The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens

by John Rechy

  How difficult to find amazing grace even in the City of Angels.

  In the following days, anticipating his job at Huey’s Mansion, which grew grander and larger every day in Mrs. Allworthy’s constant descriptions of it, he took the bus and the subway everywhere, smiling at the question about the whereabouts of his horse. He went to a concert under the stars, although fog obscured the stars. He roamed the La Brea tar pits, awed by real-looking saber-toothed tigers. At the silent movie theater, he wondered how Charlie Chaplin was able to make you laugh and cry at the same time. He studied the Portrait of a Woman at an art museum, admired its colors, but where was the woman?

  After a long bus ride on the freeway—and, damn, can you believe the freeways?—he discovered the Central Library in Downtown Los Angeles.

  He has never seen anything like this—rooms and rooms full of books and magazines, and eager young and old people pecking out information on computers. He paused to watch a young man gliding excitedly through image after image. Of nude women! He stopped to look, but the young man immediately punched at the keyboard and the nude women were wiped away by tall pine trees. All these books! Would every book get read sometime?

  “May I help you?”

  Lyle turned to see who had spoken to him. He didn’t find anyone until he looked down and discovered a midget looking up at him, a neat, pretty, trim woman with glasses. A tag indicated she was a librarian.

  “Yes, ma’am; will you help me?” he said because she seemed to want very much to help him. “It’s my first time here.”

  She stood next to him. “See how short I am, especially next to you?” She measured herself against his hip.

  “You sure are,” Lyle said. He squatted down to face her. He read her name tag: “Mrs. Small.”

  “That’s really my name,” she laughed. “Your first time here? Then follow me.” The tall cowboy and Mrs. Small entered a grand room with arches that soared over everything.

  Mrs. Small said she wanted to introduce Lyle “to the thrills of reading.” He didn’t tell her that he had gone through required reading in school, all taught dully, and that, now and then, there was more than enough to “thrill” to—like Tom Sawyer’s trip downriver, and—

  He focused all his attention on her because she was going about the matter of introducing him to thrills with remarkable diligence, pulling out, considering, putting back, or removing books on lower-level shelves that she could easily reach, except for one that she asked Lyle to get. From the dozen or so chosen, she picked three—“to begin the thrills.” She left him with a merry chuckle, passing her hand over her head and onto the place she reached on his hips. “I’m very small,” she said happily.

  “Very small,” Lyle complimented.

  He spent the rest of the day trying to read everything he could, replacing one book with another, wishing he’d done more of this in Rio Escondido. With his new library card, he checked out the three books Mrs. Small had chosen: Huckleberry Finn, Oliver Twist, and Wuthering Heights. (“The third one because it’s my favorite—do you mind?” “Oh, no, I bet it’ll be one of my favorites, too.”)

  “You sure don’t look like a bookworm to me,” a testy young man with thick glasses said to Lyle. “Where’s your damn horse?”

  “I don’t—” To hell with him.

  Glaring back at him, the testy young man stumbled on Mrs. Small, who had emerged to say good-bye, “for now,” to Lyle. “Watch where you’re going, shorty!” the testy young man barked at the natty midget.

  “Hey, you!” Lyle called out, ready to defend Mrs. Small.

  But the young man ran out.

  “Forget him,” said Mrs. Small. “He’s just insecure because he’s neither very tall nor very short.”

  On the bus back on the freeway, Lyle read from each of the books he had checked out, shifting from one to the other. He got off before his stop so he could read as he walked, very slowly, to his apartment, two books under one arm, another in his hand before him. Damn! How sad that no one could ever read everything!—and, wow, Catherine Earnshaw sure had spunky spirit, like Maria.

  During the following days, he roamed along the chic shops of Melrose Boulevard, choosing presents to buy later for Sylvia, for Clarita, for Maria. He moved on to Santa Monica Boulevard, wondering why so many guys with terrific muscles looked at him instead of at each other. He traveled to the Watts Towers, a monumental sculpture of millions of fragments of colored glass—shards of bottles, cups, saucers embedded into concrete, forming a dazzling ship that had, through the years, assumed an aged, ghostly gauziness like an apparition; an Italian immigrant, Lyle read in a pamphlet, had dedicated his life to constructing it.

