Rushes

by John Rechy

  “Small wonder he couldn’t get hard,” Don says.

  “Actually it was sort of sexy,” Bill thinks aloud. “The blood was too fake to be a turnoff.” It glistened like red wax. The white body was stark and sensual. Oh, oh, the cowboy is slightly femme already and he hasn’t even had a drink. The loincloth concealed but clearly suggested the genitals between the straining thighs. Bill retrieves his invitation from the fake cowboy.

  “I’ll have to tell you about that place called the Catacombs,” Chas tells Endore. Bill’s words have evoked it.

  Lyndy’s laughter tugs at their attention. She and Martin are lingering with a group of men in assorted macho uniforms.

  In her laughter there is nothing, a hollow sound she makes, Endore thinks. Did Martin take her to the piers? The limousine paused before the trucks. When the black engine returned and stopped, did the rough-stanced youngman hustling outside think the wealthy car had stopped for him? Endore remembers the scared face. If the youngman ran to the car, did Martin discard him without a glance?

  “That cunt’ll be here soon.” Chas hears Lyndy’s laughter.

  “She’d call you a prick,” Bill responds automatically; he is used to “defending” women from contemptuous remarks in homosexual bars.

  “I’m not ashamed of my cock,” Chas says.

  Bill simulates an endless yawn: “We know, it’s huge, enormous, proud, erect, pulsing, pounding, a long shaft, throbbing—. . .” Retracting—he saw Chas’s head snap toward him like that of a rearing colt—Bill asks Endore: “Does Lyndy really design her clothes right on her black models?”

  Endore knows the woman and the man best. As a popular columnist, he moves at times—as they all do—in her orbit, their circumferences intersect in mutual arcs—but, until tonight, not here.

  “And Martin photographs them like upright corpses,” Endore says. He has seen them in her black-and-white studio. She and Martin stood like ruling pieces in a three-dimensional chessboard. The black female models before them hardly moved. Eyes closed, their eyelids were painted shiny white, mascara-thickened false eyelashes like straight bristles. Behind the unmoving women and to the pulsatory beat of disco music, tight-clothed white male bodies chosen and easily discarded by Martin shifted from pose to pose into jagged geometric tangles. The men’s urgent fluid motion and the women’s lifeless stasis were seized, but aloofly, by Martin’s ticking camera.

  “I’ve never believed that Martin doesn’t have sex with those beautiful men he photographs; they’re all so anxious to be chosen,” Don says. “Is it true, Endore?” he solicits.

  “Perhaps, yes,” Endore says.

  Who? The question is asked and quickly answered as the woman and the tall man are increasingly noticed farther into the bar. Many of the men turn hostilely from her, many spit their defiance onto the dirty floor, turn unyielding backs to her–and to the man for bringing her here. But even more– and soon several of the previously recalcitrant, informed of their identities—nod, accepting their power perhaps so theirs may be extended outside. A few of the men may be Martin’s models, others may want to be seduced by his famous camera. The black-outlined smile on the woman defies the pursuing—but waning, waning—hostility. Her large eyes blink, as if recording the astonishing visuals—the leathered manikin-stiff presences, the barechested posing bodies, the sexual soldiers in expensive working-class uniforms.

  One pearl still kissing her lips, Lyndy fingers one of the two strands, rubious in this dyed light. Now she releases the strand. The pearls fall on the black velvet of her tuxedo.

  About the bar, the overt expressions of hostility have all but faded, at least on the surface.

  “Darling!” Lyndy greets Endore and turns her cheek for him to kiss.

  “Darling,” he says flatly to her and rejects the cheek.

  “Darling.” She extends it to Don.

  “Darling!” Don obeys.

  “Darling,” she calls to Bill.

  “Darling,” Bill says frostily.

  “Darling.”

  “Hiyuh!” Chas spits.

  Lyndy eyes him with amusement. “Darling,” she tries to extort from Chas.

  Chas stares at her. Lyndy laughs, a tiny laughter. Martin nods to the men. They acknowedge him back. Lyndy says to Chas, “I didn’t recognize you for a moment, darling Chas. Of course, I’ve seen you in leather before—mais sans tous les accoutrements!”

