It had been a hard night for me. I had been up until almost three hitting the books to get ready for exams. I was sitting at the breakfast bar just off the kitchen when my mother slid a plate of bacon and eggs in front of me and asked, "So honey, have you got a date for the prom yet?"

"No mom, I'm not going."

"Not going? You have to honey, it is part of the experience."

"I just don't want to go."

"Why not honey, what's wrong?"

Normally I would have said nothing was wrong and just ducked the question, but I guess I was tired from being up most of the night and my mind wasn't clear. "I'm not going because I can't get a date."

We had only been in town for a year. Dad's company had promoted him to be the plant manager at their plant in this city and the family had been uprooted from its comfortable and settled existence and moved thirteen hundred miles. I was a shy kid and I was slow to make friends. It had taken me years to make the friends that I had in my old school. There was also the matter of my age. I had missed a semester because of a broken leg and I was nineteen to everyone else's eighteen. That, the shyness and the fact that I was pretty much considered a nerd, plus my being new in school and that all added up to no new friends.

As nerds go I wasn't the kind that you imagine when you hear the term. I didn't have Coke bottle glasses and pocket protectors full of pencils and pens. What made me a nerd to my classmates was that I always had my head stuck in a book and in class whenever a question was asked my hand was always the first one raised. It didn't help any that my answers were always right.

I wasn't a bad looking guy and even though I had no interest in sports I was in pretty good physical shape. In fact, I was in better shape than most of the jocks. That was my mother's doing. She is a fanatic on physical fitness and she has her own mini-gym down in our basement. One day I was sitting with my dad watching a football game and my mother called me into the kitchen. I went to see what she wanted and I found her sitting at the kitchen table going through an old picture album.

"Do me a favor honey and look out into the living room and take a really good look at your dad."

I did what she wanted and what I saw was a forty year old man with a beer belly sitting in front of the TV with a beer in his hand and a half a dozen empties on the floor. Don't get me wrong here, I love my dad and I'm not disparaging him, I'm just stating what I saw. I went back into the kitchen and my mom told me to sit down. She opened the scrapbook, pointed at a picture and told me to look at it.

"That is your dad when we got married."

I looked at the picture of the tall, slim guy and there was no way that they could have been the same guy. Before I could say anything my mom said, "Your father works hard honey and his idea of relaxing when he gets home is to drink beer and watch TV. It is not good for him and I've tried to get him to exercise, but he just won't do it. I don't want you to look like that when you are his age. You dad is a heart attack just waiting to happen. I'm hoping that I can get you to start working out now so you get into the routine, into the habit. It's up to you honey, I can't make you do it, but I wish you would."

I did and I've been doing it three days a week for four years now and it shows. But even though I'm not bad looking and I'm in pretty good shape I am still a nerd to others and the two girls I did feel I knew well enough to ask to the prom both turned me down.

Mom's response to "I can't get a date" was "Then I guess we will just have to do something about that. I didn't get to go to my prom and I've always been sorry that I missed it. We will find a way to get you there honey, just leave it to me."

Two days later I came home from school to find mom sitting at the kitchen table looking through her scrapbooks. "Just looking to see what the girls wore to the prom. I couldn't go, but my cousin Mary went and she took pictures for me."

"Why couldn't you go?"

"Because I was busy with you honey and because my mother said I would embarrass her if I went to the prom eight months pregnant."

I hadn't known that and I asked about it. Mom had fallen in love with a college guy (my dad) who was seven years older than she was and one thing had led to another and she had gotten pregnant. It was only the fact that grandma wanted to protect the family's good name and avoid a scandal that kept them from having dad arrested for statutory rape. But even then they refused to let mom and dad get married until dad went and saw a lawyer and found out that in our state once a woman has a child she is no longer considered a minor. Mom and dad married as soon as I was born and grandma had never forgiven either of them. That went a long way toward explaining why mom looked so young and dad didn't.

Mom closed the scrapbook and said, "I've made all the arrangements. The limo will be here at six and the appointment to fit you for your tux is at four tomorrow."

"Mom, I told you that I don't have a date - I'm not going!"

"You have a date honey, I told you, I made all the arrangements."

"You got me a date?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"Me."

It took her a long time to talk me into it. First I said, "No way! I can hear it now; "Derek had to bring his mommy to the prom. Derek is a mommy's boy, Derek is a mommy's boy." My reputation as a nerd was bad enough without piling that on top of it.

