by John Rechy
“Why’re you staring at me like that?-like I’m the one who was in that Rushes. Not me, man! No, man, not me!” Tim stares along the block.
The footsteps of the men moving toward the Rack are muted.
Tim turns to Robert; his voice is forced: “Hey, I bet you were tryin to hustle up some bucks of your own, huh? That’s it, huh? But you can’t hustle inside that bar, see, I coulda told you that, there they just go with each other, not for bread; in there, they’re all faggots! And in that other weird place they’re going to now,” he says with deep anger. He wipes his sweating body. He wishes now the cruising men nearby would disappear, not hear even the snatches of their talk. He feels their eyes. “I hate them,” he blurts. “Drink my piss!” he says to one of the men glancing at them.
Robert pulls back. The memory of Chas’s body standing on the top of the steps stamps itself over the image of his brother. “I’m queer,” Robert hears his own words.
“What!”
“I’m queer.” The words are firmer now.
Tim looks about as if someone might have heard. “Don’t you ever say that again, hear?” He grabs Robert.
Endore watches—hearing only a word, a phrase—the rise and fall of their voices; and reading, certain he can read, wanting to read, the movements: Robert’s stance is firming. Tim’s is shaken. Endore touches his lips, as if to seal in the past—and touch—the earlier contact with the youngman. Had there been anything more possible? He glances at the men drawn like ionized particles to the magnet of the Rack. He feels a deadly excitement. No, no more was possible.
Robert pushes his brother away. “You face it—because I have—that I’m queer! I went to the piers first because you told me—without knowing it—that it was easy, and then I went to the trucks because you told me about them, too. But I didn’t make out.”
“See!” Tim clutches.
“Because I was afraid—of people like the ones you said you ran around with, beating guys.”
“Shut up, I’m warnin you!”
“You listen!” Robert demands.
Tim starts to walk away.
Don emerges out of the shadowy decline. He watches the shirtless youngman swaggering away, like a young ammai, Don thinks. He glances around. He can’t see Endore. Just the gliding forms like ghosts of sleepwalkers. Now the youngman who was in the bar is following the other. Angry. Yes, Don thinks, there’s more anger now.
Robert reaches Tim. They’re nearer the trucks now. There’s the crunch of steps, the pervasive odor of amyl. Naked men in several muted frames of light in the building stand like aroused statues.
Robert forces Tim around.
“Don’t ever touch me, you little punk,” Tim rages.
“Then listen to me, because there’s a lot I gotta tell you. You made me feel dirty, but tonight–. . .”
“Dirty like the fags who go where you went,” Tim hurls.
“You go there too,” Robert reminds him. “Man,” he says in a quiet voice, controlling each word, watching Tim’s reaction, “you can hustle somewhere else, the guy at the door told me, better places, and if that’s what you want, so what? But why do you come here, if you hate it so much?”
“Cause it makes me feel good—angry; and that’s what I wanna feel!” Tim says. He feels the waning heat, heavy. The waterfront looks uglier than he’s ever seen it. “Fuck, it’s so hot tonight, I’m sweating. Look.” He blots perspiration from his forehead. But a cool breath of a breeze is blessing the night.
Tim shakes his head, a desolate move. “The only moments I got,” he says aloud. “All I got is now,” he says. “All I got is now,” he echoes himself.
“Tim—. . .” Robert tries to soothe, but he doesn’t know what to say. Tim looks so tired, more tired than he’s ever seen him. He feels as if tonight Tim is younger than him.
Tim touches his lips. “Sometimes I wish I could shout and have everyone listen, but no one does. The only people who see me are the ones who pay me.”
“I’ll listen, Tim. But if that’s true, why do you want to hurt them?”
“Shut up; you don’t understand. It’s only for then that they want me.” His own thoughts tangle. He tries to remember the straight dark lines buildings make against the sky on windy days when he sits by the river. Sometimes that makes sense, sometimes it doesn’t. “I’m telling you why I hustle—if you’ll just listen. It’s cause I don’t know what words I wanna shout. I never have hit no one—. . .”
“I’m glad, man.” Robert says. “I’m really, really glad.”
“I. . .—just rob guys.”
The sound of footsteps, slow, searching, disembodied: yet no one is visible nearby—until the tapping of hurried heels scarifies the night.
Martin and Lyndy are rushing down the steps of the Rack and into the street.
They were refused entrance, Endore knows. She was shut out. She was left out. He sees the tiny figures summon the waiting limousine.
