Rushes

by John Rechy

  Endore’s voice is calm. “In the daytime those trucks haul meat on bloodied spikes. For the city’s meat shops. And for the restaurants you eat in, darling.” What was she looking for? What is she looking for?

  “Ah, oui?”

  At least for the moment Endore’s words have blocked her recitation.

  “Did the rot inspire you?” he flings at her, detecting the slightest pinprick in her composure. He saw Chas stretch his feline body before the boy—before he could pull his gaze away from them.

  “All of it meshed into erotic forms,” Lyndy breathes.

  “She said it was like modern art,” Martin interjects.

  Yes. To force his glance not to slip again toward Robert, Endore looks at the muscular man in the tank top. Again, the man nods an invitation, Endore nods a contingent acceptance.

  Lyndy’s voice is hard. “One must pay homage to decay. One must celebrate the new deities.”

  Endore studies the pretty face, the enormous eyes, the darkened mouth. It is blank of expression, so blank that he has to turn away from it. Don—. . .

  Don says in welcome surprise to the black man, “You just heard about the Rushes?”

  “Yeah,” the black man says, “just heard that. . . queers come here.”

  At the black man’s ugly words, Don feels a spreading sexual heat. “Black people—even when they’re normal—black men, they—. . .”

  The black man drinks his beer slowly. “You’re wondering if I go with queers? And I bet you’re wonderin if I got a big cock.” A trace of an accent seeps into the voice.

  “Do you?” Don forms words.

  “Sure–cause I’m a straight black stud, hung like a fuckin horse.” His tone has become that of a Southern Negro’s. “Yuh suck good, boy?”

  “Yes! Will you come home with me?”

  “And then you’d feel good an dirty.”

  Did he say that? Don frowns. Leave now. Yes, good and dirty!

  “Good and dirty thinkin, black nigger cock, big black nigguh cock, big black duhty nigguh cock.” The accent thickens into a parody. The black man’s lips tighten. “But so fucking superior because it’s only for a short time.” The accent disappears. “And after that, I’ll be shit and you’ll be the big white man, right? Well, what the fuck’s wrong with you, man? You with your talk about queers and strange and normal and shit. You listen, I’m as gay as you are, and you know what I’m looking for? Cock, just like you. I want big, white, dirty, young cock!” He fires the fatal word again. “Young! Now fuck off!”

  The cruel words seem to peel at the raw skin on Don’s face. He led me on just to be brutal; why? He remains isolated in the midst of the Rushes. He turns toward Endore, for sustenance, but he can’t see across the pressed bodies now. In panic, he turns to one. side, another. He was just toying with me! He looks at the shadows toward the back of the bar. And I didn’t do anything to him except want him! Anger tangles. He starts to move toward the heavy shadows up the stairs—and remembers the horrible night when he was pushed onto the filthy floor of the piers. The muscular man in the white tank top—still alone. He feels himself moving toward the beautiful man. Don’t do it, he screams to himself. Don’t! But he is already nearing the man. Before he can approach him, the man in the tank top walks away.

  Cascading laughter about the bar crashes on Don. The music is more quietly sinister and moaning than he remembers. He can almost hear the churning of flesh. He sees Bill talking to a man-in a plaid shirt. Don’t let him make out! Chas–with that boy! Stop it! And don’t let Endore make out, dammit. Especially not Endore! His thoughts shove out like curses. I didn’t mean that, he soothes himself, and the terrible moment passes. But unscreamed words remain bunched waiting.

  From the distance, Endore sees Don. Rejected. And tonight Don is in a particular panic.

  “Then it happened,” Lyndy says. She turns to Martin. “Shall I tell him now?” she enlists him again.

  “Oh, whenever.” But: “Do you know who that is?” he nods toward a man moving into the red battlefield. Even in this light deep strain scars the man’s face. “It’s Steve. Remember him? I discovered him. The great beauty of only a few years back. Look at him now. Drained by lust,” Martin says.

  “How terrifyingly dramatic!” Lyndy shivers.

  “You sound triumphant, Martin,” Endore says. “As if you had something to do with it. Steve just looks tired tonight. I don’t think it was his own lust which drained him.”

  “I had nothing to do with anything,” Martin pronounces. “Look at the hollow eyes.”

