the shared park

The doggers and the cruising homos share the park I visit most Saturday mornings with my daughter. We like to feed the ducks and climb the many stairs around and use the play equipment and run in circles around the ornamental labyrinth; they like to fuck with a small appreciative audience in the small wooded crevice that hugs the riverbank in the park’s northern corner, or follow each other around the lightly gravelled footpaths checking their mobiles and making imperceptible gestures and motions in an unspoken semaphoric language of lust with the result of fellatio or, I suppose, even sodomy, bitten down on wrists or wedges of tree bark or rolled up knock-off Harrington jackets to silence the grunts. They are all a technologically astute bunch, utilizing the internet for their own carnal ends, and spent sheaths like shed snakeskins hang from the trees like decorative adornments, like the archaeology of some ancient perverse sect.

It has been blessed with myriad sex-oriented monikers relating to the preferred activities of its most committed visitors: Queen’s Park (inevitably, though this has fallen out of favour somewhat, given the presence of an actual Queen’s Park elsewhere in the city) Shaggle Rock, Fuckpond, etc. On any number of pertinent dogging sites the park had been issued an overall rating of “good” for the practise of dogging, with one friendly couple particularly commended for their inclusiveness and for putting on a good show; one female commenter who had experience around much of Norfolk and some of Suffolk had noted positively how the man “comes loads” – weirdly I would have thought overall mass of ejaculate to be an odd desirous prerequisite for enjoyable outdoor encounters, but I suppose it makes some sense: no bed sheets to worry about and similar – and how he “fucked so well”, comparable only to one other particular couple who commonly worked one of the layby’s between Norwich and Great Yarmouth in terms of technique, methods used and all-round sexual experience. Although I found no such rating system in place for the park as the location for casual homosexual exchanges which it had in recent years become, following the advent of any number of smart-phone applications aimed at just such a thriving subculture, the abundance of furtive, repressed, tough-looking blokes would suggest a similar level of popularity, the combination of a controlled, natural, urban environment, proximity to the city centre and without the expense of a Premier Inn room being one too good resist.

My daughter and I would frequent the park in the early morning, commonly before 8am, by which time we would have already been awake for some hours; I find this a good time to visit the park, it being generally empty (aside from a handful of bird enthusiasts and sexual opportunists), a state to which my generic anxiety disorder is well suited. I prefer and actively attempt to avoid other children and their parents in the enclosed playground area at all costs, irrespective of the negative impact this might prove to have on my daughter’s socialization and development, a point of some contention within my family. My paranoia is such that I feel a great distrust of the children who attempt to engage my daughter in play or in the kind of stilted conversations at which two year olds (and their parents) excel and I immediately put a stop to their efforts; on occasion I will say the words “oh no” quite loudly when a familiar looking kid comes over to us, and despite deep ignorance they do usually get the message and persist instead with their personal leaping or varied other solo play methods on or around the equipment.

In fact the only instance on which I did engage in conversation with a fellow parent was one borne of the park’s copious sexual activity. Despite it being long before what would constitute a reasonable Saturday breakfast time for most, all-too-often the park represents a choice destination for fathers too unimaginative to think of anything else to do with their young, the same few faces cropping up week in, week out, as they too must – and would be right to – think about me: him again, can’t he think of anything better to do, that poor child, &c.; in fact my rucksack routinely contains a tea towel I bring from home for the specific purpose of wiping gathered rainwater or dew from the play equipment to minimize the potential discomfort to my daughter’s person and garments. Although for some this may represent a sort of mollycoddling, for me it is a decision structured by practicality and sensitivity, two traits on which I pride myself as both parent and, more generally, extant personage. Whilst we swung our respective children on their respective swings ensconced somewhat uncomfortably within the very minimal spatial privacy such action affords in a small enclosed children’s playground, we could hear the unmistakable sounds of sexual pleasure occurring only feet away within the wooded area that flanks the riverway, and I noted how we swung our children slightly more forcefully as an instinctive response to it. There is something quite surprising if not entirely unsettling about the knowledge that strangers perform sex acts either publically or otherwise in the daylight hours, and that same knowledge somehow conspires to tarnish life, all life, with complex levels of decadence and sleaze and leaves me feeling sticky or at least similar to that sensation, in all of my key or sensitive or fleshy body locales.

“I like the daytime doggers the best,” the other father said from nothing by way of a greeting. We had been in the playground together for ten or fifteen minutes but had not as yet even looked at one another; this didn’t change as he spoke and we both focused very intensely on our children. “They’re a proud, open bunch. It’s a community. Meaningful friendships extending long beyond the point of orgasm.”

I wanted to ask him to be quiet but instead asked “Do you partake?” as though I were offering around cannabis at a house party, and listened to the creaking of the rusted metal chain that held my daughter’s swing up, that yelped like discordant brass with every arc.

“That I do,” he said. “But only when the kid’s at home.” I observed as he strained to peer over the hedge towards the wooded enclave, as though helpless but to answer some overbearing call of nature, pointless really given the thickness of the foliage, his child now hanging in the stationery swing. “Do you mind?” he asked. I ignored the question because I didn’t, or wanted not to, understand it. “Watching him for a minute?” He pointed to the hanging child. “As you’re here anway, I mean.” His kid was staring at me, flecks of foam around the edges of his cunt red lips. I pushed the swing a couple of times, alternating between my daughter and the other kid.

“I suppose it’s okay,” I said, “As long as you’re not. You know.” He clapped me on the shoulder with one hand then rubbed both his hands together in the warming gesture.

“Minutes,” he said. “Ten tops.” He kissed his child on the head and walked hurriedly out of the gate and towards the wooded area. I could hear sticks snapping underfoot as he disappeared amongst the trees.