Broken Rainbows

by Rager, Bob

  On the street again. Was this how it as gonna be? A lure in a trap, the jaws spinning tight against the prey but just an instant before the fatal grasp the bait snatched to safety. Except sooner or later the trap would close on the bait and the prey both.

  He felt strangely cool-headed, the cars on the street stood out in clear crisp edges, the light of the street lamps, a bright yellow and white glare. So this was what doom looked like, to finally see that there was no escaping the very demons that he had fought over and over again, thrashing blindly at the dark, trying to make it go away.

  There was no love waiting for him at the end of the alley. There was no man waiting beside fire pouring brandy to welcome him home. There was no loud and merry crowd around a holiday dinner, no friends, lovers, and no magnificent strangers.

  There would only be the dark cubicles, the doorways and secret houses, overgrown park trails, places that he was making his own. Doom was seeing where your heart longed to be and knowing you would never find the way there.

  Every passing car sent up the crunch of tires on the ground, the bangs and rumbles coming from exhausts made his heart jump. But this meant that he was still alive, that he lived now.

  He knew that figure at the end of the block was the new kid, the runaway from college even though all she had done was turn her head as a car slowed down at the curb – he felt alive! This was his victory against all the shit, the hatred, the darkness that the world tossed at him.

  He could know what his future was to be – to die alone, obscure, in poverty, like so many others; he saw the future, if not the now, he saw the way it would all end and that nagging shadow of fear disappeared in his clear eyes, that for now he had survived and that he walked under the pitiless street lamps. He felt his t-shirt brush across his nipples and shivered in pleasure.

  He could still feel and he could walk these streets among men looking for sex, searching with them in a great adventure while the rest of the world was blind and lost in delusion.

  A muscle under his rib cramped in a snap of cold pain. His jaw dropped and in wonder he swallowed hard at the cold icy knot in his stomach. And then it was gone.

  In between the encounters in bars, the drinks, the crazies, the freaks and the Queens, and even the just plain ordinary, they were all alive while the rest of the world was numb, dead, only an occasional flicker of brutal hatred of the living that caught fire in beating and baiting.

  As cruel and brutal as his world could be, he knew that he was alive in it. He could feel among the living, even if the feeling was pain, or fear, or loneliness, and he felt real, the uncertainty gone, at last: life had stripped away little fantasies and delusions, cut away hopes and prayers to bare what lay underneath.

  Cruelty – it didn’t matter. He walked past some guy, just another guy on the street, a guy trying not to look out of place, searching with eyes that darted and fled and helplessly turned back to look again, lips wet and bunched with desire so sharp it ached. Cruelty has nothing to do with it, cruelty didn’t belong here. All that mattered was the stripping away of a man’s pretensions, the evasions and even fear, yes, even fear was but away until all that was left was a heart beating with desire, a red hot liquid and yet cool and smooth as ice that flowed with life.

  A desire, a forbidden pleasure that was so powerful it survived the desperate attempts to obliterate its memory; getting drunk, beatings, crazy sobbing, desperate prayers to not sin again, even the numbness of a mind slowly losing reason after years of running away from feeling that the path back to reason was hopelessly lost in twisted byways and dead ends.

  But what was left was still alive.

  Chapter 37

  He stuck his chin out. He was doomed. Yeah. And he was alive and he knew it. What happened to love? He didn’t know.

  He knew there was something—long ago, that was something that had happened to someone else; someone that looked like him, someone whose memories he carried as if they were his own, but that was a different person.

  People say they’re looking for love, love me, let me love you, love me tonight, love me tomorrow, love for a day, love forever but it was just words. And not even their own words. However much they spoke of love, they searched for an end to their desire.

  Oh he wanted to live to feel this rush of survival. He was walking these streets. He wouldn’t trade it for anything. No he wouldn’t love a family, a partner, a lover, whatever he didn’t care, what was grief and mourning anyway except more sadness and pain. No what he wanted to leave behind was that he had survived.

  Around the corner, the street throbbed with new activity. The clubs are closing and refugees are flooding the street, taxis mingle with glossy sports coupes, a motorcycle; the restless, not ready to call the night over, others beginning theirs.

  A lone figure separates itself from an irregularly shaped shadow. He balances for a moment on a booted foot, a tall dancer in jeans and dark t-shirt, then settles in both feet, a car squeals to a stop shinned to a standstill by the blissful sight of youthful beauty.

  Without caring to he has wandered to the street where stands the anonymous door to the anonymous house. A curious parade passes along the dim sidewalk. He knows where to stand just outside the upside down cones of white light spilling from the Districts quaintly shaped street lamps. They hadn’t bothered to remove the old gas lamp standards, they were just rewired for electricity although in certain blocks the night was tempered by the graceful dance of real flames floating overhead.

  The men of the parade are solemn, and silent, like members of a secret fraternal order meeting in a rite of secret handshakes and code words mumbled behind raised hands.

  His ever roving glance lingers, moves on and then returns to one figure, taller, leaner, more compelling than the others.

  Indistinct pushes him deeper into the shadows, a dull tom tom alarm warns him before he knows why he lingers even longer beyond the parade and revealing light.

