No Church in the Wild

by Paine, Bacchus

  “Oh look, she’s managed to slip her legs through the basket…” Isis said. “Impressive.”

  “We can convene at my place. I have to pee anyways,” I whispered to Jackson. We gathered the coolers and chairs into our arms and set forth on the short journey.

  As I walked next to her, I managed the best game I could muster.

  “If you ever want someone to accompany you to the symphony or whatever, you know, if you don’t have some breathtaking man escorting you, please call me. I’ve missed the culture here in favor of reckless drinking for too long.”

  “Definitely.” Finally, I felt a scratch of success, and I let it deepen my intoxication.

  He had to live on himself, to feed on his own substance, like those animals that lie torpid in a hole all winter. Solitude had acted on his brain like a narcotic, first exciting and stimulating him, then inducing a languor haunted by vague reveries, vitiating his plans, nullifying his intentions, leading a whole cavalcade of dreams to which he passively submitted, without even trying to get away.

  Joris-Karl Huysmans, A Rebours

  The Great Union

  I wake up to a sweet smell, warm apricots, and burrow my body into the warmth beside me. It stirs, and a purr escapes her lips.

  She turns over to face me and slides her arms under and around me, nuzzling her face up to my neck, warmer still. I let my chin fall into her hair, splaying around me.

  “Good morning,” I mutter.

  “Hi,” she sings.

  I take up her chin in my hand, lifting her to me, kissing her softly, running my hands down her hair and over her ass, kneading her with the palms of my hands. She scorches me, warm after a night beneath thick covers.

  I let my mouth fall into her, telling her silently the painful story of falling for her, aching and yearning, reaching desperately to treasure every point of contact. She meets me with smoldering hunger.

  “It’s surreal to touch you,” I whisper, and she kisses me again in reply. Her legs slide between mine, until she’s nuzzled her hip on my sex, and she runs her hand across my breasts as though she’ll pass them over, then returns to knead me in time. I feel her growing wet against my thigh.

  I roll on top of her and reach down, spreading her out beneath me, and I pull my leg inside hers, lifting upward, slipping onto her clit with mine easily, hot liquid guiding me. I fall down to kiss her, thrusting farther inward, and something starts to buzz.

  Slowly I awakened into a bright reflection off the surface of the phone, and I damned it verbally while I shut it off.

  I lay staring at the ceiling, writhing in the warmth of the bed, trying to remember the feeling of someone lying soft and hot beside me. But the memory was fading even as I lay reaching for it, and soon there was only the sun outside and the dry hum of electronics in the room with me. I tried futilely to put myself into the mindset for a different kind of festival.

  San Francisco’s Marina bears few of the hallmarks of the Haight or the Castro. Its populace is overwhelmingly white, straight, well-groomed and professional. On a sunny June afternoon, the males in crowds that gather at what may be the Marina’s most significant festival, the Union Street Fair, are adorned primarily with pastels bearing logos or stripes or plaid. The women wear clothes that would impress in New York. Though the sunglasses hiding their eyes are no more expensive than those of the Haight, they are almost certainly more recognizable fashions to the bulk of the nation than the bright, off-color shades worn in the Haight.

  Union Street Fair is closer to the average American street festival than most of our festival season events. Technically, I think it’s a beer festival, though none of our festivals lack beer. Let’s be clear – persons are raucous. Kegs abound and massive house parties rage in the surrounding streets. Nonetheless, there are no naked people and fewer persons obviously fucking persons of the same gender. The fair runs along Union Street for I suppose a mile, lined with pricey wares from the surrounding storefronts and the occasional additional local artisan.

  Still bitter at being forced to leave my dream, I approached Union Street with Jackson at my side. The outing had begun as a day to see my straight friends, but as the morning wore on the allure of sunlight caused the social to surface amongst my gayer compatriots. Wesley was curious about my endeavors of the day, and my lesbian buddy Aaliyah emerged from the depths of a long-term relationship seeking platonic companionship and sunlight.

