Grant stepped back toward me and said, “I hadn’t realized he was….”
“He’s inconspicuous, but he not only is, he may be the. He’s almost a gay celebrity.” I considered for a moment before I added, “his prowess is renowned, so much so that I’d be interested to assess its extent myself,” and watched a countenance pass over Grant that was half impressed and half curious. We turned our attention back to the circle as Wesley sparked our doobie.
Puff, puff, pass.
The surrounding bodies pulsed with the rhythm beating around us, and we began to move in time, small sways at first, expanding into fuller hips and looser arms. I looked toward Isis, standing across from me now in the small circle we’d formed around our stash of beer, as she spoke into Ben’s ear, smiling broadly, glowing with revelry, her tight hips moving back and forth. I imagined for a moment, the feeling of pressing my hips to hers, matching her movements, my hands wrapped along the small of her back, pulling her toward me, feeling the top of her thigh pressed against my sex, feeling her breasts melting into mine. I closed my eyes and turned slightly away, and opened them upon Wesley pulling on Ben’s arm to converse semi-privately, Grant looking at the conversation with an ambiguous, detached expression. Over Grant’s shoulder, I caught a familiar pair of eyes, trained upon me. He was hard to miss when he wore a bright red marshmallow jacket, even from such a distance.
“Excuse me for a second,” I said, and I began to walk toward the doorstep where he was perched.
“Bacchus… where are you… ?” Jackson called.
I turned my head to him and said, “I’m not going far; I’ll be right back.” I slithered through the crowds toward the steps of the house on 16th Street.
“You are everywhere,” I said to him.
“Mah, I’m nowhere at all.” His voice seemed gruff suddenly, as though I’d expected him to speak with the accent and clarity of a lark.
“Why aren’t you dancing? Everyone is dancing.”
“You have your girl.” He gestured through the crowd toward the spot, now barely discernable, where Isis stood.
“I haven’t had her at all.”
“You have her here.”
“Merely an ally.”
“Silly magiccock, alliances are fluid creatures.”
“Silly, yes, and bumbling and smitten, all with equal hopelessness.”
“We’re the ones that do the hoping, so how come we’re not the one’s that remedy the hopelessness?”
“Any attempted remedy would only result in further hopelessness.”
“How can you know that? Did that fine piece of ass follow you here or somebody else?”
I thought for a moment. “She didn’t follow just me.”
“Really?”
“If I told you she did I’d only be rewriting the past the way I wanted it to be.”
“Ha! Silly again! What’s the past? Where is it? I can’t find mine.” He mockingly began a desperate search of the steps supporting him, lifting up some of his bright, discarded clothing and peering underneath.
“Mine follows me around every day.”
“I hope that’s debauchery doing the following!” His laugh wheezed in and out.
“Some of it. Perhaps not as much as I’d like,” I mumbled.
“Well here’s you got the big bacchanalia.” He swept his hand across the landscape in the most grandiose manner, blistering with irony.
“Mm.” I looked back downhill to the bodies packed throughout the streets, the viscosity extending into the surrounding blocks, the music throbbing through it all. The expanse seemed to simmer into blurry masses of color and movement, morphed by my own intoxication.
“Bacchus, what the fuck are you doing?” Jackson yelled from below the balcony of the Lookout.
I paused, waved a hand at Grot, holding his eyes for a moment, and walked back to the crew. Grant was chatting with Wesley, Aaliyah and Carly had found us again and they stood talking to Trish and Deb, Carly’s hand reaching out to take Aaliyah’s bicep in exclamation. Isis was chatting with Ben, and I met Jackson as I walked back to approach the two of them.
“Apparently we have to keep an eye on Bacchus,” Jackson warned them, “she’s taken to wandering all over the damn streets.”
“I’m done wandering,” I said. I felt Wesley poke me in the back, and I turned my head to him.
“Done,” he whispered. I nodded my thanks.
