Chapter 3

I hate my name. Linda.

It's such a common name.

It isn't beautiful enough for me.

I think a name like "Rachel" would be a lot more fitting.

I know thirteen girls in my high school whose names are Linda, and I hate them all.

Most of them have acne, and the ones who don't are cheerleaders.

Having acne is stupid, and being a cheerleader is even stupider.

But almost everybody at my highschool is stupid.

I hate having to be cooped up in that school with all those kids those CHILDREN.

I'm a woman and I resent being in classes with a bunch of nurds and morons that still act like they're in kindergarten.

I'm only a junior, but I'm going to take these qualifying tests to see if I can skip my senior year and go right to college.

One more year of that rah-rah high school nonsense and I think I may have to be committed.

The men in high school are all so immature. You can't call them men, even. They're still boys.

Even the signs on the restrooms call them boys.

And the signs on our restrooms call us girls. GIRLS!

You can see why I have to get out of there.

I have an exceedingly agile mind.

Several of my teachers have commented that they find me an exceptionally gifted student.

And they find me very mature.

I had to fight off Mr. Logering from Social Studies and Mr. Bigelow from English almost with a stick. They kept trying to keep me after and suggesting that we meet outside of class.

Can you imagine the nerve of these guys. Coming on to me like that!

Which ought to demonstrate how mature an individual I am perceived to be by my teachers.

I don't want you to think that I'm stuck up. I'm not stuck up.

It's just that I have high standards, and most people, being rather average, just can't expect to live up to them.

If I met you, you can be sure I would judge you on your own merits, and I would inform you very frankly whether or hot, after I had time to consider the strengths and deficiencies of your character, I thought that an extended relationship would be mutually beneficial.

I'm a cautious person, which I admit does put people off, especially people in my peer group (i.e., high school juniors and seniors).

When you're young, you're supposed to be devil-may-care and spontaneous, but at seventeen, I don't consider myself young, whereas most of my peers still think of themselves as "youths" and not as adults.

And that is the difference that separates me from most of them.

I am not lonely.

I have never needed a lot of friends.

At the moment, I have no close friends, but I'm sure that's because I'm going through and transitional phase in my maturing process and I'm not sure where suitable friends are to be found.

I read over what I have written, and I think perhaps I am still, all efforts to the contrary, coming across as a snob.

I am sorry if this is the case.

If I seem like a cold and distant sort of individual, allow me to explain that I am as warm and loving as anyone, perhaps I am capable of being more warm and loving than most people.

And that's why I have to be cautious.

You cannot spread your affection around like it was manure.

For one thing, that cheapens it.

And for another thing, if you are a person who really takes things to heart, a person like I am, you have to guard against recklessly involving yourself in relationships where you may be hurt very badly.

I have reason to be cautious.

My mother has set the negative example for me ever since I was an infant.

She spreads her affection around so much that it becomes as thin and transparent as cellophane.

She is kind much of the time, but she is hardly ever sincere.

I don't know to this day if she loves me.

I rather doubt that she does.

She reserves most of her affection for men.

She doesn't have much love for ANY females, even if they happen to be her daughters.

And the thing I find the most unsettling is that her attraction for men is directed mostly toward young men.

Men about my age.

Can you see how disconcerting that is?

The fact is that I find boys of that age disgustingly immature and they are my peers.

I want a relationship with someone who is sensitive, and understanding and knowledgeable and can give me the mature affection that I crave.

My mother is willing to settle with raw sex with teenage morons! I'm no prude. I like sex.

I find it one of the most intensely thrilling experiences there is.

But it should always be connected with a mature, affectionate relationship.

I've had sex that wasn't connected with mature affection, and it was dreadful and degrading.

And thus I vowed that until I find someone mature and affectionate, I will satisfy my own sexual needs as best I can.

I have a very active fantasy life, and I masturbate fairly regularly and I'm not afraid to admit it because I think that it is a mature and healthy alternative to meaningless and loveless sex.

Perhaps you don't think I have any claim to being an authority on meaningless, loveless sex.

I do.

I have seen my mother engaged in it on several occassions, as well as having engaged it in a few times myself.

