The Door

When the door first appeared in a corner of the family room where there had never been a door before, reactions were mixed. Some were for opening it, others against. Mother suggested we sleep on it and decide in the morning.  By breakfast, however, we had begun to believe that the door had always been there.
It was a closet, of course, better left undisturbed since we had undoubtedly been storing old jackets and boxes of photographs in there. Father even asserted that he now recollected having put his missing coin collection in there some months ago and this explained why he could not find it under the bed.
In our socks and robes, we drank glasses of orange juice and consumed bacon, eggs, and blueberry pancakes until we were convinced that it was an ordinary Sunday morning.
Father dressed and went out to mow the lawn. Mother got dolled up then helped grandmother into her best velour jogging set and took her to the Indian Casino for the day. The twins dug out their allowance and walked to the Cineplex to see a movie with some friends.
My sister Madge and I exchanged a significant look in the hall way, her brown eyes magnified by her thick glasses. We paused there silently assessing one another’s level of skepticism. It was clear that we both had our doubts, but her closed lipped retreat to her bedroom spoke of a willingness to go along with the others.
I went and stood in front of the door, studying its features. It seemed to me equally plausible that I could remember the door having always been there and that I could remember an empty space where now a door stood. It reminded me of the time I couldn’t remember whether I had left the hose on in the backyard or not. The vivid memory of having turned it off was made less credible by a certain nagging doubt. The same was true of the door.
I could simply open it and know the truth, but was too terrified, not only of the possibility of the mysterious but more so of the possibility of the mundane. I had almost made up my mind to do it when my father came in and suggested taking me out for ice cream. We fetched Madge out of her room and drove to the drugstore for double scoops of strawberry with sprinkles.
The first time that the door opened and one of THOSE came in, we were all sitting in the family room watching Masterpiece Theater on PBS.
Again I would say that reactions were mixed. The cat hissed and jumped off the back of the couch. I looked up and saw the door opening, saw IT coming in and glanced at my family to see if they could see IT too. Clearly they did. I observed each one react, even if for only a moment before they quickly averted their gaze and pretended to be watching TV. Madge continued to stare silently at it. Grandmother, sitting in her wheel chair clucked her tongue and said, “Gads, not this again.” but my mother quickly hushed her, “Ma, we’re trying to watch.”
My grandmother sighed and joined my parents and the twins in their defiant TV watching while Madge, the cat, and I watched IT walk out of the family room and down the hall.
By the end of the week their visits were quite frequent. They came in groups of two or three, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes during the day, to roll, run, and scamper down the hall. They would leave all the cupboard doors open. The cat grew accustomed to them and sometimes chased after them as they frolicked.
While we played a board game, did homework, or ate dinner at the kitchen table, one of THOSE would sometimes stand there and watch. They didn’t usually open packages, but were always interested in food that had been left open or left out. They would drink the remaining milk from our cereal bowls if we left them on the table and would eat the crusts of sandwiches left on plates. We could no longer keep a glass of water by the bed because they would come and drink it while we were sleeping.
Nobody besides the cat, myself, Madge, and occasionally Grandmother, acknowledged their presence. My parents and the twins pretended not to see or hear them. Eventually it began to seem as if they actually were unaware of them. Grandmother would shoo them away in the same manner that she shooed the cat, waving a hand if they came close or were in her path and saying “Git” or “Shoo.” Madge would have staring contests with them, gazing silently and expressionlessly at them. Mesmerized they would stare back.
I took a page from the cat’s book. I would pretend that I wasn’t paying attention to them. Then, just as they got close enough I would whirl, roar, and charge, sending them scattering. I had the impression that they enjoyed it, but to leave no doubt of  my good will I would leave out cups of milk and plates of cookies or cheese.
 At the height of their presence they began to come in groups of up to five. They giggled rather loudly in the night and banged around in the bathroom and kitchen while we tried to sleep. The cat would nap all day, tuckered out from the nightly rumpus. They had started doing little favors for Madge and I, finding items for us that we lamented loosing, fixing broken toys, leaving strange little gifts such as unusual coins and glass marbles.
One day I saw Madge issuing commands in her bedroom, “Pick up my socks and put them in the hamper please. And close the window.” They obliged and stood waiting for the next command as if playing a game of mother may I.
In February, things tapered off. They came less often and in smaller numbers. A week passed when none of THOSE was seen or heard. The cat sat in front of the door waiting, tail twitching. Then one night we came in to watch Masterpiece and the door was gone. My mother stood there and stared at the empty part of the wall looking puzzled.
“I thought there used to be a closet here.” she said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. The show’s about to start.” my father answered.
My grandmother shook her head. Madge looked at me. Her lip trembled a little and her eyes got watery, but in her usual style she managed to maintain a straight face. The twins were crunching loudly on a bowl of popcorn. I invited our poor lonesome cat to come sit in my lap and scratched her chin until she remembered how to purr. The sound soothed me, but I couldn’t concentrate on the show. Absently, I gazed on, bathed in the glow and garble of dialogue.
Like Madge, I was saddened by the disappearance of the door, but worse was a nagging fear that by tomorrow I wouldn’t be sure if it had ever been there at all. And to be honest, I’m not entirely sure that it was, but the cat still sits in front of the wall sometimes, waiting. Now and then I leave out milk and cookies, just in case.

