previous  |  main  |  index  |  next

December 19,2001 the swingers' club "To Whom It May Concern: "Please excuse my father from 'Successful Partners in Parenting Class;' he is rather hopeless.  And since my siblings and I are infinitely more stable than he, I should think this entire endeavor is but a waste of time. "Sincerely, "M.C. Johnson, Product of Broken Home" But, of course, this note from my daughter was not accepted by the authorities and I was forced to attend the court-sponsored class for divorcing parents with children. I arrived ten minutes early and lounged around the parking lot of the Aster Plaza waiting with thirty others perps for our instructor to arrive.  Not one of us wanted to be there.  As we milled around either smoking or staring at our shoes, an attendee drove up, rolled down her window and asked, "Is this the parenting class?"  I had no choice but to respond, " Why no, this is a meeting of The Swingers' Club.  I'm here to meet chicks."  Only a few laughed.  The rest had sworn off "relationships" forever.  Or so they wanted to believe.  Eventually, our Licensed Professional Counselor arrived and let us into the building. We looked like the cast of a coed prison movie.  An old Chicano man wearing a New York Yankees cap.  An African-American woman with hateful green eyes.  A skinny, chain-smoking white girl whose best days were behind her at twenty.  And me, a bespectacled carbon life-form of dubious worth.  Nobody in this Big House was guilty.  We had all been framed. The pain in the room was palpable; in fact, I considered palpating a slutty-looking gal in the seat next to me.  But there existed just below the surface an unquenchable thirst for better days and, before long, it was as though we had known each other our entire lives.  We laughed with hearts broken.  We muttered encouragement to the most downtrodden.  Like the stout white woman in the red velvet dress whose sixteen year-old daughter coped with her parents divorce by relying on her two brothers for strength.  Or at least she did until both of those boys were killed last year in a car wreck. I was proud to be a part of this group, not because it was special.  I was proud to be a part of the group because it wasn't special at all.

©  2001 by the beastmaster