There was a young student from Yale
Who was getting his first piece of tail.
He shoved in his pole,
But in the wrong hole,
And a voice from beneath yelled: "No sale!"

"Just promise me that you won't judge me by the contents OK?" I tentatively took the red plastic lined folder after that odd warning.

Jude carefully looked over each shoulder, as if expecting there to be someone watching. There wasn't of course, it was a rather quiet Thursday morning and the coffee shop was near-empty.

The cover stated, "A Mother's Manifesto". I rose a single eyebrow as a a silent question to my best friend and she simply shrugged her shoulders and nodded with her chin towards the red covered folder.

I thought it was some type of joke book - making fun of the things that all parents, mothers, seemed to endure when living with teenage children. In my case, my son Barry - Jude, her son John.

She must have seen my impatience with this sort of material - feeling as if I had no time for such humorous contemplations. Jude leaned into, and practically over the tiny round table, and whispered, "Just try it Jill."

I dropped the folder on the table next to my large mocha, not convinced but intrigued. My friend was acting like this was no joke though and there was enough respect built up between us for me to trust her judgement.

I resolved to look at it later in the week.

Jude has been my friend on and off since high school - many years ago - but became my best friend when our husbands left us about the same time, approximately three years before. My other, so called, friends had abandoned me when my marriage failed. Our sons were approximately the same age as well - our only children. At first, after our divorce settlements were finalized, we used each other for comfort, shoulders to cry on - as only girls can do with another. Then we realized pleasantly that we enjoyed the others company and continued to seek each other even after our lives finally started to upswing from our failed marriages.

For our friendship - I owed it to her to find time to read the contents of that red folder with its mysterious name. It was the least I could do for her - regardless of how odd the request was.

Jude saw my inner reflection and the result before smiling gently, reaching for her cappuccino. We both knew that I would read it.

Three nights later I lay beneath my heavy down comforter, my reading glasses perched at the end of my nose, and opened the front cover of the well-worn folder. "A Mother's Manifesto - An Essay Into Mother/Son Relations". There was a name of the author beneath, but it had been scratched out long ago.

The paper was obviously a photocopy of probably a photocopy, the quality wanting, but legible enough to still read.

The date beneath the scratched out name was twelve years before. Though does parenting really change that much that it could be considered out of date or old fashioned?

It looked like someone's thesis or term paper. If not for the mysterious way Jude had given it to me or my commitment to our continued friendship, I would not have turned to the next page.

I read the opening statement silently, forcing myself to read it to its three page conclusion. It was like seeing a horrific car accident on the highway and slowing down so as to not miss a thing.

The red folder dropped to my lap as I yanked off my glasses.

"My god Jude... ?" My best friend could not hear me of course.

The Manifesto was an essay on seducing your son! What kind of filth was Jude giving me?

The opening lines were so seductive to the divorced middle-age woman with a teenage son - seeming to speak from experience. The numerous tensions of a growing boy, the adolescent distractions... his sexual awakening.

The second page had started to suggest how many sons' realize their mother's are women as well as their parent. Feeling a clench in my heart, I kept reading, agreeing with the unknown author. The end of that same page explained that most mother's knew of their child's sexual awakening but felt powerless, confused, proud and even a little intrigued. It was all so true - at least from my own experience.

That was the reason I went on to the final page of the opening statement. Then the author suggested a way to help the relationship, to allow the mother to help her child while also keeping a semblance of maternal control over him. That suggestion was sexual in nature!

The author had to be a woman - had to be a single mom of a teenage boy! Yet, the implications of what was being suggested was nothing less than shocking!

I picked the red folder off my lap and turned to the first chapter and began to read.

"What was your reasoning for giving me the folder Jude?" My fingers were white where I clenched the phone in my hand.

It was only seven thirty Monday morning and I had barely closed my eyes all night.

"Can we discuss this later Jill?" She sounded embarrased... as well, she should!