But mom beat down every argument I put forth. "First honey, none of your teachers has ever met me so the chaperones won't know who I am and none of the kids you go to school with have ever seen me so they won't know either. I look ten years younger than I am and you look two years older than you are so all they are going to see is a good looking guy with an older girlfriend. Just think what that will do for your reputation."

I was still leery, but in the end I caved in, more to please my mom than for any other reason.

"Don't you worry baby, I'll make you proud."

She did and before we even left the house. She was an absolute knock out. The way she dressed, the way she did her hair and makeup made her look like a twenty-three year old and I began to think that we might just pull it off. As we were leaving mom told dad not to wait up for us. "I have a hunch that Derek is going to get invited to several after prom parties so we will probably be pretty late getting home." Dad said, "Have fun" as he opened another beer and reached for the remote.

To say that mom got attention would be an understatement. The guys were all looking at her with lust in their eyes which made all the girls look at her with hatred and envy. Several guys asked me if they could dance with her and I was reluctant, but Kathy (which is what I had to call her for the night) said, "Come on sweetie, don't be greedy. You have me all the time." I was sitting at the table watching her dance with one of the guys when a guy I knew from Spanish class came over and joined me.

"I'm having a party after the prom and you're invited if you would care to come."

"I'll ask my girlfriend and if she's willing we'll be there."

By the time the last dance rolled around I had been invited to three parties and don't think that I didn't know that it was because of mom. Mom said that we would hit all three of them because it was necessary to keep "my exposure level high." I asked her what she meant by that and she told me about one of her visits to the bathroom. There had been six or seven girls there fixing makeup and washing hands and one of them had asked her what she was doing with the geek. "Geek? What do you mean geek?"

"Your date, what's his name, Derek?"

"Yes, his name is Derek."

"Well, everyone is wondering what you are doing here with him. I mean you are an obviously together chick and he's such a, well... a geek."

"What makes him a geek to you?"

"He's not like the other guys. He doesn't play football, basketball or any of the other sports and he always has his head in a book. I mean, like he belongs to the Chess Club for Christ's sake."

"And that makes him a geek?"

"Well like, yeah I guess."

"So he's not a jock, he'd rather be smart than dumb, and that makes him a geek? Well let me ask you something. When was the last time one of your jocks ate your pussy and gave you an orgasm? Do the jocks know where all your buttons are and just how to push them? For you girls who have given up your cherries, do your jock boyfriends keep it up long enough to get you off, or do they get their rocks off, say thanks babe and leave you hanging? Derek might be a geek by your definition, but some woman somewhere taught him right. I might be five years older than he is, but he is the best and most considerate lover I've ever had, geek or no geek." And then she had walked out and left staring open mouthed after her.

"But mom, I don't know or do any of those things."

"You will honey, you will."

We didn't make it to all the parties that night; we didn't make it past the first one. The downstairs of Phil's house was a large recreation room and everything had been pushed into corners to make a dance floor. There was a keg and some wine punch and some heavier stuff for the more adventurous and I even caught a whiff of grass a time or two. Mom, excuse me, I mean Kathy, was as popular at the party as she had been at the prom and I had more people come up and talk to me at that party than I'd had talk to me during the entire school year. Surprisingly a lot of them were girls, including the two who had turned me down. I was having such a good time that I kind of lost track of Kathy. One minute she was on the dance floor and the next minute she was gone. I started looking for her and when I saw Phil I asked him if he'd seen her.

"Yeah, I saw her go upstairs with Sam. I don't know where you found her, but she is one hot broad."

All I could do was smile, "Yeah, she is, isn't she."

I went upstairs looking for her. I saw a guy coming down the stairs and I asked him if he had seen my date. "She's upstairs. Hey man, you are one cool dude. Not many guys would be willing to share something that hot."

I didn't have a clue as to what he was talking about so I just smiled and headed up the stairs. Just as I reached the top a guy I knew from Chemistry class was coming down the hall. He stuck his hand out, "Hey Derek, my new best friend. Thanks guy, I owe you a big one." I smiled, shook his hand and wondered just what in the hell was going on. There was one open door off the hall and I headed for it and when I got there I looked in and my jaw dropped to the floor. There was mom naked on the bed and a guy from Physics class was between her legs. Mom had her legs wrapped around him and I could see the nails of her hands biting into his butt cheeks. Her head was tossing from side to side and she was moaning, "Oh yes, oh yes, so good, oh so good" as the guy fucked her. I looked around the room and saw five or six guys in various states of undress. All of a sudden I knew why I was Stan's new best friend, why Harry thought I was a cool dude and why Phil thought that my date was one hot broad.