NEW STORY TITLE: A MODERN HAREM (Erotica)
A widow, Joyce, thinks about her first date with Gerald..
Read and enjoy…
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“Mom,” Hilary said, “you need to get out there.”
Joyce Danvers looked dubiously at her pert, petite daughter. She had a pretty good idea of what Hilary was getting at, but she played dumb. “Get out where?”
“Get out into the dating world,” Hilary said impatiently.
Joyce’s heart sank. “Oh, God, you can’t be serious.”
“I am serious. Look, Mom, Dad’s been dead for two years. I know it was a big shock to everyone, being suddenly taken from us in that horrible helicopter crash. God knows I cried my eyes out, and you were pretty discombobulated too.”
“Shouldn’t I have been? It’s not easy to lose a spouse you were married to for almost twenty years.”
“Of course, Mom, but you need to move on. You don’t want to be alone for the rest of your life, do you? Dad wouldn’t have wanted that.”
“Hilary, two years is not a long time to grieve over something like this.”
“Mom, the point is that pretty soon you’re actually going to be alone. I head off to college in two months, and I don’t want to have you moping around this big old house with no one to talk to–and no one to” (she chuckled) “cuddle up with.”
Joyce rolled her eyes. “I don’t need someone to cuddle up with.”
“Everyone needs someone to cuddle up with.”
“Well, it’s not as if you’re going away to the ends of the earth. You’ll just be on campus a few miles away. I still don’t know why you don’t keep on living here and commuting to your classes.”
“Mom, I explained that already. The college insists that all freshmen live in a dorm with a roommate. I’m not real keen on that, but I guess the college doesn’t want us newbies to be lonely. And you shouldn’t be lonely either.”
“I’m not–”
“Listen, Mom,” Hilary interrupted. “Lemme show you something.”
She brought out her smartphone, pressed a few buttons, and shoved the device in front of her mother’s face.
“Look here,” she said. “There’s a dating website just for widows and widowers. I think you should join.”
Joyce blanched. “You’re kidding me, right? All these pathetic bereft people–”
“Mom, I hate to say it, but you’re one of them. And who has a better feel for what you’ve been through? People who are divorced or never married haven’t a clue.” She chuckled again. “Anyway, I’ve set up a profile for you.”
“You what?” Joyce exclaimed. “You had no right–”
“Calm down, Mom–I’ve only started it, and it’s not visible yet. But I’ve put a lot of cute pictures of you up there, not to mention one of me.”
“You? Why you?”
“Well, a prospective mate needs to know I exist–that you have an adult daughter.”
“Adult? Barely.” Hilary had turned eighteen a week ago.
Ignoring that, Hilary said, “You need to have a little spiel about yourself: I figured you’d write that yourself.”
“Thank you. I know how to use the English language.”
“Well, then, go to it! The sooner you get the page up, the sooner guys will be knocking down the door to take you out.”
Joyce doubted that very much, but the idea of actually going out on dates began to start sounding vaguely appealing. She really hadn’t done much in the last two years, and it was probably getting to be time when she should stop seeking people’s sympathy for her situation. After all, she was a good-looking woman of forty-two: why shouldn’t guys want to go out with her?
Over the next few days Joyce worked on the statement about herself. It went through a couple drafts, as Hilary proved a harsh critic (“Oh, Mom, this sounds too whiny!” “Mom, if you say that you’ll attract exactly the wrong type of guy–the one who just wants to get into your pants”), but finally Joyce and her daughter agreed on how it should read.
And they uploaded the page onto the website.
Within days, Joyce found her inbox peppered with messages from prospective suitors. Some of them, she could tell immediately, were totally hopeless; others seemed promising. She decided to meet one guy for coffee–dinner, or even lunch, was too big a commitment at the start–on a Saturday afternoon.
Hilary saw her mother come back in under an hour. And Joyce’s expression told the whole story.
“Not a good fit, Mom?” Hilary said.
Joyce let out an inarticulate groan of disgust. “This guy wanted to do nothing but use my shoulder to cry on! He lost his wife only a few months ago–and already he’s trying to find another partner! Jeez, you gotta give it some time! But he’s one of these pathetic men who can’t do anything for themselves. So basically he wants a maid, a cook, and perhaps a mother thrown in for good measure.”
