No Church in the Wild

by Paine, Bacchus

  “I swear, Wes, your tits have gotten bigger than mine.” I smiled and gave him a hug. “Go on, rub them in.” I smiled at him, and he smiled back. I looked back at Jackson, who hadn’t said a word, and he finally said, “hello.”

  “Nice pants,” Wesley returned.

  Jackson seemed distracted by the Kielbasa pushing outward on the fabric of Wesley’s nylon shorts, a monolith of its own even in its relaxed morning state. Wesley unfurled a chair beside me and sat.

  “Bloody Mary?”

  “Indeed.” I salted a cup, filled it with ice, and tapped the Bloody.

  “I’m so glad you’re first. I’d like to pick your collective brains.”

  “Oh?” Wesley said, puckering his lips. He crossed one sinewy quad over the other and perched his folded hands over his knee. I laughed out loud at his burst out of character.

  “I’d like you to coach me. Both of you. Jackson, I need your best charm, trickery or no. Wesley, I need whatever magic it is you shoot out that makes people want to sign their lives away in bars.”

  “Pray tell, why?” Jackson asked. Wesley leaned back and threw his arm over the back of his chair. A naked man wearing deer antlers jogged by, cock swinging, and both boys watched him pass before turning back to me.

  “I told you,” I looked back at Wesley, “about Ben’s friend, the neurological researcher…”

  “Oh, is Ben coming?” Jackson interrupted. Wesley and I looked at one another.

  “Yeah, he’s coming. He’s bringing her, hopefully. Guys, this girl… well, this girl is straight.”

  “And when has that stopped you before?”

  “I mean ‘straight’ like the ten percent that has no sexual reaction whatsoever to persons of the same sex. ‘Straight’ like Jackson is ‘gay.’ She’s lived in the Castro with three lesbians for god knows how long and still, nothing. Well, nothing that I know of. But if there’s Sauce there I need to be the one to extract it.”

  “Ah,” Jackson sighed.

  “Bacchus, I’m not sure I’m going to help,” Wesley said. “My favorite game is the guy who thinks he’s straight but has that questionable relationship with his best guy friend and needs a guide to help him understand.” Wesley smiled broadly, flashing his bright white teeth and deepening his dimples. A centipede of Disney princesses walked past us, and Mickey Mouse stood behind them, cracking a whip, beginning the cavalcade of visual distractions that would force breaks in our conversations throughout the day. I thought the scene might be more effective if Mickey strapped a big, erect dildo to the outside of his shorts. When I had processed Mickey, I remembered to respond to Wesley.

  “I know, that’s a different Sauce. In fact,” I turned to Jackson, “I just sort of served one of those to Jackson.” I shifted back to center as Jackson mumbled, “sort of.”

  I continued, perhaps selfishly. “I was telling myself it was off the table over and over again but I just… I don’t think I can not try. I’ve been waiting for a person like this to come along, someone magical, but I was expecting I’d be dealing with someone ‘bisexual,’” I made air quotes, “or a straight guy.”

  “That was your first mistake. I could have told you you’d go all kooky over a straight girl,” Jackson drawled.

  “She’s probably not as straight as you think,” Wesley chimed. “They never are. Did you ask her about her roommates, or if she’d ever been with a girl?”

  “No… no I suppose I just took Ben’s word… that she was straight. Well… and she defined herself as straight.” I’d hesitated as a thirty-something man ran by in costume, some kind of superhero, with black panties and an orange top and green leggings, trying to put my finger on who he was supposed to be. He was holding a bouquet of rainbow-colored balloons. A skinnier man wrapped head to toe in navy blue spandex followed behind him, and a gentleman in a gray spandex onesie that left his head free twirled the long cow-spotted tail that was attached to his ass, standing still in the middle of the raceway.

  “I think you have to investigate further before you set a course of action,” Wesley said simply. But I was still hesitant to let myself believe that “straight” had been an overstatement.

  “Jackson and I have a sort of a tacit agreement about helping folks along when they want to act on their same-sex desires. It helps them see the issue more clearly, IMHO. How’s Amber, by the way? I haven’t heard anything from her in like a month.”