We made plans for this coming Thursday morning, same coffee shop.

As soon as the phone was placed back on to the table before me, Barry strode in looking refreshed and ready for the start of his week. "Hi mom. Can't stop for breakfast... gotta run!"

I watched my son walk by me and faced the empty doorway to the hallway until I heard the back door open and then close. This morning so much like all the others recently.

The first chapter of the Manifesto spoke about male adolescence - of growing up as a young man. It never suggested it was easy. In fact, it detailed many things that a young man could be distracted from his path in life. Though written from a woman's perspective, it seemed to understand the complications of every teenage boy's life - which even included my son.

[... Your son will be undergoing many changes at this time, changes that he may not even comprehend and you may find bewildering and even frightening... ]

Barry had been such a loving and polite child - but when he hit puberty, he had changed. For one, his choice of companions was something to be desired - spending all his free hours with a trio of boys and one girl that skipped school and constantly got into trouble around our town. They all dressed in torn jeans, loose tee shirts and sneakers without socks - and all carried these long wooden sticker-covered skateboards wherever they went.

Two weeks ago I had found a rather large zip-lock bag of, what was obviously, marijuana in my son's sock drawer when I was putting away his clean clothing. The confrontation was ugly - he yelling that he was holding it for a 'friend', I knew it to be one of the boys he hung with, but swore he didn't 'use'.

That scene had lead to a long talk with a seemingly understanding Jude late into the night on the phone and then that last meeting where she had handed me the secret Manifesto.

What had she said at that first meeting, that she 'understood' and had something for me. The red binder obviously.

What had she understood though? John, Jude's son, was a good boy wasn't he? Well, there was that period last school year - something about an irate father confronting Jude about her son partaking in an orgy with his daughter, the same daughter having come up pregnant. It all seemed to disappear after the paternity test confirmed John was not the sperm donor. Jude's term not mine. I can still remember the tears, the numerous calls and meetings to give her my support - before it slowly disappeared into nothing.

The last chapter in the essay spoke about keeping the contents of the work secret, shared only between women of similar circumstances. Had Jude received the Manifesto at that stressful time in her life?

[... Though intended to be shared between like-minded-ladies, please be discreet and careful to whom you give your trust... ]

Then the last section - in lined pages obviously not part of the original essay - in that dozens of different people had hand written in comments, signing with initials and what looked like names. The last was signed, 'J (39) & J (16)', beneath three words 'a great success'.

When I got home from work just after eleven Wednesday night, I found my son Barry watching television in the darkened living room of our apartment.

He did not even look up as I stepped in and fell onto the couch across from him, and rather, kept on changing channels with the remote. His eyes glued to the television.

Since staying up all Sunday night, I had not yet caught up on my sleep and it was taking its toll - I felt incredibly old and worn out. I was still able to ask sternly, in a maternal parent sort of way, "Up a little late for a school night aren't you Barry?"

"I'm off to bed soon mom. Anyways, first class was cancelled tomorrow."

I didn't challenge this last part - having discovered months ago of my son's increasing need to lie to me when confronted, not even seeming to care if he was caught or not. There seemed to be nothing I could do - yelling or talking to him was like speaking to a rock and just as frustrating, he was to old to threaten with corporal punishment and there was simply to support from his school. If a kid goes bad, and I was increasingly worried that mine was, there was simply nothing that can be done.

After a late shift at the hospital I just wanted to have a quick hot shower and climb into bed to sleep and did not need this confrontation to explode into a loud argument.

Retreating to my room was what I was determined to do, as fast as I could, when I lifted one of my sore still-clad feet up to my knee to remove the ugly shoes I wore. They were supposed to be well cushioned, made specifically for nurses like I - but as the years passed, the end of my shifts could not come fast enough to get off my feet and no matter how comfortable a shoe was, it was never as good as soaking in a tub or laying in bed.

