When your dad left your mom, she went back to her ‘amateur theatricals,’ as dad like to smear her early days working as an actress. Okay—she didn’t have anything people would call a career. But she worked. Never enough to catch that big break, but enough to keep her in the City, in a place of her own, and dabble in the night life. She’d pull out the scrap books and demo reel if you let her. Some of the pictures—nude shots she’d pretend you shouldn’t see—proved she was hot back then. But not enough to make it big. The nude girl in the pictures was a different person from your mother now. Different enough that you’d whacked off to them more than a few times.

She always said it was easy to let it go when she and dad decided to have kids.

Sometimes—not often—her face would pop up on screen in a small part on some show from fifteen or twenty years ago, and your dad would leave the room.

Reminds him of the guys who got in ahead of him, she’d say.

Made you wonder why he married her if it was going to get under his skin like that. Maybe it was tantalizing and exotic back then for a guy like him. Now? Not so much.

Maybe your dad disliked how she held onto her wild, bohemian days. Get a little liquor in her and she’d spin out backstage stories about famous people she’d worked with and the not-so-famous people she slept with.

Fucked, she’d say, because no one slept in those days. She was quick to boast that blowjobs were a specialty of hers. She could suck a guy right out of his marriage, she’d tell you. Then she’d give a wink and laugh into her scotch and soda.

You heard the stories often enough, but when you’d picture it, she was like a different person, not the person walking around being your mom. The person in the scrapbook was thinner, dark-haired. Touched up, probably. It didn’t take much to imagine that person naked and on her knees, blowing guys backstage. Or on a movie set somewhere, the guy stretched back in one of those canvas folding chairs, your mom blowing his mind by way of his crank.

There were times when you and this one girl from class would drive out somewhere safe and she’d go down on you, but it was your mom’s young, tv-show face moving in, your mom’s tv-show mouth taking hold of your crank, your mom’s tv-show throat trying to swallow you, gagging when you thrust home, blowing your load. Even now, conjuring that face, her mouth wrapped around some strange guy’s dick would get you hard.

But—she’d blurt out if one of her stories got too graphic—she left it all behind when they decided to move to the suburbs and have kids.

Which was you.

No regrets, she’d say. No regrets.

When they broke up the summer you left college you moved back home. It gave you a place to stay while you looked for work, and it gave your mom another grownup in the room when she needed to talk.

She was needy in a way you’d never seen before. Maybe in a way you never noticed. Your dad complained it was that way with all actors. At least the ones he met. Always ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ with the lot of them, he’d say. Most of them, he always added, had very little worth looking at. Your mom wrote it off as him being jealous.

Maybe being married to her, he had too much time to think about how she got to be so good at sucking cock.

Those first few months you were back home, she’d prowl the house, following you around, one minute telling you her backstage stories, the next minute dissecting her twenty years of marriage. Nothing was off limits.

Like the times when she was drunk enough, studying you, and saying how much she missed locking eyes with a guy, watching his face as he realizes he’s getting the best fucking blowjob of his entire life. Seeing in the guy’s face how he’s wishing he could spend the rest of his life in that magic mouth of hers, she’d say, and then, when she’s drained him and it’s over, how his face says it all.

“He’s never getting another one like it from anybody else, you know?”

Those needy, laser eyes. More than once when she’d worked herself up like that, you could almost feel her brain working, trying to decide if she was going to break down and come on to you. It wasn’t all that clear in your mind what you’d do if she did. There were—no lie—times when there was just the slightest bit of morbid curiosity to find out for yourself and rationalize it as a kind of role-playing therapy for a woman who could use a little positive reinforcement. The both of you pretending—her pretending you’re just another guy, and you pretending she’s that strange actress from the old days.

When she came home with news that she’d found a semi-pro theatre group in the area that used locals for the big productions, you were relieved—kind of. It gave her something to do that took her focus off you. And your crank.

“What’s a pipehole,” she asked you out of nowhere.

