I remember the day exquisitely well. The days - no the months and years before it - are wrapped in some soft-focus, cotton-candy memory, but that day snaps into sharp focus with a clarity that is the result of moments of great impact long remembered. For all those years, my mother was my Mom. Then one day she became a woman. More importantly, she suddenly became a sexy woman. An extremely desirable woman.

I didn't - that day at any rate - suddenly become a profligate. It was to take a certain determinism and some considerable time before I might aspire to that description. No, the severest criticism one could bring to bear back then might be that I was a horny kid, one who appeared to be a touch more aware than his peers and maybe too curious for his own good.

I was home alone with my mother and my father was away. That was the case a good bit of the time it seemed. I had a father, but we didn't know each other very well. On some level, I'd come to accept his absence, for that's the way it was. I suspect my mother, who didn't complain, was experiencing less acceptance.

I'd been coerced into wearing a sport jacket that day - in place of my usual, more casual attire - and attending some ho-hum, boring cocktail party at the university president's home. I don't recall the strong-arm tactics that brought me to bay, but I do recall the suffering. It seemed like endless hours of mindless chatter where everyone but me got to have champaign or white wine. Oh, it wasn't forbidden, but my mother had made it clear that she was going to have "some wine" and I was the designated driver. We both knew that champaign had more effect on my mother than it appeared at first glance. If she didn't try to walk, or drive, she did quite well, at least at holding a conversation. However, those who knew her well were aware of a characteristic scattered thought process, a type of clang association which, when coupled with an alcoholic gaiety, turned her into a different woman. Almost daring and perhaps borderline loose.

Anyway, we'd returned home in the late afternoon from that well- supplied party and we'd both fallen into facing couches in our large living room, each of us with a welcome sigh as we put our feet up. That's when it happened. I don't recall that anything had occurred to set me up for this; it just came out of nowhere. Blind sided as it were. Out of nowhere, this sexy woman appeared!

The late afternoon sun shone toward my mother while I sat opposite her in deeper shadow. She'd drawn up her knees to push her pumps off and suddenly I was looking directly up her dress at a well-lit and unobstructed view of my mother's thighs all the way to her undergarments. It was no flash, for she'd placed both stockinged feet on the coffee table, knees still up and fallen back to the cushions, head up and eyes closed with her skirt around her mid thighs in the front and completely dropped away in the rear.

"Oh, that feels so good." she exclaimed, wriggling her stocking- clad toes. "Christ, I wish I could meet someone interesting at those parties, someone with some life in them!"

It was the type of comment that needed no reply. I suspect that I couldn't have replied coherently in any case, for my attention was riveted on the view under her dress.

Even though I'd lived with this woman all my life, I suppose I had had no interest and no awareness of her as a *woman* and even less for her clothes. After all, she was my mother for crying out loud. So, it was with some surprise that I realized for the very first time that she wore stockings and garters and not what I thought all women wore, pantyhose. I was fascinated with the stretch of her hose by the garters running down each thigh. But her panties held even greater fascination for me.

I don't think that I'd given it any previous thought, but had I been grilled on what type of underwear my mother wore, I might have guessed something white, conservative, and certainly thick. Clearly not what she had on. Illuminated by the long rays of the afternoon sun, the pale yellow of her panties, pooched out by a thick cushion of pubic hair faintly seen beneath, were not what I would have expected. As I say, I hadn't really expected anything, but what I saw so well that afternoon was to be imprinted on my mind with an indelible permanence.

"Damn, my feet are tired," she complained to the heavens. And then, stating the obvious, "Professor Twist is so incredibly boring," followed by a mental right turn, "I need some excitement in my life."

Excitement? I glanced up at her face, but she looked unchanged, head back and eyes still closed, the picture of fatigue, or was it boredom? Looking again at her long legs encased in shear nylons leading up to that pantied juncture in her crotch, I suddenly had a near-overwhelming desire to see more, to get closer. Some desires, short of compulsions, can be modulated if for no other reason than a fear of disclosure. The strength of this desire was not to be moderated by caution or restraint. I *had* to see more.

