no church in the wild a hypomnema of hypersexuality chapter 4 no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself he felt keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment he knew that the senses no less than the soul have their spiritual mysteries to reveal oscar wilde the picture of dorian gray peaches christ before claire i was drinking no more than an average professional i suppose given my age i was at the office far too often to socialize on a nightly basis and wouldnt dare indulge if it were one of the many days of the week and weekend where i would have to wake the next morning and begin plugging away at work but more than that id had little desire to get wasted on a non social basis id never had much confidence in my ability to seduce anyone but through a long line of relationships that turned on a friends first dynamic like the one id had with jamal i got laid on occasion i wouldnt have listed chastity among my life gripes and id fallen for people before claire of course at one point id found myself so overwhelmingly impressed by one of my business school classmates and seen so much in common between our playful lifestyles that id even tried desperately to convince him that our jamal like sex only relationship should be more i daresay i made a huge fool of myself before realizing that he just wasnt that into me but because people and men in particular so often reacted to my personality with a decided lack of understanding i couldnt remember going into a courtship with any hope that understanding was forthcoming really id had few courtships people hit on me but i was never sure how to hit on them and so my trial romantic interactions tended to be with people who didnt interest me all that much there were of course plenty of good people with interesting lives and substantial intellect among them and i knew it was hardly their fault that whatever i was happened to be more than they could identify with it was only with claire who was in hindsight sort of rude and rather inconsiderate that i felt the novel tug of the potential for understanding and that in itself intoxicated me to no end when i was forced to acknowledge what claire really was that potential evaporated before my eyes and i was left unreasonably despondent in my withdrawal never despondent for having lost her as a person but despondent for having lost an ideal my time with jamal shortly thereafter had solidified the feeling that romance was utterly hopeless for me then id wholeheartedly adopted the lifestyle of a barely functional alcoholic not that i then could put my finger on why or on what i so desperately sought to escape for the weeks after id parted with claire most of my outings were to bars i could usually dig up a friend to join me and i found that there were suddenly many days when i spent part of my workday hugging a cup of coffee with my head down on my desk there was one exception though san franciscos symphony was among the features of my city i enjoyed the most and for reasons essentially opposite to the rest the mood the outlook of the city and its festivals fed my taste for wild abandon and my hunger for vice for experimentation for investigation of the lascivious elements of humanity the symphony the ballet the opera these gave me respite from these abundant external stimuli and an opportunity to simply sit and think about what life was and why so since moving to the city i had been thrilled to expend my golden handcuff funds on symphony season tickets id bought two seats under the impression that id want to bring along anyone i was seeing at the time but i ended up scrambling in a desperate search for any friend any companion to accompany me with every ticket sometimes i took good friends sometimes not so good friends and sometimes i ended up going alone over time id found that the companions i chose didnt seem to get what i got out of it didnt want to or couldnt discuss it on the terms i did by instinct or perhaps that they simply didnt enjoy this particular exploit in the way that i did i consequently grew more comfortable with going alone and by halloween i rarely bothered to invite anyone to join me at the symphony at all the friday after halloween the image of the pretty girl with brilliant eyes id talked to at trigger still lingered behind my eyelids and every time i saw her there i chastised myself for failing to properly learn how to approach someone in public and strike up a conversation at that point most days of the week i chastised myself by drinking self destructively but that friday i had a symphony ticket and i wasnt so forlorn as to ruin the potential of that experience with alcohol it was bachs prelude and fugue in e minor among other pieces that interested me less i put on a dress donned my glasses to better see the movements of the musicians fingers and sat calmly in my seat warming up a bit as the strings did and listened to the reciprocal notes of piano keys bach toyed with me with us i knew it his keys taking one step forward and two steps back for what seemed like ages my mind cleared and there was neither claire nor jamal nor bars nor alcohol only the focus on following the composers journey through the piece why did these notes frustrate me it was bachs frustration not mine or it should have been but why did he teeter so on the edge of progress and then backpedal that wasnt bach it was me i realized