by Ward Fulton
"The waiter grinned at me. We'd got to be pretty good buddies, since Mother Darling tipped exceptionally well, and he liked to see people eat-at which I had always been very obliging. A fifteen-year-old is likely to take on a lot of calories and fodder of one kind or another. This time, I was outdoing even a normal fifteen-year-old. But he didn't know why, and I was not going to tell him.
"I don't know how Mother Darling did it. She was just as cool and gracious, just exactly the wistful young charmer, eating as daintily as if she did it merely to satisfy the spectators, not for the nourishment. Of course, she was an actress. And, I realized, she had been putting on this calm, gracious act most of her life. The only difference was that, once or twice she reached over to pat my hand, which she hadn't done since I can remember, but she managed to make even that look wistful and little-girlish.
"We even had our coffee up in the forward salon, which I didn't usually get since that's presumably reserved for adults. And we danced to a waltzy sort of orchestra. Nothing jive. It wouldn't have fitted with the ship's passengers. The dancing was very demure. Mother Darling made it like that, and I was just as glad. I don't think I could have taken any pelvis grinding without breaking in half, and I didn't feel capable of doing any rock-'n'-roll, frug, or any of the kid stuff.
"Not that there was that kind of music, but they did have a pretty fair combo down in tourist, to which I'd sometimes wander. But I couldn't have made the scene that night. The kids down there would have to do without my delightful company -not that I suspect any of them grieved over it, though there was a cute chick who had possibilities, if I could ever have unlatched her from her parents, a couple of professor types, but knowing.
"After the dancing-Mother Darling and I did three numbers and she doddered around with a couple of the old fogies for a few more-we headed for our suite on the promenade deck, sauntering. Actually I was getting a little nervous. I mean, for just an afternoon session: three times for a fucking and once for a suck-off! Yipes! What would a night session be like?
"I needn't have worried. Mother Darling carried over the wistful young charmer act right into the cabin, not batting an eye or indicating in any way that there had been a rousing, fucking, bed-squirming good time for us that afternoon. She kissed my cheek for a good-night and wafted off on some dream cloud of her own, in her cabin.
"That left me feeling a little foolish, plus weak in the knees, some with relief, some because I was-well, I guess you'd say frustrated. I had sort of expected maybe there'd be a continuance of the afternoon-with some real rutting and grunting. Instead I was left with instructions to go to bed like a good little boy.
"Frankly, I don't suppose I'll ever understand Mother Darling. She's like two different people. Or maybe more. Yes, I think I could see at least a couple more layers down. She's the ex-movie star, smiling, grave, gracious. She's that same movie star doing her stuff as the wistful young charmer. She's a 'good sport,' in quotes, when it comes to fun and games. Nothing quite as strenuous as skiing, which I happen to like, and not too vigorous a game of tennis. But she's nimble on the court and manages to laugh a lot, so she sounds as if she's enjoying it.
"And then there's that woman I'd never have recognized-the she-devil in bed. A completely different person from any of the other faces she put on, yet maybe the realest of them all. I could begin to believe those gossips that had her a real man-eater off screen. I do know that she never had the same leading man in any two pictures, but I had always put that down to the fact that she was choosy and, as the star, could pick the men she wanted.
"In a way that may have been true but not in the way I had always thought of it. Maybe it was true she had wanted guys with long dongs or lots of stamina. And wore 'em out during the shooting of one picture. I do know most of 'em never did anything much after playing with her. Just faded out of the Hollywood scene.
"I hauled myself off to bed, weary everywhere, but taking most of the punishment from my nuts, which really ached. I got a shot at a good tub soak and that eased things up considerably. I was able to sleep. Able to sleep? I was almost asleep before I hit the bed.
"That was my first session with her. I guess maybe she had some consideration for me, seeing as who I was, but she really could use up love-meat Gobble it. And from there on in we had a ball-a whole series of balls. And I was using mine,"
Essentially this must necessarily be an analysis of Eddie M-:'s mother, rather than of Eddie. She was the aggressor in the incestuous relationship. It is quite possible-indeed, highly probable-that she was one of those unfortunate female phenomena, a true nympholept.