Understand, I wasn't a complete nincompoop, but as a seventeen year old, I didn't know much. Most of my sexual adventures came as the result of me just being there and things happening. I suppose I was more of an opportunist than a mover and shaker, at least in sexual things. Later, that was to change. Anyway, I knew I wanted to get closer and hadn't the faintest notion how I might accomplish this... and keep my head on my shoulders.

I had an idea! Hardly original and certainly not a bit creative, but it was what came to mind at that moment and without turning it over to examine its merits, I blurted out, "Want me to rub your feet? I know it's not very exciting, but you used to love it."

Now this was not entirely without precedent, for I'd once taken a low-grade massage course that had started with the feet and then the hands. Most of the people in there were taking the course hoping to learn about erotic massage. That never happened and it was not until eight or so weeks later that we even got to the back! At any rate, I'd massaged my mom's hands and her forearms and feet and calves in the past. At that time I was doing it for the practice and hardly noted that it was my mother's limbs on which I was working. Now, months later, she just sank deeper into the couch and wiggled her toes, saying, "Oh, yes! Yes, indeed, yes. Oh, thank you. Marvelous idea!"

As I was walking around the coffee table, I remembered reading an erotic story of a young kid who massaged his mom's legs so he could look under her robe. Each day his mother relaxed a little bit more, the story went, and each day he'd get a little better view. More, he was able to move up her legs each day. "How dumb!" I thought at the time. I liked the story, but knew it'd never work. Now, it seemed like a much better idea.

Then, with the keen awareness of the paranoid, I thought, "If *I* thought of this, then my mother probably did as well. She probably know what I'm up to." Yet her relaxed body surrender suggested otherwise as I sat on the coffee table and said, "Gimmie a footsie, lady."

"Footsie?" she asked, as she picked up one leg and offered it to me, opening up the view of her entire pantied pelvis and crotch. "Since when did you get so cute?"

"You want this massage or not?" As if I'd be content to just walk away if she decided she really didn't want it.

"You can call it anything you want. Just rub it for me, please."

In retrospect, I don't know if one might have viewed this as some right of passage. Almost certainly not, yet it had a profound impact on me that colored my thinking and my thoughts, seemingly to this day. I mean, why else can I recall with such vivid clarity the texture of her skin and the color of her clothes? Why else did this produce a deeply etched memory that was swamped with eroticism?

Because I'd sat next to her feet on the coffee table, when she offered me her foot, I'd pulled it slightly aside to hold it in both hands. This caused her dress to climb still higher on her thighs and open her legs still more. Her panties were a burnished saffron in the long light. I was so close and my view was so clear, I could see the lacy edges and the stitching. As well, I could see her auburn pubic curls through the near- transparent material. No panty gusset here.

Squiggling, she groaned in obvious anticipation, "Billy, you're saving this day from being a total bust. Thanks."

Bending to my task, I started a slow rubbing, more a caress really, that ran the length of the sole of her foot. Initially, softly with a slow build up and then slowly kneading deeper, causing her toes to curl. Accompanied by appreciative groans, I attempted to establish a level of pleasure that might allow me to go farther.

With my head down, looking up through my eye lashes, I was trying to drink in the vision of her exposed private place. I knew it was risky, but at that moment, I was out of my head. I'd suddenly become a sexually-aware and turned-on young man and the erotic thrill of that sight had a much greater pull than the fear of getting caught.

I scooted closer and slipped under her legs, placing one stockinged foot on my chest as I ran my hands over her calf from knee to ankle, still staring at the darker shadow of her pussy seen inside the taut and stretched crotch of her panties. With one thigh pulled aside, her tendon stood out, tenting the leg of her panties a bit and exposing a rich forest of pubic curls peeking from under the edge.

At that moment, perhaps alerted by my prolonged silence, she suddenly looked up and saw where my eyes were looking. I expected an explosion. Since I'd been caught red-handed, I made no attempt to look away. Instead, I just continued to massage her calf as I looked into her eyes. In the periphery of my vision, I could see her dress almost in her lap. Jesus, what a moment! What was going to happen?

My mother pulled back a little and said, "There's a problem here, Billy."

