Mom vs. Dad (PG-13)

After David and I lost to our mothers—or should I say, after we were
beaten and thoroughly humiliated by our mothers, forced to kiss their
feet—I sank into something of a depression. David didn't want to
talk to me, blaming me for his humiliation. And I guess that was
fair; he had been dominating both the women, and if I hadn't allowed
them to turn the tables on me, then he never would have tried to
help, never would have been choked into near-unconsciousness by his
own mom, never would have had her put him into a double-hammerlock
and never would have had her rub his face into the grass.

Around the house I tried to avoid Mom, but that's not easy during the
summer. I tried to find other things to do, and yet I didn't want to
be with anybody else. I kept worrying that other people would find
out about the mother-son wrestling match. Mom didn't help matters
any by teasing me occasionally about her victory.

The thing I most worried about was Dad finding out. My father was a
man's man: tall, strong, and very much in charge. I had a lot to
live up to, and I desperately wanted to keep this defeat a secret.
Fortunately Mom seemed to sense this, and she didn't mention anything
about the match when he was around. It was our little secret…until
one day, later in the summer, when the cat just slipped right out of
the bag. It was one of the most significant days of my life, and
possibly the most important day in my family's history.

It began in an ordinary way. My mom, as she often did on Saturday
mornings, was in the back yard sunbathing. After the wrestling
incident I couldn't look at her in a bikini any more—it brought up
too many painful memories of her curvy, middle-aged body somehow
overpowering my own—so when she went to sunbathe I would watch TV in
the living room at the front of the house, as far away from her as
possible. Dad had been working on one of the cars but he'd come
inside for a break and was sitting in the easy chair in the corner,
watching TV with me, when Mom came inside. Standing in the doorway,
Mom couldn't see Dad in the corner, just me, so she didn't realize
she could hear when she asked, "So Matt, did you clean up your room
yet?"

"No, not yet. But I've got all day," I said.

And then the words that changed the course of all our lives. "You
need to clean it now, dear. Or do I have to force you to do it? We
both know I can make you. I'd love another chance to make you kiss
my toes."

"What?" my dad said, his voice a question and an accusation at the
same time. There was silence as my mom stepped into the room and
looked at Dad, who looked at her and then at me. I stared down,
unable to face my father's gaze or the sight of Mom in her pink
bikini.

"What are you talking about?" Dad asked, to either of us who would
answer. Mom spoke since I couldn't.

"A month or so ago, it was kind of funny, David and Matt challenged
me and Kitty to a wrestling match—"

"What?!" my father spat in disbelief. Now he was sitting forward on
his chair.

"It was in the back yard. Just for fun. We were just fooling
around, you know how it is. And, well, we won."

"Who is we?" my father demanded. I wanted to be anywhere in the
world but in that room at that moment. Dad was staring at me while
he waited for Mom to answer. I could feel his eyes burning on me as
she said, matter-of-factly, "Kitty and I won, that's what I said."

Dad spoke to me. "Is that true? Your mom beat you in wrestling?"

"Well, kind of . . . " I stuttered, trying to figure out how to admit
this. "You see, it was two against one, and, it's not like I was
trying or anything, and—"

"Now wait just a second," said Mom. She stepped forward and I
flinched. Dad saw this; he could tell I was scared of her.

"You let your Mom beat you up? And she made you kiss her feet?" I
couldn't answer…instead I stared down—straight at Mom's bare feet,
her toenails painted bright pink.

There was silence. I wanted to die. Dad couldn't figure out what to
think. And Mom…well, it turns out Mom was feeling insulted. She was
the one who broke the silence.

"Why should I be able to outwrestle him?" she asked. "He's taller
than me, and a little heavier, but I'm a grown woman and he's still a
boy."

Dad laughed. "Come on! Next you'll want to challenge me! You women
are getting some crazy ideas these days."

"Are you saying I couldn't possibly outwrestle you?" she asked, the
challenge evident in her voice.

