“No, let me see, let me see. I wanna see China, and then Japan and India. I bet India is way up there; Kama Sutra and all.” He uses the cursor to pull the bar down to the bottom. His excitement follows; India is at the bottom along with Japan and China. “Wow – wait – what?”
I walk over to the screen and check out the lagging statistics of the Durex Survey. The top of the window reads “Sex Frequency per Year.” China, Japan and India are well below fifty encounters per year. My own personal experiences find this consistent: trees that bore me no fruit.
“You know Mark, the Kama Sutra is more about how to be successful in a relationship, and also how to, like, raise a family and be intimately healthy. Very little of the Sutra is actually dedicated to eight-armed, contortionist demon sex,” I say. Yet he keeps scrolling through the other categories of the survey, hoping to validate his predilections.
“Yeah, but dated this Indian girl all throughout high school and we got freaky all the time.” He sighs and shrugs. This ends up being the last time we ever speak of the survey. I shrug as well and begin undressing As I am doing so I remember my earlier perusing of the Sutra. For fear of adding to Mark’s dismay, I keep quiet about the women’s “Art of Coyness” section. There is already enough wood on his fires of disappointment. No need to fan the flames.
My friends and housemates are on the couch smoking out of a hookah. In between inhalations of the hose, they pass around a parodically large bong. No one really cares that my door is wide open while I’m getting naked and into my dance clothes: a pair of khaki cargo shorts, a white tank top and black vans. This is really just me being lazy: the only things outside of my regular attire are dozens of “candy” bracelets and a camelbak full of Gatorade.
I am now ready. My baked group is not. I look at the wall clock: someone has tampered with it so that it permanently reads 4:20. I run back to my room to look at the time on my computer: 9 pm sharp. We have plenty of time.
I put the backpack full of electrolytes on a kitchen stool and sit back with the rest of the group. I am on Lyssette’s lap as she sits in the papasan. She puts both of her arms around my waist and passes me the hookah hose. I begin sucking out guava vapors. Running out of lung capacity, I exhale through my nose in between inhalations.
“I can’t believe you ran 15 miles today,” Melissa says to me, her voice muffled as pot smoke wafts out of her mouth and nostrils. “And now you’re going to be dancing until the early morning. I don’t know how you do it.”
“It won’t be six hours if you all keep smoking,” I say half-jokingly and half ‘I want to get the hell out of here.’ My words are trapped inside a hazy bubble.
“Dude, keep your pants on,” Joaquin chimes in. Everyone either boos groans in response.
“Too late for that,” Jamie says while winking at me. I never know whether she is flirting with just me or everybody.
I blow consecutive rings out of my mouth. I pass the hose to Mark on my right. He’s the driver for this event. His mode of transportation: an authentic 1973 VW Hippie Van.
To his left is my housemate, Melissa, one of those cool types of girls with tons of guy friends that are all secretly crushing on her. She is a blackout bingo board for the archetypal “Santa Cruz Cool Girl”: she smokes a lot of pot; plays videogames and the guitar; works in a head shop; owns a record player and an eclectic collection of vinyl; drinks forties. She’s essentially what every guy wants in a woman: another guy. The only problem is that Melissa is too cool to date you. So really all you can do is have museum etiquette by looking and appreciating her at a distance.
“Jordan - catch!” Joaquin yells as he throws me an orange medicine tube. “This is what your 40 dollars bought you.”
I open up the container: 400 milligrams of pure MDMA. “How long does it take to hit?” I ask him.
”Usually it’s about an hour, but it depends on whether or not you’ve eaten and what your metabolism is like,” He answers.
“I had a high carbohydrate meal and I ran hard for two hours today,“ I respond.
“In that case, yeah, same shit – an hour.”
I do the math and I estimate that if I take it a half hour into our trip up then I should be able to fry bacon off of my skin by the time I’m on the dance floor. But then I remember I want to peak when Infected Mushroom hits the stage.
“How long should it last for?”
“Shouldn’t be coming down for five hours - at least that’s what my experience was with it.” He says. Everyone besides Mark and I are too high and/or drunk to consider the variables. Good people.
