Entertaining for dinner

I hurried downstairs to the kitchen. The table was served, and no less than three strange women, presumably Mother’s friends sat around it, in addition to my two relatives. I seated myself in the only available chair – right between Mother and one of her guests – and let the pleasantries go over. The woman with exceeding large and voluminous breasts to my right was apparently named Stephanie. Her neighbour with dyed red hair called Audrey, and the last of Mother’s co-workers Leslie. She presently had neither hair nor breasts to speak of. None of them were bad looking, although that was the least of my concerns, but they were still largely outshined by Mother. With every female person around me so exposed, I couldn’t help but compare, and it was plainly obvious how much younger Mrs Evie Oliver was, and how much younger she would have been when she had children. She still had her firm, modest little breasts and quite clear skin.

Inevitably conversation happened, and it was fairly normal, almost refreshingly so. Every few minutes someone would recount the sexual escapade (or escapades) of the day in passing, like an aside, but otherwise the full range of mundane topics for three office workers in different parts of the command chain was covered. As dinner was ending however, discussion moved mine and Julie’s way, our studies, what we were doing now, what we might do later etc. I saw an opportunity for benign experimentation.

“...Yes, Julie is going over ancient Greek mythology, aren’t you dear?” asked Mother.

My sister nodded, rolling her eyes, but before she could remark on it, Stephanie fired “Oh my, how fascinating! What myths are you dissecting these days then?”

“Oh, you know. At the moment they’re obsessed with the myth of Œdipus. We’re going to do Cocteau’s La Machine Infernale.”

“Sounds great!” said Leslie, “What’s it about?”

“Oh, trust me,” Julie sighed “you really don’t want to know. It’s more boring than you can imagine. Ask Frank. He had to go through that, back when he was doing artsy stuff.”

All three women spoke in chorus: “Really?”

“Yep, pretty much. The humanities have been subjecting their students to basically every adaptation they could find of it for centuries.”

“But what’s it about?” Leslie insisted, “How does it go?”

Julie protested desperately “It’s really boring!” But I smiled. I wanted to see how these people, brainwashed as they were, would react.

“Didn’t you ever hear the tragedy of King Œdipus of Thebes?” I asked.

“Oh brother...” Julie facepalmed.

Again, a chorus of voices answered “No!” Even Mother nudged my arm to show interest.

“All right here goes.” I took a deep breath. “There was this king and his queen, Laïus and Jocasta. They had a son. One day some sort of oracle or greenseer told them their son was prophesied to kill his father Laïus, and sleep with his own mother, Jocasta, which was seen as a pretty horrific prospect at the time.”

“Well for the dad-killing bit, sure...”

“Anyway, Laïus and Jocasta decided they were having none of that, and so they had the baby killed. Of course they were either too stupid or too squeamish to have the boy, you know, actually eliminated by, for instance, cutting his throat or something, so they had a lowly peasant carry him out into the desert and leave him there. Well, unfortunately, a lowly peasant from the kingdom next door found the baby and took him home. The king and queen of that kingdom, Polybus and Merope, just so happened to have been wanting a son and failing to conceive one for ages, and so they adopted the child, naming him Œdipus.”

“Thank goodness.” said Stephanie.

“Well, Œdipus grew up as the son of Polybus, only no one had the sense to tell him he was adopted. And then one day, some sort of oracle or greenseer told him the same prophesy as before, without telling him the names. It just told him he was going to kill his dad and sleep with his mother.

“You mean he hadn’t already?”

“Mother, don’t interrupt, the fun bit is coming up. So, because Œdipus, poor sod, doesn’t realize his real parents are not who he thinks they are, he decides to do the most effective thing he can think of to avoid fulfilling the prophesy: he leaves the kingdom that adopted him, and guess which way he sets out for? That’s right, Thebes, capital city of Laïus and Jocasta’s kingdom. Now along the way, who should he meet blocking his way and refusing to yield him passage but his real father, king Laïus himself. Of course Œdipus doesn’t know he’s the king, nor that he’s his real dad. They have a row over who gets to pass on first, and Œdipus kills the old man.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh yes. He then goes to Thebes where a sphinx is poisoning the city, and Laïus’s brother Creon has sworn that whoever gets rid of the sphinx can be king and rule Thebes (because by this point you see everyone rightly thinks Laïus is dead, having never returned). Œdipus solves the riddle of the sphinx, who in Cocteau’s version is a beautiful woman who has the hots for him, and thus is crowned king of Thebes. He promptly marries Jocasta, has several children with her, only for another greenseer to show up. He tells Œdipus what he has done, this time it’s all clear and everyone gets it, whereupon poor Œdipus, who by now has killed his father, married and fucked his mother, is father of his own little sister and brothers, finally loses it and pokes out both his eyes with Jocasta’s brooch (oh, she’s dead, she killed herself because she understood the truth in advance of everybody else), and then exiles himself.”

There was a long awkward silence. Then Audrey, who hadn’t reacted much until now, said “That’s awful.”

“Told you so!” Julie spat.

“It’s a tragedy, and it’s Greek.” I said. “And then there’s a massive power struggle between two of Œdipus’s sons and Creon has to have Antigone killed...”

Julie cut me short “Yes, we’re doing Antigone next month, so you can wait a bit before going into that one? Please!”

I raised a hand and made a zipping motion across my lips. I looked around the table. No one spoke for quite a while. It was difficult to say what anyone was thinking beyond that the story was, as it is, incredibly boring and incredibly sad. Perhaps I should have started with Antigone. The sheer stupidity in that little tale might have elicited a stronger and more telling reaction.

Mother broke the silence: “Shall we have desert?” All around me was enthusiastic agreement that it was a good idea to change the subject, a hubbub of ‘oh yes, indeed’ and the like filling the room. However, instead of going to the fridge and getting out some exotic meal-ender, Mother motioned for us all to leave the table and follow her into the living room. My alarm bells went off altogether, and I saw even Julie look a little annoyed.

The couch had been deployed into its bed form, and there were thick carpets all over the floor, all the furniture pushed aside.

“Not one wanted to!” Mother exclaimed as she started stripping off. “I couldn’t find one of my little bootlickers willing to play with my little cunt. ‘Too much hair on it’, the last one said. Can you believe the gall?”

I exchanged a look with Julie as we stood in the doorway, all four women in front of us shedding what remained of their clothes and telling each other how they were going to make up for each others’ sexual frustrations together. My sister’s expression surprised me yet again, showing outright embarrassment at what was going down. Without another word she walked away to the stairs to get to her room, and as Mother finally noticed me and called I regretted not following her example.

“Frank dear, since your sister is unwilling to participate won’t you come and lend us your cock for a bit? As you can see, I’ve got three fresh pussies here for you. And I might even let you have mine.”

I scrambled for an excuse. What had I done today that might cover for... inaction? Carmen. I opted to give a half-lie.

“Sorry, I don’t think I can get it up. That’s why I only fingered Julie before dinner...”

“You can’t get it up? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” I answered Mother’s outburst, “Nothing’s wrong, it’s just that I’ve already been fucking this really demanding girl all day today, and my dick literally aches.”

“What sort of ‘demanding girl’?

“Carmencita Ibanez. Big, very busty, very feisty.” And then I added, with the barest hint of spite, or what I thought would sound like spite “Nothing like you.”

Mother’s eyes widened as words failed her. I left her staring after me and walked away to the stairs, biting back the surmounting terror with the satisfaction of having stood up to her. No one prevented me from reaching my bedroom, and I locked the door. Then I panicked.