i felt myself always teetering i was ready to match the notes at the very moment that their tempo sped and i felt bachs urgency at resolution ready for him to offer me my own resolve but where my thoughts were wholly consistent with the teetering introduction i found i could not follow bach to his resolution id asked myself why asked myself what was holding me back i cant progress because these people im courting dont understand me id thought but as the pianists strokes grew more and more rapid as the notes blended against one another and i felt the unified melody rise i had another thought maybe i cant progress because i dont understand them id left the symphony that friday secure in that latter thought and secure in the notion that i should try to understand where others were coming from more than i ever had before but without any concept of how id go about obtaining that understanding id laid down in bed sober still trying to figure out how i myself could seek the understanding i was so vain as to expect in others and then the dream again i only hear a drip drip drip around me i curl my toes on neptunes borders and step forward toward the first stall of pompeiis suburban baths i have this dressing room all to my naked self white gleams in marble around me and on i walk my neck trailing over as i pass the scene and stall marked i with a fresco of a woman riding cowboy on a man as i stare at the still painting i realize im hallucinating the figures to move to writhe their motion draws my eyes to stall ii where the fresco betrays a woman lying facing me waiting for the man behind to enter her i feel myself stepping with their movement almost without will warm air hugging me and iii a woman fellates a man his hand pressing downward on her head her cheeks prickling iv where a diminutive slave boy eats the pussy of a grand bejeweled woman but as i step toward stall v i wake squeezing my eyes thats the third time ive had that dream this week i thought groggily i looked over at my cell phone to find matching text messages from my two best gay boyfriends one of my texts that morning was from jackson my gay husband my oldest friend jackson had texted joan bailed on peaches tonight know anyone whod want the ticket peaches christ id learned recently was one of the citys more notable drag queens jackson and i had gotten along famously since we were children and we knew one another far too well i knew of his youthful mischief born of endless frustration with the inability to express his sexuality there was no hiding my past from him either he knew i had been a fat kid he knew what car i drove when i was 16 he knew my parents the guys id kissed first the girls who first hit on me he was at the party i tried to throw in high school for new years when my parents were out late and my friend blew chunks all over the living room and we drunkenly tried to clean it up wringing the mop in our laundryroom slopsink leaving a seeping cesspool of chunks that smelled of tequila for my parents to find he knew the lie i told them that they didnt believe about the dog being responsible and he knew they hadnt believed it he knew my sat score he knew how excited i got in calculus class when the curves started to spin and shared my disgust with our well meaning but vapid teacher who could do nothing but copy the examples she didnt understand from the book onto the whiteboard he told me he liked men when wed parted to go to college after id watched him have serious slowly progressing relationships with a few boyish ladies he was the smartest person i knew from mississippi named even for his fathers pride in that armpit of a state our post grad school reunion in the city was one of the happier coincidences of my lifetime he was simply beautiful sharp featured and honey voiced a lingering slow accent he wasnt paper thin but not bulky either not short but not particularly tall people regularly commented to me that there was just something about him and that something was reflected in the parade of hot impressive rich men who routinely followed him around like puppies women had always followed him too but that meant substantially less to him incidentally i also woke to a text from my business school friend ben merely asking whats up today ben hailed from new york specifically the longer island but he had fallen for san francisco just as i had and had refused to leave it too id suspected for years as had most of our mutual friends that the reason why was a certain taste for cock and i was elated to hear his confirmation after what seemed like decades of suspicion as with most gay men his first confession was one of bisexuality id mentioned jackson actually and how he was elated at the possibility of fucking james franco as ben and i sat watching the spiderman movie together yeah i think i would too i sort of cocked my head toward him and looked him in the eye waiting i mean im open to that too i nodded and said cool cool we should hit the castro yeah he offered timidly i could be down for that of course that was his way of saying i want cock and i knew it his getting it was another matter entirely he was bashful at least in matters not to do with intellect i suppose he couldnt deny the relative supremacy of his intellect jackson would later comment to me that ben was one of the smartest people hed ever met and i tended to agree ben looked down often shying from