And now my cousin Calvin has come to visit.

I imagine he'll find my mother (she'll insist that he call her "Chloe" just as if she were a girl his own age) as attractive as the boys that she has lured up here before have found her.

And I'll come home some day, perhaps a little earlier than expected, and I'll find them making love on the living room floor.

Or if she's being discreet, she'll take him into her room, and then I won't have to look at them, I'll only hear there disgusting moaning and groaning.

And he's my cousin, which makes her having sex with him incest.

I realize that's a rather inconsequential concern, but it still serves to make me even queasier than her former relations with young men.

So I've been giving Calvin the coldest shoulder I can.

I feel bad about that, because I usually like to give people a fair chance and have an opportunity to communicate with them and judge them on their merits.

I suppose Calvin is just an average high school senior, and that I wouldn't find that much that was redeeming in his character anyway, but I feel badly about not giving him a fair chance to prove himself all the same.

Perhaps you can anticipate my reasoning in not giving him any chance to become in the least intimate with me.

What if I were to like him?

What if we were to become good friends?

I would come home some day to find him in bed with my mother, and then what would be left of our relationship?

I feel myself to be as liberated as the next person, but once a boy has slept with your mother, it puts any relationship you might have with him on such an unpleasant footing that it isn't worth the bother.

And so, as sorry as I am that Calvin perceives me as a conceited and unfeeling person, I cannot bring myself to let my defenses down only to have my trust and good faith thrown back in my face.

On the day that Calvin arrived, I was walking between the bathroom and my room.

I wasn't expecting him to be standing there.

I didn't have a stitch on.

I think he was as astonished and embarrassed as I was. I saw his face turn bright red.

Fortunately, I was able to minimize my reaction to him and proceed as if nothing unusual had happened.

I possess great poise and reserve.

Still, he must think that I'm terribly eccentric, or a clandestine nymphomaniac.

Or something.

This makes our relationship or rather our "non-relationship" even more awkward than it would be if he merely regarded me as stuck up.

In addition to him thinking that I'm ignoring him because I'm a snot, he also must think that I'm more than a little crazy.

This can't be helped.

I wondering now if I have left you to believe that I am a little paranoid as far as my mother's sexual designs on Calvin are concerned.

I can assure you I am not.

To give you a case in point, I was dating one young man from the high school drama club and when he came to pick me up, and I would be putting finishing touches to my makeup and my hair, my mother would visit with him, and in my innocence, I thought she was just making casual chatter.

You know yakity yak.

I even was such a child as to believe that perhaps she was concerned about him and my relationship with him, and she was performing the motherly duty of checking him out to see of his intentions toward her daughter were honorable.

I should have known that what she was doing was making her own pass at him.

One night, the night of our last date together, they must have set up a rendezvous with each other.

I wasn't to find out that my mother had taken him as her lover for a few weeks after that last date.

All I knew was, was that he lost interest in me, for reasons I couldn't explain. I was rather attracted to his looks and his kind, intelligent manner, and I thought he was attracted to me.

But I suppose for an eighteen-year-old boy the idea of having an affair with an attractive older women is just too exciting for a girl of his own age to compete with.

One inevitable day, I came home early from school with a migraine headache (I get them occasionally, I must admit to being a bit high strung).

What I saw made my headache even worse.

I will describe the scene in detail, to give you an exact idea of the kind of thing I've been subjected to by my mother.

Perhaps then you will understand why I am the way I am (assuming you still find me rather strange).

I have a good eye for detail and an amazingly accurate memory. I shall report the scene as accurately as possible.

I saw them as I turned the corner from the hallway into the living room.

I had the presence of mind to duck back out of sight before they saw me. though I suppose that there was little danger of that, so absorbed were they in each other.

They were seated on the sofa.

She had unbuttoned his shirt halfway and she had her hand in it, rubbing her palm across the young flesh that she so cherishes.

Her other hand was tangled in his hair.

She was looking directly into his eyes, her eyes penetrating as only an older, more experienced woman's can be.

David was trying the best he could to return her arch look of desire, but his eyes would shift uncomfortably under the intensity of her knowing gaze.