  “Perhaps he’s tired of straining to see himself the way you and others saw him,” Endore says.

  “You hear that about the eyes.” Bill is back with a fresh 7-Up—and a beer for Endore, like a token of truce before there is any battle. Nothing worked in the field for Bill during this sortie. Those who looked good either turned awful or were cruising someone else. And the ones who wanted him, he didn’t want. The beauty in the tank top—yes! Gladly! And he keeps coming back. But he does seem interested in Endore. “I don’t think it’s true, that our eyes show, that way,” his voice is sad. Luke and he discussed it. Sometimes at night Luke would wake and turn on the light. Bill would catch him staring into the mirror. Do I have that look? he’d demand crazily. We have hollow eyes because we need more to fill them, they’ve carved too much out of us with their hatred, he would tell Bill. Often he spoke silly that way. By the tone of his words, Bill knew when it was coming and he stopped listening. Luke would say, I have that look, I have it already. Sometimes he sounded glad.

  “Sometimes when we grow very tired of fighting—if only with bitter wit—for our very lives, then I think it shows,” Endore says and hears laughter bursting about the bar.

  “But that bitchy wit saves us,” Bill is pensive.

  “At times,” Endore says. “But that’s not enough!” Urgency charges his voice.

  That’s my way of fighting back, Bill thinks. With my wit. More powerful, for me, than those demonstrations and things. Luke insisted they march in one once. But enough was enough! Luke went alone. Bill catches sight of a trucker. Cute. He glances at Endore. Endore’s words reverberate. So often he sounds like Luke. Did they see something of themselves in each other? Who is he staring at? The muscular man? Yes. No. He’s looking at that kid with Chas.

  “How’d you choose the Rushes for your first time, Robert?” Chas asks the youngman.

  “My brother told me about it,” Robert says. He doesn’t want to think about him.

  His brother? A faggot too? Chas is suspicious. He knows of the various shapes of violence in the area. Decoys in bars, you walk out, you’re jumped, the skull cracks. Chas has never been attacked—too tough-looking, he tells himself. What is this kid really doing here? He does look out of place. Just newness? Can he be mistaken about the look in the kid’s eyes? No, it’s arousal. And the crotch; no mistake about that, it’s bunched hard.

  Feeling Chas’s eyes on his groin, Robert glances away. The man in the denim shirt is not looking at him.

  “See it all, man,” Chas grabs Robert’s attention boldly. “You’re in the Rushes, and it’s your first time! You’ll never forget it. Look at all the proud macho faggots!”

  Faggots? That’s the word his brother uses. Fags.

  “All proud to be men.” Chas goes on. He stares at the murals, to find himself there. His eyes fall on one of the few drawings he dislikes. The man in it just lies there, his groin barely covered with torn briefs: beautiful, yes, and macho, but passive, surrendered. “Some are top-men here, some bottommen.” Chas pushes. At each word, he studies Robert’s reaction, determining how far to go now. “The keys on the left, like I wear, that means I’m a top-man, looking for someone to—. . .” Careful.

  Robert frowned.

  “The top-man’s no better than the bottom-man,” Chas says. “Just more experienced, the bottom dude’s as much of a man, of course—gotta be. no one’s a sissy. The top, he tells him . . . what to do.
Macho sex.” he retreats slightly. Then he hears his words but they seem to be spoken by another voice. “It’s like–. . . an initiation.” He waits. Waits. “Like a–. . .” Then he releases the word. “. . .—baptism.”

  Chas’s words swirl about Robert, sucking him in. He feels dirty. His brother told him. not exactly, but: “The way I got to know about the Rushes,” Robert blurts, “is because my brother was bragging about how him and his friends beat up on fags outside here.” He turns toward Endore. This time the looks connect. He wishes he could force that man to come over, talk to him, stop Chas’s tumbling words.

  What the fuck! Chas feels ambushed. But he can’t define the trap.

  Robert wipes the moisture from his forehead. “Who’s the man you were with over there—in the denim shirt, the good-looking dark one?” He wants to cancel his excitement at Chas’s body and the evocation of his brother.

  Rejection. Chas feels cold. The ambiguity about the kid’s presence disturbs him. Chas turns to move away.

