By Danny Fisher

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I’m in bed frolicking, as adults do, head at the wrong end of the bed, feet in the air, engaged in full-on naked frolicking with the new man in my life, when a voice from my kitchen floats up the stairs, “Danielle-a, are you here? You busy?”

I forgot that she was going to stop by; I also forgot she has a key. I get out of bed and shut the bedroom door. My new boyfriend does what he does best.

“Who the fuck is that?” Wide-eyed, he searches for his underwear, tossing blankets and pillows in a flurry of fabric.

“That would be my mother,” I say. I am forty-three years old with two grown children. The cat’s out of the bag regarding my virginity. My mother knows. My boyfriend cannot grasp this fact.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he mutters as he hops around on one foot, his found underwear pulled up mid-thigh, pants dangling off the other leg. I cock my head and watch as everything dangles.

“Babe, relax, I’ll go down there. Just chill,” I say. I slip on a negligee. “If you jump, you’ll probably break a leg,” I add, just in case he decides to try something stupid. Then I go downstairs and greet my mother.

"My mother is the lady who taught me that panty lines were tacky. She oozes the kind of sex appeal most women fake."

“Hey, Mom.” I kiss her cheek, “I forgot you were coming up.”

“I told you I had that doctor’s appointment.” She pulls back and notices my attire. “That’s cute. You look skinny. Were you sleeping?”

“No, I was fucking.”

My mother is the lady who taught me that panty lines were tacky. She oozes the kind of sex appeal most women fake. In response to my declaration, her eyes light up.

“Oooh!” She leans toward the staircase as if to catch a peek. “Is he coming down?”

“Uh, well, he’s kind of shy. The thing is, Mom, he’s a little younger than me.”

She raises a brow.

“Thirty. He’s thirty, but he looks twelve. Okay, not twelve, but not thirty. He’s cute. He’s Asian. He’s a cute Asian.”

“The Asians always look young,” she says. She walks to the bottom of the stairs. I’m not sure what she’s about to do, but there’s no stopping her. A force to be reckoned with, that one.

“Hey, you up there! You best put your pants on and come down and meet me! Don’t make me come up there!” She smiles at me and winks.

I go upstairs. The boyfriend is fully dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Are you fucking serious right now?” he says.

“Do you really want her to come up here?” We both take stock of the surroundings. There is the bed that looks like a tornado hit it.

And then there is the paraphernalia. Our eyes lock on the paraphernalia. He looks at me. I shake my head, no. There is no time to dispense with the paraphernalia. She will come up here, my expression says. She will see it. She will comment on it. She will not pretend she didn’t see it.

“Fuck,” he groans and follows me downstairs.

“Mom, this is Pat,” I step out of the way of their meeting. “Pat, this is my mother, Mona.” My mother approaches him, wraps her bony arms around him and squeezes as if she were being reunited with a long-lost love. Pat’s brown eyes shoot daggers at me over her shoulder. Mom stands back from the embrace, leaves her hands resting on his upper arms and says with a bright smile, “So, Danny tells me you two were fucking?”

The boyfriend laughs—in that way that says he is dying inside—then nods.

My seventy-three-year-old mother squeals in delight and dances a jig, old lady batwings wagging, toes tapping, shit-eating grin plastered on her face. “Oh, how I wish I was young again and could spend my days in bed with a cutie like you!”

Somehow, we dated for almost two years.

Danny Fisher is a current degree candidate at The Mountainview Low Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction.