It's All Academic
by parthenogenesis

It was a Saturday morning.  I’d slept in a little, and was lying on my bed, covers tossed back, in the process of taking care of a morning hard-on.  Just as that first wonderful-feeling, tension-releasing spurt of come began to leave my prick and start its upward journey, my mother burst through my bedroom door.

“Soren, I—  Ohmygosh!”

I turned my head toward Mom and our eyes locked.  She stood there, frozen, and time went into slow motion just long enough for that first dollop of come to reach its apex of flight, hang in midair like a living pearlescent jewel, and begin its descent.  Then she stepped back and slammed the door shut.  I think part of me must have tried to stop coming when I saw Mom.  It was futile, of course, but it both produced a very strange sensation—I’d never tried to stop coming before—and distracted from my full enjoyment of an orgasm.  I spurted to a dribble and mopped up on some kleenexes.  I wasn’t really embarrassed by Mom’s walking in on me.  Well, a little, maybe, but not a lot; I mean, after all, as far as I’m concerned, masturbation’s a part of life.  I was more annoyed than anything else.  Not angry, just annoyed.  She really should have knocked.

Mom was in the kitchen when I went in to get some breakfast.

“Soren,” she said, “I do apologize for bursting in on you while you were masturbating.  I mean, I know that you’re sixteen, and, although I’m perfectly aware of your chronological station, I hadn’t correlated that with a developing sex drive and consequent increased need for privacy.”

“It’s okay, Mom,” I said.  “But maybe you could knock next time you find the door closed?”

“I shall, Soren, I shall indeed.”

Some people may think that that’s a pretty weird way for a mother to talk to her son.  Not in our household.  My parents are both full professors at the university.  They live lives of the mind, and any topic is fair game for discussion.  Our house has always been a hotbed of far-flung ideas.  Mom and Dad would often hold casual seminars in the den, inviting their favorite or most promising graduate students over.  In the den, we had one of those huge whiteboards that would make a printed copy of what was written on it, so that pearls of wisdom could be preserved forever.

Dad’s field is philosophy.  Matter of fact, that’s how I got my name.  Dad was heavy into Kierkegaard when I was born, so Dad named me after him.  (It could have been worse.  I’ve always been grateful that he wasn’t interested in Kant or Pascal, for example.)  The crowd that Dad attracted for his seminars was something else.  “Disheveled students with disheveled minds,” he always called them.  “I may not be able to affect the way they dress, but I can teach them how to think.”  I had been jammed with philosophy the way some kids get jammed with their parents’ religions.  Most  kids’ parents read Piggly-Wiggly and other children’s books to them when they’re little.  Dad read to me from Plato’s Republic.

I did have to give Dad credit for letting his toes touch the ground every once in a while.  About four years ago, when I was twelve and just starting to think about philosophy on my own terms, he was trying to engage me in a discussion on some point that I couldn’t have cared less about, and I told him I thought it was all bullshit.  Some guy would sit down and write what he was thinking.  Then, in another country or on the other side of the world, so would another guy.  Then they’d argue about who was right, or who had “flaws” in this thinking.

“You’re right,” he’d said, “but I prefer to think of it as entertainment.  As a matter of fact, I’ve never seen a system of philosophy perfectly implemented in all its details.  People just don’t work that way.  They take a little piece here and a little piece there, they blend it with their own perception and experience, and they come up with their own approach to life, their personal gestalt.  But they don’t have a clue why they think what they do.  The entertainment is trying to find the why.”

But Dad’s influence on me may have been somewhat academic itself.  Also about four years ago—not too long after I told him I thought philosophy was bullshit—he decided to move in with one of his graduate students, a young woman twelve years his junior.

Mom’s a mathematician.  When most people hear the word “mathematics,” they think of numbers, arithmetic.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Real mathematicians look upon numbers with utter disdain.  Numbers are for mere physicists or engineers or accountants.  Pure mathematics is wholly abstract.  Mathematicians are people who can construct and inhabit whole other multidimensional universes in their heads.  Just as it takes a particular genetic quirk or kink in the brain to be able to play the cello like Yo Yo Ma, have a voice like Bobby McFarren, or create physics like Steven Hawking, so does it take a particular genetic quirk to be able to think like a mathematician.  Somewhere along the line, I decided that math is a lot like music.  If you can imagine thinking in music, then maybe you can imagine thinking in mathematics.  Truth to tell, I think Mom has a whole lot more mental horsepower than Dad does, and that may have been part of the reason he left Mom to move in with a budding philosopher.

Anyway, this is the kind of house I grew up in, and why it didn’t strike me as odd to hear my mother say “I do apologize for bursting in on you while you were masturbating.”  I had been masturbating and she did burst in on me, so it was a perfectly correct statement of fact and a proper apology.

After a bowl of Wheaties and a glass of fruit juice, I went back up to my room, checked my email, dropped into a couple of chat rooms, and skated around the web for a while.  By the time breakfast had soaked in, I was starting to get twitchy, so I grabbed a basketball and hopped on my bike to go down to the south side of campus and see if I could find a pick-up game.  Not a problem.  The basketball court was another interesting aspect of living in a university community.  It was a common meeting ground for preppies and college jocks and street-wise Black kids.  Whatever differences they might have had under other circumstances disappeared on the court, where it was nothing but the game.  That’s not quite true.  There was a lot of black-white competition, and a lot of hollering and shouting and insulting and posturing.  I think we all blew off a lot of steam of all kinds while we were running around and jumping up and down.  But nobody ever really got mad and nobody got hurt.  When everybody left, they punched each other in the shoulder with a certain kind of respect and affection, and parted with lines like, “Just wait ‘til next time, mothafucka.”  Today’s game was as lively as any other, and, by late in the afternoon, I was pooped.  I rounded up my basketball and pedaled back up the hill to home.

Over a dinner of whole-wheat spaghetti with roasted garlic sauce, Mom said, “Soren, a thought occurred to me this afternoon.”  This is academic for “I’ve been thinking” or “I have an idea.”  But notice the passive construction of the sentence, where the thought, not the thinker, is the subject.  With lives of the mind, it was the thought that was most important.  The other interesting aspect to this approach is that a context was never offered along with the fact of the thought.  You never knew what was going to come next.

“Yes, Mom?” I said.

“I was ruminating on your masturbating this morning, and it struck me as odd that, whereas we as parents pay close attention to every aspect of our children’s well-being, learning, and physical development while they’re small, we virtually ignore their sexual development and function, as if there were something amiss or forbidden about it, and it’s occurred to me that perhaps I should know whether your sexual development and function is progressing healthily and normally.”

I all but blew breadstick crumbs across the table.  Even for my mother, this was a little weird.  I took a gulp of milk, then said, “Well, Mom, I, uh, I mean, I suppose I’m doing just fine, I mean, I don’t think I have any problems.”

“I see,” she said.  “And how would I know if you did?  I expect that if you encountered any other sort of disquieting physical phenomenon, such as pain or malfunction; if, perhaps, your bowels weren’t performing normally, you’d inform me and seek my advice or assistance.  Would you be similarly inclined in the case of sexual anomaly or malfunction?”

“Uhhhhh, I don’t know.  Probably.  I might.  I guess I would.  I mean, it’s never happened before, so I really can’t say what I’d do.”

“I see,” she said.  “It occurred to me that perhaps I should observe your masturbating to assure myself on the point.  And, I must admit, it would be educational for me as well.  I’ve never had the opportunity simply to observe a flaccid penis attain a state of full tumescence and then discharge its complement of semen.”

“Mom, you and Dad were married for thirteen years!”

“Yes.  Well.  You see, our physical relationship wasn’t such that the opportunity for an observation of this kind ever presented itself.  I really shouldn’t speak with you about your father’s and my sexual relationship—or should I?  Now, there’s an interesting permutation on the proposition.  If I believe that I should know more about your sexual development, then should I not be equally as willing to speak of my own sexual experience?  I’ll have to ponder that further.  Meanwhile, what about my original proposition?”

“Mom, I don’t know.  It sounds a little wack to me for a mother to watch her son jack off.  Besides, why now?  It seems like, if you were going to talk to me about sex, you should have started a couple of years ago, when I first hit puberty.”