  “You goin?” Robert’s not sure which man he’s more attracted to. The man in the denim shirt has grown in his memories so long. Chas has just sprung into them.

  It’s not over. I just moved too fast. “Naw, I ain’t going, just gonna get another beer.” His eyes rake the boy’s body, the lithe contours. “I’ll be back.” he promises.

  “All right,” Robert says. Now he’s glad Chas is gone. Again he searches out the look of the man in the denim shirt. It is the woman’s eyes he feels on him.

  “Do you suppose the boy rejected Chas, Endore?” Lyndy asks.

  “There’s more.” Endore says. A sexual tactician. Chas works in stages. He tantalizes, withdraws, leaving desire to recalesce. “He’ll come back to him,” Endore says.

  Rejection. “Luke accused me of rejecting him!” Bill says aloud. So untrue, so strange.

  That’s what Luke said, that night. Endore remembers. He waits for Bill to say more.

  Bill tosses away the memory. From this neutral trench, he scouts the venatic zone. He knows that in the battlefield anyone can be bloodied. As good a sexcruisier as he is, he’s decamped several times tonight. If he weren’t sure that the muscular man preferred Endore, he’d move in, yes. He remembers Luke acted that unapproachable, and so does Endore sometimes. But maybe it isn’t Endore the muscular man wants. Bill’s arcking eyes catch Don wandering as if lost.

  Don holds his breath, like a swimmer hoarding it for greatest need. He moves toward an attractive man he just saw; was there a spark of interest when someone turned away from him? The man drifts away. Don looks in the direction of Endore. Help me!

  Endore wishes he could send out a message to Don, to come back; to soothe his wounds from the bloody battle; to leave. But Don is about to approach another attractive man.

  “The youngman seems interested in you. Again,” Lyndy taunts Endore. She is still facing Robert. “Are you attracted to him?”

  “He’s beautiful,” Endore says.

  “You could offer the boy so much more,” Lyndy persists. “You’ve written about the importance of first experiences. And with you it would be—. . . loving. One still hears about Michael. Wouldn’t it be loving, Endore? Was it?” she claws at the memory.

  I didn’t want that, Endore says silently to Michael.

  Lyndy’s purling voice, soft, detached—all night it has floated in and out of Bill’s hearing. Now–tense–he’s aware of it, oppressive. “Why did you come here?” he asks her.

  “For inspiration,” she thrusts out, as if she had held the answer ready.

  “That’s all?” Endore asks her.

  “Art for art’s sake won’t work, then?” Lyndy pouts. “Then let’s try this. I want to see the true shape of liberation—and see it where there is no pretense—. . .” She pauses in mock thoughtfulness. “But, no, that won’t do. It is all pretense here—the artists, the writers, the lawyers, the dancers, the clerks, the businessmen—they’re all here under the working-class drag! So that won’t do.”

  “No.” Endore is determined not to show his rage. He will attack only at the exact time.

  “You’re lured by the scent of sexual blood, perhaps,” Martin tosses offhandedly. But then there is the slightest hint of a frown, as if at the echo of his words. He looks away from the woman.

  “Oppression,” Lyndy pushes the single word at Endore. “I’m here because of my concern for the oppressed minority of homosexuals.” Her fingers clasp the necklace. Her lips clutch their smile. “But unlike you, Endore—the elitist socialist—unlike you, I’m not interested in all the oppressed. Poverty bores. I choose the chic oppressed.” She hurls the words like a malediction into the Rushes. She turns to Martin. “Shall I tell him now?”

  She’s threatening him. Endore knows.

  “Whenever,” Martin shrugs.

  “We saw a man beaten that night.” she tells Endore.

  “My God. look who’s trying to come into the Rushes!” Bill gasps.

  “How cheap you are.” Endore tells Lyndy.

  7

  Bless this sacrifice prepared for the glory of Your holy name.

  AS OFTEN as he comes to the Rushes, Chas is still amazed by the sense of continuity it asserts. Even when he stays away for days, “storing up energy,” even when he has to be gone longer, he feels on returning that he has never left. That moment connects to all the others past in a strong chain.

