Auntie and I Ch. 01

Those of you who have read my Handyman's Memoir stories will recognize one of the themes here. I think I'm a better writer now, so I thought I'd take another crack at it from a different angle, using a classic smut trope as its basis: the college boy spending a summer with his lusty aunt. Hope you like it.

—

Auntie and I have a secret. It's a secret shared with eight other women, women who live quiet lives up in Toad Harbor, Maine. It happened the summer of my nineteenth year, but, I should start at the beginning...

My father died before I was born, shipped off to the Gulf War not long after what I can only hope was a beautiful night of loving sex with my mother. I've had inklings over the years that make me think maybe it wasn't such a beautiful night, and wasn't such loving sex, but I still like to think of it that way, my mother the beautiful peasant girl, my father the handsome prince, just like in the movies.

My Aunt Pamela helped raise me. She's my father's little sister, just eighteen at the time of his death. A talented artist with no money to go to college, she stayed home and freelanced for a local advertising company, sold her own paintings at art fairs, and helped my mother with me, the baby. Mom named me Jonathon, the same as my father. Most everybody calls me Jon.

As soon as I learned to talk I started calling Pamela "Auntie". I still like the ring of it, the way it rolls off the tongue. Mom and Auntie, they raised me into a boy, and eventually, a man. From day one there was a strong emphasis on respecting women, treating them the way a man should, with love and reverence for their womanhood. Maybe it wasn't quite that sappy, but you get the idea. I learned over the years that my dad probably never got those lessons when he was growing up. There were quiet whispers of abuse, whispers I tried to close my ears to. It all made sense in a way, clarifying the reasons why I was taught the way I was, the reasons why I think of women as Mother Nature's greatest triumph.

I'm twenty-six now, married, with a boy of my own, living the good life in Southern California. I wouldn't be here without my father and his family. His parents passed away when I was seventeen, one from cancer and the other from a broken heart. The inheritance went to my mother and Auntie, my mother's half financing my college education at a prominent design school. Freshman year I took an automotive design class and that gave me my direction — I minored in drawing and painting, but designing cars became my passion. Now, I happily spend my days working on top secret projects at a Japanese car company's American design studio, and my weekends are full of laughter at the beach with my beautiful wife and child.

But this story isn't about all that. It's about the summer of my nineteenth year, a summer burned into my memory. The smell of spruce, and low tide. The smell of fishing boats, and oil paint on freshly stretched canvas. The sound of charcoal pencils on rough artist's paper. The taste of woman.

You see, Auntie Pamela had taken her inheritance and ran. That's how it seemed at the time, to me. Mom seemed to understand, but she was saddened when her sister-in-law, her best friend, moved away. Auntie had long been in love with the coast of Maine. It seems to be an almost universal affliction among artists, drawn to the haunting light and the rocky, watery scenes like moths to a flame. Auntie used her money to buy a small storefront with an apartment upstairs, in a small coastal fishing community that was starting to developing into a haven for artists. A few art galleries had already opened on Main Street and Auntie sensed a real opportunity, a chance to buy-in before real estate values started going up. Mom and I visited her soon after she moved up there. We stayed for two weeks the summer before I started college. The old store didn't look like much at that point, having been empty for over a decade. We spent part of our vacation helping her rip out horrid looking wall-to-wall carpeting, dirty orange and faded green, probably installed in the sixties, and smelling at least that old.

"Oh, I love this concrete!" Auntie said, excited when she saw what lay beneath the old carpet. "I can stain it and make it look like leather."

My mother smiled and said, "You could make mud look pretty if you put your mind to it."

By the end of the day we'd deposited every scrap of the old carpet in a dumpster out behind the marine supply store across the road, thanks to Auntie sweet-talking the owner. Her big breasts might have had something to do with it. Did I mention she has big breasts? They were sweaty and braless under a dirty white t-shirt when she went over to talk to the man. She was smiling when she came back. "We're in," she said. "He said we can use it for some other things, too, as long as I give him all my marine business. He knows I don't have a boat!" she said, smiling.

