 |
Star ing up at the ceiling in the sex club |
|
| There should be couches in all public places. Huge,
fat, overstuffed couches for everyone. Couches to sink into wherever one
goes. I snuff out a cigarette in the ashtray between me and the boy next to me. His name is Chris, I think. Hard to remember this early in the morning. I remember the name of the guy I played around with earlier. Bill. Don't know the third guy who joined us, he never introduced himself. He had a big dick and really got off on the idea of two young guys down on their knees in front of him. Bill was definitely more interested in this than I was. Which was, in retrospect, a bit disappointing for all parties involved. Chris and I were talking a few minutes ago. He lives in the Haight. He had gone out to the only gay bar still up there. I don't remember what it's called, either. Chris doesn't come to this sex club very often because he doesn't have a car. I have one, but neglect to mention this fact. Chris is nice, but I don't want to sleep with him, and I certainly wasn't going to volunteer as chauffeur for this random stranger. Chris has his eyes closed. There is one other guy in the smoking room, but he appears to have been asleep since I entered. I joke about how meditative the room is; he says nothing. I say I was becoming one with the hum of the air purifier. He still says nothing. He is a much better couchmate than the speed freak who couldn't keep still who was there fifteen minutes ago. The heat of the club, the hum of the air purifier, the sleeping people on the couches begin to get to me. The light at the top of the room in covered with thin blue gel plastic. I fix my eyes on a piece of tape holding one edge down. What are we doing here, I wonder to myself? The three of us are nodding off while dozens of men have sex in the next room. We don't go home because we don't want to be alone, but we can't perform right now because we're too tired. Tired and alone. Is that why we're here? Why isn't there a better way to deal with this feeling than falling asleep on overstuffed couches that smell faintly of sweat and dust? Bill had already wandered into the other rooms of the club when we finished and I went to wash myself in the bathroom. He is still not satiated. Is that why we come here? To reach satiation? Why do I never know when it comes? What do I want? I want to be held, touched, slept next to. This is not the place for that. But we come here anyway. This is the next best option. And this is what is available at three in the morning on a Saturday night with no boyfriend. Am I capable of keeping a boyfriend? How do I explain the urges to come here, to touch random flesh, to have sex without meaning? Maybe I don't have to. Maybe it is an unspoken truth in our culture of desire. Maybe we just know that sex only means something when it's not standing up. I realize I am beginning to think in that way that happens when my head is tired and my body feels heavy. I am too sleepy to keep my eyes open any longer, and the blue of the ceiling fades away from me. What was the speedfreak thinking while he was undulating on his end of the couch? Was his mind racing a million places, or was he nowhere at all? And what was he doing at a sex club, probably unable to become erect anyway? In some slightly twisted way, he's doing the same thing I am. In his mind, the longer he stays awake the more potential to avoid the gnawing feeling that this isn't exactly what he wanted, In my world, however, destroying my brain in the meantime is not a viable option. I also know that I will be back here in a week or two. So will Chris, and Bill, and the speedfreak. I may not recognise any of them, but we will be here. Satisfaction is a long process, and not something that we can find in a sex maze, or on a couch, or in a straw up our noses. In the most unsatisfied way I can, I get my coat and leave the club. And, ironically, I feel a little satisfied knowing that satiety won't sink into to me or anyone like someone sinking into an overstuffed couch, but we all have to keep working to find it. There's something to be said for consistancy. |