You had no idea, and she sighed, saying she’d been out of circulation too long, and didn’t mention it again.

The place she found did high-class stuff and always managed to have a semi-famous person in one of the lead roles. Someone who may have been out of the spotlight a little too long, but people would recognize the name. Sometimes they used local celebrities whose fame didn’t reach much beyond the state line. Like the guy who does the weather, or one of the women who do the daytime shows for stay-at-home moms, or the pro wrestler who does his own ads for a car dealership, or some socialite who was doing it for charity. Even if you hadn’t heard of them, it was kind of a kick. It drew enough attention to fill seats and give local talent a chance to be noticed, and the next thing you know, they’re the ones going off to do the movies and the television shows. Your mom was clearly angling to use this as a way to get back into the business full-time.

Maybe. For now, it got her out of the house, even if you had to drive her there and back until she could get a car of her own again. It gave her a chance to meet people who were as keen as she was to be doing theatre. Maybe meet a guy who could use a world-class blowjob.

At the very least it would give her that taste of show business she complained she’d lost when she married your dad. A place to be herself, exercise all the drama you grew up with, turn it loose on a paying audience, and give you a rest, right?

Fat chance.

That first night you picked her up from the auditions, she was powered up by the experience. She came sashaying out to the car, singing, ‘back in the saddle again.’

She talked non-stop the whole way home. Being back in a theatre, talking to actors, reading lines out loud. Best of all for her, this one guy she said was a producer—the guy might be Italian or Romanian, she wasn’t sure—this producer recognized her from television. She couldn’t believe it. He asked her out for coffee, and they talked television for nearly an hour.

You asked how old this guy was—figuring he was probably way older than her, looking for an easy lay.

“Probably in his forties,” she said. “Early forties.” Like it was important you get the picture of a young man—young-ish man finding her attractive enough to spend over an hour chatting her up.

You asked if she told him her backstage sex stories, still figuring the guy’s creeping on her, and she laughed.

“Best kind,” she said. “He mentioned—” she pulled down the visor to check herself in the little mirror on the back, pretending to a nonchalance she clearly didn’t feel, “—he mentioned there might be a nude scene, and asked if I was okay with being naked on stage.”

You couldn’t imagine this nonprofit theatre company—one known for putting up big, kid-friendly musicals for all major holidays—having any nudity on stage.

“No, for real,” she said, “it’s in the script.”

Now you were certain he was coming on to her, and you said as much.

“Oooh!” She did a little wiggle of her butt in the seat. “You think so?”

It was clear she wasn’t about to take seriously the idea this guy could be creeping on an older woman throwing off signals she was marked-down merchandise, priced to move.

You didn’t say it quite like that, but it still made her mad, you thinking a guy in his forties wouldn’t honestly find her attractive, a mature woman with a lot more stage experience than any of the other women in the company, and could only be creeping on her as an easy lay.

“You’re not my father,” she said.

It wasn’t about being protective. It was about being practical. You didn’t care if she wanted to get laid. You cared if he was being a jerk about it. And, no, you weren’t jealous.

Picking her up the next night, she squealed that she’d gotten the part. And, yes, there would be a nude scene. She’d be playing an artist’s model in a life drawing studio. Only the two scenes. One where the artist discovers her in a tavern, and then when she’s nude in his studio.

“That’s the juicy bit,” she said. “The lights come up, I’m there, full-frontal nudity while the two lead characters argue about something inane, which makes it funny, me standing stock still, totally naked right there between them. Funny, right?”

She told you the name of the play, but you’d never heard of it. She’d said it was never a big hit back when it first came out, but it made money, and now this producer wanted to do a revival of it.

Seemed reason enough to have her strip down for a paying audience.

That weekend, you found her stretched out on her chaise, naked, legs spread, sunning herself in the tiny backyard behind the duplex.

“Getting rid of the granny-panty tan lines,” she said, her eyes closed, smiling up into the sun, her tits and belly glistening with grease to maximize browning.