  I first met Aaliyah at one of the only all-girl watering holes in the City, the Lexington, and we’d made fast friends playing pool together. It had been months since I’d even talked to Aaliyah, and I found out why that morning after I’d dragged myself from bed. She was working on a Ph.D., and a smarmy grad school lesbian had caught her eye. One or both of them had finagled a joint research project, and a surprisingly small number of hours in a lab had resulted in some making out to the detriment of the surrounding beakers. Two weeks later, they’d spent so much time together that Aaliyah moved most of her portable possessions into the girl’s apartment. Two weeks after that, the girl had begun displaying bouts of violent depression. She lashed out at Aaliyah, with over-rough language and personal insults, egged on by alcohol. But they kept living together for a couple of months, outlasting their mutual project, and then the girl had broken things off in a maniacal fury, sending Aaliyah back to the apartment she hadn’t entered in six weeks. I told her that was a good thing, and invited her to meet us in the Marina to take some sun. “You’re very likely to hear some Journey at some point as well.” She’d laughed a little and said she’d meet me there.

  Aaliyah has always flown through life like water, going over or around the rocks when they appeared and casually resuming her course. It was as a teenager, after growing up on a military base in Asia, that she was first thrust into an American environment, including unfamiliar categories like “black” and “gay” and “rich” and “poor,” where before she had known only “American” and “not American.” She already suspected she was attracted to women, and, upon her arrival in the US, she realized for the first time that that was something notable and unwelcome.

  All of this put Aaliyah in the curious position of being an outcast because she belonged in too many categories. The gay kids at school were white, and, even if everyone at school whispered about how Aaliyah was kissing girls under the proverbial bleachers, they’d identified her first as their teammate, their classmate, and consequently the non-gay majority didn’t cajole her the way they did the skinny white gay boys. To Aaliyah, the white gay boys seemed bitter about it even as they called her “friend.” Of course, she still had to listen to the rest of the school make fun of gay people on a general level, even if she was never the direct object of derogatory digs.

  She coped with this misplaced feeling by trying her damndest to do everything right. She worked hard in school and got straight A’s. She played every sport she could, and she was good at them all.

  In the meantime, Aaliyah became a connoisseur of secret girlfriends, kisses in dark hallways, trysts in the margins between scheduled commitments, always challenged by disapproving parents, not least of which her own. It took her parents years to come around, to offer her support even in the face of their disagreement, and to apologize for the moments when they’d withheld their love.

  Aaliyah struggled throughout high school and had come to feel so wrong that depressed threatened to become suicidal. Eventually, she could enjoy her parent’s pride at her school achievements to mute the moments where they didn’t seem proud of her orientation. It took going to college, and meeting another black lesbian or two, to reveal that she was not wholly alone in the world, before she could look at life again with hope. But, through all of this, Aaliyah never thought it worthwhile to bother trying to be with men. Now, she served as my constant reminder that an exclusive attraction to the same sex or the opposite sex was wholly possible. And she rocked a semi-butch style of dress, with ties and button-downs and impeccable colors, that I much admired eve
n if I didn’t emulate it.

  I had found, in my many inquiries into the coming out stories of my friends, that her behavior in high school was shockingly similar to that of other black lesbians I knew: they behaved like little saints. They didn’t go out drinking, they worked hard at school and did well, and they strove rather endlessly to make up for the supposed imperfection of their sexuality by being as perfect as possible in everything else. In college, other black lesbians offered Aaliyah what I’d been so seduced to sense in Claire: understanding without the need for explanation. But Aaliyah’s journey through life had left her very comfortable among groups she might have thought of as “other” with a different upbringing, and so I knew that the straight, white, mainstream beautiful people who filled the Marina and Pac Heights would not make her feel alien if she joined us, and I’d invited her in the hope that the sunlight would cheer her.