personal conversations though he could hold a conversation with anyone about virtually anything bens james franco confession had come less than two months earlier barely before my stint with claire began and despite more than a couple of castro visits since including our halloween i hadnt seen him getting any cock certainly it was coming there was so much cock to be had but hed seemed so reserved when it was in reach after hed confessed his interest in men hed gone to new york to work on a deal for over a month and wed had little occasion to talk since both of us inundated by our jobs and me wallowing in discontent with my hole where the hope was to boot that evening peaches christ was producing a drag review called silence of the trans and jackson and i were in happy possession of tickets trans was i suppose misleading nomenclature trans could mean transsexual as in a person who had taken hormonal and or surgical action to switch his or her gender or intends to or potentially that such a person identifies more with the gender opposite the one listed on his or her birth certificate it could also potentially mean transvestite or a person who enjoys dressing as one of the opposite gender straight men can be transvestites but gay male transvestites are the only drag queens as ben had been on the east coast for a while i thought it fitting that he be welcomed back to the er flexibility of san francisco by peaches jackson was amenable so i extended the invite which ben accepted later that evening jackson and i had joined the long line that formed in anticipation of peaches christ which began at the doors of the castro theatre and wrapped around the corner peaches encourages her fans to dress up for shows and in this city that meant more drag queens all made up in the line tall and sequined women in black with white painted faces the grandest gauge earrings id ever seen certainly enough patrons wore simple t shirts and jeans as jackson and i did but in general the line had a strong scent of san francisco on it we didnt wait long noting the more remarkable costumes before ben walked up to me and said hi he wore a simple gingham plaid shirt and jeans his smallish nose hardly poking out between his gray eyes a mop of dark brown hair thick on his head at long last i started i have the chance to introduce two of my favorite people jackson ben ben jackson hiya heard many good things jackson said as he reached out to shake bens hand ben accepted his hand and said my pleasure and i heard something almost flirty in his voice that id never heard before throngs of summery hipsters swirled past us on the sidewalk and more costumed patrons filed into the line behind us bens eyes fixed on jackson for a moment before he said so how are you liking our fair city so far jackson beamed i love it i mean i miss having space sometimes but well theres no place like this this is like gay disneyland and he swept his hand demonstratively across the line amen to that i chimed so what part of new york are you from jackson continued the part where people are angry jackson cackled that doesnt help me ben smiled i know i wouldnt have thought most were angry before but here anyways i was born in and so they went on making small talk with almost no input from me until ben was citing some book to jackson hed recently read about how dense urban environments particularly welcoming ones like this fostered high degrees of creativity id read the book and i added a note on its thesis which i suppose reminded ben that i was there and i suppose in turn prompted him to take a good look at my grim countenance because suddenly he said bacchus are you okay thats a loaded question i replied i think thats a no the emphasis ben placed in the center of his sentence was precisely the sort of intonation our mutual friends had seized upon in the past when they predicted hed turn out gay ha i missed you man so whats up he looked over at jackson as though jackson might answer for me i suppose he might have whats up i mean weltschmerz i suppose i replied they both shot me a quizzical look i just happened upon the word but it is hugely appropriate it means depression caused by recognition of the difference between reality and the ideal based on their faces i assumed theyd understood the implication i didnt really have a good reason to be depressed but i dont think i really got the implication myself at the time that you could add irrational to the beginning of the words definition ben looked down im familiar jackson broke his silence now and looked pointedly at ben and he betrayed by his comment that id told him quite a bit about ben already your spots the toughest it gets better have you told your parents jackson and i had always made a habit of discussing the progress of those who were turning toward gay it occurred to me suddenly that that very process the process of turning gay had the potential to answer the question id posed to myself the previous night it was after all a process by which someone became acquainted with a new pleasure a process through which they would come to understand something different and grapple with what that newness meant to them i needed to understand that process more i supposed no i havent told them yet ben mumbled jerking me back into the moment id retreated from in my own head how do you think theyll react jackson looked straight into bens eyes and there