Before the chauffeur can get out, Lyndy opens the door. Inside the car, she shuts the door with a crack like a shot. The limousine moves away. Martin waits on the street. Then he snaps his fingers at a cab which has just surrendered more men to the Rack.
She was shut out. Her greatest defeat of the night, Endore knows. She is damned to reach out and be blocked by the blackened window of her limousine.
Tim glares at the disdainful mechanical animal of the limousine as it moves without a sound past him. “But I’m gonna hit someone one day—. . .” he finishes.
“But the person you hit won’t be the one who made you hurt,” Robert pleads.
Tim looks about. “Look at it all, man, so fuckin ugly. Rotting; and, Christ, smell it rot.” His hand sweeps as if to cut down the crumbling buildings, clear away the broken streets, push back the metal-stained water.
Robert senses Tim’s blinded rage. “I wish I could help you, and I will, if you let me—. . .” It’s as if, always, Tim was younger, Robert realizes now.
“You can by—. . . by—. . .” Tim clenches his teeth. “Just stay away from fags, that’s all.”
“Not that, and I won’t even listen to you if you talk about hurting people who aren’t hurting you and feel hurt, like you.”
Confusions clot in Tim’s mind.
Endore has moved closer along the street. He can see the two young forms. The endless battles, he thinks. The invisible ones, and the open ones. Unending. How deeply they’ve wounded us. He looks toward the entrance to the Rack. Some of the same men at the Rushes, but hardened even more now in their black leather, linger to enter. There are fewer outside now. Inside, the pit will be grinding. The varied tensions of the night will overflow in violent rushes.
“I’m grateful to you for bringing me here, Tim,” Robert tries to absolve whatever his brother feels of guilt, “because I know where I belong.”
“In those filthy trucks with the blood from meat? You seen the butchers in the daytime, man? You seen the chunks of meat like—like—. . .” Tim’s voice is weary. “And on those piers where everything is rotten? In that bar, with those weird guys? You belong there?”
“You’re here too,” Robert’s voice is gentle, reminding again.
“So I can hate them! You really want all that?”
“I don’t know,” Robert says. “Maybe. And maybe something else. But whatever it is, wherever it is, it’ll be me there, and it won’t be ugly, Tim, like it is for you, like it was for—. . .” The memory of Chas is blurred. He remembers Endore. “I kissed a guy in there. No, he kissed me first, and then I kissed him.”
“I’ll kill the fucker!” Tim rages.
“It was beautiful. I told him to fuck off!” the memory of anger cuts.
“You see, you’re not queer!”
Within the aisles of the trucks abandoned like the corpses of huge animals, men roam, finding other bodies.
“Just because he wouldn’t go with me. He was scared. Like you, Tim.”
“Scared? What do you mean, scared?”
“You little queer!” The word shot out of Tim. He reaches out in terror as if to clutch back the fatal word.
The orange glow from the piers is like weakening fire.
“Man, you’re my little bro’. I love you, little asshole.” Tim punches playfully at Robert’s stomach. “Who made you tough so you’d never be afraid of nothing, huh?”
“We’re all afraid sometimes.”
“No!. . . Remember how I showed you how to fight? And took care of you. I mean, man, I really love you,” Tim says.
In a window of the building across the street, two men kiss.
“Not dirty or nothing.” Tim rips his gaze from the window. “I mean, I just love you.”
“You actually had to explain that?” Robert says. “Look, I remember real good how you took care of me, and I love you, too, a lot, and I’ll listen whenever you want-whenever you feel like hitting on someone, I’ll listen instead, man, I swear. But I can’t if you want to hurt me.”
“Not you! Them!” Tim points to the cruising men.
“I’m one of them, Tim!” Robert yells at him.
“No. You’re just mixed up.” Tim pushes with his hands, to shove it all away, all that’s been spoken, seen. “You heard me tell you about those places,” he says firmly, “and it’s natural you’d be curious, wanna find out for yourself. I’m sorry I told you—. . .”
“I found out about myself long ago, man, it’s just that you made me feel it was dirty, because you feel it is, and it isn’t.”
“You go home now,” Tim orders.
“And you’ll stay, huh?” Robert challenges. “Find someone to pay you, or someone to rob, or—. . .” He feels afraid for his brother. “Please don’t, Tim. It won’t make it better, it won’t. You just add more hurt and it comes back. Don’t, man, okay? Okay?”
Don waits against a wall near the trucks. Behind him, the shadows of men have lost even their outlines.
