The Pope’s Bachelor Party
By C. M. Dougherty

The Pope built friendships out of money. I make this deal with you, you make this deal with me, there, we’re rich and we’re friends. But he had no real friends. As soon as the money connection was broken, they weren’t friends any more and I would bet the farm and the barn and the fish pond that those that were there that night are not his friends today.

I had no real friends either. I built friendships out of drinking. I drink with you, you drink with me, there we’re drunk and we’re friends. If I stop drinking I would have to find a new set friends too, non-drinking friends. I can’t see that day for some odd reason.

The Pope had his hands ties behind his back. He wore a black felt sack over his head and was escorted into the bar area to the delight of the invitees. Everyone knew the real fun was about to start. With three or four doses of alcohol under my belt I was gliding past my bad mood and edged forward with the rest of the howlers. Though I have to add, contrary to all things macho and male, I was never excited by strippers.

I stepped back to enjoy the scene, not the sex, not the breasts, nor bush, nor rounded hump. I enjoyed the scene from one step back, one degree removed like a documentary film maker. I watched the viewers viewing the spectacle. That was the real show.

There were the guys who drank heavily to overcome their insecurities until they felt brave enough to grope and fondle. There were other guys who were dreadfully afraid of being embarrassed, of having their zippers undone, afraid their penis would recede, shrivel and invert before the crowd. There were others who were still unsure of their own sexuality, but played the game nonetheless, just to be one of the ol’ boys.

The only thing strippers succeeded in doing was taking your money (one dollar at a time) making you horny with no where to go, except to bother some poor girl at a bar or in front of your bathroom mirror, drunk and accompanied only by a tin of Vaseline and a wad of toilet paper.

The other stripper school of thought, however, is that strippers, by the inherent nature and qualifications of their job, must be aesthetically pleasing. My friend Luis often objected to my low opinion of strippers by saying: "You like to see beautiful works of art in a museum right? Van Gogh? Matisse? Well a stripper is beautiful live art which can be enjoyed more fully being that it is front of you in the here and now. You can interact with the gracious beauty of a stripper, but you can only stare at the Mona Lisa through a glass partition in a cold museum elbowing out Japanese tourists who are considering buying it."

The Pope was securely tied to a pole and a war dance began around him. The crowd closed in. His hood was removed as he gasped for air. Dripping with sweat, he refocused his eyes and found his bearings; a dive bar. Two more minutes under that thick sack and he would have needed an ambulance. Actually, for what was about to happen to him, a trip to the hospital may have been a more pleasant experience. The music started and out of a nondescript back door came five or six serving wenches dressed in nothing more than trays of pigs in a blanket. The crowd reared its ugly head with a united "Awwww!" I drank more, quicker, stronger.

Two, lets call them headmaster strippers, began a serpentine lesbian dance on and around the Pope. The crowd really began to get worked up with the typical hoots and hollers of a high scoring Yankee game. The Pope was then relieved of his clothing vis-a-vis by having them torn from his body. His closest money-friends then proceeded to drench him with wide variety of alcoholic beverages.

The strippers stripped, the hookers (in the back room) hooked, and the poor Pope slumped down, nude, drenched to the bone with cold alcohol. He was one pitiful site. If I didn’t dislike him so much I would have felt bad for him. I even hoped he would break his teetotaling status by licking the booze off his skin, but unfortunately his attention was required elsewhere. The beautiful lesbian pair were performing the proverbial 69 standing up right in front of his face. One up-side down, one right-side up. I wished I could perform any job so well. This was pure talent.

The place was awash with booze and bad food. The Pope was completely miserable and I would guess it was one of the most humiliating moments of his life. One lesbian dropped to her knees and started blowing him while the other lesbian ate her mate from behind.

The poor Pope could not get an erection even though you could tell he was directing all his mental powers toward his penis. And I should add, it was fortunate he didn’t become aroused because this was the time when, we, "The American We", were really just discovering AIDS. And these fine young women were a few hundred men and women shy of virginity. I couldn’t blame him for his poor performance. What sane person could get excited in such a state with forty people cheering him on like proud fathers at a soap box derby?

However, the Pope was not to be let off the hook so easily because in part two of act one the Pope was befitted with a strap-on vibrating dildo. And when I say vibrating I don’t mean vibrating like a Braun electric razor. I’m talking jiggling and twanging motions like a good fishing lure. And it wasn’t strapped around his waste either, but rather over his face. It looked liked his nose was replaced with a black German sausage snake. The Pope then proceeded to have his face fucked off by the beautiful ass of stripper number one.

The Pope didn’t object. He didn’t complain or get angry or cry as some might have done, as I would have certainly done. I would have either cried like a baby or inflated green like the Incredible Hulk and ripped the support pole out of the floor, caving the roof in on my drinking-friends.

The Pope braved the storm. For him it was part of business, a tightening of friendships. A tightening of the money circle. More for the Pope! God bless the Pope!

You never really know anyone, that’s what I thought to myself on the subway home. I wondered if the Pope’s young bride knew what she was getting.