ast Sunday I packed a bag with a book and some pretzels. Armed with my lunch and a beach chair, I drove to Clove Lakes Park and found a spot under a tree to relax.

Halfway through Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, I glanced up and noticed two women walking down the asphalt path in my direction.

The woman on the left was wearing a yellow t-shirt and white shorts over pudgy, middle-aged legs. A pair of sunglasses and short brown hair were the first things I noticed about her face.

The woman to the right had the same thick build and the same hairstyle, yet her hair was gray. A pair of white walking slacks covered her legs and a baggy striped shirt hid her bulky torso.

They looked like a typical mother-daughter combo enjoying a Sunday stroll through the park.

With the two women cataloged in my head, I went back to my book. Half a page later, the sound of rustling grass drew my attention.

“Howdy,” said the woman in the yellow t-shirt. I tried placing the accent. Not a single born-and-bred New Yorker uses the word “howdy.”

I dropped my book in my lap. “Hello.”

“Sure is a beautiful day, ain’t it?” the same woman asked. She stood over me with her hands clasped behind her back. Her mother, or the gray haired woman I assumed was her mother, stood just beyond the first woman’s shoulder. She smiled at me.

“It is,” I agreed, nodding, glancing around the park as if I had forgotten I was sitting in a park on a perfect summer day enjoying my vacation.

“What are you reading there, handsome?” the woman asked.

I started worrying the conversation was ready to take a turn for the religious worse. Only missionaries--those eccentric women and pimple-riddled boys who knock on strangers’ doors in the middle of the week handing out pamphlets for the Jehovah’s Witness--were this polite.

I started to hold up the cover of the book when I stopped myself. If they were religious and interested in making a commission by converting me, the last thing I needed them to see was a book titled Jesus’ Son.

“It’s a book of short stories.” I dropped the book in my lap, face down. “Have you ever read Denis Johnson?”

“Can’t say that I have,” the woman said.

Rather than offer anything more to the conversation, which I felt had gone on long enough, I simply squinted up at the woman wearing the yellow t-shirt.

Crossing her arms, she asked, “Where’d you get that black tattoo on your leg?”

“Seaside Heights.”

“Is that a beach area in New Jersey?”

“That it is.”

I sat in my chair, rocking my head back and forth like an orthodox Jew, pressing my lips together in a look that said, “Yeah, well, you can leave now,” when the woman began flicking her nipple with her thumb.

“You like watching that, don’t you, honey?” She squeezed her entire breast. The heavy orb strained against fingers that belonged to a wrinkled, spotted hand that had washed one dish too many.

As middle-aged and pudgy as this woman was, something began to stir below my belt.

“Is that your mother?” I asked, nodding toward the old woman standing behind the first woman.

“She sure is,” the first woman said. Turning, she placed an arm around her mother’s shoulders, pinched her chin in her free hand, and planted a kiss right on her mother’s mouth.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Are you serious?”

“What do you say, sugar?” the first woman asked, nudging her mother behind her again. “Why don’t you show me what kind of package you’re towing down there?” She tilted her sunglasses down her nose. Her boring brown eyes matched the rest of her pedestrian figure.

“This?” I asked, cupping a hand over my crotch. “This is what you want to see?”

“Maybe you could just let me feel it,” the woman suggested. She stepped closer and bent at the knees. “Mind if I sit?”

“Be my guest,” I said, still laughing at the whole scene.

She settled down in my lap, wiggling her cheeks against my hips. “I don’t know, sugar. Does it get any bigger than that?”

The old woman with the gray hair licked her thin lips while she watched the two of us.

“Maybe this will help,” the first woman suggested. Grabbing the back of my head, she snaked her tongue in my mouth. Taking one of my hands, she placed it on her chubby belly, allowing my fingers to brush against the underside of her massive breasts beneath her yellow t-shirt.

She felt it as soon as I started growing stiff.

“Now that’s more like it, honey,” she whispered in my ear. “I definitely think you’ve got that something I’m looking for.”

The mother patted her daughter on the head. “She’s really very good. The last man she slept with wanted to marry her that same day.”

“Is that right?” I asked, unsure what else to say.

“Believe you me,” the mother added. “This young gal is one sassy babe. You’d be a fool not to help yourself to a slice of her ass.”

“You know,” I said, playing along with whatever joke they were playing, “my mother never talked about me the way you talk about your daughter. Listening to you, I’m starting to think I probably missed out on a lot of opportunities.”

“Don’t you worry about that, sugar,” the woman in my lap said. She shut me up by sticking her tongue back in my mouth. “How about we take a short little walk right over there?” She pointed to the bushes twenty yards away next to a secluded corner of the lake.

“What did you have in mind?”

“Can’t you use your imagination?” the woman in my lap answered. She looked at her mother. “Do you have any rubbers left, ma?”

May the wonders never cease, I thought.

The old woman with the gray hair snaked a handful of Trojans from her front pocket and held them out to her daughter.

“Thanks, ma.” She took two and laced her fingers through mine, pulling me to my feet. “Ready, handsome?”

I followed her through the bushes to the edge of the water. The humid air stuck to the back of my neck in thick rolls of heat. The woman’s fingers wandered over my body. She pinched my chest, slapped at my arms, and grabbed my ass. She positioned my hands over the soft lines of her own body, as if I was incapable of handling her myself.

