I wanted to blame it on the mescaline, on the drug's aestheticizing effect, but it reminded me a lot of the way I'd felt the afternoon I'd driven up to Griffith Park during the celibate years and watched three men having extremely unsafe sex in the bushes. That was all I'd planned to do, just watch, to get some fresh material for my mental pornography cache, and I'd been alternately repelled and aroused. The unsafe nature of the sex had appalled and terrified me, but I'd told myself they'd obviously made their own decision about it and would no doubt have been doing the same thing whether I'd been there watching or not. But suddenly the man who was getting fucked in the ass had looked at me--like a porno actor shattering the screen--he'd looked straight at me with utter contempt, as if to say, how dare you cop a cheap, vicarious thrill when we're actually risking (sacrificing?) our lives to do this?