Struggles With Mother

She has always wanted me to be different, I understand that more clearly now. I didn’t have the words long ago to describe the repeating pattern, the predictable questions and requests sewn together like a simple quilt of three colors that followed me at first, then absorbed silently into my skin, tempering me with its weight and threads. 
I see it now from a slightly objective angle, my eyes just barely reaching above the gray fog and swirling shapes, the unsaid yet clearly defined goals that propelled me to a university and into the angst that would endure for decades, a sort of uneasy darkness that was just under the skin and could ooze out, thick and black if scratched just slightly. 
I didn’t understand it then, could not see the words making up the sentences that rolled through her head like a conveyor belt, getting more and more worn and rusty, but rotating nonetheless. As a baby girl she must have looked at me with all the hope and wonder in the world, projecting onto the blank screen of my white naked body all she saw as right and just, all perhaps that she had done and enjoyed and wished to repeat, all that she had not done but hoped to do through my skin and eyes.
As a young woman, both headstrong and naïve, I pushed against what I thought were inequalities, the mores of American society that everyone I knew seemed to accept and go along with, nearly universally without question.
She tried to keep me as a girl for as long as she could, even when my breasts started to bud and poke out from smooth cotton t-shirts.  She would not let me shave, and then when I did on my own, without consent, she looked at me sadly, finally relenting to the unstoppable flow of womanhood and said, ‘now you can never stop.’ 
Five years later, a head full of simple feminist ideology, unanswered questions and a body and mind full of open, bursting wonder and tinged with a splash of vehement anger, I stopped.  There was a contradiction I could not reconcile…I could not quite understand why when I looked at a man’s leg, covered in hair, why was I not repulsed?  Why did I have the opposite reaction seeing a slightly smaller leg, one of a woman, covered in hair? I decided it must be the culture, it must be a shared, accepted concept of beauty without anything behind it but current fashion and taste.
She did not see the young girl struggling to find her place in the symbolic order. She did not see the exploration, the push and thought against culture and the play with body and definition and experimentation with beauty and expectations, the transgression of a young girl in a society that demonized questions and moving against the wind. 
Then, as now, she could only see me through the eyes of others. She wondered and worried about how she would be defined and judged, how she would be one of the mothers that failed, who had not properly created and raised a young woman ready to join society beyond the safety of four walls. It was she who was the voice of society, she who demonized me, who pushed back against my own conviction with equal force, who judged the hair, who looked at me in disgust.  It was she who could not, who refused to see the thoughts behind the action, the tension and struggle.
I had thought it was them, the great nameless of society, thinking, moving, bulging as one big mass. I never thought it would hit so strong, come right back without ever leaving our house, come with such force from the single person tasked with guiding me through the world.
She has always wanted me to be different.  After nose rings and tattoos, it is now her obsession to hide my trees and mermaids from polite society, to hide me from the bikers and drug addicts they will attract, to hide my transgression and keep it locked in the dark attic of our household. 
This is not the girl she imagined, not the girl she wanted, the girl who would travel Europe- not Mexico. The girl who would go to a university and get a career and a Jewish husband, who would provide grandchildren. 
These wishes, pushed onto me since birth, have gone unanswered. I am not what she wanted. I am asked to hide myself, to shave, to wear long dresses, to go along with the lies she has woven about career and status. I have lost interest, the sting has dulled though every rematch is a burden- the tug and pull of my own thoughts wondering if I should please her, shock her, ignore her, and which one of my actions is coming from which thought? 
What hurts more? Covering myself time and again or seeing the disapproval in her eyes, the ashamed glance down as she looks at my skin? She has never taken me as I am and I have never cut the string, the threads of just a few colors which bind us together.