  “Well. Dating a chick,” Jackson explained.

  I wondered if it was grotesque in some way that that made me happy. But I felt happy.

  The passing crowds had transformed now from individuals dedicated to exercise and progress to individuals dedicated to costumes. Cigarette and red poker visor, furry tigerskin top hat, beard and a blonde pigtail wig (same dude), purple spandex, pirate’s three cornered-hat carried on a wooden leg like a head on a spike, a girl in a pink tutu splayed on the pavement with her bumblebee friend trying to coax her up. The throngs passed by, ornamented with beer cans, in varying densities. A German beermaid perched herself in front of us, forcing me to look upon her ass. The bumblebee and the beermaid shifted to reveal that the collapsed lady with the pink tutu wore a pig’s nose. A girl in a red sequined dress approached and photographed her. We were still watching her writhe on the ground when Ben appeared, as a girl in a purple satin tube skirt laid down on the ground beside the pink tutu’d gammon that was already there.

  “Oink,” he said. The three of us turned in unison. Jackson started to stand up, then plopped back down when he saw that Wesley and I remained seated.

  “Hello, friend.” I looked around behind him. “Dude… you had one job.”

  “It’s not my job to get you laid by my straight clients.”

  “I’m joking. Besides, I don’t want to fuck her, I just want to hang out with her!” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Okay, okay, I want to fuck her, but that’s… I’m prepared to operate under the assumption that we could only ever be friends.”

  “Anyway, she’s coming later.”

  I stood up and jumped into his arms, almost causing us both to fall into the grass with my morning drunkenness. “I’m sorry I’m such a bitch.”

  “Me too.”

  “Whoooooo, I gotta see this chick,” Wesley whistled. “What’s this with the research?” Ben lacked a chair, a fact demanding attention as Wesley attempted to engage him in conversation through a twisted neck.

  “Jackson stood up. Ben, drink? Guys, another?” Jackson asked, reaching for the spigot. Ben and Wesley sputtered with affirmation. “I’m half full,” I said, the foreshadowing of Isis’ appearance curbing my appetite for even Festival drunkenness.

  Ben described the target and the experiment to Wesley, succinctly and with expertise. People had begun to walk against the flow of the race on its course, and a gentleman in a Golden State Warriors jersey and a pair of short shorts polka-dotted with twister game circles started dribbling loudly in front of us. Dude in a pair of Uggs and a diaper, neon green Oscar the grouch with trash can. Lieutenant Dangle doing pushups across the street. Now side pushups.

  Two pale but olive-skinned ladies had built themselves bras, boots, daisy dukes (as they say), and bracelets as well as, in one case, a cowboy hat, entirely of duct tape. Both had perky asses and were in pretty good shape, and both had long, dark, auburn hair descending their shoulders. I admired the spot where the tape was fighting the apple of Cowgirl’s ass.

  Two friends from work joined us, both single and straight and rarin’ for early morning alcohol. Neither had ever given me reason to think he or she was even remotely interested in persons of the same sex, and I was prepared to count them among the surprisingly small percentage of folks who were physiologically disinclined from dabbling that way. Nonetheless, we marveled together at an ass poking out of a crimson jock strap, furry vest, cowboy hat, and tan suede assless chaps.

  The passersby cast short, distinct, flamboyant shadows into a pleasant pool of sunlight, and the shadows danced with them as they
passed. Use of the chairs began to alternate amongst our crowd so that half of us were standing most of the time. I drank water and smiled to myself as I thought of Wesley’s investigation.

  Two more pairs of assless chaps passed by, as did at least a hundred cowboy hats and no less than 500 wigs, and the man covered head to toe by cobalt spandex passed again, as did one of those blue people from Avatar. Most who were not in costume wore plain jeans and t-shirts and sneakers, or a bathing suit. But at least three quarters of the people around me had gone through some trouble to ornament themselves. A substantial number were obviously drinking alcohol. Plump joints circled the groups around us.