was an immeasurable pause before ben answered i really dont know i hesitate to tell them until well until i have actually done something ben said self criticism writhing in his voice ripping himself from jacksons gaze to stare down at the table why i asked i must have interrupted jackson who stopped a word in his throat well i mean if i start dating a girl theres no point ben explained now his voice was more familiar i daresay it was his work presentation voice well rehearsed jackson and i looked at each other briefly the line began to inch forward and we shuffled along with the boisterous crowd as we approached the theater i looked back to ben and asked is there a particular girl youre into he opened his mouth to speak and closed it again then he said no not a particular one but i do still like women i have a very particular type of woman i mean id only known ben to sleep with one girl in our whole acquaintance an ethiopian beauty with a tiny waist and plump breasts id been jealous we offered our tickets to the usher and dug up three seats together settling with ben between jackson and me the theater was built in the early 20s and the era still wafted inside the venue spread on two separate levels under ceilings flowering in gaudian art deco swirls and a rich mauve color palette reliefs of daring classical figures adorning either side of the stage what do you like about women i prompted ben as we sat looking upon mauve goddesses ben sat silent for a long moment before offering i like the grace of them and the calm jackson laughed out loud which bordered on rude and sarcastically chimed i feel the same way about ella fitzgerald now i was giggling jackson for his part had long ago foresworn any lingering interest in women wed often joked that if he had any interest whatsoever or if it were 1955 wed be legally married as opposed to philosophically married already the surrounding attendees looked up at our laughter and jackson looked at me so he hasnt yet been the subject of your proselytization not really hes been far away for a while and has just recently hatched from the closet and all i explained ben sounded annoyed when he said im sorry did you have some measure of enlightenment to offer jackson sighed i hope you realize what kind of can of worms youre opening right now i reached across ben to smack the side of jacksons arm bitch he smiled as did i ben dearest friend where to begin i suspect your interest in women is likely marginal at best or at least more aesthetic than romantic and why would you think that ben asked me because you admit that you are attracted to men i would think you of all people would understand an attraction to both ben whined calling me out indeed i do and i actually think thats more common for people of both genders than their only having interest in one sex i believe you have some attraction to women if you were a woman id be totally prepared to call you a bisexual much as i hate that word but you grew up in an environment where the vast majority of the community believes that any attraction to men denotes exclusive attraction to men an environment which i daresay criticizes exclusive attraction to men in some way if deep down you believed that you could be happy with a woman i dont think you would have admitted any attraction to men at least probably not to anyone but me with girls admitting the attraction is less dangerous because it doesnt necessarily quickly change your identity to gay especially in san francisco but i admit if a woman socializes with lesbians all the time or like doesnt partake more than once thats a pretty good indicator that shes really only into men he sat quietly for a moment then muttered in a weak voice im not sure im comfortable with the assertion that other men can be attracted to both genders but i am so obviously not into women just because im willing to come out im not sure im like done with women are you with her on this he asked jackson jackson replied no im not not entirely i think she makes more of everyones experimentation than she should realistically i find a woman sexually attractive every once in a while but objectively the idea of pussy grosses me the fuck out how do you feel about the sex organs thats always been the hard part ben said catching jacksons eye again and getting stuck there jackson looked back unabashed so to speak i said cackling try as i might i could never ignore the opportunity for a juvenile dirty joke touch ben said but im not buying i get that youre saying some sort of cultural sensory deprivation is at work here and i know that sensory systems are continuously shaped by experience like if you dont use the sense in a way it will sort of atrophy and so depriving someone of the use of their senses well except for the sense of smell will affect perception with that sense going forward jacksons eyes fixed a giddy curious stare on ben as he spoke probably in awe that this banker spouted recent neurological studies but even given changes to a psyche that might result from depriving that psyche of something some people are demonstrably totally gay and some people are decidedly straight and i think that comes from something immutable about them ben said i agree i said exasperated i was used to ben busting out a hugely relevant counterpoint and it hadnt phased me its just that peaches christ took this opportunity to interrupt us with the beginning