She liked being able to intimidate him with her age and experience. I could tell.

She brought both her hands to his shirt front and unbuttoned all the buttons, pulling the shirt out of his pants and never once taking her eyes of his face.

It was as if she was telling him that she was so experienced that she didn't even have to look to know exactly what her hands were doing.

She took off his shirt and ran her hands over his shoulders and his chest and his back.

"You have an intensively attractive build," she said. "Your muscles are very firm."

She squeezed his arms and shoulders admiringly.

"Would you like to see my ... " she let her voice trail off, and then she smiled.

"Would you like to see my chest?" she asked, after he had already given a little gasp in anticipation of the question.

He nodded.

She took his hands and placed them over her breasts. Then she pressed her hands over the back of his hands.

David was staring at his hands and at the breasts that they held.

I imagine they felt quite good.

My mother is forty years old (although she says she is thirty seven, and has been saying that for three years) and yet her breasts are still quite firm.

They have begun to sag only enough to give them a comfortable, slightly used look which somehow seems to make them even more attractive to men.

They look like the breasts of a woman who loves to be made love to.

And as David handled the breasts in his palms, she let out a moan, as if to say of all the men she had had, David possessed a touch that she loved, loved perhaps not more than some others, but just about as much.

I could tell David was highly aroused.

"Would you like to take off my blouse?"

David nodded like the schoolboy he was.

"Then do. Please," she said, almost more as a pant than as a word, "Do."

David unbuttoned the blouse, fumbling a little in his reverence of her well-formed breasts.

He opened it and she helped him slip it off her arms, which she did by obligingly lifting her arms above her head.

This movement had the effect of making her breasts lift and thrust, and this so excited David that he impulsively buried his face in her cleavage and kissed her their as his hands caressed her breasts.

I could see the nipples of them, brown nipples the color of cocoa, becoming hard and straining a little through his fingers as his caresses brought them to erection.

She moaned to let him know that he was doing exactly the right thing.

I would have liked to come up behind him and hit him hard with a blunt instrument. Perhaps kill him. His head would fall heavily and bloodily into my mother's lap, ruining her designer original skirt.

She would be upset.

I controlled myself, but I dug my nails so hard into the woodwork that the marks are still there. They caught Mother's eyes once and she wondered idly what had caused them.

David was now so infused with confidence from my mother's sounds of pleasure that he put his mouth directly over the nipple of her left breast and began to suck, much as I had sucked it when I was a few weeks old.

My mother leaned back against the arm of the sofa, forcing David to half lie on top of her to continue his sucking of her breast.

The movement also bowed her back a little, so that her breast was pressed firmly up against his mouth.

He loved kissing her nipples and the flesh of her breasts, and he moved his head from one to the other as if each delighted him so that he couldn't decide which one to concentrate his attentions on.

He was not tiring of the feel of her hard nipples on his tongue and the yielding flesh of her ample breast in his mouth, but she was anxious to proceed to more intensely stimulating sensations.

So she let her hand travel down his chest and his belly as he sucked and licked hungrily at her breasts, and she rubbed his thigh at first on the outside, and then on the inside.

David stopped his mouthing of her breasts as he sensed the imminent first contact of her hand upon his penis.

I saw her smile an almost jaded smile that David couldn't see from his position.

She squeezed at the inside of his thigh, an urgent, demanding squeeze, and then she slipped her hand up and squeezed his penis, as naturally and with as little ado as if it was simply another part of his anatomy, with no more special sexual interest than she would have touched any other part of his body.

The natural, casual nature of the caress aroused David more than a more self-consciously erotic stroking might have.

David gave out a gasp of pleasure and let his head fall onto her breasts as she rubbed and stroked his organ, bringing to full erection.

It became clear that he would lie there, reveling in the feel of her hand massaging his organ until she instructed him as to what to do next.

"David," she said, warmly and maternally, as if she was thinking only of his well-being and happiness, "Would you like to be inside me now?"

David tried to say yes but he choked on his words and all that came out was a grunt.

She was very understanding though, and quite willing to accept this as a valid reply.

