A Morning in Dad's Closet

"Is that something you enjoy? Watching women like that?"

"I think so. I don't know. It's not like any girls want me."

"I think if you tried a little to think more positively you would see your luck change because you're a cute guy," Mom said. "About you being a voyeur? I don't want you to get arrested looking in girl's bedrooms."

"I haven't."

"Just Eileen's." Mom responded, and when I gave her a shocked look and asked how she knew about that she added, "I didn't know. I guess Eileen caught you but didn't say anything."

"Shit," I mumbled.

"I think she was flattered that somebody wanted to look at her - she has self-image problems of her own," Mom explained. "When she talked to be about it she said she even opened the curtains a little more so you could see better."

"Oh man."

"About what you saw this morning..."

"I'm sorry. Does your boyfriend know I was in there?" I asked and she nodded and told me he was the one that saw the sock on the floor.

"No, I'm the one that's sorry, and you deserve and explanation," my mother told me. "I have a good idea what you think of me and I don't blame you. I also suspect that because you're close to your father, you'll tell him. I understand that as well. If you want to you can tell him. You'll find that he already knows."

"Dad knows you cheat on him?"

"He doesn't know the details. He doesn't ask and doesn't want to know the who and the when and the where," Mom replied. "That's not the way it is."

"Then why? Are you one of those nymphomaniacs?" I asked, having been introduced to the term regarding a girl that apparently put out at school for everybody but wouldn't even go to the movies with me when I asked her.

"No," Mom responded, and then after laughing a little continued. "Maybe I am. I don't know. You see, I had an active sex life before I met your father. I'm not proud of it but I'm trying to be honest. Then when I met your Dad, we were like bunnies. What you saw in there was an everyday thing, that and ten times on Sundays. We were both insatiable."

The thought of watching my mother and father acting like that was funny in a way but I didn't laugh.

"Then a few years back something happened," Mom went on. "And when I tell you this I have to beg you NOT to tell your father I told you this because it would crush him. He thinks you look up to him."

"I do," I said truthfully. "I look up to you both."

"Anyway, a few years ago your father - he found himself unable to perform. Do you know what I mean by that?"

"I think so."

"This crushed him because he was always so virile," Mom said. "Much more so than any man I had even met. He went to the doctor and went through a battery of tests. They couldn't find anything wrong. We bought this little vacuum device - he choked down oysters because somebody told him that helped. He went to therapy."

"Geez," I said, dreading the day when I didn't get a hard-on when the breeze blew.

"Nothing worked. So he told me that he knew how much sex meant to me and he said that I was free to take on a lover. I resisted - honestly I did - and then he said that if I didn't want to be with another man, I should find a woman," Mom said as she reached over and clasped my hand.

"It wasn't something I hadn't experimented with in college, but I told him that wasn't what I wanted because anything a woman could do to me - he could do just as well," Mom explained and then asked me if I was getting any of this.

"Yes."

"So finally he told me that when you guys when off to school he was going to leave me," Mom choked out. "He wanted me to be happy more than anything and knew that me going without sex was going to make me miserable and make him feel even more guilty than he already did. I love that man so much honey. Love - not just sex like what on in there before."

"Maybe your Dad was right about that all. Maybe I just finally relented because I am a horny old broad and needed an excuse," Mom went on. "Anyway, all he asked was that I keep it low key and don't rub it in his face. Try to meet up with respectable men, like my friend Raymond. Don't ask, don't tell and your father doesn't even care if I do it in our bed, as long as I change the sheets."

"How did you end up with the mailman?"

"Raymond is a bit of a ladies man and I doubt whether I'm his only stop like that," Mom explained. "I guess he liked something about me and so when I showed a little interest that was it."

"Is it because he has a really big dick?" I asked.

"No, that has nothing to do with it. Maybe it's the forbidden fruit part of it," Mom opined. "Raymond was just - easy I guess is the word. I smiled at him and the rest his history. Not every guy is interested in a fat old lady."

"Stop it Mom."

"So what you do about this morning is up to you," Mom concluded. "I love you either way, and I hope some day while you might not forgive me, you'll understand.

I nodded because my head was spinning, and besides I didn't know exactly what I felt.

"I think we both need a shower before we get to work," Mom told me as we got up.

"I don't really have to be to work until noon," I said as we walked down the hall, and as I looked into my parents' bedroom at the slightly open closet door I shook my head at my stupidity.

"Must have been hot in there," Mom mused. "Could you actually see anything?"

"Oh yes. I could see everything."

"Wish I was in better shape," Mom mumbled.

"I obviously thought you looked great," I replied as I looked at my sock, and then was stunned when Mom hung up her robe and went into the bathroom naked.

"No sense in hiding at this point," Mom said with a wry smile. "For better or worse you've seen it all."

And as her dimpled butt disappeared into the shower I realized she was right.

****

Thank you for reading.