The Taboo Summer of My Grandmother, My Mother, and Me

I was 18 when I understood that desire doesn’t care about kinship or shame. I learned it during a rainy week, in a mountain cabin, with my grandmother and my mother as witnesses to everything that happened.

The trip was Nora’s idea, my grandmother’s. When Dad left us — five months before that summer, without warning and without explanation — she showed up with a practical proposal, as she always did. A friend was lending her property in the southern mountains: a wooden chalet surrounded by pines, far from the city and from everything that reminded us of the disaster. My mother, Valeria, took a while to be convinced. She’d spent weeks with red-rimmed eyes and her phone in her hand, waiting for a call that never came. I was the one who convinced her that getting away was the only option.

I had no idea how right I was.

We traveled three hours by bus so we wouldn’t miss the scenery. Nora complained the whole way, because she preferred direct flights, but in the end she gave in. From the terminal we took a taxi that carried us along dirt roads for almost an hour. The cabin was exactly like the photos: dark wooden walls, mountains that swallowed everything, a silence that felt different from the city’s. We used the first day to acclimate. We walked a pine-lined path before dusk, and that night, the three of us seated in front of the fire, we barely spoke.

No need.

***

The next morning I was the first to wake up. I went out to look for firewood and nearly ran into a man standing at the entrance.

He was big. Dark-skinned, bald, wearing a leather jacket that reached his knees and a jaw that didn’t invite conversation. I guessed him to be between fifty and sixty. He introduced himself as Rodrigo: the property caretaker, sent by the owner for whatever we might need. Firewood, groceries, repairs. I asked him to come back when the others were awake.

When the three of us met him, it was clear he was a man of few words. He chopped firewood without being asked, checked the generator, and warned us about the storm moving in. In that area, at that time of year, they were violent. They could last for days.

That night he came with his companion. César was taller than Rodrigo, with graying hair and a still, penetrating gaze that lingered on things longer than necessary. I guessed him to be about sixty, though he moved with the energy of someone younger. We invited them to dinner. The storm had already started, and it made no sense for them to leave in that weather.

Nora was the one who talked the most during that first dinner. She asked them about life in the mountains, about the weather, about local customs. Rodrigo answered slowly, weighing every word. César listened and watched. I realized he was looking at the three of us with methodical attention, as if cataloging us. I decided not to drink alcohol. I remembered too well the last time I had.

***

The storm lasted two straight days without stopping. On the third, it eased up a little in the morning, but came back worse in the afternoon. Rodrigo and César couldn’t leave in that weather. They stayed.

During the second day of rain, the alcohol circulated faster than I noticed from my room. I had gone to bed early with a book and only heard the dull murmur of conversation in the dining room. At two in the morning I woke up thirsty and went to the bathroom.

The hallway was dim. A strip of yellow light spilled from the half-open dining room door.

I looked, without meaning to.

Nora and César were standing by the table. He had one hand under my grandmother’s blouse, kneading a breast with the calm of a man who already knows he owns it, while with the other he squeezed her ass over her skirt. He was kissing her mouth slowly, tongue deep inside, unhurried. My grandmother wasn’t resisting. She was kissing him back with the same calm, one hand resting on his chest and the other going straight down to find the bulge between his legs. She squeezed his cock over his pants and smiled against César’s mouth when she felt how hard he already was. There was no awkwardness in the gesture, no discomfort. It was something that already had its own rhythm.

I searched for my mother with my eyes and didn’t see her in the dining room. I heard noises in the bathroom.

I decided to go back to my room. I didn’t make it.

Rodrigo emerged from the back of the hallway. He saw me, gave the slightest nod, and pushed the bathroom door open without knocking. He left it ajar.

I moved closer without making a sound. Through the crack I saw Valeria with her back against the wall, hurriedly pulling up her pants. Rodrigo was watching her from the doorway.

“Get out, please,” she said quietly.

“After what we were talking about, you’re not going to tell me you got scared.”

