Chapter 1

I don’t know if boys in general are dense as they grow up, but I was. I’m aware that’s a pretty sweeping comment, but let me explain and perhaps you’ll understand where I’m coming from and judge me less harshly.

What I’m actually referring to is a boy’s reflection on his parents. In my case, it was just one parent, my mother. She was a single mother, and that’s all I ever knew her as. I had no idea who my father was, only that she’d never married him and deflected any questions or conversation concerning him. They say that familiarity breeds contempt. I think that’s a little harsh, personally, but familiarity does cause one to view the other person in a bubble. When you’re a kid, your mom is just ... your mom. Other kids’ moms might seem interesting, or exotic, or even hot, but you see your own mother so much that she just fades into the background.

My mom was a real estate agent. I guess she’d been a waitress when I was little, but she had her realtor’s license by the time I was five or six. We were poor, but I didn’t know the difference. She always found a way to put a roof over our heads and food on the table. It took until I was twelve or thirteen before I did the math and figured out that she’d had me when she was fifteen. It sounds crazy now, but back then, the fifteen-year-olds I knew seemed like grownups to me, so I didn’t think a lot about it. Nor did I think about how hard it must have been for her to be pregnant and not even old enough to have a driver’s license, yet.

Anyway, she did okay as a realtor. The income wasn’t steady. Markets like that fluctuate, so you have to plan for the long haul. I knew she’d had second jobs, now and then, as I grew up, but I hadn’t paid any attention to that, either. Like I said, I was a little dense. Or maybe just self-absorbed.

What I did pay attention to was my mother’s opinion on how a man (or boy) should treat a woman. She was death on that. It was her firm opinion that If a man didn’t respect women, and their wishes, then he was lower than whale shit. She made it quite clear, even before I entered puberty, that I was to be a gentleman. I was to listen to what a woman said, and always, always, always respect her.

I was allowed to date when I turned sixteen. I did some of that, but I was pretty shy. I had to know a girl pretty well before I’d ask her out. It might sound counter-intuitive, but by the time I knew a girl that well, we were friends, and had usually figured out dating each other wouldn’t be as fulfilling as just staying friends. I felt the same urges other guys did, but the girls I felt them about were mostly either out of my league or already somebody’s girlfriend. So I fell into the category of group dating, for the most part. A bunch of us who liked each other went out and did things together. I’d recommend it to others, except that my sexual development took a somewhat odd path.

But that comes later. I managed to get by with usually quick, somewhat violent masturbatory sessions. The objects of my passion at such times were photographs of women who didn’t mind if I saw them naked. That was obvious because they had posed for such pictures and let somebody put them in a magazine. I could have whatever fantasy I wanted about them without feeling like I was objectifying them. That was one of my mom’s hot-button issues.

Mom managed to save up enough money for me to at least start college. I wanted to be a fire fighter, and it just so happened that the vo-tech school in our town offered an associates fire science degree, so I was able to save some money by living at home. The rest of the guys in my class were away from home for the first time, horny out of their minds, and finally able to get drunk without a parent finding out, so they were a pretty wild bunch. I’m sure that if I’d lived in the dorm with them, the peer pressure would have caused me to do some of the same stupid things they did, but I was able to get away at night. It helped my study habits, too, which I had failed to build up in high school. It a close enough that I could ride my bike (helpful in the physical fitness arena, which was a big deal in the program) or walk if I had to.

On the other hand, living at home meant I couldn’t bring a girl over and despoil her, like my friends bragged they did. Alas, I stayed a virgin. Of course I never told them that.

And that brings me to what started the train of my normal, ordinary, dense life to ... well ... derail. Or threaten to derail.

In my fourth (last) semester I had to take a humanities class as an elective. I chose Art 101 because I figured it would be easy credit. I mean art is subjective, right? So you can’t screw it up, right? If my apples and bananas in a still life end up looking like coals and sticks, then I can just spin it and say it’s what I intended, right?

It turned out I liked art. I’d never spent any time drawing, but I should have, because I had a talent for it. My teacher even thought so. After class one time she took me aside and asked if I might be interested in working with one of the college art partners. I didn’t know what a college art partner was. It turns out that a local art gallery offered training above and beyond what the vo-tech could offer. They called it “investing in art’s future.” I would later learn that the theory is a little like American Idol, or The Voice, where tens of thousands of people are screened who might never come to the attention of a music producer, but who have raw talent. Not many will make the grade, but the few who do make a lot of money for the people putting on the show. What these art partners did was try to find talent that could make them money.

Anyway, it was part of what was called Art Lab. The owner of the local gallery came in as a “guest instructor” and ran it in a studio at the college. It was only on Friday nights, which was good, because that wouldn’t interfere with my fire science classes. It was three hours long, so students could spend serious uninterrupted time on major projects. Obviously, since it was on Friday night, only the serious people attended. If you were a pussy hound, or an alcoholic-in-the-making, you avoided things like art lab. I had taken out a few girls since starting college, but only those I already knew from high school. I didn’t really have a lot of self confidence, or at least enough to approach the vivacious, independent girls I saw on campus. Actually, that was one reason I took art as an elective. I figured maybe girls who were into art might be into quiet, polite guys ... like me. My point is that losing Friday nights to art lab didn’t cut into my social life.