"Oh, shit," I thought. "Here it comes!"

"Let me remove my hose. You can't give me a proper massage while I'm wearing them."

She didn't wait for a discussion. Instead she suddenly got up and went into the nearby hall powder room, returning minutes later with her hose bunched in her hand. She tossed them on the couch and sat again. I noted that the garter belt was with the hose as it fell out in plain view. I suppose that she didn't give it a thought. In contrast, I was acutely aware of her intimate undergarments lying there. My mind was whirling. Why hadn't she protested when she caught me so flagrantly looking under her dress? Was she collecting her thoughts that she might upbraid me the better?

Instead, she just smiled and said, "There! I feel better. Back to the massage, if you please... and quit looking under my dress!" Her warm smile took away any sting her words might have had.

She sat directly opposite me and demurely placed her foot back in my lap, offering me no more than her knees and lower thighs to see. I worked for another 30 minutes, kneading and massaging, and while I was able to get fleeting glimpses of her thighs, I was not again able to see again what I so desired, a close-up and unobstructed view of the crotch of her panties.

From that day on, I remained aware that my mother was a very attractive and sexy woman. And, as a consequence of that awareness, I became increasingly familiar with all her clothes, both from the perspective of what was stylish as well as what was revealing. I became intimately aware of her various undergarments, not that I had many opportunities to see her in them, but more that I couldn't resist snooping in her lingerie drawers.

Mother was a striking woman, tall - about 5' 10" - mostly legs it seemed, with athletic-looking calves and slender thighs. I'd always anticipated that I would be a tall man, for my father, at 6' 2", was the runt of his family. Couple that with my mom's genes and it seemed reasonable that I'd be tall. It was not to be. At eighteen, we were pretty much the same height. I knew just where the tips of her breasts hit my chest.

I should mention that my mother had very attractive breasts, a C- cup with prominent, up-tilted nipples that were often evident despite her clothes. Sometime later I was to learn that she was one of those women who were blessed with exceptionally firm, youthful breasts, that never lost much of their firmness. She is one of those rare females that will have youthful breasts into her later years. Like intelligence, beauty is given to us as an accident of birth, no more than a fortuitous role of the genetic dice. It's comforting to be part of a line of good stock I was told, but I hadn't thought of it in this arena of sexual attractiveness.

While my mother's figure was model-attractive, it was her facial features that were eye catching. She had a straight, almost aristocratic nose and a wide, full mouth. Her prominent cheek bones set off her unusually attractive eyes. They were hard to describe, her eyes. She had high, full, unaltered eye brows, that were dark in color in contrast to her natural auburn hair. But it was the eyes themselves that caught your attention, for they were a light green-blue with an exotic cast. At times I thought she might have some Asian blood, but I never got a hint of it in the rest of her family. In any case, they were striking, often dark and brooding and at times almost electric. Without altering her facial expression, her eyes could show humor or joy and, at times, anger. I often wondered what she looked like when sexually aroused.

But I digress. Back to the awakening of my sexual awareness.

I didn't set out to seduce my mother, despite the rich and lurid fantasies I entertained. I held them as deeply secret and guarded as one would any shameful, licentious desire. The thought was given no more than masturbatory acknowledgment, as frequent as that was. Still, the gap between our thoughts and our actions remains hidden from our conscious awareness by the strength of our denial. So while I might have denied a plan to seduce her, my actions would have argued differently. I set out to be her friend and her confidant, to reduce if not break down the conventional barriers between us. This was largely an unacknowledged plan of mine. I don't recall thinking anything more detailed than vague objectives of getting closer to her.

Over time, I became more open with her about my self. I asked her opinions of things, including girls and dating and later, sexual things. I worked at being her emotional intimate. It wasn't difficult, for she was at heart an emotionally trusting and open women who, it turned out, was largely unencumbered by repressive standards. To my surprise, we gradually became good friends. That I would bond so closely with my mother was not surprising, given my nature and that fact that my father was largely an absent force in my life.

