When I first heard about it, I was guarding a table on the patio of Java Beach Café. It was an unusually warm morning for San Francisco, one that demanded indulgence in the rarity of a windless fog-free Ocean Beach. Our favorite haunt was jammed–dogs, bikes, baby strollers, skateboards–and the spectacle of coffee and conversation made me uncomfortable. At the next table, a trio of young men hovered together, barefoot and bare-chested, their skin shimmering with sand. They smoked Shermans and traded rumors, every word rolled in smoke.
Just appeared out of nowhere.
It’s growing near the de Young.
Dude, it’s purple and made of stone.
Strange things were often overheard in this town. Strange things happened, even. But this was decidedly peculiar.
My husband, Ian, rushed through the swarm, balancing our bowls of oatmeal with expertise. Crowds never bothered Ian the way they did me. He thrived on throngs.
“Did you hear about the purple thing growing in Golden Gate Park?” he asked.
“Sounds pretty creepy, right? Like a tumor growing out of the ground or something.”
Ian set the bowls of oatmeal down and gave me a look. I knew it well after ten years of marriage. Impatient. Challenging. “Why does it have to be creepy? It could be pretty cool, you know. I can’t believe you were ever an art major.”
Somehow, I didn’t equate my college string sculptures and charcoal drawings with unexplainable spontaneous malignancies.
An adolescent surfer girl across from us rubbed her wet head.
It’s cresting in the Music Concourse.
Her surfing companion, a woman with tattooed-covered arms and purple hair, chugged her coffee.
I heard it’s ten feet high already. Maybe twenty.
Everybody was jabbering about it.
We tried to sit and eat, but soon a pilgrimage to the park began and people started taking their food to go.
“Come on, Mae. If it gets to be too crowded for you, you can always go home,” he offered.
I hated how dismissive he had become of me. “I’m still capable of imagining the intrinsic value of something,” I said. I grabbed my helmet and jumped back on my bike just as the barista hung a sign on the front door.
Closed early today due to the purple phenomenon.
+ + +
We raced along the Great Highway toward the thick green canopy of Golden Gate Park.
“I’ll bet it’s because of that tower,” Ian shouted.
The viewing tower at the newly remodeled de Young Museum had created quite a stir with its bold architecture–coppery skin, a dangerous spiral, a rusty-caged beacon twisting out of the eucalyptus and palms–and now this, an inexplicable oddity growing directly under its nose. I ignored his theory. Ian loved this town for its unique events: the celebratory LGBTQ Parade, the goodwill of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, the blatant sexuality of the Folsom Street Fair, the absurdity of Bay to Breakers. But he didn’t instill them with any meaning. He just loved their undeniable chaos.
We cut into the park at Homeless Row, just behind the empty soccer fields. Its denizens always looked menacing, enhanced by the heavy shadows of the cypress trees. It didn’t help that the Chronicle had recently detailed how dirty and drug-addicted they were. They, too, were on the move, pushing their grungy over-stuffed shopping carts, jockeying for position along the trail.
I heard it’s festering already.
Festering? You mean like a boil?
But it’s made of stone. Can stone fester?
At this, Ian abruptly jumped the bike trail and cut across the Polo Field without a word. He was fond of such sudden moves, always expecting I would follow, but as I slowed down to scan the growing crowd I lost sight of him. Parents struggled to push strollers across the spongy grass rutted with gopher holes. Some children were hysterical. “I want to see the purple thingy!” they demanded, but the parents looked conflicted. Their faces seemed to say, “If you were older, maybe…” or “If we were younger,” and they carted their families away as fast as they could, struggling against the sun-seekers lugging their ice chests full of beer, bags of snacks and collapsible chairs up from the beach.
By the time I reached JFK Drive, a glut of abandoned cars had forced the Fulton 5 to dump its passengers. The crushing mob made me instantly claustrophobic and my feet stopped pedaling. I imagined Ian marching at the head of the procession by now. He had been a drum major in high school and had never gotten over the need to “provide proper directions and cues.” But then suddenly he was at my side, off of his bike and pulling me from mine.
“It doesn’t get any better than this,” he insisted, before dragging me into the vortex without another word.
Towers of abandoned bicycles had cropped up everywhere–in trees and bushes, stuck to hillsides, stacked like rings on lampposts and Stop signs. The jarring sound of squeaking skateboards, roller blades, and scooters collided with the thump thump thump of stilts and Pogo sticks. Ian skipped at the head of a group of college-age women chanting a sorority slogan. Enterprising young musicians sold their CD’s. A blind woman tapped her way with a gold cane. The park was filled with a curious assortment of jugglers, acrobats, magicians, and protestors predicting the end of the world.
