Chapter 1

You’re going to think this is a sad story, because it starts out sad. But don’t be sad for long, brothers and sisters, because it ends up pretty okay, at least to me it does. I’m Bobby, by the way, Bobby Henderson. That really doesn’t matter to the story, except that it’s about me and my mother, Claire Henderson. There are a few other people in it too, but they only matter a little. I’ll mention them later.

My mom’s story starts out like a lot of people hope their adult lives will start, with a good marriage to a good man who gave her a good baby - that’s me - and they were pretty happy, all things considered. But my father was killed in an accident at the plant and things sort of went to shit starting then.

I was only six at the time, and I don’t really remember too much about him. I do remember my mother crying every night for a long long time after she told me he wouldn’t be coming home any more. She told me later that, in my six year old style, I tried to make her feel better, telling her that I loved her and that it was going to be okay. That’s what she told me whenever something I thought was bad had happened. You know ... scraped knee, hit by a baseball, stepped on a nail ... that kind of thing. So, when I heard her crying I said the same things to her. As strange as it sounds, the words I said to her when I was six had a profound impact on our relationship, and would continue to have that impact for years and years. More about that later.

There was a huge insurance settlement that meant my mom didn’t have to work. She loved being a mother, and, as I was her only child (she had a miscarriage a year before Dad died) she had no one else to pour her love onto except me. I think all that love she had left over from loving my father got poured on me too, but that part comes later too.

It was 1956 then, and attitudes about single mothers were different then than they are today. A widow woman in those days didn’t have much to hope for unless she was wealthy. We were, but I didn’t know it then. Mom was approached by all kinds of gold digging guys who brought her flowers and candy and the like, but she rebuffed them all. Later she told me she felt like Daddy could see her and it just seemed dirty to do the things those men wanted her to do. So, being independently secure financially, she bent her attentions to a lot of volunteer kinds of things. She was a teacher aide, and a Red Cross Donut Dolly, and she worked at the homeless shelter sometimes. She went to the library, taking me with her, and read stories to children one evening a week. I loved all those stories, and her sweet mellow voice as she read them. She had a knack for making up voices to go with the characters in the stories. She even made up a deep raspy voice when a troll spoke, and she actually sounded scary! To me at least.

And in the evenings we played games and watched TV and she asked me all about school and my friends.

My favorite time was bath time. In those days you didn’t take a bath every single day, like people do now. You took a bath when you needed one, and that was about it. A lot depended on what you did during the day. If you got hot and sweaty, you took a bath. If you didn’t do anything except sit in class, or something like that, you might not. I played outside quite a bit, with other kids in the neighborhood, so I needed a bath more often than Mom did.

The first bath I remember for sure was when I was maybe ten. I have vague memories of baths before that. Whenever mom took a bath, she put me in the tub too. It was really no different than it was any other time. As she washed herself, and me, we’d talk about things and she’d tell me stories. I do remember the feel of her soft hands sliding around on my body ... across my chest, or back, or along my arms. It felt good when she touched me. And I remember that almost every single time she gave me a bath she told me what a big, strong boy I was, and how handsome I was. She said other things too, but I remember those the most.

What happened when I was ten that made me never forget it, was that she was sitting down in the tub, soapy water just under her breasts, and I was standing up while she washed my legs. We’d done it this way a thousand times.

But this time I got an erection.

Of course I didn’t know that’s what it was called then, but my little ten year old pecker reared it’s puny head and stuck straight out from my body like a flag pole off the facade at Macy’s. It was pointing right at Mom’s face like a little toy rifle. She never blinked an eye. When her hands slid down my belly they slid onto that stiff little thing and she washed it too.

“You’re a handsome boy Bobby. And a big, strong boy,” she said, like she’d said a thousand times before. “And you’ve got a big strong handsome penis that you can be very proud of.”

That was the first time I ever heard the word “penis”. All my friends called it a “dick”, but the way they said it communicated that it was a dirty word, so I never used that word around my mother.

Her hand slid under my penis to the little empty sack that was under there, more of a bulge than anything else.She cupped that bulge tenderly.

“And someday you’re going to have big strong handsome testicles that will be all full of nice sperm for some lucky girl.”

Now she was talking a foreign language, but her voice sounded mellow and sweet, like always, and I just assumed that whatever she was talking about was a good thing.

Then it was my turn to wash her. It had been my job, for as long as I could remember, to wash her back, and her hair, and I liked doing it. Her back was smooth and slippery in the bath water, and her skin felt good to my hands, like her hands felt good to my skin.

