Chapter 21

I woke up much later than I’d expected to. The clock on Timothy’s desk said it was almost 8. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel too sick; unsurprisingly, I did indeed have to urinate, urgently. I pulled on underwear before I walked out. Fortunately, the bathroom was empty; I relieved myself, then cautiously ventured out.

Alice and Timothy were at the table already. Neither of them was wearing anything, but they didn’t comment on my underwear. Alice solicitously asked how I was feeling; I told her I was felt fine, which wasn’t really true. I wasn’t dizzy or sick to my stomach or even suffering from a headache, but I was completely bewildered and disoriented by what I seen last night.

It wasn’t that I was disgusted by it; indeed I couldn’t help but imagine myself in Timothy’s position, suckling on Alice’s breasts — unhelpfully, they were right there opposite me for me to see now; I tried to avoid staring. Perhaps instead of masturbating she would even want me to touch her, as I had touched Lily so many times? Or even to invite me into her? But at the same time, I was horrified that I was even imagining such things. This, this was too strange to accept.

I kept thinking of the “I” word. Well, I was the one guilty of that with Lily, wasn’t I? Timothy and his mother weren’t having sex. He hadn’t even hard been last night; he’d told Alice to stop groping him. Of course he did; he was gay, and besides it was his mom.

I had the insight that, more than anything, it was the thought of a similar scene playing out in our family that shocked and horrified and disgusted me. I briefly remembered the vision I’d had last night of my mother’s breasts, in the hospital room holding Lily when I was four. I had never remembered that until last night’s marijuana-fueled free association, but I was positive it was a real memory.

I’d never seen her breasts any other time that I could remember, though of course I must have as an infant. I didn’t want to see them. I was repelled by the thought of seeing them, let alone sucking them, let alone my mother masturbating while I sucked on them. How could Timothy have done that?

But of course he was used to seeing Alice naked, to being naked with her, whereas that was utterly taboo in our family. And he was gay; so it couldn’t have been sexual. For him. But it was sexual for Alice! She had brought herself to orgasm, right there on the fucking couch, with Timothy suckling her like a little kid, a baby. I just could not get my head around all of it at once; I kept going around in circles.

Alice had made Turkish coffee for Timothy and herself earlier. She asked me if I wanted some. I rarely drank coffee at all, but decided it wouldn’t hurt to have something stronger than tea; and besides, I was curious what Turkish coffee was like. She asked me if I wanted it sweet or not, and I said I didn’t. I wasn’t a big fan of sweet things in general.

Alice went into the kitchen and made the coffee, which turned out to be a thick, frothy, fragrant liquid poured from a small brass coffeepot; it was prepared for one person at a time. I wasn’t prepared for how good it tasted. It wasn’t thin and acidic like the coffee my parents drank, or the sort you might get in a blue and white cup at the deli. It was rich and tasted just a little earthy and you could only drink about three quarters of it before it turned into mud at the bottom of the cup.

Alice was kind enough to make me another one and I sat there, mostly silent, trying to figure out what to say. I could hardly admit to having been awake during last night’s ... action, but part of me wanted them to acknowledge it, to bring it up themselves. I desperately wanted some reassurance that everyone was still happy and everything was as wonderful and beautiful as the conversation and music and singing had led me to believe and that the breast-feeding, or whatever it was, all fit into the bigger picture somehow. Of course that didn’t happen. We sat around drinking coffee and not saying much. Eventually, I said I probably had to get home soon as I still had homework to do for school.

It took another hour to pull myself together, get dressed, and leave. Timothy said he’d come down to the subway with me and got dressed too. Alice stood at the door, still naked, and gave both of us big hugs. She had showered in the morning and smelled fresh and clean. I still hadn’t, and I felt a little gross and hoped she wasn’t turned off by me. At the subway entrance, Timothy looked at me seriously. “Umm, Rob,...” I stared at him. “Uhh, well ... nothing, I guess. See you in school tomorrow!” “Yeah ... I’ll see you,” I replied, and descended into the bowels of the subway system.

When I got home, Mom and Lily were out; Dad told me they’d gone shopping. In a funny way, I was relieved; I wasn’t sure if I could face Lily right away. I needed some time completely by myself to mull over what I’d experienced last night. Retreating to my room, I closed the door, flopped down onto my bed, and stared the ceiling.

I felt numb, a little detached from the real world. Part of that, I supposed, could have been the lingering effects of the pot; I had no prior experience with it, and thus nothing to compare it to. But my mind kept skittering away from the central enormity of what had happened the night before.