“So what do they do there?” I asked.

“They do different things each semester,” she said. “I believe they’re doing a figure study this semester.”

“I guess I could try,” I said. “Isn’t drawing figures hard?”

“It is for some people, but as you already know, it’s formulaic. We’ve already gone over the basics of that in class. Mrs. Gaskill will be providing advanced instruction. I think you could do it.”

“Okay, then,” I said. “Where do I go and what should I bring?”

I arrived at the studio the next Friday night. It was in the basement of Ferrel Hall, a big two-story building, and you had to go down a long, empty hallway to get there. It was a little spooky because it was so quiet. I only saw one other person in the hallway. I would find out that the veterans got there early, because Mrs. Gaskill provided donuts and coffee. She said you should never paint hungry. I found out you should never try to paint with sticky fingers from eating donuts, either, but that’s another story.

If I had any doubts, they disappeared when I got my first look at Maureen Gaskill, who owned the Gaskill gallery in town. I’d seen it before. It had a giant stylized G as a logo. You couldn’t really tell it was an art gallery from the outside, but of course that mysterious, huge “G” made everybody ask what it was.

Mrs. Gaskill was hot as a pistol. She exuded a raw, but controlled, sexuality that made me want to be around her, even though I knew she was married and there was no possibility in the universe that I had any chance with her. She was kind of a real, live Playboy bunny sort, who was good for uncounted fantasies, but that was all. She examined me when I came in, but I knew better than to stare at her. My mother had taught me better than that. She was practically obsessed about me being a gentleman and treating women with respect.

The atmosphere was different than the classroom. There were maybe fifteen other students there, and easels set up all over the room, arranged in a semi-circle around a raised dais that had a love seat on it, upholstered in what looked like red velvet. The easels all had blank canvases on them. There were some half-finished works propped against the legs of a couple of them, and some more leaning against the wall. Apparently last semester’s project was drawing a machine of some sort. It looked like maybe an espresso machine, tall and shiny, with lots of other stuff around it. Also, apparently, lots of people hadn’t finished the project before breaking for the holidays.

I was a newbie, but nobody treated me like it. Maybe we were all newbies. I didn’t know. Everybody seemed friendly and relaxed, which puzzled me a little, because I was worried that people would look at my work and laugh, or something like that. Then again, maybe they were all worried I’d laugh at their work. It turns out artists, at least beginning artists, aren’t judgmental at all. Or maybe they’re just polite about it. If they think something’s awful, they just don’t comment on it.

When it was time to start, Mrs. Gaskill called for silence. She folded her arms under her breasts. I knew better than to look at them, too. That didn’t mean however, that I wasn’t interested.

“We’re doing a figure study this semester. Our model will be posing nude. It’s your choice of media, but don’t get too adventurous. If you’re not already experienced with paint, then stick to pencil or charcoal, something a little more forgiving and easier to handle. This is going to be special, this semester. I’ll tell you more about that, later.”

I knew from regular class that drawing or painting something like that is done in stages. First, you get the basics down while looking at the model; basic pose, form, proportions, and all that. That is done by making circles, ovals, squares and such like. Then you turn those shapes into body parts, adding details. After that you can fill in additional components on your own. Later, you finish the fine detail by looking at the model again. That’s when you do things like put in creases in the skin, wrinkles in the clothing, shading, and that sort of thing. I wondered if the model would be male or female, but I didn’t ask. I’d find out soon enough.

So there I was, also relaxed and ready to get my first extended look at a naked body. I really hoped it would be a female body. I was ready for that.

The model was female. What I wasn’t ready for, when she came out of the dressing room, dropped her robe, and took up her position on the love seat ... was that it would be my mother.

There are events that you have no control over, which sort of crash into you like a tsunami, and change the face of your life forever. I had never thought of my mother as a sexual being. She didn’t go out on dates, and never had while I was growing up. I hadn’t thought that was odd. None of my friends’ moms went out on dates either. I was aware there was a category of woman labeled MILF, but I’d never met one in person (with the possible exception of Maureen Gaskill) and I certainly never thought of my mother as being in that category. I knew she had breasts, because they pushed out her shirts and dresses and all that, but I hadn’t seen them since I got nourishment from them. My mother didn’t prance around the house naked, or semi-naked. Neither did I. And she was my ... mom. I know most of you get what I’m trying to say, here, because most of you out there in reader land have never thought of your mother as a sexual being either. Or at least tried not to.

The problem was that, in those few seconds after I realized who the model was, that tsunami washed over me and everything changed. She had my mother’s face, but I was suddenly unable to think of her as being my mother at all. Remember that raw sexuality I mentioned that Mrs. Gaskill has? This model had it too. She wasn’t trying to be sexual. It was just unavoidable. First off, there wasn’t an ounce of fat on her body. I knew she was thirty-four years old, but she had the body of a twenty-two-year-old gymnast. You couldn’t quite see her ribs, but it was close. Her thighs were firm and full, but not heavy. There was no extra flesh on her upper arms, or neck. That neck looked long and thin, perhaps because her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. I’d seen her with a ponytail before, but usually only when she was doing yard work, or something like that. Most of the time her honey-blond hair was down. She kept it long, about at her shoulder blades, because she said it helped her sell houses.

