Chapter 18
Once that the three young men had left, Mona began to have misgivings about her sexual conduct.
She knew that she had been trapped into having sex with Chuck and Jeff, but it had all come about as a result of the fact that she had been so strongly attracted to Ed, and had had sex with him on so many different occasions. As she lay on her bed and thought about the flow of events during the course of the last few weeks, she couldn't help but conclude that she had been a terrible influence on her son.
Perhaps Gary did have great difficulties when it came to performing, and maybe he was spending too much time away from the house. If that were the case, she thought, then maybe she should have emphasized more the importance of him sticking around, rather than going off on a wild sexual tangent with her own son.
She needed to talk to Ed fast. She thought about how terrible it would be if he actually did ruin his life and become some kind of sex maniac. She would always blame herself.
Mona continued lying in bed, thinking and worrying.
Some two hours later, she heard the sound of the front door close. She then heard footsteps.
"Ed, is that you?" she asked. "Yeah, where are you."
"The bedroom."
"Great, just the place I wanted to find you," he laughed.
Mona could tell from the fact that his speech was slightly slurred that he had been doing a good deal more drinking since she had last seen him. He had probably gotten drunk with his friends, then had quickly parted company with them, expecting some sexual satisfaction from her.
Once she told him that she was in the bedroom, Mona instantly regretted it. She was faced with a difficult set of circumstances. Mona knew Ed would want some more sex, and she would have to either give in or tell him no.
Ed entered the room, observing her lying there in the middle of the bed.
"You look so damn sexy," he said. "Just strip off your clothes, honey, and we'll fuck."
"I want to talk to you, Ed."
"Talking can wait. I want to screw you."
"That's what I want to talk to you about. I want to talk to you about the sex we've been having. I think we're gonna have to face up to some problems."
"What problems? You just have yourself some fun and that's it."
"No, there are responsibilities involved," she insisted. "I guess I didn't fully realize it until you brought your two friends over. I was like the town whore, sucking off two big studs."
"Oh, no. You shouldn't have thought of it that way. We just all wanted to have a little fun, and I had told them how good you were."
"That's just what I mean. To think that that's the way you'd be talking about your own mother."
"I didn't think you had any of those hang-ups, mom. I thought you were like me. I figured that you lived for kicks."
"I have been," she admitted. "But all of that has to come to an abrupt end. I love your father, Ed, and I love you, too. In fact, I love you so much that I'm gonna just have to give you up sexually. It's too damaging for us to continue this type of relationship."
"Oh, you're all wrong," he protested. "You want to keep on having sex with me, baby. I know you do."
"That's right. I have to reluctantly admit that. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to allow myself to get carried away any more. Oh, no. I'm not going to. That's all there is to it. I would like to see you take yourself a little more seriously. You're gonna throw your whole life away, Ed, and I don't like it one bit."
"What do you mean by that?" Ed looked at her startledly.
"I mean that there's a lot more to life than having sex. Sure, when I married your father he appealed very much to me. I naturally enjoyed having sex with him, and he enjoyed having it with me. But that was just one aspect of the overall relationship. You know what the key point was?"
"I don't have any idea."
"It was respect. Just plain old honest respect," she said, tears beginning to trickle down the sides of her face. "He respected me and I respected him. That's what a good marriage has to be built around. I was thinking about that just a few minutes ago, as I thought about how I had gone down on you and your two friends. I couldn't have had much respect for myself to do something like that."
"I just don't understand this," he shook his head. "You seemed to like the sex so much."
"I did, but there's certain things that are bad for you, even if they seem to be good at the time. Maybe I did derive a lot of pleasure from that, but that didn't make any of it right as far as I was concerned. What I was doing was wrong, and I realize it now. It was dragging me down and it was dragging you down. If I have problems relating to your father sexually, maybe a lot of that stems from me. Probably I'm derelict for not insisting that we get away more often. If I could just get him away from his work for a little while, he'd be I'm sure the same man that I knew years ago."
"I'm just so disappointed I don't know what to say," Ed said, turning away and staring in the direction of the door.
"It just has to be this way," she insisted.
"Very well," Ed said in a choked voice.
Ed left the room, closing the door behind him.
Already Mona began to feel better. Her husband would be home in just a matter of a few hours. Perhaps if she fixed him a good dinner, then had a lengthy discussion with him over after-dinner drinks about their life together, she could begin steering him back toward the path she wanted him on.
She had to start communicating better sexually with Gary. It was a new challenge for her to face, and now that she had ended the painful ordeal of telling her son Ed that it was all over between them, she looked forward with great interest to undertaking that responsibility.
Gary had given her many hours of pleasure in the past. Perhaps she could bring him to new levels of passion. She wanted to bring out the same animal instincts in him that had been brought out in Ed. And she wanted to receive the same kinds of joyful, uninhibited sensations.
She would close her eyes and rest for a few minutes, then would get up and make the best dinner she knew how for her husband.