  At this fair I was also to meet a straight(er) friend who had greater connections to the Marina, and he too would play a substantial part in the enlightenment that was soon to unfold before me. I’d first encountered Grant during my business school days watching basketball at a local sports bar, where he’d sat short and unassuming in his chair. We connected over a mutual affection for beer and a mutual aversion to the cockiness of Duke basketball. He was the sort of boy who carried a farcical ego around all the time, acting macho and crass around groups and melting into a sort of gentle, caring specimen when isolated from them. I discovered over time that he was obsessive about his body, and with palpable results. Of course, I’d immediately noticed what could only be described as a rockin’ body, hard and thick with musculature, punctuated with big hands and feet, collarbones visible anchors for broad pecs. He made no secret of the fact that exercise was a large part of his life. We had that in common, among many other things. It occurred to me once, when considering Grant and our friendship, that I seemed to have more in common with boys than girls. Later I’d learned some traits that Grant shared more with girls than boys. Once, he’d invited me over for dinner to watch the NBA finals, and I’d arrived to find that “dinner” was a plate of vegetables and a canister of hummus. Then I understood that manorexia was the reason he had a six pack, not just that he exercised so much. He was to bring a new girlfriend to Union Street to meet me for the first time, perhaps so that she could see with her own eyes that I was more bro than ho.

  Jackson and I grabbed beers and parked ourselves on a stoop at the intersection of Union and Laguna, awaiting the arrival of our many compatriots. Aaliyah arrived first, looking decidedly lesbian, and Grant followed in decidedly straight Marina-standard summer attire. He introduced a girlfriend roughly his height, with an elegant oval face and thick brown hair that hung to her mid-back. She greeted me warmly, as well as my friends. Grant and his girl, Anna, carried their own beers, and Aaliyah rarely drank, so we stood on the corner making small talk and waiting for Wesley’s grand entrance.

  When Wesley arrived, I congratulated myself inappropriately for doubling the African-American contingent at the fair, and I warmed at Wesley’s clever choice of attire. He wore yellow board shorts and a green t-shirt with the “John Deere” logo on it, along with green Celtics cap so precariously placed at a tilt atop his head that I suspected the wind would take it from him sooner or later. When I hugged him hello, I whispered, “I can’t wait to see who else here we see wearing your shirt,” and he smiled. He departed with Grant and Anna to collect more beers.

  When the trio returned from their beer journey we embarked on the requisite stroll, slipping through cracks in boisterous gatherings of hairy legs peeking from madras shorts, stopping intermittently while one of the group considered the overpriced wares the adjacent merchants had brought into their outdoor tents, and Aaliyah purchased a humorous t-shirt that had a portrait of Barack Obama tagged with the word “PILF.”

  While the crew was predominantly distracted by the PILF purchase, Wesley took my arm and turned me to the side.

  “Grant,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Any gay in him?”

  I thought for a moment on Grant’s relationship with his closest male friend. “Potentially. Not sure.”

  He nodded and pressed his lips together in confirmation. “I’d hit it.”

  We’d strolled for almost an hour when Grant invited us to slip off of Union to visit the house party of a nearby friend. The line of us sauntered up to an open doorway, already crammed with people, to find a party reminiscent of fraternity row.

  It was rare to find a house such as this here, one residence in the whole building, stuffed with six bedrooms and an expansive backyard twenty meters square. A DJ had set up shop in the backyard, and either the residents of this house were richer than the collegiate décor suggested or the guy was a friend doing a favor. His rhythm pumped through the house.

  Grant made an introduction or two, but we were all soon left to our own devices. After a group visit to the keg, Aaliyah began to wander and stopped to chat with a group of girls who appeared abundantly straight, while Jackson and I put our names in line for the beer pong tournament that occupied the entire common room. I looked over at Aaliyah, who had already begun to flirt, thinking at least there’s one person out there who totally understands my attraction to unavailable straight women. Eventually Grant and Anna reappeared near the beerpong table, and I suggested they sign up to play against us.

  Anna politely declined. “I suck,” she explained, “and I’ll end up wasted.”