Had it happened? I tried to impose some discipline on my racing thoughts. Fact: I was half-asleep and had been — well, hallucinating perhaps wasn’t the right word, but I was imagining some fairly vivid scenes in my minds eye. So far as I could tell, though, those were all actual memories — being in the bath, seeing Lily for the first time, and so forth.

Also fact: I had seen with my own eyes, heard with my own ears, Timothy suckling at Alice’s breast. I’d smelled the thick scent of Alice’s excitement, too. There was no question she had asked him to do it, he had reluctantly agreed, and she had masturbated herself to orgasm while he did it.

The pot had certainly distorted my senses a bit, fueled my imagination when my eyes were closed, but I knew what I had seen. It hadn’t made me make the scene up out of whole cloth. It had happened; of that I was certain. And from what I’d heard, it wasn’t the first time it had happened.

So, fine. Alice isn’t just an old, nudist hippie. She gets off on having her teenage son suckle her breasts. I tried to reconcile this undeniable truth with the image I’d constructed of her as a person since we’d met. She was incredibly intelligent, perceptive, interesting; from the very beginning, she had seemed to have it all together, to be able to drill right down to the essential core of a topic of discussion, to see through the superficial, to weigh our opinions and discuss ideas without being either, on the one hand, caught up by emotion or, on the other hand, overly dispassionate and clinical.

She also sang and played the guitar beautifully, was a wonderful gourmet cook, and a great storyteller. In short, she seemed like an almost perfect person. I’d been a little surprised by the nudism and then by the evident attention she’d paid to me when I was undressed, but it hadn’t really been off-putting; indeed I had been flattered that such a fantastic adult would pay, not only my opinions, but also my body any attention at all.

It had profoundly shaken me, though, to see her in the throes of apparently uncontrollable passion. She had almost begged Timothy to suckle. She had brought herself to a shuddering orgasm as he did so. I was reliving the old fears that had plagued me so many years ago, when I, to my horror, had first found myself, in early puberty, involuntarily aroused by lying entangled and almost bare with my sister at night. I had worried that I wasn’t in control of my sexual urges; that I would do things that I regretted, that I would corrupt Lily somehow, that I would ruin everything.

Everything had worked out OK - I’d gotten control of myself, and when Lily herself eventually began to to want more, I’d conquered my fears and yielded to her. And now ... Well, could I really accuse Alice of doing anything worse than I had? True, Timothy hadn’t seemed to be an enormously enthusiastic participant, and he’d protested when Alice tried to fondle him. But he’d acquiesced to Alice’s request without any real fuss, and he didn’t seem to mind the actual suckling part. At least the soft sounds he’d made while doing it had seemed pretty contented.

I still couldn’t get my head around it, though. Surely someone like Alice would have had enough self-control not to give in to such a clearly perverse desire. I seized upon the marijuana as a handy explanation; yes, it must be that. She had been stoned, she wasn’t really in control of herself. I’d knew now how weird it had felt, and I’d felt horny under the influence too.

I made up my mind then and there: never again. I wasn’t going to smoke weed, I wasn’t going to drink, nothing. Never mind if drinking water kept one from feeling too crappy the next day; if being intoxicated could lead one to be that unable to control one’s behavior I would steadfastly avoid intoxication. It was fun, it felt good, but it was also was starting to terrify me.

I’d felt like I was an even keel emotionally for years, thanks to sleeping together each night with Lily, and even after our parents threw a monkey wrench into that, we’d managed to recover. Thanks to her again; she had simply come into my bed and made love to me until I realized it would all be OK. No, I was happy just inhabiting a small world with her. I wanted nothing to do with anything — or anyone — who could throw me as far off-kilter as I’d seen the night before.

I thought about Lily. I was curiously unconcerned about the possibility, still hanging over our heads, that I might have impregnated her that first time. I’d read in the health class book that a single unprotected encounter had only a 1:20 chance of getting a woman pregnant (though I’d missed the statistical subtlety that that assumed a random date; Lily’s chances would have been much higher halfway through her cycle). More importantly, Lily’s unconcerned optimism the other night had calmed my anxiety; I somehow felt it’d be OK.

I thought back to how we had made love three nights before; how I had made her come with my mouth, what it had tasted like, how wonderful it had been then to enter her, to have her whisper “come Robbie, come,” to feel the great release of built-up pleasure, to pump my seed with no fear into the condom inside her, feeling as close to my little sister as two humans could possibly get; to embrace afterwards and fall asleep in each other’s arms, as we had for so many years.