Denise Bryant - Mother and Daughter

And then she would crawl down and I would lie on my back and ascend to the dizzying heights again.

All year long it was the same. Cindy and I, the parties, the men, and our own personal love affair.

It was shortly before Kathy was due to arrive for the summer again that I woke up by myself one morning with a bad case of the chills or something. I was on the verge of going to see the doctor, when I realized that the trouble might be psychological. How was I going to face my daughter?

Would it be possible to hide the fact that I was having an affair with Cindy when she slept with me several nights a week? Could I give up Cindy for three months? Was I really a genuine Lesbian now? What would the future hold? What would Kathy's future hold?

I began the day with a double of scotch that shot me off into another plane of escape. The tranquility of the past nine months was suddenly snatched way from me and I needed to escape somewhere else. It was then that I probably half-way realized that the journey to Lesbos itself was just another form of escape, albeit a pleasant and satisfying one.

By noontime, I had killed half the bottle, and I called Cindy at her home. It was Saturday, a day that she ordinarily did not go to work at her downtown apartment, but spent at home with her children. Thank goodness for Cindy, I heaved a sigh of relief after I hung up. She was always coming to my rescue in times of need. She had told me she would meet me at the apartment in half an hour.

“Maybe it's a good thing you're half loaded,” she said, taking off her dress and walking around in her slip. “You know… I've learned a lot about you in the past year, darling. I think it's time I gave you a psychoanalysis.”

“A psychoanalysis?” I questioned with a laugh, going for the bottle of scotch, “Are you a psychiatrist very suddenly, dear?”

“Any hustler's a psychologist when it comes to sex problems, honey,” Cindy said with logical conviction. “And I learned a lot more during my own psychoanalysis. You and I are birds of a feather, Denise. I know you almost as well as I know myself.”

Cindy pulled all the drapes closed until the bedroom was almost as dark as the inside of a movie theatre. I slipped out of my dress and lay on the bed, making sure the bottle of scotch was on the table right beside me. I closed my eyes and propped up on leg. I was smiling, still not taking all of this very seriously.

“Are you ready, doctor?” I asked.

“Denise…,” she stated my name, and I could hear her padding around on the rug beside me, “the things I'm going to ask you… talk to you about… will not be exactly pleasant. You may become very angered at me, in fact. You may be hurt and filled with disbelief. But you will have to answer me. Do you understand?”

“Oh, my goodness!” I exclaimed, sitting up in the bed and opening my eyes. “You do mean business, don't you?”

“Yes darling,” she said more softly, sitting down beside me and kissing my ear, “When did you first realize you were a real Lesbian, Denise? You are, you know.”

“No! I…” I started to protest, then realized I could not deny it. “When I… was with you. That's all.”

“You've had desires toward other girls,” she stated as a fact rather than a question, “You've been with other girls at parties and you loved it. You can't deny that, darling. I know you can't, because I've been through the same thing.”

“Yes…”

“And when you were a child, Denise, how did you get along with your mother?”

“Oh, please, Cindy,” I objected, recalling what she had told me once. “Just because your mother went down on you when you were a child, doesn't mean that it happened to me too.”

“Well, something happened, my love,” she insisted, rubbing my forehead very gently and talking low. “How did you feel about your mother?”

“I don't know,” I admitted, thinking I was throwing her off by telling the truth. “So much of that part of my life is a blank… a noting. Mother pampered me, took up for me, adored me, loved me more than she should have.”

“Aha!” Cindy brightened. “You don't want to remember it, because you are afraid to remember it, afraid to recognize the truth. How abut this being loved too much by your mother? Did you take baths with her until you were five or six years old?”

“Until I was ten almost. We used to have loads of fun…,” I burst out, and then suddenly checked myself, clamping my hand to my mouth.

I remembered it like it was yesterday, or not more than the day before. How old was I? Seven? Eight? Nine? Ten? I know we had just bought the big new house out near the edge of town. Mother and I had been cleaning out the rooms and arranging furniture all day. Father was away on a trip somewhere.

The master bathroom had one of those oversize tubs built diagonally within a square mold. Mother said it was like a Roman bath, and that she would bathe me like she was my personal servant, and that I could then bathe her. She told me about always bathing well between my legs.

I remember looking down and watching her hand disappear in the mountain of suds between my legs. The only sensation I experienced when her fingers touched me was a ticklish feeling. I laughed about it and told her to stop. When I was bathing her that way, she laughed too. At least… I thought she was laughing. But it was such a strange way to laugh, and she was shaking and moving or something.

“… but I never thought of it as sex,” I was explaining to Cindy, who had removed all her clothes and was sitting beside me. “To her, it could have been that… all that loving and kissing and the way she absolutely squeezes the life out of me when we meet or part, or at any other excuse. I guess that's one of the reasons I avoid seeing her now even. I thought it was because I didn't want to be babied so much…

“It's so warm in here,” Cindy commented, helping me off with my slip and things.

“And besides… you want to make love with me ” I laughed, feeling so very comfortable and relaxed in spite of this evident discovery. “I didn't think your psychoanalysis would last very long.”

“On the contrary, my love,” Cindy said with a shake of her head, cuddling beside me. “This is part of the therapy, I want you to close your eyes and use your imagination. I mean it now. No matter how much your conscious mind rejects the idea, I want you to close your eyes and imagine that I am Kathy…”

“No! Have you gone mad?” I accused her, pulling away. “I think that's taking it a little too far.”

“Have you forgotten how it felt to have Kathy in bed with you and Bob?” Cindy asked, turning me around to face her. “I know it must be a terrible thing for you to realize, but the sooner you do, the sooner you can accept it and be relieved of the terrible frustrations it causes, the conflicts and tensions within you.”

“I'll try,” I told her, draining my glass and working up close to her again. “I'll try to abandon myself completely just to show you how wrong you are.”

“Now imagine… let your fantasy take over,” Cindy spoke in the low intoxicating whisper that could almost hypnotize me, her fingers gently playing on my body, “The soft, smooth skin, the long hair, the breasts almost as large as mine… I'm here with you, Mother. I want to kiss you, Mother. Mm-mmmm…”

Cindy continued her gentle caresses and kisses down to my breasts, my belly, and below. At first, it was impossible for me to think of her as Kathy. But then, the longer I kept my eyes closed and tried to envision it, thinking particularly of that night in bed with Bob and her, I began to gain a mental picture of Kathy. When Cindy came back up my body and embraced me, I put my hand on her breasts, and it was like I was fondling Kathy. My hands roamed her body, and they were roaming Kathy's body. It was weird and awful, but I felt myself becoming abandoned to the fantasy.