Robert Lubrican - A Model Mother

"To answer your completely unexpected question … I don’t know if Phil has a big one or not. I don’t make a habit of checking out my friends' dicks," I said.

"Which one was he?" she asked.

"I do not believe you’re vetting my friends, to pick out a boy toy for your friend," I said.

"That’s not what I’m doing at all," she said. "I’m just gathering information that may be useful some day."

I thought back.

"He’s the one who said it was only fitting that, since you got to see me naked way back then, I got to see you naked now. He also said my penis probably isn’t much bigger than it was the last time you saw it."

"Ah, yes," said Mom. "I remember. He wasn’t quite so far gone as the others."

"Yeah," I said.

"Was he right?"

"About what?"

"About how big your penis is."

I looked at her but she wasn’t smiling. Still, it had to be a joke. I wondered how many nineteen-year-old boys in the world had just been asked by their mothers how big their dicks were. It had to be a vanishingly small number.

"I’m not going to answer that," I said, with as much dignity as I could.

"Good for you," she said.

"Why would you ask that?" I asked.

"Because they’re your friends, your peers. You hang around with them, right? So they affect you … how you act. They were jerks. I don’t want my son to be a jerk, too."

"They were just blowing off steam," I said. "Normally they’re good guys."

"I’m sure Rodney thought he was just blowing off steam when he raped me," she said, her voice even.

Now I knew my biological father’s name was Rodney.

The week went on. I went to classes and it was almost possible to forget that woman, on that love seat, with that come-hither look on her face. It began to seem like a dream.

Then it was Friday morning again and there was my mother, looking beautiful in her baby-blue jacket, getting ready to go sell somebody a house. She finished her bowl of Special K as I came in. I got a cursory kiss on the cheek and she said, "I have to go. See you tonight?"

Now those are very normal words, in a very normal situation. They’re words that are said in millions of kitchens every morning, and they are literal in their context and meaning. But for me , they were different. The feelings those simple words created in me were complex. I would see her that night - all of her. That alone produced a reaction akin to what many children feel on the night before Christmas. But the way she said it was what really got to me. It was as if those three words were a foreign language which, when translated into my own, meant, "I want you to see me tonight, when I’m naked, and vulnerable, because while I’m being paid to do this, I’m really only there to pose for you."

I know. Most people would say all she meant was what those other millions of people meant, but I sensed all that other stuff. Maybe it was the way she held my gaze as she said it. Maybe it was the set of her body. I read somewhere that 70% of communication is done through body language, rather than the verbal part.

"You couldn’t keep me away with Donald Trump’s border fence," I said.

"Good," she said.

I have to admit I had difficulty concentrating on my classes that day.

When I got to the lab, everything seemed exactly like it had the week before. Nobody treated me any differently. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was very ordinary. Still, as I stood at my easel, waiting for my mother to come out and get naked, I felt a tiny little secret thrill that I knew the model … lived with the model. I knew she created feelings in the others that were very strong and sexual, but all they could do was look at her. And preserve her image on canvas.

But I’d sleep in the same house as her that night.

Mrs. Gaskill didn’t act any different either. She was just as good looking as last time, though tonight, like my mother, she had her hair in a ponytail. She was wearing a loose sweatshirt, but it did nothing to diminish her aura of sensuality. I wondered about the man who had cheated on (and lost) this woman. He had to have been an idiot.

Then my mom was there and she dropped the robe and got into her pose. She looked directly at me, first, but then her eyes drifted away.

As I put lines on paper I thought about how she looked. As I said before, I knew she was thirty-four years old. The quarterback had gotten her pregnant when she was fifteen. She’d had another birthday before I had mine. People don’t think about it this way, but your first birthday is actually the day your mother pushes you out into the world, the day you are actually born. It is literally your birth-day. Most people consider the celebration you have a year later to be your first birthday, but it isn’t. You don’t have more than one actual birth-day. You may celebrate that day for the rest of your life, but you’re not actually "having a birthday."

Sorry. I got off on a tangent. Anyway, my mother was not "cougar" material, technically. A cougar is an experienced older woman who enjoys a relationship with a younger man. My mother was neither experienced, in that sense, nor looking for that kind of relationship. Mrs. Gaskill sounded like a cougar, at least according to my mother. But looking at my mom, reclining there in that totally sexual way, displaying herself in what looked like a clear offering of her body, made my mind go wandering. I’d hook up with Mrs. Gaskill in a heartbeat. I wasn’t experienced, either, really, but then wasn’t that the point? A woman who knows the ropes could teach a guy like me a lot about how to please a woman, and I really wanted to please a woman. My friends just wanted to get their rocks off, but I wanted a woman to look at me like the model on that dais was looking at me. I wanted a woman to crave my attention, to wait impatiently for me to be there, to luxuriate in the feel of my hands on her skin. I wanted a woman to be eager to kiss me when she wasn’t drunk. And, of course, I wanted a woman to welcome me into her inner core, to accept my seed as a treasured gift.

Come to think of it, I might not do all that well with Mrs. Gaskill after all. I wanted commitment. I wanted a life-mate. I wanted a woman who wanted to be the mother of my children.

That led me to the difference between being in school and working. I was learning how to put out fires, save lives. Someday I’d actually do that. Mrs. Gaskill could be like college, teaching me how to be the kind of man who would attract the kind of woman I was looking for.

"Okay, that’s it for tonight," came the voice of the woman I wanted to teach me everything sexual.

I looked at my watch. Where had the night gone? Then I looked at the paper on my easel.

Wow! When had I done all that?

I felt a presence at my shoulder and turned to find Mrs. Gaskill there. Her eyes were on my drawing, but they moved to fix on my own.

"Nice work," she said. "It’s as if you really know the model." She gave me a little crooked grin.

I didn’t dawdle this night. I got cleaned up and went to the exit of the building, expecting my mother to be there. She wasn’t.

I didn’t know what to do. We had come separately, of course, and I could go home the same way. But I wanted to wait for her. I was pacing outside when I heard something and looked at the street. I groaned. The three stooges were coming my way.

"Dude, where is she?" asked Jerry, when they got close enough.

"Don’t you guys have a life?" I harped. They didn’t seem drunk tonight.

"Yeah, but it’s not as interesting as yours," said Don. He grinned.