Sloane Peterson's Denim Ass.

I looked up from my notebook around the smallish suburban park in San Francisco. Unfamiliar chords from a guitar drifted across the grass. A couple threw a Frisbee to their excited, slack-tongued dogs. A group of children shot out of the double doors of a school behind us to play on the basketball courts, screaming with glee as if released from Kid Prison. The park was busy, the way it should be on a day like this. It was Hooky Weather: outstanding environmental conditions capable of coercing people into skipping work, school, or any other sizable responsibility because of some immediate and fictitious illness. The California sun warmed the black plastic frames of my wayfarers, providing the right ingredients to placate even the most unreasonable hangover.

Things got predictably rowdy the night before seeing as Marin had just gotten to town, so along with ibuprofen and a good breakfast the three of us looked forward to relaxing in the afternoon sun. The park was our way to shut off the world for any period of time: an optimal locale to recuperate, read a little, and conceive half-baked plans for the rest of my visit. I’ve always enjoyed old-fashioned peace and quiet, those precious, fleeting moments where my Blackberry doesn’t plink with activity and when I have no pressing need to go anywhere or do anything. We reclined on the grass and surrendered to the warm, orangey ball.

Nate and I first met Marin in the Dublin Airport where she, like the rest of our study abroad compatriots, was groggy, confused and in desperate need of sleep. We quickly became friends with the fetching Minnesotan because for some reason our Irish classmates wanted nothing to do with a rambunctious group of Americans suddenly unencumbered from relying on fake IDs. It had been three years since we were last together and it didn’t surprise me that she’d fly to the west coast based solely on a passing remark that there would be fun in which to join. The reunion began on Tuesday. She waited outside the automatic doors of the airport with her oversized sunglasses, a shock of blonde hair, and Chiclet-white smile as Nate pulled the Zipcar towards the sidewalk. We hugged, put her luggage in the car, and headed back into the city. To our delight, it was another sunny day in California.

I stretched out on the grass as a rumbling car shrieked to a halt on the train tracks buffering the edge of the park from the street. A handful of people climbed off, one of them a middle school aged boy on a Razor scooter. He rolled past us staring towards the grass, his jaw nearly scraping the pavement. His pre-pubescent voice, unabashed and innocent, knifed through the background noise.
“Whoa!”
I adjusted my sunglasses.

 “Uhhh...” muttered a confused Marin, breaking into her low-pitched chuckle—the octave used for laughing in a church or at a dirty joke. I put down my notebook and Nate dog-earred his Kerouac to take a gander. Relatively close by was a couple in their mid- to late-twenties: a short, olive-skinned man in jeans and an attractive brunette who, from a distance, looked a lot like the character of Sloane Peterson from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” One moment the pair lay side-by-side, idly chatting and the next they engaged in what can only be described as Yoga Sex. The jockey-sized male lay flat on his back and slowly lifted his partner in the air using only his legs. Her arms then gracefully stretched out in Boeing fashion as she straightened her legs, pointed her toes and stared down at him, her body now parallel to the ground. After holding the superman pose for some time, she gradually twisted and turned and gyrated into other positions, which, if legally considered yoga, are likely named Upward Facing Hooker, Naughty Needle, and Dragon Fellatio.

Whoa indeed.

Apart from the occasional bout of laziness, I try to keep my body in relative working order. Since I had no interest in baseball, was too petrified and delicate for football and because my parents didn’t have money for hockey equipment, I played soccer and ran track. And without cable television (until age fourteen at least) or any video game system whatsoever, there wasn’t much else to do but stay active. In the past six years, I’ve taken up boxing, a sport inherently dichotomous because though it’s a demanding hybrid of calisthenics, self defense and strength training, it also gives strangers license to punch each other in the face. It’s a concept which to some is just as jarring as watching two adults perform naughty Kundalini in front of a playground.

As far as fads go, Americans have long since shelved the Thighmaster to don stretchy pants, sling the pastel mat over their shoulder and journey in droves to their tranquil, sweaty Mecca. Every time I glance up from my book and catch eyes with a glistening yogan retrieving his or her soy latte, my hamstrings quiver in fear. I gave yoga the old college try back in, well, college. I interned at a summer program in New Hampshire and a co-worker who recognized my gym rat gene suggested I try it out. She volunteered to proctor a couple of sessions as well as give me numerous, soon to be recycled photocopies of an attractive woman demonstrating certain positions. So in an effort to diversify my exercise regimen, I unfurled my teal mat onto the hard concrete and proceeded to sweat and struggle through two workouts. My trial run was clammy, strenuous and embarrassing, and I will forever tip my cap to those who, unlike me, transition gracefully from Half Shoulder Stand to Bridge Pose.

But what did it all mean? I wondered while snapping pictures on my Blackberry. Was he smugly broadcasting the simplicity in getting this woman’s head so close to his genitals? Was this a flexing of Yoga Muscle, a taunt to those unbendable, uncoordinated and possibly arthritic? Or were they marking their Yoga Turf to discourage other tandem partners from practicing in the park?

“Lust Panther,” he would say to his girlfriend, shaking his head. “Saw ‘em do it.”

I briefly imagined their reaction if all of the sudden I unveiled my dumbbell collection and began lifting aggressively or used my pitching wedge to flop a few golf balls in their direction.

 “Sorry,” I’d say, “just showcasing my skills in a public forum.”

On the one hand I applauded their athleticism and mutual crusade for good health, but on the other I didn’t quite get it. The park was supposed to be a place where we could unwind, and I found the couple’s willingness to perform the awkward and the bizarre bothersome. We weren’t able to change the channel or raise our collective hand to object. They forced their sultry agenda onto everyone present, even if Sloane Peterson and her diminutive sidekick didn’t realize it. I guess thrusting one’s legs in the air while facedown in another’s erogenous zone didn’t fall under their definition of Hobbies That May Be Perceived As Weird In Public. But it goes without saying that certain activities should stay far away from the voyeuristic, judgmental eyes of strangers, especially those armed with camera phones and mobile access to Facebook. It’s why strip clubs are indoors. It’s why bathrooms have locks. It’s why Clinton got a blowjob in his office and not in a beach chair on the south lawn.

The three of us decided on a change of scenery, primarily one that served lots of cold beer. As we left, Sloane Peterson’s denim ass, a sexy beacon glimmering in the afternoon sun, reached toward the heavens. We were off to find some privacy in a bar and continue catching up on old times, leaving them to their cigarettes or long embrace or whatever it is people do after Yoga Sex.