Schwingen

Ilya Flotte-Gebetstulpen, Coco de Mer
THOU SHALT KOMMEN BLANKES.

Der reine weiße Plastik des Zeichens winks an mir in der niedrigen Beleuchtung des Stabes, während er den Schimmer sich verfängt, der weg von einer Linie der Flaschen aufprallt, die „Marys Gekritzel-beschriftet werden,“ „dieses ist Josephs,“ und „des Joneses.“ Ich starre entlang des Zeichens, es bin an, wie wir einen Witz teilen, wie die zwei Paare versammelnd herüber von mir, am anderen Bein des Len-Förmig Stabes.

Ich kann ihr Gelächter über dem porn kaum hören, das auf dem flachen Viereck von Fernsehapparat über mir spielt und blitzen ein Mann- und Frautun welcher Gott sie entwarf, um zu tun, im reinen Sonnenschein ihres eigenen Gettogartens von Eden.

Nur ich bin nicht der Präsident des Universums mich vorstellte sicher, daß sie handhaben würden, so viele Glieder in so vielen rechten Winkeln wie dem zu verdrehen.

Die Kamera zooms auf einen Hebenrippe Rahmen und schleppt hinunter… Ich schaue weg, wenn ein anderer alkoholischer Apfelsaft vor mir erscheint. Eine Frau kreischt über dem Stab, „wir nennen dieses ein `heilige Rolle' unten in Florida.“

Ich kreuze mich mit der Schale, und die Paare heben ihre Plastikgläser an.

Der Barmixer hebt sein Getränk auch an der karminrote flüssige Fliegendurchlauf sein schwarzes Hemd geknöpft fest zu seinem Ansatz, wie dem Kostüm eines Priesters. Er bietet mir Anleitung für das dritte mal an: „So mögen Drehbeschleunigung dieses für Beifall…“ Von wir aller Einfluß unsere Getränke über unseren Köpfen, und unsere Schalen drehen' ringsum unsere Schädel, die Weise Christen daß glaubten, die Sonne die Masse gerechten Hunderte Jahren vor einkreiste.

Das letzte Mal, das ich jedes mögliches andere Getränkritual verband, war Weihnachten, als ich Kommunion in der Kathedrale im Stadtzentrum gelegenen Los Angeles nahm. Mein Interesse am Sonntag Service wurde weniger durch Bescheidenheit angespornt, und mehr aus dem Gelächter der aufpassenden Leute heraus spenden Geld, das sie nicht bis einen der reichsten Grundbesitzer sich leisten konnten. Und für einen Hedonist, war die Architektur der Kirche heilig. Obwohl das Gebäude entworfen war, um eine Niederlassung des ältesten Geschäfts der Welt unterzubringen an zweiter Stelle, war es nur himmlisch, weil es so sehr erdig war und moderne-d Kathedrale angenommen ohne irgendwelche rechten Winkel errichtet wurde.

Es sei denn ye von meinem Fleisch essen…

Ich erinnere mich zu lächeln, wie ich meinen Kopf beugte, um eine Oblate und eine Muffe des Traubensafts zu nehmen: Ich trank Jesus, in der Tat. Eher wie erhielt mich ein unter Normalgröße liegendes, overpriced Getränk an jedem möglichem anderen LA-Stab: Ich hatte 10 Dollar zur überschreitenen Wanne gespendet, die ich umfaßte meine Aufnahme, um das befleckte Glas, keine angenommenen Sünden zu bewundern dachte. Ich war für meinen Spaß gestern Abend unrepentant, und ich wußte, daß der Sohn des Chefs verstehen würde: Jesus hung with that hooker, Mary Magdalene. And anyway, how was that service any more than a better business, than a larger scale money-maker than the just-outside-Miami, members-only club I’d paid $77 to join, to partake “free” cocktails in?

And unless ye drink of my blood…

I look at the half-naked man across from me, his wine wasting in front of him, untasted. His crotch is covered with a green, tiny towel, like a little leaf over Adam’s evil area after eating a bad apple. His belly bounces with his breath.

I only look away when he meets my eyes; I turn my head, I take a deep sip. This cocktail is so much sweeter than the holy Kool-Aid I’d drunk at church.