  “That means without your chains.” Bill isn’t sure whether his hostility then is aimed at Lyndy or Chas.

  Chas stretches his body before Lyndy. The vest opens farther to exhibit his hairy chest. He clenches his hands behind his neck, revealing the dark tufts of sweat-curled hair under his arms.

  Lyndy’s black lips tilt at the edges, stretching the smile. “And so you’ve raided the Rushes,” Endore hears himself say to her.

  “I do so like to be first into forbidden territory,” Lyndy says.

  “But you aren’t,” Endore says. “Martin’s been here before.”

  Martin does not react; there is not even the tremble of a reaction. “I promised Lyndy that our romantic cynic would be here,” Martin says to Endore.

  “Why did you come here?” Endore asks Lyndy; his voice is controlled, but he feels a burgeoning anger which he would prefer were not there.

  Rude, Don thinks. And Endore likes women! Those columns he’s written in their defense. Rude. Men aren’t gentlemen any more. His lips are parched, he’ll have to have a drink soon.

  Lyndy says, “To be with friends. Though I must admit I didn’t know how many! We were at Andy’s earlier, and some of the same faces are here now.”

  “The faces are somewhat less tired here,” Endore pursues. He will have to explore the disturbing rage, this sense of—. . . outraged possessiveness?

  Chas laughs. “Amen!” he approves.

  The looks of the two men connect, this time in alliance. Against the woman for invading their domain, Chas knows. Against the woman and the man, Endore knows, for invading their domain, however differently he and Chas may view that violated territory and the nature of the violation, however different their reasons for outrage-no, Chas’s reasons will not be his, their look has signaled only the pact of cobelligerents, who may yet confront each other.

  In posed annoyance, the petite woman pouts. “I’ll be the first at the Rack,” she announces slyly.

  Chas’s eyes assault her. “No, you won’t!”

  “I doubt that even Martin can get you into the Rack, darling,” Endore says. He pursues his feelings, to make sure that no demon lurks in his antagonism toward this woman. Is he affronted only by her, her’presence here, affronted only by the breed she represents of smiling, despising infiltrators into a world they have neither earned nor been shoved into? Yes, he insists, it is her and her breed because Martin’s presence affronts him as powerfully. But does it? Yes, Martin equally. But differently? He hopes the evening will answer.

  Martin shrugs.

  “One can try,” Lyndy says.

  “They. Won’t. Let. You. In,” Chas asserts.

  “But, darling, look!” She spreads her arms and looks at herself. “I’m here in the Rushes!” she says triumphantly. “And the Rack is just next door.”

  Now Endore accepts their presences at the Rushes. There is a retrospective inevitability to that. Throughout the years of cold intimacy between Lyndy and Martin, and Endore—and, yes, Chas—there has always been a fascinated hostility, a hostile fascination as if the discovery of a vulnerable secret in one will—may—prove there is none to find in the other; a plenary justification which only the other’s weakness may provide. Or is it so only for him? No, that has always been there, hints coalescing during the recurring bouts disguised in endearments, branded with “darlings.” Yes, it was inevitable that the entangled fascination would be extended into the battlefield of the Rushes.

  “Let’s get a drink, darling, and you can see more,” Martin says to her; then like a tourist guide: “In the back the seriou
s sex is happening–beyond the pool table where they pose; here it’s just a preliminary evaluation of possibilities that occurs. And conversations between ‘friends’ before they move into the arena as enemies battling for the same body.”

  “No serious sex at the Rushes.” Chas resents Martin’s arrogation of his beloved world.

  “Ciao,” Martin tosses back without turning as he moves away with Lyndy.

  “Oh, do wait for us!” Lyndy flings back like a curse at the four men.

  Disbelief. Anger. Acceptance. Anger. Acceptance. Acceptance of power. Lyndy moves like a delicate conqueror through the tide of reacting flesh.

  Chas spits.

  Endore knows that between his obeisances to the rituals of this night’s cruising—and now he wants sex, very much—he will return throughout the night to this island, staked as an arena, to confront the man and the woman; yes, both. He feels it will be so with Chas—the four lured to each other like detectives to uncover a mystery. And Bill? Perhaps, perhaps not; he’s too caught up in the splendors of the Rushes. And Don? Tonight he’s troubled, patched wounds are being bared.

