My son and I have always been close.

Ever since his father left us when he was young, it’s been just the two of us living the most enjoyable fun lives we can.

Now at nineteen, he’s grown to be more handsome, intelligent, and kind than this young forty-year-old mom could have ever imagined. I’m really proud to be his best friend and glad he chose to stay at home while going to a local community college.

Oftentimes as of late, we’ve played a harmless little game of trickery. We will regularly find ways to hide and scare each other. Maybe a little juvenile, but it’s quickly become our “thing”. Our form of recreational hobby.

Maybe it’s simply one of us waiting for the other to come around the corner in the house and give one of those classic “rawrs!” that induces a flashed micro-panic with the heart briefly stopping, only to send a smile crawling across the face seconds later.

Or maybe it’s one of us luring the other into a room by creating a creepy curious sound after a late-night horror movie session and flashing on the light to reveal our poor attempts at a sinister face… something we both always seem to easily fall for.

Just last week, the clever little sneak hid in the backseat of my car in the driveway and waited until I got in to spring up with a scare by grabbing my shoulders as I screamed. He rolled in the backseat, kicking his legs with an uncontrollable laugh. Part of me wanted to beat the hell out of him, but another part held that impulse in check with a sense of defeated appreciation.

Almost like we were keeping some imaginary score between us; always even yet always trying to one-up it.

I thought of my latest “one-up”. It was a day I got home extra early in the afternoon from work before he was home from classes. My car was parked in the closed garage; he would always know I had arrived by hearing the groaning machinery of the automatic door opening and closing, but since he never entered through there to get into the house upon coming home, there was no need to check for it. He would have simply assumed I wasn’t there yet if he didn’t see or hear me anywhere in the quiet house.

I figured I would hide in his closet. It’s a two-door pull-open wooden shutter style, with the horizontal strips adjustable for tilting to whatever angle you want. Perfect at the right setting for me to see through, and just enough for him to not see in.

I figured he would open it after coming in his room to change his shirt or something, and I’d make my move of easily jumping out at him.

Not that I wanted him to get the impression I was snooping around his room; I’ve always respected his privacy and have received the same gesture back. But this was too good. He would never expect it. Payback for the car.

I never heard him call out my name. Why would he if he suspected I wasn’t home yet? I heard him shuffling around downstairs and he eventually came up into the room.

It was go time. I was immediately excited. Any moment he would come over, and I would be ready at a moment’s notice to get my revenge.

He set his books on his desk and emptied his pockets of his wallet, keys, and some spare change, kicking off his shoes.

Any second now.

He pulled his shirt off, revealing his bare chest. I was going to get him good. At first, it seemed like he took a step toward the closet, but then he turned and grabbed his belt buckle, starting to undo his pants.

Oh, damn.

I hadn’t thought of him changing completely since he usually only seems to change into a new shirt. But the pants dropped and lifted one leg at a time to pull them off. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Never mind my own embarrassment at a failed scare attempt, but I quickly realized how embarrassed he would be to catch me hiding in his closet when he was down to his boxer briefs.

I convinced myself he would be understanding when I explained my plan didn’t go as expected, but still. Maybe it was now or never. It’s not like he was naked. The equivalency of a bathing suit. I should just jump out right now and get it over with.

As I went to place the palms of my hands against the shutter doors, that’s when he thumbed the edges of his boxer briefs and yanked them down to his ankles. Shit. Shit-shit-shit. The embarrassment meter was going to be high on both sides for this one, that much was clear.

I almost started panicking. If he pulled open the closet doors, I should just cover my eyes and come clean with the failed plan.

I tried not to look, but I had to out of the corner of my eye to see where he was going. I mean, there he was, my son, completely bare-butt naked and walking across the room. I could make out his penis slightly swinging as he trotted across the carpet. Bigger than the last time I had inadvertently seen it, which was probably seven or eight years ago.

He grabbed a towel from his dresser. A sigh of relief flowed through me. He was going to go shower, which meant leaving the room. Which also meant a golden opportunity to make my easy escape when it was safe. Free and clear, like I had never even been there.

No one would ever know, except me. I laughed inside my head at how ridiculously vain my effort became, and I could soon forget about it.

Only he didn’t leave the room. He turned and headed for the bed instead, laying the towel out on it and standing there with his naked backside to me as he adjusted it, patting it here, bunching it there, ironing it out there.