So I got behind her and washed her back and she handed me the shampoo like she had a thousand times before. We had a cup that we kept by the tub and we used that to capture fresh water to do her hair with. I loved pouring that cup of water over her head while she sputtered and acted funny. And I was rubbing my hands through her hair, getting up a good lather and my penis kept touching the back of her neck. It felt good doing that and I leaned forward a little, poking her more. She turned her head around and looked at what was poking her and then looked up at me with something in her eyes that made me feel all warm inside. Then she turned around and I finished up and poured three or four cups of water on her head while she sputtered and complained that she was drowning and called for help in a cartoon character’s voice.

We dried each other off too. When she was drying me she dried my still-hard penis and I asked her: “Is it going to stay like that forever?”

She smiled and said, “No, it will get soft again. They always get soft again. It’s too bad, really, because they’re a lot more fun when they’re hard.”

I didn’t understand that either, but my worry that my pants would stick out at school went away. It did get soft later, when I was in bed.

But it got hard again the next time we bathed.

In fact it got hard again every time we bathed after that. She never acted like it was anything to worry about, so I didn’t worry either. She started washing it more than she had in the past, though, and it felt wonderful when she did that. Her hand covered it, leaving about half an inch left over and, as she slid her hand back and forth to get that half inch clean too I got that warm feeling again, like when her big brown eyes had stared into mine.

By the time I was twelve, she was washing my penis for ten minutes at a time. I had to have the cleanest penis in town, but I didn’t care, because it felt fabulous when she did that. I was too tall to wash her hair if she was sitting down now, and she got to her knees when it was time to wash her back and hair, and now my hard dick poked into her back, I got my body right up next to hers when I did her hair, rubbing my dick all over her back because it felt so good.

Then one day she was washing my penis when I felt something happening in my groin. It was a kind of pain, but it was a pain that felt good somehow. It made me bend my knees. But it happened so fast that I got scared. I made a noise and Mom looked up at me and I guess my face was showing something because she stopped.

Something made me say, “Please don’t stop.”

“What’s happening Bobby?” she asked me.

“I don’t know. It feels funny and it hurts kind of, but I want you to keep doing that.”

And she started again, staring up at my face. The pain rushed back at me again and my gut clenched and it was awful ... except that it was fabulous too! The pain streaked through my dick and it was so powerful that I had to sit down. I splashed water everywhere and bumped my head on the back of the tub. Mom was up and over me in a flash, worry in her eyes. I blinked and then grinned what must have been a funny looking grin because she laughed. She had the nicest, most musical laugh and all my worry that something bad had happened just fled. My dick felt wonderful.

“Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay. My big strong boy is close to being a big strong man,” she said. She leaned forward and kissed me on my forehead. And, like I said earlier, those words made me feel like everything was fine. What had happened was strange, and a little scary, but if she said it was going to be okay, then it was going to be okay.

Not long after that Jimmy Thompson snuck one of his father’s Playboys into school and, at recess, he was showing it to a bunch of us boys. He opened it to the middle and there was a picture of a naked woman, standing by a bathtub. She was blond and had on a lot of makeup, and she looked different than my mother. The guys were saying things like “Oh man!” and “Look at those tits!” and “You can almost see her pussy! and “Shiiit she’s sooo sexy.” These guys were salivating all over this picture and I couldn’t figure it out. I’d seen it all before, and much closer and in person, and I’d probably see again that night. But I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut about it.

That was the first time I realized that maybe ... just maybe, the other boys didn’t take baths with their mothers. I mean all us guys took showers after gym, and I washed myself perfectly well in there and didn’t think a thing about it. But taking baths with my mother was just as normal, and I didn’t think anything about that either. At least not until Jimmy brought that Playboy to school.

Andrew Tucker bawled that he was getting a hardon and grabbed his crotch. Two other guys said they were too and I realized it was because they were looking at a picture of a naked woman.

I learned a lot that day. the rest of the day I thought about those hardons I got in the bathtub ... when my mother was naked.

And, to my credit (as she told me later), I asked my mother about it as we were getting ready to take a bath that night.

“Mom, can I ask you a question?” I said.

“Sure honey,” was her completely normal reply.

So I told her about the Playboy, and about what the guys had all said, and about their erections.

She had been taking off her blouse, but she stopped as I talked. I had already taken off my shirt and was standing there in jeans and socks.

She didn’t say anything for a minute, and she was looking everywhere except at me. I remembered I hadn’t actually asked the question.

“So my question is, do I get hardons in the bathtub because I think you’re sexy?”

Now she looked at me. “Do you think I’m sexy?” she asked.

“I guess so. You look just like the woman in the magazine, and they said she’s sexy.”