A hundred thousand bodies swirled around us, filling the intersection, trickling down and up Market Street and through the alleys and in the side streets. There were more naked people, more tight jeans, more neon accents, more instances of perched hair, less instances of body hair (although, where body hair made an appearance, it was robust and obvious in its dominance), more speedos, more singlets, and more mixed martial arts on televisions than at the average street festival. Men and women coupled off with persons of the same sex. Rugged, well-manicured hands slid along developed glutes in abundance. Breasts of both types collided against mirrored organs.
An hour later, a dude from some south-eastern City gang would roll up to this intersection and shoot three people, killing one. All reports would suggest it was not a hate crime, but was rather a result of some previous conflict between the homicide victim and the shooter that was somehow absent any usual strife present between heterosexual and homosexual. If he had such a specific target though, I wonder why he shot two others. Was his aim simply bad? Did they offend him? Why kill the kid AT Pride if there was no hate about it?
It would have been impossible for me to imagine seeing a man murder a 19-year-old and wound two others as I stood at the center of that dance of a hundred thousand people who might wanna fuck the same gender. Even with the – at least purportedly – disinterested friends mixed in, everyone seemed happy about what was going on around them. Hate would seem misplaced there, in that place of love. Of course, my distinct impression of harmony’s being present was a consequence of how the event had turned out for me in the past. Until the shots rang out, the night was naught but Eden.
At the present moment, the harmony remained pervasive, and sporadic dancers sprung up around us. I turned to find Grant swaying his abs against his t-shirt in time with the tempo of the closest DJ’s music, inaudibly accompanied with dissipating tones, impoverished by distance, from the other nine soundtrucks and stages, all of which had been effectively overwhelmed.
I had a second pulse. My intoxicants had dampened my senses to the point where the sensation of pressure from the music matched the sensation of pressure from my heartbeat. Closing and opening my eyes, I spied the outline of Aaliyah beginning to dance. Her shoulders somehow led a larger movement of her hips, which swung back at the perfect moment, their flats lifting forward and up, her movements precise as her unbound arms swayed her breasts lasciviously.
My eyes blinked again. Grant had widened his movements.
And again, a boy danced with Wesley from behind, as Wesley peered over his shoulder to assess.
Again, and Jackson was dancing with Ben, his fingers curling into Ben’s spine at its base. Bouncing together with purpose. I caught Isis’ eye and she smiled back at me, and I started to dance mildly. Later Jackson told me he’d put his hand on Ben’s hip suggestively before they began to dance, and Ben snapped at him:
“Don’t think you’re about to Sauce me.”
Jackson had thought for a second and then replied, “But I don't want to Sauce anyone else,” then he took Ben’s hand and began to dance.
I returned my gaze to Wesley, who looked at me as though he was prepared to be rid of his suitor, so I reached out my arm to him, and he took my hand, and we began to get down. The team had nearly gotten through the latest two six-packs, but that didn’t stop everyone from swigging as they swaggered.
Wesley maneuvered me to ride his thigh, and we bucked rhythmically, my chest lying into his hard, prosperous, burgeoning abs. His arm around my back and mine around his, and we pushed into one another.
“Have I ever
told you you’re beautiful?” I asked him. I certainly found him beautiful, but I suppose that’s partly because we usually see the people we love as perfect.
“Somewhat,” but he smiled at me.
And we continued dancing.
I pulled back a bit as I watched Grant move in my peripheral vision toward Isis, flanked as she was by her roommates and Aaliyah. Jackson and Ben continued their bodily conversation in isolation. Jackson’s hands took Ben’s, flattening their bodies together with forearms touching, palms together, fingers falling over the others’ hand, hips rolling into each other. Jackson leaned forward and pressed his lips to Ben’s, and Ben’s mouth reached back into him, and they rocked kissing one another.