  Don wipes his forehead and feels the puffiness. But Endore is studying the reactions in Lyndy’s wake. “Drinks?” Don asks the three men. His words pull at the clinging spell, but they don’t expel it.

  Chas wants a beer. He was going to cruise the bar in his first sortie of the evening—feeling “hot”—but now he’ll wait until Lyndy and Martin move away from it.

  “A 7-Up,” Bill pretends to whisper.

  Endore’s hands are cold on the warm bottle of beer. He nods yes to Don.

  Don goes to the bar. This time he will get a double shot. He likes to buy drinks for his friends—to fuss on his way back as if he were just about to spill the drinks–anything for good friends.

  At the bar—away from Lyndy and Martin, Lyndy facing the red maw of bodies, Martin’s back to it—Don sees the black man he noticed earlier. He’s handsomer than he appeared at first. Is it his imagination, or did the man look at him? Yes. Even in this bar, with its miasma of prejudice, like that of so many other homosexual bars, especially the “leather and Western bars” like the Rushes, the black man is eliciting much attention. Is he looking at me? Don glances to both sides of him, to see whether someone attractive is next to him. Yes, on his right, a blond youngman who averts Don’s glance, angling his body away. Don gets the drinks, asks for a tray to carry them on. Again, he’s sure the eyes of the black man are on him. Is he a hustler? the thought pounds. No, nobody hustles in the Rushes. The black man has pulled back into more darkness. Expecting me to follow, later? A pinprick of pain pierces his temple. He rushes back toward his friends.

  Moments of silence enclosed the three.

  Endore listens to the shooting laughter about the bar, the break challenging definition. Again the laughter explodes, this time out of a man near them. Endore turns to look at the man. Drunk already, he leans his head wearily on the shoulder of a man with him as if the laughter wounded him.

  Bill’s eyes are choosing. Another cowboy is glancing their way; the construction worker over there; a—. . . What the hell is he? Oh, yes, an aviator.

  Chas breaks the tensive spell. “Fuckin cunt!” he growls. He grinds the sawdust on the floor. He despises women increasingly. When he thinks of soft flesh—. . . He loathes weak heterosexual men, too; and weak homosexuals. All weakness! He touches the coarse stubble on his chin. Especially Lyndy—that type. He touches his leather chaps—they feel soft, but it’s a rough softness. To purge his thoughts, he looks at the walls, seeking out the panel in which a man is pointing authoritatively to another, ordering him. Stretching again, he can smell his own clean male sweat. “She wanted me to call her darling–but I didn’t!”

  Don returns juggling the drinks ostentatiously.

  “A major-victory for us, Chas,” Endore jibes, “ranking at least with the resistance at the Stonewall.” He is referring to the first homosexual riots against the police during a raid of the Stonewall Inn one sweating summer night

  “Stonewall!” Don cringes from the memory. Not long ago, he stumbled on a demonstration commemorating that day-thousands of homosexuals marching and chanting down the streets with raised fists. He ran to avoid it, but the chanting pursued him. He could hear it badgering into his apartment, and he closed the windows.

  “She kept wanting me to call her darling,” Chas persists.

  “Poor Chas,” Bill ribs. “She should have seen from your keys that you’re a master in search of a slave. . .. I can’t picture her licking boots.”

  “You fruity shit, lay off!” Chas focuses his rage.

  Bill looks away. Whatever was stirred on the piers has been exacerbated by Lyndy. There’s that goodlooking marine over there—but often that type is interested in all that silly bondage and discipline. However, he’s been known to change people’s minds. Where’s the aviator now?

  They have accepted Lyndy about the bar. Because she has the kind of power they admire—she’s rich and famous, and chic. Endore thinks, watching the diminutive figure of the woman and the looming figure of the man conquering more of the machos at the bar. Yes, he admires Chas’s resistance, and that of others, too—to her, to this woman.

