I watched the contortionist wrap his legs behind his ears and rest his chin on top of his crotch. One thought immediately came to mind, and I whispered it to the person next to me.

It only occurred to me, a moment later, that the thought I had was of an image of the contortionist sucking his own cock.

And that what I had whispered was,

“I bet he can auto-fellate.”

And that the person I had leaned across and said this to, happened to be my mother.

As the realisation of what I had just done began to hit me, the dreaded – most feared - words then came out of my mother’s mouth. I watched her lips purse together, and in slow motion-movie-style, say,

“What’s Auto-fellate?”

I sat there silent for a moment, and thought of my options.

• Lying is not something I am good at, and I tend to avoid doing it due to the sleepless nights of conscience-preying I have following it.

• Pleading ignorance wouldn’t work either: my mother knows me too well – the only reason I would use a technical term for something is if I actually knew what it meant.

• And the truth? Well, I’ve been in a similar situation to this with her before and it didn’t turn out all bad. Surely the best choice.

I leaned over to my mother and said, softly,

“It’s when a guy has the ability to suck his own cock.”

My mother looked at me, and blushed.

“What?” she said, “I didn’t hear you properly. Tell me again.”

I silently groaned and wished a hole in the ground would suddenly appear and swallow me up.

“Auto-fellatio is when a guy has the ability to suck his own cock” I repeated, adding, “supposedly two men out of every hundred are able to do it”; as if that statistic would somehow relieve the tension between us of our having such an explicit discussion.

My mother looked at me confused.

I thought it might help if I said no more, so instead, I motioned with my head in a downward bobbing movement to try to show what I was talking about.

It was probably the worst rendition of self-induced oral sex in the history of mime, but I didn’t care to show off my cock-sucking skills to my mother; giving her an insight into my particular blow-job technique was not an image I wanted her to carry away in her mind, at any point.

Ever.

Thankfully, my mother stopped blushing and instead slowly nodded in recognition of my explanation/badly performed mime.

But, as if possessed by some kind of truth demon, I then couldn’t stop myself blurting out,

“He is definitely able, look at him!” and pointed to the contortionist, as he crab-walked around the stage with his head still resting on his crotch.

My mother turned to look, and I tried to get the image out of my head, that she was at that moment getting an image in her own head of this guy’s cock in his own mouth.

This was all becoming far too psychologically complex for me, and when my dad - who was seated the other side of me - then chipped in and said,

“What are you two talking about?”,

I felt like I was going to die of embarrassment and self-induced neurosis.

I waited, with a heavy knot in my stomach, for my mother to respond.

“Oh, we were just saying how athletic and fit the performer must be”, she explained to my dad. “He is so flexible, isn’t he?”

She turned to look back at the contortionist and we all continued watching his amazing performance.

I thought that was the end of it, and hoped I could put this episode behind me.

A moment later though, my mother leaned over to me. “I think you’re right” she said and winked at me, before turning back to watch the rest of the show.