “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”. That was his impression of his surroundings and it’s inhabitants.

----

He was the only child of a single mother that, (he didn’t know this) had a I.Q. that placed him amongst less than a tenth of the world’s population. He was normal in every respect when considered outwardly. The kids at school thought little of him, but when they did they thought he was a nerd.

If his school mates had been able to conceptualize at a higher level they would have realized that they ignored him because he scared them. He was different than them in that their conceptions of reality, were to him, superlatives. The teachers at school, save a select few, were also intimidated by him. They knew, that, they of learning and intelligence, were dullards compared to him.

He never noticed any of this. His thoughts worked in ceaseless fashion around the metaphysics of life. Not in the noveau sense, but real questions pertaining to man’s responsibility to maintaining a structured moral code while balancing desires for self. His thoughts of heaven and hell came not from rote learning, but fragments of reading interspersed with life events. These abstractions would have stood a graduate student well in a thesis paper. But he knew none of this, nor cared.

In a nut shell he was destined for far more than his current situation predicated.

----

He placed his book down on the bed. His concentration would not come back, and he couldn’t figure out why. For the last week or so he had struggled reading his beloved books and still couldn’t assess the reasons for it.

Looking around the room he tried to find a focal point to fix his mind upon.

The walls were a broken down white that must be mandated for two room apartments everywhere. The fixtures were non-descript and of no help. The t.v. spewed it’s pablum from a tinny speaker encased in cheap plastic. The anchor man reading the news had a distasteful affect that made his eyes continue to roam.

There was nothing to focus upon. Soon his eyes rested upon her shoulder. The freckles on it stood out in contrast to the white of her skin. And they displayed a casual symmetry with her shoulder winding their way down towards her back and out of view.

Always the observer, he started to look more at the woman lying on the bed next to him.

From the shoulder he saw the shirt and it’s curled edges where the sleeves had been cut off. The upper portion of the cut sleeve rested comfortably and crumpled against her neck, revealing the shallow depression where the shoulder, chest and arm meet on the body. The freckles of the shoulder now gone from his thoughts he felt an awareness of the beauty of that depression. It was fragile and delicate and the skin had a purity in presentation that he hadn’t noticed before.

Also he noticed the fatty tissue that ascended from this region of her body. Traveling downwards for him to view, and then covered by the shirt.

For the first time in his life he looked at a breast with interest. Under the shirt that covered it, he noticed it’s rise from the chest area. Falling and rising in a natural succession. It was not a large breast. He could not quantify it’s size, nor did he wish to. It was to his mind a breast.

But it held his interest. And again, for the first time in his life, he felt arousal.

The body next to his stirred and rolled into him a little. Not as a lover does while sleeping, but companionship. Her foot touched his.

Amused at himself, he reached for the remote and turned the t.v. off. Next came the light and the room was dark.

Sleep was elusive. Already his mind had wandered away from the sights he had just viewed. But there was a dissonance to his thoughts compounded by the erection that had developed.

----

The alarm went off. His mind although structured and disciplined, rebelled at the early morning light straining through the window curtain. The sounds of traffic were higher than last night, mixed with voices.

The morning was uneventful, punctuated by a shower and coffee that was waiting for him. A note left on the table instructed him to “please pick up my dry cleaning”. He had seen this note before. He was a normal teenager in that he was very forgetful. It was signed, “Mom“.

----

He arrived home from school with his Mom’s dry cleaning in hand. It was placed in her closet carefully as it was her only good suit. She was trying to get a better job; trying to get them out of this Midwestern mediocrity.

----

Sometimes at night, after getting home, she would change into her sweats from her old high school and talk of her dreams to him. They were the moments that made him smile. He could hear the longing in her words for a better life for him and her. He knew that one day he would supplant those dreams by taking her away from here, giving her new horizons to dream from.

Most other times she would come home with a smile upon her face and inquire as to how his day was. She was a normal Mom, excepting the fact that she worked two jobs and was exactly twice his age.

She also varied in that she knew who and what her son was. She never worried about him. In him she saw a human being that was special beyond all others that she knew. She often tried to assess her objectivity in feeling that way, but knew even as his mother, there was something special about him. She never felt as though she had to be a mom to her son. In fact she felt him as her equal in most ways.

He still had a way to go tying everything together, but his maturity was once described by her grandmother as that of “a old wise man”. That was when he was 4.

----

His homework done, he waited for his Mom to come into the apartment. The spaghetti dinner he was cooking was almost done.