Hilary came out with one of her patented chuckles. “And, um, probaby a bedmate too.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Several other dates also proved unsatisfactory, although not quite as bad as that first one. Then she got into an extended email exchange–with a few phone calls thrown in–with a forty-four-year-old guy named Gerald Wilkins. He seemed really promising: kind, sincere, genial, and not totally wallowing in grief. So she agreed to meet him for dinner.
Hilary sensed that this meeting had the potential to be more consequential than its predecessors, so she took particular care with how her mother presented herself. But when, in her mom’s bedroom, she saw what Joyce had slipped into, Hilary made a face.
“What’s the matter?” Joyce said, alarmed. “Don’t you like it?”
“Mom, the classic ‘little black dress’ is a wonderful thing–but it may not be quite right for the occasion.”
“Why on earth not?”
“Look, Mom, you’re a beautiful lady, but that dress shows your curves–and you have plenty of them–a bit too much. You don’t want to look too slutty for a first date.”
“How dare you!”
“Mom, I’m just telling you what I think. You have a bit more flesh on your bones than I do, and that dress is kinda tight, especially around the bust and hips. Don’t get me wrong: you got a great rack–”
“Hilary, please!”
“–whereas I got itty-bitty tits. I don’t know how that happened.”
“Dear, your breasts aren’t too small.”
“They’re only thirty-two B. What are yours?”
“Um, thirty-four D.”
“See? They’re probably twice as big as mine.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“The point is, Mom, you need a dress that shows off your assets with a bit more, um, restraint.” Hilary approached the big walk-in closet in the bedroom and fished out a nice-looking dark blue dress. “How about this?”
“Well, okay,” Joyce said, a little crestfallen. She really liked her little black dress.
“Let’s see how you look in this,” Hilary said, holding it up in front of her mother.
Joyce swallowed before saying, “Maybe you should leave the room while I get into this.”
“Oh, Mom, for heaven’s sake!” Hilary exploded. “We’re all adults here. I won’t faint if I see you in your bra and panties.”
When Joyce still took her time taking off the black dress, Hilary went behind her and said, “Here, I’ll do it.” And she unzipped the dress and pulled it off of her mother’s shoulders, while Joyce shimmied out of it.
Hilary’s eyes widened as she saw her mother almost naked. “Gee, Mom, you really are built!”
“That’s enough of that, Hilary,” Joyce said severely.
But the figure that Joyce revealed, even with her underwear on, was enough to make any man salivate. She was five foot six, with full, round breasts, the cutest little bulge around the tummy leading to an even more pronounced bulge that all women have at their delta, swelling hips and fleshy thighs: it was a vision of ripe loveliness that made Hilary proud that Joyce was her mother.
Joyce stepped into the blue dress and got it on. Hilary zipped it up from the back, then stood back to look at it.
“Yeah,” she said, “it’s perfect. You’re a doll, but not, you know–”
“A slut,” Joyce added sourly.
“I didn’t say that. This is just the thing to make this guy’s heart go pitter-patter without being too obvious about it. I love that hint of cleavage it shows!”
“Maybe I should put a drop of perfume between my boobs.”
“If you like.”
“I was being sarcastic, dear.”
“Well, Mom, it couldn’t hurt.”
“Hilary, I am not going to sleep with this man on the first date. Is that understood?”
“Don’t tell me, tell him. He’s the one who, if he’s any sort of man at all, is gonna wanna paw you all over before the night is through.”
“Oh, you are so disgusting. This man is a gentleman–I can sense it.”
“Whatever you say.”
Even so, as she prepared for her date Joyce got increasingly excited–not that she really expected the evening to end with her spreading her legs for someone she’d never met before, but she did think there was the definite possibility of a long-term romance with Gerald.
Joyce had agreed to have Gerald pick her up at her house, to save the both of taking two cars to the restaurant where they would dine. As she opened the door in response to his knock, she saw that both of them were looking the other over carefully–and liked what they saw.
Joyce noticed that Gerald’s eyes widened ever so slightly as he couldn’t help focusing on her breasts before he looked her in the face. She was used to that from her many years in a real estate office; but she was encouraged that, although he was a widower, Gerald wasn’t so wrapped up in grief that he couldn’t see the attractiveness of a woman who was not his dear departed wife. As for her, she found his height (five foot ten), broad shoulders, muscular chest more than a little appealing. And she chided herself when, as she walked behind him to his car, she kept staring at what looked like a lusciously firm butt.