Our chatter grew exponentially the closer we got to the hill.
It’s fifty feet high!
What if it’s like Godzilla?
It’s the eighth Wonder of the World!
When the tower burst into view through the eucalyptus trees, a surge of energy propelled us down around the last bend of JFK Drive. The thick throng began to moo, quietly at first, but soon the guttural song was rolling in deafening waves. I mooed along, self-consciously at first, then in an off-the-chart bellowing. A cowbell clanged in the distance and nervous laughter rippled through the crowd. We were in a tizzy.
And then, there it was–a purple head rising on the hill.
The mooing faded into silence and we came to a standstill. It was much smaller than I expected, perhaps fifteen by fifteen feet, and it was bald. The head had only surfaced to just below the nose, its large almond shaped eyes and perfectly cupped ears intact. Its smooth marbled surface reflected the sunlight, projecting a kaleidoscope of patterns and colors, and my chest ached from its indefinable beauty. The crowd gawked and mumbled for a long while, unsure of how or where to put our amassed energy.
At first, the music that emanated from the head was mournful and bewitching, the notes so discordant they were impossible to grasp. I looked towards the Bandshell to make sure a jazz band wasn’t performing, but it was completely quiet, and so was the crowd. Once its rhythm and melody grew into a lyrical harmony, the crowd began to sway. Some cried. Some chanted. Some held hands. Birds were arriving in such numbers the delicate branches of the eucalyptus trees drooped from their dancing. A horde soon circled the head, straining to touch its smooth purple surface and whisper in its ears. Their sudden confessions were breathy and so intimate.
I love you. Will you…
Can you help me? My mother…
Take me with you. I need…
Others stood at a distance, uncertain and needing more time, and still others simply laughed at the absurdity of it all.
I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.
Once past the first rush of adrenaline, the crowd relaxed and began to set up little picnic areas. They lolled and sprawled and lounged. They feasted on their bread and fruit. They reveled in the head’s presence, toasting it with their wine glasses or bottles of beer.
Ian and I had yet to mingle. He scrutinized the head intently. “I just don’t get it. It’s so weird looking,” he said. “At least, it’s stopped growing.” He squinted at it. “Do you think it’s done growing?”
Was I detecting a note of fear?
“Does it matter?” I asked. I was more concerned that we only had a couple of energy bars and one bottle of water to share. “We always leave home unprepared.”
“We just ate. How can you be hungry already?”
But I wasn’t hungry; I was ravenous and, suddenly, there seemed to be a difference. “I’m going to wander,” I said, finally, and disappeared into the gathering.
A drum circle had formed around the head, and its rhythmic beats pulsated through the crowd. I recognized a former neighbor in the circle, a young man with dreadlocks and a dancer’s body. Ely was clearly in a trance. I had seen the glazed look many times before when he practiced his mantra on the doorsteps next to our house. I had attributed it to the pot he also smoked as he drummed, and the constant rhythm had tended to annoy me.
“Mae,” he suddenly called out and waved me over to the circle. He kept me in his eye-line as he continued to caress a rhythm out of his drum, but now it sounded sweet and unbearably sensual. There was a certain equality in the shared rhythm, an inclusiveness to the circle that reverberated with such intensity I began to ache again, but this time more deeply, a response that should have embarrassed me, as Ely was at least ten years younger and gay.
Men and women of all ages, already dressed in skimpy warm weather clothing, began to undress themselves and each other, slowly at first, as if seeking approval for their sudden lack of inhibition. The drummers, who appeared nude behind their instruments, intensified their rhythms and the vibrations resonated into the crowd. That cautious kiss of a first date quickly gave way to a wild, unrelenting ecstasy; the drummers were guiding the revelers into a full-blown orgy right under the nose of the purple head.
I tiptoed through the undulating breasts and long legs, the smooth buttocks and hairy backs, the nipples and penises rising and falling with the beating of the drums. I searched for Ian among the groans and panting and squeals of the swarm. I wanted to tell him I understood now, that this was exactly what the moment called for, exactly what I needed even, but he had disappeared from view. Finally, the urge was too great and I began to disrobe. I joined the fondled and caressed, the suckled and the pinched, effortlessly fusing my body to the bliss, that undeniable euphoria that transcends care and worry and the need to judge, until after what seemed like an eternity of successive bone-chilling orgasms, my body laid limp from exertion.