We all pile into the back of Mark’s black and red van. He gets into the driver’s seat and Dan in the passenger’s side. This leaves me, Lyssette, Melissa, Joaquin, Vincent, Jamie and Jessica in the back. Everyone makes for the back window where the couch is. It only seats four, leaving it for me, Lyssette, Jamie and Melissa. Behind the driver’s seat is a cushioned chair. Vince sits in it with Jessica at his feet. Joaquin is against the back of Dan’s chair, strumming a mandolin to anonymous melodies. We’re all discussing Jessica’s upcoming quarter abroad in Costa Rica. The trip inspired her to break up with her boyfriend. No one seems sorry about it.
Vince listens with furrowed brows of concern. He sips a Pabst from the same hand that he holds a smoldering Marlboro Red. Melissa, Archetypal Santa Cruz Cool Girl - meet archetypal greaser complete with leather jacket over a white t-shirt, Chuck Taylor All-Stars and an ample Pompadour. While we’re at it, here’s Joaquin, a throwback to the early 90’s Seattle rock scene: work boots, torn up jeans, plaid shirt over a punk/metal band t-shirt you’ve never heard of, goatee and long, stringy “I don’t care” hair. And then there’s Lyssette, our token goth girl: black dress, lacey shirt, knee-high industrial boots, a comically small hat with a veil, and thorny accessories. I seem to have found myself in the setup to a terrible joke: a jock, goth, grunge rocker, greaser, hippie, three hipsters and a nerd pile into the back of Wavy Gravy’s shag wagon.
I start thinking of the Durex stats that said single people in the US only had sex 45 times a year. The number amazes me; it seems blindingly right. I count my casual encounters and people I slept with outside of official relationships. I scrape up the number 25. Unable to remember how many times I hooked up with each, I spitball the number 2-3, averaging 2.5. This sum is barely over the survey’s mean. Considering this is only over an 18 month period is unsettling.
Well, shit. It’s now very possible that every straight man’s inflated body count could be just terrible estimation and math skills rather than insecurity. These paltry numbers could be why people resort to relationships. It is (probably) better, (probably) consistent and (again, probably) safer. Oh right, and let’s also not forget there’s that whole interpersonal connection, happiness, companionship and romance stuff.
The van barrels down the hill. In a perfect screech, we turn and stop at a Valero. I get out with Mark and give him the printed up directions. As le panne d’essence pours into the car’s stomach, Mark looks over the paper.
“Why the hell are we going up The 1 when it’s faster to take the 17 to 880?”
“Scenery,” I tell him. “I know it's night but you can see the moon reflecting off of the water. Plus, this way we don’t have to pay a fee to get across the bridge.” He counters, telling me that the 680 goes inland on the Peninsula and is a straight shot unlike the 1.
“Well, in that case I can still find the SF Civic Center if taking the 680 will be better.” I say, caving in.
Slightly disappointed, I get back in the van. For reasons missed, I come to find Jessica and Melissa making out. I play it cool and make my way back to the couch. Vince and Joaquin are rapt. The former takes a heavy gulp of his Pabst and approves the view as “hot” with a nod and a pointed index finger.
“How’d we arrive here?” I ask in feigned offense. I’m pretty sure I fail to hide my titillation.
“I wanted to make out with my best friend because now she’s out of a relationship and it won’t matter if it’s awkward since she’s leaving for the equator.” Melissa says matter-of-factly, stopping mid-lip-lock. They recommence, giggling intermittently.
“So, wait, if Jessica’s leaving and just broke up with her boyfriend, does that mean I can kiss her too?” I ask. Subtly is an afterthought. They both laugh. Jessica gently moves Melissa aside and comes toward me. She grins with a pierced lower lip. She sinks her tongue into my mouth. We embrace for a blissful ephemeron. When she pulls away, the rest of the passengers are making out. Jaime and Melissa are together; Vince and Lyssette are having at it; now Jessica is moving her way over to Joaquin. I need to get in on this. I go over to Jaime and Melissa. Jaime gets up on my lap and leans back so that both Melissa and I can pull her shirt up. My hands collaborate with Melissa’s in rubbing Jaime through her jeans. She moans.