“Good points, Soren.  To the first, I must reiterate that I am your mother.  I have a responsibility for your well-being in all aspects, and it discomforts me to think that I might have been neglectful.  To the second point, two statements.  First, I assumed that your father was attending to those duties.  Second, I must admit that that I hadn’t been paying too much attention.  My energies were primarily directed toward my projects and my classes.  Finally—to be completely honest once again—seeing your erection and ejaculation this morning arrested my attention in an odd way and turned my thoughts in directions I hadn’t previously considered.”

“Mom, did it ever occur to you that this might be a seriously personal matter?”

“Of course, Soren, I’m not dull-witted, you know.  As I said earlier, this is a matter of healthy bodily function, which should not be taboo; further, I believe that there are aspects of curiosity and education that shouldn’t be ignored.  I’m curious, for example, how often you find it necessary to relieve yourself in this way.  Daily?  Several times a week?  Weekly?  I have no idea the frequency with which sexual urges impress themselves upon an adolescent male.”

“Actually, Mom, I usually jack off two or three times a day.  In the morning, before I get up, and again at night, before I go to sleep.  And sometimes during the day, depending on what’s happening, how I feel, and whether I have the opportunity.”

“Two or three times a day?  My goodness!  I had no idea it might be that frequent.  How fascinating!  In any event, Soren, please give my proposition some serious consideration.  We’ll speak about this again later.”

After dinner, I took a much-needed shower to wash away the sweat of the basketball game.  I watched TV for a while, then went to my room and got on line for a couple of games of Worms and StarCraft.  But, all the while, Mom’s “proposition” was churning away in the back of my mind.  I was really torn.  On the one hand, just logically speaking, as Mom had suggested, why shouldn’t I let her watch me jack off?  Jacking off and coming were an integral part of teen-age existence.  If kids my age didn’t jack off, there would probably be fights and rapes and unwanted pregnancies all over the place.  I was going to continue to jack off as long as necessary to keep my head on straight, whether Mom watched or didn’t watch.  On the other hand, getting too seriously into sex with your mother felt …strange.  Suppose I told Mom I didn’t know anything about female masturbation and asked her if she’d let me watch?  That probably wouldn’t work.  Parents always have the upper hand, and transactions with them are usually one-way.  What’s sauce for the parent isn’t sauce for the kid, so to speak.  The problem was, I really couldn’t think of anything wrong with it, logically.  It was just a feeling that maybe it wasn’t right.  The one thing I knew for sure was that Mom would keep after me until I gave her an answer.  And that if I didn’t give her the answer she wanted, she’d keep trying until either she got what she wanted or we arrived at complete loggerheads.

I took one more check for email, then turned my computer off and brushed my teeth.  I went down to Mom’s study and said good-night to her, then returned to my room and got into bed.  I’d been in bed for about three minutes, and was just starting to think about Marianne and massage my cock when I heard a knock at my bedroom door.  I let go of my cock.

”Come in,” I said.

“Soren,” Mom began, “have you masturbated this evening yet?”

“Uh, no, Mom, actually, I haven’t,” I said.

“Well, then,” she said, “have you come to a decision about my proposition?”

“No, I haven’t”

“Have you given it any thought at all?”

“Yes, Mom, I have.”

“Well, then, when do suppose you might be inclined to reach a decision?”

Good grief.  The metaquestion:  if you can’t give me an answer, then tell me when you’ll give me an answer.  Hitting me with the metaquestion meant that Mom wasn’t going to let me off easy.  Once she gets locked onto something, she doesn’t let go.  I made up my mind on the spot.  If I put her off, she’d keep at me until I gave her an answer.  If I didn’t give her the answer she wanted, she’d keep at me until we wore each other down.  The easiest way out was just to give her want she wanted, and be done with it.  But despite the logic of the situation and my desire to be relieved of the pressure of having to give her an answer, I still couldn’t get comfortable with the situation.  It just didn’t feel right.

I thought about it some more while Mom stood a few steps away from my bed, looking at me with her eyebrows raised in anticipation.

“Let me ask you a question or two, Mom,” I said, finally.

“Of course, Soren,” she replied.  “You know that serious questions are always in order.”

I organized my thoughts a bit, cleared my throat, and started.  “To tell you the truth, Mom, I’ve given your question a lot of thought.  I understand that human sexuality is a natural function, and that masturbation is a normal—necessary—activity for a teen-age boy.  I also understand and am grateful to you for your concerns about my health.  And I understand your curiosity for curiosity’s sake.  The problem is that I can’t abstract jacking off in front of you into the realm of pure inquiry.  It makes me feel uncomfortable, like something’s wrong.  A boy and his mother shouldn’t be sharing sex.  Or something like that,” I trailed off lamely.

“Why, Soren!” Mom exclaimed.  “The hole in your thinking is as big as a barn door!”

“It is?”  I said.

“Of course.  If I went and watched you play a basketball game, I wouldn’t be playing basketball with you, would I?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, then, there you have it,” Mom said, looking triumphant in her logic.  “Watching you masturbate is not sharing sex with you, is it?”

She had me there, if the analogy held—which I wasn’t sure of.  Mom wasn’t a basketball court, but she was a woman.  Or something like that.  I couldn’t get it quite right.  This was one of the craziest discussions I’d ever had with Mom.  It was logical, but, then, again, it wasn’t.  I had the feeling that this discussion could go on for a long time.  And I had the feeling that to pursue it further would only make it worse.  Because of Mom’s determination, it was one of those I couldn’t win, even if I was right.  However right might be defined in the circumstance.

Mom’s voice yanked me back from the mental loop I was getting into.  “Watching you masturbate is not sharing sex with you, isn’t that right?”

“Strictly speaking, no, Mom, it isn’t.”

“Well, then?” Mom pressed.

“One more question, then:  this is a one-time deal, right?  You just want to watch me jack off one time to satisfy your curiosity about watching me get a hard-on and then coming.  Then it’s over.  Agreed?”

“I should think so,” Mom said.  “I had no further ideation or intention in the matter.”

“All right, then, you can watch.  One time.”

“Splendid.  And when will be able to carry out our little experiment?”

“Why not right now?  Let’s do it and be done with it.”

“Oh, goodie!” she said.  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

Mom went over and got my desk chair and rolled it to the side of my bed, then sat down, hands clasped in her lap, as if she were about to hear a lecture.  I reached up and turned on the bedside light, then kicked the covers off and pushed my jockey shorts down.  At that point, I had a soft-on, not all the way shriveled up, but not hard, either.  My cock, near its full length, was lolling lazily to one side along my thigh.  I closed my eyes, turned my thoughts to Marianne and thinking about unbuttoning her blouse and taking off her brassiere, and started to massage my cock again.  It was hard in moments.  Then I started to stroke it, slowly, savoring the feeling.

“Soren,” Mom said, “what causes your penis become erect?”

I stopped stroking and turned my head toward my mother.  “Blood, Mom, it fills with blood.  Surely you know that.”

“Of course I know that, Soren.  Don’t be impertinent.  I mean, what causes the blood to be diverted into your penis?  What happens in your mind or your body?”

“What happens?  I don’t know.  I don’t have a clue.  I think about sex, and I get a hard-on.  Heck, sometimes I get a hard-on for no particular reason at all, then all I can think about is sex.  That’s why I jack off.  I get tired of thinking about sex all the time.  That’s all I know.”

“I see.”

I shut my eyes and went back to Marianne.  I imagined that her breasts would be small, firm, and high on her chest, that they would be yielding to my touch, and that her nipples would harden when I took them between my lips, first one, then the other.

“Soren,” Mom said, “when you think about sex, what exactly is it that you think.”

I stopped stroking and looked at Mom.  “Mom, I fantasize.  I think about a girl I find attractive and imagine being with her.”

“I see.”

I closed my eyes and picked up where I left off, stroking slowly, imagining that Marianne’s breasts and nipples were slightly perfumed, and maybe just a bit salty to the taste.  I imagined her nipples hardening and I imagined her putting her fingers in my hair and sighing with pleasure.

“Soren,” Mom said, “could you provide a bit more detail?”