  The hustler, for that is what he is, has just stepped out a cab. He twists his shoulders displaying a broad back and digs around a tight jean pocket for a bill and then oddly he holds the bill for a moment rubbing a thumb across what, Hamilton’s face? Almost in a caress before giving it to the driver.

  He knows that touch; the slick paper that was only a moment ago the power that a client held over him, the crinkled green bill that passed between their fingers, from Michelangelo’s God to the Adam of his first him on love.

  The hustler pushed a hand each of his pockets in a timeless style—was the first Jones Dear? Well the first in photographs, the youth with his hands pushed deep into the light glove like pockets of a pair of levis, a wordless poem that pleaded vulnerability, begging for gentleness but threatened violence all at once.

  He could only think this was somehow Americans, the salty taste of blood on the mouth at the end of a kiss, the confabulation of romance and biology. The quest for the alternate destination and the horrors of the Donner party; and it all ended in Hollywood, California in the pockets of young men with ancient desires. Around them the shadows throb and change shapes.

  The hustler blowing with ease and indifference of an athlete amusing himself with twists and arches of his back comes up short.

  He is staring into the cauldron of roiling movement truing to see, trying to—

  Dale makes himself easy to spot; the cowboy hat was a hint but the clincher was the checked shirt, its sleeves ripped off to reveal hard curves of his upper arms .

  The words come in bits and pieces like shrapnel from an explosion.

  “What the F…”

  Dale and the hustler face each other. The moody bayman next door and the lone cowboy on the plains, confront each other. The sounds aren’t words, someone’s been caught off guard wandering, checking out the…

  “Checking out your ass that’s what. You were in there werentcha?”

  They speak in rich textures of gentle farmlands, sounding like sibling variations of each other.

  Now D
ale in imitation has jammed both hands into his pockets, making the muscles bulge up into his shoulders.

  “Whadaya mean there, why… ok, ok. You were in there:why not? You’re in there right? I’m right aren’t I?”

  “Aren’t I? What is this? All these girls running away from Miss Porter’s, the Madeira School, Rosemary Hall?!”

  Now it’s Dale’s turn to nod and ponder.

  “Oh I get it college boy, that’s how you’re getting by.” He looks down at the other man’s hands and pockets.

  “I bet that’s whatcha you got going in there?”

  “I never lied about the money.”

  “Oh yeah, you just never said where you really got it, all that shit talk about—whaddyacallit, teaching, a teaching fellow…”

  “Christ,” he thought in his shadowy box seat. The whores were moonlighting grad students, the escorts studying law, the Hustlers analyzing Mandarin.

  Around them passed the blurry figures eager for the shadows, an electric taint in the air, grateful for the dark, yet eager to find something solid.

  “That’s it fucking matter,” the older boy challenges. “I don’t really do anything. They,” the word is tossed with a sneer, “they do all the stuff.”

  Dale reels back from the outlandish dissimulation. He is not much shorter than the other man but when he nods, he is collected and calm, he speaks with primogeniture.

  “Huh, I’m just glad that Dad isn’t alive to see this shit going down.”

  He nods. “Yeah; those lines you called me a cocksucker… I suppose you learned that in college, huh college boy?”

  A man moves away this encounter isn’t about sex. Uncertain he stays away, trying to put off the end of the night.

  “Hey whattya staring at?!” Dale challenges the smoky outline. He’s angry about this intruder crossing into his world, reminding him of something he’s trying to forget, embarrassed that his discomfort has audience.

  “Don’t you ever call me that again.”

  There is an empty moment then “Why not if it’s true?”

  Then the sound of air sucked out then a sudden breach of the night.

  “I’m a cocksucker the taller if younger of the two brothers says.”

  “Jeesus,” Dale hisses under his breath.

  “I followed you around; it was exciting the places you went—down on South Capital Street, the bars on 14th, that warehouse on West Virginia Ave. Oh my God, West Virginia Ave.”

  “You laid down a path for me.”

  Dale is listening off balance.

  “Whoa, I… I never made you do anything.” He is almost walking.

  “No,” the younger kid says. “You didn’t have to.”

  “Jeesus, man.”

  “I didn’t go to the Iwo Jima memorial though I was scared, I didn’t want to get beaten up.”

  “And, and, Dad was still alive.”

  “You shut up.”

  “No I won’t…”

  And Dale walks away disappearing into the dark but cluttered shadows; deep beyond the reach of the street camps, cluster of men bulges and twists; here in the middle of the block, arcs of light spring across the walls but never reaches this huddle of bare chested men. The air is thick with sweat, the air has an edge, the sting of poppers, and sweat, cliques, and beer; men lined up waiting their execution stand with their backs against a wall, another row of men kneel before them. Hands reach for crotches,a shoulder twisting to burrow deep into an opening between hips and a chest.

  Dale can’t lose himself in this windy world of flesh.

  “Okay, okay, let’s get out of here. I don’t wanna be in here when you’re here.”

  And the two walk toward the other end of the alley.

  “I’m okay with it you see.” Dale jerks his head around. “I’m okay with it. I go to the bar and hang out… I like the guys, I like men. I’m, I’m angry the way you are. I don’t have to go to the place you…” He looks away.