What the hell was he doing? Just get out already! He fluffed his pillow at the head of the towel and crawled onto the bed, clearing his throat and positioning himself over the towel, reaching to his lower regions with some kind of tugging effort but gently lowering his body on top of it.

Oh. My. God.

He was going to masturbate.

My heart went up into my throat. He gave a little grunt and squeezed his hips, smoothly and slowly beginning to rock himself back and forth over the towel. This was not happening. No way this was happening. My mind raced with panic. Of all the days he could have done this, why did it have to be this one, right now?

Then again, he was a nineteen-year-old guy. Masturbation was his life, and I know he didn’t have a girlfriend.

That much he was always truthfully up front with me about. My instinct was to immediately burst out of the closet and quickly leave while spewing apologetic excuses on my way out the door. Trying to save face and avoid embarrassment and shame at this point was out of the question.

Yet another part of me had my feet frozen in place. It was the ultimate embarrassment.

My optimism figured, maybe he would finish quickly, and leave for the hallway bathroom to clean up or something, and that would be my great prison escape. Again, embarrassment only known by me, and that’s the lesser of two evils I could live with.

But that other evil? Him finding out I was in there. What if afterwards he went over and opened the closet to find me standing in there? What the hell would my excuse be?

Sure, I could mutter the truth, but I can’t imagine the possible shock and horror of him knowing he had just performed a masturbatory session with his mother in the closet the entire time. It would traumatize him.

Yet through all these conflicting thoughts of debatable terror, in the back of my mind, in the deepest and most curious of chambers, I was asking myself, “What kind of masturbatory session WAS this, anyway?”

There he was, grinding himself into the towel. I had never heard of that. Was this something boys or men alike did? I figured he would just jerk it like everyone else. Maybe his method was better for my predicament, anyway. This way I couldn’t see OR hear anything pertaining to the traditional method.

I wasn’t sure if I could stand in that closet, forced to listen to the whacking sound that came with an erect penis slapping in a hand, and knowing it was my son’s erect penis slapping in his hand.

He wasn’t making much noise beyond the shuffling of the blankets on the bed, until he let out a soft moaning grunt. I closed my eyes. Then I cracked one open, just a tiny bit.

I tilted it in the direction of the bed to see him, head buried within the top of the pillow with his arms tucked under it. His bare bottom was squeezing with each push. I shouldn’t be seeing this.

Yet… it was almost… exciting. A nervous excitement. That feeling that starts to get your hands shaking, when you’re seeing or doing something you know is wrong, that you could have never possibly comprehended would happen to you in real life, in your wildest, most awkwardly bizarre dreams.

He lifted his body up a little, seeming to slightly adjust his positioning more comfortably.

His penis was long and erect. His method, as strange and foreign as it was to me, seemed to be doing the job, and quite pleasurably.

He carefully sank back down, sliding his penis forward into some kind of groove track he had worked within the towel’s fabric. He bucked his hips, and the bed was starting to give little creaks.

Did he do this method all the time? Is this what he was doing on his bed at night while I was in my own room, reading, or watching TV, or sleeping?

I guess I wasn’t surprised, and it certainly wasn’t for me to judge. After all, I can’t count the number of times I’ve quietly and secretly pleasured myself on my bed at night with my fingers or my dildo, not bothering to acknowledge the presence of another human being just down the hall.

Maybe it was that initial thought that shifted my uncomfortable nerves into tiny curiosity.

It’s not like I was standing there blatantly watching him, but the longer he was performing the act, the more I found myself simply not looking away. I almost had a sudden shift in my mood. A sense of appreciation. He was, after all, performing a natural human act.

And better than going around knocking up girls. He worked and studied hard in his classes. He was probably stressed. He deserved a good release, and who was I to burst out of that closet and ruin it with a failed joke? I didn’t know what would happen after. I only knew I could control the then and now, and right now, I wasn’t going to leave that closet.

He gave another moan with a hard breath that caught my attention. His naked body was moving in such a fluid, smooth manner. He gave that “unh” sound. That “unh” sound that lets a woman know that a penis is being immensely pleasured, and pleasured well.

That “unh” sound that makes a woman’s thoughts stop dead in their tracks with a realization that nothing else in the world currently matters right now except this penis getting the pleasure it needs.

At first, it seemed crazy, but my realizations settled on a singular notion that I was actually being privy to something special. A newfound sense of appreciation. A new sense of pride in my number one guy, just simply being himself and doing what made him feel good.