Rise Hawk Rise

Haunted for weeks afterward I would recall the way we sat, the skeletal appearance of the emptying convention hall, Hawk's stoic candor.
I see it now, sometimes from his perspective, sometimes from mine, sometimes hovering beyond us both. I was leaned back in a chair with my long  legs in stockings stretched out in front of me, heels forsaken, devouring a bag of generic brand party mix. There I slumped watching exhibitors drag carts laden with boxes of comics and the trappings of their booths out the yawning cargo door 120 ft away.

I was waiting for my partner to bring the truck around. A moment earlier she called to say the line of vehicles waiting to reach the loading dock was wrapped around the hotel. It would be a while.
So I was resigned to sitting there in a numb stupor when Hawk returned to his table beside mine. Presently my chair was turned with the back to him.
When we started talking I sat up and turned sideways so that I could twist around to face him, gripping the metal back of the chair to stay in place.

At that moment I still knew him as Jim and not Hawk, the quiet artist that sat beside us for two days dressed in a black t-shirt and slacks, his steel colored hair being all that I could see while his face was turned down to his work.
On Saturday, I had decided that maybe he was a snob who thought himself better than us. He didn’t do much to initiate conversation or contact. That was the day that I wore the tight red dress with the push up bra.
On the morning of day two I glanced over and saw him applying color to a drawing of Harlequin. I felt a sort of jolt realizing that the perfect plastic look of these characters was coming from Jim’s attentive work. This quiet man wearing wire framed spectacles seated next to me was making those drawings look like that.

That was why at the end of the day as we started tearing down the booth I turned to Jim and told him I had taken the opportunity to watch him work and was impressed. I told him his work was beautiful.
He welcomed me to flip through the pages of his portfolios. When I had finished looking through them he offered  to let me choose one.
I selected the Harlequin I had seen him working on in the morning and packed it carefully away. Now he stood beside his suitcases on wheels and talked to me as I craned around in my chair.

Jim’s father had insisted that he would never amount to anything. He didn’t like or understand comics. He thought they were for kids and couldn’t understand his grown son’s interest in them.
One day Jim showed his Dad a copy of Arkham Asylum to demonstrate that comics weren’t just for kids. It left his father speechless on the subject ever after. Jim suspected that it was merely because he was afraid of being shown something like that again.

Jim bought and ran a comic store during the comic boom in the 80’s when you could find a comic book shop on every block. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the craze of the day.  It was during this era that Jim started attending exhibitions, carting all the wares of his comic shop into convention halls. A few years later his employees suggested he table as an artist while they ran the booth dedicated to the shop.

One year a boy approached and asked Jim to sketch something for him. Jim explained that he wasn’t that sort of artist. He was afraid of how it would turn out.
But when he saw the forlorn look on the kid's face as he walked away empty handed, Jim called him back and sketched a hawk man. The kid loved it, but Jim, not convinced that this was work he’d want to be known for, signed it “Hawk” rather than using his real name.