  “I go where I want to go. I only do what I wanna do.”

  “You don’t have to go to those places,” he glances to mean dangerous uncharted territory across town.

  “Why do you hustle anyway? You don’t have to… you’re hot you know, some guy is waiting to meet someone like you, settle down.”

  Dale snorts. “Go shopping for sheets at a mall, yeah.”

  “I never got that—hustling middle aged men, hustling those desperate types from the suburbs.”

  “You don’t get it do you?” Dale says; his sudden quiet as commanding as the report of a revolver in the narrow alley.

  “I’m quiet and then, then they want me because they know I’ll do it for money; some men just gotta have the, the, the kick of paying for it.”

  “Isn’t that the same as going after drunks, guys who have to drink get over their inhibitions?

  “Yeah college boy—use those big words. Anyway I don’t go after drunks, that’s just wrong.”

  Dale looks around.

  “It’s funny you know,” he speaks softly in awe. “Here in the dark people get me, they find me, they look for me, me.” He stands up high with pride. “Here in the dark I’m somebody. A somebody. And they pay me. That’s why it works, they pay me, they get what they want, we’re all happy.”

  “You don’t sound happy.”

  “Cut out the psychology crap. Look at me. I’m happy. I got money, I got friends, oh…” he takes a quick glance at the couplings made and broken just a few feet away.

  “You’re smart, you don’t have to do this… I can get you into my school, they have a policy to accept family members. You’re my brother, you could do it. And, and Dad would be happy.”

  Uh oh…

  “Well Dad’s not here anymore, so it don’t matter,” Dale says quietly.

  They are both silent together.

  “Look Dale, get away from the, the hustling. I’ll take you to uh places where you can see guys who’re okay with—themselves. They just want to meet other men, they just like other men. I mean there’s nothing wrong with liking other men, wanting to be with a man.”

  “Listen to you man, you’re all queer, your mind’s been brainwashed. And you talk about making Dad proud. You think he’d be proud if he finds out you were queer?!”

  There’s an unexpected onslaught in the chorus of heavy breaths, groans, and cries.

  “He did know. I told him before he died.”

  “You what?! You’re fuckin’ crazy. You know what, that’s what probably killed him, you telling him that. He probably couldn’t take it. Jeezus!”

  “It’s funny. I just realized that all the while I thought you were Dad’s favorite. You didn’t really know anything about him.”

  “Whaddya mean, I don’t know anything about my old man.”

  “Nothing I could say to him or not say to him, could have killed him. I didn’t kill him when I told him about me. He killed himself. He drank himself to death. He drank all that week in February, drank so much he poisoned himself to death with alcohol.”

  Dale erupts in a wild swing and lands a open palm across an unready jaw.

  “You fuckin’ faggot…!” Dale spills out words cold and steely with anger. “I hate you.”

  The man’s face has gone white and he blinks but as his shoulders sink with disappointment he is calm with resignation. “You don’t mean that.”

  “Why don’t you just go home, or better go to one of those wine bars and meet another faggot.”

  “Maybe I will. I want someone, someone who’s okay with being who he is.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, get out of here. You don’t belong in this place.” Dale jerks his head to the growing crowd of silent dark men.

  “Sorry about, uh you know hitting you like that.”

  “Yeah, okay okay.” He had been ready to turn on his heel and walk off but he lingers.

  “You know you really didn’t hit me; you slapped me like I was a girl.” Somehow he manages a chuckle.

  “Jeesus man, you don’t l
et up with this faggot stuff do you?!” There was a long pause.

  “I didn’t drop you because you’re still my brother, my faggot brother, but still my brother.”

  “Oh, thank you, I think.”

  “Now get outa here. This is no place for you.”

  They nod silently in agreement and part.

  He has been watching the two argue, theirs the only words in the alleyway. Dale disappears into the frieze of naked men, men with jeans pushed down to their knees and ankles, men crouched in praise, adoration, submission, worship.

  For a moment they are merely inches apart. He smells Dale’s scent of healthy sweat and a recent soaping and shower. Dale grooms himself before going out with the lore of high school teenager preparing for a prom date, to prepare himself for ritual sacrifice that consumes innocence but offered hope that this time the preparations will be accepted, the mumbled words, the exchange of human essence for treasure will soften the hearts of the gods and there will be a different ending to the ritual repeated over and over again.

  All this he inhales in one breath. Until Dale stirs from his pose.

  And there is someone else, a john from the suit he is wearing and the scent of drugstore aftershave, a man who had like a smoke had drifted within an arm’s length distance.

  And the scent of Dale’s body, the heat mixing sweat and tobacco and a something else. What could he call it except the smell of the young.

  Whispers drift between Dale and the wrath like outlines of the john.

  Chapter 38

  Something was upon the street. The escorts walk in twos and threes.

  Climbing into a stranger’s car, the runaway college kid gives a fatalistic shrug. C’est la vie, la de da, into the breech defiant.

  The escorts gather between clients, cigarettes dangling from curved fingers.

  One of the bottle collectors was working the street, picking up discarded cans, a public service really, because the sanitation crews avoided the block.