Becoming a Man in the Shadowlands by Dennis N. Randall - HTML preview

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Chapter One: Molested by my mother

My mom is drunk.

The sound of her fury is coming from downstairs in the kitchen. Slamming pots and pans and screaming curses announce her rage. When my mother drinks she throws fits, and tonight her temper tantrum is a rolling thunderstorm of anger.

My mother is, as they say, a work in progress. She had divorced my father two years ago and remarried to the preacher with whom she had been having an affair. For the wife of a minister, she uses an impressive vocabulary of red-hot four-letter words. Tonight those heated words make an appearance, and she blazes like a forest fire.

My mother's name is Joyce, and I am her son. She demands my sister, and I never call her Mom or Mother. We are only to call her by her given name; failing to follow her name rules earns a swift rebuke or a smack on the ass.

Joyce is 46 years old, about 30 pounds overweight, and a nasty drunk.

When her alcohol fuels her temper, I give my mother an ample clearance. If she is in an alcohol-inspired rage, my survival strategy is to shelter in place and wait for the storm to pass. After a while, her tantrum abates, and the house grows quiet. Stillness is good because silence is safety.

After twenty minutes of peace and quiet, I think it is safe enough to engage in my new favorite past time: self-pleasure.

First, I check again for any sounds of human activity in the house.

Silence prevails, and the coast is clear. Joyce sleeps soundly after a round of heavy drinking. With luck, I shouldn't be hearing from her until tomorrow afternoon.

I lift a corner of my mattress, and reach under to retrieve an illicit copy of the dirty magazine "Swank." It features well-endowed women in various stages of undress. The photo content is exclusively tits and ass because it's all the censors will allow breasts and backsides.

Men's magazines are easy to acquire. Now and then as I do my morning paper route, I find a random skin magazine sticking out of a trash can set out for curbside pickup. I could always count on several addresses to produce new editions to add to my growing collection.

I kick off my shoes, remove my socks and pants and slide out of my underwear. My short-sleeved shirt is unbuttoned, and I do not wear a tee shirt. Naked from the waist down I settle onto the bed and flip open a magazine and start to play with myself.

Like virtually any 15-year-old boy, I masturbate almost as often as privacy allowed.

Early mapmakers used to mark unexplored and unknown regions of the ancient world with the inscription: "Here there be dragons."

My mental map of the female body included a swath of real estate below the navel and above the knees, which could have borne the same markings.

It would be another nine years before Playboy magazine published its first full-frontal nude pictures of a playmate.

A warm glow is spreading across my body, and I'm almost on the verge of orgasm when the door of my room suddenly swings open. My mother stands at the entrance, looking at me, she screams, "What the hell are you doing?"

I'm stone cold busted. I scramble to cover myself and grab the only shield within reach, the magazine I had been using as a visual aid.

In a flash, my mother crosses the room and grabs me by one arm. The next instant she drags me off the bed. As I tumble ass first to the floor, she snatches the magazine from my hands.

There is no chance to shield myself before Joyce pulls me to my feet and waves the magazine in one hand as she holds my arm in the other and shouts, "You like looking at these pictures?"

I'm too shocked and too afraid to speak. Joyce stares down at my midsection and asks, "Or should I say, do you just like to picture yourself screwing?"

She giggles at her clever wordplay. Her garbled words reek of alcohol.

What follows for the next many minutes is a barrage of words and slaps delivered first with rage and later with something almost like affection.

She keeps screaming in my face and tells me repeatedly, "Dennis, you should be ashamed of yourself."

Each time she says, I should be ashamed; she looks into my eyes, slaps me and then peeks down at my naked display.

Soon the face slaps become clumsy caresses and peeks become long gazes. I move my hands to cover my shame, Joyce moves my hands away to one side, keeping me open, and exposed for her inspection.

My body burns with humiliation as my mother's eyes focus on my private parts. I'm on fire with shame. Never before have I been so exposed, naked, and helpless.

Joyce pulls me to her body and wraps her arms around me. She buries her face in my neck and starts to weep. I can barely make out her muffled words.

My mind races in panic and confusion. Every one of my five senses is operating in overdrive.

My sense of touch overloads with impressions. Where Joyce holds me pressed against her body, I sense the protrusions of her nipples and breasts shifting and sliding against me under the smooth silk of her nightgown.

Moisture from her breath warms my skin, and her tears trickle down my neck; the chill of evening air blowing in from an open window raises goosebumps on my exposed buttocks while heat radiating from her warmed the front of my body.

I choke on her foul breath and inhale a gas cloud mixed with the stench of gin and accented with the flowery scent of cheap perfume. At the far edge of detection, a pungent odor tells me she needs a bath.

A misty fog bank of hair obscures my field of vision. Here and there between strands of hair, I can see my desk and scattered papers and unfinished homework assignments. Fear rises like steam from my body and blends with the taste of lilac hairspray from the strands of her hair stuck in my mouth.

When she shifts position, I catch a glimpse of a shelf filled with model airplanes.

All I can make out is the babble of incomprehensible words mixing with the sound of weeping, breathing and rustling fabric.

I'm also painfully aware of my nakedness and vulnerability. Every time I back away, my mother pulls me closer and holds me tighter as we stand together next to my bed.

We stand together like fence posts for the longest time. After a while, my mother begins to sway back and forth, as she mumbles something about being sorry and something about me becoming a man and other nonsense. We continue to sway back and forth in this strange slow dance for several long minutes. Our dance is alarming, relaxing and calming all at once. The way she holds me reminds me of the affection I never received from her as a child and all the times I wish she had calmed my fears.

I've shriveled to almost nothing. As we continue our weird dance, involuntarily I am becoming aroused as my private parts brush against the terrycloth material of my mother's housecoat and the soft fabric of her nightgown.

