They ordered four bags, all they could fit in their bike trailer. “We can give one to Lisa,” said Amos, “if things work out with . . . the Monarch.”
Jake gave him a withering look.
Mary Ann glanced between the two of them. “Is there royalty here or something?” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “I’m very discreet. That’s the way it’s done. Anne Hathaway was here last year, and she just—walked amongst us.”
“The Monarch is an art car,” Amos explained. “A Monarch butterfly.”
“Oh . . . of course . . . wow . . . like down in Pacific Grove. That’s sounds amazing.”
“We made it for Anna.” It tumbled out of him just like that. He wanted Mary Ann to know. She went way back with Anna, and she would get it.
“Is she here?” She sounded more aghast than excited.
“No, it’s just . . . a tribute.”
“Oh—well . . . that’s good. This would be a little rough on her.”
“That’s what everybody keeps saying.”
Mary Ann loaded two bags of ice onto the counter. While Amos was transferring them to the trailer, she made a hasty hand signal to Jake that asked, Are you two an item? Jake reddened on the spot, and the exchange was not lost on Amos.
“We’d better be,” he told her, grinning.
“Well, let me tell you something.” Mary Ann put her hand on Jake’s shoulder. It was chilly from the ice and felt good. “This is one of the finest men I’ve ever met.”
“Mary Aaann,” said Jake, sounding, even to his own ears, like a kid saying “Mooom.”
“Shut up, Jake. I’m saying this.” Her hand remained on his shoulder. “This man literally saved my life.”
“I did not literally save your life.”
“Okay then—my sanity. It was the worst moment of my life, and Jake was there—so there—being kind and strong and comforting.”
“Makes sense to me,” said Amos.
There was no way to change the subject but do it himself. “So what are you doing here? I mean, it doesn’t seem like your sort of—”
Mary Ann drew back in mock indignation. “What? I don’t look like Burning Man material?”
“Well, I wouldn’t have—”
She laughed, cutting him off. “DeDe and D’or and I are doing a plug and play, so just shoot me now. We’re the Ladies of Woodside. That’s what the Candystriper thing is all about. I’m doing penance for my luxury. And I should be, believe me.”
“Nice RV?”
“Huge. Oh my God.”
“How huge?”
“Reba McIntyre huge. You guys should come over. Hang out. Take a shower.” She gave him a wicked look. “I won’t tell. Your radical self-reliance is safe with me.” She leaned into him, as if she were about to offer him drugs. “A sit-down barbecue with cornbread and coleslaw and chocolate cake. And showers.”
Amos’s face was hard for Jake to read. Was he charmed by her energy or slightly repelled by it? “Get thee behind me,” he said, smiling.
She threw another bag on the counter. “I wasn’t going for Satan.”
He laughed. “Nowhere close.”
“There’s no virtue in missing out,” she said.
A long, confusing silence hung in the air.
Jake jumped into the breach. “Anna’s been loving the Volcano.”
“Oh . . . good. It’s not too much for her to manage?”
“Well . . . I do that for her.”
“Of course. That’s so sweet.”
“Not that often, but . . . sometimes before bed.”
Mary Ann smiled at him wistfully, sharing Mrs. Madrigal for a moment, then shooed them both away “Go! Make delicious cocktails! There’s a line here!”
As Jake and Amos left with their wagons, Mary Ann hollered a final imperative. “And marry him, Amos . . . if you get half the chance.”
Do you hate her?” Jake asked as they unloaded the ice back at Trans Bay.
Amos thought for a moment. “I sort of don’t.”
“Yeah—me too.”
“How did you save her life . . . or whatever?”
“Do you remember that shed I showed you at Michael’s house?”
“Where the old guy killed himself?”
“Yep. . . . She was with him.”
“What?”
“He shot himself in front of her. I showed up a few minutes later. All I did was call the police and let her cry on me. I guess it was kind of a bonding moment.”
“I would say . . . yeah.”
“That and our hysterectomies.”
Amos remained unruffled. “She had one too? Not for the same reason, I take it.”
“Hers was for cancer. Just a few months before mine. She spent some time with me in the hospital. I’ve never forgotten it.”
“Then I won’t,” said Amos, giving him a tender look.
The Mormon underwear made its debut as soon as night fell. Amos came slouching through the tent flap, his chest hair spilling from the scooped neckline, his circumcised cock straining parabolically against the thin polyester blend of the fly.
“Excuse me, sir. May I speak with the lady of the house?”
Jake told him he must have the wrong house.
“Okay, then, what am I supposed to say?”
“In the first place, they’re not in their underwear when they come to the door. Or just their underwear, anyway.”
“So what did this guy say? The one who used to sit on your lap in his underwear?”
“I don’t remember. Just be yourself, Amos.”
Regrouping, Amos shook out his arms like a runner before a marathon. Then he grabbed his cock and snarled out his words backwoods style.
“I spit on your alien corn,” he said. “I curse your zombie alfalfa, your amber waves of . . . whatever.”