I was just undoing the white laces of the shoe when I thought of how absurd that stupid Manifesto had been - sure my son and I had our problems, but to suggest an improper relationship between us as a way to help seemed ludicrous.

Then I caught my son sneaking a peek beneath the bottom hem of my nurses uniform.

With my ankle up on the opposite knee, my thighs were spread rather wide and unladylike as my skirt was only knee length and hid nothing. Though it was rather dim, I could tell the radiating light from the television was lighting that space beneath my skirt so that Barry must have a view nearly up to my covered panties.

In my weariness, I had forgotten my propriety.

Looked at coldly, Barry could see next to nothing - his mother's soft meaty thighs covered in white nylon. Perhaps the more obvious shade of white beneath the crotch of my nylons, my panties, about my groin.

Yet the words I had spent all the previous night reading, only three days before, seemed to come back to me - of a child spying on his mother. Innocently looking at the only woman in the world that they loved unconditionally but felt compelled to explore the female form that she represented.

[... It may surprise you that nearly every male teenager goes through a period of appraising his own mother's body. You are the first woman in his life, possibly the only one that he grew up loving and trusting... ]

The essay had said teenage boys will go to great lengths, some better at hiding their actions that others, to look upon their own mother's body.

I had read the passage quickly, thinking it had not applied to Barry and I. There was simply never a second that I thought my son gazed upon me as boys did when I was his age. In fact, it had been years since the last time I noticed a male of our species looking at me that way. It was, up to that moment, impossible to contemplate my son doing so.

More the fool was I.

[... Look for small signs in your son's behaviour; perhaps he drops his fork at the table to look up your skirt, or... ]

It had been barely a handful of seconds since the awareness of my child's eyes when an urge to drop my ankle from my knee and clamp my knees together. Yet the author had written at length at how positive it was what Barry was doing.

[... How can any woman truly compare to a man's mother? Of course he will look at your body in ways he never had before hitting puberty! Your son is turning into a man - a man that uses you as his muse, your his first and finest example of womanhood... ]

So I took a deep breath and forced myself to finish untying my shoe, pulled it off my weary foot and then quickly massaged my sore instep. Stop this I screamed at myself, confused and hurt at being looked at this way in my own home.

Barry could not keep his eyes from beneath my skirt, though I could tell peripherally that he was nervously looking at my face to see if I was aware of his interest while I forced myself to watch the television.

My heart was beating rapidly in my chest when I dropped my foot and brought up the other - repeating the procedure that I often did every night after work. Though, usually, in the privacy of my bedroom.

After the second foot was done, I could not retreat to the privacy of my bedroom fast enough.

There, I had a longer hotter shower than I intended, but my fast-beating heart needed settling and I could not help but remember those words I had read barely days before.

[... What a teenage boy does to quench his rising new desires coursing through his body may surprise and shock you... ]

Stepping back into my bedroom, a large bathroom towel wrapped about me, I felt something - call it intuition - and looked about my room nervously. I have had a long enough day and definitely enough startling discoveries this last week to last a year. My eyes scanned the room but eventually dropped to my hastily discarded work clothing at the foot of my bed. It all seemed as I had left it, but a growing anxiety told me to keep searching.

There, inside the rumpled sweaty nylons where I had stripped them off hurriedly, was where my panties should have been. It was missing! I often removed my nylons with my panties, at the same time - to save myself redundant movement and time after a long day.

Using my bare foot, I kicked around with my toe, trying to prove to myself that I was overreacting. I could not be overdoing it - they were not on the floor - in the place that I had disrobed several minutes before.

Quickly going to my dresser, I dropped the towel, put on a comfortable cotton panty and an over-sized white cotton tee-shirt - my normal bed attire. Then I opened my bedroom door to silence. I had been praying for the sounds of the television from down the hallway - but there was nothing. My son had gone to bed - as evidenced by the white light coming from beneath his door. Striding on bare feet, I was silent as I strode to a spot directly in front of my son's door and reached for the handle before stopping a millimetre away from grasping it.