"Damn right that's what I'm saying," said Dad. He rose from the
chair and in one motion swept Mom's legs from under her and rolled
her firmly but gently to the carpeted floor. She tried to escape but
in seconds he had both her wrists held securely in one of his big
hands and had her legs secured underneath his other arm. He laughed
as she tried to squirm away. Seeing how easily Dad had overpowered
Mom made my previous defeat that much more embarrassing. "See," said
Dad, speaking to both of us, "a woman doesn't have a chance against a
man. I know Matt's still a teenager, but I can't believe you really
won against him. He must not have been trying."

At that moment I felt a surge of love for Dad. He had stuck up for
me!

Mom, however, did not share my same warm feelings for Dad. I saw a
flash of anger in Mom's eyes. She stopped struggling and Dad let her
go. Still on his knees kneeling beside her, he turned to me. "Son,
I know it's hard to know when to use your strength. I appreciate
your not wanting to hurt your mom. But if she's going to embarrass
you, you've got to defend yourself."

As he finished, Mom, still lying on the floor beneath him, spun her
body slightly and threw her legs into the air. Snap! She scissored
her legs around Dad's neck. His face registered amazement, and he
immediately put his hands up to try to pry her legs off.

"Defend yourself against this, big boy!" Mom yelled as twisted her
body in an attempt to throw Dad off his knees. His strength was too
much, and she couldn't force him into a prone position. I was
surprised, though, that he couldn't rip her legs from around his
neck. She had one calf under his chin, and her ankles were hooked
together tightly, and despite his efforts he couldn't force his was
free. However, his laughter showed him to be amused by Mom's attack
rather than concerned.

As he struggled with her legs, Dad laughed the way a grown-up laughs
in the pool when a kindergartener hangs on his back trying to dunk
him. There was no sense of real competition. Mom, supporting her
weight with her elbows, was trying to shake Dad's head back and
forth, trying to knock him to one side or the other, but he was too
solid. His laughter seemed to make her angrier.

"See?" Dad said to me through his laughter. "I don't want to hurt
her, but I'm not going to let her hurt me, either."

It was at that moment, though, when I began to think the tide might
be turning in Mom's favor. Despite his words, he was frustrated that
he couldn't break free of Mom's legs. And her grip on his neck was
beginning to take its toll. I don't know if she was partially
cutting off the blood flow to his head or perhaps making it hard for
him to breathe, but Dad was turning red and beginning to gasp for
breath. Soon he wasn't laughing at all. Mom was shaking him more
vigorously and his position upright on his knees became less and less
stable.

I hadn't moved, hadn't spoken, during the beginning of this wrestling
match between my parents, and I remained motionless as finally Dad
fell with a loud thud to the floor. When he hit, Mom's grip on his
neck was loosened for an instant, and it looked like he would slip
his head free from her legs. But instead Mom reacted more quickly;
she leaned forward and grabbed Dad by the hair and pulled him closer
to her bikini-covered crotch, then clamped her motherly thighs closed
over his ears.

It was an incredible scene: my mother, feminine and mousy, wearing
only a pink bikini to hold her heaving breasts and cover her round
rear end, holding my father's head in between her sweaty thighs. His
face was now purple and his eyes showed anger and confusion. Lying
on his side, one of his arms was trapped beneath his body. With the
other he tried desperately to wrench Mom's thighs apart, but Mom
grabbed his thick wrist with her thin hand and pulled it away.
Although she wasn't nearly as strong as Dad, she was able to keep him
from opening her legs.

Now it was Mom who laughed while Dad squirmed and kicked his legs
helplessly. "Come on, honey," teased Mom. "Defend yourself so I
don't hurt you." Dad grunted in reply, causing Mom to giggle even
more.

The scene was too intense, too bizarre, too unsettling for my
youthful psyche. I couldn't watch. Without knowing what I was
doing, I rose and ran from the room. Finding myself in the kitchen I
got a drink of Kool-Aid and then forced myself to face the
situation. It wasn't as bad as I thought, I told myself. Mom and
Dad were just playing around, getting frisky. That's what married
people do. It wasn't real. With those thoughts in mind I ate a
sandwich before returning to the living room.

But when I returned, the scene was even worse. In the ten minutes I
had been gone, Dad had apparently never escaped from the
headscissors. Mom had trapped him even more securely, his nose now
just and inch from the pink bikini covering her crotch. Moreover,
she had managed to twist one of his arms into a hammerlock, and she
was wrenching his wrist high in between his shoulder blades. Dad's
legs were barely moving, kicking feebly. Clearly he was helpless. A
high-pitched whimper was escaping his lips.