  The entire City, mouth-to-ass, was hosting this party. Sure, people stayed home, lots of them, gay couples and straight couples and single moms and people who only wanted a Sunday morning paper. But so many joined, participated, enjoyed, unphased by the assless chaps or the wigs or the nudity. Everyone appeared to be having a great day. I witnessed no fights, nor voices raised in anything but celebration. I filled with appreciation over the notion that I’d somehow managed to live here, where anything goes, where whatever I am is fine with the next guy, and I’m fine with whatever he is, and I get great Citywide parties and operas and symphonies and ballets and theater and fantastic bougey food to boot.

  “Is that woman dressed as an inflatable sumo wrestler?”

  I had been so entranced by my revelry on the openness of San Francisco I’d totally missed Isis’ arrival from the rear.

  I was laughing as I turned around. “I believe it is.” She was dressed simply, in jeans and a light sweater, and I envied both articles because they got to brush up against her.

  “This is an amazing day,” she said.

  “Isn’t it, though?” A troop of smurfs grabbed both our attention by retrieving a ball from my left. “Uh... can I get you a drink?”

  “Sure.”

  “Bloody Mary, beer…?”

  “Bloody Mary’s good.” I poured her a drink, carefully adding the requisite vegetables. When I looked up I noticed two early twenties boys pissing on the backs of the Porta-potties. They were clearly not the first, as they had but added to a river of piss that ran from the row of Porta-potties to a drain thirty yards away.

  “Watch the river of piss running down the middle of the Panhandle,” I warned as I twirked the spigot.

  Jackson and Ben looked up as well from the conversation they’d shared with Wesley and my straight friends, Kate and Josh.

  Jackson groaned, “Heathens.”

  “The line’s not that long,” Isis noted critically.

  I’d noticed that she brought three familiar lesbians with her. I was introduced promptly and politely. Josh started to hit on one almost immediately, and I caught Isis smiling at him in amusement.

  “That’s a double fail,” she leaned to me, “not only does she not dig dudes, but he picked the wrong girl-crowd horse and has ruined himself for the three of us who might’ve actually considered him.”

  I cracked a smile. “That poor boy. So they’re not three lesbians then?”

  She hummed affirmatively. “Carly only likes women, but Deb and Trish both occasionally hook up with a guy. They just prefer to date women.”

  “Women are a bit better at relationships, to be fair.” Her look sought explanation. “I just mean, women are more willing to commit, in general, than men. And they commit in a different way.”

  “Ah… I dunno,” she said. I grew frustrated that my bait was not taken, and frustrated at myself for making too-blanket a statement.

  The crowd of us mixed and sloshed, but I spent enough time talking to Isis to hear that she loved the symphony, and the ballet, and sports. Awash in giddy, I drew the courage to start investigating more actively from her sports lead.

  Did you play sports? Yeah, basketball, ran cross country. How long’d you play basketball? College. Oh come on. Is that how you know so many lesbians? Sort of.

  “How long have you lived with them?”

  “Since college, off and on. We all wanted to move out here at once, on the cheap, but never managed to make enough money to move apart other than a few stints where they lived with girlfriends. Grad school doesn’t pay as well as you’d think.”

  “Certainly now that Ben’s funding you, you…”

  “No, I know. I just… it’s been so long that it feels weird to leave.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest you should be moving out of your apartment. I just want to make sure he’s making you comfortable, lest you need a new bank to come to your rescue.” I smiled what felt like a sinister smile, accidentally.

  Teletubbies, antennae, overalls and a plaid shirt, homemade rainbow wings with matching sleeves. A guy talking on a smartphone with a can of beer in his hand sat behind a small cardboard sign that said “Spare Change God Bless.” A man dressed in a Gorilla costume, made of a furry miniskirt, vest, and boots. A tattooed guy in purple tights and a red negligee. A full-body bacon costume crafted of foam. Man, that bacon guy is at all the festivals.

