Acting Out With Mom, A play of love turns to love-play, Listen to what she whispered in my ear…don’t just read it…hear it as I heard it…the warm air of her breath…her lips almost touching me…her fragrance surrounding me. Feel what a simple declarative sentence has the power to do. “I want you,” she said. Yes, she had said things like that to me before and yes, she had kissed me before in a more than motherly way…but that didn’t count did it? After all we were only acting.
My mother Connie was pretty well known in the community. She had starred in the local theater productions for about four years and I always ran lines with her. By the time she approached dress rehearsal, her emotions were at performance level. So when she said to me, “I want you,” I was stirred.
My heart beat with uncertainty along the drum line of acting and reality when our lips met. We read parts together even when there was no play to rehearse for. We had brought each other a measure of comfort with our special way of saying ‘You are loved.’ It was warm and safe when we kissed and touched. The controlled heightening of emotion and sexual feelings took us to a plateau where we both respected the dangerous edge…until that moment.
We didn’t break the kiss. Our lips met and we gently stayed in a magical place for a long moment. At that time we didn’t speak about it, it just became our way.
It would be foolish to say it wasn’t sexual but the mood was also loving and comforting. The first time I touched her breast, we were doing a scene that preceded the characters making love. She only wrapped her arms tighter around me and kissed me harder. When weeks later I attempted to reach under her bra to fondle her bare flesh she removed my hand. I didn’t do it again.
My mother’s last two relationships could better be termed, ‘train wrecks’ and the most I had given to other women had been a few months of my time and very little of myself. At that time, the fact that my relief came at my own hands after kissing and touching her was something I accepted. I was satisfied because I felt I was getting more from my mother’s warmth and love than I would from sex with a stranger. When my mother told me that she was happiest when we read together kept me going.
So when she told me she had met a ‘nice’ man at work and had enjoyed a few dates with him, I told her I was happy for her. I wasn’t. I wasn’t that mature. I was only thinking about me; I was afraid it would spoil our special times together. I met Tom and he really did seem sincere and ‘nice.’ Shit.
I wondered why she had hid the fact that she had gone out. I wondered if there had been more than just dates between them. I was of two minds…and both of them hurt my head. Maybe I should just be happy for her and let things be or maybe I couldn’t just let her go. Mind one never had a chance.
It was also at that time that mom told me about Sara. She was a woman in her fifties from India that lived with a man in our building. I assumed he was her husband. Mom told me Ravi was her son. Sara and Mom became friendly and spent quite a bit of time together. After a few months my mother confided that something was going on between Sara and Ravi. I said, “What do you mean?” She wouldn’t go into details but she hinted that their relationship was sexual.