She didn’t answer. He closed the distance between them slowly and my mother didn’t step away. He put a hand on her jaw, lifted her face, and kissed her. Valeria took two seconds to answer, but she answered. Rodrigo yanked down the pants she had just been pulling up, shoved his hand between her legs, and sank two fingers into her all at once. My mother moaned against his mouth, a short, rough sound I had never heard from her. He pulled his fingers out, lifted them to the light so she could see them glistening with wetness, and brought them to his mouth, sucking them one by one.

“You’re soaked, Vale,” he said. “Don’t tell me you don’t want it.”

She closed her eyes and rested her forehead on his shoulder.

I stood frozen in the hallway.

This can’t be happening, I thought. Or it is happening and I don’t really know what I’m supposed to feel.

I went back to my room and sat on the bed with my heart racing. I tried to read. I couldn’t. I heard footsteps, doors, the murmur of low voices mixed with the rain, and then a long moan from my mother that slipped under the door. I felt myself getting wet without being touched. In the end I got up.

***

When I opened the dining room door I had to stop for a moment.

César was kneeling in front of my grandmother. He had ripped off her panties and thrown them on the floor, and now he was eating her cunt with his mouth open, tongue stretched out, sucking her lips and driving it inside her with a slow, deep rhythm. Her eyes were closed and one hand rested on his head, guiding him, pressing him against her every time he found the exact spot. The other hand clutched the edge of the table. She bit her lip to keep quiet, but short gasps kept escaping from her throat, making the whole scene tremble. Nora was 54 years old, and that body I had so many times seen on the beach or in the gym locker room was now responding to something I had never known her to have: her dress was hiked up to her waist, her tits were out of her unbuttoned blouse, her nipples hard and dark, and her cunt was spread open over the tongue of a man she had met twenty-four hours earlier.

“That’s it, my love, like that,” she murmured, voice breaking. “Lick it all.”

César drove his tongue deeper and started sucking her clit with his lips, mouthing it like it was a little nipple. My grandmother pushed her pelvis against his face and came silently, trembling all over, mouth open and no sound coming out. He didn’t let up. He kept sucking until she had to push his head away because she couldn’t take any more.

My mother and Rodrigo arrived from the hallway a moment later. He had one hand buried inside her pants, all the way in, and she walked unsteadily, mouth slightly open. Valeria watched the scene with wide eyes and Rodrigo guided her toward the couch without taking his fingers out.

Rodrigo saw me from the doorway. He smiled faintly, a gesture with no tenderness but no cruelty either.

“Come here,” he said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

My mother turned at the sound of his voice and saw me. She tried to straighten up, but Rodrigo held her by the hip, fingers still inside her.

“Leave her. Let her decide.”

I went in. I walked up to Rodrigo and kissed him before anyone else could say another word. It was the only way not to stop and think too much. His mouth was rough and tasted of vodka. He put his hands on my waist and pulled me closer until I felt his size against my hip.

He took my hand and pressed it against the bulge in his pants. It was huge, hard, throbbing under the fabric, and I felt something like fear mixed with something else I couldn’t name. He opened my hand and slid it inside his pants, wrapped it around his cock. I felt it hot, thick, the skin taut. My fingers barely reached around it.

“Suck it,” he said in my ear. “Start slow.”

I knelt without protesting. I pulled his pants down to mid-thigh and his cock sprang out, hard, the tip already wet. I took it with both hands, stuck out my tongue, and licked the head from bottom to top, tasting the salty flavor of semen already beading there. Rodrigo sighed and put a hand on the back of my neck. I opened my mouth and took him in, first the head, then more, as much as I could. I gagged and he held me there for a second before letting me breathe.

“That’s it, baby. Use your tongue. Suck it well.”

My experiences up to that point had been with boys my own age: vague, fast, not much to remember. This was different. Completely different. I had his cock in my mouth and couldn’t fit it all, and he kept easing it in patiently, a little more each time, while he held my hair back to look at my face.