Eventually everyone has made out with everyone and all threesome possibilities are accounted for. Lyssette is now laid out over everyone in the back seat. She discovers an important part of the van’s anatomy: a ceiling handle that seems to have no real purpose. It hangs next to a disco ball that Mark has installed. Lyssette turns on the ball. The mirrored facets begin to spin and shoot light out, bespeckling the walls in a kaleidoscopic pattern.
She holds herself up by the wall handle and stretches out over the rest of us. Her legs are wrapped around my waist and everyone is rubbing, licking and kissing various parts of her body. Her head is in Vincent’s lap and he’s bent over, making out with her. I’m bestowed with her lower torso – my favorite part of her body. Her legs are muscular and toned from horseback riding and her waist is thin and accentuated with jutting hips. Her skin is soft, silky and smells of coconut lotion. I stroke my hands all over her midriff, kissing her obliques and tongue-flicking her belly button piercing. I slowly pull her panties down through her skirt. She plants her feet on the couch and arches her back. The garments slide off more easily, her pelvis inching closer to my face. My hands work my way down underneath her black skirt and I massage her legs. Her hips gyrate as I rub her tanned skin and I feel her closely cropped hair. I test the water by gradually moving my fingers forward. I patiently and thoroughly lick my fingers and then gently slide them into her. Her noises become louder but muffled as her lips are pressed up against Vince’s. Jaime gets behind me and takes my shirt off. She starts rubbing Lyssette with one hand and me with the other as she is kissing my back. Eventually there’s a strong, momentary constriction and then a release.
The car stops and everyone pokes their head up to see where we are: the Bay Bridge toll plaza – the very same one I told Mark to avoid. Everyone in the back recommences except for me. I go up to the front.
“Why didn’t you take 680?” I ask our lean and boyishly handsome driver.
“I wanted to give you guys more time,” He says while smiling widely as if to hold back laughter.
“Do you need any money?” I ask, his smile infecting me. I almost mirthfully break.
“Naw, dude, it’s cool.” He says, hunching over the steering wheel to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling.
I take a time out, sitting in the middle of him and Dan. The back continues in its fleshy, writhing indulgence. Looking out the surrounding windows, I observe the reservoir of automobiles dammed up at the toll plaza. The residency time for all the SF prospectors looks to be about 25 minutes. That’s a Bay Area local for you: we can look at the traffic’s speed and direction and surmise the travel time. We don’t need no FM frequency updates.
This doesn’t discourage anyone: most of the traffickers have their windows rolled down and are blasting trance, EDM or jungle. It’s every thizz kid’s wet dream with everyone having the same nocturnal plans. The musical convergence makes for a bizarre but cohesive interaction much like the smorgasbord of passengers in our van. Brothers and sisters come together and dance, dance, DANCE!
The traffic begins venting its impatience, the other passengers and drivers start dancing in the lanes to all the sound systems. I tell the ongoing orgy in back to take a look. Stopping and looking outside, everyone becomes more excited. Everyone puts on just enough clothing and opens up the sliding door to join the extemporaneous dance party. Melissa and I get on the top of the van and start twirling our hands and gyrating our hips. Mark blasts Journey to drown out all the other “boots and cats”. Steve Perry implores everyone to never stop believing. A friendly volume war ensues. The higher the decibel count escalates, the fuzzier the music becomes until it's inaudible. For fear of ruining the speakers, everyone sheepishly returns to an acceptable amplification.
The traffic starts moving.
“All right, everyone get the fuck back in the car,” Mark yells with endearment. Everyone listens. The orgy recommences as promptly as it dispersed for the dance intermission. Once at the booth, I stop to watch the reaction of the toll collector. The middle-aged woman wearing the reflector vest does a double take into the back of the van. She laughs and shakes her head, waving Mark on through and refusing to accept his money.
“Have a great night,” she says.
Fifteen minutes later we’re in the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium parking lot. We all exit and start putting on our plastic bling and breaking glow sticks. I put on my Camelbak and take the 400 mg MDMA and wash it down with Gatorade from the hose.
The entry line is moving faster than the toll plaza. The boys and girls separate into two different lines for the security check. The security guard goes through my bag. I’m already a bad mule getting high on my shipment. I’m waved on through and I meet the rest of my posse. I turn to Lyssette. She looks right back. I wink at her. She raises her eyebrows and then turns back to the rest of the group. The car ride must have been just an isolated incident. Unfortunately the beast has had its cage rattled. I have no idea what to do about it now.