of her drag review the lighting in the theater darkened and the applause rose to be continued i whispered to ben as the emcee in a black garter belt introduced the story and the players urging peaches christ who played trannibal lecter out onto the stage and together they introduced the lesbian clarise a professional looking queen in a power suit who accepted her introduction in a voice crafted with baritone and lisp to imitate ms jodie foster next came madame senator and her chubby drag daughter and the introductions closed off with the announcement of buffalo jill played by an up and coming drag personality made famous on reality tv via rupauls drag race buffalo jill was the lankiest of the bunch though hardly the castmember with the most egregious stage makeup a video of credits followed the live introduction allowing each lady in the cast the opportunity to make another joke about herself and the cinema inspired premise toward the end of the video the senator appeared giant on the screen eye makeup facetiously suggesting that her eyebrows rose at the very top of her forehead before buffalo jill was given accolades appropriate to her premiere in the break of darkness that followed the video while the bare sets were supplemented with the accouterments of an asylum i began my response to ben not bothering to whisper i believe some people are only attracted to the opposite sex and some people are only attracted to the same sex i just think those types of people are actually the minority that most of the population has like you do some attraction to both she just hopes thats true of most straight girls really jackson added i guess i do hope that generally i just think women are more likely to admit an interest in both sexes when they have it because for some reason people then think of them as extra sexy while if a guy admits to liking guys everyone is generally going to assume he is just totally gay but i maintain that youre more likely to find happiness with a man now ben well id agree with that at least ben conceded but im not sure im ready to buy that most of the population is attracted to both something went awry onstage and the darkness lingered longer than it should have id certainly give you that most of the population that is attracted to both doesnt admit it i said defensively but if youre blindfolded and some unnamed person starts doing a great job of blowing you youre going to ejaculate regardless of whether the mouth happens to belong to a man or a woman the stranger to my left looked pointedly at me but i continued slightly more hushed the mistake i think people make is assuming that the response to sexual stimulation is physically dependent upon a partners gender its not its more dependent upon your perception of that persons sex and how that perception fits into your worldview shaped by your upbringing and of course your perception of whether that persons sex should turn you on so if you think someone shouldnt turn you on for whatever reason you may not feel attracted even if you have the biological backings for attraction jackson cut me off bacchus you cant deny that perceiving someone you find beautiful of a gender you find beautiful plays a part in arousal no i wont deny that i said i just think what you respond to is partly a consequence of your upbringing imagine your parents had insisted throughout your childhood that any man who dressed as a woman was satan could you enjoy this show as much the emcee interrupted us as the stage lights rose s he called out clarise who began meandering through the staged asylum making her way toward trannibal lecters voluminous bright orange hair as clarise conversed in euphemisms with trannibal another inmate whipped her dick out of her straightjacket and started to wag it at clarise a brief change of scene brought buffalo jill tricking the senators chubby daughter into a van when the scene closed the lights dimmed and restarted quickly bringing us into the lair of the infamous buffalo jill a lair that appeared strikingly similar to the asylum but now roasting spits fit for a luau were perched at each corner of the stage loaded with some unidentifiable pieces of plastic whited out mannequins peppered the display and on the floor lay bloody obese corpses as i leaned over to ask ben what was on the spits the production answered my question with a song if the song had a title it must have been delectable buttocks twenty or so chorus queens filed out onto the stage and joined buffalo jill in singing the praises of buttocks asses glutes delicious they were scrumptious delectable the actors began to mime chopping off one anothers glutes with stage cleavers as it occurred to me that the spits were roasting plastic bubble butt insertions for pants the chorus queens fell en masse onto their backs and held legs in the air shaking their asses to the crowd singing delectable buttocks over and over again when the lights rose for a break ben said holy fucking shit indeed replied jackson speaking of perception supporting stimulation i began oh id hardly disagree that perception plays a role in arousal ben said this does not arouse me thank god jackson said but there are aroused people here what im trying to say is that perception is malleable too i think even jackson will agree with me on that i suppose i will agree with her on part of this your perceptions the very world you see around