McNulty!

Bob and one other guy in the quintet are not performing up to snuff, and I am annoyed. This is not Bamburia but the idea is the same: we are five male voices trying to perform out as much and as well as possible. No other members of Bamburia are in this group, just Bob and I and three NPCs. It is clear in our final warmup/rehearsal in the church practice room that we are not all we can be. Grrr. I throw out the idea that we need some reform in singer practices and standards, and suggest that musicians are replaceable if they do not adhere to the revised standards. Bob is deeply offended, feels that this is fraternal betrayal.

We go into the chapel itself, which is much bigger and more elaborate than the First Assembly of God in Hammonton, but the crowd assembled there definitely has that same feel. All the background memories of being a kid whose parents are intimately involved--in Sunday school, in the music program, friends with the pastor--are there even if I can't sort them all out; it's just a pervasive feeling: I know this place. It is before the service, which apparently includes our performance, but folks are gathered here and preparing for some sort of rite--not a baptism per se, but a family dedication to the Lord, I suppose. There's literature or swag about it in the hymnal pockets on the backs of the pews, but I don't take the time to read what's up: I'm concerned about out quintet's performance, which promises to disappoint. 

Later--I'd say after the performance, but there's no actual memory or record of that--we have a blow-up in the church bowels over my singer concerns. There is also some to-do about my coat; at some point I end up wearing a coat that is not mine and I realize this belatedly. Where is *my* coat? Of course I have to go hunting for where I left it.

There is a purely theoretical interlude where someone--let's say Scott Robinson, though I'm sure it wasn't specifically he--and I discuss theology and morals, Christianity and nihilism. I argue (Scott has heard me so argue in the past, and I'm pretty certain he agrees, so it's not really an argument, more like a pas de deux) that atheism does not preclude morality. I also contemplate the shakier ground of nihilism, which seems to me to require das ewige nein, a total absence of morality, attendant on the total absense of meaning. But I want nihilism to retain morality. I want "soft nihilism", I suppose. All the while we are having this conversation I am playing a "video game" but with real objects: I am using a power drill with a circular bit to cut circles in oversized decks of playing cards, which are lined up in a grid, three across and who knows how many north-south... possibly to infinity. Each circle cut takes out a particular character in the design on the backs of the card decks; each such cut is obscurely tied to a given statement in the "morality" argument. No idea of the particulars, but it is clear as I am doing it.

Later: in the well-traveled path between Point A and Point B there is a very steep hill whose downward approach one must take at a careful, controlled run. I have no idea why I'm on my third time tonight, but this time, just as I have gotten started down, I see some guy walking insouciantly up to my landing point. I have no control but end up sort of crashing into the front of him; and he has the audacity to give me shit about it. I start to explain that one needs to be careful in the upward direction to be sure nobody is currently heading down the hill; but seeing that he is John Doman, I break off and tell him, "By the way, I'm a big fan." He is gracious in response, and we start chatting. I ask him, "What are you doing now?" by which I mean what is he working on, acting-wise, but I immediately realize it could also be read as designs upon his immediate future--which is how he reads it, and he takes me back to his place.

His place is on 12th Street in Folsom/Hammonton, about where Tony's custard or Anna Martelini's house is/was. It's a gorgeous, sprawling, Jetsons kind of joint, where two entire exterior walls are just glass. We have drinks and talk; we do not have sex and there's no real tension in that direction, but at the same time I don't have the sense that it is off the table entirely. A lot of stuff happens from this point on, including some other people coming over socially, but that detail is lost. Mostly I'm pals with John Doman, so that's a big yay on waking up.

Yay penis.

In a department store that's really a second-hand store, I am browsing news stories. the format is unclear and perhaps irrelevant: they may be in books, magazines, on VHS tapes, or memorialized in extruded, cast, vividly painted polymers. In any case, I am trying to decide which take best represents the event in question (also a McGuffin--it could be a WWII battle or a Monty Python sketch for all I know) and I am carefully considering each. They are all on the bottom shelves of several adjacent sections, and having contemplated a contender I decide that it is inferior to one I perused a little while ago... where was that?

I retrace my steps but cannot find it. I assume it must be on the facing side of this rack of shelves, so I head around the corner and hunt further. Nope. I keep checking racks until I am several stacks away, in another department of the store. I finally allow that it can't possibly have been this far away, and head back to where I started. But now there are several women browsing the same little area, and they impede my search.

Waiting for them to clear out, I head over toward the front of the store, where a furniture display sits beckoning potential buyers through a great panoramic bank of windows. It is dusk outside and cars in the parking lot are turning their headlights on. (Back in those quaint days when one had to turn headlights on! And wear onions on one's belt.) I am wearing a yellow collared shirt and underpants; and, wandering amongst the furniture with no other shoppers around, I decide I can continue and finish my shopping without the underwear: the yellow shirt must be for tall guys because the front and tails  come down past my genitals and butt, respectively. I pull my undies off and rebutton the bottom few buttons of my shirt. This will be fine.

But the exhibitionist charge earned here precludes any further shopping, so the next thing I know, I go to check up on a number of friends whom I've been hanging with. They are all disposed, individually or in pairs, on bunks--upper and lower berths lined up three abreast against opposite walls of a basement room. In the middle of the far wall, perpendicular to the bunks, is a large TV display showing gay porn. All my friends (including a number of hetero ones) are busy having sex with themselves or each other. Adam and his girlfriend are in the upper left bunk closest to the TV and are unhurriedly making out. Various solo guys are working their cocks with various levels of abandon.

Speaking of which, here's John Dugan, lovingly tugging his outsize pud, upper right, center. As always, he is breathtakingly desirable. But this is new territory to me: while I am used to exhibitionism I am not used to everybody else doing it. This casual, communal fuck/wankfest is strange and wonderful. There are no bunks left but I park myself in the middle of the floor and start to masturbate--first with a blanket over me, then, emboldened by the spirit of the room (although I haven't officially been invited to participate, I make an assumption that it's fair game), out in the open.

Somehow, though, this prompts John to cover up. Despite his business being conspicuously unfinished, he wraps himself in sheets like swaddling clouts. And, honestly, fuck that noise: I immediately go hit him up and unwrap him. He is accommodating and friendly, as usual. Oddly, this version of John Dugan is extremely hirsute; and he has recently shaved his body hair, resulting in numerous razor burns and stubble. That's a bit of a turnoff but I am on a mission: I lick and kiss up the inside of his thigh to his taint, then sit him down and take his gorgeous cock in my mouth. And like a video game where I have conquered the big boss, this scene is done.