  Somehow Wesley materialized just behind them, inaudibly, and chimed in, “I’ll partner with Grant.”

  “Hell yeah, man!” Grant replied, reaching up to offer his palm for a high-five, which Wesley reciprocated.

  It took some minutes of idle standing and drinking before our turn, but once the game started it became clear that as a foursome we had above-average beerpong talents. Wesley was nothing if not a coordinated athlete, and Grant’s abilities were comparable to Wesley’s. For our parts, Jackson and I had trained hard at the Mississippi After-Hours-Boredom School of Beer Pong, and we held our own.

  Grant did not hesitate to celebrate their incremental victories, and so Jackson and I watched, smiling at one another, as he and Wesley fist-bumped and chest-bumped and high-fived and hooted at one another, distracted, until suddenly Jackson’s last shot at their remaining two cups went in on a bounce, securing our victory.

  “Well done, Lover,” he said.

  “The credit is yours. You’re nothing if not opportunistic,” and we both giggled.

  “Can we play winner here?” a familiar voice asked from behind us. I swirled to find a piercing stroke of exotic green looking back at me, elated, wondering if I had slipped into a dream. Then I saw the “we.”

  Isis stood next to a strapping lad, about 6’2”, sporting a pale yellow polo shirt with its collar popped and a semi-snug pair of metrosexual jeans, Wayfarer glasses perched on his head.

  “Hell yeah!” Jackson said. She hugged Jackson, and then reached out for me, and I smelled the smell I’d dreamt what seemed mere moments ago.

  “This is Dan,” she gestured toward the Wayfarer. “Dan, this is Jackson and Bacchus.” We shook respective hands and I wished I could twist his a little as I half-ignored the curious look on his face when she said my name. Stop, Bacchus. She’s always been “straight.” It shouldn’t be jarring to see her on a date with a guy. Pull it together.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” Jackson started. “How do you guys know each other?”

  “We met a couple weeks ago, down the street,” Dan explained. Ah, so she does venture to the straight parts… and look what she finds. As I looked upon him my jealousy faded, consciousness infused with reason pushing it back to where it could be effectively ignored.

  “Who do you guys know here?” Dan asked.

  “My buddy Grant knows the residents, if I understand correctly. How about you guys?”

  “I live upstairs,” he answered curtly, as though I should know that. Y
ou left your front door open, cocksucker, don’t act like we’re supposed to be in-crowd before we can walk in. Then I mentally slapped the back of my hand, but Jackson had turned to give me a quick affirmative look that said “douchebag.”

  They took positions opposite us at the table, and we re-racked.

  I was abundantly grateful to the game, indebted to its layout for an excuse to watch her without extensive risk of being obvious. I peeled the simple, clinging clothes off of her with my eyes, revealing the body that writhed against me in my dream, watching a perky breast bounce with her throw and inhaling a touch of apricot I must have hallucinated. They were playful with one another, she and this Dan, and my love for Jackson’s opportunism did not prevent me from wishing I was playing on her team before I warned myself again to stop wanting without encouragement. Eliminate desire, says the Buddha.

  We did not lead so decisively that I could not feel the tipsy curling over me, my alcohol tolerance having waned in the months since I’d first really talked to Isis, and my shots grew less accurate as the game wore on. Frankly, my heart wasn’t in it anymore.

  Once we had fallen victim to Dan’s beerpong skills, which had been refined in an actual frat house, Jackson announced he needed to drag me home to pull it together so I could be his date at a fictional hospital function. I threw a grateful glace in his direction.

  “Oh…” she said, “too bad.” She walked around the table and hugged me again, I suppose to say goodbye, and when she pulled away she said quietly, “Hey are you around on the 23rd?”

  I might have considered my schedule, but instead I just said “yeah.”

  “Do you wanna go to Tchaikovsky and Haydn?”

  I paused. “What about…” and I pointed my chin quickly at Dan.

  “Not the symphony type.”