you when you open your eyes is shaped by the environment you were raised in and the descriptors youve been given for example in namibia there are only five words for colors theres one word that means both green and blue and when anthropologists show a namibian a bunch of green blocks and one blue block shaped the same and ask the namibian to tell them which block is different they really cant they stare and stare and after a very long time they might identify something different about the blue block point is in some sense you cant even see what your environment doesnt give you words for right exactly i stuttered excitedly like in rome there were no words for gay or straight there were however specific verbs for every act of penetration that indicated a particular gender penetrating organ and orifice the romans only thought of good and bad in terms of actions active or passive actions and reacted to those there was no such thing as an orientation and good luck finding a latin word for drag queen even though there was plenty of cross dressing there had been a time when i made such speeches proudly full of self assurance years of study had generated a compulsion to call out rome in my everyday conversations often to the chagrin of my companions but the progression of claire to jamal had me wondering at the inefficacy with which my theories seemed to apply to my world i was undoubtedly overly dependent on the lessons of roman ideology i hoped that i was at least presenting these harebrained theories of mine convincingly to ben so what ben asked the words for hetero and homo are derived from german ha no well sort of they were coined by a german about a hundred and fifty years ago i know of no references to sexuality as a personality trait before that and believe me ive looked in rome ben asked ive looked well beyond rome on that one no the first reference to homosexuality is thought to be in an 1869 german pamphlet that advocated the repeal of sodomy laws ironically as soon as you name a thing you shape its existence forever that i believe jackson said i think shes been obsessed with looking at that question for a while now i felt defensive i just refuse to believe that any necessary characteristic of humans goes without a word for the first several hundred thousand years of human language so i dont think were on the right track using those words now i find them grossly inadequate the man to my left was staring unabashedly at me now and i was saved from acknowledging him when the lights dimmed and rose again back in buffalo jills lair the senators daughter had been unceremoniously dumped into a huge metallic cylinder nervously cuddling buffalo jills fluffy white human sized drag dog as she cowered buffalo jill began a song of triumph of hunger of narcissism posing seductively for a video camera whose feed displayed above the stage wrapped now only in a light silk flowery robe as she sang she teased the crowd with flashes of the alabaster form beneath it which was strikingly feminine when shown in profile ass cheek and all to the audience we watched awestruck as she met the crescendo of this particular musical number by reaching down to tuck her dick between her legs and turned to the audience opening the robe gasps escaped even this open minded audience and i was forced to admit that seeing just the little tuft of black hair above the crotch this skinny ass queen appeared to have the body of a flat chested chick the crowd roared i cant believe they just did that ben said as the lights dimmed neither can i but im glad to hear the cheering i replied and the lights quickly rose again clarise was on the hunt having made her way into buffalo jills corpse laden lair and she poked around with limp wrists turning her head to look for buffalo jill jill jumped out from behind the sets attacking her but the attack was halfhearted at best and resulted in jill lumbering over clarise and demanding that she lip sync for her life to the tune of total eclipse of the heart naturally clarise accepted luckily the corpses and mannequins rose from the dead in inanimate in support of clarises musical number a drag ballad of the highest order dripping with double entendre and somehow singing the praises of dick apparently clarise had adequately lip sung for her life and she was spared as the show concluded we sat clapping in stunned silence as the curtain call lingered on the drag starlets were not shockingly prima donnas and each one took five times as long as a superstar opera soprano to absorb her applause even buffalo jills human sized fluffy white dog buffalo jill took a full five minutes partly to profusely thank the boyfriend and parents that sat in the audience to watch her partly to regale the audience with memories of rupauls drag race and partly to hear herself talk i supposed as the three of us stood to exit peaches christ sat us back down as with all of her productions she announced the audience was encouraged to appear in costume and she asked that the costumed queens make their way to the stage to compete for the best serial killer costume award as they began to gather on stage jackson noted that the closest any had gotten to looking like a serial killer was the one who just dressed like hannibal lecter in his straight jacket otherwise the twenty or so contestants included a man in a leather speedo and a black wrestling mask several standard