Jake laughed and threw a sneaker at him.
Chapter 23
LIFE AFTER ME
Michael and Ben had done molly twice in the course of their eight years together. One time during a hike in Pinyon City, the other during a Norah Jones concert in Golden Gate Park. It was a snuggly drug, like the old ecstasy, which had once carried a warning label about impromptu elopement while under the influence. The new ecstasy, on the other hand, was laced with speed—or so they had heard—so it was vital to obtain pure MDMA if you had any interest whatsoever in avoiding tooth loss and eventual madness. Ben knew a guy who knew a guy, so they ended up with several doses of molly for the trip to Black Rock City. One of them they would take on the night of the temple burn (a more spiritual experience, Ben said, than the actual burning of the Man); the other they were taking tonight at Comfort and Joy.
You could spot this camp from almost any place in the “gayborhood.” Silky pink and orange banners—the colors of a desert sunset—streamed from poles around the perimeter of the village. It felt medieval, but not the granite-dark, ominous medieval of Game of Thrones—more like the Necco-colored fairy scenes in True Blood. This was a fairy scene, come to think of it—or rather a faerie scene—so it seemed to Michael as welcoming a place as any to wait for the molly to come on. He was not quite a faerie—just as he was not quite a bear and, in his distant, slim-hipped 501 youth, not quite a clone—but he liked the gentle energy of faeries. They had lots of sofas, too, here at Comfort and Joy. That was a big plus.
“Is that the orgy tent?”
Ben shrugged. “That’s not quite the word for it. It’s really laid-back and mellow. A lot of cuddling. Like the club in Shortbus.”
“As I recall, the people in that were fucking their brains out.”
Ben rolled his head over and smiled at him. “You don’t have to go in. We don’t have to. We can stay right here on the sofa.”
“For a while, at least, okay?”
“Of course.?
??
Silly old coot! Michael had been in hundreds of sex spaces over the course of his adult life. Thousands, maybe, if he counted glory holes and Lands End and back rooms and the woods along Wohler Creek and Dick Dock in P-town and the Warm Sands resorts of Palm Springs and, okay fine, the men’s room at Penn Station one sultry midnight in the late 1970s. It had been as easy as falling off a log. Or falling onto one, as the case may be. So what was so different now?
You are old, Mr. Mouse. Nobody wants to see you doing it. And if they do see you, you’ll be met with rolling eyes and wrinkled noses.
If he were to express this to Ben, he would receive a reprimand, since Ben still found some fun in this body and wanted no part of Michael’s sporadic self-loathing. But this tent, for some reason, filled him with irrational fear. It felt like the end of something, the whimper instead of the bang. It was as daunting as his very first gay outing when he climbed the stairs to the Rendezvous on Sutter Street to confront the unimaginable sight of male couples slow-dancing to Streisand.
How many more shots did he have at this? With Ben even? With anybody?
“Look!” cried Ben. “Let’s try that!”
It was an open-air walkway hung with silvery Mylar streamers. A simple concept, but one that enchanted as soon as you were in the midst of it.
That was still the trick, wasn’t it? Just jump into it, babycakes.
“Woohoo,” said Michael, turning around for the return flight through the streamers.
Ben laughed. “Did I hear a woohoo?”
“Must’ve been somebody else,” said Michael.
Back on the sofa now. An indigo dusk. A breeze tickling the pastel banners. Ben slumped against him, still shirtless and warm. A palpable unwinding.
“You feeling it?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Michael.
“Nice, huh?”
“Mmm.” He kissed the side of Ben’s head. “Let’s just live here.”
“We couldn’t have Roman here.”
“Oh, fuck, you’re right.”
“What good is a city without dogs? It’s doomed to be temporary.”
“So right.”
“He would love it though. All these funky crotches to sniff.”
“I hope the Dood is happy with the new dogsitter,” said Ben.
They let time pass between them like a breeze.
“I’ve been so selfish,” Michael said after a while.
“About what?”
“The whole baby thing. I wasn’t being honest with you. I wasn’t grossed out by the idea of you helping Shawna out. I was just scared.”
“Of what?”
“Oh . . . people making plans for a future I won’t be part of . . . the whole idea of Life After Me.”
“There is no life after you,” said Ben.
“Well, that’s what I think, but the universe may have different ideas.”
Ben chuckled.
“It took so long to find you, Ben, and now I don’t want it to change. I want it all set in amber. I want us and nobody else in the most selfish way you can possibly imagine. I can’t help it—I’m old-fashioned. I believe marriage is between a man and a man. And if there’s a baby to be taken care of—frankly—I want it to be me.”
Ben said nothing.
“You see?” said Michael. “Selfish. Even a little creepy.”
Ben pulled him closer. “I understand, though. I might be the same way.”
“If you were old?”
“Yes.”
Michael tweaked Ben’s nipple. “I’m not that old.”
“But, sure . . . I think of life after you . . . I do.”
“Of course you do. You’d have to. Who wouldn’t?” He paused. “What do you think of exactly?”
