Working My Passage

My name is Adrian Kimber. I was almost born with, as people used to say, a “silver spoon in my mouth.” I say “almost” because when I was born my father had not quite made it to what he saw as “The Top.” I must have been about four or five when he finally got there, and became what they call, “Departmental Head” of a government department.

Once he had reached the dizzy heights we soon moved to a new house in a very exclusive suburb. To my young mind the house was very exciting. It had a huge garden and there were nooks and crannies both inside and outside the house where all sorts of adventures could take place. Among its other glories it had a swimming pool and a tennis court.

In fact the place was probably three times bigger than we needed. There were only three of us, father, mother and myself. In that house you could have lived separate lives and never see each other from one week to the next. The garden was beyond the capacity of my parents to cope with, so like most of the people who lived in that suburb a part time gardener was employed and in addition there were two ladies who came in to clean the house three times a week and another lady who cooked the evening meals for us.

All of this, as my father said, “Went with the territory. One has to keep up appearances.”

I actually saw very little of my father. He always seemed to be going away to conferences and international gatherings, and when he was home he took little interest in me. It was only when I started school we had any significant contact, and that was to discuss my progress and reports. He always seemed a remote figure in my life.

Mother was different. I think most boys consider their mother’s to be pretty, I know I did, but from the perspective of adulthood I can fairly say she was indeed very pretty, and even now she is in her late forties she still retains much of those earlier lovely looks.

She is not very tall, perhaps five feet four of five with a slender, graceful figure. She had long ash blonde hair that I loved to play with when I was little, and she was what I would now call, soft and warm.

Mother was twenty when I was born, and I know I shouldn’t have been born when I was. You see, I was what people call, “Conceived out of wedlock.”

It seems that when my father was still climbing the ladder to the top, mother had worked in the same departmental offices as he. Father was some fifteen years older than mother, and it seems they got too intimate too soon, and there I was, on the way. I worked this out when I came across some family documents years later.

They had no more children and I became the focus of mother’s love and care. As I look back I sometimes think that for a long time I was the only love in mother’s life.

When I was six and had started school some new people moved in next door to us. The man was another Departmental Head. It was considered etiquette in those days to go and welcome a newcomer to the street (or avenue as ours was called). Mother made her visit and two or three days later the lady next door visited mother.

It was mother’s habit to come and pick me up from the very exclusive church school I attended, and the lady’s visit coincided with pick up time. It seems she asked to accompany mother and that is how I first met Mrs. Amanda White.

I think our liking for each other was instantaneous. This was especially so on my side because on seeing me I heard Mrs. White whisper to mother, “He’s a beautiful boy, Kylie.”

At that tender age one does not look for the features in a woman that one might ten years on. Never the less, what I saw was a very lovely woman who, as I later discovered, was some four years younger than mother.

She was a little taller than mother, but then, at six years of age every adult looks tall as they loom over you. She was also not as slim as mother. She was, I suppose, what we call “Curvaceous.” Even at my tender age I recognised that what I thought of as her “lumps” (breasts) seemed larger than mother’s. Overall one might say she was Junoesque.

On being introduced she kissed me on the cheek and said, “I’m so pleased to meet you, Adrian,” and unlike a lot of people who say things like that, she sounded as if she meant it.

I responded in kind and I meant it too. Among the other things I noted at that time was that Mrs. White smelt nice. Not like a lot of the ladies, or even the men, who came to visit and left trails of strange odours I didn’t like and which I now know to have been deodorant and perfume. Mrs. White smelt of Mrs. White, just as mother smelt of mother.

We went back to our house and Mrs. White and mother had afternoon tea in which I joined, not for the tea, but the cakes. As Mrs. White was leaving she gave me another kiss on the cheek and said, “Will you come and visit me sometimes, Adrian?” Then she looked at mother and asked, “That would be all right, wouldn’t it?” Mother said it would be fine if I wasn’t too much bother.

When she had gone I said to mother, “She’s a lovely lady isn’t she?”

Mother agreed that Mrs. White was indeed very lovely.