“A bit more detail about what?”  I asked.

“About what you imagine about being with a girl you find attractive.  I’m curious about your thought process, what it is that produces the effect in you.”

Letting mom watch me jack off was one thing.  Letting her into my mind was quite another.  Masturbation was external.  Thought was internal, much more personal, more intimate, more like sharing sex than merely stroking my hard cock.

“Mo-om,” I said, making two syllables of the word, just like a little kid, “what I think about while I’m jacking off is pretty personal.  I’m not sure I want to share that with you.”

“Soren, I’m astonished at your response,” Mom said, in apparent real astonishment.  “You know that products of the mind are always of value.  And need I remind you that a pertinent question in pursuit of knowledge is never amiss?”

“Aw, Mom,” I began, “what I’m thinking while I’m jacking off is hardly definitive logic or creative thought.  It’s imagination.  Fantasy.”

“Nonetheless, Soren, it will provide me insight into the functioning of your sexuality; of male sexuality in general.  That insight could be valuable.”

This interruption had caused my hard-on to begin to soften.  “Mom, you’re going to wear me down.  Okay, one time.”  I locked my eyes onto Mom’s, defiantly, I felt.  “I’m thinking about a girl I find very attractive, someone I’d like to be with and to have sex with.”  I gripped my cock firmly and started to squeeze and stroke it, in an exaggerated sort of way.  “In my mind, I’m unbuttoning her blouse, slowly, savoring the idea of seeing her neck and her chest come into view.  Button by button, her blouse comes open, the pale, smooth skin of her chest exposed by degrees.  When her blouse is unbuttoned, I gently slide it off her shoulders, then reach behind her and unclasp her brassiere and help it slide down her arms.  Her breasts are naked before me, small and perfectly formed, with beautiful pink nipples.  I put my nose between her breasts and inhale the scent of her, her soap, her perfume, the essence of her skin.  I kiss between her breasts, then along the left one to her nipple.  I kiss her nipple, then lightly run the tip of my tongue over its surface, tasting her, her slight salt, feeling the exquisite texture of her flesh.  Her nipple hardens in my mouth, she runs her fingers through my hair to the back of my head, and presses me to her chest.  ‘Mmmmmmm,’ she says, in pleasure.

“That’s what I’m imagining,” I said.  My cock was hard again.  Harder than hard, it seemed.

Mom was still looking straight into my eyes, her facial features relaxed and her lips parted, her breathing shallow and tentative.  While I was talking, her right hand had moved from her lap to her left breast.  Suddenly, she blinked, looked at her right hand as if it belonged to someone else, and returned it to her lap.

“Sssss…” Mom began.  She stopped, cleared her throat, and started again.  “Soren,” she said, “have you ever had sexual intercourse?”

I shut my eyes and kept stroking.  “No.”

I speeded up a little.  As soon as I came, Mom would have seen what she came for, and this would be done with.  A silent minute passed.

“Soren,” Mom said, “have you ever seen a girl your age or a woman in the nude?”

“No, I haven’t.  For Christ’s sake, Mom!  Do you want to watch me jack off or have a conversation?  This does take a certain amount of concentration, you know.”

“Soren!  It does not require a blasphemous utterance to return my attention to the point under consideration.  Of course, I wish to continue to witness your masturbation and subsequent ejaculation.  That is why I’m here, after all, is it not?  Further, as you’ll recall, I did say that there was an educational aspect to the matter.  I am still in pursuit of knowledge, you know.”

“Yes, Mom.  Sorry.”  That last exchange had caused me to soften a bit.  My concentration had been broken.  I shut my eyes, grasped my cock firmly, and turned my mind back to Marianne’s chest.

“I must say, Soren,” Mom said, “your penis certainly has grown since the last time I saw it.  I do believe it’s fully as large as your father’s.  Perhaps a bit larger, even.  This is quite curious.  Do you mind?”

I looked over and saw Mom’s hand heading for my cock.  I short-circuited slightly, and, without thinking, let go and drew my hand away.  Mom grasped my cock lightly between her thumb and the tips of her fingers.  When she touched me, I almost came.  “She’s not just watching the basketball game,” I thought, “she’s getting onto the court.”  But I made no move to stop her.  She pushed my cock to one side, then the other, then forward, then back, as if she were testing the control stick of an airplane.  She let go of my cock and cradled my balls in the palm of her hand, hefting them slightly as if testing their weight.

“Fascinating apparatus,” she said.  Then she wrapped her hand around my cock, squeezed it just the right amount, and gave it one up and down stroke.  My toes curled.

“Oh, my,” she said.  “That does feel nice.  So warm.  And such an interesting texture, much like fine velvet, or perhaps doeskin.  Firm, yet soft at the same time.  And the skin slides so easily!”

Mom relaxed her grip on my cock and supported it in the palm of her hand.  She took her glasses off and leaned in for a close look.  As she ran her gaze down my prick, I felt the warm exhalation from her nostrils pass over the head and down the shaft.  My toes curled again, and my hands clenched reflexively.

“Fascinating,” Mom said, “utterly fascinating.  And you have such a nice smell of clean, healthy skin.  Odd.  I’d never have thought that a penis might be considered attractive.  Well.  Sorry for the interruption, Soren.  I’ll keep my place.  Please do carry on.”

My heart was thumping as if I’d just maneuvered through a full court press.  Nobody besides me had ever touched my cock before, and you can bet that nobody else had ever stroked it.  The feeling was out of this world.  It was the same motion as if I’d done it myself, but what a difference.  And this was my mother!  But this was my mother.  I shouldn’t be feeling like this.  God, I would have loved it if she’d decided just to keep stroking.  I shouldn’t be thinking like this.

But I was stiff as a board.  Hard as a rock.  Blue steel.  And it was Mom who’d made me that way.  I shut my eyes, took hold, and stroked with a purpose, but I wasn’t exactly fantasizing just at the moment.  What I was doing was remembering the feel of Mom’s touch, and of her warm breath running down my cock.  It was all over in less than a minute.

I felt the come gathering somewhere between my legs, then I let go with an orgasm like I’d never had before.  A spurt of come arched high into the air and landed on my chin with a splat.  The next one landed in the hollow of my throat.  And so the spurts marched back down my chest and stomach, until they fizzled into the final oozes that ran down over my fingers.

I looked over at Mom.  Her eyes and mouth were three very round O’s.  “Hhhhhhhh,” she said.  She cleared her throat.  “That was quite remarkable, Soren,” she croaked.  She cleared her throat again and swallowed hard.  “I had no idea.  I simply had no idea.”

“Wuuuuuuuuuuuh,” I said.  I cleared my throat.  “Well, Mom, does that satisfy your curiosity?” I croaked.

Mom looked down at my gooey cock and hand, then she looked toward the wall as if what she were seeing was far on the other side of it.  “Yes.  Yes, I suppose it does,” she said, more as if she were talking to herself than to me.  “Thank you, Soren.  Good night.  Pleasant dreams.”

The next thing I knew, I was being dragged from sleep by an insistent tapping at my bedroom door.  I cracked one eye open, noted that it was morning, and turned my head to one side to glimpse at my alarm clock.  8:17.  My heart thumped and adrenaline rushed through my system.  Shit!  I was going to be late for school!  Then I snapped back to my senses.  Today was Sunday.  What the heck was Mom doing knocking on my door at 8:17 on a Sunday morning?

“Cuh,” I said.

The door opened, and Mom breezed in, dressed in sweats, bringing with her a waft of soap and shampoo, her hair still slightly damp from the shower.  Mom runs.  “Oxygen is the brain’s fuel,” she’s reminded me about a jillion times, and, since Mom’s biggest job is thinking, she wants to be sure that her brain has enough fuel.  She gets up early every morning and runs before she starts her day, and, if she’s stuck on a problem, she may run again at any other time during the day, both to take her mind off the problem and to give herself an extra shot of brain fuel.

“Soren,” she started, “have you masturbated this morning yet?”

“Geez, Mom, I haven’t even woke up yet.  It’s Sunday morning.  Us growing adolescents need our sleep, you know?  Besides, you watched me jack off last night, remember?  Our deal’s done.”