drag queens in prissy heels one towering drag queen in a leafy gold bikini and two preteen girls wearing school outfits peaches and buffalo jill chatted with each contestant asking the audience to boo their favorite why boo i did not know maybe they had communally internalized past boos and hisses and repurposed them the way the gay community has repurposed the word queer ben jackson and i were effectively trapped in our seats i bet none of the men up there are at all interested in women ben said agreed jackson said not necessarily those guys up there probably stand to take much more shit than you if they told their drag friends they actually wanted to fuck women women with vaginas i mean i really dont understand why she insists on presuming the majority of the population is into both other than to make herself feel better jackson said to ben i insist because you cant possibly watch the number of women that i have most of them all the while proclaiming heterosexuality try being with women or actually just switch back and forth to women and still think exclusive attractions to men or women are the norm but bacchus you live in san francisco you know in mississippi girls arent dabbling that way jackson said no i readily admit that san francisco makes it easier and that people in mississippi are less likely to experiment though they do but this is the only place ive ever been where any man will introduce himself as bi and actually want to make out with me its not just that ben said this city self selects for counterculture of course theres more experimentation more switching here true i confessed but girls are still willing to experiment elsewhere ive helped them i smiled at jackson who was present for such an instance once now admittedly women are more likely to experiment in an environment like this where everyone around them totally accepts experimentation as mere experimentation as having no effect on their identity but whether they live here or not once you put the idea in someones head that everyones fine with them trying it well im just saying that there must be curiosity interest abounding because once you put people in this kind of environment they seem willing to try gay out much more often the gold bikini queens face dropped as she received minimum boos particularly in relation to the two pre teen girls whod been introduced before her youre not seriously telling me you think that the majority of the population would try sex with someone of the same sex just because they got a proposal in a welcoming climate ben said thats exactly what im telling you provided that they are in a mental place to admit to themselves that they want it it does take some getting used to the practice of gay sex even if you want it it took me a while to drudge up the courage to go down on a woman the first time but i do think they might just be interested in trying it out i wish that were true jackson said i love me some straight boys peaches turned to interview the hannibal lecter who muttered unintelligibly through his mask and received pitifully few boos eventually she moved on see i said excitedly even jackson gay or straight milgrim has dabbled with a boy who claims hes straight a short halfhearted round of boos rose okay im confused now ben said are you claiming that people have this desire and dont know it because they dont have the right words for it or are you saying that people have this desire and will express it in secret both i answered of course some people are more aware of it than others and probably more likely to express it as a result sometimes they just need a little help i grinned at jackson who smiled and shook his head booooooooo the crowd roared the auditory jolt gave me an idea maybe it was the spirit of all of these amateur drag queens or maybe it was my new recurring dream of romes sexual options or maybe it was just that i was bored and wanted something that i could look forward to that put the idea in my head like sexual extraction extraction of what their gay sauce ben asked jackson laughed i like sauce he said we cant call it gay sauce i said i told you gay is a misleading word fine just sauce ben offered drawing another smile from jackson but id like to see you extract it he was kidding but i appreciated the opportunity to take him seriously how appropriately wet so extract like by prowling the streets of the city searching for research subjects from whence to extract gayness i will only bring forth the gay as a public service my friend jackson interjected well we couldnt prowl these streets could we its not as though the walkers of the castro are harboring latent sexual impulses maybe if we go to pac heights i looked at him we he shrugged this sort of extraction seems too enjoyable to miss and he drew his cheeks back into a mischievous cherubic grin so say our mandate is to extract the sauce what would be our gameplan we need prey where do we find the prey jackson asked no one in particular looking casually around the theater full of gays mocking me ben apparently felt contentious and for once ignored the opportunity for a joke if you assert that a majority of the population is susceptible to this sort of saucing how can you even ask shouldnt they be everywhere unfair i said we opened this moment of philosophy noting that most of our majority faces a mental restriction against expressing the sauce wed have to