I glanced sideways at Nora. She had climbed onto César, who was sprawled on the couch, and was riding his cock with her knees spread and her eyes closed. She drove it all the way in and then rose slowly, showing how it sat inside her, shining with her own juices. She touched César with the same concentration she used for anything else: focused, unhurried, with no apparent shame, riding him with her tits bouncing and her own fingers pinching her nipples. My mother watched the scene, eyes bright, while Rodrigo found his way under her clothes and unbuttoned her pants to let them fall.

Don’t think, I told myself. Watch what they’re doing and don’t think.

I kept sucking Rodrigo’s cock until he pulled it out of my mouth with a short tug. He yanked me up by the hair, turned me, and bent me face down over the arm of the couch. Beside me, less than a meter away, my grandmother was still riding César, and on the other side my mother was already naked from the waist down, with Rodrigo probing her cunt again with his fingers.

***

Rodrigo took me to my room sometime that night. He said we’d be more comfortable there, that my mother got nervous when she saw me.

I didn’t agree, but before I could say anything he threw me onto the bed, yanked off my pajama pants and panties in one motion, and knelt between my legs. He spread my thighs with his hands, looked closely at my cunt as if studying something, and lowered his mouth. He started with the lips, sucking them one by one, running a broad flat tongue over the whole slit. Then he drove it inside, made me like he was fucking me with his tongue, and I jerked, gripping the sheets.

“Stay still,” he said without lifting his face. “Let me work.”

He sucked my clit with his lips, bit it just a little, and I started moaning uncontrollably. He put two fingers in while keeping his tongue on top, and moved them inside me with a rhythm that made my hips lift on their own. I grabbed his head without thinking and pressed it harder against me. I came like that, with his mouth crushed against my cunt, shaking and squeezing his fingers with everything I had inside me.

When I finally asked him to penetrate me, he didn’t do it right away. He positioned me face down on the bed, with a pillow under my hips to lift my ass, spread my legs and began tracing the edges of my sex with the tip of his cock, coming closer and pulling back, rubbing it over the whole wet slit without quite entering. He ran it over my clit, over my lips, over the entrance, and when I pushed back looking for it he withdrew. That night I learned what sustained desire is: something that fills your head with noise and makes you lose track of time.

“Ask me for it,” he said.

“Put it in me.”

“Ask nicely.”

“Fuck me, Rodrigo, please, put it all the way in me.”

When he finally did, it wasn’t where I expected. I felt the tip resting higher up, against my asshole, and before I could protest he pushed. The pain was sharp and immediate and I screamed.

“Breathe deep,” he said, holding my hips with both hands. “Relax or it’ll be worse.”

I stayed still, panting into the pillow, feeling myself open little by little, millimeter by millimeter. He spit on the joint and used the saliva to help himself, pushing a little more, backing off, pushing again. It took me several minutes to find anything like comfort. He didn’t rush. When he had it all the way in he stayed motionless, letting me feel the whole thick length locked inside, and reached around to find my clit. He started rubbing it with two fingers while he stayed buried to the hilt, and the pain mixed with a deeper, darker sensation climbing up my back.

“See?” he whispered into my nape. “Now you’re going to like it.”

He started moving. Long withdrawals and slow entries at first, then faster. I surprised myself by matching his movement, pushing my ass back without being asked, moaning into the pillow. He grabbed my hair, yanked my head back and drove his cock all the way in with short, dry thrusts that made me yell.

“Tell me you like it.”

“I like it.”

“Tell me how.”

“I like it when you fuck me in the ass.”

He came inside with a low growl, holding my hip tight, and I felt every hot spurt in there. When he pulled out, it came with a thread of semen that ran down my thigh. He lay down beside me and told me to rest. That the best was yet to come.

***

The three days that followed have no clear order in my memory. Time inside that cabin worked differently: no television, no signal, the rain always in the background and the fire always lit.