“Did you guys know that this event has the largest disco ball in the world?” Jaime asks as we walk into the 20,000 person stadium. We see it, gawking at Atlas’ bacchanalian burden: a staggering 10-foot, reflective sphere. All around us are glowing, decorated people, lights, dancers and elaborate costumes. We jump up and down, crashing into one giant group hug. PLUR is the word. We push our way up to the stage front, the crowd condensing as we get closer. We find a place next to the Marshall stacks. Benny Benassi’s set is blasting at 11. We all start dancing, giving special emphasis to our arms and hands. Every so often people come by, hug us and trade candy bracelets, dance with us, embrace, kiss, make out, move on. Meanwhile, ambient electronics pahoehoe flows underneath a pulsating surf of tasty dance beats, vibrating the floor and moving the bodies on it.
Benny’s set ends without any announcements or goodnight. The record transition to DieselBoy. The music gets louder and the lights brighter. I look around to see if anyone else has noticed: no evidence of such. I look at my watch. 11:51 pm. The snake is saddled up and ready to ride. I keep getting warmer, eventually taking my shirt off. The front of my body is filmed in sweat but I keep getting more into the dancing. I can’t stop. I am compelled to surf with the beat and hop scotch on the ethereal audio lava flow. I quickly chug at my camelback hose. The Gatorade may be diluted but it tastes sweeter than the bee’s hive. I gargle it, letting the semisweet juice warm up before swallowing it. I feel every inch of the fluid’s journey, cascading over the millions of peristaltic fingers. Bent on experiencing this riveting sensation in an excess, I continue chugging.
Melissa notices that I have stopped dancing and am earnestly sucking at the hose like a fallacious incubus. She approaches me. I can’t see myself. I can only assume I have the drunkest, sloppiest grin on my face as I’m practically giving this apparatus a blowjob. I nod and laugh, shooting the water out of my nose. Opening up her arms and laughing too, we embrace. She pushes back to give me a slobbery kiss and then returns to dancing.
I eventually run out of Gatorade. I’m disappointed but at least this means I am hydrated for the rest of the night. But now I need more bodily stimulation. I look around at all the blinding strobe lights and Marshall stacks. I tell the others where I am going and to stay put. They all nod but I know they’ll forget. They are stoners first, friends second and never a moment before.
There are no barriers or guards in front of the speakers as I look around for security. I put my body up against the vibrating stacks. If I didn’t have ear plugs I would be deaf. My hair is trembling, the bass circuitously wrapping each follicle in static electricity. I put my back against the speakers. I see a guy covered head-to-toe with spinning lights. Within arms length of me, he is twirling glow sticks on long key chains. I tap his shoulder and ask him for a light show. He smiles and nods. I take my seat on the floor and he starts. His movements are so fast that his glow sticks are just smearing colors. People crowd around. My back vibrating against the speaker’s diaphragm.
One of the girls amongst the crowd is in a Gogo Girl outfit and riveted pigtails. She has a cigarette behind her ear. I motion for her. She comes down to eye level with me. I request one of her cigarettes in exchange for one of my candies. We trade. She lights up the spliff for me. Normally a menthol is gag-worthy. Under the influence of molly, the cool taste is worth killing for.
Eventually the crowd disperses. I wander around, still climbing the ladder to my summit. When I brush against people, it isn’t that simple; it feels almost as if I am about to fuse with their skin. I want to sink into them but I’m just passing by. The lights are flashing and beckoning me to shore to sink my ship. All I can see are silhouettes. The white lights break up and scatter into primary colors, the hairs on my arm dancing, sweat trickling off and down my face. The music, however, sounds slightly off. I hear everything dialed in but I can only concentrate on each layer of the track. I have to concentrate really hard to actually hear everything combined. Right now it’s only the downbeat, bumping like tachycardia at 123 BPM. Keeping calm, I try to at least keep the bass constant so I can dance in time. It proves to be too awkward for me.