The following year the kid returned with an army of other kids, all eager to get sketches from Hawk. So Jim became Hawk, a fixture at the comic book conventions each year.
He was the longest tabling artist at Wonder Con. When they moved the operation from San Francisco to Anaheim they offered to fly him out to maintain the record. But Hawk had to decline because at this point he was caught up caring for his mother.

Hawk had to sell his comic book store after his father's death because the old man had left his wife with nothing but a mountain of debt. Hawk stepped in to care for his mother.
He took a job at Cisco Systems as the personal assistant for a man who wouldn’t walk five feet to fetch his own coke from the mini fridge.
He started building her a house. He still sold comics from a van to some of his old customers making special deliveries, but his finger was no longer on the pulse. He simply used the catalog to look up and order the items they requested and lost sight of the vast complicated scene that had once been his area of expertise. Slowly the number of customers dealing with him in this way dwindled until there were less than a handful left.

To  fend off the wave of sorrow that was threatening us with silence I said,
“But at least you still have your passion. You’re here.”
And Hawk looked at me and said,
“To tell you the truth I don’t feel passionate about it any more.”
I looked at him, Hawk, battered by the storm of life, weighed down by his father's curse; Hawk, resigned to being pulled into the abyss, and I cried.
“Then you have to find something else, something to be passionate about. You must have passion!”
Hawk blinked at me, digesting my outburst.
My partner arrived with the dolly and without ceremony we began to load it up. Hawk offered to help but we said we had it covered.
“See you next time.”
I smiled as we headed towards the light cascading in through the cargo bay. Hawk waved and rolled his suitcases towards the hotel lobby.

And so it was that for weeks I would be haunted by the incomplete tale of Hawk. Would he rise at last beyond fear, beyond his father’s voice within, beyond the mortal coil, to soar and grasp with outstretched talons the fire eternal that burns in the hearts of the pure?
Or would the cold gray wave that was the hand of his ancestors pull him quietly into oblivion?
And I hoped, I hoped that Hawk would rise, that the encounter with the dame in the red dress would shake the sleep from his wings and remind him of what it is to be alive and striving against the cold and the curses. I hung the picture of Harlequin in the hallway and I whispered to it:
“Rise Hawk. Rise.”

When Genres Collide

 

You know how art imitates life, and then sometimes life imitates art imitating life? After a while you have to ask yourself  what is life and what is art.  More important: what’s real?
But if you were art and you asked “What is real?” would you really have a hope of finding an answer? I mean if you’re unreal and your world is unreal, what would you have to juxtapose that unreality against? You could hope, I suppose, that the author has left you some clues as to her reality, but what if she is art imitating life, and you're just art imitating art imitating life?

I ordinarily wouldn’t be allowed to ask questions like these because I’m a romantic comedy. Lucky for me, however, I’m a romantic comedy that centers around a cute 30 something who happens to be an aspiring author, a little nerdy (sans glasses though, that would be too stereotypical) , but pretty. The kind of gal that keeps looking for love, but misses the opportunities because she over intellectualizes everything and often misses the obvious. For example, last week I was signing my self published transcendental comics at an expo and had a near miss with a handsome fella that works for the book store that invited me.

Wait, we should back track here. I’m leaving out the details that really define my genre.

So I was invited by a bookstore that has been carrying my self published graphic novel. They were exhibiting at this big convention in Oakland. My creative partner, the one who draws, the one who usually deals with the guys from this store, couldn’t go. Her sister's baby shower fell on the same day.
Thus I found myself strapped into high heel sandals and squeezed into skin tight leggings paired with an oversized t-shirt that hung off one shoulder as I wriggled my way through a convention center, toting a small blue suitcase full of our books, alone.
I never actually wear high heels, so I was totally unprepared for the pain and obstruction of mobility. As I approached the entrance hall, I attempted to call my contact from the bookstore, who I’d never met. In theory he would bring out the badge that would gain me entry.

