Denise Bryant - Mother and Daughter

“I think it is,” Kathy insisted, and she seemed the most serious I had ever seen her, “Mother, if anyone can understand about me, I know you can. At night… I can't sleep when I hear you and Bob in the bed together. I can't sleep and it… I know it's wrong, Mother, but it turns me on. Oh, gee, I've heard you getting kicks in there with him, and I can't sleep!

“That's why… well, I didn't know any kids here this summer, and when Ricky called for you last month… I pretended I was you on the telephone.”

“You what?” I exploded, clamping my hand up to my mouth, not knowing what to say.

“Yes, Mother,” Kathy said with a nod, a slightly triumphant and knowing smile trying to show itself, “He thought I was you to start with because when I answered, he said 'Denise?' in such a sexy voice. And I just felt like changing my voice a little and making it low like yours, and I said, 'Yes, darling.'

“So, that's how it started. You can imagine some of the things he said, and I just kept saying, 'Yes, darling.' It was a riot, Mother. Oh, I know I shouldn't be joking about it. I know that, Mother, and I'm not joking about it. You have no idea how close it made me feel to you..

“How close?” I questioned, so beside myself with shock I was hardly conscious of everything she was saying. “How could it?”

“Mother, don't you understand?” she asked, kneeling beside me once again with a look in her eyes that bespoke a genuine kind of love. “I know! You don't have to try to hide anything from me. I'm not ashamed of you. I know that you're like me, Mother. You have to have it too. When Ricky… started telling me on the phone how he wanted you to do things to him… how you ate him raw and everything… oo-oo-oh, I just got so jazzy!”

“But how… did you meet him, if… he thought you were me?” I asked bewilderedly.

“Oh… ha-ha… that took some doing,” she said with a funny laugh that I seemed to remember from more innocent times. “I was afraid to talk too much, or he would know it wasn't you. I told him that 'my daughter' was visiting me and just dying to meet him. The rest was easy. I had him come by in the afternoons when you weren't here and when Bob was gone too.”

“So… you think your mother's a nymphomaniac?” I found myself saying blankly, too numbed to think or plan what I was saying, “You think your mother's a tramp, and you can be a tramp too. Yes… I suppose you would think that-shacking up with a man here at the house like this seducing schoolboys on the side. Would you like me to tell you the rest, Kathy? Surely, you want to hear about the man who pays mother thirty dollars to watch me pull up my dress and masturbate? Or the married man who likes for me to spank his bare bottom? Or the preacher who runs in for a quick… kiss on the penis and pays me ten dollars. Oh, if you think… think you're such a nymphomaniac… maybe you'd like to try five men at once! I have, Kathy! What do you think of that?”

“Oh, Mother! Mother! I love you!” she screamed, in tears as she threw her arms around me and hugged me so very tight. “I don't care what you've done, Mother. Don't you understand… that I understand? Can't you understand me now? I love you and I need you, Mother. I don't… have anybody else…”

Kathy crawled up on my lap and held my head close to hers. Her warm lips pressed on my cheeks, and I was overwhelmed with her love. We both cried our fill, and then stayed there in each others' arms for several minutes. I couldn't think of anything to say. The dirty feeling was not as bad as it was, but I kept thinking of Ricky. He had made love to both mother and daughter. The thought kept running through my mind and it would not go away.

Bob did not come home that night, and at about one in the morning, Kathy knocked on my bedroom door and asked if she could get in bed with me. We talked for a while about several things there in the darkness, our arms sometimes around each other, or our hands entwined.

“Mother… it's not wrong or… or perverted to do that is it?” she asked about going down on a man. “You do it, don't you?”

“It's not wrong,” I assured her, but realized that I couldn't just outwardly condone complete promiscuity. “It's something… well, like any kind of sex. You should be in love. You should find a boy you deeply love and discover a spiritual oneness with.”

“No… I'm not like that,” she admitted, kissing my forehead. “I've even thought of having sex with Bob. He can turn me on sometimes… like when I hear him making love with you, or see him kissing you. I peeped in the den one night and saw him kissing your breasts. I was so turned on I… I made it myself that night.”

“How many times have you and Ricky… made love?”

“Three times,” she told me readily, adding, “and he's the only boy I've ever eaten raw…”

“Kathy! Where in the world did you get that expression?”

“Oh… that,” she laughed at my tone of voice, “The kids say it at school. Like if you want to tell a guy to get lost, you say, 'Aw… eat me raw.' Everybody knows what it means.”

“And… have any boys done that to you?” I found myself inquiring.

“No… no boys,” she said, seeming to emphasize the last word, then deciding to tell me all, “but there was a man… a real beautiful man. Oh, I know it sounds terrible, but it really wasn't. Joby Clark, he's the big disc jockey back home. I used to call him up in the afternoons and talk and yak, and so he asked me for a date.

“I… I kind of knew he was married. But Joby Clark! My gosh, Mother, any girl would die to have a date with Joby Clark. I met him down at the station that afternoon when he signed oft the lights, and I was dancing there in the dark with Joby Clark.

“He told me what a pretty girl he thought I was. Oh, Mother, the music was just all over the studio. It was super! And when he said how he liked my legs… his hands were on my legs. I… I couldn't see what he was doing until I felt him kissing my legs, up, up, up… and then zoo-oom! Oo-oh, I just about flipped!”

“Well, I think that's enough for tonight,” I stopped her, feeling very uneasy and frustrated, “Let's try to go to sleep now, and we can talk some more about it tomorrow.”

“Mother… are you going to make love with Ricky again?”

“Of course not,” I answered sharply, really upset by any talk of the idea. “1 don't think he'll be coming around here again. You… the two of you never talked about me, did you?”

“No,” Kathy replied, “But I wish he had told me more about you on the phone.”

“Why?”

“I'd like to know how good a lover you really are…”

When I told Bob what had happened the next day, he was furious. He called me all kinds filthy names for having had an affair with one of my students. But I realize now that the main point of his anger was caused by jealousy. It absolutely infuriated him that some other male, and particularly “some little punk schoolkid,” had been the first to enjoy both mother and daughter.

I should have realized then that there would be trouble. I should never have told Bob at all about the situation with Kathy. But I too had to have someone to talk with. And I was afraid to confide too many of my fears and problems to Kathy.

In the back of my mind, the suspicions grew every time I was out and there was a possibility that Bob and Kathy were alone together. I found myself watching each one closely for any change of attitude toward me, or each other. The only thing I could detect was that Kathy felt closer to me now. She talked to me more openly each time we were together.

One morning when Bob was out, she told me about her new boyfriend that she had met at the tennis court. I knew who he was, a very popular senior, and I was pleased that she was dating him. When she insisted upon giving me the intimate details of their activities the night before, I listened, but I felt strange about it. There was something morbid in a daughter feeling so compelled to tell her mother just everything.