"Let's undress, David," she said, and she indicated that she wanted to get up and take her own dress off.

He let her up and she stood to unfasten her skirt.

It fell to her feet and she stepped out of it and folded it neatly and hung it over a chair.

She also took the opportunity to pick up the blouse, which in the heat of the moment David had tossed on the floor.

As she folded the blouse and put it over the chair with her skirt, I saw David put his hand to his face, realizing the mistake he had made in so cavalierly flinging the blouse to the floor and risking a few unsightly wrinkles.

My mother is a very passionate person. She is also very neat. It is an interesting contradiction which might account for some of the more neurotic facets of her character.

David unbuckled his pants and stepped out of them.

They were both naked except for their underwear.

She stepped up to David and they embraced.

She ran her hands down his back, as if marveling in the firmness of the well-muscled flesh.

And then she brought both her hands down to his button and clasped them firmly, pulling him against her.

She began rubbing her womanhood up against him.

David's breath came out almost in a sob.

She reached between them and cupped one of her hands over his erect organ, which I glimpsed before she grasped it. It was a large bulge in his tight briefs.

She began to masturbate him through his briefs and he grasped involuntarily at her shoulders to support himself.

I suppose the sensation was so intense that it made him weak in the knees.

She was getting very excited now, too.

Her breath was coming very rapidly and as she moved away from him to give her hand more space to massage his fully aroused organ, I could see that her panties were damp with the moisture of her excited vagina.

She pulled at the elastic of his briefs and began to pull them down.

She pulled them all the way down his legs as he stood there, kneeling on the floor as she slid them all the way to the floor.

He stepped out of them, one of the few movements he felt secure in initiating on his own.

She was on her knees before him now.

She lifted her head up and her face was right before his erection.

She grabbed it in her hand, wrapping her fingers around it.

And then she put it in her mouth.

She sucked him until he began to whimper, and then she lay down on her back, not relinquishing her hold on his penis, but pulling him down with her gripping his erection all the time.

He went down on his knees, and she lay on her back, looking up at him with a wry smile.

"Take off my panties, darling," she said, sounding as if he was the lover and theirs was the love of the century.

My stomach surged up into my mouth and for a moment I felt sure I would vomit.

He took off her panties, pulling them down over her shapely legs, reverently and carefully, as if any sudden movement might cause him to wake up and he'd find himself collapsed in sleep in Mr. Morgan's geometry class.

As' soon as he slipped the panties off, she spread her legs open slowly and gracefully, as if she were an angel spreading her wings.

"Come put your cock inside me," she said.

He stretched out on top of her as she lay sinking into the plush carpeting.

She took his penis in her hand and guided it to her vagina.

He brought his hips down, thrusting up inside of her.

"Fuck me, David," she said, "Come inside me.

He thrust into her two or three times and that was about it.

David wasn't very sexually experienced, and this experience was too much for him.

He had an orgasm immediately, and then he lay on top of her, too mortified to look at her.

I know it pleased her that she had excited him so that he couldn't properly make love to her.

I think this excited her much more than if he had been a competent lover.

She stroked his hair, and said, "Darling, that's alright, that's good. I wanted you to come inside me. Did you like it?"

I figured this would be an interesting time to make my enterance.

I walked into the room and sat down on the sofa.

I picked up and apple from the fruit bowl on the table and took a bite of it.

They didn't notice I was in the room until I made the crunch.

They looked at me with horrified glances.

"Hi Mom, hi David," I said. "Are ' you having a pleasant afternoon? It certainly looks as if you're having a pleasant afternoon."

They didn't say anything.

And I couldn't say anything else because I didn't trust my voice.

So I threw the apple at them as hard as I could.

I hit David in the eye.

The next time I saw him skulking down the hall in school, I noticed that his eye was swollen and black and blue.

I ran into my room then and locked the door, so I don't know what happened then.

I needn't have locked the door.

Mother never came around to explain herself or to see if I was slashing my wrists, which I did consider but immediately rejected.

I don't have a suicidal personality.

Suicide is an immature reaction to stress.

And I suppose crying is immature too.

But I couldn't restrain myself from doing that.