My understanding of Sigmund Freud's work goes little beyond his idea that men are plagued by unresolved psychosexual conflicts, particularly that we all want to fuck our moms. I guess it says something about the potency of this theory that I've never been able to get beyond it; I was so coldcocked by the image when I studied Freud in college that I didn't have any mental energy left over for his trivial-seeming thoughts about ego defense mechanisms. In fact, the thought of entering my mother bothered me so intensely that I wondered if I was overcompensating for some hidden desire. I eventually came to realize that I wasn't just horrified by the thought of fucking my mom; I was horrified by the thought of fucking anyone's mom.

    In my mind, having children was related to sex in the same way that dying in a car crash is related to driving down the road. Mothers, it seemed, had kidnapped the playful and hedonistic nature of sex and used it to turn themselves into totems of consequence. I've always been amused by the term MILF (an acronym for Mother I'd Like to Fuck) because it so neatly separates attractive mothers from the general population of women. I thought the special category was needed because mothers were off limits (though of course, they are not), but then I realized there is no such category for LILF (Lepers I'd Like to Fuck) or WILF (Wives I'd Like to Fuck). A man is meant to understand one simple truth: making love to a mother is fundamentally different from making love to any other woman. For a long time, any mother that fell under my gaze, no matter how single and young, was as safe as a cow strolling past a Hindu temple.
   At least that was the case until I was set up with a mother, Theresa, on a blind date. I was twenty-four years old and my grad-school roommate, Jamie, and his girlfriend, Dawn, were invited to an out-of-state wedding in Chicago. Dawn's good friend Theresa, who lived in Chicago, was also invited. That I would go as Theresa's date struck Dawn as an act of goodwill. "It would be so sweet of you," she implored. I was half-thinking about the free drinks and food, and half about sneaking away from my date and her baby pictures long enough to chase after some more eligible girls. As the wedding date approached, Dawn began to sense my impure motives. My sweetness, in her eyes, soured a bit. She explained that Theresa hadn't been out with a guy in well over a year, ever since she'd gotten pregnant by some loser named Ken. "The only reason I asked you is because I thought you'd be into it. What the fuck are you so afraid of?"

   I took Dawn's scolding like a punch in the face. I didn't think it was fair of her to accuse me of being afraid, probably because I was a little afraid. Ever since I had announced my impending date to my friends, they had begun treating me the way people treated Neil Armstrong before he was launched to the moon. I was crossing over into a strange land. Several friends suggested that she must really know what she was doing in bed, as if getting pregnant was the result of sexual expertise. Most guys speculated endlessly on tightness and looseness, stretch marks, the inability to get wet after having a child. They generally agreed that the birth was too recent, and that I was being disrespectful to motherhood in some vague but serious way. I was warned about staples and stitches. Several guys warned me that she would be so desperate for a man that she would latch onto me and sob after sex. Our female friends agreed that we didn't know what the hell we were talking about, but they couldn't provide accurate information either.
   But no information, accurate or bogus, could have reduced the shock of seeing Theresa for the first time. She was the opposite of motherly: boyish haircut; high, alert breasts; perfect, round ass; strong, thin legs. In her strapless dress, her shoulders looked like they'd been chiseled from rock, and her clavicles formed perfect lines across the base of her neck. Total MILF. She diffused the usual blind-date awkwardness by hugging me and leading me by the hand to the car. I was startled by a collection of baby toys on the seat and floor, but Theresa said casually, "just move that stuff to the back."
   Minutes later, we were sitting with a gang of friends in a church. Throughout the ceremony, I was transfixed by how the light material of Theresa's dress draped perfectly over the smooth wedge that formed between her thighs. It looked as though her child — I didn't even know if it was a boy or girl — must have sprung out of thin air instead of from a swollen, distorted belly.
   We had a couple hours to kill between the service and reception, so we all headed to a pub and started drinking. It didn't take long before Theresa and I were casually fondling each other against the bar. Theresa's friends kept pulling me aside to whisper about what a great guy I was for hanging out with her, and how she never got to have a good time, and how she hadn't looked this happy in months. I couldn't have been more confident about getting laid if I had flown to Bangkok with a suitcase of cash. Later, Theresa told me that she had booked her own hotel room for the night. "And the baby's staying at Grandma's," she said. "I'm pretty untethered."
   The reception was held in a big, crowded room. The bride and groom were up front, doing various cutesy things. Our group laid claim to an isolated corner table near the bar. I was pacing myself with the liquor, so I'd be just the right kind of drunk for a perfectly satisfying screw. That's what I was thinking about when my illusions were shattered. Someone's baby was getting awfully fussy at a nearby table. When it broke into a wail, Theresa blushed, grabbed her breasts, and ran to the bathroom. Dawn glanced at me. "She lactates when babies cry," she said, then rolled her eyes at my naivety. I might have been more shocked if she'd said that Theresa had several vaginas, but not much. Those very breasts that I had been lusting after were busy producing a child's sustenance. Suddenly, everything that I had been thinking about doing with her seemed like a corruption of some divine, preordained purpose. But when Theresa returned from the bathroom, she carried right on partying, rubbing my leg and prepping for a big night.
   At about two in the morning, the whole gang of us found our way to Theresa's hotel room. Everyone was excited about going skinny dipping at the beach. I was pretending to be way too fucked up for a swim. I almost wished I really was, so I'd be too fucked up for sex, as well, and could avoid rubbing up against a pair of breasts made slick from mother's milk. As I lay on Theresa's hotel room bed, I decided there was surely some subculture of guys with breast milk fetishes. They probably had their own magazines and web sites. I explored the depths of my desires to see if such a fetish was in me, but I came up empty-handed.