Eddie, a perhaps "over precious" young man, hints at this and implies perhaps that it is coupled with a form of schizophrenia, in that she could pass from one highly excited state into a completely different emotional strata without seeming to recognize the transition or the fact that she had been involved in another emotional area.
The woman he calls "Mother Darling" was an actress, a very successful actress in a specific type of rote, that of the wistful young charmer. She was accustomed to "putting on an act" in a very literal sense. It is also quite possible that she was putting on an act in a psychological sense.
Schizophrenia, split personality, is still a dark corner in psychiatric work. Subjects have been known to harbor as many as nine separate personalities in one corporeal body, each distinct, each un-known to the other. Most schizophrenic personalities, however, have some knowledge of their alter egos, even though the control of which personality shall be dominant at any given moment is not always possible.
Actresses and actors, in general, have a mild form of schizophrenia-what might be called self-induced schizophrenia-which enables them to shift personalities on the stage or screen to fit the role requirements. When it reaches the proportions which would appear to be the case with Eddie's mother, then there is, in all probability, a true mental split. There certainly was a strong emotional split.
There is a hint of transference, too, in Eddie's failure to call this woman "Mother Darling" when he describes the sexual activities of the two of them. This is a suggestion or hint of schizophrenia latent in Eddie, since he is compartmentalizing his own thinking about "Mother Darling" as his mother-an obvious affectation-and "Mother Darling" as his incestuous mistress.
However, it is not Eddie who calls for analysis. The aggressor was his mother, using her considerable sexual attractions, along with a very active aggression, to seduce her son. It is the act of aggression that primarily concerns us. According to hints and "old gossip" as Eddie recalls it, his mother had, for many years, been man-hungry, using up her leading men with her sensuality. In each case, apparently, she was the sexual aggressor.
In The Ability to Love, author Allan Fromme, notes this form of sexual aggression: "Sex, we all know, can become a channel for many unconscious forces that may have little connection, or perhaps none at all, with sex itself."
The woman here was certainly using sex as an aggressive act on the body of her son. She had seemingly been doing, so for many years with other males. The very intensity of the act and her apparent emotional split over each incident, in which she seems not to recall or else to very successfully bury the memory of the sex act, is indicative of some early traumatic shock. In this, apparently, her intense sexual activity is a reaction to the trauma instead of a true sexual activity stimulated by normal means. Since she is not available for analysis and cannot answer any questions that would lead to a specific clue to her trauma, one can only speculate as to original causations.
That the original cause of the trauma was sexual there can be little doubt. Since she seems to have had no emotional reaction to the act of incest with her son and had an immediate and seemingly complete amnesia of the incident, one can assume that her initial trauma developed out of some incestuous practice upon her. Perhaps her father or brother had originally seduced her.
Wilhelm Reich, in The Sexual Revolution, says of such early traumas: "They result immediatel
y in antisocial impulses and perversions and often in social anxieties and moral depression." Certainly excessive sexual activity and incest can be considered "antisocial impulses" if not to the extent of perversions. The social anxieties and moral depression which Reich mentions could easily be the triggers of the amnesiac reaction to each sexual act for Eddie's mother, extending back to the original sex act of incest perpetrated upon her.
The woman desperately needed the physical gratification of sexual activity and yet, mentally, could not tolerate the actions she went through, wiping them out in a form of amnesia. Whether this amnesiac effect extended to actual schizophrenia one cannot be absolutely certain. However, from her son's quite frank account, one can assume that it did reach schizophrenic proportions, passing the bounds of mere amnesia.
The fact is, because of certain biological structures, a few young girls are almost medical anomalies, suffering from a constant-or constantly recurring-need for sex. These girls grow up to be nympholepts. Eddie's mother was obviously one of these. Apparently unable to face the facts of her own biological drives and the sexual acts these led her into, the woman developed the convenient emotional cover of amnesia which, as mentioned, probably extended into schizophrenia with time and repetition. In all probability this schizophrenia-if-it actually existed-was the result of the early trauma arising out of some very early sex act, possibly incest.