Then there was ... the rest of her.

Her breasts didn’t look as big as I would have expected them to, had I ever thought I’d see them like this. I don’t know anything about cup sizes or all that. All I can say is that they were in perfect proportion to the rest of her. They were distinctly round on the bottoms, but the tops sloped gently down until they suddenly tried to defeat gravity. It actually looked like her nipples might be trying to help pull the tips of her breasts upward. Those nipples looked stiff ... erect, based on pictures I’d seen of other breasts. They were a sort of maroon hue, set on little circles of the same color. Oddly, I was reminded of a ski jump when I looked at them. I’d seen pictures of saggy breasts. These were definitely not saggy breasts.

Her pussy - I guess vulva is the polite term - was the most shocking of all. It was shaved clean of any trace of pubic hair, and the lips looked like some kind of odd fruit that was split open, with the soft, inner-flesh bulging out through the split.

All this was easily visible as her position, when she finally settled into it, showed it all off. She lay down on the love seat on her side, with her head supported on one hand, held up by her elbow. An odd cylindrical pillow was under her arm to take up some of her torso’s weight. She kept her lower leg mostly straight, but bent the knee of her top leg, lifting it to open herself to our view. The foot of that leg rested right behind the knee of the straight one. Her top arm was bent, with her wrist lying on her hip and her fingers dangling downwards, as if pointing at her sex. Her eyes seemed to be looking right at us ... me. The look on her face was along the lines of, “Finally! I’ve been waiting so long. Don’t you love me enough to come to me when I really need you?”

That tsunami I mentioned?

It was my dick getting rock hard.

For my own mother.

“Let’s be professional, now,” chided Mrs. Gaskill, as though she knew exactly what was going through my traitorous mind.

“Yeah, right,” said one of the only two other males in the room.

“I’d kill to look like that,” I heard one girl say.

The model - I just couldn’t think of her as my mother - lay there still as stone, unruffled by the susurration of soft comments. It was as if she knew she was a goddess, and didn’t expect anything else.

“I know this is a provocative pose,” Mrs. Gaskill went on, “but your work, this semester, should you choose to, may be submitted to an exhibition of erotic art scheduled at a major gallery in Phoenix, in February. They’re going to reserve space for amateur works, and there will be prizes awarded. The grand prize is an invitation to display future works, which may lead to sales. Need I say more?”

There were murmurs of interest.

“Now, the erotic part should be easy,” said Mrs. Gaskill. “Our model will be most helpful with that. I chose her for exactly that quality. What you need to concentrate on, initially, is her face. I picked this model because she has the look we want - on her face, I mean - and it’s critical that you capture that look. You can put any body on her that you wish, but don’t pass up her face.”

“Like I’d change that body,” whispered a guy standing next to me.

“Yeah,” I replied automatically. There was no way I was going to say, “Dude! That’s my mom!” even though that’s what I was thinking. I remembered from my childhood some movie with that name, but I’d never seen it.

“Don’t fight any passion the model creates in you,” said Mrs. Gaskill. “Use it to inform your work. It’s all right to be a little horny. Jennifer understands. I think she’d be offended if she didn’t create those feelings in you. That is her purpose, after all, to imbue passion in the artwork you’re going to create.”

I blinked. Mrs. Gaskill was basically saying that Jennifer ... my mother ... was intending to be sexy... trying to get us all horny - even the women! - and that if she failed in that intent, she’d be disappointed!?

“No problem there,” came a soft, feminine voice from off to my left. I looked, but couldn’t identify who’d said it.

This was not my mother. Obviously, my mom had a doppelganger, right here in Flagstaff, who we’d never known about. She had to be a doppelganger, because there was no way in the world that my mother would do this.

It was then that the model’s eyes drifted onto mine. They widened, and she blinked three times. Then she swallowed and opened her lips.

She looked away, though, and didn’t say anything.

In those eyes, though, was the crystal clear message that she recognized me.

Dude! That was my mom!

“What just happened?” Mrs. Gaskill asked. I glanced at her and she was looking at ... the model. “You’re blushing like a newlywed. I thought you were ready for this.”

“Sorry,” said the contralto voice of my mother. “I was just thinking of something. I’ll settle down and try not to do that again.”

“To the contrary, it made you look amazing. It was the frosting on the perfect cake. Whatever it was, think of it as much as you can.”

“I can’t think about that for three hours,” groaned Mom.

“I understand,” said Mrs. Gaskill. She turned away and looked at us. “Let’s get to work. Posing is difficult and tiring. Let’s not make things hard on our model.” she barked.

“I’ve got something hard for her,” said the guy standing next to me.

“Don’t be a dick,” said a girl next to him. “She’s probably somebody’s mother. She’s almost old enough to be your mother.”