Trying to find my group, I aimlessly thread through the crowd. I bump into two sets of hands. One is passing a condom to the other. I connect the hands to arms and then the arms to bodies. They belong to two guys in white booty shorts and skin tight, black muscle shirts. They are dancing close; the larger guy in front wraps his shaped, sculpted arms around the smaller one’s lower back. Both of their hair is spiked up into sort-of mohawks. Rolling, I confuse the two as the same person, still only seeing silhouettes, unable to discern either. The two gorgeous men kiss for a short while.
Then suddenly, the smaller one with the condom pushes the other to the ground, bending him over. Both their shorts drop to their ankles. It’s rude to stare but that’s what I’m doing. Like the dancing before, I can’t seem to help myself. The dominant, smaller guy unwraps the plastic with the care he neglected his sub. He pulls out the synthetic and places it down and in front of him. The piece disappears into the shadows. Both of them lick their hands and place them at their adjoining pelvis and rear where light is absent. Right before initiation, the dom looks over at me. Most of his features are obfuscated but I can see his big toothy smile glowing under the UV light’s influence. He nods at me and docks. His sub reacts: shoulder blades squeezing together; back arching. I give them thumbs up. Not my predilection but their delight delights me.
Before I go looking for my friends, I see a familiar outline: Lyssette with her checklist goth attire. Her nipples are seen easily through her camisole’s thin material. Her skin dark, I can only see the whites of her expressive eyes with the erratic lights racing and strobing around us. She comes right up to me, forcing my hands around her. She dances, her upper body undulating side-to-side. I stand there, incapable of working with the discordant bass drum. She continues, her long, wavy, chestnut hair whipping side to side closely behind her accentuated bodily movements.
Without warning, she takes one of my hands, licks her fingertips and then slides me into her. She never put her underwear back on from when we were in the van.
“What the - ?” I ask, but my voice is drowning in the electronica tidal wave.
I stop. I’m too confused. I can’t see her face with all of the lights coming from behind her but I know she can see mine that says “what the fuck are we doing?!” This isn’t an hallucinogen I took - I clearly know this is happening. I don’t move anything. The light reflects off her soft cheeks and long, bouncy hair, each individual fiber in phosphorescence.
‘Do something, dammit,’ I say to myself.
She dips backwards, her face lights up from the strobes and her vibrant eyes roll back. Her spine melts in my hands like heated wax going from solid to liquid. Come-hither motions in my one hand, her melting spine in the other. My mouth half open, my pupils gaping, I become aware of my surroundings. Everyone is either oblivious or trying really hard not to gawk. Privacy on a crowded dance floor. I capitulate and do as I would as if no one is there. My arm keeps her from falling backwards. She keeps bending back more and more. My muscles burn. I don’t care.
She comes back up after much twitching, pushes my hands out of the way and gets down. With her knees resting on my shoes, she unbuckles everything, dropping my shorts to my ankles and takes me in. I don’t know how I’m holding out. I pull her hair, throwing my head back, blinding myself to the artificial daylight.
She gets up and reaches into her shirt and pulls it back out, revealing a small, square-shaped wrapper. She rips it open, pulling out the contents, and throws the wrapper onto the floor. The harness gets placed down below. Her face is inches from mine, drunken eyes locked in on me, teeth exposed, bottom lip dropped. The constriction starts at the top and makes its way down. I don’t know how it’s going to happen.
Pulling her leg up, her calf lands on my shoulder. The space in between us disappears in one, concise pull. It’s a seamless, molecular fusion. The music scrambles frantically, like water looking for weak spots in the bedrock to sink down into the Earth’s mantle. I look to the stage. Infected Mushroom is jamming under the large disco ball.
Our upper bodies don’t seem to be moving, but something that I don’t see is happening. The music is aggressively climbing to a summit. It gets louder, the many layers start lining up appropriately until finally they’re waving back and forth, foam spilling on the sharp ridges of the uniformed longitudes of the swells. They keep hitting the surface continuously in parallel bombardment, the ocean’s infinite energy incessantly grabbing the vault of sand only to slip back out and attempt it over and over again. The sky is up above it like immiscible materials. I am hearing the division and unity the way it was intended to be heard in this wall of sound: synthesizers gargle; snares are spit out like the clacking of a gatling gun; the inexorable metronome of bass kicking like a blitzkrieg. The bright pastels are blissfully blinding. I am frozen in a subatomic world; the grain of sand and the menage-a-trois molecule of two Hydrogens and an Oxygen. The stacks keep charging, gushing on to the dance floor. The dam has broken and its motherlode is a tsunami of sonic dopamine and serotonin.
