School Grounds

The women, all together, they won't deal with me on the school grounds.  They avoid me, will barely talk, eyes averted.  But in a park, far away, no school, no other women around whom they might know, it's very different.  They open right up.  High-beam smiles, easy laughs, as we talk about our children, and about the stupendously wise things we have gained from life, now that we're parents.  Not anything I planned, this new direction with them.  Only a revelation, like a discoverer stumbling upon an unknown ocean, helmet in hand, open shirt, aching limbs. 

            On the school grounds, the women don't want other women to observe me with them, there in their child's space.  After all, eyes scrutinize, mouths talk, word gets out.  And the children are present, in their own sacred grove of learning and fulfillment.  So, like spies, we must pass each other by.  No hint of anything is allowed, though I, the less-adept spy, with eyes raised for a second, would often beseech.  But no, the women could never sooth me with their gaze, never open their pupils wider. 

Women, seemingly incapable of doing things on their own: there's always someone else watching, usually another pestering woman.  Women are never released from the group, never free of the disapproval of the chattering troupe, and the fighting and the envy, as well as the mimicking and resistance (and the contrary urging on).  Can't do anything volitional, can't be bold.  Or so you think.  And then, on a distant playground, when one of them is embarking on a capricious affair with me, their child playing ten feet away with mine, they are still involved with all other women, but in woeful compliance, in complicity. 

            These other watching women aren't physically present, with toes in the sandbox, sandals kicked off, but they watch anyway, from afar, saying, "We know how things go, and this all makes a lot of sense to us.  Here, away from us, do what you want, do what you need.  We sympathize.  We would do the same.  But we know.  He's kind of cute, too, and good with kids!  And you'll still keep your eyes down when you pass him on the school grounds as class gets out and we're standing around—though perhaps his semen is sliding down your inner leg at that moment.  And in fact, you love your child more now, and love us more too for accompanying you, and keeping you honest, here with all your shared endeavors.  For you're a good woman, never doing anything untoward, as long as no one (especially the children) can see you, can mark you on the school grounds, though later you might want some of  us to see, to know your passion, as well as your ability to still be a good mother.  But for now, right now, with your lover, you tell yourself you're alone, repeating to yourself all the fine things you've done and learned in life as a good mother, as you beat at your lover with your new slimmed down, pregnancy-rid body.  You're back at your fighting weight.  Your weight loss was happening even before you met him; now, with him present in your life (and fucking him twice a week), you're back where you started, before you started to swell.   

            They have more to say: "Here's a new man for you, and you've got a baby already; it makes fucking even better, because now you don't have to worry.  No baby to gain with fucking.  No man to lose either, for you already have your husband.  And he won't know.  Go to it.  It seems, actually, as you fuck, there'll always be another man, though who could it be, other than this man, and your husband?  Two men, and the baby.  And never a hint when you walk past him on the bustling, noisy school playground. 

            Even at the other playground, the one where you two actually talk, you're safe.  After all, it's just some man whose child is playing with your child.  The whole world can watch and not know a thing, and perhaps even believe you're married to him, and these are your two handsome children—though we, all the other women, know.  And what else do you want but that?  You've got everything, you've got it all, here with us." 

Listen to them talk.  The women see things very clearly.  It helps me see clearly too, hearing them whenever she refuses to look at me.  She never breaks down with her discipline as she ignores me walking by.  Not even a glance.  Something is satisfied in her perhaps, in her woman's soul: I don't see you; you are invisible to me. 

            I used to think she had learned this in her association with me, but perhaps she has always known it.  She's only visible to other women, and her child.  It's her being schooled—and my being schooled too.  With me, with my association with her, we are both invisible to each other, hoping to never worry about love or pregnancy now, or ever having a body for anything but fucking.  No tears of heartbreak to give out, and no babies to squirt out, no future with this lover, because she loves her husband, after all.  That is never questioned. 

            Doesn't she love her husband?  I think she does.  I hope she does, just as I love my wife.  But still, she should look up when I walk past her.  I don't wish to be schooled like this, to subjugate myself, though I don't seek to marry her either.  Do I?  Not at all. . . 

            Yet surely there are other women who might feel differently, women with children also, sitting in parks, walking the school grounds, who don't seek to instruct me as stringently as she does.  Who perhaps can blow the world apart, as I wish to do too whenever a fine woman, who I find naked with me twice a week, ignores me on the school grounds. 

            Yes, another woman for me, who has been busy speaking to my current lover, whispering in her ear incessantly from afar and now wishes to take her place, schooled herself, after all, in behavior in the public eye. . .a woman who nonetheless wishes to wreck everything, possessing a blatant eye for me, and for other women all the time, so that everything is visible in her eye, and in mine too, as we pass each other on the boisterous school grounds, looking directly into each other's eyes, even more confident than my current woman that we are being watched.  I might wish for her.  Why, I don't know.  As perhaps my current woman wishes for another.  Both of us might want more.  We are incapable of less.  We know about the chatterers and the way to be careful, and we don't care. 

            Why would we do this?  I don't know.  Maybe we have to be visible.  We all have to visible after we've been naked for each other, here with our fine children at our sides.  There's nothing else but this heralding of us.  It's tragic, really, on the school grounds.  But it explains so much.  I might have to tell my current lover this, just so she knows.