by John Rechy
“We can’t leave him–them–the same brutal battles,” Endore says. “We can’t leave them our ugliness.”
“Ugliness! Whatever you call it, we’ll leave him–them–what is ours. Only ours.” Chas stands in defiance before Endore. “Yeah, the piers, the trucks! And the Rushes! And the Rack! The places we’ve made for ourselves.”
“The places they pushed us into and we’ve converted into our own,” Endore says.
“The same now,” Chas says. “Ours. In them we live more in one night than they do all their lives.” He indicts Lyndy with a glance.
“But if we leave them only that–. . .” Endore begins, and imagines a new generation for whom sex exists only in clusters in filthy orgy rooms, its anxious sextime over, so quickly, at 35, a deathtime confirmed by posted notices in bars, baths, orgy rooms. “If we leave them only that—. . .” he repeats.
“The bountiful sex you’ve praised, written about, remember?” Chas prods.
“Yes—that—which we’ve earned,” Endore says. “But if there’s nothing more than what we have now, we’re doomed and we doom them.”
“Doom,” Lyndy pronounces. “What a curious word.”
“You really think you ‘saved’ that kid from me!” Chas derides.
“‘Saved,’ too, has a curious ring, a certain obsolescence,” Martin says.
“And from myself,” Endore says. “But not. . . saved–. . .” That word-like . . . love, so difficult to pronounce, even in one’s thoughts. “. . . –just . . . more choices.” Yes. choices. “And if then he chooses your piss or to grovel at your boots, so be it.” Yet those words flow out easily.
“We may be doomed, but we’re alive!” Chas stares at the mysterious presence Endore has always been for him, from the beginning, throughout the years, now, always.
Alive! The word reverberates.
“Listen!” Chas says passionately. “Listen. When you’re still walking the piers, a faggot all alone looking for sex, and it’s Sunday morning, you know you’re alive, man. Alive. Because you know you’ve been through the greatest adventure. And you’re alive! Still alive! Despite the punks and all the yells of ‘Queer!’ and all the raids–despite all their shit, the shit we live with, we’re alive! That’s the only victory we have, man, and that’s what makes being a faggot special. That you can survive all that–for an excitement like no other, and you’re always on the edge, and that’s when you’re most alive, when you know you’re still alive, and tomorrow, too, because tomorrow it all starts again, our only continuity. That’s the joy that only we faggots have. Because in between the busts and the headbashings and the screams for our blood—before whatever it is that finally takes us over—getting drunk or going crazy or, yeah, killing ourselves or just dying—we’re alive, and they can’t even feel, not even pain, but we do, pain and relief when it’s over, and you call it S & M and that’s okay. But we feel, and they’re dead—having to come here to sniff at our world, breathe our sweat. So where the fuck is it all more honest even when it’s brutal!”
“Only in our jungle, where we flaunt our defiant survival,” Endore answers.
Chas exhales in triumph. Excitement roars. The Rushes stretches its limbs—alive! “And that’s what we’ll leave the ones who come after us—because it’s righteous, and that’s what we owe them!”
Endore frowns. His words just spoken echo as if out of a hypnotic trance created by Chas. Clearing it, he shakes his head, to shed the acquiescing words, but they’re insistent, they cling—and others are equally insistent, clinging too: “There’s got to be more,” he says emphatically.
Chas feels betrayed.
“All that, too,” Endore says. “Yes, that’s uniquely ours now, to leave, yes, that, yes, but with less pain at least, at least less guilt. At least that. And goddamnit more, too. There’s got to be more. That and more! And not the fucking cruelty!”
The two men strain toward each other.
“Bravo!” Lyndy applauds. A requiem for the living!”
Chas faces her. Outlined in the dark black paint, her eyes narrow with hatred. Chas rubs his armpits, wiping up the sweat there. He brings his moistened hands right up to her face, her nose. “Smell it, you shit!” he yells at her. “Smell the fuckin sweat, you slumming shit!” he demands.
She reaches out and grasps his wrists. He thrusts her hands away. He turns to Endore:
“Look at the Rushes, man. Would you trade it for anything else?”
13
All of you take and eat of this: For this is My Body.