“It’s we growing adolescents, Soren.  And yes, of course, I remember that I observed your masturbating last evening.  It’s because of that that I’m here.  After a good deal of contemplation, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m more ignorant about male sexual function than I’d previously considered, and I also believe, in retrospect, that the objectivity of my attention was distracted and I didn’t observe all the aspects about which I was curious.  I believe that one more observation is in order.  Do I have your consent in the matter?”

Of course, I had a morning hard-on, about 60% piss and 40% sex.  My thinking was clouded.  As usual with waking thoughts, about six things were going on at the same time.  I was thinking about sex, of course.  I was also thinking about homework and the yard work I’d promised Mom I’d do.  I was thinking about basketball and X-Files.  I was annoyed with Mom for having awakened me as she did, and I was annoyed with her for wanting to go back on her deal.  At the same time, I was remembering all too clearly the touch of her fingertips on my cock, that one stroke, and the feel of her breath running down my shaft.  “No,” my mind said.

“Yes, Mom,” my mouth said.

I tossed off the covers, swung my feet to the floor, and stood, the bulge of my hard-on evident in the front of my Jockey shorts.

“Where are you going?”

“I gotta take a leak, Mom.  One tube for two purposes, you know?  If I have to piss too bad, I’ll never come.  And, if I’m about to come, there’s no way I could take a leak.”

“Crudely put, but understandable,” Mom said.  “I suppose that’s an aspect of male anatomy I’d never stopped to consider.  Well, be about it, then.”

I went to the bathroom, sat down on the toilet, scooted back as far as I could, pressed my hard-on down below the level of the seat, shut my eyes, and waited until I’d softened enough to be able to piss.  Sometimes the one-tube construction is a real pain in the ass.  When I stood up again, I just took my shorts off and tossed them in the hamper.  My next stop would be a shower and clean shorts anyway, so what the hell.

I walked back into my bedroom with my 40% hard-on swinging in front of me.  Mom’s gaze went briefly to my face, then locked onto my cock.

“Soren!” she said.  “Isn’t that rather gross comportment?”

“Ah, c’mon, Mom,” I said.  “I’m just going to take my shorts off anyway, and, besides, isn’t that what you wanted to see?”

“Yes.  Well.  Logically speaking, you’re absolutely correct.”

I lay down on the bed, grabbed my cock, and started to think about Marianne.  Then the image of Marianne faded and the memory of Mom’s touch and breath took its place, and I got rock hard.  Fast.  I started stroking.  Mom leaned in closer, drew a deep breath, and exhaled.  The air blew across my cock.  I picked up the pace.

“Soren,” Mom began.

A pertinent question in pursuit of knowledge is never amiss.  I really should know to expect this by now.

“Yes, Mom?”

“Soren ... will it work if somebody else does it?  I’m sorry.  That was terribly imprecise.  What I mean to say is that, although I understand that masturbation is inherently a personal activity, I’m curious whether you would still ejaculate if another person performed the manipulation of your penis.”

“Yeah, sure, Mom.  Haven’t you ever heard of mutual masturbation?  Didn’t you experiment with boys when you were dating in high school?”

Mom folded her hands in her lap primly and looked down at them.  “No, Soren, I didn’t.  You see, I didn’t date while I was in high school.  I had known from the moment I could verbalize my thoughts that I wanted to be a mathematician.  All my time in high school was spent in pursuit of my studies.”  Mom sighed.  “I wasn’t particularly interested in boys at the time, and I don’t think I was considered dateable anyway.  Boys didn’t seem to be too interested in the class ‘brain,’ and, to tell you the absolute truth, I think they called me things like ‘nerd’ or ‘geek’ behind my back.”

Mom had told me a lot about everything she studied and where she went to school, but she’d never before talked about her personal experience of growing up, of being a teen-ager.  It seemed obvious to me that she’d been lonely, even if she couldn’t admit it.  I could sympathize, feeling as strongly attracted to girls as I did, but at the same time being scared to death of them, sensing a barrier between us that I hadn’t yet successfully learned how to get over, under, around, or through.

“I’m sorry, Mom.  I didn’t mean to pry.  But, yeah, it’ll work if somebody else does it.”

“Well, then, I believe that I’d like to try a hands-on experiment, as it were.  As you well know, the more senses are engaged in a learning process, the better the knowledge is acquired and retained.  Therefore, it seems to me that I would understand better and be able to observe better if more of my senses were applied to the situation.”

“You want to jack me off?”

“Well, yes, I suppose you could put it that way; I mean, I have to admit that’s the upshot of what I’m saying.”

Speech never fails me in conversation with Mom.  We’ve almost always been able to talk about anything, primarily because, I think, the discussions are always academic, exchanges of thought and information.  No matter what the topic, they’re never really personal.  But, all of a sudden, speech failed me.  I didn’t know what to say.  I loved the touch of Mom’s fingertips last night, and I loved the feel of her breath on my cock, I couldn’t deny that.  But letting my mother jack me off?  That was very personal.  I tried to imagine how the guys might respond if I said, “Hey, guys, guess what?  My mother jacked me off last night.”  How would I respond if one of them said the same thing to me?  My cock, the traitor, throbbed.

“I don’t know, Mom,” I said.  “This is a lot more than you asked for to start with, and I’ve already fulfilled my part of your original request.  Besides, if you remember your own basketball analogy, your jacking me off would make you a participant in the game.”

Mom blanched, and opened and closed her mouth without saying anything.  Had I finally caught my mother hoist by her own logical petard?  My hopes for a win on logical grounds faded as soon as Mom started speaking again.  “I understand that I’m seeking to extend the conditions of our agreement,” Mom said, “and I accept full responsibility for that.  In many instances of study or inquiry in the past, I’ve found that an initial quest for knowledge often leads to the desire to know more, and I believe that to be the situation that applies here.  I genuinely want to know more.

“As for the analogy, well, you’re not actually having sex, are you?”

“No,” I said.

“I think it could fairly be said, then, that what you’re doing is practicing, working out in anticipation of a real game, as it were.  If you were at a basketball practice session rather than an actual game and the ball went out of bounds, I might throw it back in to you.  I would, in that sense, be assisting your practice, but not participating in the game.  Isn’t that right?”

“Uhhh, I don’t know, Mom.  That sounds like you’re stretching it, to me.  Maybe we both should think about this for a while?”  I said, hoping for a reprieve.

“Please, Soren?” Mom asked, in a voice I didn’t think I’d ever heard before.  Her hand started to edge toward my groin.

I could have said no.  I could have reached down and deflected Mom’s hand away from me.  I could have jumped off the bed and pled a sudden need to go play basketball, to work in the yard, to do homework, to go to the store for a gallon of milk.  But, mesmerized and paralyzed, I watched Mom’s hand continue its slow, tentative journey across the bed.

Suddenly fascinated by the scene unfolding before my eyes, I saw Mom’s hand get nearer and nearer to my cock, then reach it.  Like vines creeping around a branch, Mom’s fingertips disappeared behind my cock and appeared on the other side, then began to close.  My hand started to move away from my cock as slowly as Mom’s had approached.

Mom’s hand reached its goal.  She closed her fist just enough to be grasping my cock, then squeezed a couple of times experimentally, trying to figure out how much pressure was enough.  The sensation was like nothing I’d ever imagined.  Heavenly.  I couldn’t think of any other description.  When Mom was satisfied with her grip, she tried a tentative up-and-down stroke.  I might have done it differently, but I sure couldn’t have done it any better.  Then she started a slow up and down rhythm.

“Am I doing it right?”

“Yuuuuuuuh,” I said.  I cleared my throat.  “You’re doing just fine, Mom.”

Mom was doing better than fine.  She was doing wonderfully.  She was stroking more slowly than I would have, but that only made the sensation better.  Everything inside of me was saying “speed up,” and everything Mom was doing was making me slow down.  The tension was nothing short of exquisite.  I closed my eyes and turned control over to Mom.  There wasn’t a fantasy pussy in my mind.  All my attention was focused in my cock, in her touch, and in the sensations Mom was producing.  She didn’t vary her stroke at all, didn’t speed up, didn’t slow down, didn’t pause.  Just up-down, up-down, up-down ... out-in, out-in, out-in.