In my limited experience adults rarely ask a child to visit them, so I wondered why Mrs. White had invited me to her house. I asked mother and she said, “Mrs. White hasn’t got any children of her own but she would like one. Perhaps she wants to find out what it’s like to have a little boy around the house.”

Not being fully apprised of the methods of begetting I asked mother, “Can’t she go and get a boy of her own?”

Mother gave a gentle laugh and said, “No darling, there are special things that have to happen to get a baby.”

With the carelessness of childhood I decided the matter was not worth pursuing, so I let it drop.

Nor did I pursue Mrs. White’s invitation. Nice lady though I thought her, she was an adult and had no children for me to play with, so there seemed no point in going to visit her.

My first visit to her came about through one of those typical childhood events. I accidentally kicked my ball into her garden. My mother told me to go and ask Mrs. White if I could go into her garden and get it.

This I duly did and Mrs. White came with me to help search for the ball. As we hunted she kept up a flowing conversation centred mainly about school, what I did at home, did I have many friends and did they come to play at my house.

I was amazed by Mrs. White’s garden. I knew she had a gardener because it was the same one we used, but Mrs. White had lots more flowers and even vegetables growing in her garden. I must have said something about this because she laughed and said she loved gardening, especially growing her own vegetables and fruit.

Like most of the houses in our street she had a swimming pool and tennis court. She asked me if I could swim and play tennis. I said I could swim a bit but couldn’t play tennis. Then she asked me if I would like her to teach me tennis. I said I would, but would have to “ask mummy.” Mrs. White said she would do that.

I left with my ball and a happy heart, not only because I was to learn tennis, but because I had smelt the Mrs. White smell again.

My parents used to hold what they called “Cocktail parties.” They were very boring and as far as I could gather the guests were other Departmental Heads or people called “Ministerial Advisors.”

They all stood around saying things like, “My minister says this,” “My minister says that,” “What does your minister have to say about it?” The men came with their wives who all looked very old, not like my mother or Mrs. White, and if they spoke to me at all, called me things like, “Dear boy.” Mostly they ignored me.

One lady Departmental Head, the only lady head, brought her husband. He seemed a very shy man and nobody spoke to him, so he spoke to me, calling me, “Old boy.” He used that hearty, jolly voice some adults use when they talk to children.

On very special occasions a minister would come to the party. Everyone was very nice to the minister, but if he or she left early, as soon as they had gone everyone would say nasty things about them.

These parties got better for me after Mrs. White moved in next door. Mr. White being a Departmental Head got invited and Mrs. White came with him. That was how I met Mr. White.

It’s a bit hard when you’re little to sort adults out, but I can recall that at first I thought Mr. White was Mrs. White’s father, or even her grandfather. He looked even older than my father. He was tall with a nearly bald head, a curvy sort of nose and a little red mouth that seemed always to be wet. Mrs. White introduced us saying, “Arthur, this is Adrian one of our next door neighbours.” He looked down his nose at me from his great height and said, “How do you do, young fellow,” then turned away to talk to someone.

Mrs. White said, “Come on Adrian, show me your garden. I knew mother had already shown her the garden, so I suppose she just wanted to get away from the people. Showing her the garden became quite a regular feature of her party visits, and we would walk around hand in hand as she told me about flowers and trees and insects. I didn’t really mind what she told me about so long as I was with her.

I had noticed that when my father went away, after a few days, mother seemed to change a little. I don’t say she got nasty, but she was irritable and snappy. After a while she was even like that when father was at home. Then another change came over mother. She started to get a dreamy sort of look and seemed to be prettier than ever, and wanted to hug and kiss me a great deal.

Not long after Mrs. White started to teach me tennis, something occurred that I now understand, but it mystified me at the time.

One day all our school lavatories got blocked. It was decided that we children could go home for the afternoon because of this, and as I didn’t really live far from the school I walked, or rather, ran home.

When I entered the house I went in search of mother, calling out, “Mother I’m home.” At first I couldn’t find her, but when I went upstairs I heard a sort of shuffling gasping noise from my parent’s bedroom.