The call went straight to his voicemail.
“Hi, this is Annabelle from Sophist Comics, I’m just outside. Give me a call back when you get this.”
I stood there holding the phone in one hand, the suitcase in the other, my oversized water bottle tucked under one arm, my purse under the other, teetering like a two year old's block tower, alternately fumbling phone and water bottle, biting my lower lip anxiously.
I called again with the same result and realized that he probably wasn’t getting reception in the bowels of this beastly mega-building. I’d have to convince someone to walk me to the booth, or page them on a loud speaker or something.
But just then my bladder was too incredibly full, so I waddled to the ladies room. I’d just locked myself in a stall when the cell phone rang. I hesitated. It’s kind of weird to talk to a strange guy for the first time from a bathroom stall. I might not get another chance though, and he doesn’t need to know I’m in the bathroom right? So I answered.

“Hi Annabelle? This is Rory from Amazing Comics. I‘m outside, you must be here somewhere.”
“Hi Ro-”
Flush, flush, FLUSH. Suddenly the toilets in the neighboring stalls become active and somehow this triggered the motion detecting unit in my stall to flush too. Loudly.
“-ry. I just stepped into the bathroom. I’ll be right there.”

Bladder not relieved, I hustled back out of the stall, but I had to wash my hands to prevent the spread of disease. I pumped soap from a plastic dispenser into an outstretched palm then waved it under the faucet. Nothing happened. The motion detector didn’t respond.
There was another silver protuberance hanging over the bowl so I waved my other hand frantically under it and it promptly dispensed more foamy soap. I then had two hands full of soap and the water still wouldn’t come on. I began to pass my hands under the faucets of every sink in the row to no avail.
I started panicking. This was taking forever. Rory would be wondering what was keeping me, and would, no doubt, come to the simplest vulgar explanation.

At last, an aged and diminutive Chinese woman holding a broom and upright dust pan emerged from the side lines. Wordlessly, she shook her head and pushed a small black button at the base of one of the faucets. Water gushed freely.

Despite my embarrassment and nervousness, or perhaps because of it, Rory was extremely nice to me. He sat beside me at the table where I waited to sign the comics that nobody had ever heard off. We chatted casually and soon I was completely at ease.
We joked about his name, about attendees in ninja turtle t-shirts. He confided that he used to have to wear huge glasses until a recent eye surgery. We had one of those sweet awkward moments of intense eye contact after I blurted that I would have liked him even more with the glasses. Then at last I packed all of my books back up and started saying good bye to the surrounding exhibitors.
“Can I help you carry your things out?” Rory asked, his hand lingering on mine after the parting hand shake.
And here’s where my quirk, the overly analytical mind, provided the necessary plot driving obstacle to the romance.
“Uh, I got it in here. I guess I can get it out again. Thanks. It was really nice to meet you!”
Smiling one last time, I waddled , awkwardly, painfully away, a modern, self sufficient gal.

Only later did I realize it had nothing to do with whether or not I needed help carrying stuff out. That was just an excuse so we could leave the convention together, share an elevator ride, stop at the hotel bar for a drink, exchange numbers, meet in a few days at a coffee shop, rendezvous for dinner a week later, escape for a weekend in Quebec, lick frosting from an engagement ring plucked from the crest of my birthday cupcake, etc.

I slap my palm against my head when my creative partner explains all of this to me. We will have to plot another encounter, a trip to the comic book store, a walk past the French school where he also teaches, a slutty dress worn to somebody else’s book signing where I will hide behind a shelf when I see him laughing with a pretty woman who will turn out to be his sister.
You understand, a romantic comedy. That’s me.

When I walk down a sidewalk there’s a smile on my face and my hair bounces in slow motion. I say hello and good morning to the elderly. I don’t know how pretty I am. The sun comes out when I stroll through parks, poets stand me up for dates in tea houses, I’m accidentally rude to nice guys, I rescue kittens from fire escapes and handsome divorcee Dad’s rescue me when I get stuck on fire escapes with kittens. That’s just how it is. And I don’t mind at all. Well, maybe a little, but for the most part I’m content. Embarrassment and awkwardness may fill every scene of my life, but we know two things for sure: I am pretty and eventually I will live happily ever after despite all obstacles. So it’s totally worth it.

