Chapter 3: Caught, and the Game Gains a Player.

In the same email where she asked to stop the game, however, Denise also asked (sort of off-handedly, it seemed) if I ever chatted via instant message, and if so, what was my username -- she said that her username was the same as her email address.

I knew this, of course, and had even seen her online, many times. I had, however, decided to try to avoid appearing pushy or "stalkerish," and so I had never mentioned it and had remained committed to not pressing my luck, unless she invited. And ... this seemed to be a sort of invite.

The next day, mid-morning, I was working at my computer (ok, I was surfing the internet, reading stories on alt.sex.stories, not actually working), when I saw her name go active in the yahoo messenger. Long ago, I had created a username for myself to match my authorial pseudonym, and so, thinking quickly, I now logged in under it. Somewhat trepidatiously, I sent her a message.

She was more receptive than I'd hoped -- she was quite friendly and apologetic about "what had happened." I didn't pursue the subject, as I sensed her reticence, and I didn't want to seem nosy or pushy. After a bit of awkward smalltalk (about the weather -- I'd told her where I lived, a sufficiently large metropolitan area that I had no worries she'd imagine it was her brother).

After a little while, though, she suddenly volunteered that she felt like she needed to explain what had so upset her, and what had caused her to want to stop. So she began to tell me what had happened.

Lissa, her daughter (who, she explained via IM, had just turned 14 -- another one of those eerily confirming personal details, as if I still harbored doubts, but for some reason, I thought of it exactly that way, as a "real" confirmation), had apparently decided that her mom was "acting strangely" lately, and had therefore gotten nosy.

Unfortunately, it hadn't taken much for Denise to "get caught" -- she said that, regrettably, she'd been stupid enough to 1) print out copies of the emails we'd been trading, and 2) leave the large pink dildo lying with them.

So, the fact was, Lissa hadn't even had to nose around by logging on to her mom's computer. It had all been out there "for inspection," as she explained: Lissa found the emails and the "giant dildo" in the top drawer of her mom's computer desk in the home-office/den -- I could visualize the desk and den clearly, and I had a stunningly intense vision of my niece Melissa popping open the drawer and hefting the pink object with an expression of combined curiosity and disgust on her face.

Of course, Denise might never have known what Lissa had discovered if she hadn't walked in on her daughter as she was "inspecting the evidence." Placed on the defensive, she'd confronted her mother, and seemed very upset, indeed.

Denise went into some detail on her "fight" with her daughter, in which Melissa threw at her an accusation that Denise was, in fact, engaging in the exact sort of "risky behavior" that would have left Lissa "grounded for life" -- i.e. Denise was chatting about sex with strangers from the internet.

It had, as mother-daughter confrontations often do, lead to a very tearful and heartfelt talk, but the conclusion Denise had reached, though frustrating for her, was that she should stop the game.

I agreed during our IM conversation that it would be awkward to continue. And I really did believe that -- it was simply too weird and inappropriate to move forward. "At least for now," I added in an unrealistically hopeful parenthesis. And so, that's where it lay.

-.:.-

Over the next month or so, Denise and I continued to share an occasional email, but things were oddly vacant, and definitely quite impersonal, after the intensity of those weeks. Then, two weeks before thanksgiving, I got a short email from Denise in which she said she had a "serious question," and to IM her sometime.

Later that night, I saw her come online, and so I sent her a hello. She began by saying not to take anything she said the wrong way, but that she had something that was bothering her, and she felt she could talk to me about it "safely."

"What's up?" I asked.

She digressed, saying that she'd recently discovered my "other" story -- the earlier one (involving the incestual game of truth or dare). I was surprised, thinking she'd known about both of them all along.

"No," she said, and, added that in fact, she might not have emailed me in the first place, if she'd seen the earlier one. Uh oh, I thought.

"Please, just hear me out," she went on. She said her first reaction was that it was very "gross" and that it was inappropriate. But then, she said, she realized she was a hypocrite.

Hm, this was going to be interesting, I thought. "Why's that?" I asked.

"Here's what happened," she continued. About a week after Lissa discovered her "secret life," her daughter had come to her, and confessed that it was she who'd made Denise's other dildo "disappear" -- the one Denise had told me had gone missing some months back. Further, Lissa said that she had been "thinking about things," and had decided that it wasn't fair for her to not let her mom "have fun" and that she [Lissa] felt like a hypocrite.

The catch was -- and apparently it took quite a while to get Lissa to explain to Denise what she was getting at -- Lissa had decided that if mom was to be allowed to "play," then it was only fair that Lissa should be allowed to play, also.

"What in the world do you have in mind?" Denise quoted herself as asking her daughter, and continued her self-quote, "I don't think people like Finn are easy to find." ("Finn" was the name I'd given her as my "real" name — something to go behind my authorial pseudonym from the alt.sex.stories newsgroup.)

She went on to tell Lissa that Finn probably "wasn't safe," for that matter. Basically, Denise trying to admit that the risk had, in fact, been unacceptable, and that Lissa had been right to challenge her on it.

But Lissa had asked, earnestly, "it seems like you do trust him, don't you, mom?" Denise had nodded, yes. More talk, more protestations, and finally, net result was, Lissa basically had asked to be allowed to "play too." Meaning what? "Finn could give us BOTH tasks," she insisted to her mom. "Finn," of course, meaning me -- Denise's brother. Whoa.

Denise continued her narration: she had felt angry, once she understood what Lissa was getting at. Outraged. "No way," she'd insisted. There was something just too weird about doing sexual dares "as a mother-daughter team or something."

Denise paraphrased her daughter at length, then:

"Don't be a hypocrite, mom," Lissa had argued. "Don't you think it would be a great way for me to have some fun, in a relatively safe way? I'm a pretty shy girl, no guy has asked me on a date (not that I wanted to date those stupid guys from school, anyway, and not that you would let me, right?), but I'm 14. I'm a curious, normal, teenager, and of course my hormones are out of control."

To be honest, I was surprised at the maturity of the dialogue (assuming it was being accurately reported), considering it was between mother and teenaged daughter. But I reflected that it was only to be expected -- I knew Denise was a committed, decent, but liberal-minded parent.

Denise reported further, Lissa saying, "At least this way, you'd know I wasn't sneaking out on you, behind your back, or doing dangerous stuff with guys you didn't even know about, like some other girls do. And I could get to have some fun, and experience some cool stuff. Right?"

Finally, Denise summarized: as things stood, the answer from her to her daughter was still a resounding NO. She'd not even indicated it was open to discussion, and Lissa was "off sulking," according the her mother's description. That had been nine days ago.

But, meanwhile, Denise had nevertheless been giving it some hard thought. Also, Lissa had been not-so-subtly pressuring ... saying things like "don't you wish you had a hot little task today, mom?" or even, "I sure am horny, mom."