When I think back on those two weeks I realize that was when I started to get an inkling of the power that women hold over men. Sexual power. I shouldn't say they hold it over us, because they don't for the most part, but it's always there, always playing a roll. Auntie Pamela is a beautiful woman with a million dollar smile. She doesn't look like a model or a magazine girl, more like the girl next door with the big bazoombas and the hourglass hips, full bodied in the voluptuous sense, with soft but not unpleasant bulges where she probably didn't want them. Muffin tops, I've heard them called. To me, looking at her with the hormonal eyes of an adolescent young man, she looked like a wonderful playground. They were emotions I hadn't felt at home before she'd moved away, but not seeing her for a while made her look new. It was all me, I realize now, the adolescent pathways in my brain rearranging, changing females from back-lot-baseball partners to something so much more. Did I mention Auntie has big breasts?

Those two weeks in Maine were a revelation. I'd never seen the ocean before, and what a spectacular place to see it! We spent part of a day on the rocks at Pemaquid, in the shadow of the iconic lighthouse, Auntie and I with our sketch pads, Mom happily reading a book.

One day we drove to Acadia National Park. We walked the carriage roads, hiked some trails, listened to the waves at Thunder Hole. We had lunch at a restaurant in Bar Harbor and I fell in love. A Japanese girl was eating at a nearby table with her parents. They didn't speak much English, but she was fluent. She saw me sketching and came over to look. I blushed, my face bright pink, when she saw the drawing was of her. Some sort of electricity shot through both of us. I could see it in her eyes and hear it in her soft voice. I would have married her on the spot, the way they did in the old days, but, alas, I was seventeen and she was gone from my life as quick as she'd appeared.

By the end of the two weeks, Auntie's gallery was stripped of its former ugliness, the nice man across the road's dumpster was overflowing, and the small upstairs apartment felt like home. The Japanese girl was still on my mind. I was very sad to leave Maine, nearly in tears, deeply unhappy to leave Auntie behind and terrified about my upcoming move to college.

"You're going to love it!" she said, hugging me tight against the warmth of her bosom. "I would have given anything to be in your shoes. Love it for me, will you, Jon? Love it for me."

As we were leaving, walking though the empty old store, Auntie said something that made my heart dance. "You know, by next summer this place will be busy. I'll need help during the tourist season, otherwise I won't have time to work on my paintings. And I want to give classes, too. Jon, would you be at all interested in spending part of your summer here? I'll pay you. It'll be a real job."

I looked at my mother and she looked neutral. I found out later that she was disappointed I wouldn't be home with her, but she knew it was a good opportunity for me to grow. College was one thing, but it wasn't real life. Living in a small village, working at a gallery, it sounded perfect in a lot of ways. She signed off on it quickly, and I was over the moon. I suddenly couldn't wait until next summer.

—

My first year at college was a watershed year. The virginity I was starting to worry about ended with a bang, an after-party coupling in my dorm room with a cute Asian girl. I'd developed an attraction to the dark-haired beauties after the fleeting encounter in that Bar Harbor restaurant. The girl in my dorm room wasn't even a student, she was a local girl who'd wandered into the party with some of her friends. It turned out they were more than a little slutty, seen in previous years prowling the dorms looking for fresh boyfriends who had money. I wasn't one of those, and it ended up being a one night stand, but I didn't care. My aching cock had found its real purpose in life, and I was a happy guy.

The other thing I learned that night was that sex didn't have to be a private event. My two roommates and I all had girls wrapped around us, all in the same room. There was no swapping, but there was plenty of visuals and exciting sounds. Six naked people having a serious go at it. An end to my virginity that truly opened my eyes.

A more serious relationship came and went. In looks, she was the opposite of an Asian girl, a crystal-blue-eyed natural blonde with long legs. She had the same muffin-top softness that Auntie has, and breasts almost as big. Her sexual appetite was voracious, much to my delight. My roommates were delighted, too, because she wasn't shy. I'm sort of surprised she didn't take us all on at least one time, after a drink or two too many, but she never did. The relationship ended fairly amicably, right before summer break. She left me horny, and a whole lot more experienced.

And then it was summer, and I was nineteen. I went home and spent a week with my mother and her new dog, a kindly, bear-like Newfoundland that had replaced me in her somewhat lonely life. I packed the things I thought I'd need in Maine and I got on a bus. Auntie met me in Portland.