Suddenly it stops, leaving the crowd’s white noise of cheering and encouragement for an encore. I look down at my lower half. I’m alone. My shirt is gone. I put my hand in my pocket and feel a moderate amount of moisture. I backtrack, noting that my shorts are at an appropriate elevation.
Someone in an orange jumpsuit comes to the stage and announces that it is 4 am and the show is most certainly over. I feel my forehead. What he meant to say was that the music for the show is over. The lights come back on. Reluctantly, the crowd congests the exits. I hold my ground and do an inventory of my pockets and backpack. Everything is accounted for except for my shirt. I don’t feel like looking for it. I flop onto the sullied ground. Nursing my fatigue takes precedence before all else.
Hopefully the room will empty and my group will hang back to wait for me. Eventually they’ll see one loner lying flat in the middle of the football field-sized floor. I’m trying to decide whether my forty dollar experience was real or hallucinated. I conclude that it's best to just meet up with Lyssette and see how she reacts to me.
Before dozing off, someone falls on me and starts hugging me. They pull back. It’s Meslissa. She’s all smiles.
“How the hell did you love that?!” She asks in wonderment.
“I loved it,” I respond. She squint-smiles and moves in for another embrace.
“Your pupils are still gaping wide open,” she laughs. Still holding on to my hands, she gets off of me and leans back to pull me off the ground. The rest of the group is standing behind her with what looks like post-coital joy. FFL: Freshly Fucked Look.
“All right, so, sleep and stuff,” Melissa says.
“Sleep,” the rest of the group responds.
I look over at Lyssette. She’s avoiding eye contact with me. I’m left wondering.
The ride home is quiet aside from The Sea and Cake whispering out from underneath the dashboard and steering wheel. Mark is nice enough to drop everyone off at their respective homes. The only people going to our house are him, me and Melissa. The first thing I do is raid the refrigerator for some kind of fruit. I find a bowl of freshly washed persimmons.
Mark and Melissa no longer seem as keen on going to bed as they were an hour and a half ago; they both retreat to the couch and turn on the Super Nintendo. Mark takes a controller and relaxes on to the recliner. The jingle of Diddy Kong Racing becomes the only sound in the room. Our other housemate, Jessica, is sleeping in her room, oblivious to the events of our evening in San Francisco. She’ll hear about it later for sure though.
I go to the couch with the bowl of unripened persimmons. I’m still euphoric, able to appreciate their tingling on my jaw with each mastication. I hope I won’t be bored with anything once I’ve dismounted the apex.
“Where the hell did you go for the entire show?” Melissa asks, gazing at the screen with weary eyes. The only explanation that enters my mind is the teachings of Don Juan the Yaqui Shaman. This wasn’t demon weed or peyote but Mark and Melissa aren’t conscious enough right now to see the difference.
“I met up with Peyote,” I say as the best answer possible, “I met up with her.” The buttons on the controllers keep gently clicking under thumb compressions.
“So her head was like a cactus with hundreds of red, buttony seeds infused in her green, leathery, water-retaining skin?” Mark asks. He’s surprisingly coherent for 5:30 a.m. and after innumerable bong rips.
“No, peyote comes in the form most welcoming for whoever is taking it. It’s like how Ishvara has appendages that are all separate gods whose forms it can choose to take. Tonight I was Arjuna and Peyote my Krishna.”
“So what was she like?” he asked, finally looking over at me, the game on pause.
“The Mediterranean Sea. She was olive-colored, smooth, hot and cool, hair that seemed to be caught in a permanent gentle breeze, like a snapshot and an iris that was soft bark on the outside but healthy wick on the inner mantle.” The two had no fucking clue who I was talking about. This was my intent.
“Are you still coming down?” He asks, smiling anyway.
“I will be for a while longer,” I finally respond. The moving ceiling starts bothering me less. I still had quite some time left. I continue to let the persimmons joyfully sting me.
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