How to Eat an Elephant Ch. 06

We were on a roll. We had successfully introduced Bonnie and Sammy to the fold, followed by Lisa and Chris. This was working better than we had ever imagined. Just as gamblers get cocky and stock investors get cocky, we got cocky.

Who was going to be next? Since Victoria and I had selected Lisa and Chris, we thought letting Bonnie pick the next couple would be fair. After all, we wanted to be fair, didn't we?

At our next luncheon meeting, attended by Sarah, Bonnie, Lisa, and me, we had a long talk. Sarah and I were gratified to see how Bonnie and Lisa gushed about their relationships with their sons. Lisa, especially, talked about how she had despaired about ever getting Chris to show some ambition. Since they made love together, she said that Chris was sending resumes out and was talking about possibly going to graduate or law school. She was bubbly at how well it had worked for her.

"I just wish I had done this before. I always knew he was attracted to me, but I thought it was just one of those Oedipus phases, or something. I had no idea he still had those desires. If only I had known. I've always thought he had become a handsome man. I won't say I hadn't ever thought of him in that way, but for it to come to what it did? It still blows me away."

I jumped in. "I think that about sums it up for all of us, Lisa. The only problem I have is trying to keep up with that youthful vigor Bill has. After the change I thought I didn't need sex anymore. Boy, was I wrong!"

Bonnie giggled. "Same with me, Victoria. I've started calling him 'Sammy the Bull.'"

"Do we call it quits here?," I asked the group. "Or do we see who else we can help?"

Bonnie raised her hand.

"Bonnie, you may think you're a teen-ager again, but we're not in class. You don't have to raise your hand."

Everyone laughed, then Bonnie said, "My best friend is Susan. Her Matt is graduating from college this year, and he still doesn't have a good job lined up. He's getting a degree in computer science, so he's got a lot of potential, but she says all he wants to do is lay around. His grades are falling, at a time when he needs to be focused and doing his best. He's been doing some contract work, but she wants him to show some fire."

"Do you think we can trust her?"

"Oh sure," Bonnie said. "She's my best friend."

"Do you think there is some spark between her and her son?"

"He's a guy. Of course there's spark with him. Susan has never said anything about it, of course, but she has to notice how he looks at her. I do, and I'm not around him nearly as much as Susan is."

"Everybody in on it?"

A chorus of assents resulted, so the next members of the club were selected.

We invited Susan to lunch later that week, with only Bonnie, Sarah, and me. We didn't want to gang up on her, and thought three of us would be a good showing. Susan came in, and I was floored. She had bright red hair cut in a cute bob, and she was a stunning beauty. She had on a green sweater that showed off her breasts, which made me feel somehow cheated by the Great Fairy. Suddenly I felt dowdy.

She sat down and Bonnie introduced us. We had some mutual friends, so in no time we were all chatting away. While I wanted to dislike Susan because of her looks, I found she was bright and warm. She was the type of woman who you like immediately, and I warmed quickly to her.

Bonnie finally broke the ice, asking her, "So, how is Matt doing at school?"

"I don't know what I'm going to do with him. I just can't light a fire in that boy's butt. His grades are falling, and I don't think he's sent a single resume out. We ask him to come home so we can work on his resume with him, and he won't even do that. Were your guys like that?"

Perfect opening, so Sarah took it. "Exactly like that. They reach that age where you can't control them anymore. What you need to do is give him some focus."

"Yeah. As if. There's no focus in him. He's perfectly content laying around doing nothing. That's not the way I was raised, and I don't know where we went wrong with him. Maybe I gave him too much."

Bonnie giggled a little, and said, "Maybe you didn't give him enough, Susan. Maybe you should have given him what he really wants."

"If I knew what he wanted, I'd give it to him if it would light a fire under him."

I jumped in. "You know guys that age, Susan. You remember what they're like. All they want is to get laid. That's usually the only focus they have."

She snorted. "He doesn't even care about that. I tried to line him up with the daughter of a friend of mine." She looked at Bonnie. "You know, Linda's girl. She's cute. He wouldn't even call her."

"Maybe what he wants is what only Mom can give him."

Susan paused, looking at us. "That's not it. I offer to cook him any meal he wants, if only he'll come home for the weekend. He doesn't care. I think all he does is lay around his apartment drinking beer."

We had made every cute allusion we could think of to the real solution, and Susan wasn't biting.

Bonnie said, "If there was something you could do to focus him and get some ambition into him, would you do it?"

"Sure, within reason. What are you talking about?"

This was the critical moment, and I didn't feel good about it. Susan seemed smart, but she wasn't picking up on anything.

I jumped in. "Well, think about it, Susan. There has to be something he wants more than anything else, and when you figure out what it is, he'll come around."

We broke up the lunch and went our separate ways toward home. Later that afternoon, we had a group chat.

Bonnie led it off. "I don't think she gets it. She didn't have any idea what we were talking about."