That’s why as I shop for groceries on a Wednesday afternoon I smile at everyone that crosses my path. My floral patterned dress is conservative but flirty, my cardigan bright. Tonight's the night you know, I’ll go out for coffee with Mr. Wrong and meet his best friend Mr. Right.
An old woman smiles back, so does a middle aged man, a teen in skinny jeans ignores me, and then it happens. I have an encounter with another genre.
It’s not his clothes. They’re almost unnoticeable. T-shirt, jeans, black jacket, everything slightly rumpled. It’s in his eyes, in the deadened but slightly predatory way he glances at me.
My smile evaporates, I divert my eyes, suppress a shudder. Here is a man accustomed to hurting others, a man who wouldn’t think twice about it if the opportunity arose for him to gain something by it. The knowledge is very clear in me. I need to get far away from him fast before my genre changes in kind.
I will not be a  surprise turn for the worst Takashi Miike story. I hurry out of  the store, heart still racing.

The parking lot seems different, grayer, awash in a dingy murk. The shopping carts look rusty and run down. There is some trash in the flowerbeds. The music of the world has shifted.
I rush forward to my car. Don’t look back. Don’t fumble with the keys. You’ll play right into the thriller author's device.
Once inside the car I avoid rushing to lock the doors. Striving to maintain calm, I start the engine and drive.

Three blocks away I reemerge in my genre when a man in a red convertible pulls alongside me at the light, looks my way and flashes a smile.
On cue I spill iced tea into my lap. I’ve never been happier to be a klutz. I am back.

Raising Men

I watched them through the thin layer of grime on my windshield. The dried yellow goo that had once been some kind of bug, the dried up remains of early morning dew, the fine golden dust of pollen.
There was a wide lawn in front of me. An old fashioned, uneven field full of tiny mounds and clusters of small white flowers that I used to make into garlands and drape over my hair. The square field sat beside an elementary school, partitioned from the collection of single story buildings by several rows of giant eucalyptus.
The day was full of wind and I preferred to remain in the shelter of my car. A 70 year old man jogged along the sidewalk between my car and the field. He had short running shorts on and a wide-strapped baggy white tank top. His face was full of wrinkles and his head was completely white, but his body looked firm and strong. I remembered hearing a 40 year old lithe acrobat saying that the face was the first thing to go. I made eye contact with him as he jogged past and I felt bad about being in my car, sitting on a soft seat, I felt somewhat guilty that I was not exercising too.
In the field were groups of young children led by a few adults. They were spread out, seemingly unaffiliated and congregated in different corners of the field. Closest to me, in the corner to my left, was a group of 20 three year old boys. In charge of them were two men dressed in slightly baggy, yet tailored jeans. The men both looked young, professional, as if this was the place they stopped by on their way home from a high-rise office building.
Two women stood off the side, somehow lending their moral support just with their presence. They talked, angling their bodies towards each other while still mostly facing the group of boys. They were young stay-at-home moms, the type of mothers that proliferated in the tree-lined streets and gated homes of upper-class Hillsborough. They had lovely expensive houses, SUVs, and plenty of time to drive their kids to fields such as this, plenty of time to chat and exchange stories.
A young girl, perhaps four years old, dressed in little shorts and a pink T-shirt, fluttered like a butterfly on the outskirts of the group. No one spoke to her and she spoke to no one. She skipped, jumped, entertained herself entirely while everyone gathered was busy with other things.
The men led the young boys in a series of exercises, each relating to baseball. Each boy had a baseball mitt and matching blue baseball hats that were slightly larger than their heads. The boys were divided into two groups, with one man leading each group. I watched as one man threw the baseball underhanded, practically rolling it along the grass and the little boys, one at a time, would attempt to catch it and throw it back.
The boys were all so short, most of them would fall as they enthusiastically sent a ball flying as high as they could. The would run to the back of the line, jumping into place with the explosive energy that such young children have.
I saw how such mentoring would be applauded by a community and seen as noble. I saw the blind mechanically of it too. These men were teaching the next generation, just as they had been taught. Little boys get pajamas with trucks, cars, hammers and sports equipment. Little girls get flowers. Little boys play baseball, they play soccer, they run, they hit, they jump.
This was the cycle, the process of socialization. The process of turning young boys into men that liked sports and teams and competition.
This process was not only the consequence of being born male. It had happened to them, it had been taught to them by the elders. Blue, gray, black, green, it was part of their conditioning. They were taught by their fathers. By the men that spent time each day teaching them to throw. Those adults in their nice clothes, in their noble position as mentors and teachers, they had once been taught as well.
I watched the young girl try on an oversized catcher’s gear and a helmet. At first I thought she was about to join them, but she danced around for a moment in the large black helmet that wobbled on her head and then put it back on the grass.