   Theresa got up and turned out the lights, and I felt like I did one time when I saw a car go crashing down into a ditch from a snowy road: terrified to go down there and find a dead body, but aware that my obligations as a citizen outweighed my personal fears. I told myself this was just something I was going to do; I wasn't going to be a pathetic little wimp. Then suddenly my silent pep talk was interrupted by the awareness that my dick was being sucked. First off, images of babies sucking nipples and mothers sucking dicks whipped through my imagination in a strange montage. I cleared my mind, only to be visited by a more practical question: Does the mere sound of sucking, even if she is the one doing it, trigger her lactation? Theresa snapped me out of these thoughts by gripping my balls in her hand with slow and steady pressure. I nearly let loose in her mouth, but I held back and raised her dress.
   At least on initial hookups, a woman's breasts are of immense importance. You don't want to be overly coarse and forward by diving for her crotch, so you try to warm things up a little before heading downward. Theresa's motherliness, her unlickable breasts, really threw a wrench into my sexual routine. Within a couple seconds I entered a canal that, not long before, had been exited by the living, breathing child of some dork named Ken, who was widely considered to be the biggest asshole in Chicago.
   Much is made of tightness and looseness. Guys like it tight, the tighter the better, like the weight of the water on your body when you dive all the way to the bottom of a lake. But saying that you like a tight fit and not a loose fit is like saying you don't like caramel because you like pretzels instead. I entered Theresa with all the ease of inserting a letter into a mailbox. I was entering a vast place, and once inside I became aware of internal caresses and novel sensations. There was an amazing gradient of pressures that she could manipulate with the slight rocking of her hips. I decided that a better word for tightness might be "confining." There was a gentle silkiness inside Theresa that is difficult to describe. She did not need to worry about me being a one-pump wonder. I knew that I could last as long as I pleased, which is the most triumphant feeling a man can have. It's not that it didn't feel good, just that it didn't feel too good.
   In the morning, I lay beside Theresa, thinking my usual morning thoughts about my hangover and what I wanted for breakfast. Theresa was thinking about her little baby. She called her mother and made arrangements to have the child dropped off to her at the hotel's restaurant.
   At breakfast I realized that she was not going to think about me at all anymore. It made me feel pompous and stupid that I'd thought she'd try to latch on to me. Theresa's mother brought in the baby very discreetly and left. It was a little girl. Theresa nursed right in front of me, and silently challenged me to watch and not be embarrassed. I feigned a deep interest in my oatmeal. When I looked up again, Theresa was holding the baby over her head, tossing it gently into the air. "What did you do last night?" she asked her daughter. "What… did… you… do?"