"Mom!" I yelled. "Stop it! You're hurting him!" But I didn't try
to intervene.

Mom looked up, surprised, as though she had been lost in a reverie
and hadn't realized what she was doing. "OK," she said, regaining
her focus. She released his arm and opened her legs, pushing her
husband's head to the carpet. Standing up, Mom adjusted her bikini
top and her bottom. As Dad slowly shook the blood back into his head
and massaged his arm, Mom looked at me, grinning.

"So I guess it wasn't a fluke when I kicked your ass, huh?" she
said. She was so obviously proud of herself, and happy with her
power, that I almost smiled in spite of myself.

Dad pulled himself to his knees, then used the easy chair to climb to
his feet.

"You cheated," he said slowly, working his jaw to loosen it up. His
face was fiery red, his hair disheveled. He saw me standing there,
unbelieving, and his eyes dropped to the floor. Just as I was
embarrassed to let him know that I had been defeated by my own
mother, his own shame at having been held captive by his wife's legs
was intensified by my having witnessed it.

"Want to go another round?" asked Mom, holding her hands out toward
him, fingers open, challenging him to a game of "mercy." I
remembered my own test of strength with Mom, after I'd already been
weakened. Surely she couldn't expect to have the same outcome
against Dad! Although she had managed to beat me, he was so much
bigger and stronger, I didn't see any hope for her.

And there wasn't, really. Mom had either overestimated her ability
or she had wanted to give her husband a chance to redeem himself.
Within seconds she was on her knees, her fingers bent painfully
backward. She had tried to reverse the hold as she'd done with me
but Dad was simply too strong. As he bore down on her she grimaced,
her teeth clenched and eyes nearly shut. He forced her all the way
to the carpet and straddled her. He easily held her down and sat up,
triumphant. She wiggled underneath him but it was clearly impossible
for her to extricate herself. Dad smiled at me, and I smiled back.

"OK," said Mom, an air of resignation in her voice. "So we're even
now. Let me up and we'll go have some lunch."

"What do you mean, even?" Dad asked. He had the advantage now, and
he was clearly going to press it. "It doesn't look like we're even
to me."

"Come on," said Mom. "I let you go. You never would have gotten out
of my leglock if hadn't let you. Now you've got me pinned. So we're
even."

"We're not even," snapped Dad. "I'm on top, you're on the bottom.
Just remember, I wear the pants in this family."

My parents stared at each other in silence, letting this last comment
rest on the brittle air in the room. I stood still, confused,
worried. Mom had stopped struggling; now she was just glaring at
Dad. Finally she spoke. "Want to make it best two out of three?
How about one more time, to see who really wears the pants in the
family?"

In an instant they were both on their feet, eyeing each other
warily. Dad had taken the challenge, determined to solidify his role
as the dominant family member. As they slowly circled each other, I
was struck by the ridiculousness of the scene: my dad, six feet tall
and athletically built, in jeans and a t-shirt, loomed over my mom
who, at five and a half feet and wearing only a bikini, looked like
she should be building sandcastles at the beach.

Dad charged his wife and knocked her backward to the carpet.
Although she was caught off guard, she managed to wrap her legs
around his midsection and—more importantly—wrap her arms around his
head. He was on top of her but quickly found that she was in
control: his face was firmly buried in between her two pillowy
breasts. He tried to back away but she clung to him like ivy. Dad
pushed himself up to all fours while Mom hung beneath him like a
sloth. He tried to rise all the way to a standing position, and he
might have been able to in spite of her dead weight hanging from him,
but he was already so tired out from the fight that he couldn't get
further up than his knees. All the while I could see Mom pulsing her
legs rhythmically around his ribs, crushing and then releasing the
pressure, then crushing again. Eventually Dad collapsed and Mom
giggled as she held him on her chest and he floundered helplessly.
Every second that ticked by he lost more strength, unable to breathe
with his face smothered by her chest, and unable to escape the
crushing power of Mom's middle-aged thighs.