"You've changed," were the first words out of her mouth. Her eyes twinkled as she scanned me, head to toe, settling on my face, which she scanned even deeper. "Girls," she said. "Am I right?"

To this day I don't know how she knew so quickly, but she did.

We had dinner in Portland, near the waterfront. It was wonderful to see Auntie looking so full of life. We fell into easy conversation just like we always seemed to do, talking about my mother, my classes, drawing, painting, the gallery and her new life in Maine. She seemed truly happy.

It was a three hour drive up the coast to Toad Harbor, the final leg a narrow two-lane down a long peninsula, over a few bridges, ending at the small village on the rocky harbor I remembered, some of the rocks as big as islands. The oddly sweet smell of low tide was in the air, and a fog was rolling in.

"Did you bring flannel shirts and a jacket like I told you?" she asked. "Summer's different up here."

I could already feel it, the fog bringing an evening chill that felt refrigerated.

Auntie parked on the street in front of her gallery's big storefront window, and my eyes barely recognized it. A stunning large format painting sat on a wooden easel in the window, lit with soft spotlight that was turned down dim for the nighttime. The lights inside were dim, too, but I could see that the walls were lined with paintings and other framed work, and it looked like there were some sculptures on stands. A professionally painted sign hung over the big window: TOAD HARBOR ARTS

"Oh my God," I said. "It's fantastic!"

Auntie smiled. She was proud, and rightly so. "I'll give you the tour later. Let's go upstairs so you can unpack."

Unpacking led to beer drinking, which led to sitting around talking some more. Auntie was worried about the beer, big trouble, she said, if anyone found out she was giving it to me, but I assured her I wasn't a lightweight.

Halfway though our third bottle, it was getting late. "You're different, too," I said, letting the statement hang there. I scanned her with my eyes the way she'd scanned me, hoping she'd break down and tell me something, but she didn't. "Sorry, I got nothing," I said, my mischievous smile drawing one from her.

"You little stinker," she said. "What, can't tell if your Auntie's gettin' any? Just for that I'm gonna make you tell me."

"Tell you what?"

"About your first time. All the details."

"No way!"

"How long did you last? Was it a quick spurt?"

"Auntie!" I said, my eyes darting between hers. Her face was alive with excitement, different than I'd ever seen it. My cock was acting different than it ever had around her, too, suddenly rock hard in my pants.

"Describe her to me," Auntie said. "Were did you meet her?"

I told her the story of the party and the party girls, me and my roommates getting lucky all at once. Auntie seemed particularly interested in the "all in the same room" aspect, asking how much I could see of the others, how much I watched, if I minded them watching me. It was a little like psychoanalysis. I learned some things about myself from her questions, and I learned some things about her from them, too.

"A one night stand, that kinda sucks," she said, tipping her third empty bottle into her mouth, hoping for more than the last drop. "Got your noodle all interested and then you had nothing. Who was next? Don't tell me that was it for the year."

Auntie liked my girlfriend better, and seemed quietly pleased at my description of her body type. I didn't come right out and say "big tits" and "muffin top", but she got the gist and smiled softly when she realized I like curvy, squishy girls.

"A tit man, huh?" she said, smirking at me. "I have a theory. The only men who don't like big tits are the ones who've never gotten their hands on a pair."

I could have sworn her arms squeezed her breasts together slightly, making them look even bigger than their normal bigness, but I might have imagined it.

We ended the wonderful evening with a tour of the gallery. I followed her down the creaky back stairs, across the dimly lit back room to the electrical panel. Auntie switched on the lights.

"This is where I teach my classes," she said, walking me between all the easels, showing me the little stage where models pose. "You've seen it all in life drawing class, right? Do you do men and women, both?"

"Yup," I said. "They're students. They get paid a little."

"I haven't told you much about my students, have I?" she said. "They're all married women, fisherman's wives, mostly. This village is so isolated down here, there's not a whole lot for them to do. I have eight, now, and really the only way to get models is for them to do it themselves. It wasn't easy to get them out of their clothes, and they still won't do anything more than topless. There's all types, but definitely a few with...let's call them voluptuous."

