Wilson Koewing ~ Lounging by the Pool

I sat melt­ing into a lounge chair by the com­mu­ni­ty pool watch­ing my wife and young daugh­ter splash around in the shal­low end. We didn’t live in Swaying Pines, but we’d joined the pool as friends of the com­mu­ni­ty. We lived close by in San Anselmo. Swaying Pines was a com­mu­ni­ty of ranch style hous­es tucked away under the shaved hills that bor­dered San Anselmo to the north. It con­sist­ed almost exclu­sive­ly of fam­i­lies not unlike mine: mid­dle aged men, a lit­tle soft around the mid­dle from years of desk work, who had younger, fit­ter wives and between one and five pre-pubes­cent chil­dren. I was drink­ing a west coast IPA in a Stanley ther­mos cup, and the edi­ble I’d tak­en before leav­ing home was one of the good ones, slic­ing through my anx­i­ety clean and leav­ing only a sub­lime, feath­ery detach­ment in its wake. The life­guards were all high school­ers, and it was not lost on me that if I were to enter sud­den car­diac arrest while swim­ming that not one of them was strong enough to pull my fat, bloat­ed body out of the deep end. In fact, look­ing around, I doubt­ed the col­lec­tive inhab­i­tants of the pool would be able to drag me out. I won­dered if this was some­thing I should bring up to the board. I con­sid­ered con­fer­ring with my wife, but her response would be lit­tle more than mock­ing my mor­bid­i­ty. From behind my Maui Jims, I watched the young French Au pier, who’d been show­ing up this sea­son, sun­ning by the kid­die pool and bare­ly watch­ing the pig tailed lit­tle girl she came with. It was dif­fi­cult to deter­mine exact­ly what made the French woman so tan­ta­liz­ing, but the effort­less way her swim­suit hung off her instead of hug­ging her body was part of it. She was nei­ther over­weight nor toned, but some­place in the mid­dle where few women reside, hav­ing more the appear­ance of being soft, hips thick with baby fat, ass bub­ble round and breasts perky. A sort of effort­less and per­fect fem­i­nin­i­ty. She was keen­ly aware of not only my leer­ing eyes but those of every dad at the pool who watched from ridicu­lous side eyed, neck break­ing angles in an effort to make sure their wives didn’t notice, but of course they did, rolling their eyes in res­ig­na­tion. What did it mat­ter? What were any of us going to do with her? What was any­one going to do with her besides ruin their life? Most I could offer would be fin­ish­ing on her stom­ach after nine­ty sec­onds then falling asleep. At some point in mid­dle age the fan­tasies become far more inter­est­ing than the poten­tial indis­cre­tions. Nothing is worse than the actu­al sex. Flabby bod­ies breath­ing heav­i­ly and pray­ing for the end to come. I loved my wife, but what was the point in us hav­ing sex any­more? We only did so because she want­ed a sec­ond child. I did not, but was pow­er­less, brow beat­en and too weak, dis­en­gaged and indif­fer­ent to fight her advances. With dis­gust­ed pur­pose she rode me night­ly to milk the baby bat­ter from my loins. Occasionally we’d get drunk and make out first like there was life in us, but the morn­ing would bring such ret­ro­spec­tive embar­rass­ment we could hard­ly look at each oth­er while eat­ing break­fast with our daugh­ter. My daugh­ter who I wor­ried would not take well to the arrival of a sib­ling. Because we became par­ents lat­er in life, she had been so pur­pose­ful­ly reared, dot­ed and obsessed over that I feared she could not pos­si­bly share our atten­tion and affec­tion with anoth­er. And in some way, I hat­ed that she would have to. I hat­ed the grow­ing resent­ment in my heart for a child not yet con­ceived. I hat­ed my weak­ness in not being firmer with my wife. My wife who believed there was a stig­ma attached to being an only child. I dis­agreed. I felt we lived in a time where being an only child made more sense than ever. With each pal­try ejac­u­la­tion I wor­ried I might be ruin­ing my daughter’s life. I was the only child until my younger broth­er was born. At four, my moth­er found me one night stand­ing by his crib with a pil­low pressed over his face. Did I real­ly know what I was doing? Yes, I did. Strange how she looked at me like I was a mon­ster but seemed to for­get the next morn­ing. Could she not bring her­self to believe what I was capa­ble of, or did she too under­stand the dis­ser­vice she had done me? I tried to push these thoughts from my head as my daugh­ter wob­bled over demand­ing a snack. My wife fol­lowed and stood over me drip­ping cold water. The Au pair left the lit­tle girl she watched to sleep swad­dled on a shad­ed lounge chair and approached the deep end, tip-toed along its side and dipped her foot in. The gazes of the col­lec­tive dads fol­lowed. The wives shared know­ing glances. She dove in seam­less. The dads shuf­fled in their chairs. She swam most of the length of the pool under­wa­ter before sur­fac­ing, show­ing off impres­sive lung capac­i­ty. She free styled over to the steps and pulled her­self up. It was the moment every man was wait­ing for. Dripping wet she tilt­ed her head to the side and squeezed the water from her hair. She fixed her biki­ni wedgie. She adjust­ed her top, jig­gling her perky breasts. Then she returned to her chair, tow­eled off, sat down, put on head­phones and pulled out her phone and the air was let back into the place. The sounds returned. The kids resumed play­ing. The wives shook their heads. The wind rip­pled the swim team-col­ored tas­sels that hung over the pool. Cloud shad­ows slid across the sur­round­ing hills. The lifeguard’s whis­tle blew. 

~

Wilson Koewing lives and writes in Marin County, California.