Married Ladies Have Sex in the Bathroom

We did it everywhere.
We were middle-aged women
with middle-aged husbands
and school-aged boy children.
Mostly in daylight.
Mostly in twenty minutes
or less.
In places so common
they’d never suspect.

Every room of both houses.
the cellar,
the garage,
the neighbours’ children’s four-foot wading pool.
And then there were the bathrooms, 
the bathrooms,
The bathrooms of Fitzwillies, 
                      The Girls Club,
                                Caldor’s,
                              Shop-Rite,
                             The bushes
in back of the bar at the end of the street.

We did it on my picnic table,
and under her picnic table.
We did it in extremes,
dressed for inclement weather.

Coming, fully clothed,
hats,
scarves,
boots,
and mittens.

Coming, buck-screaming naked,
in the hot dirt,
of some Godforsaken Road,
with bugs crawling, 
in woods that never gave back
her pink lace panties.

We did it lying flat
on the kitchen floor,
our heads pressing up against the kitchen door.
our bodies barring our boys’ entrance.

We did it seated
in my car, moving,
in her car, in the body shop,
at the airport, 
on the plane to Baltimore
while she calmly discussed
Women, War and Peace
with another speaker in the next seat.

In the hot tubs, 
even though I hate the hot tubs,
not waiting for the couple inside
to come out.
We did it with phones ringing,
kids screaming,
dogs barking,
tubs overflowing,
and dinner burning in the pot.
We did it with fingers so hot
we thought we’d be branded forever.
We did it with bodies so tired,
hearts so heavy
that doin’ it was the last thing
on our minds.
Still, something greedy whispered,
get it while you can girls,
because you never know
if or when
you’re gonna get it again.

We did it and called it empowerment,
lust,
avarice,
and adultery.
We dared man or nature
To deny that doin’ it
Was anything but sacred.

We flaunted.
We hid.
Tense and tangled,
sometimes we forgot
when to run, when to taunt.

We stopped.
Caught our breaths, confronted.
Like dogs in heat, we fought.
Our live uprooted,
recovered to fight,
to blame some more.

In the end
we cared for ourselves
enough to stay
alive in this world, together.

And a year,
and a year,
and the years go by.
Less and less
we press each other.

Still we love.
But oh the sex.
It’s never been the same.
Life on the edge is an addiction.
Honest life is pleasant, better, definitely better,
but so damned tame.

Sally Bellerose