My mom pushes me away from her body and looks down at my re-born erection. After a long gaze, she grins, places a hand on the back of my head, and pulls me in close to her body and embraces me. The scent of alcohol and perfume is again overpowering as she buries my face in the cleavage at the top of her nightgown. Her hug is confusing and comforting. It is a hollow reminder of real affection I never received from her as a child.

Joyce whispers in my ear, "Dennis, you need to stop jerking off to pictures of naked women. You need to see what a real woman looks like under her clothes. Come into my bedroom one of these days, and I'll show you everything. And I mean I'll show you everything."

While she speaks, she reaches down and fondles me for eternity. I freeze in place as her fingers explore, stroke, and caress me in places they should never be. Tears roll down my face as my shame turns to new inner horror. I am responding to my mother's trespassing touch. The implications of her invitation accompanied by her exploration of my private parts are instantly apparent to me.

Confused sensations at the edge of an expanding glow of pleasure mix with shame and tears of embarrassment. I fear I might take my mother up on her offer. Shame removes her offer from the table.

Humiliation is burning me alive. Why is Joyce masturbating me? Does Joyce think I want her to touch me like this?

After lingering for several more long minutes, she removes her hand from my erection and whispers, "I think you will like it."

She kisses me on the cheek, releases me and stumbles as she backs away and turns to leave the room. I'm still standing there half-dressed and still in a noticeable state of arousal. She stops in the doorway and stares at my crotch and then back into my eyes. "Sweet dreams, Dennis," she says with a smile.

Then she is gone.

I am trembling and shaking so badly I can't keep my balance, trying to put my pants on is an impossible chore. I give up trying to stand and sit down on the edge of the bed to finish getting dressed.

Still trembling I drop to my knees and reach way under the mattress and fish out a hidden pack of smokes and a book of matches. My hands shake as I light a cigarette and try to relax.

Smoking anywhere is against the rules, and tobacco use in the house is a hanging offense. Then again, so is playing with your son's dick.

"What the hell was that all about?" I ask myself as I take a deep drag.

My mind is trembling as much as my body. Thoughts race in one confused direction after another before slamming into a wall and rebounding off at a tangent. Anger, arousal, betrayal, rage, confusion, disappointment, guilt, and desire whirled and swirled through my brain like a tempest out of mythology.

What happened is so far off the deep end I couldn't begin to imagine how far down it is to the bottom. Joyce's offer to come to her room and see everything echoes in my head.

I imagine the scenario would play out as some sick show-and-tell ending in a sexual union. Why is she doing this to me? What kind of game is she playing?

My mind feels like it is twisting inside out and upside down every time the memory replays in my head.

After a while, I stop thinking and stare at the ceiling. I take a deep breath and will myself to relax. Each time I succeed in regaining my composure, I shudder at the memory of my mother's touch, and my response to her stimulation.

Part of me knows my arousal in reaction to my mom playing with me is involuntary. With a mind of its own, my prick ignited like a pile of wood chips set ablaze by a tossed match.

Another part of me sits in skeptical judgment as I remember the mixed sensations of arousal and embarrassment as my mother hugged me and stroked me. The warmth and illusion of affection, while she held me in her arms, is both welcome and terrifying. How wonderful it would be if I could go to her to calm my fears. Maybe sex is her way of showing affection. The more I thought about the fantasy of motherly love I had experienced the angrier I became. None of what happened is real. She had only pretended to give me her love and affection; the two things I desired the most. I muffle my sobs in my pillow.

I am pissed at myself for crying like a baby, and I fight like a bastard to get myself back under control.

Tonight, Joyce deliberately opened a forbidden door and set out a welcome mat of invitation. It is a door I didn't think I could ever nail shut again. Sweet dreams my ass!

I notice a cloud of tobacco smoke is filling my room and I open my bedside window and light another cigarette.

Pulling up a stool, I lean on the windowsill and absently pick at a few bits of flaking white paint. Gazing out into the night, I try to make sense of what happened.

My mother and I are in a virtual state of war and have been for as long as I can remember. Nothing I did ever is good enough, and nothing I did receives her approval. I could not remember her ever saying she loved me. For the most part, I defiantly rebel against her authority. If I want to piss her off, I call her mom or much worse, mummy.

Tonight, Joyce laid waste to any sense of shelter and sanctuary left in the privacy of my body. Worse yet she tried to invade my mind. I see her molestation of me as a vicious act of aggression.

My mother molesting me was weird, and in a screwed-up way, it is entirely consistent with my previous two sexual experiences. Three years ago, a couple of school bullies abused a friend and me for their amusement. My babysitter raped me about a year later.

They had been unsettling and confusing experiences: random memory blips of terror and guilty curiosity.

Guilt was the hardest emotion to process. Each unpleasant episode, including tonight's encounter, had an edge of arousal, and a part of me was curious as to what would happen if I had become a willing partner to my abuse. I mostly dealt with my feelings by not dealing with them. I just shoved the memories into a corner of my mind as if they were bad dreams and I moved on.

I didn't think "moving on" was any longer an option. Events of the night have changed everything. I couldn't leave home until I turned eighteen. Getting legal and going to the authorities after she molested me seemed like overkill, and could end up destroying the only family I had left. I had heard horror stories about the foster care system from kids at school; I didn't think the risk was worth it. There is no one I trusted enough to talk to about what happened. Besides, who would believe me? Accepting my mother's offer is a non-starter. All I can do is to shelter in place and await further developments. It is even possible that she will remember nothing because she had been so drunk.

Nearly out of cigarettes and with the eastern sky starting to lighten, I finally give up trying to sleep.

As the sun rises, I finish getting dressed and embark on my paper route.