Innocence

By Philip Matthews

Oliver Procerus: ‘We can call this power – which is like a carrier wave that probably underlies much of human life beyond the sexual alone – the Eros Current, and see that it is the expression of those higher entities that both determine the sex of a human being and express all of the higher qualities we associate with humanity, as distinct from mere animality.’

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip Matthews
• Release date: May 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005045388

Philip Matthews

Writer's life, hidden, frugal, self-absorbed, no TV or social media, a few good friends - but the inner life, ahhhhh. Recommend it to anyone.

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PREFACE

Oliver Procerus: ‘We can call this power – which is like a carrier wave that probably underlies much of human life beyond the sexual alone – the Eros Current, and see that it is the expression of those higher entities that both determine the sex of a human being and express all of the higher qualities we associate with humanity, as distinct from mere animality.’

A long day, perhaps a long night to come. The newly-wed couple, Jojo and Freda have reached the stage where they lie on the bed, Freda naked, feet drawn up under her thighs, left hand supporting her head while she stares at her husband, who for his part lies naked except for his shirt, on his back supine and looking at the ceiling.

Obviously, something has put a stop to whatever might have been about to happen. It’s Jojo who speaks:

‘Well, looks like I need to tell you this, Freda, and I don’t know how you will take it. I’ll tell you as mom told me. I was already eight years old, but it was only then that I wondered what she was doing. I asked because it was only then that I realised that there was a secret in it. We were always alone, and it was only when the house was empty that she did it. Pop never knew and still doesn’t know. As for my sister, I’m not so sure. It’s like an instinct with her, and I feel there were times when she was going to ask me. Maybe not just ask me, you know. Maybe more than that. But I better explain.

‘Mom told me that it was one of her friends who told her once, when I was still only an infant, what to do. Her friend had learned it from her mother. It was a custom in her family. I was crying once and mom couldn’t quieten me. Her friend was with her and she told mom to suck my little dick to quieten me. Mom said she didn’t want to do that because she thought it was a very dirty thing to do, just the way you might think about it, Freda. So mom’s friend did it to me and it worked. Apparently I didn’t find it at all strange to be sucked like that. I even kicked my feet out, which mom’s friend said showed that I liked what she was doing. But the main thing was that I stopped crying.

‘I don’t know about little girls, but boys, even very young boys, get a lot of pleasure with their little dicks, even though they cannot come or even get very hard. And it was a really nice pleasure, like waves of sweetness flowing into me from my dick. And it can be done over and over without any loss of pleasure. Mom said she was still reluctant to do that to me, even though she could see that it caused me no harm and in fact did quieten me. But the next time I cried and neither the tit or her comforting me worked she finally removed my napkin, washed me there carefully, and sucked me until I stopped crying. I never felt the need to cross-examine mom. Strangely, perhaps it was my age, but I didn’t see anything wrong with what she told me: it was a useful trick for mom, and for me – once I was old enough to understand – it was a source of real pleasure and good feeling. I was at time even grateful that she took the trouble to do this for me. Of course, I was by then long beyond the need to be quietened in this way.

‘The turning point came, I think now, when I was about three going on four. My earliest memories are of mom bent over me, her head bobbing slightly, waves of sweet pleasure radiating though me, a sense of perfect quiet about us. But I do remember clearly the first time I reached up to her afterwards and clutched at her breasts. I think I was trying to connect how I felt with mom. It was only then that she reached back to me and drew me up into her arms and held me close to her for what seemed a very long time. It was then I learned that she experienced pleasure too.

‘Mom was the kind of anonymous matron that you would see without noticing her. Shopping, attending church, even helping out at the food-bank, people served her or accepted her service without a second glance. By early middle age – my late childhood – she was a dumpy woman of less than average height, dressed in plain clothes, usually a skirt and jumper or blouse, depending on the season. Outdoors a nondescript overcoat or jacket, sensible shoes and stockings. Yet she was a warm person, her flesh soft, her breasts plump but not fat, her thighs round and smooth. I sometimes wondered – once mom and I had become really intimate – how she related to pop. He was much like her, mild and self-effacing, plainly dressed and always busy. He was descended of a long line of master carpenters, now a specialist in restoring the sometimes extensive woodwork of old buildings. They slept together and I did see him sometimes place his broad hand on her shoulder, but never more than that. This did surprise me knowing by then what mom was like. The only explanation I could find may seem curious: I thought pop preferred the firmness and plasticity of wood to the soft yielding warmth of his wife.

‘Well, be that as it may. I was of course completely without experience of other bodies – except perhaps what I saw incidentally of my sister’s (who was five years older than me). Pearl was slender and lean where mother was soft and full, so there was no real comparison that I could make. You must understand, Freda, that I was not sexually interested in mom, such a thought would never have entered my mind. Nor did I regard mom’s intimate relation with me as sexual. You must remember that I grew up with mom’s mouth embracing my little dick: it was simply part of my life, and would be so until the crisis later, which so changed our relationship.