  Within that synergetic continuity of the Rushes, each evening has its identity. Some nights Chas comes here only “to breathe in the bar”; other times he leaves early with someone. At times he’ll stay until the bar closes. Those nights especially, he makes several incursive moves beyond the shroud of shadows at the back of the bar, “charging” his cock up, being groped and groping; pushing an eager head down. There are other times when the Rushes itself seems to command the night. Like now.

  Chas has what is admired as a warrior’s instinct—he seems “always” to make out. The instinct is, more exactly, cunning. When his quarry has flashed premature surrender, Chas sends out his sure questions. Then he moves in—“aggressively.”

  With Robert, signals clash. A hint of withdrawing-and then he called Chas back. The kid is very aroused by him, but he’s attracted also to Endore. Yet Endore never advances; it’s unlikely the kid would make the initial move, his first time in a bar. And there’s the boy’s brother–that is troubling. Still, the kid gave him the only sure hardon of the night.

  For now, Chas will retreat from the boy. He will leave a sexual promise to dredge at the kid’s desire.

  Like a general surveying the field, Chas leans against the bar. Soon, when the evening rushes toward Last Call, his favorite time will occur. The hunt will be unmasked, no more the excuse of being here with friends or for a drink. Sex reigns. The animal stretches, and the Rushes assumes its full life.

  A few stools away, Michael is talking to a man. Chas has always been attracted to him. Staring, he tries to force the handsome youngman to look at him. He does. Chas nods. Michael does not answer. Chas nods again. He isn’t sure whether Michael answered that time, because waves of anger are flooding the bar, voices are conveying an unspecified message of turbulence. When Lyndy entered, there were stirrings; but now increasing portions of the bar seem electrified, in a state of alert.

  Chas maneuvers his way to the trenches. He sees Bill turn away as if in rejection of the sight at the door.

  Bill sees Chas standing against the wall, his back to the panel depicting the stripped figure about to be bound by another; from here, it is almost as if it is Chas who is being menaced. Bill thinks. The unwelcome reaction he felt toward the two presences at the door fluctuates, and now he feels an anticipatory excitement at the thought of Chas’s outrage when he discovers them. And what is Lyndy’s reaction? Bill looks at the inscrutable outlined mask.

  All vinyl and sequins, two incongruous figures stand at the entrance to the Rushes. The smoke swirling toward the open door creates a nebulous red outline against the
dying night.

  “ ‘They had terrible strength and force and great were their ambitions; they attacked the gods. They tried to climb into heaven intending to make war upon the gods,’ ” Endore recites.

  “Something from one of your columns?” Lyndy asks.

  “No, one of Plato’s; he attributed that to Aristophanes; he was talking about what we would call transvestites.” And so now he can either free himself of the doubts which Lyndy’s presence stirred or face his own hypocrisy. In his columns he has reminded that the Stonewall Inn was what would now be known as a “sissy bar.” The “sissies” and “queens,” not the masculine men here, were the heroic revolutionaries who fought the cops that first heated night. Rough bars like the Rushes sprang up soon after and ostracized them. Endore upheld the courage of the “queens.” Not parodies of women, they were their own creations, assaulting, daring, defiant figures abrading entrenched sexual postures. . .. Now a “queen” in full drag is actually standing at the entrance to the Rushes.

  A black woman. And a white transvestite. Are attempting. To enter. The Rushes. Bill forms each careful phrase in his mind, to force the reality. Why is he so tense? He’s always “liked” transvestites and women. The Rushes changes everything.

  The avenging figures are rubicund silhouettes against the door. Standing there like unwelcome messengers, they threaten the men here much more than Lyndy’s full foray. The two have the power of psychic assault.

  “You’ll get the shit kicked out of you if you come in,” the man at the door tells the transvestite.

  “Let us in and let’s see,” the transvestite says. Small, she is dressed in vitreous black vinyl; needling sequins flash on the slit skirt. Like Lyndy’s, her eyes are enlarged by the outlined black; eyes as defiant as the cheap sheen of her skirt.

  “We’ll just keep standin right here!” the black woman promises. She crosses her spangled arms. She is a ferocious presence. Warring colors—turned into zebra stripes in this light—intercept the exposed brown flesh of her shoulders, legs mounted on spiked brilliant shoes.