“So how’d you hear about E’s Den?” The bartender, who’d also doubled as the doorman, pours another drink for himself as he asks me. In the low lighting, the scarlet liquid looks like blood, even more so than the grape juice that the priest had poured for me.

“I was searching online,” I answer. “I wanted to find a swingers’ club in Florida. I was curious.”

“Seek and ye should find, eh?” He takes a neat sip. The bar’s soft light beams off his baldness, blurring a halo over his head of monkish fringe. “You came on a quiet night. Sunday’s are usually the best day for us. Everyone comes and it’s a real community. A lot of regulars, even a mother and her daughters… We’re all just hanging out, barbecuing.”

In a flash I see an orgy of ugly flesh, and I put down my drink. It was how he made it sound so innocent that reminds me where I am: a Southern all-you-can-eat buffet, only instead of the cheap ribs they served at a restaurant my Bible Belt uncle favored, people here paid for choicer meats.

I clutch my cup again: the liquor had already baptized my brain, and a few sips more could further slur my thoughts. A little devil on my shoulder warns the strange drink might work the opposite of fruit from the tree of knowledge: I’d wake up naked, not knowing what had happened. An angel counters, telling me to just trust for the best: doesn’t it all feel so comfortable, so natural, so right here?

I stare into my cocktail, waiting for an answer, like a lazy prophet. I only look up at a spark of light: the bartender had turned to talk to the couple further down the bar, and the gold cross dangling down the front of his shirt had caught the gleam of the spot-lit stripper’s pole.

The chrome pole stands so straight, a clean line pointing upwards, while stabbing an altar of a scuffed, mirrored stage. To the left of that sliver of silver is the closed door I’d seen as soon as I walked in: THOU SHALT ENTER NAKED.

Just a door knob twist away, it seems sinful not to cure my curiosity…

“Do you mind if I go in?” I take the bartender’s nod as permission to enter clothed, and stand up, still for a second as I find my balance. Then I open the door.

A staircase’s ascent glows under hidden light, and I climb, curious as an old-maid bride. At the top a room blossoms open to me: it has close, cozy walls that somehow seem to stretch up to the sky in the dark, like the cloudy ceilings of a church. Same as the bar below, the room is built of rough plaster logs, and their texture gives the space the feeling of a pioneer Puritan’s cabin. Clean mattresses border the walls, and their soft white cushions any misgivings I have about the beds’ closeness to each other. Towards the end of the room, smaller cots tuck into private places, little family chapels lining an old cathedral.

The space ends with a big bed, its high canopy spiriting around it, blurring my view, till the curtains open wide in a ghost breeze, and I suddenly see: I see wrinkled sheets with bleached stains that might have been blood or grape juice or wine, I see how the drink ritual, that cheesy cheers, had distracted me from how much alcohol they’d bled into me, I see how the cheap humor of the sign had dared me into this, I see how they all wanted me to partake, to belong, to–

“Join us?” asks a pair from downstairs, naked as Adam and Eve as they brush by my black dress, moving towards the bed.

I stare at them: in the glowing darkness, neither young nor old, they’re a vision of the couple at my high school youth group who dictated I wait to be fucked by a man I’d barely know, but that I’d committed to for eternity. That I’d sworn I’d love forever, even if I learned later that truly unconditional love was just another four-letter word. That I’d sacrifice what ever soul I’d sewn together to please the church’s, the state’s, everyone else’s invisible gods.

The woman kneels in front of her husband, bowing her head. His eyes catch mine, and his face creaks into a smile: I’d be fresh flesh for a stale ritual.

He nods his head a little, then stretches his arms out, his fuzzy shadow making a cross. His hands flap down to force his wife’s head into his lap, and bending over her body he looks as broken as a priest watching a pet student.

And the two shall become one flesh…

Her hand grips his thigh, and her wedding ring winks in the low light. That cheap chip of glass, glued to an empty circle of fool’s gold, sparks my flight down the stairs.

I rush out the door without saying good bye. As I drive away, from my rearview mirror I see the weird angles of the club’s steeple, and I offer thanks that I’ll never be trapped swinging between society’s demons and gods, but determined to build my own heaven on earth.

At a stop sign, I text message a friend, whose brain and body I thought worthy of worship. I hit SEND and wait for his response to my digital prayer:

I’m feeling impure. Come over and make me scream, “Oh my god.”

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