‘As I have said, a little boy can experience the pleasure of his penis without ever tiring. Yet such pleasure never became a habit or addiction. I would always know when mom was going to pull my trousers down and bend to me, and accepting the coming experience without anticipation or notable excitement. Before I started school, with my sister already at school and pop out at his work, mom would come into the little room she had me play in and I would immediately get up from my cars or soldiers and go to where she sat on the couch. She would lift me up onto the couch to stand beside her. She would pull down my pants and bend her head to me, her soft, moist mouth already open, its wet warmth at once the first thrill as she sucked my soft member in like she might a succulent piece of fruit. And she always drew deeply with that first draw, so that my whole body was pulled towards her, my hands coming up to balance me against the cushiony pile of her strong hair. And she too would need to balance us both then, to compensate for the difference in mass, tiny me in contact with her expanse. She would bring her soft hands around behind me and mould them to my little buttocks. Again, as I have said, there was no passion – as adults would know it – between us, no clutching or grinding, no gasps or sobs, heavy breathing. She would suck on my little dick, her tongue sometimes flicking across its tip, and hold my body steady against her face, her nose pressing into my stomach, her eyes closed, a steady strong sucking pulse that pulled me to her, then relaxed, only to pull me to her again. And while I was drawn in against her hair and then relaxed, my hands seem to flutter over her shoulders, grazing the fabric of her blouse or the weave of her jumper, all the time conscious of the mass of her flesh, how it would give to my fingers before I encountered the fixity of her bones.

‘Afterwards, as I trembled with my all-consuming joy, she would dry my penis with her handkerchief and pull up my pants, and brush me down with flat open hands, grazing in turn my chest, stomach, groin and legs, then turning me and running her hands down my back, over my buttocks and down onto my legs, bare then as a young boy. The last thing she did was to lift me up and place me standing on the floor at her knees, then lean forward and kiss me on the brow. Then she would stand up, brush down her own clothes, give me a last smile and leave the room.

‘All this could happen anytime, sometimes more than once in a day. There was no rhythm to it, and as I have said it wasn’t a habit either. She would come to me, strip me down, bring me to my pleasure and then tidy both me and herself up afterwards. My pleasure. This was always the beginning and end of her ministration. As a young child I accepted this fact, egotistical enough then to believe I was worthy of this attention, the devoted service to my pleasure, as I saw it. Then came the day, as I have told you already, when I saw that she did derive pleasure herself from the ritual. I suspect now that the reason I noticed her enjoyment was because I was becoming more aware of her body. No, not alone mom’s body, but of my own body too. Yes, there definitely was a moment when I experienced first of all the presence – best word here – of mom’s body, and almost simultaneously became aware of my own body – that is, aware of my body a something distinct from my self-awareness. Of course, at that instant I also became aware of my experience of pleasure, its source in this body of mine, and then of mom’s agency in arousing this pleasure in me. Perhaps a matter of reciprocation, but as I experienced the actuality of my pleasure, I looked at mom to see if she also was experiencing this pleasure. You see that I was still young enough to assume that such pleasure that mom would experience would be exactly similar to the pleasure I was experiencing.

‘On this occasion, I was intensely aware of mom’s actions afterwards. It was when she brushed herself down upon rising from the couch that I noticed how her breasts trembled as her hands passed over them. Yes, I believed then that this was evidence of mom’s pleasure, the tremble of her bosom matched exactly the tremble of pleasure I was still experiencing at that moment. Spontaneously, I reached forward to her, hands raised to touch her. But I was not tall enough then, so that my hands fell against the pit of her stomach and slid down into her groin. She did quiver, and I saw the play of some unknown emotion in her eyes. Swiftly she caught my hands and raised them away, bent to kiss me and left the room.

‘You might think that I had somehow and by accident created a precedent. But no. I’m sure she was aware already of the changed tone of our ritual. No longer did she do something to me and generate a response in me that both gave me pleasure and afforded her some satisfaction. I wasn’t of course capable then of intuiting the nature of her satisfaction, and to be honest I’m not sure I am capable of doing it now either. Don’t misunderstand her pulling my hands away from her groin like that. I knew even then that she was not disturbed by my reaching for her like that – I actually I think she liked the fact of my response, regardless of how clumsy it was: there was an element of recognition that might in fact have relieved her. I say this in the light of her behaviour during the following weeks. True, she would come as she always did without notice. I would rise to meet her and she would lift me up, strip me and begin her ministrations. Not the first time afterwards, but after that I noticed that her eyes were open much of the time, when once they would have remained shut for the duration. It was like she was looking for something and yet no quite sure what it was. But no, that might not be quite true. You see that I observed her all the time, had always observed her. This is what she saw, that I watched her, my eyes looking down on her puckered lips about my dick, her soft short nose butting my stomach. What did she learn from that? Actually, considering what I began to do then, you could say she was in some way inviting me to respond to her.