AS OFTEN as he comes to the Rushes, Chas has never felt his view of it as alternately threatened and strengthened as he has tonight. Not threatened by Lyndy, not anymore: after he thrust her hands away, the pasted smile returned to her face, and he ignored her. Nor in his view threatened by the memory of Elaine and Roxy—that is receding, he assures himself. The matter with Robert still burns, yes, but there may be redemption for that. It is Endore who provides the threat, and, just now, the strength.
Always before when they moved into the arena, they staked out separate areas and waged different campaigns. That acknowledged their respective power. Often verbalized, the ambiguous rivalry between them has never been tried. The unnamed stakes are so high that neither has wanted to test them. When Endore approached Robert, a crucial barricade collapsed, however mysterious the full tactic involved may still be for Chas. Yet Chas goaded Endore into an acknowledgment of mutual love—implied—for the Rushes, a love they may share. Glimpsing an extorted victory, Chas felt outraged by Endore’s sudden betrayal—as Chas saw it. So Chas withdrew his question about total fealty to the Rushes.
Now he thrusts his look into the field, where the stronger combatants relish the final moments of this night’s battle, now that safe early “victors”–and deserters—have moved out and the wounded begin to stagger. He, Endore, Michael, the leatherman form two potential flanks which may shift before the night is over.
Yes, Chas’s implied demand of total devotion to the Rushes was premature, not enough open allegiance had been exposed in Endore to support it. Endore’s silence confirmed that. Chas will wait. If he pushes, Endore’s resurgent momentum might engulf him.
Looking at the leatherman, Endore feels again a heated charge which he does not welcome. He searches out Don, he’s still talking to the man his age. Insisting the hot stirring abate, he looks again at the leatherman, and feels again the jabbing heat. He tries to locate Michael. Instead he sees Bill.
Bill turns away. Behind him in a wall drawing, crouching figures gather at the feet of an exposed body. Steve walks past Bill. Steve is drunk again. Bill remembers him from the “body” magazines he used to pore over. How often he stared, aroused, at photographs of Steve’s perfect body, each striation a badge of beauty. Now look at him, a prematurely aging ghost. He should stay away and let people remember his photographs and not him, Bill thinks. But now his attention returns to what has developed in these latter moments, a most interesting, and interested, prospect. He and the man nearby have cruised each other within a narrowing circumference.
Goodlooking, grand body, Bill evaluates the man. But the clothes are wrong! Plain boots and khaki pants and a striped shirt and an awful fatigue cap—not molded! So wrong! Yet he’s so right. But let’s hear him talk. “Hawrya?” Bill assaults. In his mind, he removes the man’s cap. There! Now he replaces it with a cowboy hat. Better.
“Gettin along, getting along.”
The voice is fine-but watch the “gs.” “Leaving soon?” Bill asks. Leave the vest on, substitute the boots.
“Figure I might, yeah.”
He hasn’t lost his macho stance, good. But, oh, those clothes! Well, the shirt comes off. The vest is good, getting better now that the shirt is gone. He removes the khaki pants and substitutes a—. . .jockstrap! Wow! Cowboy hat and boots, brown vest, jockstrap!
“Can you get into macho fantasy?” Bill decides to go all the way.
“Uh, well, I guess,” the man is
unsure.
Oh, oh. “I bet you could! You look so—so—macho, and, well, dominant.” I’ll teach you, he thinks. I’ll tell you exactly how to do it.
Already the man is altering his stance to conform to Bill’s words.
“Let’s go to my place, then,” Bill says. “We’ll sharp a cab, I like things always to be equal, it’s the only way.”
“All right. Yeah, sure.”
All right! So easy! Bill feels relief. The night’s tension—no matter how intense—is always dissipated by a good contact. This was one of those nights when it did work out well, yes, after all the jerky abortive starts. He chose correctly, although—. . . although—. . . Well, yes, he would have preferred the shirtless muscular man. But! “I have some clothes I’m sure will fit you,” Bill tells the man. “They belonged to–. . .” He pauses. He tries to remember Luke’s face and can’t. Instead he remembers the spooky crucifix. Well, that’s gone!