I slowly became less conventional in my own modesty. It was not at all unusual for me to chat with my mother wearing no more than my Calvin Kleins. I was aware that she studiously avoided looking at my body when I was so briefly dressed, but she never reprimanded me for inappropriate attire.

I became aware that when my dad was away, she usually left her bedroom door open. I took that as an invitation and often walked in on her to "chat." Not infrequently, I'd catch her in her bra and panties. She'd say, "Whoops," and slip on a robe, loosely tied. Once, as I walked into her room, she was walking out of her large closet wearing only an unbelted robe that swung open as she moved. From a moment only, I saw her nude body. It was no more than a flash that left nothing more than an after- image. It was that after-image that I examined so repeatedly. I saw firm, upthrust breasts, and a flash of dense pubic hair at the base of a flat abdomen... and then she pulled the robe closed without comment.

I'd gone in to ask her if she'd like to play some tennis and for a moment was tongue tied, standing there, staring at her.

"How're you doing, Billy?" she asked as she belted her robe.

"Doin' OK, Mom," I replied, trying to sound cool and collected when I was anything but. "You like to play some tennis?"

"Love to," she replied. "Now?"

"Sure, now."

"OK," she tossed over her shoulder as she walked to a tall chest of drawers and picked out a pair of small white cotton panties. I'd become aware of what undergarments she wore for what occasions and white cotton were for sports.

Her robe was clingy, hugging her body and buttocks. I was acutely aware of her prominent nipples and the swell of her rounded mons as she faced my direction. Then, glancing directly at me for a moment, she turned away and, unbelting the robe, she stepped into the panties, pulling them up firmly into her crotch, snapping the elastic. It took no more than brief seconds, but time seemed to slow down and she moved in slow motion.

She was standing in front of a large, south-facing slider window, and intensely back lit. The sheerness of her robe allowed the bright sun to highlight her body silhouette and I could see her remarkably well through the translucent robe. I gazed in rapt awe at the long-legged outline of her figure, the shadow of a full breast swinging forward as she bent to step into her panties. I thought of ripe fruit.

Suddenly it was very still in the room. I think I was holding my breath. Was she really aware of me there? Did she know what I was seeing? I knew her as too quick and too smart to be unaware of how she looked. Were we slowly escalating to a new level of intimacy? And if so, could I ever acknowledge it?

As she pulled the robe away from her body for a moment, I caught no more than a flash of one rounded hip and thigh and it thrilled me. From a lower drawer, she pulled out a pair of white tennis shorts and employing the same visual screen of her robe, pulled them on, again pulling them tight into her crotch. In my mind's eye. I could see her puffy mons

In a moment, I became aware that my dick was swelling and caught down the leg of my shorts, feeling bent and painful. Before she looked back, I adjusted myself.

Now what? I knew she kept her bras and shirts in the same chest of drawers. Would she select them and go into her closet, or even into her bathroom to don them? I watched as she picked out a brief white cotton bra and a white T-shirt. Again, she glanced at me, and then shrugging her shoulders as if to say, "Oh, the heck with it," she turned away, let her robe drop to the floor where it pooled at her feet. She quickly put her bra on, hooking it in the back with a nimble facility that comes as the result of long practice. Magicians, I think, have the same facility.

I saw, perhaps as never before, how narrow her waist was and how beautifully full her hips were under her long and delicately curved back. It was more pronounced and exaggerated by all that flesh! It took but seconds to don her bra, but it wasn't quick enough, for I snapped a mental picture of a back and side view of her full breast before it disappeared. Yet another lurch in my groin. I was a goner.

She looked back. I smiled, wanting her to know that I had seen her, but not wanting to act snide or smart ass. "Nice," I said.

She returned the smile and turned toward me as she was pulling the T-shirt over her head. Again, for a brief moment, I saw her en face, appreciating how skimpy the bra was and how much of her breast simply appeared to ride as much above of the cup as in it.

I don't recall who won at tennis that day. What I do recall is the moment of watching her bend over, nude under her robe, and lifting one foot, place it into the leg hole of those white cotton panties. Later, looking at the panty line under her shorts, I thought to myself, "I've *got* to see more of her."