She walked in a little after 7:00 p.m. A smile upon her face. She looked tired but was rarely ever down. There was a simpleness to her that he knew made him love her all the more.

The talk was casual and light. Dinner was cleared and their nightly routine unfolded. One that had started when he was eight.

----

He would finish up his preparations for the coming day. Tidy his room and then go into his Mom’s smaller room and climb onto to the bed with her while she watched one of the few channels they had. He would have a book in hand and read about whatever subject caught his interest this week, memorizing the details in a off handed way that would astound people in years to come.

Her bed was a double bed. So they were in close proximity; He propped up on his two pillows to her one pillow, and their shoulders touching.

She would usually fall sleep by nine and he by ten. This was their life together. He often times thought that they were more friends sharing a space, than a mother and son. This being the reason for a lack of apprehension falling asleep in his mothers bed at his age.

----

This night he selected one of his history books and climbed into the bed, lying on the comforter as his Mom did. His book casually kept his attention as his mind started to wander again. Seeds of curiosity started to take form in his mind.

He wondered why his Mom had never dated, to his knowledge. He looked at her form next to his and saw his Mom watching the t.v. contently.

He thought she looked pretty. He couldn’t really compare her to other women as he had never paid attention. Her face was freckled and for the first time he noticed she had full lips.

Her eyes were a hazel color that was complimentary to her blondish hair. And her facial structure was symmetrical.

She noticed him looking at her and smiled. For the second time in his life he felt himself becoming aroused.

His normally ordered thought process started to come apart. He felt a flush to his face and quickly re-opened his book. He tried in vain to continue reading.

Over the top of his book he saw her legs extending out towards the end of the bed. A slight stubble was visible down around the ankle area, blackish in color.

He put the book down, opened in the form of a arch, on top of his lap. He pretended to watch the show that was playing on the t.v. In his peripheal vision, he traced her legs up to her knees and beyond. Her thighs were visible, or at least half of them were, the rest covered by the same t-shirt she always wore to bed.

It dawned on him that this woman had been lying next to him for years half dressed. There started to develop a pain in his penis that he had never felt before. Since he had never masturbated before, he did not know this was pain that was easily relieved.

He looked again at his mother’s face, her eyes starting to droop. Her breathing slightly irregular.

He looked down again at her thighs and traced the contour of them up to where he supposed her vagina was. As she was lying on her back, he correctly surmised the raised mound of the shirt, was the anterior portion of her sexual organ. Her vagina, he thought. The word itself made his penis ache more.

He struggled again, in vain to start his book anew. His wishes being overridden by hormones that were new to him.

His thoughts completely muddled by this point. He turned the t.v. and light off. His mother mumbled something while climbing under the covers with him and stretched over, giving him a kiss on the cheek.

She turned onto her side away from him. He lay there with his mind a mess.

Sleep eventually came. As it did, there came images and illusions. The fluidity of which that characterizes R.E.M. sleep.

A warmth spread through his penis that he slowly became aware of. It was a warmth that was created by friction. He was in that state that is awareness confined. He could do nothing about it.

In it images played of his mother’s chest covered by that shirt she always wore to bed. Connected to these thoughts were the warmth in his lower regions and a pressure that was steadily building inside him. The disconnect was that of all the things he was aware of, this was not one of them.

Like a dam bursting he felt a release that was immediate and exhausting. He felt his penis spasming against something.

Conciousness comes quickly at these times, as it did for him. He was aware that he was positioned against his mother, his thighs finishing their last feeble thrusts against her backside. His pajama bottoms sticky and wet along with the shirt that covered her bottom.

In a panic and devoid of cogent thought, he rolled onto his back. At the same time his mother got off the bed without turning on the light, walking out of the room. She quickly returned with a towel and without saying a word loosened the fronts of his pajama bottoms and pulled them from his hips. His feeble raising of his hips, perfunctory in nature. She then did the same for his underwear.

There was no thoughts in his mind, but that suspended panic. She gently dried him off, only brushing his now flaccid penis. Then tending to herself she, removed her shirt which offered him a profile of her naked torso. She pulled the panties from around her hips and quickly wiped his ejaculate from her backside.

To the bureau she turned removing another pair of panties and slipping these on, she then removed a t-shirt from the closet and put this on.

He lay there as she crawled into bed. She rolled onto her side, facing him and took him into her arms. She held him this way, soothingly telling him he was okay. Those were the words he fell asleep too.