Chapter 2

Brian and I got Jerome on the couch which was no easy task. My son didn’t say much and he was hard to read. He was no doubt in shock.

After we’d put Jerome to sleep, we sat together at the kitchen table.

“Look Brian, I’m sorry you had to see that...”

“I’m sure!”

I ignored his attitude. After all, who could blame him?

“Jerome’s really drunk,” I continued. “He was passed out in the bathroom...”

“So you decided that was a good time to blow him?” Brian cut in harshly.

“Let me finish Brian.” I told him. Even though I didn’t have a leg to stand on, I tried to be stern “He’s not going to remember any of tonight and you can’t tell him either Brian. You can’t tell anyone.”

It was hard to look into his eyes as I talked to him.

“Oh, he’ll remember!” My son gasped.

“What makes you so sure?”

“It’s all he talks about.”

“What do ya mean, ‘it’s all he talks about’?”

“He talks about fucking you all the time Mom. It’s all any of my friends talk about.”

Brian sounded distraught, flustered, almost like he was pissed off that his friends talked about me like that ... or he was a little jealous.

“I’m very much aware of that.” I told my son.

Brian looked at me a little sideways.

“Jerome was just a fountain of information tonight.” I assured him.

“Wha-da ya mean?”

“Well, he told me all about the things that you and your friends talk about; all the things you say about me.”

Brian’s attitude changed; he actually looked a little worried. He shouldn’t have been. After all, he certainly had the upper hand here.

“He told me that you wanted to watch while he and I had sex...”

Brian didn’t say anything. He sat there looking at me.

“ ... Said that you wanted to hide in the closet and take pictures.”

Brian got red in the face.

“He even told me that you wished you could have sex with me as well; said you dreamed about it a lot.”

Brian didn’t know what to say to that.

“And ... and you believed him?” He stuttered.

“Well, after hearing you guys talking and seeing the pictures that you had of me on your computer, you tell me. Should I believe him?”

He didn’t answer.

“Well, is it true?” I pushed.

“Is what true?”

“What he said: you wishing something like that, dreaming about it? Is it true.” I asked.

The words made my stomach sink. I never imagined that that was a question I’d ever be asking either of my sons. I was hoping to show him that I wasn’t the only one that had something to hide here.

The silence and the look on his face said it all.

“Think about all the trouble it would cause if any of this were to get out Brian ... Any of it.”

“Yeah, well ... I bet you weren’t thinking about that when you were blowing Jerome, huh?”

My first thought was to slap him but he’d made a very good point.

“I guess not Brian. I can’t even tell you why I did that. I have no idea what came over me.” I said shamefully.

There was a long awkward silence.

“So now what?” I finally asked.

Brian cocked his head, shrugged his shoulders, and puffed out his bottom lip. After a few minutes he told me he had an idea. There was a hint of, what I can only describe as a mischievous smile on his lips.

“And what might that be?” I asked apprehensively.

“Well, I think I know a way to make sure none of this gets out. It would almost ... force us ... to keep quiet about all of this.”

“Really now? And what might that be Brian?”

The tone of his voice and the look in his eyes made me very uncomfortable. “How ‘bout if you and me actually did it?”

‘Grab Toto and hold on to your ass Dorothy’, I thought, ‘there’s a storm a brewing.’

“Did it? Did what Brian?”

“You know...”

I was surprised. Surely he wasn’t suggesting what I thought he was suggesting. Even thought I knew, thanks to Jerome, what kinds of things he had bouncing around in that little head of his, I didn’t believe he was actually willing to come right out and admit that Jerome had, even in his drunken state, spoken the truth.

He leaned in closer and whispered, “You know.” He nodded his head as if that would clear it all up, “IT”, he said in a low impish tone; his lips curled up on one side in a playful, yet disturbing smile. He looked very much like his father when he was up to something and he looked like his father now.

Had he a black Top hat on and been twisting the ends of a long handlebar mustach, the scene would have been set. There was nothing to do but wait for the train to come barreling around the mountain and put an end to little Polly Dogooder tied to the track.

I certainly don’t mean to compare myself to Polly Dogooder. I am, by-no-means taking the moral high ground here. I’d done something wrong, very wrong, and I now, it would seem, was about to pay for it.