We had slowly grown more relaxed around each other. I know that that sounds odd, that a mother and her son would become more relaxed with each other, but that's exactly what happened. I think that there has always been some male-female sexual tension in our culture, mostly buried and not honored, but certainly operative. And as with many things, we aren't aware of them until they go away. It's their absence that highlights their former presence. In that fashion, I was very aware that many of our defenses had been lowered.

Some months later when I'd been away at school for what seemed like too long a time, I called my mother just to chat. We never said anything blatant, but there always seemed to be a kidding undertone to our conversations, subtly skirting around sexual things. One day she upped the ante. "So, getting any?" she asked.

I was stunned. Was she reading my mind?

"No, dammit. You?" I was taking a chance here and I knew it. I'd been distantly aware that in the last little while, even when my father was home, that they were not connecting, my mom and dad. You can't be that close to someone and not be aware of those charged emotional states, even when they're never discussed. Mom, I knew, was frustrated, but we didn't talk about it. As I said, she never complained.

"No," she answered, and then quickly added, "but we're not talking about me. What's happening with *you* these days?"

I was used to her fending me off in this fashion and hardly paid it any attention. The fact of my emotional state was that I was lonely. I missed my mom. And oh, yes... I was horny. I decided to act out on a new fantasy. I asked her for a date, a mother-son date.

"Mom, I miss you and knowing I won't get back home for a couple of months, it makes it worse. So I was wondering, would you come up and visit me? We're having a little dance here and I don't know anyone. You wouldn't have to stay in a hotel or anything. I've got a pull-out couch; I'll use that and you could use my room. Will you let me take you to dinner and then the dance?"

She made I'm-thinking-about-it noises and then said, "Well... I'm not sure about the dancing part. I've danced with you - or tried to - before and it's something about two left feet... " and then she laughed.

"Mom! Come on, will you? I'm not that bad," knowing that I really was that bad.

"Alright, alright. I miss you too and I'm a little lonely myself. I miss our talks. It's be nice to have dinner and re-connect with you. When's the dance?"

"Two weeks... the weekend after next. Can make it?"

"Sure. Will you pick me up at the airport? I dread tying to get a bus or a taxi."

We made the arrangements and just before hanging up, I blurted out, "Mom, I love you and I can't wait to see you. Gosh, a real date!"

In retrospect, I can see that I'd been sexually attracted to my mother for a long time, but initially too inhibited to admit it to myself. With the pealing of that layer of my denial, I came to accept the intense sexual feelings I had for her, but continued to deny that I expected or even wanted to seduce her.

Another uncomfortable foray into self honesty brought me to that point where I knew I *wanted* to be sexually intimate with her, but realistically, didn't imagine I ever could. After years of viewing her on some asexual pedestal labeled MOM, I rapidly came to see her as an extraordinarily sexy woman. Suddenly, I was in lust.

After all, she wasn't a dummy and she wasn't some bimbo. I had reason to believe that she was a sexually intense person, but because of conventional morality, she didn't feel free to share that side of herself with her son. I'd been successful in developing and easy-going and partially uninhibited relationship with her. There was an unspoken sexual tease to be sure, but it remained submerged and unacknowledged. How might I change? That was the question.

Crudeness would never work. That was a no-brainer. Similarly, a frontal assault would be ineffective and worse, insulting. While she might be more susceptible to a secret romantic connection because of my father's neglect, it wouldn't be with me, that was clear.

I'd thought of enticing her into something like a nudist colony, even mentioned it a couple of times. She was mildly interested, but I knew that that was no more than a blind alley, an emotional cull de sac, and not even a very sexual one. I feared the stiff and formal behavior I imagined a nudist colony to be. Too, I suspected that it would provide at most little more than an avenue for my voyeurism but no entre into sexuality. Nothing there, I concluded.

Would some innocent approach move me closer? I remembered that she'd been willing to allow me to massage her feet, even had been a bit careless in her posture, at least at first. Might that provide an avenue of approach?

