振動

Ilyaの艦隊の祈りの袖口、 Coco de Mer
THOU SHALTは露出したに入る。

印の新しく白いプラスチックは棒の低い照明の私に「メリー走り書き分類されるびんのラインを離れて跳ねる光をつかまえると同時に」とまばたきする「これであるヨセフ」、および「Joneses」。 私は印、それをL字型棒の他の足で私から、集まっている私達が2つのカップルのような冗談を、共有しているようにある凝視する。

私はやっと私の上のTVの平らな長方形で遊ぶポルノグラフィー上の笑い声を聞くことができ自身のゲットーのエデンの園の純粋な日光で人および女性のどんな神がするようにそれらを設計したかすること点滅する。

彼らがそれのようなそう多くの直角でそう多くの肢をねじることをどうにかしてことを私だけ確実宇宙の大統領想像したではない。

カメラはの下で引きずる持ち上げる胸郭で急上昇する… 私は別のアルコール性のりんごジュースが私の前に現われるとき見る。 女性は棒を渡って叫る、「私達呼ぶこれを`とフロリダの他宗派の信徒」」。

私はコップとの自分自身を交差させ、カップルはプラスチックガラスを上げる。

バーテンダーは彼の飲み物を、余りに、ルビー色の液体の飛行のパスボタンがかかる司祭の衣裳のような彼の首に、堅い彼の黒いワイシャツ持ち上げる。 彼は私に指導をこれで三回提供する: 「そう喝采のためのこのような回転…」 私達はすべての把握私達の頭部上の私達の飲み物、太陽が前に地球の公正な何百年を一周したことを私達のコップは私達の頭骨のあたりで」回り、方法クリスチャン信じた。

私が他のどの飲み物の儀式も結合した最後は私が都心のロスアンジェルスのカテドラルの聖餐を取ったときに、クリスマスだった。 日曜日サービスの私の興味は謙遜によってより少なく促され、監視人々の浮かれ騒ぎからの多くは最も豊富な地主の1人に適用できなかったお金を寄付する。 そしてhedonistのため、教会の建築は神聖だった。 世界の二番目に最も古いビジネスの枝を収容するように建物は設計されていたけれどもそう非常に土であり、現代カテドラルが直角なしで推定上造られたのでだけ天空だった。

yeが私の肉の食べなければ…

私はグレープジュースのウエファーそして指ぬきを取るために私が私の頭部を曲げたように微笑することを覚えている: 私はイエス・キリストを、全く飲んでいた。 私が他のどのLA棒でも小型の、高値の飲み物を得ていたようにもっと: 私はステンドグラスあらゆる想定された罪ではなくを賞賛するために私がカバーした私の入場を考えなかった渡るバケツに10ドルを寄付した。 私は私の楽しみのために昨晩頑固であり、主任の息子が理解することを知っていた: 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.”

Related to "Swinging":

» Metallic Anthropologie Belt

"Swinging" keywords: Cover Story, SEX, Travel .
You can follow responses to "Swinging" through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.