Chapter 1

Two good friends, boys from the same neighborhood, were as different as grapes and cranberries. Sam was a junior in the local, three year middle school, while Joey was a freshman. Although each was 14 years old, their birthdays landed them in separate class years.

Sam liked girls but was too shy to ask any of them to be his girlfriend. He had rich fantasies, some sexual, some powerful. Sam loved to role-play as a good ranger. When he wasn’t playing video games, Sam read survival books and enjoyed practicing techniques such as starting fires with a knife, twisting grass into rope, and tying knots for a variety of uses. When his mother, Eleanor Patterson, took him camping, he would sample edible and medicinal wild plants. Initially, she wasn’t fond of camping, especially in the wilds, but her late husband had passed his love of exploring to their son. So she encouraged Sam’s affinity to nature, and over time Eleanor grew to enjoy their escapes together.

Sam sported his mother’s light brown hair and his father’s sturdiness. Classmates always picked him to be on their team for any physical game. Sam got along with them in general, but they would have teased him if they found out his best friend was a freshman.

Joey had problems. He was older than the other kids in his class. His mother, Charlene Tucker, had remarried after a fractious separation and sudden divorce, and although his new ‘dad’ was kinder than his real dad, Joey disliked him more than his sneering classmates. He was sure his mom had married Rudy because nobody else would marry her.

Charlene had been a beauty in her youth, and her first husband had swept her off his feet and impregnated her in the same night. Their parents pressured them into marriage, but it fell apart when Joey was eight, the day his mother caught a severe burn on her face, as if she’d fallen onto a steaming iron.

That was her story, but Joey believed his neurotic father had angered into a rampage. Randall Tucker was always blaming his wife about being unfaithful. He flaunted his own affairs, “To get even.” And when she insisted on her innocence, he would beat her. After the iron burned his mother’s face, she divorced him and obtained a permanent restraining order to protect her and Joey. In court, his father had raged at her, threatening that no man would touch her now that she was, “Ass ugly!”

Plastic surgery was too expensive for the divorced mother, but Charlene worked out to keep her shape as enticing as ever. Unfortunately Joey had a problem with that. He often jacked-off with her body in his thoughts. He’d never seen her naked, but he had seen enough porn to imagine her naked. After cumming, he would feel guilty. He loved his mom, even when he imagined her as his sex toy, but when she remarried, Joey’s jealousy buried his love. He decided his sexy but scarred mother was a slut.

“Is your mom a slut, Sam?” Joey asked one day, as the two boys walked home from school. Late summer air was refreshingly cool, but couldn’t calm a heated Joey. He had heard his parents fucking that morning, and he’d had a boner all day, thinking about his mother.

Sam smelled jasmine in the air. “I don’t think so, but some nights, when Mom goes out with her girlfriends, she gets home late. Not often though. How much sex turns a lady into a slut?”

“Is she a lesbo?” Joey wondered. The dirty stories he read claimed that all lesbians were sluts.

“I dunno. Don’t think so.” Sam had once discovered a couple gay porn magazines under his mother’s bed. Their pictures didn’t do anything for him, but he searched his mother’s room for additional surprises. He’d found a shoe box with several wooden clothespins and a small dildo that looked exactly like a real cock, veins, wrinkles. It had a wide flange at the base. He had laughed after comparing it to his hard on. His was a little bigger and longer.

Remembering that afternoon in his mother’s room, while she was at work, made Sam’s dick harden. Sam asked quietly, “Do you want to get on the internet before Mom comes home?”

Joey grinned, “You slut.” ‘Getting on the internet’ was their code for watching porn and jacking off.

They ended up playing cards when they couldn’t find any porn that they hadn’t seen a dozen times. The porn filters at Sam’s house weren’t as tight as the filters at Joey’s, but the boys could only sneak into a couple websites for adults. Their tastes in porn differed less than other aspects of their lives. Joey was into hardcore whipping and fucking. Sam liked bondage and light spanking with kisses and loving sex. That stuff was really difficult to access behind the Patterson firewall. They were lucky to find a photo or cartoon every few days.

“Blackjack!” Sam cried out when the ace of spades landed on his cards.

Joey was grateful that they never played for money. Sam was a lucky kid. The older boy’s grades were better than Joey’s, too, but Sam looked up to his young friend. Joey was the kid who did interesting things. The younger fourteen year old distanced himself from his loss at cards. “Hey, Sam, would you like to find out if your mom’s a slut?”

Eleanor Patterson drove with a mind for safety. She never hurried nor jumped into unfamiliar circumstances. Her husband had been her source of spontaneity and risk - often erotic risks, but those days were gone. She tried dating online, but there were too many weirdoes. Jack Patterson had been ambitious, daring, exciting, and loving. She could trust him to take her beyond her limits and bring her back safely and joyously.

With her son becoming an adult, Eleanor limited herself to brief encounters with men who her girlfriends picked. They picked carefully, and while the sex was often good, Eleanor missed the intensity that her late husband could bring to the bedroom and spicy else-wheres.

She never dated the same man twice. Some were married, but none of the bachelors had anything interesting about them other than their dicks. Therefore she was lucky to get laid every few months. At least she didn’t crave sex. She only masturbated once or twice a week. Eleanor eventually decided that she was doing her girlfriends more of a favor than they were doing for her. She chuckled and pulled the old Volvo into her home’s driveway. It had been a long, stressful day of work, and she was looking forward to a quiet evening with her son.

“Hi, Mrs. Patterson!” Joey greeted from the couch. He and Sam were playing a video game, a simple one involving blocks dropping. “Oh, man, you beat me again!” Joey popped up from the couch to pull his shirt off.

Sam stared at the monitor screen as if it was the only thing in the house. His mom couldn’t tell if the red on her son’s face was from within or due to light from the screen. “Joey?” Eleanor raised her eyes at the young guest’s partial nudity. He had already lost his pants and shoes and socks. Sam was only down a sock and both shoes. Eleanor stifled her urge to overreact. It was just a kid’s game. “Don’t you think you boys should stop, now that I’m home?” She blushed.

Joey stopped bouncing. The bulge in his underwear stopped bouncing too. “Yeah, I suppose, Mrs. Patterson, but I don’t want to stop when Sam’s so far ahead.”

Eleanor sighed. She was too drained to fight the boy. “I’ll be in my room, changing.” She hadn’t needed to tell him about changing. She chided herself and marched away from the living room.