When I awoke, it was dead quiet. I cast my eyes across a mass of pleasured beings and scanned the area where I had last seen Ian. A phalanx of cops navigated their way through the crowd, towards the head. No doubt someone had complained by now, but surely they weren’t thinking of trying to arrest it? An argument between two over-stimulated partakers suddenly erupted, and before anyone could stop them, one broke a bottle of beer on the purple head. The crowd, still clinging to every last drop of ecstasy, moaned in disappointment. The other bloke joined in and broke a bottle of red wine across the nose, this time following the shattering sound with a war cry.
People sat up, nudged by the presence of police, and began to gather their clothes, an arduous process, as most of us had shifted substantially. I scrounged someone’s long billowy dress just as more bottles were flung at the head, crashing into hundreds of little jagged pieces and splattering deep violet trails down its smooth purple surface. Some of the carousers began to sob and curse at it.
Don’t do that again!
How can I go home now?
Damn you! You made me remember.
I finally spotted Ian. He was crawling out from behind a manzanita bush, partially clothed, covered in leaves and debris and wearing an odd hat with horns. A redhead in torn fishnet stockings and a Red Sox baseball cap crawled out after him looking satiated and dirty. He smiled when he saw me, though sheepish and a bit too flushed. Oddly, I wasn’t jealous, just curious. Why had they hidden themselves behind the bushes rather than join the rollicking horde in their pleasure?
By now, a riot was in full bloom. The flock had splintered into those who were satisfied and those who wanted more. One rogue gang assaulted the head by climbing the arcs of the ears and stamping on them, lacerating them until they split and tumbled to the ground. Seized by their success, the trouble-makers pummeled the head harder, jabbing the nostrils and punching the eyes, until the head inexplicably lifted off the ground. The crowd stood immobilized by the head’s betrayal; it hadn’t grown out of the earth after all! It was so ultra-light, the gang batted it back and forth like a balloon, until it fractured and broke into big chunks, its purple sheen faded, its true content revealed – Styrofoam. The hooligans dragged the remains down the hill behind them, shredding it into a trail of flittering white pellets.
Circles of people hovered around each other, crying, shaking hands and promising to call each other soon. Some kissed on the lips, others cheek-to-cheek. I surveyed the dispersing crowd, trying to recognize someone, anyone I could thank or kiss or say goodbye to, but it was still too much of a blur. One elderly woman, dressed in mismatched ill-fitting pajamas that exposed drooping breasts, attempted to console herself as she wandered from one pile of debris to another. “What do I do now?” she cried, as she wrapped a red feather boa around her neck. “Who will have me?”
As if on cue, a half-naked drummer ran up the hill. A discerning eye could recognize him as one of the rogues.
An orange head is growing in Dolores Park!
Other rogue drummers quickly surrounded him.
It’s up to its nose already!
And off they ran, pounding out a senseless noise.
Ian grabbed my arm, looking relieved. “Are you ready to go home now?”
The drumming filtered though the trees, sweet, rhythmic and powerful, arousal already inflaming my body, stifling my answer.
His body shivered. “You think about it. I have to pee,” he said, and off he hobbled down the hill.
I watched the dwindling mob pick its way through the discarded clothes, ice chests and half-eaten lunches, until a clunky cacophony picked up. A one-man band worked the crowd, simultaneously using his hands and feet to play various musical contraptions as he warbled a curious refrain.
This one has a mouth!
This news was too great, the urge already too intense. I ran towards the public restroom looking for Ian, where I spotted him sneaking into an overgrown willow tree, guiding a scantily clad young blonde by the hand. I caught up to him just in time.
“I’m going to Dolores Park,” I said, and kissed him square on the lips, thanking him for everything.
He frowned. “Can’t you wait?” The blonde was shivering now, too. “I’ll find us some bikes when I’m done,” he offered.
“The park is across town. You’ll need to speed things up,” I said, before running barefoot in my free-flowing dress after the half-naked drummers. I hoisted an abandoned staff of giant fennel, still wreathed with ivy, and joined in the procession of cymbals and flutes. Even with the fog starting to roll in, Ian will be able to find me easily enough, in the cavalcades of exuberant young women dancing under these same trees, down these same streets as a hundred years before, Duncanesque women holding hands and moving freely past flowering rhododendron, their colorful dresses billowing as they leap and run barefoot across the meadows, the same women dancing on Greco-Roman vases in the de Young, in the bas-relief and architectural friezes of temples and tombs, the same women dancing in the retinue of Dionysus.