A rhythmic sound came to my ears - barely heard even though our apartment was otherwise silent - and a fear clenched my heart before I dared open that door.

I did not want to find what the evidence suggested - I had not the strength to see my fifteen year old son masturbating with his own mother's panties. And that was exactly what he was doing right?

Backing away from that door as if it were alive and had fangs, I closed my own secretively and crawled into bed to weep myself to sleep. How could I have been so blind?

Jude watched me enter the shop, order, pay for and then retrieve my mocha before striding to her corner table.

My heart was already beating rapidly and my palms sweaty - and that before my first drink of caffeine!

Before I could say a word - though I have no idea what I was about to say or ask - Jude leaned in and asked, "So now you know?" She smiled privately and then sipped her double chocolate cappuccino while watching me over the rim of her cup.

My friend could not have said anything more startling to me just then, "My god Jude - its all true, you and John?" My voice was but a whisper though I hissed the words, her words confirming what I only denied up to that point.

Her smile disappeared and she spoke defensively, "I am a good mother Jill!"

Yet, one that used sex to control her son. The Manifesto had gone into great depth about the benefits and methods to do just that. What I did not know, is to what degree had Jude sunk too? I mean, the essay had detailed many ways that a mother can use sexuality to help or submit, as I tend to think it, her child. The essay had used a whole chapter to explain how a fully exclusive and unhindered sexual relationship was the best approach for any mother to take. "Have you had sex with him?"

[... Think of sexuality as your way to keep your child on the right path for life. He is starting on that path toward adulthood, who better to be his guide!... ]

Though I told myself that I did not want to know before the question had even finished coming from my lips, since in my heart I already knew the answer.

Jude suddenly stood and asked coldly, "Shall we walk down by the beach?" I stood, drink in hand, and walked beside her a little bewildered.

My best friend did not say a word until we were slowly striding down by the sea wall, a ten minute walk from the coffee shop. In a patient voice she spoke, "You remember the troubles John was getting into a few months ago right Jill? He was having 'sex parties' with friends of his - girls as young as twelve!" I could hear her disgust - her frustration. Perhaps even some of her fear, fear of the loss of her son's future to his adolescent games.

I had not known about the sex parties - but I knew many of her son's problems stemmed from sexual acts. Until the troubles started, John had always been a very bright boy with a good future ahead of him.

She continued unashamed, "Mrs. Washington - John's English teacher - last year called me in to the school and gave me the binder." My son Barry did not have that teacher as yet, but I could probably guess her circumstances - divorced, teenage son. It seemed to be a rather common story in my circle of acquaintances. The binder, of course, was "A Mother's Manifesto".

"I read it probably a dozen times, feeling like it was written for me specifically." I nodded at this, feeling much the same way... unfortunately. Jude did not notice my movement and kept talking, "I felt so inadequate - to think my son would be sexually interested in me rather those hard bodied teenage girls he was fucking - was an absurd thought." In all our years, I had never heard Jude use that word! It helped prove, if only to myself, that my life was drastically changing.

Though I have not decided if it was for the good or bad as yet!

Jude was not an unattractive woman - though the teenage cuteness that I first knew was lost in the extra pounds and the many years. That left a soft, well padded, though not fat in any way, middle-aged woman. She was right, I realized with a start, how could she compete with those pretty teenage girls her son must have been sharing with his friends?

[... Each couple is different, but consider the direct approach? Your own confusion and struggle will diminish in that moment of truth, if you offer your child yourself... ]

"So I took the direct approach that the Manifesto suggested." I returned to those badly photocopied pages in my mind, but did not have a chance to remember before Jude continued. "I walked into my son's room late one night dressed in new lingerie beneath my robe - sat down on his bed - and told him that I loved him, wanted him to return to getting good marks, to forget those parties and those friends. In exchange for this I told him that I would be his private lover, that I would do any sexual act for him, as often as he wanted. I then stood and dropped the robe and struck a pose." She chuckled pleasantly for a brief second at her memory before explaining, "The rest, as they say, is history!"