Eddie M- is not an admirable character in himself. He is young, brash, and concerned primarily with what Freud calls "the hedonistic gratification of the sexual drive." He admits to having sexual relations with young girls from the time he was thirteen and, by his own account, he was quite willing to continue his activities among his peer group. In feet, on the first instant of his mother's incestuous attack on him-and it can only be called an attack-Eddie admits that he was considering having sex with a young girl aboard the cruise ship. He accepted this sexual attack by his mother and subsequently was completely bewildered by her reaction to it. Or rather by the lack of any outward manifestation indicating that she had any reaction, or indeed, any recollection of what, to the boy, must have been a devastating experience, no matter how sophisticated he thought himself to be.
In his own reactions over the next two years one can see a gradually developing antagonism, along with a slowly dawning recognition that his mother was deliberately fencing him off from more normal contacts, especially sexual contacts with those of his own age. The constant traveling was either a conscious effort or possibly an unconscious desire by his mother to eliminate opportunities for closer entanglement with girls, which might easily have happened in a more stable life pattern centered in a community.
How did Eddie feel about his mother as an incestuous partner? Obviously he enjoyed "the hedonistic gratification" but physically he was exhausted and emotionally ambivalent Eventually Eddie came to hate his mother; he turned on her, repulsing her advances and saying to her the one thing which would destroy her-the references to her aging, which in turn triggered her recognition of herself, a recognition that led to her subsequent suicide.
"Like I said, I don't suppose I ever did understand Mother Darling. She was Mother Darling and in top form as the gracious lady, to me and even to the fuddy-duddies on the cruise, for the next couple of days. Honest, I was sort of bewildered. I came damn close to thinking I'd dreamed all that stuff about her and me in bed, even if my nuts did ache somewhat Would they, if it was only a dream? Anyway, I had about decided to consult my psychiatrist when I got home. Sure, I have a psychiatrist Doesn't everybody?
"Anyway, I'd about reached the conclusion I really needed a couch session with a psychiatrist, when we hit Funchal. I happen to like Funchal. I dig those crazy streets with the picture signs laid in mosaic so the ignorant peasants who couldn't read would know how to go. And those pebbles-well, in the center of Funchal they've mostly cut out the skid-runners on carriages and wagons in favor of cars and trucks, but they still scoot you down the Monte in those big wicker chairs with the overlong skis.
"I know I took this babe from tourist up the Monte and we got two of those wicker deals and raced down the mountain, with our drivers riding the skis and hanging on to the leather straps. The kid from tourist had never seen anything like that-this was her first trip abroad, I think-and she was having a ball. Oh, so was I, because she was a cute chick with all her parts, assembled correctly, too.
"I think I could have made a successful pass after that, when we got back to the ship. I had her sort of loosened up and she wasn't making too much of it when I felt one of her tits. Only Mother Darling was in the Zocala when we got down into the town. She was sweet as pie to Anita-that's the kid from tourist-and took her with us shopping. Mother Darling was really wonderful to her, not letting her spend money on the junky stuff-and do they have it in the shops there!-trying to show Anita what was really good and worth taking home. Only I don't think Anita had that kind of dough. She really ought to have been buying maybe a few junky trinkets. I know the treatment sort of made me squirmy, even if Mother Darling was being gracious. It also sort of killed the glow Anita and I had for each other.
"I never was able to work it back up before Anita and her family got off at Barcelona. Mother Darling and I were going the whole route-Marseilles, Nice, Genoa, Naples, Palermo, Venice, and then by another boat to Dubrovnik, Phaleron, Istanbul and back through the Greek Islands. Once, when I was a kid, we'd made that trip, including Rhodes and Egypt, but Egypt's sort of out of the mainstream of tourism these days.
"I had said a sort of hurried good-bye to Anita- not even a kiss, with her family looking on-and promised to write. Only whoever does? And we left Barcelona. I know I went up to our suite and threw myself on the bed, trying to figure out how it had gone sour. I mean, between Anita and me.