  As he walked to the bus stop nearby, he was aware of angry, resentful stares, mostly from younger black men, whom he nevertheless greeted, eliciting some grudgy, some friendly greetings back—but, mostly, even more hostile glares. Sister Matilda had seen her father lynched, and the black slave had to challenge Cap’n Newton to feel pain. So it was easy to recognize that the men and women on these streets had to suspect everyone. They had no way of knowing that he felt em-pa-thy for the down-trotten, because there wasn’t all that much in the goddamned world, was there?—and if they—

  “Look at the cowboy! Whatcha doin’ wanderin’ around here, man?”

  A wiry young black man with a cap slouched back had swaggered up to him with two others, circling him.

  “Just lookin’ around,” Lyle said.

  “He just lookin’ around,” said another of the three, a short, heavy boy, no more than fifteen years old.

  “Whatcha lookin’ around for?” the third one, tall—with muscles that seemed to strain for action—faced Lyle, his nose inches from Lyle’s. “Trouble?”

  “I got no problem with you,” Lyle said. He asked the Virgin Guadalupe to help him find the right words to get out of what looked serious, very serious. “I want you to know I feel lots of em-pa-thy for you.”

  The three looked at each other in exaggerated disbelief. “Did ya hear that? Fuckin’ white cowboy says he got a lot of em-path-y for us,” the wiry young man announced.

  “What the fuck’s em-path-y?” the short, heavy one asked the tall one.

  “Ask the cowboy, man. He’s the one that’s got it.”

  “Feelin’ for another,” Lyle said seriously.

  The three broke into laughter, slapping at each other. The muscular one pushed Lyle, hard, on the chest. “You feel that? You feel em-pa-thy?”

  “No,” Lyle said, “it just hurt.”

  “Maybe this’ll make you feel more em-pa-thy.” The short, heavy one shoved him to one side. The wiry one shoved him back. They bounced him back and forth, gathering closer to him, a tightening triangle, fists ready, feet dance-kicking. Lyle’s fists prepared to move, but he cautioned them—they had to learn when to wait. He was in real danger. The bus was approaching. He tried to back away from the three—but they closed in, anger on their faces spilling into rage.

  “Look. I got no problem with you,” Lyle repeated. He was afraid, very afraid.

  “Maybe we got lotsa problems with you, motherfucker!” said the tall one.

  What was the boy reaching for? What was he holding? Something that gleamed in a flash—a knife, a gun? It was all a blur now for Lyle as sweat blistered his eyes and the three figures pressed in about him, jostling him roughly back and forth, blocking him from sight.

  “Y’all get away from him, ya hear?” A black older woman with a pretty hat, a band of tiny flowers around it, had rushed to the scene from her house on Grape Street. “He came to see the Towers, that’s all, I saw him walking there.” She stood before Lyle, facing down the three men.

  “Get away, old bitch,” the tall one said, “we don’t want no shit from you.”

  She didn’t budge before Lyle. The bus halted, the door swooshed open. “Jump in quick, white boy!” the woman ordered, “and don’t come ’round any more where you don’t fit.”

  Lyle hopped into the bus.
The doors closed. Rushing to a window, he called out to the woman, who was already sauntering away, “Thank you, ma’am, thank you”—and then to the others who had followed menacingly, striking at the sides of the bus as it drove away: “I swear I got no problem with you.” He was trembling, sweating, terrified. He had to figure this all out. If only he could ask Sister Matilda what to think, what to feel.

  3

  An essential decision about life and living.

  But you couldn’t go on being afraid all the time, could you?

  So, the next day, Lyle resumed his treks about the city that contained lots of dangers, yes, but also lots of fabulous excitement—and exceptional people like that black lady with the flowers on her hat. Very soon, he’d be going to Huey’s mansion, the party for Ms. Universal! In the meantime—

  Along Sunset Boulevard at night, scantily clad girls and leather-garbed young men posed outside nightclubs with sinister names, “The Viper Room,” “The Vortex,” “The Pit.” He wasn’t old enough to go in, wouldn’t really want to—so many people pleading to be let in by hulking, sulking attendants at the doors. Often, young men and women standing outside or coming out of the darkened nightclubs—or sitting in one of several outdoor coffee houses sipping foamy drinks—responded to him. “Cool” … “hot.” How could you be both? he wondered.

