Folie a Deux, Episode 01

"But if it wasn't your fault --"

Emily cuts the interviewer off with a violent shake of her head, making her unruly hair jump. "No. I had begged my son to do things to me. Do you understand that? I had begged him to do unspeakable things to me because, in that moment, I needed him more than I ever knew I could need anyone. I had begged him to ejaculate inside me because the idea of not receiving his seed was, in that instant, both physically agonizing and heartbreaking. I had never shared anything even remotely approaching that with any lover I'd ever had -- and certainly not with my husband, the father of my children."

"And now that thing was between us," Mike says. "I mean, if we'd have struggled with it, like if I'd had a hard time getting it up and she couldn't get went and it had been awful and painful and awkward...that would have been normal. That's how it should have been between a mom and a son. But it was so good that we both knew it would always be there, always right there, and even if we never talked about it again, and right then I was hoping we wouldn't, we'd both have to go through life knowing that the greatest sexual experience either of us had ever had came at the hands of other. And how were we supposed to go on like that?"

"Did you think you might be pregnant?" the interviewer asks Emily.

Emily shakes her head. "That didn't occur to me for some time. I was rather overwhelmed by what we'd done, so I wasn't able to think very much about possible consequences. I don't think it even crossed my mind for an hour or two, and when it did I dismissed it immediately. I thought I'd ovulated several days before, so even if I was wrong by a day or two I was still safe."

"Were you on birth control?"

"No. I have side effects of birth control medications -- nausea, dizziness, weight gain, that sort of thing. If I had a desk job, I suppose I would have simply done my best to ignore those symptoms, but they were of course impossible for a dancer." She pauses, then adds, "And besides, I really didn't need it. For the past several years, there had been essentially no danger."

"What did you do then?" the interviewer asks Mike.

"It was a weird situation," he says. "Not only had I just fucked my mom and come inside her, but I was still in her when we both sort of realized what we'd done. Pulling out of your mom isn't something you can just do, you gotta put some thought into it. I think we apologized to each other about fifty times in the next minute, and then I finally pulled out of her and got up."

"Oh dear," Emily sighs resignedly. "There was a flood when he pulled away, and the smell of sex was...overpowering. He was very polite and he helped me up and offered me my clothes before he began dressing, but there was so much...of him, running down my legs, all the way to the ankles. I'd never had so much inside me before. I was a disgusting mess."

"Did you clean up?" the interviewer asks.

"I asked to," Emily replies. "I asked one of the women; I supposed that feminine compassion would be more likely to be productive than asking a man. Unfortunately, she was...stunningly vulgar and cruel."

"This tattooed bitch with bolt-ons looks my mom up and down and just smirks," Mike says, "and then says, 'You were just begging your son to come up inside that mommy-cunt you got, so enjoy it.' Everyone around us laughed. So I handed her my underwear and let her use that."

"After that response, I was hardly about to ask to use the bathroom," Emily sniffs. "No one seemed to be paying us much attention at the moment, so I walked behind a parked car and cleaned myself up as best I could and then put clothes on. I knew there was going to be a great deal of...seepage, and my shorts were light-colored and it would certainly show, but I wasn't about to go without them."

"I got dressed," Mike says. "I guess I expected the shit to continue. I figured they just weren't done with us, you know? I thought they'd...I don't know, kick the shit out of us, rape, threaten at least. Maybe make me and mom go again. But it was weird, because they were just sort of...ignoring us."

"Ignoring you?" the interviewer asks. "Really?"

"Yeah. I mean the bitch said that to mom, but only after mom said something to her," Mike says. "A couple of guys came up to me and slapped me on the shoulder and told me I'd done a good job fucking my mom, but...it sounds weird, but I didn't think they were fucking with me. I thought they were actually congratulating me. I mean, how fucked up is that? And after that they just sort of left us alone and started fussing over the pig they had roasting."

"I did not anticipate the indifference," Emily says. "After forcing us to copulate and make a spectacle with each other, I assumed they'd continue to torment Mike and me. I thought they'd harass us at the very least, but they simply ignored us for a time, with the exception of offering us each a beer."

"You let your 18-year-old son drink a beer?" the interviewer asks.

Emily snorts. "Given the circumstances, it seemed trivial."

"There was a log thing, a split log they used as a bench," Mike says. "Mom and I sat on one end of it and drank beer and tried to figure out what to say to each other. I asked her if she was OK and she said yes. She told me that nothing we'd done was our fault, which was technically true, and that I shouldn't feel bad about it, which was complete bullshit. And then we just kind of stopped talking."

"Why?" the interviewer asks.

"It was hard to find a topic," Mike says dryly. "We couldn't discuss even the near future because we had no idea what was going to happen to us, and I couldn't really say, 'Wow mom, you're an awesome lay.'"

"I was focusing on what a terrible human being I was," Emily says simply. "Mike was still a child, so nothing that went on between us could be blamed on him. I was the adult and the parent. It had been up to me to maintain proper boundaries even in this situation, and I had failed utterly. I didn't believe we could ever recover. I thought he would never want to speak to me again."

"We sat there for...half an hour, maybe," Mike says. "Then the bikers started laying out a feast, a real picnic feast. It was the damnedest thing. They kept bringing food out of the house, all kinds of salads and side dishes and stuff, and they started carving that pig. When they started cutting the meat, that was when the smell hit me. I was so hungry my stomach roared."

"Surprisingly, they offered us food," Emily says. "We were told to serve ourselves. By that point it was about 3:30 in the afternoon and we were both quite hungry, so we ate. The pork was delicious, and I thought the baked beans were particularly good."