The need to come started gathering around my body like an electrical charge, starting at the top of my head and at the tips of my toes, traveling through my nerves toward my crotch.  By now, I would have been stroking furiously, pushing, pushing, pushing for the release of coming.  But Mom didn’t change her pace, and the electrons gathered, and gathered, and gathered.  My cock, improbably, got harder and harder, and felt like it was swelling, in danger of bursting.

“Soren,” Mom said, in a quieter than usual tone, “it feels like your penis is getting even larger and harder.  Does this mean that ejaculation is imminent?”

“Yeah, Mom” I panted, “I’m about to come.”

And then lightning struck.  All those free electrons arrived at the base of my cock at the same time and went off.  I exploded with such force that I may have blacked out for a moment.  My eyes were shut, so I didn’t see my own come, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it hit the ceiling.

“My God, it’s pulsating like something alive,” Mom murmured.

And it pulsed, and it pulsed, and Mom got strokes and squeezes coordinated with the pulsing, and I didn’t think it would ever stop.  The lightning discharged out my cock, and the thunder rolled through my body.  Mom hung on until I’d dribbled out the last drop.  When I opened my eyes again, she was sitting motionless, looking at my cock and her hand, come running across her fingers and knuckles.  Finally, she blinked hard and shook her head, as if she were coming out of a trance.

“Yes,” she said, “I understand better now.”

She let go of my cock and drew her hand up toward her nose.  “It has a distinctive odor,” she said, in that talking-to-herself voice, “not unpleasant.  Musty.”  She moved her hand in front of her mouth, then stuck her tongue out took a small lick of the semen on her fingers.  Wordlessly, she grabbed a handful of kleenexes from the box by the bed and wiped her hand.  Then she mopped me up, too, starting with my chest and moving down, finishing by wiping my cock, very gently and carefully.

“Thank you, Soren,” she said, standing.

“Nuuuuuuh,” I said.  I cleared my throat.  “No, thank you.”

Mom looked down at me for a few moments, her face unreadable.  Then she left, closing my door behind her.  I went back to sleep.

I didn’t wake up again until nearly noon, pretty late for me, even for a Sunday.  I had a hard-on again, of course, but I didn’t really feel like jacking off.  The pressure wasn’t that great yet, and I didn’t want to spoil the memory of Mom’s touch on my cock.  If I closed my eyes, I could still almost feel her light, experimental grip, her first tentative strokes, and her slow, steady rhythm against the building need in my balls.  So, instead, I went straight to the shower, then read the comics while I ate some Wheaties.  After breakfast, I checked my email.  What I would have liked to do then was go play basketball, but what I had to do was mow the lawns and clean the yard, get the trash out for Monday’s pick-up, and do homework.  In this house, not doing homework was not an option.  I took on the homework first, to get it out of the way and off my mind.  Two hours later, I’d finished a problem set for math, read a chapter in my social studies book, and written a short paper for my English class.

Then I tackled the yard.  The lawns were easy enough, but leaves had accumulated around the shrubbery, and weeds I’d neglected when they were smaller were beginning to look aggressive and ugly, so I decided to do a complete job of it.  I didn’t really like doing yardwork, but it felt good to be outside and exercise, even it I couldn’t be on the basketball court.  The bad part of doing yardwork is that it’s completely mindless.  It requires almost no thought at all, which means that my mind drifts on any of the seven or so levels it generally operates at.  After sampling all the other levels, it settled in on sex, as usual.

While I raked leaves out from behind bushes and pulled or hoed weeds, I followed my mind to memory and fantasy.  Sometimes I thought I fell in love a little bit six times a day, once in each class period.  In each class, there was one girl who was my favorite, and for that hour, when my thoughts strayed from classwork, I’d imagine what it might be like to kiss her, caress her, undress her, and have her want me.  To have her want me.  Hm.  I’ve always thought about wanting a girl, wanting to see and touch and feel, wanting to fuck.  But I hadn’t given much thought to having her want me.

Then I thought about Marianne, which was where my thoughts about girls always returned.  Marianne was truly my dream lover, my fantasy of choice.  Although I’d known Marianne since the eighth grade, I’d never really talked to her.  We exchanged greetings and sometimes discussed assignments or other school-related subjects, but nothing more.  There was no logical reason for me to talk to her about anything else, and, besides, if I asked her out and she said no, then my fantasies about her would be destroyed.

To me, she was beautiful, not in a sex-pot sort of way but in her simple beauty and wholesomeness.  She was a distance runner on the girls’ track team, and she had a runner’s body, lean, lithe, and muscled.  Her short hair was naturally an amber blond, not quite brown, but not quite red, either.  She wore no makeup except for a light hint of lipstick, and she dressed in a way that reflected not a cheap sexual allure but confident femininity.  She moved with the grace of a savanna cat and had a smile that made me melt.  Unfortunately, we moved in different circles.  I didn’t socialize much at school and didn’t participate in organized sports despite my interest in basketball.  Something of a loner, I focused on my studies and my individual interests.  The truth was, I led something of a life of the mind, too, I suppose.

Having turned my thoughts to Marianne, I started undressing her in my mind.  No.  My mind was too impatient to undress her.  I saw her standing there nude, facing me, but with her torso turned slightly to one side, posed with a tension that accentuated her lean muscularity.  I saw her small, high breasts, with their demure pink nipples; her flat stomach with a dimple of a navel, her amber-blond bush, not wide, I imagined, but a narrow strip extending up from the top of her labial cleft about a third of the way to her navel.

I suddenly realized that I’d stopped raking leaves, that I was standing stock still with a death-grip on the handle of the rake, staring into the bushes on the side of the house.  My cock was throbbing painfully against my jeans, and I was getting crazy with wanting to see and touch real breasts, a real pussy, to run my fingers through the hair and smell it, right in front of my face.  I couldn’t stand it any longer.  I put the shrub rake down and went to the downstairs bathroom.  Fortunately, Mom was in her study, doubtless lost somewhere in a seventh dimension or transform theorem, and not around to ask questions.  I took my cock out and gave it a dozen quick strokes.  That was all it took.  Jeez, what a heat!

Sunday night was quiet, back to Mom’s and my usual household routine.  Mom always liked to review her notes and lecture materials for the coming week.  I did a couple of loads of laundry so that I’d have clean clothes and underwear for school.  Surfed the web aimlessly for a while.  Took a shower, brushed my teeth, and hit the sack.

The following week was routine, too, as were most of our weeks.  Mom had her school schedule and I had mine.  We had dinner together, as usual, and exchanged the usual kind of talk about daily events.  Nothing was said about our activities together the preceding weekend.  Business as usual, between Mom and me.

I jacked off daily, of course.  That was part of the week’s routine, too.  And I thought about Marianne, as usual.  But I can’t say that I didn’t think about Mom as well.  The fact, whether I liked it or not, was that something had changed.  A new element had been introduced into the environment.  Two new elements.  Mom’s and my relationship had had introduced into it an intimacy that had never been present before.  Moreover, at the same time that Mom had got her hands-on experience with me, so had I had a hands-on-me experience.  That was the first time anybody besides me had touched my cock in a sexual way, and it was the first time a female had touched my cock, period.  Whenever I jacked off, all this came to mind at the same time.  A literal touch of reality got mingled in with my fantasy, with the effects of making the fantasy more intense than ever before and of escalating in my mind and in my body the desire for some hands-on experience of my own.

The upshot of all my mental churning about sex was that, by the time Friday night arrived, I truly didn’t know whether I was hoping Mom would want to further her knowledge of male sexual function during the weekend or not.  I was precariously balanced on a tightrope of desire and concern:  desire for more touch, and concern that the touch being my mother’s was not right.  What I really wanted was for some outside force to give me a nudge, to push me off center, so that I could get off the tightrope and land firmly on one side or the other.

Thus it was with a mixture of regret and relief that I woke at my own time and alone on Saturday morning.  Mom had not come in with a request for further research on her part.  My mental state was such that I didn’t even feel like jacking off, so I got out of bed and went down to the kitchen to find some breakfast.  While I was musing over a bowl of granola and the Saturday comic page, Mom came into the kitchen.  Although she’d long been out of her post-run shower, she was wearing a tee-shirt and a pair of jogging shorts.  Quietly, she moved about the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea.  The next thing I knew, she was standing behind me, gently massaging my shoulders.