  Along the streets, and in the coffee shops where he ate, people were often friendly—a family once asked him to dinner at their home Sunday—and he’d talk, listen. At times he was invited to parties going on somewhere. Once he smoked from a joint someone at an outdoor table handed to him. He became so dizzy and disoriented he had to sit down with them until the weird sensation passed.

  He was so excited by everything he saw, everything he experienced—trying to figure it all out, including the hostility he had generated on the black streets—that he preferred to roam alone, to absorb it all fully. Sometimes he took his guitar with him, slung over his shoulder so that, if he felt like it, he might sit down somewhere—anywhere—just as he had in his lot in Rio Escondido—and he would begin a song in his mind. When he left his guitar behind, he might return at night to test some notes and jot down words that might become a song. Black eyes deep with anger—” He’d work on his songs until the man who lived in the apartment next to him would bang on the wall and ask him if he was crazy.

  He took a bus to Venice West, and walked about the small quaint city—canals, buildings with arches, carved columns; in the distance, neat rows of stacked condominiums, and, nearby, oil plucking at the earth like dinosaurs.

  He loitered about the boardwalk by the beach. Girls in bikinis and athletic young men in trunks skated by. He stopped to watch men with huge, oiled muscles work out in an outdoor pit. The most muscular man put down his weights and walked over to wink at him. Kids performed tricks on skateboards, bikers glided off toward the ocean, gangy boys slouched in baggy clothes. Stay away from them!

  Tourists strolled, dancers danced, musicians played, drummers beat on drums—and men and women passed out leaflets offering solutions for everything.

  “See the face of God?” a bearded old man sitting on the ground and wearing a loincloth called out. Because nobody else was stopping, Lyle paused. The man drew tangles of lines on a piece of paper, a harsh black X across it. He handed it to Lyle. “Twenty bucks.” Lyle thanked him and hurried on.

  Gypsies telling fortunes, clowns cavorting, a butterfly lady fluttering along with gauzy wings, gymnasts soaring into the air, jugglers, ragged bands, fake jewels, sticks of wafting incense, artists sculpting sand, tattoo shops with drawings of maddened butterflies, coiled panthers. Everywhere, dazed men and women, young, old, like zombies, begging for money, shivering under the warm sun.

  He had left the ocean for the last, looking away from it even though he couldn’t avoid glimpsing it as he walked along. The day waned, crowds thinned.

  He walked barefoot toward the endless expanse of water. The tide was advancing. Slow waves gathered into larger ones, splashing the beach, retreating, gaining force, climbing. Nearby, two lithe men and two women in black tights performed a slow dance of graceful motions as they faced the setting sun—now a fading blaze of umber—as if greeting the coming night. Flocks of birds perched on the sand, facing the ocean.

  He stood as close to the water as possible. It was as if everything, including the setting sun, was waiting for the sky to fuse with the ocean into darkness. Was there anything else this amazing? Was grace? Beyond that expanse of water and sky, what? Mysterious, beautiful, secret. Like so much of what he was encountering in this city of astonishment, mysterious, beautiful, secret.

  Like Sylvia.

  4

  Has Lyle met BABETTE during the savage attack of the peacock at Huey’s Mansion?

  Inside the gates of Huey’s Mansion, but not yet inside its lush grounds, Lyle stood in a row with ten other young men his age, all handsome. Before them, a black woman in shiny black leather instructed them about this evening’s affair celebrating Ms. Universal.

  “My name is Honor!” she announced. “Now, everyone listen up! We don’t take crap from anyone. We got guards all around, serious guards with guns. Lesser guests gather in a parking lot at UCLA and will be bussed only after they show picture identification. VIPs are allowed up to this area in their cars, mostly limos. People will try to break through, to catch a glimpse of Huey, maybe Ms. Universal. But they’ll get in over my dead body.” She reiterated their “duties”—roam around answering questions about where this or that is, guide guests there, summon waiters for hors d’oeuvres and wine if anyone was missed. “Show the guests where the towels and the robes are if they want to take a shower or use the sauna.”