Now I should tell you that I was about to turn thirteen, which made my mother thirty-two. And she did look like the woman in the playboy. Her breasts were different. The woman in the magazine had big round breasts that bulged off her chest and looked like they weighed a lot. The rest of her was normal. I mean she wasn’t fat or anything. My mother’s breasts came out from her chest and then turned upwards almost, coming to a point. The tips were darker pink than the rest of her and they kind of looked like eyes that were looking in different directions, one looking slightly to the right and the other slightly to the left. In one way they looked kind of like little ski slopes or something on the tops. The bottoms were round, like that woman’s in the magazine.

Like I said, she wasn’t fat. Her waist was narrow above hips that spread out and then dipped back in where her legs started. She didn’t wear lots of makeup or anything, so her face looked plain, but I had seen her in makeup when she was going to a party or someplace where grownups did whatever they did, and she looked like the woman in the magazine then too.

“Well, I knew this would happen some day,” she said with a sigh. “I guess it’s time we had a talk.” she started buttoning up her blouse. “And I guess there won’t be any more baths together.”

I thought I’d done something horribly wrong. I felt my heart pounding in my chest and my eyes got full of tears and I said, “Please Mom, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. Please don’t be mad at me.”

She looked startled and said, “Whatever are you talking about Bobby?”

“I don’t know!” I wailed. “But if we can’t have baths together any more you must be mad at me, and I don’t know why you’re mad, but I promise I won’t ever do it again. Please don’t make us stop.” I had suddenly equated bathing with my mother as a pleasure that was a privilege ... that could be taken away for bad behavior.

She got that look in her eyes again and she jumped up and hugged me tight. “Oh, I’m sorry baby,” she said in those soothing mother tones. “I’m not mad at you. Not at all. You’re a fine young man, and I love you very much. But we need to talk about some things.”

I wiped my eyes, ashamed I was crying. Boys didn’t cry in those days.

“Can’t we talk about it in the bathtub, like always?” I begged.

She looked startled. When I later thought back on it, while I just thought we were taking baths and feeling good, she knew exactly what was going on in the bathtub, and she assumed I did too.

She sat down on the toilet. “Maybe we can talk about it in the bath. But I have to ask you a question first. What do you know about sex?”

“Sex?” I said. “I don’t know. It’s how babies are made?” I asked hopefully.

“Do you know what two people do to make a baby?” she asked patiently.

I was lost. I heard the guys talking about tits and pussies and dicks all the time, and “getting it on” was mentioned a lot too, but it was all just words to me. I mean if somebody had never seen a car and they heard the words “bumper ... clutch ... taillight ... headliner” would they understand how a car was made?

So, to my credit (as she later told me), I told the truth. “I don’t think so.”

She frowned and bit her lip. Then she said, “Bobby, when you see me naked, what do you think about?”

Now what kind of question was that? I was trying to please her, to make her happy so we could take a bath and I’d get to wash her hair and rub my dick against her back, but I didn’t know the right answers.

“I don’t know.” I started. “I think about how pretty you are, and about how good it will feel to wash your back, and about playing with the soap in your hair to make it stand up straight like Alfalfa’s cowlick on the Little Rascals.”

“Do you like it when I wash your penis?” she asked.

“Sure, it feels great,” I said back. “It’s my favorite part, especially when I get that pain that feels so good.”

“Do you know what that nice feeling is called?” she asked, looking curious now.

“It has a name?” I asked, surprised.

She muttered “What are they teaching kids in school nowadays?” and then looked up at me. I realized she hadn’t been asking me that question. That warm look that I liked so much was in her eyes. I could almost fall into those eyes when she did that. They looked like big pools of liquid chocolate or something. And of all the things I felt my penis start getting hard. She stood up./p>

“Bobby, I’m going to have to teach you about sex. It’s obvious the school isn’t doing it.” Neither of us knew that the sex ed part of Health wouldn’t take place until the year I’d be fourteen, which was a whole year away. “There are things you need to know about, but it’s complicated. And I don’t want you talking with the other boys about anything we discuss. Deal?”

She was unbuttoning her blouse again and the relief that flooded over me was so strong that my eyes teared up again. I snorted and gulped and rubbed my nose and said “Okay ... deal.”

So I got the lecture on the birds and the bees from my mother ... in the bathroom ... naked as a jaybird ... with visual aides.

When we were both naked, instead of getting in the bathtub she sat down on the toilet seat and told me to stand in front of her. She reached out and cupped my stiff penis and balls in her hand. “These are what the man needs for sex,” she said, hefting them. My penis got harder. “The testicles are located in here.” She fingered the sack that, a year ago had been small and empty but which, since then, had grown something in there that hurt if I squeezed them too hard. I had been worried about that. I was afraid I had cancer or something. I wanted to talk to mom about it, but I was afraid, so I never did. Now, just by describing my sexual organs to me, she put my mind at ease. “And, when you’re old enough, the testicles will make sperm.” She played with them a little longer. “Your friends probably call these your balls,” she said.