“Good morning, Soren,” she said, running her hands over my deltoids.

The aura of soap, shampoo, and clean skin lingered about her.

“Hi, Mom,” I said.  “What’s up?”

She moved out from behind me and took a seat at the small kitchen table directly opposite from where I was sitting.  Her nipples were points against the fabric of her tee-shirt.  Clearly, she was not wearing a brassiere.  I couldn’t remember her not wearing a bra before.

Looking me directly in the eye, she said, “Soren, as I’m sure you’re aware, I often predicate something I’m going to say with some measure of explanation in order to assure clarity of expression and unambiguous communication.”

This is true.  Mom usually does a lot of verbal beating around the bush before she gets around to what she really wants to say.  The precision and attention to detail that are part of her work seem to leak into other parts of her life.

“This morning, however, I’d prefer to be direct and to the point:  I’d like to masturbate you one more time.”

“Why?” I asked, almost despite myself.  “Haven’t you learned all you wanted to learn yet?”

“Since you’ve asked for an explanation, I’ll be happy to provide one.”  Mom’s face clouded slightly.  “However,” she continued,” I must admit that, in this case, I feel as if I might be proceeding with conflicting and perhaps mutually exclusive goals in mind.  Perhaps it is, in fact, that what I need to resolve is the exclusive factor.  That is new to me, and, I believe—yes, yes, I think I’m beginning to understand better now—resolvable only through experience.”  Her face brightened again.

“You’re trying to do two things at once?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.  “You see, when I masturbated you last Sunday, it was with the goal of furthering my observations—being able to have the issue closer to hand, as it were—and at the same time increasing, as you’ll recall my telling you then, the number of sensory inputs engaged in learning.  However, I realized when thinking through the experience later in the day, I had not observed all I wanted to observe.  For some reason, my objectivity became clouded and my attention wandered.  I will even admit, though not proudly, that I may have closed my eyes at some point.  I therefore wish to repeat the experiment to be sure that I didn’t miss anything; or, that, in case I did overlook some aspect of the event, to see what I might have missed.”

“That’s one,” I said.  “What’s the other?”

“Why, to be keenly aware of circumstances that might have caused my attention to falter last weekend so that I can be on guard against its happening again.  I am not accustomed to having unaccounted for lapses in my awareness of phenomena in my immediate surrounds.”

This wasn’t exactly the nudge I was hoping for, but the tightrope twanged, enough for me to lose my balance.  I could feel blood starting to flow into my cock.

“I see,” I said, not wanting to appear too eager.  “Did you have a particular time in mind when you’d like to carry out this particular experiment?”

“Why, as soon as possible, of course,” she said.  “As I’ve told you many times, when curiosity announces its presence, one must not be hesitant to respond.  But,” she continued glumly, “realistically speaking, I assume that you masturbated before coming down to breakfast, so I’m prepared to adapt my schedule to be more compatible with your ability to participate.”

I set the comic pages aside and scooped up the last spoonful of granola.  After chewing the cereal carefully, swallowing, and taking a drink of milk, I said, “Well, as a matter of fact, Mom, I didn’t masturbate this morning, so I don’t see any reason why we couldn’t take care of business immediately.”

Mom looked at me and smiled, her glum expression instantly gone.  “Well,” she said, “then let’s get about our research.”

Together, we walked back to my bedroom.  I shucked off my shorts and tee-shirt and lay down on the bed, my hardening cock lying along my stomach.  Mom pulled up my desk chair and sat down.  Without hesitation, she reached for my cock.  He hand was warm, her touch was gentle, and the effect was electric:  I went from hardening to hard in an instant.  Despite an tremendous desire to shut my eyes and lose myself in a world of sensation, I also wanted to watch Mom’s face and her reaction to what she was doing.  I guess I wanted to do a little research of my own.  I was suddenly curious whether she was really going to learn what she said she was going to learn or whether, maybe, she was fooling herself.

Mom gave my cock a couple of gentle up and down strokes—then she closed her eyes, and her free hand slipped from her lap, moved up under her tee-shirt, and grasped her breast.  The motion of her shirt made it plain that she was caressing her breast with the same rhythm she was using to stroke my cock.  This was, it seemed to me, a new development in the research that bore further examination.  I watched, with a strangely detached fascination, as her hands worked on both me and herself.  And strained for all I was worth not to come too soon.  I was on sensory overload.

Then Mom gave me the shock of my life.  In one swift motion, and without losing either her grasp or her motion, she stood, turned sideways, and sat down on the bed near my knees.  She opened her eyes and focused her attention on my cock, her face seeming to reflect little short of rapt wonder.  And then, again without warning, she bent forward and put her lips around my glans and then quickly withdrew, as if she were taking one tentative taste of a lollipop to see if the flavor were right.  Apparently being satisfied with what she found, she put her whole mouth over my cock, down to where her lips met her stroking fist.  Then she murmured, “Mmmmmmm,” deep in her throat.

That was all it took.  I’d missed my usual morning jack-off, Mom’s mouth was so warm and so wet, and the vibration of her throat was so exquisite, that, without even being able to warn Mom, I shot.  I exploded.  I came so suddenly and violently that the semen burned on its way out.  Mom didn’t move her head, except up and down with her fist.  And she swallowed and kept sucking.  No sooner had I spurted my last spurt than Mom uttered a muffled “Mhn!” through her nose.  Her grasp on my cock and her breast tightened, and her whole body went rigid for perhaps five seconds.  After she relaxed again, she swirled her tongue around my cock a couple more times, then sat up, gazing at the wall behind me with an unfocused look.  She suddenly looked different to me.  The angles and planes of her face had changed, become softer, in a way, as if tension she’d been carrying all her life had been relieved so that she was more fully herself.

“Mom?” I said.  “Mom?  Are you all right?”

Still holding my cock loosely, she continued to gaze at the wall.

“Mom?” I asked again, louder this time.

She started, shook her head slightly, and looked into my face.  “Yes,” she said.  “Yes, Soren, I’m here.”  And then she smiled, a warm smile that seemed to reflect contentment more than just happiness.

“Are you okay?  Did you learn what you wanted to learn from this experiment?”

“Half,” she said.  “I learned half of what I wanted to learn.”

“Um, which half was that?” I asked.

“Pardon me, Soren, I said that imprecisely.  I did not in fact learn half of what I wanted to learn.  It would be foolish of me to try to persuade you that I had made the observations I’d hoped to make.  It would be patently obvious to the most casual bystander that I couldn’t be visually aware of your ejaculation while your penis was in my mouth—which is not to say that I didn’t experience it at all, of course.  I had at first thought that I had learned what caused my attention to wander during our previous experiment, but, if I am to be intellectually honest with myself as well as with you, I must admit that I didn’t learn any of what I’d intended to learn.  It is with considerable distress that I must report to you that, at some point, my intellectual faculties were distracted in the extreme.  No, that’s not quite right.  My intellectual faculties faltered.  Faded.  Oh, hell, my intellectual faculties vanished.  Left.  Departed, decamped, fled, absquatulated absolutely!  My subjective experience was that I felt a compelling desire to take your penis into my mouth for no scientific or logical reason whatsoever.  I need to think about this some more.”

Having said that, mom dropped my penis, stood, turned, and walked out the door on slightly unsteady legs.  There was a wet spot on the seat of her running shorts.

Truth to tell, I needed to think about this some more, too.  It had all happened so fast that I didn’t have time to think, and then Mom pre-empted all thought-space.  One simple fact of the matter was that my mother had just given me a blowjob.  A second simple fact of the matter was that it felt wonderful.  More than wonderful.  It was a new sensation for which I had no comparison.  A third fact of the matter was that I wanted to do it again.  Period.  The tightrope had disappeared.

Another fact of Saturday was that I had the weekend’s homework to get out of the way, no matter what I’d rather have thought about.  I got up, took a quick shower, then buckled down with the books.  By 12:30, I didn’t have to worry about calculus or AP physics any more until Monday.