  Take a shower?

  Lyle’s eyes scanned the large arena they would rove, an area tented as if for a circus. Inside the tent were tables and mountains of flowers, and several bars tended by young men, a rainbow of bottles behind them. Beyond the canvas structure, on a vast lawn that rolled on to the edge of a forest of trees, monkeys swung about and birds chirped merrily in plant-filled cages. On slopes that disappeared into the horizon, a deer—another one!—more!—idled about. Peacocks tended by a woman in safari khakis sauntered haughtily along. Far away, remote, high, ascending upon level upon level of flowers—birds of paradise, exotic lilies, roses—and, somewhere a waterfall was murmuring—there, up high, higher, was The Mansion, resplendent in early evening brightness as if the very earth had begged it to emerge.

  A helicopter lurked watchfully over everything.

  Like a drill sergeant in leather, Honor moved aside for a thin man to inspect the attire of the attendants.

  “Boots!” snarled the man.

  “Tony Lama,” Lyle announced. “Black ones.”

  “Cool, dude.” the young man next to him said, and loosened his tie.

  “What’s going on, what’s going on?” Honor was there.

  “He’s wearing cowboy boots!”

  Honor looked around, as if considering whether to call someone to find a pair of shoes for him, escort him away, or shoot him.

  Bubbles of laughter floated over them. The first fleet of guests was sailing out of limousines—and there, as if materializing out of the extravagant setting, and across an impervious pool of diamond-gleaming water, on which white lilies relaxed—there, ready to greet the first guests, stood—

  Huey and Ms. Universal.

  Huey was a short man in a wine-colored velvet robe. Next to him—and from this distance—Ms. Universal seemed to have been airbrushed against the verdant background; she was all silvery-blonde, wearing a sheath of a dress that made hot love to her voluptuous body.

  “Too late to do anything about the damn boots!” Honor scowled at Lyle. In substitute anger, she tightened the loosened tie of the young man next to him and didn’t stop until he protested, “Ouch!”

  “All of you!” Honor commanded. “Move out!”

  Lyle thought Ms. Universal was the most dazzling woman he had ever seen,
next, of course, to Maria.

  And Babette.…

  Wait! Was Ms. Universal Babette—now a blonde?

  Several other young women, all pretty, all sexy, dressed in tiny skirts and low tops were idling about looking like bunnies. Oh, God, they were wearing rabbit ears—and cotton tails!

  “I’d sure like to fuck Ms. Universal,” the young man next to Lyle said earnestly as they began to break up to their stations.

  “Me, too,” Lyle said just as earnestly. If he could get closer to her, he’d determine whether she was Babette!

  The young man who had loosened his tie sidled up to Lyle. “Name’s Shandy—well, that’s my stage name. Hey, you’re, like, a handsome dude, man. You think I’m, like, good-lookin’?”

  Lyle nodded his head, yes.

  “Yeah? Hey, do you ever, like, go with guys?”

  Lyle thought of Raul and the lonesome chorus boy in Las Vegas. “I like guys,” he said.

  “Great. I’m not a fag—I bet you’re, like, not either, dude—but at these parties there’s, like, always some bitches or some guys who, like, wanna get something going with us good-looking studs. Wanna, like, pull a sex gig with me after? Pays good, y’know?”

  Male prostitutes? He knew of course that there were female prostitutes. But males?—getting paid for something as terrific as sex? “Oh, uh, maybe another time, dude Shandy,” Lyle said, because he did not want to offend the man.

  Shandy cocked the thumb and index finger of each hand in imitation of a double-barrel gun. “Gotcha, dude!” he fired.

  Lyle had maneuvered closer to Ms. Universal! Those breasts! Those lips! Those hips! Those legs! That smile that stayed and stayed! Definitely Babette. No two women could look like that. Who was she smiling at? No one. Just smiling. He stared until he saw her blink, having made sure she wasn’t a cutout of the poster.

  The blonde apparition and the man in the velvet robe disappeared along the paths, to mingle away from lesser guests spilling out of buses.

  As Lyle milled about answering questions—“Where is—?” “Where is—?” he saw a peacock that had wandered away from the attendant in safari khakis.