  “The only demonstration I ever joined,” Don is musing, “was when we flew our flags half-mast for Judy.” He tilts his drink, to swallow; he stops himself, holds it in both his hands, as if to force them to keep it away from his lips for longer moments. He remembers: Judy is dead! a man on the telephone screamed at him. It can’t be, Don insisted. It can’t be! But it was. She sang about the defeated, and he loved it. We all loved it then, he thinks wistfully. Oh, it was a ritual for them. When she performed in the city they vied for seats on the front row—and waited eagerly each time. Would she turn up? If she did, would she be drunk or sober, fat or slender? Don felt an empathic triumph either way. And each time, he brought roses, blood-red roses which he then flung in offering at her feet. Judy is dead.

  “Nobody listens to her anymore.” Chas tosses. “The Stones still say it. cause they sing from where it counts.” He gropes his groin harshly. The cockring feels good to his touch. His fingers outline it.

  “I prefer Barbra Streisand,” Bill dares deliberately, and in further defiance curls his body.

  “Puccini,” Don sniffs. “And Judy, of course,” he adds loyally. The ice soothes his lips. He wishes he could fish a piece out and apply it to the smarting area of his face, but that would call attention.

  “Actually all that’s changed since then is that costumes have come out of the closet,” Bill says. The macho pose jumps back. He knows Chas hates his leather referred to as a “costume.” “Now that was a funny remark,” he congratulates himself.

  Endore smiles, complimenting Bill’s valorous campingyet he remains attractive even here. The earlier tension between them has eased, but it’s a deliberate easing on both their parts. “But that’s not all that’s changed,” Endore says.

  “Listen!” Chas flings. And waits. As if not sure what he will say, merely wanting to protest Endore’s tone. He gulps his beer, then brings the bottle to his chest, feeling its coldness there. He doesn’t know what he wants to protest, Endore’s words were ambiguous. “At that place I told you about—the Catacombs.” he speaks in a deceptively soft tone, “they tied this beautiful dude upside down, naked, bound by the ankles from the ceiling. For thrashing. I don’t know why, but at first no one wanted to go first although the dude was begging for a good whipping. I got my belt out and—. . .” He flails his arm like a whip. “That’s all it took, then everyone—. . .”

  “That’s hateful,” Endore stops him. By softening his voice, Chas seduced them into listening.

  Sick, Don thinks. Sick.

  Bill turns his head away, belatedly rejecting Chas’s story.

  A cold blackness rushes Chas. He erupts: “So fuckin superior to it all. Endore. Looking down on me because I’m into S & M.” He pulls at the memory of the “slave auc
tion” he conducted. “Openly.” he says. He made the willingly shackled slaves kneel. “Man, remember that.” He threw the chain into the filthy water. No. Not that memory. “And proudly.” The upturned man—his mind pulls that back; his whip cracked like a gun against the bared flesh. “Openly and proudly, man.” Another memory crowds the last: The memory lunges to a tall figure in black, and then to another—and then those are shoved away by an image of the transvestite in vinyl looming on the ramp at the piers. “You deny it, Endore,” he tries to blank his mind, “but to sacrifice yourself to another—to accept that sacrifice—that’s the greatest. . . ‘love,’ if you wanna call it that. How much will you do for it—for . . . ‘love,’ huh? And how much will you demand of it?” His voice is passionate. The hair mats on his chest, wet from perspiration and the cold sweat of the beer bottle.

  Endore turns away from the passionate anger, and from the tight muscles knotted in urgency. Their encounters have hinted before of matches. Tonight’s pressures are defining a clearer contest; those of other nights, preliminaries. But Endore is not certain he wants to accept the challenge tonight. “That’s a new definition of . . . love, that includes pain and humiliation.” he says.

  “There’s no real pain, and no real humiliation, you know that.” Chas pauses. His voice is insidiously soft again. “I still hear what a good top-man you are.” The cold beer, the cold bottle—he welcomes the coolness breathing on him.

  “Were.” Endore says. The image of himself of years ago has been evoked. Booted feet straddling whoever was his beautiful willing “slave,” Endore looked into the other’s eyes—always that unwelcome moment beyond his control—and he would feel awash in– . . . Pity. Anger at himself. Then the surge of power would wipe those away. “No more,” he says.

  “Here at the Rushes all that counts is sexual power.” Chas asserts, “and it radiates from between the legs, raw naked cock and sex: that’s what rules here. And what the fuck? Outside it’s another kind of power that reigns. Why should it be different here?”