overcome the cerebral obstacles this is no small task perhaps jackson began well between the two of us certainly we have discussed a substantial portion of our friends and acquaintances who yearn to sauce a queen in a black leather corset screamed at the crowd seeking boos they were not forthcoming mere drag failed to impress this audience it seemed i let her voice die down before i answered indeed id daresay i know a fine contingent who truly need the sauce poured out then we begin there jackson said adopting a pedantic singsong tone all of a sudden from those we know to those they know each in need of an education ben was just staring at him blank faced before he caught himself and turned his attention back to the contestants on stage i on the other hand was becoming excited about this endeavor what better way to understand why people sampled one gender or the other than to watch them up close what better way to get at what i seem to keep missing so ill er indicate boys with some sauce to you i said to jackson and youll suggest your best contingent of bi curious ladies to me and then well discuss yes and we will show them precisely what theyve been missing he replied we will well be like superheroes but instead of saving humanity from evil beings well save our subjects from a life of sexual confusion the thought made me smile permit me to play devils advocate ben said but wont you be creating a life of sexual confusion you lose fifty points ben i chided havent you been listening the confusion arises from the chasm between what society tells them exists and what their genitalia respond to if someone is truly only interested in the opposite sex we could do nothing we play only in the recesses between straight and gay where folks are already feeling curious i speak from personal experience when i say that you only stop being confused all the time once you realize what you feel for each well be saving these people from crippling sexual ambiguity the drag contest before me seemed suddenly ironic but i reminded myself that the people on that stage were very clear on what they found enjoyable in life this theater was full of the happiness that free sexuality conferred i imagined spreading that happiness around the world tinkerbellesque though it may take a while jackson offered implicitly acknowledging the challenge in finding persons to sauce who were ready willing and able i looked over at him i think we need superhero costumes i have to say my appearance hasnt seemed terribly seductive lately if im going to be trying to seduce the sauce out of people i think i need to look a different part can there be a feather boa theres really nothing like a feather boa jackson snarked and a man three rows in front of us wearing a yellow feather boa turned to throw him an angry look ben chuckled ive never seen you wear a feather boa in your life i told him pretending for the incensed gentleman that jackson hadnt been referencing him and ignoring the fact that he was teasing me at last peaches christ selected three winners for her contest then asked the audience to boo in confirmation we braced ourselves but ben had taken jacksons boa joke to mean we were speaking wholly in jest okay i get it he said youre not really going to do anything ben almost sounded disappointed realistically dude i dont have anything other than this investigation going down right now and i dont have the energy for anything else i cant really care about anyone romantically as far as i can tell or i dont want to im just numb so if i can please them sexually and show them a new indulgence in life they might enjoy thats that is of course assuming that i could pull it off well someone told me i should be doing that recently i watched as peaches crowned the two preteen girls co winners who ben and jackson asked in unison i considered for a moment how to explain to these two very reasonable men that id taken life advice from a bum wearing a billion different colors who was surprisingly insightful and decided i couldnt doesnt matter the point is i will go on a quest for sauce happily assuming jackson will join me and we can help one another find targets we stood as the crowds finally released us from our seats oh i cant fucking wait i might have to start arranging some visits jackson said even if only to show you youre off the mark on this whole almost everybodys bisexual business youll see them switching permanently most of the time i think we began to speculate about who we could try out but my participation in the conversation dwindled as we poured out onto castro street to find a bar and ben and jackson began to ask one another about their respective histories comings out tastes favorite books favorite victorian playwrights and all manner of personal characteristics caught up in looking at one another such that i left the castro that night feeling distinctly like a third wheel but there i had created an entertainment for myself a new distraction a new something to get excited about i was going to create debauchery in some way it seemed my only option id sputtered around for weeks now unjustifiably idle alcoholic as though caught in the hole i dug myself of course i didnt see how unjustifiable my malaise was at the time it was not until this game ran the course of the roman sexual storybook recurring in my dreams that i was shown enlightenment and the game was just beginning 