My son… was pleasuring his penis. He was PLEASURING… his penis.

That notion made me feel like he was now grown up. I was proud. I knew it was far from the first time he was discovering the pleasurable aspects of puberty, which would seem like a much more sensible and monumental occasion to play the cheerleader mom, but still. It made me want to burst from the closet and cheer him on. I wanted to wave my arms, and shout, “Do it! Just do it! Just do what feels natural, honey! Make your penis feel good as best you can and as much as you want! There’s no shame in this household!”

A light gleam of sweat was slightly reflecting on his lower back and bare bottom as he rhythmically mounted the towel. His body was giving off a musk that I could smell and sense all the way from the closet. He was in heat—in heat with that sexual and musky essence only a woman can really sense coming from his key areas—groin, chest, armpits, neck.

It’s the same for a woman’s body during a hardworking sexual act, too. And it’s not just the vagina like most men would point out. Our necks pulsate with it. Our boobs radiate with it. A man I briefly dated four years ago once admitted that the smell coming from my armpits as he pumped into me from on top was so good it made him cum harder into me than he had ever cum in his life.

That thought hit me, too. Eventually, my son’s penis would ejaculate. His semen would shoot and spurt out, and his body would probably shake. I wondered what kind of cummer he was. How does one finish when he’s ready after he’s been humping a towel?

Is he going to just let it out as he continues pumping? Or is he going to slightly lift his body up and grab hold of his hard member, jerking as the streams of cum shoot onto the fabric?

I wondered how much of something like that I’d be able to see from the distance and confines of my hiding spot. Would I actually see his semen shooting out? What form would it be? Sputters or smooth lines of streaming ropes? He has a good-sized dick, so I figured it would probably be long streams.

Then he slowed to a stop and caught his breath. Did he finish? No, he was reaching to his nightstand to pull down his laptop computer next to his pillow. Porn, probably. I’m guessing lesbians licking each other’s cunts, just getting mouthfuls of warm vagina that would make him blow in seconds.

I wondered if he preferred shaved, trimmed, or hairy women. My own vagina was very neglected as of late, hidden deep within the confines of a bushy Amazon rainforest. A smile curled at the edge of my mouth in thought, as if realizing for the first time in my seasoned age that I totally have such a mother’s vagina.

His fingers did some clicking on the keyboard and he seemed to pull a picture up. A picture. Very old-fashioned. I was glad he was taking an imaginative approach to his masturbation, and not the quick and easy route with a lazy video.

He fixed the photo on full-screen mode and resumed his grinding, giving soft moans as he turned his head away to relish in the pleasure and then refocused his eyes back to the image.

The image of me.

Holy fucking shit. At first, I thought I was imagining things, that with all my thoughts and analyzing I subconsciously put myself on that screen. But there it was, clear as day. A picture of me in a bikini from last summer.

My son was masturbating to me.

It nearly broke my brain. I had already been dealing with so much mentally throughout this “experience” that I didn’t know how to react. I was confused. I was surprised. I was in denial.

Mostly though, like my preceding thoughts before he resorted to the laptop, I was almost… flattered. Curious. Was he attracted to me? Did he want to have sex with me? Where did this come from? Could have fooled ME. I consider myself very perceptive, but until this moment, I’ve gathered no intel or signs that this was at all possible. He sure was good at hiding it around me. No comments, no subtle touches or looks.

But there he was, grinding into the towel and staring hard at me and my nearly-nude body. My son’s penis… was getting pleasure from looking at me. Me of all people.

And I was watching him do it. That was the plain truth I could immediately not deny to myself. I was no longer biding my time waiting for him to finish. My curiosity had already gotten the best of me; now it put me over the edge.

I knew things would never be the same, even if I left that room without him knowing I was ever there. I could never look at him or think of him the same again.

And yet, a tiny, minuscule part of me started burrowing its way up from my innermost taboo cores. I thought of stripping down naked and slowly snaking out of the closet to stand next to his bed.

Of course, he would probably jump up startled, and try to cover himself up in embarrassment. How’s that for a scare after all?

I would smile and reach down and gently touch his arm and tell him that it was okay. Not to be ashamed or embarrassed, that it made me feel wanted and beautiful. To ask if he would want to continue and let me watch, and let him look at the real thing in person. To not slam my foot on the gas pedal by offering for him to succumb to me, but maybe something simpler to start this journey?

Maybe ask if he’d like me to lay on my back on his bed where he could slide his penis back and forth between...