"I know I was only fifteen, then, but I thought I knew my way around among the chicks. I'd made out all right back home, throwing enough love-meat around so I never had to worry about the well going dry. I'd had cunt and knew where more was available-back home. But I had had this sort of yen for Anita. Or maybe it was just the gonads working.
"Mother Darling came in and looked down at me. 'Really, Eddie, you'd be better off with a tepid shower. The weather… I'm not sure I should have tried this trip at this time of the year… Go on, Eddie, take a shower. You'll feel better.'
"Maybe I would. I mean, staring at the ceiling doesn't get you anything but a knowledge there's a crack in it. I crawled off the bed and kissed Mother Darling sort of absently-she liked to have me kiss her in passing, absently or not. I started peeling out of my shirt as I went. I heard her behind me, laughing, but kind of choky. 'You have nice shoulders… '
"I was still getting the shower adjusted to just that temperature where it feels exactly right. You know, a real tricky balance between air temperature and your skin. That's when she came in, laughing and shedding her peignoir, stepping into the shower right along with me and kissing me on the neck. A real hungry-type kiss.
"That's when I knew it wasn't any crazy dream. It was real-and exciting as hell. She really knew how to get a guy worked up. A little finger-action along the spine and then down around the front. Nothing quite as crude as grabbing my love-meat, but little passes that made it sit up and take notice. Rubbing those tits against my back didn't do my dong any injury, either. She could really squirm 'em around and grind 'em in. And make a guy know what they were and why they were there.
"The first thing I knew I was swinging her around in the shower and grabbing a mouthful of tit and sucking. And maybe getting more shower water than sex, but it was still great. Mostly, because, I figure, when I turned around, my meat hit right at her cunt.
"She rode my love-meat, sliding it between her legs and working her twat back and forth on it, like a witch on a hot broomstick, moaning and whimpering all the time, her eyes half shut and her mouth working. Hell, her cunt was working, too. I could feel it twitching at my dong, lipping it, getting things worked up in the working area. And I was pum
ping, too, and sliding some in the shower, because I'd dropped the soap and it was underfoot.
"She led me out of the shower, drying us both off at once with one of her big fluffy towels and riding my private little old broomstick all the time she was wiping.
"She had a perfect little body, pint-sized, maybe, but all the parts were there. And whoever put together her particular jigsaw, did one fine job. I know I could run my hands down her back and grab that nice, raunchy rump, dig my fingers in and practically lift her on to my love-muscle. She dropped the towel along-about then and started clawing at my shoulders, doing a rumba rhythm right up against me and letting out little yips. She was practically gnawing on my collarbone, and all the time she was turning us both and moving back into her cabin. Don't ask me how she managed it I had my hands and mouth and face full of woman. And that was a woman I was holding. My love-muscle was moving to a beat of its own, right up against the hottest twat in Christendom, And one that wasn't just hot but worked at being a twat.
"Somehow she had backed me to the bed. I fell back across it and she climbed right on top of me, squatting her turbulent little cunt right over my dong, moving it around until things fit. And then she just sat down, ramming my prick up her twat until her pussy hairs seemed to come out of me instead of her.
"And she did the shimmy. Oh, I know that's an old dance, older even than her, but then, what she was doing was older still-from back in the early days of Time. She could swing her pelvis and twitch back and forth, all at the same time, and bounce up and down, so my love-muscle was riding up and down in her hot cunt and getting chewed by those hot cunt lips.
"I'd have said nobody could do all those things at once, but she would have made a liar out of me. Because she fucked the living daylights out of my love-muscle, going in all directions at once, and still managed to damn near claw my shoulders loose.
"Enjoy it?-I know I was having myself more excitement than if somebody had stuck a blender up my tail-running. But her? I don't know. She looked excited-wild-eyed, really-and had this funny, rigid sort of smile pasted on. But she also looked as if she might be hurting. Like it was something she had to do. Still, she was loving it You could tell.