I looked up at Wesley and he looked back, and then he pulled back as well. We widened our steps from each other, and moved toward the group, and Aaliyah looked up at us and began dancing anew. I turned to Grant, diverting him by reaching out for his shoulder, beginning to dance with him. He couldn’t match Wesley’s musculature or his rhythm, but he had a bitchin’ body with abs of his own and big, strong hands with long-reaching fingers. On we went, our bodies lifting and swaying with one another. I kept his breadth to the side of the group, and I watched over Grant’s shoulder as Wesley began to dance with Isis just as he had with me.
Upon the second change of song, I parted from Grant, and it was as though Wesley had already parted with her, and we all began to dance individually for a while. Her tanktop clung to perky impending breasts, which bounced up and down in glorious harmony as she wiggled, her hair undulating with the music. My eyes could but look upon her face, though, in its sharp, soft magnificence, and soon she looked up at me. I am sure it was a look of wanting emanating from me, but her eyes gripped mine without reservation. We were moving then in the same rhythm, looking into each other from three feet away.
By now any one of us, or any one of the swaying masses surrounding us, could easily be blackout drunk. Necks were loose and steps were uncertain and balance was faulty and reaction to the drumming around us embellished. The four of us stood in slight disjunction from the others, pressing inward amongst us.
Wesley stepped into Grant’s legs and got low, bucking from a wide squat, then slowly moved back and forth through his hips up into Grant’s chest. Grant matched his pace.
I was vaguely aware that Wesley had moved in as I looked at her, and suddenly I felt my foot step between hers. I matched her tempo, and we moved immeasurably toward each other. I let my fingertips fall against her leg, resting on her tensing quad and lifting resistantly with its movements. I let the contact guide me into her, and finally I felt her thighs touch mine, both at once. The air between us pulsed with the waves formed by our hips, rolling together, correcting our differences in rhythm with proximity.
Through my fingers on her thigh I experienced a rush of electricity, as though all heat began there. I felt I was speaking in the touch with a pulse of my own, and I inhaled her fruity heat, letting my forehead fall into her hair, and feeling, in a scalding wave of arousal, her hand wrap around my waist. We fell together, my nipples searing into hers, the uppermost crease of my thigh sliding inward across her sex, grinding into it, trailing my clit up her quad.
Time had stopped. It could have been a minute or an hour, I don’t know, that I was engulfed in thrashing ecstasy with her, her air filling my lungs, her scorching, pliable breasts clasped between mine, when our hands began to purposefully explore one another. As we moved I took her ribcage in my palms and pulled my elbows back and ground against her, and she slipped her hands along the ridges of my ass cheeks, steadying herself against them, pressing her warm crotch into my hip.
Hip to hip we circled, as the beats pulsing around us slowed their pace, and in time with the music we thrusted against one another, slowly, torturously, each pulse against her discharging an excruciating bliss through my engorged sex and up into my torso, flowing upward to pool at the back of my head. My chin curled around her neck, continuing the movements of our hips, up through writhing cores and across our reaching shoulders. The world steamed around me, and I could feel the music and the rapture of our tango pounding in every measure of my body as I felt her pace speed, as I felt her slit grind harder into my thigh. In and out we went into each other, and I must have moaned faintly as she purred when she pressed herself harder into me.
Each of us flattened pulling palms across steadily shifting spines, surges of power flowing outward from the beats and peaks in the music, our motions growing urgent, sharply inhaling, brashly ramming our bodies together. I grew harder and harder against her, insistently crashing into her when she challenged me with a quickening plunge of her hips. We were sweating, my eyes closed into her hair, our bodies grinding against one another, when her hand crawled downward to cup my ass, and she rushed her clit toward it. She moved against me clumsily, hastily, as I rubbed back and forth across her dancing thigh. The frenzy between my thighs began to focus, collecting into a bulb of ecstasy in its center, my eyes rolling backward beneath closed lids, and, when I felt her buck against me thrice and begin to fall limp, the tensing of her quad under my building ecstasy burst it open, and the orgasm flushed through my body and into hers.
Our thighs clutched together in absentminded weakness, our bodies leaning into one another limply, and we let 20 beats of the music pass that way, stilled now despite the cadence continuing around us.