We walked some minutes in silence before I blurted out, without any planning on my part I assure you, "I discovered Barry stealing my soiled panty last night." My revelation may have been my way of altering the topic - for not wanting to learn more intimate details of Jude and her son.

A few steps later Jude asked casually, "Did he leave you a little present afterwards?"

It took me a second to realize what she meant, my face heating up so that I knew it was turning crimson, "My god Jude! No, he did not!" But I had not found the lost undergarment yet, and wonder exactly in what condition it would be when I discovered it. The thought clenched my fast beating heart tightly and I felt embarrassed that I had not thought about what the condition of the garment, post use.

Minutes passed and my feet were starting to tire in my flat bottomed sandals when Jude finally broke the thick silence by stopping, grabbing my elbow so I did the same then turning to look me in the eye. "Listen Jill. What you do with your son is no one else's business, but the Manifesto changed our lives for the better, perhaps it could do the same for you?"

When I did not answer directly, but in fact stood stupidly with my mouth open like a fish, my best friend added boldly, "Besides", she chuckled, "my son is insatiable!"

Jude did not seem the least disturbed what she was revealing was nothing less than incest.

Throughout the whole of the Manifesto, it does not use the word 'incest'. I took that as a warning once I thought about it in that term and after speaking with my friend Jude. It went into great depth about the emotional, physical and psychological aspect of a sexual relationship with one's child - but it never spoke the bold truth and called it for what it was.

[... A mother and son affair is the purest kind of physical love - one that includes trust, love and lust in the truest sense... ]

Friday afternoon I was sorting the laundry by piling the whites and the darks on the floor of our hallway when I found the missing panty. It had been stuffed deep down in the laundry so that it was beneath clothing from a week ago.

Holding it with the tip of my forefinger and thumb, as if it was diseased, I could see the discolouration in the crotch. I brought it up before my eyes, though an arms distance away, and stared at it. There were the normal residual marks from wearing my garment over a long day - but higher up in the crotch, the front of the white satin panty, was a dark unknown stain.

I knew what it was of course, prior to lifting my other hand to touch the discolouration with the tip of one finger. It was dry, but felt rough, coarse. As if I were looking at that accident again, I scratched my nail over the inner surface of the normally smooth silky interior of my panty. I scrapped away some white dried substance.

It would have been missed if I had not been looking for it. Obviously the 'present', as Jude liked to call it, was that Barry had left. There had even been an attempt to clean it before depositing it into the hamper.

The panty fell from my fingers into the white sorted pile.

How can a son do that with his mother's soiled underwear? It was disgusting!

[... Sometimes your son will leave you an indication of his confusion and lust for you - often this is a mark in your bed, your panties or sometimes even in your food... ]

The Manifesto attempted to explain that what my son was doing should be taken positively as an expression of Barry's love and not the disgusting way that I naturally felt.

Indeed, my son had left me a 'present', I thought grimly.

When I heard the door open, I immediately shoved the dirty panty into the clothes washer, pushing other clothing in afterwards. I did this as if I was the guilty party and not my son. When Barry appeared around the corner, as usual carrying his sticker-covered skateboard, he blurted, "Just dropping off my bag mom and heading back out!" He did not even look my way and could not see the bright red of his mother's cheeks.

Two weeks went by and I lived my days like a scared rabbit - looking for secret looks from my son, for missing clothing... even for holes between our shared bedroom wall.

[... How can a mother that truly loves her son deny him anything - including herself?... ]

At night I locked my bedroom door and read various chapters of the Manifesto again and again. It was stating that a mother who truly loved her son would do anything for him. It suggested the sexual outlet of his own parent would allow him to focus on other parts of his life - to excel in sports, school or even emotional and physical development. As Jude would attest too, the Manifesto also suggested a bad kid can be brought back into the fold in the same way.