Without looking at them, he walks with his trophy past all the others he cruised earlier or who cruised him—the cowboys, the biker—was it another one?—the construction worker-two?—the man in mixed uniform, and—oh, good, the bastard will see me—the man in the cutoffs, his cock and balls dangling out now. Sweet revenge. “Pardon me, sir,” Bill snips at him, “but I believe your brains are pouring out of your pants!” He nods to Endore and Chas. He pretends not to see Don talking to an older man at the door.
Bill says to the man he’s going home with, “I bet I could get to like you. A lot. I always get a feeling. You know, I guess maybe it’s silly, but I still believe in love.”
Seeing Bill leave. Chas spits. Okay, another time. He brings his fist to his lips. He glides toward Michael. Pauses. He’s wanted to talk to him all night. Earlier, he almost did, but the glance from Michael was too brief. It’s longer this time—but still no definite clue. Chas moves on. To the leatherman. Pauses. The dude is as macho as they make them—and hot for me. Chas knows. He remembers Robert’s face when he looked down the steps at him. Chas approaches the leatherman.
Endore sees him. He feels relief. It has to do with himself and Michael. Chas is talking to the leatherman. Or is he? Didn’t it work? After a few minutes with the leatherman. Chas is returning to where Endore stands with the others. Whatever occurred with the leatherman. Chas is exultant.
Ignoring others who approach him. the leatherman waits, tall, brooding, awesome.
Now! Chas faces Endore. The same close proximity of the earlier severed moment: a continuation, yes. Chas squeezes a popper to his nose. Then he lets it fall. It touches one of Lyndy’s abandoned pearls. Chas separates it with his shiny boot, shoving the ampule aside in the sawdust. Swaying sensually, he removes his vest. The perspiration gleams red on his chest. Gathered, the moisture streaks erratically and lodges, hot. in his groin. He waves his hand in a sweeping arc as if to embrace the Rushes. The sexual implosion, the first, the best one of this popper, bunches sexual heat. His cock strains. He touches the sweaty groin, and then brings his hand to his lips, kissing it. licking it.
“The fuckin Rushes is seething. And naked.” he says.
Endore looks into the bar. Yes. The sexual currents are flowing with power out of the retral shadows. Glued by sweat, more bodies caress, mouths kiss. Another head bends, a body arcs. More flesh is bared.
“Powerful, man!” Chas blesses the Rushes. The erection hardens. ‘Dozens of hard cocks throbbing together at the Rushes right now. All is sex now. Feel the fucking excitement growing!” Yes. he will now move to conquer the massive threat of this night, particularly this night, emanating from Endore against him. In approaching Robert—the first time he ever made an initial solicitation-Endore abandoned his role as verbal antagonist: he questioned Chas with action. Yet Endore’s questioning wavered earlier before Chas’s onslaught to elicit an acknowledgment of mutual faith to the Rushes and its life.
Now Chas has to pursue the part that wavered in Endore. Conquering it will provide a transfusion for strength, and for their love of the Rushes: and that new strength will wash away the vulnerability—did they detect it?—of Chas’s earlier confession and. if not erode, temper the mysterious humiliation radiating about the encounter with Robert. Its possible meanings permeate this night.
“Its power is undeniable.” Endore feels the bar’s heat.
“But you try to resist it.” Chas begins his renewed strategy.
“Only to keep from being a total animal in it.” Endore says.
Whatever form it took, Chas’s encounter with the leatherman has emboldened him.
“But you are. You are a sexual animal,” Chas pursues. “Like the fucking rest of us. You belong here—and no matter how hard you try to write it away, you come here because that’s what you are and where you can be that. Smell the male sweat, the poppers, the odor of cum, and look at the beautiful writhing bodies that lasted the night with hard cocks.”
Endore breathes in the sweet rancidity of the Rushes.
“This is all we have, you and me,” Chas makes a daring move to extort the verdict he needs. “You and me, Endore, we’re alike!”
Waves of dark sensuality seem to toss Endore within the sea of flesh. He will have sex tonight. He sees the panels-even out of sequence, they depict a journey to disorder. “You’re wrong. Chas: we’re not alike.” he pushes away.
Chas winces. Rejection. He’ll fight! He pops another ampule of amyl. The odor invades the air. He lets it waft chemical sex as he did earlier when he stood at the top of the stairs. Robert looked up.
Lyndy and Martin reject the sexual fumes.