We all agreed. I said, "Look, I hate to say it about another woman, but she's hot. You know her son is drooling over her. He gives all the signs we saw. He avoids her. He doesn't come home. All the signs."

Bonnie agreed. She knew Matt, and said she could see the lust in him when he was around Susan. "What man wouldn't want her," she added. "My Sam knows him. He's always looked to Sam as a big brother. I'll ask Sam to get him to come home, maybe, so they can get together, and maybe Sam can put a bug in his ear."

So Sam did that. He called Susan, got Matt's number, and called him. Matt didn't want to come home, but Sam hinted that he could help Matt get what he wanted more than anything else, and Matt's curiosity was aroused.

That weekend, Matt came home and Sam invited him over with the excuse of needing some computer help with his router. Matt was cool about it, of course, because computer science majors quickly learn they are everybody's IT guy. When he got there, Sam told him the computer seemed to have healed, and Bonnie took them beer, salsa, and chips in the den. Bonnie retired to the kitchen, but sat at the door so she could listen to them. When Bonnie told us about that, I imagined her leaning against the door, and couldn't help but laugh.

"We're incorrigible. We're like a bunch of cougars, trying to hook everybody up."

They all laughed. "May be some truth in that," Sarah said, under her breath.

Bonnie said Sam and Matt didn't take long before getting around to guy's favorite topic, pussy. Matt said he wasn't dating anyone, didn't want to get involved, and was cool with his life the way it was.

"Man. Don't you ever get laid anymore? I remember you in high school. You were a mover and a shaker."

"No," Matt said. "I just don't have the drive anymore. It's not worth the trouble."

Bonnie went in to take them more beer, and leaned over to kiss Sam on the mouth. She said when she left, Matt's mouth was hanging open.

"Sam. When did you start kissing your Mom like that?"

"You mean like we always wanted to? I saw Susan at the store a couple of weeks ago. She's still hot, Bro. You should be moving on that like you said someday you would."

"I can't stand to be around her now. All she does is bitch at me about getting a goal. I'm sick of hearing it."

Sam laughed. "What if you told her she was your goal?"

"You don't know my Mom that well. She's a control freak, with a temper you wouldn't believe. What they say about redheads is true."

Sam wouldn't let it go. "I read somewhere that redheads are incredible lovers because their skin sensitivity is so strong, or something like that."

Matt scoffed. "I doubt it. I don't think she lets the old man near her anymore. I haven't heard them going at it in years. But Dude. Bonnie. What's going on? You were always as cold with her as I am with Mom. What changed?"

"I realized if I couldn't beat 'em, join 'em. Man, I didn't want to go through life like one of those pathetic guys with perpetual Mommy issues. I finally realized that to get what I wanted, I had to give her what she wanted. What she wants is for me to love her. So, I gave her that."

"And?"

"Hell, it's like eating an elephant. Take small bites at a time, and before you know it you've eaten the whole elephant."

"I don't know. Give Mom an inch, and she takes a mile. She'd want to go back to running my life for me."

Sam laughed. "Maybe give her a couple of inches, and see if she likes it."

Matt laughed, too. "Yeah. I can see that happening. She'd freak out on me. I patted her butt once a couple of years ago, and thought I'd never hear the end of it."

"Well, you know what your situation is. It's like they say in golf, though. 'Never up, never in.'"

When Bonnie recounted it to us, we were kind of shocked.

"Is that how they talk? Did they always talk about us like that? Jeez. Next time I see Jim, I'm going to give him a piece of my mind. He has to learn to treat women with respect."

"Oh, Sarah," I said. "Give them a break. They're guys. Sometimes it's better to just stay out of their simple little brains. Kind of like staring into a cesspool, you know."

We all laughed. Bonnie said, "Yep, that's probably right. We do have to caution them again on how careful we have to be, though."

The following Wednesday, Bonnie called around to say that Susan wanted to have lunch again.

She came in, and seemed sad. "What the hell have I done?"

"What? Sit down, Susan. What are you talking about," asked Bonnie.

"After we had lunch I started thinking about what you said about finding something he really wants that will motivate him. You're going to think I'm terrible. Promise me you won't think I'm terrible."

"Susan," Bonnie said, "We won't think you're terrible. We all have boys. No matter what you say, we've probably been through it."

"I doubt you've been through this. I feel terrible. I'm a terrible Mother."

"Oh, come on, Susan. What did you do? Sell him to a human trafficker?"

"Worse. I began thinking about what could motivate him. When he was a senior in high school, we went through a period where he couldn't keep his hands off me. He was drowning in testosterone. I could get him to do anything, just by giving him a smile and bending over in front of him. I know it was shameless, but it worked."

"Yeah. Been there. Done that," said Bonnie.

"So I thought I'd see if it would still work. This weekend he came home. You know that. He and Sammy talked. After he got back from your place, Bonnie, I made a point of going to the kitchen just wearing panties and a tank top. I thought his eyes would bug out of his head. It was cute."

"Uh, huh. I can imagine. What did he do?"