I would not say that I considered such a thing between Barry and I - but I became more open about the idea, and not so disgusted. The initial shock of what was suggested in the essay had worn off - now I told myself that the woman that had wrote it was so in tune with teenage boys and their single mothers, that I could receive some insight into how best to reach my son. That is not to suggest any inappropriate relationship between us - only that there may be other clues in the well written text.

Also, I used the excuse about learning what had gotten into my friend Jude, why she was living a secret sexual life with her only child as well? As a friend, I owed it to learn as much as possible and perhaps guide her away from that evil path. Right?

Of course I was simply lying to myself - two weeks after finding the discarded sperm-soaked panty in the wash, I had passed that first mental hurdle toward the impossible. I set the Manifesto onto my lap, pulled off my reading glasses and asked myself what it would hurt, if Barry found a reason to stay home and catch peeks of his old mom?

As soon as I thought that, I was stunned at myself and immediately shoved the red binder into my bedside drawer, turned off the light and clenched my eyes tight to fall asleep. I didn't, of course. I lay thinking about the words in the essay over and over - shocked that the recommendations within were starting to make sense to me and my child.

Every Saturday morning Barry and I usually slept in, then he would disappear for the remainder of the day. My guess, he ran out to be with those other boys and that girl that I did not like - their little deviant group - skateboarding around the neighbourhood, perhaps doing drugs, and whatever else I did not want to know about.

After my shower I slipped on my old white terrycloth bath robe and did not think about how I must look until I was stepping into the kitchen. My son's eyes rose from his bowl of cereal and immediately locked upon the movement of my chest beneath my robe.

I actually stopped frozen for almost three seconds before turning toward the fridge to hide my embarrassment and my surprise. "Want a glass of orange juice honey?"

"Sure mom."

I brought two glasses over and set them before our normal spots at the table. Barry was starring down at his cereal but I could feel the awkwardness of the moment - could tell that he wanted to look up at his old mother's unhindered bosom beneath her loosely tied robe.

When I turned back to my cereal, which I had prepared and left on the counter, I did something that I would never have done without the Manifesto guidance. With a quick movement of my hand, I loosened the top part of my robe just enough so that it ballooned open easily.

Oh, it did not show my whole chest off, just an abundant amount of cleavage. And I did not put any forethought into the action, I only did it, I told myself, to see how Barry would react. It was simply a test of course.

Turning back toward the table with my hands holding the full bowl before me, Barry did a double take of his head, his eyes growing wide as he watched me approach.

This cunning mother stepped up to her place, directly opposite my son's, and bent over slowly to set the bowl down. I stayed in this pose for several pregnant seconds before sitting back into my chair.

I knew, without looking down, that my son had received an eyeful! One breast was nearly exposed to the nipple, the other much of the inside curve. Barry was sitting across from me, staring with an open mouth at my exposed cleavage.

I took two mouthfuls of cereal before reaching up with my free hand to close my robe. That was quite enough of that, I scolded myself.

Test over!

Barry blinked several times then turned back to his cereal.

My heart was beating and I kept stealing little looks at my fifteen year old son.

There was several things that amazed me about what had just happened, not the least of which, that I had had the guts to do such a thing! I am a thirty nine year old woman who looked her age. I had a thin face, long legs, small hands and feet, wide hips and a jutting ass and large 'C' cup breasts. Sounds fine right? Well, add to that mix, stretch marks on my waistline and beneath my navel - crows feet at the corners of my eyes, laugh lines at the corners of my generous mouth, breasts that hung too low on my chest, my ass sagged and with at least twenty pounds overweight. To think that a teenage boy would look at me the way that Barry had just done - wide eyed, obviously with pleasure - was unthinkable until this moment. Oh sure, I had asked myself that question the night before, I did not seriously believe I had the goods to entice anyone.