  As I looked on, I thought of how I might flirt, coyly slide into the questions like “hey, have you ever thought of kissing a chick?” But, either there was no way to be so coy or I couldn’t swing it. I admitted my own failure and changed my own subject. “The people here just seem so much happier than anywhere else I’ve lived. I mean, my god, look at them.” In our field of vision two persons were flailing lividly in the street, surrounded by loose, picaresque folks merely standing, a lot of smiles. “This party stretches for miles.”

  “They do look happy, but they’re not any happier than anyone else.”

  I turned my head to her and tensed a cheek muscle quizzically, returning her questioning look from earlier.

  She shrugged. “It’s science. People report equal measures of happiness regardless of their life circumstances. Example: after three months, someone who just won the lottery and someone who just became a paraplegic report very different levels of happiness. You can probably guess which is happier. But a year out they report the same average level of happiness. One of our runaway evolutionary successes is the capacity to synthesize two things: happiness and the result of sets of circumstances – basically what will come of a set of facts. So we know very well whether we’d prefer to win the lottery or be a paraplegic, but no matter which one we end up with, after a year, research shows that we end up equally happy with our overall lives. Dan Gilbert suggests that’s because we also have mechanisms in our brains that cause us to decide over time that whatever we’re stuck with is better than what we gave up. So, we feel better.”

  “Amazing.” I gazed at her for a moment before I realized what I was doing and looked away. The folks two groups down from us had erected a life-sized cardboard cutout of Samuel L. Jackson, and the ribald masses were lining up in droves to take photos with it.

  “There are actually studies where people ask patients with amnesia – the kind where you lose short term memory and forget you met someone thirty seconds after you meet them – well, if you ask them what painting of three they like better, they’ll almost always pick one if you tell them they already own it. They synthesize happiness with their purchase even when they don’t remember making it. I trust those conclusions, of course, because I’m well aware of how people rewrite their memories after the fact.” She grinned. A girl walked by with a knee-length coat made of various stuffed animals, and I wondered if she was the same girl who’d blessed the Hunky Jesuses. Behind her, I saw the most attractive naked man I’d seen all day, tight bold muscles rippling as he walked. I stared unabashedly.

  “Naturally. But, yeah, very curious. And a great way to explain why those guys I know who obviously have a little same-sex libido in them seem satisfied with their lives with women. But, who knows, maybe I was wrong about their modicum of same-sex attraction.” I doubted my own error even as I said it. “Check him out.” I pointed to the naked guy, wearing only dress shoes and socks, bulbous ass flexing as he walked.r />
  “Yo, boys!” Wesley and Jackson alone turned, as Ben was engaged in conversation with Deb. I pointed to the ass. Josh casually punched Wesley in the arm from his adjacent spot, jostling an “Oh my.”

  “Oh, that’s a good one,” Jackson beamed. The guy had beautiful, broad shoulders, his obliques peeked out over his hips, and he clearly spent at least five days of every week at the gym. As he walked, bands of muscle tensed in his ass, releasing with a mild gadunkadunk. A plump cock swung back and forth, big enough to obscure his balls.

  A straggling float approached, a rather large blow-up kiddy pool on wheels, with a boy and a girl, both in excellent shape, wearing tiny red bathing suits stamped with the word “lifeguard.” They brought an inflatable palm tree into the pool with them, gathering a little dance party as they passed. But, the throngs no longer really passed, merely lingered in any given area, and the race had become a simple street party – though a large one.

  A pretty, dark-eyed girl wearing only certain pieces of a French maid’s costume was pinned against a nearby tree, voluntarily, with a boy behind her tucking a dollar bill into her ass. She smiled radiantly.

  Jackson walked up behind me and put his chin on my shoulder. “We’s thinking of packing up.” The groups in the street had flown into groups on various stoops around us. The stoop group across the street appeared to have at least two girl scouts and three municipal workers in orange vests. The one to the right of that had only two men in black speedos and suspenders, white knee socks, black tuxedo shoes, and tophats, holding two beers apiece, looking longingly at one another. “Dude in an orange furry vest just tried to hump Wesley, I think that started the discussion. Oh, by the way,” and he pointed back toward the basketball court behind us, where a blonde girl was perched precariously on the rim.