"One thing I didn't count on. When he was a teen-ager, I could control him. He's a man now, I guess, and I didn't expect that. I went to the cupboard to get a cup, and the next thing I know he's hugging me from behind, rubbing his erection on my butt."

"Did he say anything?"

"Oh, yeah. He whispered in my ear that I was the sexiest woman on earth and that he wanted me more than I'd ever know."

Sarah sighed. "You're killing me, Susan. That's the hottest thing I've ever heard. What woman wouldn't like to hear that?"

"From her own son?" Susan was getting more agitated.

"From any man. He's your son but, as you seem to have learned, he's a man. What happened next?"

"I turned around to give him a piece of my mind, and he kissed me. Right on the lips. Tried to stick his tongue in my mouth."

"Tried to?"

"OK. He did."

"Did you respond?"

Susan started crying. "That's the worst part. I did. I couldn't help it. His holding me felt so good. I kissed him back."

"Nothing wrong with that, Susan. Sounds like a normal reaction to me," I said.

"But it was so wrong."

"Not necessarily. What's wrong with a woman kissing a man, if they both consent and she wants it? That's what makes the world go round," Bonnie said.

"Her own son?"

"Sounds pretty innocent to me," Sarah said. "You've done nothing wrong. You just kissed him."

Susan paused.

"You did just kiss him, didn't you? Was there more?"

"I may have let him touch me."

We knew where this was going, but we weren't going to let her off easy. I said, "Of course he was touching you. He was kissing you. Nothing wrong there."

"He was holding my face while he kissed me. I don't know where he learned to kiss, but he was pretty damned good at it. He moved his hand down to my arm, and then he did it. He put his hand right on my breast."

We looked at each other. We had all been there. The forbidden touch. The touch of a man's hand on our breast, but in this case it wasn't just a man. It was forbidden flesh. It was the touch of an adult son.

"And you're going to tell us you didn't like it?"

Susan blushed. "Maybe I did, but it was wrong. Creepy, you know. Not creepy that he touched me, but creepy that a Mother would let her son kiss her and touch her. I mean, my God, I'm supposed to protect him. I'm not supposed to corrupt him. I'm supposed to be the adult."

"You didn't tell him that, did you?"

"I told him that what he wanted could never happen. I told him it was wrong, and I'm never let him do that. I pushed him away and ran up to my bedroom. He hardly talked to me the rest of the weekend. He avoided even being in the same room with me."

"Nothing broken that can't be fixed. You just have to get him to come home again so you can talk to him about it, in a situation that is not so emotional."

"That's just it. He said he's coming home again this weekend, and he never comes home two weekends in a row. I'm scared to death. How am I going to handle this?"

Yes, we had all been through this, but we had all been, at least in part, the driving force of our seduction by our sons. Susan was agonizing over it, clearly. We had reached the point where we wanted it to happen. Susan was trying to keep it from happening.

Bonnie was her friend, so it was up to Bonnie to say more. "Susan, um, you know these things happen, don't you?"

"Not in my house, they don't. I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't want to drive him away, but I don't want to encourage him, either. I should never have let it get out of hand. What do I do? I don't want to lose my son."

"There's nothing out of hand yet," Bonnie said. "Do you think Sam has never touched me? How about you girls? Your sons never touched you?"

Like a Greek chorus, we replied, "Mine did."

"So don't worry about it, Susan."

"But what will I do this weekend? He's going to want to kiss me again or, just as bad, he'll spend all weekend avoiding me."

"If he were going to ignore you, he wouldn't be coming home, would he?"

"Then he's going to try to kiss me again. What do I do?"

Sarah looked at her. "My solution? Let him kiss you. What's the harm? He's a man. You're a woman. He loves you. You love him. You see where I'm going with this?"

Susan sighed. "When it happened with you, did you let him kiss you again?"

I brought up the selfie of Bill and me on my phone and showed it to her. "Does this look like I pushed him away?"

Susan looked at the photo. I admit, it was a good photo. Bill had his arm around me, our heads were side by side, and both of us were smiling broadly.

"What if he touches me again?"

I didn't say a word. I just looked down at my phone and repeated, "Does this look like I pushed him away?"

Susan gasped at the realization of what I was saying. She looked at each of us in turn. "Are you saying...?"

"Not saying anything, Susan. You have a man you love and who clearly loves you. Where you go with it is your business. Are you saying you've never been in this position with someone before, in over 30 years of marriage?"

She didn't say anything, but just looked at the photo on my phone.

"So you've been there before, and you handled it before. There's nothing different about this time."

"But there is. Yeah, I've had guys kiss me and maybe some of them went too far with their hands, but I didn't care if I pushed them away. This is my son. I can't lose him."

"You won't lose him. You just need to channel him. You have leverage here. Use it."

Everyone chimed in to voice their support, and that was how we left it. We arranged to get together the following week and Susan promised to give us an update. I will admit, my pussy was pretty wet when we got done talking and I texted Bill to make sure he was going to be home that weekend. I needed my Billy.

And I wondered if Susan had told us everything.