“Oh . . . living in Europe maybe.”
Michael saw it: Ben selling his armoires in some trendy Roman neighborhood. Trastevere, say, or near the Piazza Navona. Ben’s sandy hair flecked with a gray that matched his eyes. Ben going home on a Vespa to a roof terrace and a man.
“What would he be like?”
“Who knows? Somebody younger, maybe.”
“Younger than me?”
Ben chortled. “Younger than me, doofus.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I dunno. Because I haven’t before? Because you’ve shown me it’s possible?”
“Well . . . thank you . . . but that wasn’t my intention.”
Ben gave Michael’s leg a shake.
“The young can be difficult,” Michael added.
“So I’ve heard.”
“And Rome is expensive.”
“Who said anything about Rome?”
“Holy shit, those flags are beautiful,” said Michael. “Just rippling across the sky like—what?—sorbet and cream?”
“I’ll be there, Michael.”
“What?”
“I will be with you. I’m here with you now, and I will be with you then.”
Michael hesitated. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Yes, it is. How many times do I have to marry you before you get it?”
He leaned and kissed Michael.
“Is this the drugs talking?” asked Michael.
“No. But the drugs are asking the questions.”
Michael chuckled. “We could do it in Ohio now.”
“What?”
“Get married.”
“Do you really want to get married in Ohio?”
“Not especially, no. I just want to Be. Here. Now.”
Ben laughed. “Good. Call Shawna. She’ll be so happy.”
“We can’t call her. We can’t call anyone.”
“That’s right.”
“I am here now.”
“You are. And so is he.”
Ben was pointing toward a buff and nearly naked youth prancing past their semicircle of sofas. “ ‘Evening of the Faun,’ ” said Ben.
The guy had goat horns sprouting from a mop of blond hair. His legs were trousered with some sort of faux fur through which an actual penis was spiking heroically. It wasn’t huge, but it was finely formed and completely stole the show.
The guy pranced closer and stopped.
“Greetings,” he said.
“Greetings,” they replied, almost in unison.
“Do you mind?” He was asking to sit down.
“No . . . sure . . . of course.” They shimmied apart to let him sink onto the sofa between them.
The faun pulled a goatskin wine bag from around his neck and guzzled from it before offering it first to Michael, then to Ben.
Seeing their hesitation, he said, “It’s water.”
They both accepted swigs and returned the bag.
“You can hold it if you want.”
He meant his cock. Michael glanced at Ben and grinned.
Shrugging, Ben seized the guy’s cock at the balls and squeezed it.
“Nice,” he said.
“Thanks.” The faun turned to Michael. “Your turn, Daddy.”
Michael obliged him—because . . . why the hell not? The shaft was warm and roped with veins, a fistful of life.
Another endorsement seemed redundant, so Michael said, “I used to have a pair of those.”
The faun gave him a clumsy, boyish leer. “Bet you still do.”
“No.” Michael laughed. “The pants, I mean. I had a whole Pan outfit. Long time ago.”
“No shit?”
“Home Yardage. Mock chinchilla.” He was still holding the guy’s cock, having just noted that it was markedly thicker at the base. “I never thought of this, though. The open-air thing. I guess because I had to ride a cable car to the party.”
The faun giggled, but that’s the way it had happened.
Mary
Ann had sent him on his way that night. Squeaky clean out of Cleveland, she had already begun to accept his brand-new randiness as if it were her own. “Go find a nice billy goat,” she had told him with a playful shove, and in some ways that was the version of her he still maintained, the smart girl creeping up on adventure with one eye covered, not the liberal rich lady from Woodside taking Zumba lessons at the Zen Center. He had come to like the latter-day Mary Ann, but never with the intimacy of old. She probably felt the same about him—that stodgy old queen fussing in his garden, holed up with his younger husband in the Castro.
“Those are nice, too,” said Michael, letting go of the cock to touch the guy’s horns. “Did you make those as well?”
“No,” said the faun with a grin. “Those are real.”
Chapter 24
IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
On her way to Coinkydink, Shawna stopped at an installation that had caught her eye from a distance. It reminded her of one of those carnival Tilt-a-Whirls, a slanted spinning disk that held its contents by centrifugal force. In this case, though, the contents were not people but little bonfires that scattered sparks as they orbited through the night sky. It was a simple concept—all iron and fire—and its operation was even simpler: two people on the ground alternately throwing muscle into a giant crank. Two people, it suggested, could do wondrous things working together.
Was she totally out of her mind, chasing down a stranger who had lured her with graffiti and promised to disappear? Had this offer of no-strings-attached sperm so caught her fertile imagination that it had destroyed her ability to reason?
She stood for a while and watched the whirling embers, partially to absorb their magic, partially seeking postponement of potential folly.
That was when Otto appeared.
“Well, hello, ladylove.”
He had called her that back in the day. Ladylove. It had bothered her with its faintly sexist overtones and corny echoes of his stint at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. Tonight, however, she found it curiously reassuring. Go figure.