I just stared at him for a long time while it soaked in. I was more than stunned. I couldn’t believe his boldness and, for the life of me, I didn’t see how in the world anybody would benefit from such a thing — except for Brian of course.

I was troubled — troubled and a bit disturbed. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought I understood.

He’d caught me doing the unthinkable. His mom was giving his seventeen-year-old friend a blowjob. Something I’m sure he’d pictured me doing to all his friends, and even to him at one time or another. Something I’m also sure, he’d never thought would really happen, even in his wildest of dreams. He, no doubt, figured that if his mom would do something like that, then what else might she be willing to do?

He’d been standing in the kitchen just a short while ago, knowing full well what I was doing to his friend behind that bathroom door just as I had sat in that very kitchen knowing what Jerome had been doing in the bathroom when I left him there to jerk off. And like me, it had had a profound effect on him.

“Look Mom,” Brian began, “if dad ever found out you did this, he’d probably kill Jerome, wouldn’t he?”

“No doubt.” I told him, pretty sure I was right.

“So ... if he knew that I, you know, did it to you, he’d kill me too, right?”

“And me as well.” I agreed, “What’s your point Brian?”

“Well, if you let me ... do it, (his words staggered me) then there’s no way I could tell anyone without getting everyone killed. I mean, if one bee gets out ... they all get out. Everybody loses, right?”

Every time he mentioned ‘Doing it’, my stomach tightened.

“He’d kill us all.” I added with an undeniable honesty.

I didn’t know what to make of all this. It was obvious he was trying to take advantage of the situation. He was using my careless transgressions to hopefully get what he wanted; what he’d dreamt about.

Somehow, in one night, I had gone from molesting my son’s under aged friend to ... to what?

“Jesus Brian. That’s incest...” I mumbled, the words sticking in my throat. “There has to be another way.”

“I don’t know Mom. I think Dad killing us all is a pretty good deterrent.”

“You could just promise me you won’t say anything.”

“Well yeah, I suppose.” My son said to me with a sinister smirk on his lips. “But my way seems more ... more fool proof.

“You’re kidding.” I was appalled but helpless. There was a big hole in my boat and that little son-of-a-bitch had the plug.

“You’re gonna Blackmail me?” I asked.

Saying it out loud put it in its proper place.

I shouldn’t have been at that point but I was; I was shocked. After everything I’d heard and seen, I guess I should have figured that Brian would find a way to fulfill his dark fantasy as I suppose I had too. I considered my father and some of the things he made me do to indulge his unnatural urges. And it would seem that I had done the very same thing with Jerome. And now Brian was doing it to me. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I suppose.

“I ... I need to soak all this in.” I told Brian. I slowly left the kitchen and went quietly to my room. Oddly enough, to my amazement, the images of Jerome and the urge to pleasure myself still peeked at me from under the covers.

I sat on my bed. I thought long and hard. The problem was that I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d done in the bathroom. No matter what else had happened, I’d fulfilled a fantasy that had poked at me for such a very long time. I suppose I couldn’t hold it against Brian for trying to do the same. After all, what he wanted to do was wrong. But hadn’t I just taken advantage of —sexually molested, technically— a drunk minor in my own bathroom. It was hard to point a moral finger now.

I was sorry that Brian had caught me, but I was in no way sorry that I’d done what I’d done. I couldn’t get over how it made me feel. In spite of everything, it aroused me like I’d never been before. It aroused me even as I sat there in my room trying to figure out what to do. I think that had a big influence on my thought process. It was almost one in the morning when made my way back to the kitchen.

I’d expected that Brian had gone to bed but he was still sitting at the table with an empty glass in front of him. He jerked his hand out of his lap as I stepped into the kitchen. He was no doubt thinking about what I’d done to his friend and probably fantasizing about what I might do to him.

I sat down quietly. We looked at each other for a few long, awkward seconds.

“Well, wha-da-ya think?” Brian asked hopefully. He looked like he could have had a winning lottery ticket in his hand, and he was waiting to hear that last number announced on the television to confirm it.

“I don’t really have much of a choice here, do I?” I told him just above a whisper.

Brian looked at me like he was trying to understand, to put it together. “You ... You mean yes?”

I rested my forehead down on my arm and nodded my head slowly. I didn’t want Brian to see my face as I submitted to his blackmail.