My chin rested against the back of her neck, her hair falling around my face, my arms sliding down from where they had been clasping her back, and I felt the gods draw my jawline back across hers, grazing the soft skin of her cheek with mine, drawing my lips up to hers.
We jumped against each other at the sound of the gunshot.
She dropped her chin to her chest abruptly, and she placed a hand against my shoulder and pushed it away as both of our heads turned to the sound, and the searing cacophony of the shot was followed by three more shots just like it. I fell backward away from her reluctantly, head swimming in a thousand thoughts, the contact with her body an absorbing phantom. My god.
“My god… I… I need to go to bed. I – I need to go,” she stuttered to the pavement.
“Ise…”
“I need to go.” Eyes still downcast, she turned away and began walking away from the intersection.
“Isis! Not right—wait!”
But she was running. Nearby people screamed “What the fuck?” and gasped, and stirred, everyone in earshot stopped dancing while the people more than a hundred yards away continued as they were, oblivious to the shots. In the chaos I lost sight of her by the time she’d gone twenty yards, even trying to keep her in sight, frozen as I was with confusion.
“I think we should get out of here, now,” Wesley said firmly. The nearby crowd had begun to press outward into the surrounding streets, and we took hold of everyone remaining with us, having lost Aaliyah and Carly somewhere at an unknown time. Jackson dragged Ben by the hand up the 16th Street hill, the rest of us nearly running. Grant put his arm around my stilled waist and led me uphill, and Wesley walked beside him, all of us trotting, albeit clumsily, up the steep incline, breathing hard in spite of considerable collective conditioning. When we reached the intersection atop the hill I stopped, pulled out my phone and sent her a text.
“Please tell me you’re alright?”
Then I sent a similar one to Aaliyah as Jackson did the same with Clint, and I suggested we walk over the hill toward Buena Vista Park, and the collective of us began to climb. As we walked my ass buzzed and I jumped. Aaliyah was with Carly, at home.
“Is Isis there?”
I held my phone out and watched the screen as I continued uphill. We’d heard no more gunshots, but now there were sirens. Finally Aaliyah replied.
“She just got here.” I closed my eyes in gratitude.
By the top of the hill we all guffawed with exhaustion, drunk as we were, and I finally received her reply.
“I’m alive,” and nothing more.
&
nbsp; There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize the conception of the beautiful.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Marsyas[***]
As we reached the peaks of Ashbury Heights, Jackson explained politely that he and Ben would continue on to his house, by implication, alone, and the three of us that remained all met that announcement with equal but exhausted support. That development provided a minor light upon the night, though otherwise I faced a certain exhaustion from such all-consuming excitement followed by such fundamental disappointment, fear mixed in confusion. Blue balls, I assume, is more of a lie than a figure of speech most of the time, but my body was rife with unfermented potential, profuse lubrication still sliding between my legs from my earlier arousal, even having felt release.
There were of course no cabs circling up this high, where most of the wealthy residents slept soundly, oblivious to the recent violence, in their multi-million dollar residences. I was parched, first from my swirling dance of tension and then from my mile-long burst uphill, and I could but imagine the others were in the same condition. I suggested we continue the few blocks to my house and hydrate. Wesley and Grant were more than amenable.
None of us knew more of these gunshots than their sound. Though at one point or another we’d all trained our attention toward the firing pistol, the crowds obscured the shooter and his victims, and we’d no concept of who was shooting or who was shot, only that there was shooting and that we should not be around it. None of us had consulted a clock as we scurried uphill, but now Wesley consulted his phone and announced that it was barely midnight.
“Are you guys okay?” he asked.
Selfishly, my angst had little to do with what was, at that time, an ambiguous shooting that could have had one victim or four. The shooter was perhaps a bigoted invader, and his existence and his purpose were equally disappointing. Yet my reaction was more egocentric. He (or she) had really picked a most inopportune moment. I blistered at this unknown criminal in my own head. Honestly, could you not have waited fifteen minutes while I managed to say a word to her about the dance?
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