Chas holds the chemical burnt offering to Endore.
Endore breathes the crushed ampule. The afferent charge rushes erotic redness and images of denuded flesh. He continues to breathe from it. A blackness funnels, almost closing his vision, but funneling open again; and within the sensual whirlpool he sees the leatherman, and then Chas–the top-stripped animal body.
Chas holds the ampule to his own nose, siphoning the vestiges of the chemical’s charge. He drops the crushed ampule on the filthy floor, and he steps on it, squashing it on the sawdust as if to seal the act of communion between him and Endore.
He pulls Endore against his body. Endore allows the pull. Chas tries to pry Endore’s lips with his tongue. Endore’s lips seal. Chas’s hungry tongue licks Endore’s face, cheeks, ears, chin, mouth, then moves down to the exposed triangle of flesh at Endore’s chest. Then his head rises, and his lips wait for Endore’s to move. Endore shoves his mouth against Chas’s. Their tongues hunt each other’s wetness. The sweaty chests slide against each other. The hard groins kiss.
Martin looks away. Lyndy’s hand reaches up as if to turn his head to face the men.
Endore pushes Chas away.
Out of the clearing blur of sexuality, the faces of Lyndy and Martin emerge staring.
“You’re right, there’s no difference between us,” Endore says darkly to Chas.
Victorious, Chas smiles.
“Who are you going with tonight, Chas!” Endore demands.
Michael. Chas pauses. “The guy in black leather,” Chas’s voice is a sexual growl. “I got it all set up, hot and ready.”
Not Michael. They will not have to fight for him. “We want the same man, Chas!” Endore hears his words.
“How appropriate!” Lyndy’s voice is hungry.
“Of course,” Martin understands.
Ambush! Chas’s voice is quiet: “That guy in leather’s a heavy bottom-man, he’s into heavy humiliation.” Chas’s voice is lower: “You’re not into that anymore.”
Lyndy licks her dried lips.
Endore feels hatred, desire, anger, pity. “There’s no difference between us, Chas, remember? We’re both animals in the sex jungle!”
“He’s into heavy masochist stuff.” Chas’s voice is firm.
Endore’s is cold, like Lyndy’s, like Martin’s: “You’ve made it clear.”
In the redness, the leatherman’s dark clothes gleam as if b
loodied.
“I can understand, with that kid.” Chas’s whisper attempts to expel Lyndy and Martin. “I’m not even sure I would have gone through with it, with him. That other guy—my first time here—I punched him out, Endore, after he—. . .” Yes, that long ago time: Chas looked down at his pants, the man’s piss continued to wet them, it soaked his hard cock. After moments, Chas’s fierce fists shot out at the man’s face.
Lyndy taunts: “You sound afraid. But look how formidable you are, in your shiny black boots, your cocked cap, your keys and handcuffs—and your sweat! And Endore isn’t even wearing the uniform.”
“That uniform is worn in a look,” Endore says.
“I’ll go with you, Endore.”
Endore jerks back from Chas’s words. When the two men kissed, it was an acknowledgment of desire, yes, always there, but not a promise of fulfillment; more, a kissing away of any possibility of fulfillment. “Don’t, Chas!” Endore says–for himself, for Chas–but desire clutches them.
“Of course!” Lyndy says triumphantly.
“Stay out of this!” Chas turns to her. “I mean it.” Anger carves every word. “You can watch the last moments, yes, like the tourist you are, but stay out!” Then he turns to Martin: “And you, too, Martin, just watch like an honorary tourist for as long as we let you. But don’t say one more fuckin word to me, either of you.”
Lyndy and Martin wait.
“I want to Endore,” Chas says. “I still have the pants I was wearing when that guy pissed on me years ago. You said earlier to play my game fully with myself, that’s what you meant. This is myself, too. I’ve always wanted that other side too.” He feels freedom, a sad freedom.
“No, Chas,” Endore says.
“I want to.”
“No.”
No! Chas shakes his head. No! He breathes deeply. No! He sheds a trance. No! He grasps for anger. No! “No!” he says aloud, echoing and answering Endore, as if that one resonating word will restore his previous world. And it does, but cracked. “All right, then!” The softness drains. “All right, let’s play for that dude! You’ll lose, Endore!”