I went to the kitchen and made myself a hummus sandwich on twelve-grain bread, and let my mind wander while I chewed.  The whole situation with Mom seemed to me to be getting awfully complicated.  What had started out as a request for a one-time observation on her part had now become three escalating episodes that went from my jacking off for Mom to her jacking me off to her giving me a blowjob.  I could see a pattern, almost calculate the slope of the line with respect to time, and extrapolate to ....  I had a hard-on again.  A hard-on that needed something warm and wet around it ....  The conclusion I came to was that it was time for some basketball.

I hopped on my bicycle and rolled downhill to campus.  I was relieved to find plenty of the other guys there, too, and it was easy to get a game going.  I played hard, fast, and furious, and didn’t think at all for the better part of three hours.  The bike ride back up the hill at the end of the afternoon used up what was left of my legs, and by the time I got to the house, I was exhausted.  I took a long, hot shower, slipped into a pair of jogging shorts and a tee-shirt, and collapsed on my bed.

The next thing I knew, Mom was knocking on my door, calling to me that dinner was ready.  We dined quietly and conservatively, enjoying our vegetarian three-grain casserole.  Conversation over dinner was the usual sort of thing about Mom’s work, my classes, my afternoon on the basketball court, Mom’s praise for the job I’d done with the yard.  Mom said nothing more about a desire for further investigation into her research on male human sexuality.

After dinner, I was still tired from the week of tension, the work in the yard, and the afternoon on the basketball court.  My homework for the weekend was done, so I just fiddled around with my computer a little and watched some television.  Around 9:30, I was about out of steam and I’d  started thinking about the blowjob Mom had given me that morning again, so I decided to call it a day, hit the sack, and jack off slowly to ensure a good night’s sleep.

I went to Mom’s room to say good-night to her and found her lying on her bed in an ankle-length robe, reading a book in the soft light of a single lamp on the nightstand.  When I walked into the room, she put the book down and laid her glasses aside.  Before I could speak, she said, “Soren, I’d like to thank you very much for your participation in my desire to assure myself that your sexual function was developing normally, as well as, of course, my further desire to learn more about adolescent male sexual needs, and the male anatomy in general, particularly in consideration of your initial reticence in the matter.  I believe that, all told, I did in fact learn all I wanted to learn, and more besides—as so often happens when we begin research on a topic.  That was very generous of you, and I’m deeply appreciative of your willingness to help me.”

My heart sank.  By now, I was really hoping that Mom hadn’t wrung the topic dry.  Considering how our experiments had progressed from one thing to another, I had hoped that there might be something more.  “Well, um, I’m glad I was able to help,” I said.

“However,” Mom continued, “a further thought occurred to me.  A recollection, actually.  Perhaps you’ll recall as well, when I first put the question to you whether you’d be willing to demonstrate your tumescence and ejaculation for me, my speculation about whether I should speak with you about my own sexual experience; whether turnabout was fair play, as it were.  After due consideration, I’ve decided that it’s only fair and reasonable that I should, indeed, offer you something in return.

“Unfortunately, I have no comparable experience with female masturbation and orgasm that I can demonstrate.  Nonetheless, I also recollected your telling me that you had never seen a girl your age or a woman in the nude, and it occurred to me that I could give you the opportunity to observe and examine female genitalia.  Eventually, you will meet a young woman and begin sexual exploration with her—well, no, that’s not quite right.”  Mom paused, and sighed.

“Perhaps you’ll also recall my mentioning that I had had no sexual experience prior to marriage, and that, in fact, my sexual experience during marriage, was—how can I put this—lacking.  I’m afraid that I know little more about sex now than I did when I was in high school, but my hope is that, when you do enter into a relationship with a young woman, the nature of which is that sexual exploration is a desired consequence, you will, at the very least, not be entirely ignorant of the female genital anatomy.”

That was Mom’s usual long, slow warm-up.  For the fast pitch, she undid the belt on her robe and opened it wide.  Under the robe, she was nude.

“You are welcome to examine me in any way you wish.  I might add that I understand better now,” Mom said in a small voice, blushing brightly from her forehead to her knees, “your initial discomfort with, er, exposing yourself to me.”

I don’t think my jaw actually hit the floor, but my mouth did go dry, my cock expanded uncomfortably down my leg, and I suddenly felt very, very nervous.

“T-thank you, Mom,” I croaked.  “I, er, ….  I mean, I, um, ….”  Mom just smiled at me and motioned down her body with a wave of her arm.

I let my eyes sweep the length of Mom’s supine form slowly, taking in her lean, lithe, muscled runner’s form, her small, high breasts with their demure, slightly brownish nipples, her flat stomach with a dimple of a navel, her amber-blond bush, not wide, but a narrow strip extending up from the top of her labial cleft about a third of the way to her navel.  Then it hit me:  Mom looked just the way I’d imagined Marianne would look nude.  My face burned and my cock swelled painfully.

“In any way I wish?”

“Yes, Soren,” Mom said.  “In any way.  I asked you to permit me to examine you in ways that extended the terms of our initial agreement, so it seems only reasonable to me that you should be able to examine me in any way you wish.  The locus of your attention at the moment indicates to me that you do have some particular interest or curiosity.”

I snapped my eyes from Mom’s crotch back to her face.  “Can I, um, you know, er, touch you, too?”

“For Heaven’s sake, Soren, logic dictates that if you’re going to examine my genitalia to the same degree of detail with which I examined yours, touching is inevitable, don’t you think?”

Inevitable.  Yes, of course.  I ran my eyes over Mom’s body again, remembering another of her maxims:  “Knowledge gained is never wasted.”  No, Mom wasn’t Marianne, but she was absolutely right.  I could learn from examining her body information that would be valuable to me in the future.

Mom took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and seemed to relax all over.  Her arms lay loosely by her sides, palms up; her legs were slightly parted, and her labia, separated slightly, appeared dry.  I sat down on the edge of the bed, and my right hand went on autopilot.

I reached out, and, with my index finger, traced across Mom’s forehead, then over and behind her ear.  From her ear, that single finger followed the line of her jaw to her neck, and then down to her chest.  On her chest, my fingertip traced a lazy figure eight around and between her breasts, then slowly spiraled inward around a nipple.  As my finger moved, her aureoles crinkled tight, and her nipples stood up hard.  When I touched the top of her nipple, Mom hissed breath in through her teeth.  I spread my palm over her breast and squeezed gently.  Her breast, which had been lying flat against her chest, firmed and rose slightly.  Mom made a low hum deep in her throat.

From her breast, four fingertips followed a line of fine, light down that led to her navel, where my index finger again looped a circle, then dipped in.  Mom’s stomach quivered.  Four fingertips continued their slow journey downward as the line of down became darker as it neared her pubic hair.  At the top of her bush, my fingers traversed the curly boundary down one side, then back to the top and down the other.  A shiver ran through Mom’s body.

I shifted my weight and scooted down a bit so that I was sitting near her feet and could bring my left hand into play.  I took her left foot into both my hands and squeezed it firmly, then pulled so that I stretched her foot as my grip slid off the ends of her toes.  Taking her foot again, I massaged her instep and arch, then pulled each toe slightly.  When I finished with her left foot, I repeated the squeeze and massage on the right.  Mom raised her arms above her head, and stretched, the muscles in her legs standing out, then relaxing.

I ran my hands up her calves, kneading the muscles as I went, then continued up her thighs, kneading and massaging until my fingertips felt the tickle of her auburn bush.

“Mom,” I whispered, “would you spread your legs a bit more, please?”

Wordlessly, she did as I asked, sliding her ankles a foot farther apart.  Mom’s vaginal lips were more open now, the labia minora beginning to appear, pink and shiny, at the edges of their enclosing sheath.  I leaned in and put my elbow between her knees, then reached forward, and, using my thumbs, gently pulled her vagina open.

Then I literally examined the part of a woman I was most curious about, with a strange combination of clinical detachment and sexual heat.  Yes, I was curious.  I wanted to know what a pussy looked like, right up close, how the reality matched up to verbal descriptions and the pictures I’d seen on the web.  But at the same time, I felt like I was about to come in my pants.  My cock, impossibly rigid and trapped between my abdomen and the waistband of my shorts, pressed hotly against me.  My breath was so shallow it was almost as if I weren’t breathing at all.  Mom’s right knee raised from the bed and fell lazily to the side.

