Ann finished her shower and pulling on her bathrobe she went to her bedroom. There she took off the robe and naked stood looking at her self in the long mirror. Her face contorted into a grimace of self deprecation. "Who could love me?" she muttered ruefully.
It was true; she was not the most attractive of women. At forty one she had lost her once slim figure, now her waist was thicker, hips and thighs heavier. Only her large breasts retained some of their original firmness and their nipples were still a soft pink.
It was her breasts that drew the attention of men and so that was what she emphasised. The problem was she only seemed to attract the most undesirable types of men; those with failed marriages behind them and the sad sack types who had never married because no woman would have them.
"I always get the bottom of the pile," she told herself.
Ann certainly had problems. To begin with she was a single parent with a son, the result of a brief liaison when she was eighteen. The guy had been a smooth one; he told her that he loved her and would marry her, and so it was alright if her fucked her, which he did enthusiastically until she announced herself pregnant.
It was then he disappeared off her radar screen. The social welfare people eventually found him. He'd gone back to his wife and kids, but they made him pay a paternity allowance. The money was great, but it was nowhere near enough to meet all the bills.
Ann had given birth to Craig and lived on with her parents for a while, but eventually she decided that she had to become a mature adult and live with some degree of independence. She took any job she could get, cleaning, waitress, serving behind a hotel bar, even posing as a photographic model until she started to put on weight.
At first she enjoyed the men ogling her, trying to look down the top of her dress to see her breasts, but in time this palled and she came to see these men as a "sick lot of perverts."
The difficulty was that Ann was very libidinous and was honest enough to admit she needed lots of sex, and lots of sex she got, but from her point of view always with the wrong sort of men.
The problem was that like a lot of women, she wanted that potent mixture of love and sex, but that can be very hard to come by for a woman in her position. Men might declare their love, but the moment they learned that she had a child love seemed to fly out of the window.
When money was tight she had even considered going "on the game," but that was dangerous for a freelance. The people who ran the brothels and prostitute rings didn't like the freelancers, and Ann had seen the results; women whose faces looked like a raw steak in a butcher's display.
As for working for the brothels or one of the rings, she was fastidious enough to not fancy having to take on all comers for half hour stints or rough fucking in the back of client's cars. In any case she wasn't really the type they liked to take on. They preferred girls and women who had a drug habit they needed to feed, or university girls needing money badly for their studies. Those were the sort they could control.
Craig had experienced a few "uncles." None of them had lasted, but these experiences had left him in no doubt about his mother's sexual behaviour, even though in recent times she had kept it away from home. He nevertheless knew where she was going when she went out in the evening. It would be to some cheap motel or hotel room, of if she was lucky and the guy had a room of his own, or his wife was away, she might get the luxury of a comfortable double bed.
* * * * * * * *
Still looking at her self in the mirror Ann spat out, "Slut."
She had a date that night with her latest lover, although "luster" might be a more appropriate description of what would take place between them. They had dated a few times and the pattern was always the same, a few drinks at a hotel bar and then upstairs to a room rented for a couple of hours.
Ann sighed and said to herself, "Who could love a tart liker me?"
Saying that it occurred to her that the only person who sincerely loved her was her son Craig. Aware of her behaviour he had never once reproached her. It was as if he understood her need for sex and that in it she desperately sought for her other need, love.
Ann often thought it was remarkable that he had turned out as well as he had. He had never been in any bad trouble and had done exceptionally well at school. Now engaged in tertiary studies Ann had scrimped and scraped to find the money to let him engage in further studies, and with the money Craig made working evenings in fast food outlets, they just got by.
He had grown to be a fine looking young man and Ann dearly loved him. In fact Ann often thought that if she had been twenty years younger and Craig not her son, he was just the sort she would liked to have married; but he was her son and she wasn't twenty years younger.
Ann loved children and would liked to have had more, but only within the marriage bond. Now at forty one that seemed a very remote possibility.
Ann sighed and turned away from the mirror. She had to decide what to wear. Guys often wanted to strip her, but they didn't like to have to wrestle with some of the complex clothing women wear, and she knew that the man she was going to meet liked to keep it simple.
She chose her flimsiest bra and some panties with a soft gusset. The gusset she hoped would keep some of the surplus juices at bay after they had finished, and might stifle some of the after sex smell.
Men seemed to like women wearing red, and so she chose her one red dress with a zip up the back; that would be easy to get off. Net stocking and high heel shoes completed the outfit, and picking up her handbag she put a packet of condoms in it and some tissues.
She had learned her lesson the first time she got pregnant and now, even when a guy said he'd had a vasectomy, she insisted on a condom being used. The only time she would ever allow a man to take her with his penis uncovered was in a martial bed, and that seemed increasingly unlikely.
She always lubricated heavily during sex, and the tissues were to cope with that and the semen after the sex.
* * * * * * * *
It was a warm evening and so she decided against a coat and made her way to the kitchen to let Craig know she was on her way out.
She found him sitting at the kitchen table dressed only in shorts and engaged in taking notes from a book. He glanced up as she came in and then returned to the book.
Ann was early for her date and so she sat at the table killing time and looking at Craig. As she sat he glanced up again, held her gaze for a few seconds and then once more returned to his book.
Without looking up he said softly, "Don't go out tonight mother."
Surprised Ann said "What?"
Now he looked up at her appealingly and repeated, "Please mum, don't go out tonight."
"Craig, I've got an appointment, I can't just not keep it."
"Break it mum, don't go."
"But...but why...why?"
"It's...it's just that I don't want you to go...to go to him."
"How do you know it's him?"
"Because it always is, and you're too good for the life you lead."
"Too good...too...I thought you understood what I need. I've got to have something Craig, I need something, I can't be a sainted nun; I've got a woman's needs."
"I know mum, but just this once don't go. If you don't go this time then the next time it'll be easier and after that easier still; you don't really need to go."
"But I do need to go Craig; I'd go crazy if I didn't...didn't...." She paused trying to find an acceptable word and finally said, "If I didn't get some loving."