"You had an appetite after everything?" the interviewer asks.

"I was ravenous," Emily replies. "I felt as though I hadn't eaten for two days. I'm afraid I made quite a pig of myself, but no one objected. They were worse."

"I had two more beers, and I know mom had at least one," Mike tells us. "We didn't really talk to anybody because we didn't want to stir anything up, but the whole vibe had gotten...well, not friendlier, but less hostile. It felt like we were crashing their barbecue, not like they were getting ready to mess us up. I was starting to think we might actually make it out of there."

"When we were done eating, I asked to use a bathroom again," Emily says, "and I was told to, and I quote, 'Piss in the bushes if I was so damned prissy.' So that's exactly what I did."

"I just came back from taking a leak, and mom was back," Mike says, "when their leader, that Petey guy, comes over and sits next to us, asking us how we liked the meal and joking like we were best buddies or something. And then he started telling us about the law enforcement around there."

"He informed us that the Sheriff of the county was 'in his pocket,' as it were, there would be no investigation if we reported this incident to the police," says Emily. "He was also of the opinion that, since we were physically unharmed and had...'had a good time,' we should be grateful, chalk it up to a learning experience, and be on our way. Since several gang members would be traveling into Pinedale after dinner, he told us they would be so kind as to drive us to a service station, and he gave us directions to tell the tow truck driver for how to get back to Lou." She pauses, then adds, "He also demanded that we thank him. We didn't think it wise to refuse."

"Fifteen minutes later we were in the back of an SUV heading for town," Mike tells us, still sounding surprised by the turn of events. "They stopped off at the minivan and we got our luggage, anything we wanted to take, and they drove us on in."

"They played the worst music I have ever heard," Emily says indignantly. "It was nothing but screeching guitars and bass and screaming. And they played it so loudly!"

"It was, ah, it was all right," Mike says. "It meant we didn't have to talk."

"They were going to drop us at the service station," Emily tells us, "but there was a motel down the street, and I asked them to drop us there because I absolutely required a shower at the earliest possible moment. The clerk only charged us half price when we told him we were only going to use the bathroom. The place was dingy and a little grimy, and I certainly didn't trust the linens, but as I said, I needed a shower."

"I didn't want to stay in the room when mom was using the shower," Mike shrugs. "I couldn't. I needed to put some distance between us, if only because I didn't want to think about her naked with water running over her. I just took a walk down to the station and arranged for the tow truck driver to run out and pick up the minivan, and then I walked around for a few minutes. It was...hard to go back to the room where mom was. I just didn't know what the hell to say."

"I took a very long shower," Emily says. "The water didn't get nearly as hot as I wanted for my...my mental health, I suppose. I wanted to scald my skin off. I wanted to come out new."

"Did you?" the interviewer asked.

"No," Emily says, shaking her head with a rather sad smile.

"I got some food from a grocery store," Mike says. "Some kaiser rolls, cheese, cold cuts. Some mini carrots -- mom loves carrots -- and some pears. When I came back mom was sitting on the bed, already dressed, brushing her wet hair. She didn't even look up at me when she told me she wanted to sell Lou to the tow truck driver."

Emily reappears as the interviewer says, "You loved your minivan."

Emily nods.

"Why did you sell it?"

"I couldn't get back inside it ever again," Emily says. "When I thought of it, all I could think of was the accident and what it led to. What we'd been forced to do. How could I drive that? How could I carry my husband and my daughter in that vehicle? How could I ever ride there again with Mike?"

"So what did you do?" the interviewer asks.

"I walked to the service station and arranged to sell Lou in return for it being towed. I didn't even want any money for it. I just needed to be done with it forever."

"We still needed to get to the wedding," Mike says. "We ended up paying a 16-year-old kid $200 to drive us to the airport in Salt Lake City. He was a nice kid and he kept trying to talk to us, but we weren't really in the mood. I don't think we said ten words."

"There was a 7:25 from Salt Lake City to San Francisco the next morning," Emily tells us. "We bought tickets and got two cheap motel rooms so we wouldn't have to sleep together. Then I took a taxi to an all-night pharmacy and bought a douche. Then later, sitting alone in my bed, I called my husband."

"Did you tell him about what had happened?" the interviewer asks.

"I told him we'd had an accident," Emily explains. "I told him the van was totaled and Mike and I were shaken up but all right. I told him we'd walked to a road, flagged down a passing police officer, and then arranged to finish our trip by air."

"You didn't tell him about the Visigoths, or what you and –"

"No!" Emily says emphatically. "How could I tell him that I had been forced to fornicate with our son, that I had taken his sperm inside me? What words could I possibly have used for that? And how on Earth could I possibly have told him that, knowing that his son had given me more pleasure in a single sexual encounter than he had given me in at least the last ten years combined? What was I supposed to say to him? And...my God, what was I supposed to say to Mike?"

Mike comes onscreen again as the interviewer asks, "What did you and your mom talk about on the flight?"

"We didn't talk."

"Not at all?"

"No," Mike says with a shake of his head. "Neither of us said a single word."

The screen goes black for a moment, and then a picture of the gang hideout appears with the legend, "In December of that year, the Visigoths' methamphetamine lab exploded and burned the building to the ground. Five gang members and two associates were killed in the fire."

The picture is replaced by the mugshot of Petey, along with the legend, "The following July, almost exactly a year to the day after the events described in this documentary, Douglas 'Petey' Hounslow lost control of his motorcycle while driving on a mountain road during a rainstorm. He skidded over a cliff into the Green River and was killed."

The credits roll.