Taking it that mother was in there I entered, and then I stood stock still. Mother was in there with a man. Mother’s face was rather red, and her clothes were all funny. I mean, she was wearing a shirt but the buttons were done up all wrong and it was dangling outside her jeans. Her hair was messy which was unusual for mother and she looked very flustered.

The man was about mother’s age, and I suppose he was nice looking. He had a pair of trousers on and a shirt but they belonged to a three piece suit. I could see the rest of the suit and a tie draped over a chair by the bed. He looked all flustered too.

I went to mother to kiss her as I always did when I came home, and she smelt different. She had a sort of fishy smell and I saw some of her underwear on the floor.

She stammered hello and then said, “Darling, this is mummy’s friend, Mr. Hammond.”

Mr. Hammond muttered hello as he tried to get the rest of his clothes on, and mother said, “You’d better go, John. I’ll ring you later.”

He left and mother, still sort of flustered, asked why I was home early and then said, “Darling, Mr. Hammond is mummy’s special, secret friend, so don’t say anything to daddy about him.”

Since my father and I rarely spoke at all, I had no intention of telling him about Mr. Hammond, but mother asking me not to made me wonder why Mr. Hammond was special and secret.

After that, and when my father was away on one of his endless trip, Mr. Hammond came often to our house. Sometimes he stayed all night. I know that because I would wake up early in the morning when he started his car and left.

Mother seemed to be very happy, and as it meant she was happy with me, I was satisfied to leave well alone, except I talked to Mrs. White about it.

By then I had been given quite a few tennis lessons by her, and no longer called her, “Mrs. White”. Now she was “Aunty Amanda”. One day after my lesson with her we were sitting in her house drinking some lemonade. I decided to ask her about the mystery of Mr. Hammond.

When I had told her she smiled and said, “Sometimes ladies, especially mummy’s need to have a special secret friend. It’s good for them because it makes them feel happier, but I don’t think you should tell anyone else about it because then it won’t be a secret any more and it will be spoilt for your mummy.”

I asked her if she had a special secret friend and she said she hadn’t got one like my mother, but she did have a very special friend. I asked who, but she wouldn’t say.

As time passed I spent more and more time with Aunty Amanda, so much so that I loved her almost as much as I loved mummy. It was rather like having two mothers.

One hot afternoon when I had been struggling with the tennis bat that almost overwhelmed a small boy, Aunty Amanda and I had a swim in her pool to cool down. She was great fun in the water, chasing, wrestling and tickling.

She wore one of those things they call a “Bikini,” and I loved the feel of her body against mine as we played in the water. I have learned about “Infantile sexuality” since those days, and although that is supposed to relate to the desire of the small son for his mother, I think it must apply in other situations as well.

I mention this because it must have been when I was about eight, and we had been playing in the pool; I felt my little penis hardening as our bodies clung together. I had no idea what I wanted to do with or to her, but I wanted to do something. The only thing I could think of was to kiss her, which I did. She smiled at me and said very quietly, “I love you little Adrian.”

I told her I loved her, and we stood in the water, she holding me against her breasts as the water buoyed me up. We held each other for a long time, and she kissed me a lot.

After that time Aunty Amanda and I often went out together. She had asked mother if it was all right for her to take me out, and mother had said “Yes.” I think it meant mother had more time with her special friend when I went out with Aunty Amanda.

She took me to look at pictures, listen to music and see things at the theatre. I didn’t always understand what I was seeing and hearing, but I didn’t mind as long as I was with her.

She didn’t say in words anymore that she loved me, but I knew she did, just as I knew I loved her, and often in her pool we would cling together after we had wrestled, and my penis would be hard, and she would look into my eyes and stroke my face and hair. I used to do the same to her and tell her she was pretty.

My birthdays came and went as they do for all of us, and always there was a present from Aunty Amanda; at Christmas too. The time came for me to leave primary school, and my father wanted to send me away to a boarding school. My mother would have none of it. I can remember hearing them arguing noisily about it, with my father saying things like, “It’ll make a man of him,” and my mother responding, “You mean like you?”