You had to remind her that the back yard wasn’t private. Anyone in the houses on either side or behind could see her if they decided to have a look.

She shimmied herself in the chaise, clearly enjoying the idea of being spied on by the neighbors.

“If you must know, the producer took me out onto the stage after everyone left, had me strip down and do some poses to see how I would look nude under the lights. You know, like should there be more light or less light, should I be way back upstage or should I be closer to the audience downstage.”

You started to point out to her that having her naked, on stage, with everyone gone was a sure sign he was creeping on her.

But she cut you off before you could get any of that out. “The costumer—a woman, for your information—the costumer was there the whole time. She’s the one who pointed out me having a full bush was perfect for that era.”

Your mom never liked shaving between her legs, something she said your dad was keen on.

“Makes me glad—damn glad—I never let your father talk me into that.” She drew up her knees and flexed her legs wider, letting sunlight reach the nether-est of her nether regions. “The costumer did point out the tan lines, though.”

She showed off a lot of glistening pink, spread open like that.

You couldn’t see what her tan lines had to do with anything, and warned her she could burn herself that way.

“Uh, excuse me,” she said, “the play is set in France in the 1800s. Women didn’t shave themselves like that, and they certainly didn’t have tan lines.”

You don’t consider yourself at all prudish, but it sure seemed like he was softening her up for an easy score. All he did, you tell her, is come up with an excuse to get you naked and look you over because everyone’ll be looking at crotch—

“Oh, please!” she jumped in.

—and—how no one would be thinking anything about tan lines being historically accurate.

“You are a prude,” she said. “I can handle guys like him. I was chewing them up and spitting them out long before you came along.”

You reminded her that she was the one who said she’d been out of circulation too long. It just might be guys like him who do the chewing and spitting.

She was miffed. The next couple of days, the rides home were quiet. A little small talk, but she didn’t bother sharing any more backstage gossip. You pressed her, asking how it went, if the producer was still coming on to her.

“Everything is just fine.”

A few days after that, she started talking as soon as she got the car door open. She could not wait to tell you every little detail of what happened. The words came tumbling out, in a rush of squealing delight, mixing disbelief and hot indignation, topped off with just the faintest hint of delight. How he’d cornered her—honest to god cornered her—in the dressing room, and she had nothing on but a thong, and how he turned her around, started fluffing her hair. How he was getting in so close his chest hairs were tickling her nips.

“Like something out of the eighties, right? Shirt unbuttoned, curly-haired chest showing. The only thing missing were the gold chains. Did I mention this guy was Italian or Romanian? I don’t know which.”

You said that she’d mentioned it.

“Then, like he’s just now noticing my tits hanging out there in front of God and everybody, he mooshes them together! Mooshes them together, saying, like, he has to remind the costumer to use a push-up bra for the dress I’m supposed to wear in the first act.”

You reminded her that she was supposed to be nude, so what’s with the push-up bra?

“Of course I’m going to be nude. But that happens in the second act. The scene in the first act is where the artist picks me out of a crowd.”

The girl with the pushed-up breasts.

“It’s historically accurate. For France. The guy wants to make the most of the costume, is that a crime? He actually said we shouldn’t let these go to waste.” She gave herself a little squeeze with her elbows, popping them out at you, in case you weren’t paying attention. “He’s going on like this while he’s got his thumbs on my nips, holding my tits mooshed together.”

You can’t tell if she’s worked up because he’d been out-of-line, or if she was totally digging it.

“What surprised me was, strange as this was, my fucking nips were popped out. He’s going on about the costume, pretending he didn’t notice my nips getting hard.”

Yeah. She’s digging it.

“He’s still mooshing, when I realize he’s worked his knee between my legs—like I’m a fucking ingénue,” she said, frenchifying the word, her eyes wide, “and the way he’s pressing in, it’s obvious he’s got a hard-on. A fucking hard-on.”

Okay. Not unusual—if you think about it. Your still-hot mom gave this guy a hard-on.