As more drinks are downed and the music gets louder U2 and their

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Friends are drawn into the partying. Eventually a rumba line starts snaking around the room, everyone's hands on the butts of the person in front of them. As the line gets squeezed together a humping motion takes over, until the train of bodies looks like an orgy of caterpillars. Edge reaches back over the shoulders of the woman between them and strokes Larry's chest, which inspires another woman to lift up Larry's shirt and lick his torso. Larry lurches backward and the whole line collapses into a pigpile on the floor.

The members of U2 pick themselves up and agree it's time to go. Edge and Morleigh are going to go home, but Larry and Bono are up for finding another club. They head to a straight disco across the street. They are waved through the entry, escorted downstairs, and placed on a slightly elevated platform behind a velvet rope. A small, thin man in a floppy hat approaches the rope and Bono jumps up, waves him through, then gives him a big hug. It's a photographer friend of U2's from past trips to Australia who used to be a cross-dresser. Bono laughs and introduces him around and asks what's new. "Well, I'm HIV-positive."

Bono engages his friend in intense conversation while Larry orders drinks and studies the roomful of dancers, most of whom are studying Bono and Larry. It's hard to tell which side of this velvet rope represents the tourists and which side the monkeys, but we are all in the zoo. Over the next half hour a bizarre ritual unfolds. Women accumulate along the rope, displaying themselves for U2. They lick their lips, they bat their eyes, they gesture suggestively. Joni Mitchell once told me about going to the Playboy mansion with Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson. She said that every bunny and centerfold who approached the two movie stars would stick out whatever part of her anatomy—breasts, butt—was most developed. I understand now that Joni was not exaggerating. Some of these women are sliding the velvet rope between their legs. Some are stoking the poles from which the rope is suspended. They are no longer looking at Bono and Larry like animals in a cage, they are looking at them like hamburger on a plate.

For the first time in my life I have some sympathy for Mick Jagger's defense of sexist Rolling Stones songs like "Stupid Girl." Jagger always said that when you're in the Stones' position you really do meet a lot of women like that. I figure it's an artist's job to rise above that level, but you know what? It would be very hard to objectify some of these writhing women more than they are objectifying themselves. When

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People make a commodity of their sexuality and throw it in your face it doesn't take very long—if you're not interested in taking advantage of the offer—to sink into a vaguely amused contempt. It's not right, it's not justified, but that seems to be what happens to a lot of rock stars. Maybe it happens to movie stars and politicians too. If people around you treat themselves like prostitutes, it's eventually easy to act like a

Pimp.

I made a note the first time I heard Zooropa all the way through that the album sounded to me "postsexual." Looking at that comment later I couldn't figure out what I had thought that meant. Now I remember! It ties in with Bono's comment back at the transvestite party in New York that he now knows how it feels to be a babe. Rock stars at U2's level are in the very strange position of knowing that if they feel like having sex with a beautiful woman, there are hundreds anxious to volunteer at any time. The rare men who have become big enough rock stars to find themselves in that unusual situation have in their songs either (a) ig­nored it, so as not to alienate an audience unable to identify with such circumstances (as with Springsteen) or (b) used it to peddle pin-up fantasies to adolescents (as with Aerosmith). But in fact, morality aside, a man liberated from the need to pursue sex may find himself with a very odd perspective on human behavior. Sex has lost much of its power over him. The attitude I sensed during that first listen to Zooropa was one where sex was no longer even a very interesting issue, as money ceases to be an issue for the very rich: the characters had moved on to other things. Now I'm thinking that it would be great if U2 or—even better —Mick Jagger came at the subject head-on: what does it mean to be a man and be sated? That would really be new ground for rock & roll, where most men are such prisoners of their pee-pees that they will not be able to think past it until they are dead.

A woman with very long legs in a very short miniskirt knows the fellow guarding U2's little podium, and she manages to get through the rope and starts dancing on the band's perifery—as if she just happened to be there and hadn't noticed any rock stars. She moves closer and closer to Bono, keeping her eyes fixed across the room. Finally she succeeds in catching his attention. He is not, however, lovestruck. He is floating in alcohol. He leans into my ear like Henry Higgins studying an anthropological curiosity.

"What color knickers do you think she's wearing?" he asks.

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"Well," I say, "her bra's hanging out and it's black, so her underpants must be black."

"Hmmmm," Bono says with the detachment of a boozed-up profes­sor. "I think she's the type to wear a black bra and white little-girl knickers."

"You're crazy."

"Ten bucks says I'm right."

"You re on."

Eric, Bono's faithful security man, is as always standing nonchalantly within Bono's sightlines. Bono waves for him to come over and whispers in his ear. Eric grins and studies the situation. He clears the drinks from a short glass coffee table in front of us, reaches out and takes the dancer by the hand, and suggests she climb up on it. She jumps at the chance and starts frugging before us, her head brushing the ceiling.

Bono gives Eric the thumbs-up and we lean forward to settle our bet. Just as we do a startlingly bright strobe flashes off in our faces. Someone has just shot a humiliating photo and blinded us in the process. We fall back rubbing our eyes while the dancer shimmies off the table and across the floor.

"I didn't see a thing.'" Bono shouts in my ear. "Did you?"

"I still can't see anything," I say, Bono's face eclipsed by a floating purple blotch. "At least you were wearing those welder's glasses."

Eventually the dancer—who Bono correctly describes as amazonian, finishes shimmying and flops down between us. "Will you show us your underpants?" Bono asks.

She smiles and hikes up the dress to her hip, snapping a black strap. Bono hangs his head in defeat. "That's American dollars, Bono," I say.

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