The Forbidden

Bright yellow sun shone down on the grass covered knoll, its heat sending out the subtle smell of earth and fresh green sprouts. The first day of spring brought with it a rare sunny day, and the little mound in the park was filled with all types of people, all of them with their heads facing the heavens, basking in the rays of sunshine that found them equally. A small group of hip young lesbians lounged on a Mexican colored blanket while their small children squirmed over them. A young couple with bronze skin lay contentedly together, lazily stroking each other’s skin. A man sat next to his bicycle eating a dark croissant slowly. Three children played with the dropped fronds of a nearby palm tree.
“Ahhh!!” came the delighted scream of a young Asian woman. She sat on top of her boyfriend, a young white man. She moved her arms close to his body, trying over and over to tickle him, but he was doing the same, lunging his hands towards her torso and ribs. He grabbed her and threw her to the ground playfully. She wiggled under his weight, laughing, trying to find his ribs with her hands. She screamed softly with delight. It was an intimate display of friendship and trust, and they played, rolling and mounting each other, laughing and lunging. Their bodies were not just covered in cloth, but also with wide smiles.
Next to them, a young black girl, no older than four, watched the couple with curiosity. The girl’s hair was braided with rainbow colored beads at the tips. Her eyes were wide open, and a faint smile rested on her lips. Next to her was an older white woman, the girl’s mother, a woman well past middle age and wearing only white. The woman looked at the couple with quick shots of disgust, then gently pushed the little girl’s head back towards her and away from the couple. As soon as the woman took her hand away from the girl’s head, she would turn to look once again. This time, her smile brighter, for now she knew this was something she was not supposed to see.
“Ahhhh!!” the Asian girl laughed. The white woman turned to them, a look of disgust etched across her face. She held her hand in front of the little girl’s eyes, blocking her view, but the girl squirmed and moved her head and looked at the couple again, captivated, knowing that what they did was forbidden and wrong, and the more her mother sighed and cleared her throat, the harder the girl tried to look, her own delight growing with the conflict.
The older woman’s look cried, “There are children here for goodness sake! Children!” In her purity and chastity, she forgot that it was scenes like this that made children, the very child in front of her that she now tried to protect from the urge that kept the planet spinning with cats and flowers and honey. In another moment of ecstatic union, perhaps alone on a bed, the couple might one day create a new being. But now, there were no thoughts of the future. There was only play. There was tickling mixed with kisses and tiny screams. There was grass and sun and the sense that there was no one else around them, though there was. Their shared delight rose into the warm afternoon, creating waves of pleasure for those that could watch without fear, sadness, jealousy or disgust.
The woman looked at them with hard eyes. How long had it been since she had been like that? Alive, laughing uncontrollably, her body thrown every so often to the ground by firmer hands. The child kept finding openings to watch, the annoyance of her mother making the scene so much better. Her eyes fought through the hand that tried to protect her, realizing there was something she should not see, that somehow, for some reason, her mother didn’t like it. She watched, bringing into her two of the many different strains that would one day be a fundamental part of her. Curious fascination with sex and the memory that it should not be happening, her mother told her so, her mother had clearly expressed it without a single word.