There in the bushes she lifted her shirt over her head and tossed it behind me, where her mother caught it and folded it neatly.

“You’re quite the dynamic duo, aren’t you?” I said, staring down at her heavy orbs supported in a monstrous white contraption disguised as a bra.

The mother cackled behind me. “Get some while the gettin’s good, boy.”

The daughter slipped out of her bra and dropped her shorts. She forgot her panties at home.

“What do you think, honey?” she tempted me, spinning in a circle, advertising herself. “Think you can handle a piece of this?”

I may never understand why, but I have this thing for plump, middle-aged women. Usually, I draw the line at circus freaks, midgets, and female construction workers, yet this woman standing in knee-high weeds, naked except for sneakers, ankle socks, and sunglasses, with her breasts hanging down to her navel, and her mother urging us on, managed to bring out the animal in me.

I grabbed her and squeezed everything my hands could find.

“That’s right, honey,” she cooed in my ear, “you know I like it rough like that.”

“Don’t be shy,” her mother instructed me. “Smack that ass like you own it.”

The daughter pulled her face from my lips and started on my belt.

“Don’t rush it now, darling,” the mother said. “Take your time and make sure you enjoy this young bull.”

Fifty yards or so down the lake’s shoreline, two Mexicans pointed in our direction with their fishing poles.

The daughter tugged on my briefs, hustling me deeper into the weeds. The mother stalked a step behind us.

With my shorts around my ankles, the daughter tugged on my junket pump till the skin grew raw.

“Hand me another rubber, ma,” the daughter said. “I dropped that other one you gave me.”

Just as the mother pulled another Trojan from her pocket, a pair of garden snakes slithered through the weeds between her feet.

“HOLY JESUS!”

Throwing up her hands, the old lady tried jumping in my arms. Instead, I ducked to the side, letting the mother collided with her naked daughter. Together they tumbled into the lake.

The two Mexicans had called over a dozen of their friends, wives, and girlfriends, and now they joined in laughing at the two gringas splashing in the murky water.

I pulled up my shorts and buckled my belt.

“I don’t think it’s legal to swim in the lake,” I mentioned. “You should probably get out of there before one of the Park Rangers catches you.”

The daughter swore. Dragging herself out of the muck, she glared at me while her headlights swung from side to side. “Now what’d you go and do that for?” She collected her clothes from the pile in the weeds. Her mother crawled from the water on hands and knees.

I grabbed the daughter’s bag. While she busied herself with her bra, I pulled out a handful of pamphlets--pamphlets for the Church of Latter Day Saints.

“Did you honestly believe you could just sucker me in like that?” I said, waving the pamphlets in her face.

She snatched her things from me. “You obviously don’t love Jesus as much as you should, young man.”

That park was a great place to steal sexual favors from the church recruiters. Rumors had been circulating that groups like Jehovah’s Witness, the Church of Latter Day Saints, and some First Baptists had been dropping the suburban door-to-door tactics in favor of converting strippers, hookers, and whores into the faith. Once converted, they then sent those same women out to public parks, beaches, and parties with specific instructions to multiply the flock by employing any means necessary--emphasis on the word any.

“Is that really your mother?” I asked.

The daughter buttoned her shorts. “You’re not the sharpest tool in the shed, are you? Would you slip some tongue to your own mother?”

The mother struggled to her feet just as a Ranger approached on bicycle.

“Better hurry up and get that shirt on,” I said. “Here comes the law.”

The Ranger rounded the corner and pedaled onto the grass just as the daughter pulled her yellow t-shirt over her head.

“There’s a sign right over there that says no swimming in the park,” the Ranger said. It was a female Ranger with tan legs and hiking boots.

“They were trying to get me to love Jesus,” I explained, pointing at the both of them. “Isn’t that also illegal in this park?”

The Ranger pulled a pad from her pocket, flipped it open, and nodded at the two women. “Let’s see some identification.”

I walked away. While the Ranger wrote citations for the Jesus freaks, I collected my bag, book, and beach chair. On the other side of the park, across the street, I set up under another tree. Twenty minutes later, a young lady with dark hair introduced herself.

Standing to shake her hand, I wondered why she was wearing a denim jacket in such warm weather. As soon as I got to my feet, I realized why.

Under her jacket, I stared down at two naked white breasts--no shirt, no bra.

Some people call this guerilla marketing. Let the men stare for a few moments while she sets the hook and reels in her catch. Unlike the mother-daughter combo, she shot straight.

“In the mood?” She tilted her head toward the bushes.

“What’s it going to cost me?”

“Meetings every Sunday for the next eight weeks.”

“How long are the meetings?”

“They never go past an hour and a half.”

“Does anyone speak in tongues?”

“No, we don’t believe in that, although there is a lot of singing.”

“Single women?”

“Plenty.”

“Okay.” I took her hand and followed her to the bushes. “Do you have protection with you?”

She held out an assortment of prophylactics. “Take your pick.”

I selected the green wrapper and she held my hand.

“Remember,” she said, squeezing my fingers tight. “Jesus loves you.”

 

[END]

© 2004 Stephen Donaldson - Contributor's Bio