I got married at twenty and divorced at twenty-seven. It was a childless, loveless marriage. Why we got married I can’t even say, not now. I can only call it a mistake. I’d say a tragic mistake, but no one was permanently injured, so it was just a routine mistake.
The reason it lasted as long as it did was that at that time I was just starting out and barely making ends meet. I was the proverbial turnip, and she’d gotten nothing out of me. And she had no means of income, no education, no skills.
After several years she got off her lazy ass and began finding work she could do, like babysitting, cleaning other people’s houses, (Lord knows she hardly cleaned ours) and bathing dogs. At first, she spent everything she made on things like make-up and really cheap, glitzy jewelry.
She finally wised up and began saving money, and with that money, she went to a technical training school. After two more years, she got a certificate and got a job as a nurse’s aide. Thus the end of the marriage.
I was free, and content to stay that way, at least for a while. The years went by and I became more successful. There were also some strange, new thoughts sneaking into my brain. I decided it might be time to find a new wife.
I met Elsie at a church charity function. I didn’t attend services often and hadn’t been aware of her, but at the money-raising event, she had a table of baked good for sale. I chatted with her and liked what I heard and saw.
I started going to Sunday services and got to know her better. I guess you could say I fell in love, but it was more like she was a comfortable fit. We laughed at the same things, we liked going to the same restaurants, we wanted to see the same movies, we hated the same TV shows.
After almost nine months of wooing, I proposed and she accepted. She was a widow with a sixteen-year-old son, and even with her husband’s insurance, life had been touch and go for her. She’d been single for almost six years, and had buried him in her memory and moved on.
We got married and I moved out of my apartment and into the house they’d shared. Asher showed no resentment in his mother taking a new husband, but he didn’t accept me as his new dad. He wasn’t hostile but didn’t call me Dad. He continued to call me Mr. Mathews.
So here I was, thirty-seven and with a new wife and a teen-aged son.
He was a nice-looking, scrawny teenager and no trouble to his mom. Like all teens, he was attached to his cell phone, spent hours in his room playing video games and kept his friends away from us. But as far as we knew he wasn’t doing anything bad or getting into trouble.
In the months that followed I bit by bit began to notice one disconcerting thing about Asher. He seemed to be constantly touching his crotch. He’d adjust his cock, or sometimes appear to squeeze it. And he sat and walked around with one hand in his pocket. By watching him closely I was sure that many times he was stroking his hand up and down his cock.
Well, he was at that time of life when hormones go wild, so I supposed it was natural, but uncomfortable to watch. But then again, why was I watching it? But I continued to do so.
Elsie had taken her ability of baking to a new level. From displaying her skills at bake sales, she’d built a small business of providing cakes for church members’ birthday parties and anniversaries. People began asking her if her pies were for sale. Platters of cookies were snatched up.
The house was constantly filled with the smell of chocolate and vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg. I learned the difference between ganache and butter-cream. She spent many hours of every day in the kitchen, turning out marvelous, scrumptious treats.
One downside of this was she paid less attention to Asher and his activities. She was fortunate she had raised a good boy who kept to himself, but he was free to do as he wished.
It seemed that as soon as he turned seventeen physical changes took over his body. Muscles formed. Not the bulging kind yet, but the long sinuous muscles of young men. His pleasant looks grew into a hint of the handsomeness to come. There was a viral masculinity to him that he didn’t seem to be aware of yet, but I could sense it, and it was disturbing.
My eyes followed him when he came out of his room wearing only his jeans, or perhaps only his boxers. I noticed how his ass formed two distinct mounds that undulated when he walked away. I wondered at the obvious movement that caused the fly of his boxers to separate a fraction of an inch, but not quite enough to reveal the secret.
I marveled at the smooth hairlessness of his skin, and at the evolving wisps in his armpits. I smiled at the faint hint of a mustache, still years away from becoming a real one. All of these things captured my attention and my imagination. Those strange, new thoughts that had snuck into my brain a couple years ago stirred and awoke.
The upside was that I began giving Asher more of my time. I talked to him whenever he gave me the chance. More importantly, I asked questions and listened to his answers. It went slowly, but little by little he opened up. I showed interest in the things he was interested in. I shared things I found on my computer I thought he’d be interested in. I tried to think of things we could do together, places he might like to go.
I don’t think the kid was lonely, but just having someone nearby to talk to, appeared to fill some void. Maybe it was having an adult he could trust who really listened. In a couple of months, things had changed between us. He was more relaxed and comfortable around me. He still called me Mr. Mathews instead of dad, but it somehow was less formal. It just became the name he used for me.
One Saturday morning I’d gotten up and hadn’t bothered to shave or bathe. I went downstairs in my pajamas and had coffee and toast. After looking through the local paper and watching a portion of Morning Joe on MSNBC I went back upstairs to do the morning routine.
Elsie had already begun working on some rather big order, which meant she would be unavailable for even casual conversation. Asher, I assumed, was in his room, doing whatever it was he did in there.
I had taken my shower and dried off, wiped the steam off the mirror and just finished shaving when the door opened and Asher came in. He had the cell phone in his hand and had already closed the door before he saw me standing there, my back to him, naked.
From my point of view, the important thing was that the cell phone was the only thing he had. He was as naked as I was.
“Oh, sorry Mr. Mathews, I didn’t know you were in here. Sorry.”
He was looking down, trying not to look at me, and covering his cock with the hand holding the cell phone. Good luck with that. His cock was a good six or seven inches long, soft. He had balls, too, and with all that smooth skin there was a nice, little patch of hair making a nest for those eggs and that stalk.
He was fumbling with the door handle, trying to get it to turn.
“Hey, okay guy. No problem. We’re men here. You gonna shower? Go ahead, I’m almost done.”
He let go of the handle, but stood where he was, not able to move, it seemed. I turned and looked him up and down.
“You know, you’ve got a great body. It’s only going to get better as you get older. You don’t have anything to be ashamed of.”
He was still having trouble looking at me, but by keeping his eyes down, my cock was in his line of sight.
“That phone isn’t doing a bit of good there, and you’re only going to punch in a phone number if you continue holding it there.”
I laughed and he nervously laughed with me, but he moved his hand away from his cock.
“You know, Asher, you’ve got a really nice-sized cock. I’m sure you’ve seen other guy’s cocks in the gym at school. Maybe you didn’t look or think about them, but if you do you’ll know most of them can’t measure up.”
My talking like this was probably shocking him, but I hoped the casual way I was going about it might intrigue him.
He had looked down at his cock, as if not knowing it was there, even though a minute earlier he’d been trying to hide it. I saw his eyes shift and knew he was comparing his cock to mine. The truth was, although mine was a little fatter, it wasn’t as long.
He hadn’t said anything, but I decided to push ahead, hoping I didn’t go too far, too fast.
“I bet when you get an erection it grows another couple of inches. You should be proud of that, boy.”
With his head still down he cut his eyes up at me, and I saw a small smile flutter across his lips.
“Yeah, I thought so.”
I turned back to the mirror and splashed aftershave onto my face.
Looking at his reflection in the mirror I said, “Let me ask you something, are you still a virgin?”
He frowned and simply said, “Huh?”
I didn’t turn around. “Have you had sex with a girl yet, or anyone?”
He looked back down and shook his head slightly. “No.”
I turned back around and leaned my naked butt against the sink edge.
“Come on, don’t be embarrassed. You’re only seventeen. It could be another three or four years before it happens. I bet some of the guys you know talk about it like they have. Don’t believe it just because they say it. Most of the time they’re bullshitting.”