The upshot was, I didn’t go to boarding school, but went as a day boy to yet another church school.

So I continued to see a lot of Aunty Amanda who along with mother had come to play a central role in my life.

With the coming of those turmoil teenage years, my physical and emotional changes brought insights into my relationship with Aunty Amanda, and I began to see her through the eyes of a sexually maturing male.

The school I went to was solely for boys. It has changed since then, but at the time I know that most of us suffered from the lack of female presence. We started to be given sex instruction. These consisted of pictures and charts of male and female anatomy and we longed to see a female body in the flesh.

Twice a year there was a school dance, and girls from another school came and we danced with them. The feel of their bodies drove us nearly out of our youthful male minds, but the dances were always heavily chaperoned by grim teachers, so nothing happened beyond dancing.

Some of the boys sneaked in erotic magazines with pictures of nude women and we had out dirty little sniggers and jokes about them, but in our hearts we wanted the real thing.

I am not clear now how I first learned to masturbate. It is one of those things that boys seem to instruct each other in. I began to masturbate regularly, first fantasising the girls in the magazines, then girls I had seen around.

I can see now that this is all part of the maturing process, but there was one moment of shock when I was about sixteen. On my sixteenth birthday Aunty Amanda became “Amanda.” She said I was too grown up to continue with the aunty title.

There had been a small gathering of some of my friends for the occasion, and I could see them looking with amazement at my mother and Amanda. One of the boys said to me, “I thought they were your older sisters. Where did you get a mother and a friend like that, Adrian?”

During the following days at school there was much banter about “Adrian’s lovely ladies.”

However, I get ahead of myself. After everyone had gone except mother and Amanda – father was away as usual – I escorted Amanda her to her house. When we got to the front door I said goodnight and went to kiss her. This was normally little more than a filial peck, but on this night Amanda pulled close to me and I felt her warm moist lips linger on mine, her body was close and her hips seeming to move her belly against mine.

“Goodnight, special friend,” she whispered, and was gone.

I staggered back to the house, my penis hard and throbbing. I went straight to bed and masturbated, and as I came I whispered, “Amanda, I love you, I want you.”

This was the first overt recognition of an attachment, a love I had felt since childhood for her. Even in the days when my little penis had become erect at the feel of her body, I had no openly sexual thoughts about her. She was my Aunty Amanda whom I loved.

Now that love had become something else; or perhaps what it had always been, but was for the first time out in the open. I was so worked up that I had to masturbate twice more that night, and every time is was Amanda who was my fantasy.

Images of her beautiful breasts clad only in a barely covering bikini top; the thin sliver of clothe that passed under her crotch to sink into her vagina; my hands playing with her hair as I kissed her soft lips haunted me that night.

In the morning I felt I could not face her again, although I longed to see her. In class I was unable to concentrate and twice got reprimanded by the teacher for inattention. That evening I was due to play tennis with her and almost didn’t go I felt so shy about seeing her after all my thoughts about her.

As it happened her husband had returned from one of his conferences and in a way it was a relief. Had he not been around the place I might have burst out with something, and in doing so might have lost her friendship for ever.

Her husband stayed home for a long time, and given the increasing level of study I was experiencing, my emotions gradually settled down, and I told myself it was ridiculous to feel sexually attracted to a woman at least sixteen years older than me.

I went occasionally to play tennis with Amanda, but both of us seemed to have changed. Amanda was less boisterous and playful especially in the swimming pool. I held back from her for fear of getting worked up again, thus giving myself an unnecessarily agonising time over her.

On my seventeenth birthday Amanda was overseas with her husband, and stayed overseas for three months. On her return she greeted me effusively, as I did her, but I felt it was all on the surface.

As the year drew to an end, and with it my time at school, the university lay ahead. My father gave his royal command in virtually one word, “Law”. I promptly applied to enter the School of Botanic Science,” my true love. He was furious, but in the face of my mother’s support he submitted.