I was young. Nineteen, and still living at home. Alone on a Saturday night in the dead of winter, my girlfriend waiting tables until midnight, the neighbors' dark windows refusing to offer any sexual entertainment in the meantime.

My father, as usual, had been invited to a party, and barring anything better to do I joined my mother in reluctantly tagging along, figuring I would stay a couple of hours before heading to the restaurant.

The hostess greeted both me and my father warmly, and my mother somewhat indifferently, as though other women were an annoyance to be tolerated. She took our coats, and I watched her ass as she swayed up the stairs with them. By my standards at the time she was old, but attractive. I knew her casually from summer volunteer work as a programmer at a local charity. I have no idea where my father knew her from, but I did know better than to ask.

The party, as I had expected, was a mindless enough way to kill time. I hung around, made small talk, provided free consulting to people who thought that my status as a freshman computer major somehow made me an expert. I kept eyeing beautiful women, but only the hostess deigned eye me back, and I figured she was just being polite. During our few brief office encounters over the summer she hadn't seemed extraordinarily flirtatious, and my frequent visions of her riding me on my desk belonged securely in my dreams.

After an hour and a half I noticed that my mother was frequently glancing at her watch, and I was growing restless myself. We conferred, and decided to approach my father about going home. After a brief conversation with the hostess he suggested we go on alone, that he would be home later, and that the hostess would help me retrieve our coats.

I followed her up the stairs, again watching the sway of her firm round ass beneath her long flowing dress. She led me down a hall, through a half-closed door, into her bedroom. The bed was on the other side of the room, covered with coats. I contemplated how to begin finding ours, wondering if I could remember what my mother's looked like, when I noticed the hostess was standing very close to me, making purring noises, remarking on how wonderful it was to have me here and what a big pile of coats that was, and how it might take a long time to find them. I contemplated pushing her down on the bed and kissing her, over and over I contemplated, but I could not make the scene go further in my head, or bring myself to grab her. I do not know how long I stood, watching her as she inched toward me, listening to her compliments, imagining grabbing her, eyeing the pile for our coats all at the same time.

The coats won. I spotted the arm of mine and my mother's with it, excused myself, stepped around the hostess, grabbed them, and hurried back downstairs to find my mother and escape back into reality. By the time I found her the hostess had come back downstairs and was talking to my father, who stopped us as we were about to go, said he was coming after all, asked us to wait. We watched him follow the hostess up the stairs to the coats.

Ten long minutes later my mother asked me to see what was taking so long. Back up the stairs I trudged, down the hall, opened the half-closed door quietly and gently, made eye contact with the hostess over my father's shoulder, tapped my watch pointedly, stepped back into the hall, called his name loudly for good measure, trudged back downstairs, told my mother he was almost coming, waited another five minutes before he hurried down the stairs, his coat already buttoned.

That night my girlfriend was unusually urgently amorous. I knew better than to ask why. Within minutes of entering her apartment, I entered her, took her on her bed half-dressed as she whimpered with pleasure beneath me.

My mind wandered as my hips moved.

I pictured my mother, tall, slender, pale, poised, refined, flawlessly dressed, standing near the front door, tapping her foot lightly and impatiently on the floor as she waited.

I pictured my father, short, compact, tanned, powerful, crude, his pants around his ankles, on the bed, driving his hips up and down, back and forth.

I pictured the hostess, short, curvaceous, dark red with passion, radiating heat, sexually raw, her long loose flowing dress bunched around her waist, reclined at an angle on the pile of coats, her legs wrapped around my father's back.

I pictured the guests, retrieving their coats, dismantling the pile, making their way out the door into the cold dark night, huddling, unknowing, into the warmth of their trenchcoats, parkas, and furs.

I came. I came hard, and my girlfriend, unknowing, came with me.