Denise Bryant - Mother and Daughter

And why should I delude myself with the idea that Colby was not having relations with Kathy? They were alone almost every night. There was the car for them to do it in. There was our room at the motel. Why else would a 29-year-old man continue dating a 15-year-old girl… even if he did think she was 18?

Eighteen! Of course. That even made it plainer. And it made me feel a little bit better about what they might think of us. Funny, that I should be as concerned over that as my daughter's virginity. It was then that I determined to stay up until Kathy arrived so that we could have that talk before the summer was over.

I had nearly gone off to sleep sitting up in a chair when I heard her coming in at 4:15 in the morning. She looked so lovely as she walked over to give me a kiss. Her face was radiant and the lack of any make-up pointed up her natural beauty as she knelt there beneath the lamp and looked up at me.

“I've been proposed to, Mother,” she stated with a tone of pride in her voice, then danced across the floor and tossed her purse on the bed. “How did you make out? Did you get a proposal too? Did you have a good time with your old friend?”

“Proposed to?” I questioned, ignoring her queries as I sat up straight and took a sip from my watered down scotch with no more ice in it. “How can you be proposed to by a married man?”

“Oh, he'll be unmarried next month,” she told me with the assurance of gullible youth, “and we can have a honeymoon in Europe and live in a big house up on Massachusetts Bay. Oh, Mother, think how everyone would talk about me back at school… Kathy Bryant married a rich man from Massachusetts and she's having a honeymoon in Europe and…”

“Have you told him you are fifteen years old?” I demanded, standing up and yelling at her, my face contorting angrily as I raved on at her. “Have you told him? Does he know that I could call the police and have him arrested for staying out all night with a minor child and doing… doing things that are called statutory rape in a court of law?”

“Mother…?” Kathy said questioningly, looking at me with an absolutely genuine expression of deep hurt. “You don't think that I did anything that…”

“Oh, Kathy!” I stormed at her, lighting a cigarette, “I'm not dumb. I'm not a stupid woman. Why would a 29-year-old married man be going around with you all summer? Why was Chillie, that delinquent drop-out goon last summer, after you all the time? I don't think you've been holding hands on the beach until four o'clock in the morning, Kathy?”

“Why would Colby date me all summer long?” she came back at me in tears, her arms outstretched, “Mother, this is why I wanted to talk to you. I know… I know why Colby sticks with me. I want to think that he likes me or loves me or really wants to get married. I want to think that. But I know the real reason he keeps going with me is because he thinks, every night, that the next night is going to be the night he can do it to me!

Mother! I'm still a virgin! You may not believe it and nobody else may believe it. But I know that I'm still a virgin! Oh… sure. I talk up a good screw. That's what they say at school. I can talk like a tramp and people think I'm doing everything with every guy I date. I don't care! I know I'm not!”

“Kathy…” I tried to stop her, wanting to talk about it more rationally, wanting to listen and believe her, “Let's…”

“Let me finish first… please,” she requested, kneeling on the floor and looking up at me.

“Mother… I have had boys make me so turned on I could taste them. Oh, I've wanted to get laid in the worst kind of way. When Colby had me over at their place tonight alone, I was fighting… I was fighting the most I ever had. He's a lover, Mother… a real lover. He had his finger… in me! I've let guys at home do that before, I let Chillie do it last summer… but Colby knows how to do it so you just feel so crazy and jazzy you'll do anything!

“But I didn't do it! Mother, I want to be a virgin until I get married… Mother? You… you don't believe I'm a virgin…”

“Kathy… Kathy, darling,” I tried to quiet her, feeling like an absolute heel, reaching down and drawing her close to me. “I think I've been a terrible…”

“No!” she screamed, pulling away from me and standing up, taking off her clothes hurriedly. “You won't believe what I saw. You have to believe me now. Here… you're a woman. Feel! Here… feel!”

Kathy lay sprawled across the bed naked with her legs apart. She spread the lips of her vulva and repeated her request so very urgently. Something seemed to click in my mind about bathing her as a baby, but then I remembered what Cindy had told me about her mother, and I was briefly aware of the idea that I might be just torturing myself unduly, trying to imagine all kinds of terrible things that were not even involved.

“Kathy, honey,” I told her with a nervous and very insecure laugh. “I'm… not even sure I could tell. How… would I know…?”

“You should know? You're a woman,” she said, very convinced, “Colby says he can tell by putting his finger way up there. Here…”

I did it. I tried to throw all my fears aside. I sat right down on the bed beside her and I did it. I don't know whether I could really feel the hymen or not, but it didn't take any medical knowledge to convince me how wrong I'd been. It was impossible to get two fingers inside her very far at all. And my index finger went in very tightly and seemed to be obstructed by something as I tried to push it in its full length.

It surprised me that she was still so lubricated, but then I assumed that she and Colby had been kissing and stimulating each other out in the car right up until the time she had come in.

“Mother… oh… what am I supposed to do?” she asked me as I withdrew my finger. “How can you keep holding out? There must be something…”

“Will you forgive me, darling?” I interrupted, almost breaking into tears as I embraced her very closely, pushing the hair back from her eyes and pressing my lips to hers briefly. “Will you forgive me for being such a fool, having so many doubts, not trusting you… my only daughter whom I love so dearly?”

“Of course, I will,” Kathy said at once, putting her arm around me, “1 know part of it's my fault because I'm such a tease and I like to turn people on. Everybody thinks I'm giving out like everything, but I'm not. I go right up to a point and then I turn off because I have to. But how do you keep on doing that? Two girls in my class are pregnant already because they went one step farther.”

“Maybe you shouldn't let the boys go so far,” I advised, finding myself admiring her nakedness, but uncertain of my emotions. “Maybe you should go only so far as a kiss or two and stop then, before you get so excited.”

“I tried that, and I went without a date for eight weeks one time,” she told me, standing up to admire herself in the mirror. “The nicey-nice boys, the ones I'm not really wild about anyway because they're too goody and not any fun, they won't date me now anyway. Big deal. No great loss for me, I can tell you that. So that leaves only the guys who are going to try to get in your pants no matter what. The only trick is to keep them interested and be able to say no when the thing gets there… keep your legs so tight together they can't get it in.”

“You've gone that far?”

“Oh, Mother!” she said exasperatedly, plopping on the bed again, “I thought you were going to talk to me, and understand, and try to help me. Please don't be a stupid parent. Be my friend.”

“Well… I'll try, darling,” I attempted to assure her, becoming strangely curious and setting on the bed beside her, “Just… how often do you get into one of these situations where you… where your date has his penis out and tries to… enter you?”