Peeping Toms

Your standard suburban neighborhood.  I was about twelve and still had my pals living next door and across the street.  We had a gang.  During the summer, we’d fill the Supersoakers with piss and shoot cars from the bushes.  During the winter, our moms would have hot cocoa ready for our sledding adventures in the woods behind the middle school.  Every house on the street had kids around our age, but we were the oldest.  It was around then that Mrs. Shields became the focus of our masturbation fantasies.

The Shield’s had too many kids.  Five boys, two girls and I could imagine more were on the way.  I used to think back when we learned about condoms that maybe the Shield’s didn’t know about them.  Mr. Shields was a good dude.  Chief of our town’s fire department, strong as an ox, liked lawn darts and he seemed to love his family.  Mrs. Shields couldn’t have been any more typical as a the next-door-neighbor mom at first glance.  She dressed conservative, was constantly baking and was a stay-at-home mother.

Sometimes when you’re very young, you can’t see things as they actually are.  Take the female anatomy.  Until you’re sexually capable, girls are strange, weird, smelly, stinky, different.  Once the Johnson starts spitting the sticky stuff, women blossom right in front of our eyes.  There we were, three 12 year olds finishing a spy fort that bordered the Shield’s back lawn, when all of the sudden Jason spoke up.  “I think I can see the Shields’ bedroom from here.” 

He was right.  Even with the distance, Kevin, Jason and I could see the inside of the master bedroom.  It was then that the stash of Pine Cone bombs and Nerf weapons were replaced by electronic binoculars, a telescope and one of those Mattel sound machines that claimed to pick up noises from far away (which is total bulllshit, that thing never worked).  Needless to say, our idea of fortress changed quite rapidly that summer.  We initially conceptualized the fort as a place to hide some toys and gather evidence on surrounding kids and their whereabouts in the case of a town-wide Manhunt competition (it was always good to keep a close eye on the tricky ones who plan their hiding places a month in advance).  Now it was wall-to-wall with smut.  There wasn’t a corner of that fort that didn’t pay homage to the porn industry of the time.  Back then, which really wasn’t all that long ago, shaved beavers were uncommon and the typical porn star still had a perm.  Anyway, back to the bedroom…

Over the course of our first week as peepers, we gathered the following evidence:
Sunday - nothing.  Monday - a kiss goodnight.  Tuesday - nothing.  Wednesday - an argument.  Thursday - reading books.  Friday - nothing.  Saturday - nothing.  Sunday - reading books, kiss on the cheek.  I remember thinking ‘when the fuck did these people do it?’  I mean, it was just a week, but come on!  They’ve got 6 kids, all within a year of each other.  It must be a bad week we thought, so we took a breather and started fresh the following night. 

On our way up to Smutville (the name of our fort), the Shields kids were waiting at the base of the ladder.  “We wanna come up.”  “It’s for big kids only,” we explained, “So fuck off.”  God they were so weird looking.  Some were good looking, some were ugly as sin, nobody looked related.  If you’ve seen the movie ‘Cheaper by the Dozen’ with Steve Martin, the Shields kids remind me (in retrospect) of those kids.  The movie kids looked like a group of misfit orphans living with foster parents.  This was the Shields, a group of misfit children who were constantly bothering my gang.  “Whatcha doing up there?” Asked the eldest one.  “Research,” was our answer, but I wanted to say, “Spying on your parents and seeing the process of creation first hand because the magazines were only 2 dimensional.”

The next week turned into two, and then two turned into a month.  Eventually we got tired because we never saw the Shields doing it so we gave up.  It was now about August when we started using the fort as just a hangout rather than a spy tower.  We managed to get a TV and mini fridge that we ran the electrical through an outlet in the Shield’s patio.  They didn’t mind, or at least they never said anything about it, so it was all good. Until one night, the power blew out. 

We didn’t know if it was our fault, but our appliances were off and from the looks of their house, the lights were out as well.  I used the binoculars to scope the house for a pissed off Mr. Shields fed up with our thievery but could only see Mrs. Shields in the kitchen on the phone.  Before she made her way back upstairs, she either unlocked or locked the backdoor.  About a half hour into our surveillance, a dumpy truck pulled into their driveway and an Asian man stepped out.

Initially he was dressed like your average, casual dude.  But he decided to change his clothes in the driveway.  Stripping down to his birthday suit, the Asian man put on what appeared to a workman’s attire.  We put two and two together and guessed he was the electrician, but why did he wait to change at the job site and why wasn’t his truck adorned with the proper decals?  Without hesitation, our Asian friend made his way to the backdoor, which was purposefully unlocked by Mrs. Shields.  He disappeared into the dark house and for a while, there was nothing to be seen. 

All at once, the lights were on and there he was, the strange Asian electrician in the Shield’s master bedroom, having Mrs. Shield’s fill out paperwork… in her robe.  They were awkwardly close.  “This can’t be happening,” was the last thing any of us said to each other before the Asian man aggressively reached under Mrs. Shield’s robe.  Yes… this was truly happening.  Mrs. Shield’s was going to bang her Asian electrician.  All of those months of waiting for this one moment.  We were mesmerized by the sight of it.  None of us had ever seen two people have sex in real life; we weren’t picky.  So what if it’s not Mr. Shields, the Asian was doing just fine.  But where was Mr. Shields?  His truck was in the driveway right next to the dumpy van.  Enter Mr. Shields from the closet in the bedroom.  “My god, are you seeing this?” Kevin asked.  Yes, we were seeing it and in awe that shit like this really happens.

Mr. Shields was completely naked, using one hand to please himself while holding a camcorder with the other.  At one point, he stopped everything and directed the Asian man to switch sides.  It was then he leaned over and expelled a load on his wife.  Shortly thereafter, he cleaned up and handed the Asian man a wade of cash, walked him outside and locked the backdoor. 

It was questionable whether or not he was an electrician.  What was a fact, however, was that he was hired help.  A man purchased by a husband for both him and his wife.  Mr. Shields was a voyeur and Mrs. Shields was an adulterer.  The all American couple had a secret that my gang shared in.  No wonder their kids were a confused, mixed breed of mongrels.  They came from the loins of an electrician… at least that night.  Who knows what costumed workman has tickled their fancy in the past.