Soon Dad's struggles slowed and Mom rolled him over to his back, so
that now she was on top. She released his head but quickly grabbed
his elbows and pushed them to the floor. Amazingly Mom was now
strong enough (or Dad was weak enough) that she was able to hold his
arms pinned. She still kept her chest on his face, continuing to
smother him with her chest. At first he kicked and tried to roll her
off. But after a couple minutes he stopped moving. Mom lifted her
chest up and looked down. She and I both saw Dad's red face, sweaty
and swollen, as he gasped for breath in between Mom's large, dangling
breasts. Mom sat up on his chest and readjusted her bikini top.

"I guess we're finding out who wears the pants in the family, aren't
we, honey?" she asked me. I didn't answer.

My Mom had always seemed like a typical Mom: baking cookies, making
soup when I was sick, putting band-aids on my cuts, volunteering at
school, cooking dinner for the family. So I was completely
unprepared for this vicious side of her. Perhaps being the cook and
nurse for the family for so long had made her resentful. Whatever
her motivations, my Dad was about to suffer for them.

Still sitting on his chest she slapped him a few times until he
opened his eyes. "Who wears the pants in the family? Huh?"

"I do," he groaned. This was the wrong answer. She forced him to a
sitting position, then had a seat behind him on the carpet. Grabbing
one of his wrists, then the other, while he offered little
resistance, Mom braced her feet in the middle of his back and then
pulled back on his arms as hard as she could. He grimaced in pain
and shouted inarticulate curses. I still watched, motionless, now
deep in psychological shock. Dad was so helpless. I heard popping
and snapping noises and feared that Mom was doing permanent damage to
his arms or shoulders, and so finally I begged her to stop.

"Who wears the pants?" she asked. My father didn't reply. I
silently longed for him to give in and tell her that she wore the
pants so that she would stop her torture, but he stubbornly refused.
Perhaps he refused because he knew I was watching, and he couldn't
stand the shame of having his son see his humiliation at the hands of
his smaller wife.

Whatever the reason, Dad held out. So Mom inflicted more pain. She
let him go and he fell sideways to the carpet. Forcing him to his
back again, Mom stretched out his right arm beside his head and sat
on it, pinning it down firmly. She pulled his left arm behind his
head and held his left wrist securely with her own left hand. This
allowed her to have her right hand free. As Dad lay helpless beneath
her, unable to unseat her or roll away, Mom pulled his t-shirt up and
exposed his stomach and ribs. It was such a strange sight, his
powerfully built body helpless underneath her curvy, feminine form.
Methodically, laughing all the while, Mom clawed Dad's stomach and
chest, driving her long, pink fingernails into his flesh, as he
whimpered incoherently. My father, crying like a girl, unable to
stop his wife from torturing him. I begged Mom to stop.

She stood and walked over to me. Patting me on the head, she looked
sympathetic. "I'm sorry that you're seeing this, honey. Who would
have thought I'd be able to beat up both of you? But I didn't start
it, you know."

As I pondered that, she walked back to her prone and semi-conscious
husband. I watched as she unfastened his jeans and slowly slid them
off. He could barely resist as she left him in only his skivvies and
his ripped t-shirt. Then Mom pulled his jeans up and over her ample
butt. After she rolled the legs up several times, his jeans fit her
relatively well. She stood over him, her foot on his chest.

"Who wears the pants?" she asked.

Still he didn't respond. Dad just looked up at her, both angry and
afraid. She moved her small foot, with her pink toenails, to his
throat and pressed down.

"Say it," she commanded.

Still he refused. Mom put more and more of her weight onto Dad's
throat until he was obviously choking and nearing unconsciousness. I
begged her to stop.

"OK, honey. I'll stop soon," she said to me as she looked down at
Dad, who was desperate for air. "But first I have to convince your
dad that I am now in charge of the family." She looked at me. "You
know who's in charge, don't you?"

"You are," I whispered.

"Don't forget it young man. Now go upstairs to your room. You don't
need to see any more of this."

I was grateful to be dismissed. As I crept from the room, cowardly,
ashamed that I'd let my father be humiliated—as I had been humiliated—
I turned in time to see Mom lower her butt, clad in Dad's own jeans,
onto his desperate, beaten face.

From that day, Mom wore the pants. Dad wore them, too, but only when
she sat on his face.