Then I remembered that my mom liked her wine. She wasn't a lush, but it was clear that she didn't stop drinking just because she began "to feel it." More than once she'd said, "Why drink if you don't want to feel it. I drink for effect." I also remembered that when tipsy, she became something of a sloppy drunk. Not fall-down drunk, but certainly risque often and careless of appearances. I once overheard her say, "I drink to make my *friends* more interesting." This wasn't a common occurrence, but I had seen it rarely, and only with friends. Well, I was a friend, wasn't I?

I was waiting for my mother at the arrival gate. Boy, she looked good as she stepped into the arrival area, an over-night bag hanging from her shoulder and wearing a light summer dress, uncharacteristically brief with a hem line well above her shapely knees.

"Hi, good lookin'." I said to her as I stood there, hands on hips, looking her over.

"Don't just check me out, guy. How about a hug?" she asked, dropping her bag and stepping into my arms.

Whew! I'd hugged my mother lots of times, but I didn't recall such intensity, such a full-body press. I was acutely aware of the pressure of her breasts pressing into my chest and more, somehow her crotch was riding on my thigh. I distinctly felt her pubic bone as I held her close and kissed her, first on the cheeks, and then looking at the joy in her eyes, impulsively, I planted a wet one on her lips. Did I feel a flash of tongue tip?

That fast. It happened that fast. I didn't have a woodie when I saw her, but when I stepped away from that kiss, I'd sprouted a boner. I thought I detected her eyes flitting across my pelvis, but couldn't be sure. To hell with it, I thought. She knows I'm not a monk.

"Have anything more than this?" I asked, picking up her shoulder bag.

"You kidding? You ask me up for a week end, for a dance, and you think I've got it all in that little bag. Why I wouldn't go to the tennis club with that little bag alone."

"A steamer?" I groaned.

"Not quite," she laughed, "but I did come prepared."

Prepared for what, I wondered. "Oh, that's OK. I brought the Four by Four."

"You're taking me to dinner and a dance in a TRUCK?" she asked in fake horror.

Laying my hand on my chest, I asked in mock indignation, "Moi? Did you think I was so crass? Me? Of course not! I borrowed a *van*."

I knew what she thought of vans... that they were thinly disguised make- out vehicles, employed mainly by the underclass... whoever they were.

She squeaked, "A *van*?" and then laughed. "Oh well, mothers will do anything for... "

"Kidding! Just kidding, Mom. Actually, I borrowed a friend's Mercedes sedan... the kind you like... you know, long, sleek, and very conservative."

"A Mercedes? For me? You must really *want* something, eh?"

I thought, "Little do you know Mom. I want to get into your pants." But what I *said* was, "Just to be with you, Mom, that's all I want," and gave her one of those shit-eating grins that gives evidence to the lie.

The business of picking up her two sizable suitcases occupied us for the next little while and it wasn't until we were driving away from the airport, ensconced in the warmth of the big Bronco and listening to some soft jazz that I was able to fully appreciate her being there.

I drove over to the old river road, longer but a more scenic, more romantic route.

"Thought I might take you right home, give you the chance to take a nap and then clean up before going out to dinner tonight. That sound alright?"

"Don't *leave* me. Stick around, won't you? I came this far to spend some time with you. I can nap anytime."

"Don't worry, lady. You won't be able to get rid of me," I promised, laying the palm of my hand on her knee, aware of the silky soft skin on the inside of her thigh.

She laid her hand on mine and squeezed it, saying, "I think I like dating you."

In short order we were home and the Bronco was unloaded, her bags placed in my room. We chatted non-stop as I watched her move about my room, making room for her things. I knew it was her custom to get out of her traveling clothes straight away, so I stuck around to see what might unfold.

As I'd hoped, she began to undress, tossing things here and there, commenting on news from back home, requiring no more from me than an occasional affirming grunt. When she was down to her bra and panties, she pulled her robe from a suitcase and, turning her back, unhooked and dropped her bra and in almost the same motion, slipped into her robe.

Still with her back to me, the robe hanging open, I could see her hook her thumbs into the panties' waist band and pull them down and then off, tossing them carelessly on the bed just a short distance from me. I stared at them, brief and rumpled, imagining that they were warm and scented by her. I was dying to pick them up and hold them to my face.