Chapter 1: Molested By My Mother

My mom is drunk.

The sound of her fury is coming from downstairs in the kitchen. Slamming pots and pans and screaming curses announce her rage. When my mother drinks, she throws fits and tonight her temper tantrum is a rolling thunderstorm of anger.

My mother is, as they say, a work in progress. She divorced my father two years ago and remarried to the preacher with whom she had been having an affair. For the wife of a minister, she uses an impressive vocabulary of red-hot, four-letter words. Tonight those heated words make an appearance and she blazes like a forest fire.

Her name is Joyce, and I am her son. She demands my sister and I never call her “Mom” or “Mother.” We are only to call her by her given name; failing to follow her name rules earns a swift rebuke or a painful smack on the ass.

Joyce is forty-six-years-old, about thirty pounds overweight, and a nasty drunk.

When alcohol fuels her temper, I give my mother an ample clearance. If she is in an alcohol-inspired rage, my survival strategy is to shelter in place and wait for the storm to pass.

After awhile, her tantrum abates and the house grows quiet. Stillness is good because silence is safety. After twenty minutes of peace and quiet, I think it is safe enough to engage in my new favorite hobby: self-pleasure.

First, I check again for any sounds of human activity in the house. Silence prevails and the coast is clear. Joyce sleeps soundly after a round of heavy drinking. With luck, I shouldn’t be hearing from her until tomorrow afternoon.

I lift a corner of my mattress and reach under to retrieve an illicit copy of the dirty magazine Swank. It features well-endowed women in various stages of undress. The photo content is exclusively tits and ass because it’s all the censors will allow.

Men’s magazines are easy to acquire. Now and then as I do my morning paper route, I find a random skin magazine sticking out of a trashcan set out for curbside pickup. I can always count on several addresses to produce new editions to add to my growing collection.

I kick off my shoes, remove my socks and pants, and slide out of my underwear. My short-sleeved shirt is unbuttoned; I do not wear a T-shirt. Naked from the waist down, I settle onto the bed and flip open the magazine and start to play with myself.

Like virtually any fifteen-year-old boy, I masturbate almost as often as privacy allows.

Early mapmakers used to mark unexplored and unknown regions of the ancient world with the inscription, Here there be dragons. My mental map of the female body includes a swath of real estate below the navel and above the knees which could have borne the same markings. It would be another nine years before Playboy magazine published its first full-frontal nude pictures of a playmate.

A warm glow spreads across my body and I’m almost on the verge of orgasm when the door of my room suddenly swings open. My mother stands at the entrance, her eyes grow wide with surprise and then narrow in anger and she screams out her words, one slow syllable at a time. “What?” pause, “the FUCK!,” she takes a breath, “are YOU doing?”

I’m stone-cold busted. I scramble to cover myself and grab the only shield within reach, the magazine I’ve been using as a visual aid. In a flash, my mother crosses the room and grabs me by one arm. The next instant she drags me off the bed. As I tumble ass-first to the floor, she snatches the magazine from my hands.

There is no chance to shield myself before Joyce pulls me to my feet. She waves the magazine in one hand as she holds my arm in the other and shouts, “You like looking at these fucking pictures?”

I’m too shocked and too afraid to speak. Joyce stares down at my midsection and asks, “Or should I say, do you just like to picture yourself fucking?” She giggles at her clever wordplay. Her garbled words reek of alcohol.

What follows for the next many minutes is a barrage of words and slaps delivered first with rage and later with something almost like affection. She continues screaming in my face and tells me repeatedly, “Dennis, you should be ashamed of yourself.” Each time she tells me I should be ashamed, she looks into my eyes, slaps me, and then peeks down at my naked display.

Soon the face slaps become clumsy caresses and the peeks become long gazes as my mother’s searching eyes focus on my private parts. I move my hands to cover my shame but Joyce takes my wrists and I am powerless to resist as she slowly, almost gently, moves my hands to each side of my body keeping me open and uncovered for her inspection. Never before have I been so exposed, naked, and helpless.

Joyce pulls me to her body and wraps her arms around me. She buries her face in my neck and starts to weep. I can barely make out her muffled words. My mind races in panic and confusion. Every one of my five senses is operating in overdrive.

I am half holding my breath as my mother’s body surrounds me on all sides. With nowhere to run, part of me retreats inside myself and I become two people. I am both a voyeur and a participant. I am neither here nor there. I am somewhere else as the sweeping second hand on my alarm clock freezes in place; I observe from distance.

I choke on her foul breath and inhale a gas cloud mixed with the stench of gin and accented with the flowery scent of cheap perfume. At the far edge of detection, a pungent odor tells me she needs a bath.

A misty fog bank of hair obscures my field of vision. Here and there between strands of hair, I can see my desk, littered with scattered papers and unfinished homework assignments. Fear rises like steam from my body and blends with the taste of lilac hairspray from the strands of her hair stuck in my mouth.

When she shifts position, I catch a glimpse of a shelf filled with model airplanes. All I can make out is the babble of incomprehensible words mixing with the sound of weeping, breathing, and rustling fabric. I’m also painfully aware of my nakedness and vulnerability. Every time I back away, my mother pulls me closer and holds me tighter as we stand together next to my bed.

My sense of touch overloads with impressions. Where Joyce holds me pressed against her body, I sense the protrusions of her nipples and breasts shifting and sliding against me under the smooth silk of her nightgown.

Moisture from her breath warms my skin and her tears trickle down my neck; the chill of the evening air blowing in from an open window raises goosebumps on my exposed buttocks while heat radiating from her warms the front of my body.

We stand together like fence posts for the longest time. After a while, my mother begins to sway back and forth as she mumbles something about being sorry and about me becoming a man and other nonsense. We continue to sway back and forth in this strange slow dance for several long minutes. Our dance is alarming, relaxing and calming all at once. The way she holds me reminds me of the affection I never received from her as a child and all the times I wish she had calmed my fears.

I’ve shriveled to almost nothing but as we continue our weird dance, involuntarily I am becoming aroused as my private parts brush against the terry cloth material of my mother’s housecoat and the soft fabric of her nightgown.