There were moments when the five of us were together and moments when we split apart. There was an afternoon when César and Nora disappeared for hours, and when they came back she had her hair loose, a serene expression I had never seen on her before, and a dark stain of dried semen on the edge of her blouse that she didn’t bother to hide. There was a night when my mother and I were in the same space, receiving the same attention from the two men, and we didn’t look each other in the eye. No need. I heard her come less than two meters away, voice shattered, while Rodrigo fucked her on her knees and César pushed his cock into her mouth at the same time. I had just been using Rodrigo’s cock in my mouth a little while before; then it was César’s turn. It tasted different: saltier, thicker. He came in my mouth and told me to swallow it all, and I swallowed.

One day Rodrigo took me to the clearing between the pines, with a fine drizzle and cold mud under my feet. He pressed me against the thickest trunk, hiked up my skirt and pulled my panties down to my ankles. He knelt first and ate my cunt right there, standing up, with my legs open and one of his hands holding my ass so I wouldn’t fall. When I was wet enough he stood, unzipped his pants and shoved himself into me in one push, this time from the front. He kept me there, standing, fucking me against the bark, his hands under my thighs lifting me, until I had to cling to the tree so I wouldn’t lose my balance. He came inside me and let it drip down my legs until we got back to the cabin. When we returned, nobody asked where we’d been.

César had more patience than Rodrigo. He was more meticulous, slower, and that was also a form of intensity. The first time he took me was on the big couch, with my grandmother watching from the couch opposite while Rodrigo licked her tits. César undressed me slowly, spent half an hour licking me all over, from neck to feet, nibbling my nipples until I begged him to put it in me. When he finally did, it was at such a measured pace that I felt every centimeter of his cock going in and out. He stopped when I was about to finish, stayed still inside me, and waited. He made me come three times like that, back to back, without pulling out. With him I learned that speed isn’t always what matters.

There was a night when Nora and Valeria ended up entwined with each other, under the eyes of the two men. I’m not sure how it got to that. These things aren’t planned. Alcohol pushes them, heat, confinement, the absence of visible consequences. My grandmother was licking my mother’s cunt sprawled on the rug, ass in the air, and my mother was squeezing her head against her with both hands, arched, moaning her own mother’s name as she came against her mouth. Then they turned over and it was Valeria who returned the favor, tongue out, while César fucked Nora from behind and Rodrigo jerked off standing at the side. I watched them from the rug and touched myself, two fingers inside and my thumb on my clit, until Rodrigo noticed me and came to put his cock in my mouth kneeling in front of the couch.

At one point, when the three of us were sharing space with the two men, my grandmother looked at me from the other side of the couch with an expression that was neither shame nor apology. César’s cock was inside her and my mother’s hand was on one breast, and she held my gaze while she came. It was something closer to recognition. As if to say: this is part of you too, and there’s no reason to fear it.

***

The last day the sun came out for the first time.

Rodrigo and César had breakfast with us and left without ceremony. César squeezed Nora’s hand and held her gaze a moment longer than strictly necessary. Rodrigo nodded from the door and said nothing. That was his way of saying goodbye too.

We spent the rest of the day packing and walking the pine path. Nobody talked much. There wasn’t much to say that wouldn’t feel too big for an outdoor conversation.

On the bus back, Nora slept with her head against the window. Valeria looked at the landscape. I looked at them both.

I thought about what had happened that week without trying to classify it. Not with shame, though maybe I should have felt it. I thought about how each of us had arrived at that chalet carrying something different: my mother with the wound of a separation, my grandmother with that energy that never finds somewhere to go, me with that mix of curiosity and fear that eighteen-year-olds have when they still don’t quite know what they are.

And I thought that sometimes what changes you isn’t what you expected to change you.

When we got home, something had changed among the three of us. Not visibly, nothing you could point to. But it was there, in the way we spoke to each other, in the silence we now shared without discomfort, in the way Nora looked at me from time to time as if recognizing something.

We never named it. There was no need to name it.