My eyes looked and my brain recognized and rattled off the words from textbooks:  labia majora, labia minora, clitoral hood, clitoris (I wasn’t really sure whether I was seeing Mom’s clitoris or not), urethra, vagina, perineum, anus.  In truth, the Latin words didn’t have much meaning.  What I was looking at were Mom’s pussy and asshole.  Mom’s pussy, open and wet, collected moisture now plainly visible in the fascinating turns and folds of that special flesh, pink fading to mysterious and alluring darkness.  Mom’s asshole, dusky and suddenly attractive twisting striations where the flesh of her buttocks folded inward and disappeared.

I relaxed the pressure of my thumbs, but Mom’s pussy remained mostly open. I tentatively touched the collection of fluid that was now beginning to seep downward toward her asshole.  Mom shuddered.  I rubbed my thumb against my index finger.  Slippery.  My fingertip traced lightly up and down Mom’s slippery pussy, up almost to her clitoris and back again; then down.  When the tip of my finger touched the crinkly flesh below, Mom’s asshole clenched slightly.  Then I wondered:  could I find Mom’s G-spot?  Did examining in any way and touching include touching on the inside?

“Mom,” I whispered,  my throat so dry and constricted that my voice was barely audible.  “Can I touch you … inside?”

Seconds passed before Mom replied.  “Oh,” she said, in a breathy, distant voice I’d never heard her use before.  “I hadn’t thought about that.”  There was another lengthy pause.  “I did say examine in any way, and it’s only logical that, with female genitalia, the internal portion would have to be included.  Yes,” she breathed, “you can touch me inside.”

I extended my middle finger, and ran it up and down Mom’s slippery cleft several times to be sure that it was well lubricated, then began sliding it into her vagina—in a bit, then out a bit, going deeper with each stroke until my finger was as far into her as it would go.  Mom drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly.  Her vagina, hot and wet, clenched around my finger, and I tried to imagine what it would feel like against my cock.  Then I curled my finger back toward my palm, stroking the upper wall of her vagina … and … yes! I felt a soft, rounded lump beneath the surface.  When I stroked her G-spot, Mom’s eyes opened wide, and she said, “Soren!  What are you doing to me?”

“That’s your G-spot, Mom,” I whispered, continuing to stroke it.  Mom’s eyes closed again.  Each time my fingertip slipped over that lump, Mom rocked her hips slightly.  “How does it feel?”

“It feels good,” Mom breathed, “but just good isn’t the right word, and I don’t have a word for it.  I don’t just feel it in my vagina.  I feel it everywhere, and I feel kind of … hungry … no … not hungry, but as if something were missing.  I feel a need I can’t describe.”

For several more minutes, I continued to stroke Mom’s G-spot.  But just stroking her G-spot wasn’t enough for me, either.  I bent my head forward and began to kiss and nibble around the edges of her bush, trying to take in more of her.  The scent of her arousal all around me was a perfume and a potion that was threatening to make me lose my senses.

Then I knew what to do next.  I’d read about cunnilingus, and I had to examine further.  Mom hadn’t said that I could touch only with my fingertips.  I needed to touch her with my tongue, as well.  I slowly withdrew my finger from Mom’s pussy.

“Are.  You.  Through?” Mom asked, in the voice of a little girl who was afraid all the ice cream was gone.

“No, Mom,” I whispered, kissing her stomach just above her bush.  “Closer examination is required.”

I hauled myself all the way onto the bed and kneeled between Mom’s legs.  Feeling the bed move, Mom opened her eyes and watched me with a wary fascination, apparently unable to move, like the hen with an eye on the fox.  I leaned forward, cupped my hands under Mom’s ass, and nibbled along her thighs.  Then I ran my tongue up her pussy, from perineum to clitoral hood.

“OhSor ... Whatareyou ... Don’t ... Stop! ... Youcan’t ...,” Mom said.

Then the tip of my tongue insinuated itself beneath Mom’s clitoral hood and found her clitoris.

“Eeeee!” Mom said, bucking her hips against my mouth.

My mind bifurcated as I buried my face in Mom’s crotch.  Part of me was logging the experience, noting that—considerably to my surprise—Mom’s lubricating fluid was virtually flavorless, but that the combination of its smell, a slight hint and acid tang of urine, and the scent of her clean flesh combined to make an overall aroma that was heady and compelling.  The other part of me followed the compulsion to lick and taste and tease with my tongue, feeling a direct connection between my tongue and my cock, and a growing imperative to seek release.

Then I quit thinking entirely and became lost in a world of sensation I hadn’t expected to encounter.  The world consisted of nothing but Mom’s body and its tastes and aromas and the increasing tingle in my balls.  My tongue took on a life of its own.  I plunged it into Mom’s vagina as deeply as I could, then withdrew and moved down to tickle around her asshole.

“Oh!” Mom said.  “Oooooooh.”

Back and forth, in and out, and up and down my tongue danced, gradually focusing its attention more and more on Mom’s clitoris.  Mom’s fluids and my saliva ran down her ass, making my hold on her buttocks tenuous and causing the tip of my middle finger to come to rest on her asshole.  Mom pressed downward against that fingertip, and it slid in.

As I ran the tip of my tongue over and around Mom’s clitoris, she began to breathe harder and move her hips erratically.  I hung on as best I could and followed wherever she went.

“Oof!” Mom was saying.  “Uff!”

Then Mom’s hips started rocking up and down, faster and faster, so that I could barely hang onto her and keep up with her.  All of a sudden, she raised her hips violently, slamming her crotch into my face.  Then again.  And again.  Bang!  Then bang!  And bang!

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!” Mom growled, low and feral.

Her muscular runner’s thighs clamped against my ears almost painfully, and held me there, motionless.  Her hips continued to buck.

“Oof!” Mom said.  “Uh!  Uh!  Uh!”

Then she relaxed, completely.

I couldn’t ignore the tingle in my balls any longer.  I raised up on my knees.  Mom’s eyes opened, wide, hot, and wild, and followed my motion.  I pulled down the front of my shorts, gave my cock two strokes, and came—explosively.  The first pulse of come landed just above Mom’s chin and splashed between her parted lips.  The next hit her neck, and what followed trailed down her abdomen until the final few drops decorated the top of her bush.  My pulse was pounding in my temples and I was panting as if I’d just run a race.  I fell forward, catching myself when my hands hit the bed on either side of Mom’s chest.

We said nothing, either of us, remaining just as we were until we’d caught our breaths.  I thought that perhaps I should say something, but I was without words, spent and insensate.  After a few minutes, I straightened up and tucked my still oozing cock into my shorts.  Mom licked my come off her bottom lip, then, with a dreamy expression on her face, traced her fingers through the puddles on her chest and stomach.

I got up, went to Mom’s bathroom, and dampened a washcloth with warm water, then returned to the side of her bed and gently cleaned her up.  When I got back from rinsing the washcloth, Mom was asleep.  I closed her robe loosely, then turned the blankets back underneath her, and covered her up.  I kissed her softly, turned out her light, and made my way back to my room.

Still in a daze myself, too overloaded with sensation to be able even to think about what had just happened between Mom and me, I cleaned myself up a bit, pulled off my tee-shirt and shorts, and climbed into bed.  I was asleep in minutes.

I was jolted awake by the sound of Mom virtually crashing into my room.  My eyes flew open.  It was light.  Morning.  Mom, wearing her long robe, was standing by the side of my bed, looking almost frantic.

“Mom!  What is it?” I said, lifting myself up on my elbows, suddenly frightened as memories of the night before flooded back into my mind.

“Cock,” Mom announced, shrugging her robe to the floor to reveal her nude body beneath.  “Soren, I want your cock. Now!”

My heart rate slowed, and I smiled up at Mom.  “Mom,” I said, “if you do that, you’re not just getting onto the court—you’re becoming the game.”

“Give a shit,” Mom said, pulling back my covers.  “I’m up for the toss.”