Auntie opened the drawer of a flat file and pulled out some drawings. "They all keep the nudes here for the most part. Most of 'em think their husbands wouldn't understand. One thing you'll learn is that most of the men around here are very conservative."

Auntie pulled out drawing after drawing. It felt odd to see all the women bare-breasted before I'd met them clothed, but artists are supposed to be detached when it comes to nudity. That's when the drawings of Maria started coming out of the drawer.

"Whoa!" I said, a little too loudly.

Auntie smiled. "She's a hottie, huh? I knew she was, but oh, man, when she unhooked her bra and let it drop there was a hush from all the other ladies that gave me goosebumps."

Auntie showed me all seven of the drawings of Maria, some of them well done. One of the women had obviously focused her efforts on breasts and nipples, and she'd done pretty well capturing the feel of what I would have seen myself — the sexy essence of soft, firm flesh, the lovely line of the ski-jump curve of them, and the suckable quality of the most sculptural nipples I'd ever seen. Maria appeared to be a rather spectacular looking young woman.

"How's my tit man doin'?" Auntie said, smiling at the mesmerized look on my face. "Gonna make it?"

I suddenly realized I had a throbbing boner, lumping out my pants plain as day. "Should I be...seeing these?" I asked. "What if I meet these women?"

"You'll meet them," Auntie said. "Just don't say anything about it."

My education about the eight wives was slow but steady. It seemed odd that it started with a parade of bare breasts, but I wasn't in a position to complain, and didn't want to anyway. As I remember and contemplate that summer, as I've done for years now, I often wonder if Auntie had a master plan that she carried out to perfection. What I do know for sure is she had me fully aroused within hours of my arrival, the crotch of my pants full of hardness more than once, with her loving eyes more than glancing at it, making me blush. Either Auntie was a sly one, or she innocently fell into the path of the rolling snowball and was carried away by it the same way I was. Even now, seven years later, I'm still not sure which it is.

—

Tourist season in Maine doesn't really get up to full speed until July, so I had some time to draw and paint and do some poking around before Auntie needed me to man the gallery. My mother made a quick visit, but she didn't want to leave the dog in the kennel too long, so she was gone soon after she'd arrived. Toad Harbor was such a sleepy little village, it was hard for me to believe it would come alive with tourists in the heart of the summer. It turned out I was right. It was pretty much a sleepy little village all year 'round. Oh, there were cars that came into town, many of them art enthusiasts and collectors who'd read about the galleries there, but even in 'high season' it was pretty darn quiet, by my standards anyway. It didn't surprise me at all that some of the local women wanted to take off their tops and draw each other's tits. There just wasn't much else to do.

Personally, I enjoyed the quiet. Freshman year at college had been a whirlwind, so it was nice to spend my days sketching and then go back to the little upstairs apartment for a critique from my favorite artist. I guess I didn't mention yet that the apartment was very small. The entire back half of the upstairs was the office space for the old store, and Auntie used it for storage mostly, with a corner work table set up for matting and framing, and another table for crating and un-crating, packaging, shipping and that kind of thing. That left half of the upstairs for a two bedroom apartment. If you told me it was built with little people in mind I'd say that's about right. Auntie didn't seem to mind. We bumped into each other often, and it always drew a laugh out of her. The narrow hallway wasn't built for two full sized people. There were plenty of times she could have ducked into an open doorway when I needed to pass, but she always chose to flatten herself against the wall as best she could and let me squeeze by. I never knew if she was going to go face to the wall or back to the wall until she did it. She giggled either way, but one time, when I squeezed past her soft, warm ass, with both of us in sweatpants and me half-hard from watching some porn, her giggle turned into a soft moan. I remember it registering in my brain in an odd sort of way. We were two weeks into our cohabitation at that point, and she sort of felt like a college roommate. Sweatpants were our usual uniform. Auntie was braless under her t-shirts in the mornings and evenings, and quite possibly pantyless too. The bathroom door didn't necessarily have to be closed tight and latched. We felt like buds. So the moan in the hallway was no big deal, even though I thought about it for the next few days, wondering if it would happen again.