‘Yes, there’s something in this. For what I began to do was this. As I told you, I had previously played my fingers across her shoulders. Now I began to touch her face, my fingers in her ears, caressing her eyelids, even grazing down against her mouth, that living zone that was for me the source of all my pleasure. It wasn’t that I experienced any increase of pleasure in undertaking this exploration. No, it was more like beginnings of a search of mom, a tentative encounter with another living being. Was it that objective? Yes, truly. I began my examination of mom in the same spirit as she stimulated me. It’s obvious that mom knew my body in great detail. After all, she had tended my body from birth: washed me, changed me, fed me, clothed me, she knew every little detail about my body. So, it’s obvious that I needed to begin my excursion into mom in much the same way, by carefully tending to every detail of her.

‘Of course, nothing like that was ever going to happen. We were not a sexual couple, trading sexual pleasures. But what did happen bit by bit in the last months before I started school was that I returned to my initial focus on her breasts just as mom changed her physical relation to me during our ritual. No doubt I was too big by then to be easily administered while standing beside her on the couch. There was some clumsiness until she decided that I should lie on my back on the couch so that she could – by dint of kneeling on the floor – capture my dick with her mouth while bent over me. I didn’t feel I had a choice in how I lay in relation to her but I did come to lie at right angles to her. At this angle I could see much more of mom’s body and found that I could reach to her with my right hand.

‘My first direct contact with her nearest breast was accidental. I had been absently stroking her upper arm when she moved slightly so that my hand slipped away and fell against her breast. She either didn’t notice what had happened or maybe didn’t mind. The latter I think is true. For I found on later occasions that she angled her body so that I had an easier access to her breast. This happened to be in the summer – our last pre-school summer – so that only a light blouse and a thin bra separated my hand from the soft pile of her breast. And because of how we physical related to each other – I would sit up on the couch after she had dressed me again while she remained on her knees before me – I found I could touch both her breasts, even weighing them in my little hands. I was quite forward here: this was a completely new aspect of our relationship. Again, I stress that this was not in itself a sexual act: I felt I was doing for mom something analogous to what she did for me, and that she experienced the same utterly detached pleasure that I did.

‘This aspect of our relationship would develop. There was, to be honest now, a kind of contamination of the innocence of the service mom had provided me from my infancy. The trouble was that mom was not an innocent infant, but a grown woman, married and with two children, the latter implying full sexual relations with her husband for some years at least. Thus my attempt to pleasure mom could only echo some elements of her sexual experiences with pop. And of course we never discussed this sort of thing, never. In any case, what was there to say? I am still a virgin man, as I suspect you know, and I most certainly never had the thought that I would someday and somehow replace pop with her. You’ll see what I mean.

‘School days brought some big changes yet didn’t change the essential. Thinking now, it looks as though I have remained infantile in some significant way. I don’t blame mom for this: I feel it has to do with the constant stream of pleasure I experienced through my childhood. Adults find they must work for their pleasure, but as a child I was in a real sense given pleasure at no cost to myself. Even now I can feel that tingle in my spine, as though a groove was created there, like a permanent plug-in. This explains why I thought school was a complete waste of time. I couldn’t understand why everyone spent so much of their lives there. Grown-ups appeared every morning, washed and in clean clothes, and so many children with bright faces and eyes shining with expectation. It was as though they were on stage in a long-running show. Just as well that I could absorb all that was talked at me, because I could never bring myself to try to remember any of it.

‘But the biggest change was at home. My sister brought me to school each day and I had to wait in a hallway until her class came out so she could take me home again. Pearl was eleven then, tall and straight, not cold but not close either. She was like pop in the way that I was like mom, and I think we related much as our parents did. I walked beside her every morning for three years and walked back with her in the evening through sunshine and rain, and never did we touch each other. And yet I knew that she cared for me in some way, proven when she thought I was being bullied by two bigger boys in my class. She was suddenly fierce that day, confronting those boys, wagging her finger at them. I suspect they didn’t yet realise what they were doing, simply following a native urge to dominate what they felt was open to domination by them. Did they grow up to be bullies or did my sister’s warnings check their instinct? I don’t know. I shared classes with them until they left at sixteen, but I paid so little attention to my classmates that I never noticed them again.

‘And it was strange how whatever closeness developed between Pearl and me in those early years did bring some shared understanding. I didn’t realise it at the time, but my sister was going through her puberty in those years. I remember once seeing her cry quietly as we walked home, though I was afraid to ask her why. Sometimes she would suddenly bite her lower lip and her eyes would stare coldly before her. I knew something was happening to her, but it was something I had never seen in mom through all the years of my intimacy with her. I did once try to talk to her – going on seven at the time and becoming aware of the fact of aging, growing old and dying – but she just smiled grimly and said I couldn’t understand.

‘But one thing I did understand about Pearl. To the extent that I by then