“Didn’t you hear me?” Tim’s voice is rigid. “I said, go home.”
“No. Before tonight is over, I’m gonna make it. With a guy. Really make it, together, and it’ll be good, and I won’t feel guilty. Not dirty either, Tim; and it’ll be with someone I want and who wants me.” He remembers his lips on Endore’s. He searches out the memory. It’s coated with love now, soothing. I wish he hadn’t been so afraid. Afraid and angry, he thinks.
Endore sees the squared shoulders of Robert. What occurred between Robert and his brother, he’ll never know exactly—another of tonight’s fragments. But he can deduce. And hope. And for Michael. The youngman’s brother? He remembers him rushing after the raiding car long ago this evening and proclaiming his. . . masculinity.
“If I see you here again, I’ll beat the fuck out of you!” Tim threatens Robert. He has to end this encounter. He feels bombarded by invisible threats. The waterfront is smothering him.
“No, you won’t, Tim,” Robert says. “Because you’re as gay as I am.”
Tim’s angered fist almost connects with Robert’s face. But Robert swayed.
Endore sees Robert walk away from the waterfront. The fake uncertain swagger is gone.
“He . . . ain’t. . . queer,” Tim whispers. Now he adjusts himself, arranging his hair. He slings his shirt over his shoulder.
Don takes a few steps away from the trucks.
Tim’s tough-sexual stance is returning. Then it shatters. Too heavy. He’s tired. He touches his wet forehead.
Endore moves across the street.
Tim sees him, recognizes him.
They both hear the screeching brakes of a car. They push against the nearest wall. Other men on the street move for shelter. But the car merely stopped to release more leathered men to the Rack. Laughing, they seem to welcome the fear their arrival aroused. Don moved back into the shadows.
For the second time tonight. Endore and Tim stand touching, pressed against the wall. Neither moves, feeling welcome warmth where their bodies touch. Again, Endore sees the sad, pleading, long-lashed eyes of Robert’s brother. Tim’s lips open. His mouth inches toward Endore’s. Then Tim’s eyes squeeze shut, his teeth and lips clench, his hands tangle into fists, wringing out the vulnerability, converting it into the need to wound.
Endore feels the tension in the trembling body next to him. Once more he looks at Tim, and then he moves away.
As if forcing each part of his body to respond. Tim adopts his tough pose again. First the shoulders, slouched; then the legs, spread. The head tilts—. . .
Endore sees Don on the other side of the street.
Don was about to cross, but seeing Endore, he lowered his head, avoiding him.
Endore passes the lowered entrance to the darkened building where Don waited earlier. He hears beckoning sexsounds. He pauses. He looks back toward the Rack. A shirtless man wearing black chaps and leather cap pauses there. A tall man in leather stands near him. The two move past the weakened light over the entrance to the Rack.
Don walks toward Tim. But he turns back. Endore has stopped Help me! Don wants to call back to him. Instead, he moves along the street toward Tim. Help me! But now he’s standing next to Tim, who waited.
Keep moving. Don walks past Tim. Keep moving. Tim’s eyes follow him. Don moves farther away, faster. Don’t turn back! He turns the dark corner.
Don’s going home, Endore thinks in relief.
Out of Endore’s sight. Don waits. He hears distant footsteps. Endore’s. Now he hears closer ones. The youngman’s. Don leans his head back and looks at the shut sky. We used to be able to see the stars, he thinks
Pulling at Don with his inviting look, Tim walks by slowly. Don follows him into the darkness of a sealed building. Don can hear the sound of Endore’s footsteps again.
On the moist pavement, the footsteps move back along, not away from, the savaged waterfront.
15
As often as you shall do these things, in memory of Me shall you do them.
IN A LIGHT like cold fire, two naked men crawl on the wooden floor. Chains dangle from their wrists, studded belts are crisscrossed like distorted harnesses on their torsos, black cockrings and straps contain their flushed genitals. The odor of urine, dead cum, stale sweat, the putrid vaporescence of amyl and butyl nitrite saturate the torpid air. A leathered man wearing dark sunglasses in this dark dusk holds a chain looped to metallic collars about the necks of the crawling men. Each time he tugs, they grovel at the boots and crotch of whatever dominant-stanced man he indicates. With a black belt, the man strikes the bared buttocks. His thrust spittle forms sequins on the lubricated flesh.
In the large barren room, slabs of wood slant in fallen diagonals. They create the atmosphere of a collapsing subterranean world. Muted here too, its origin invisible, music groans, as if the panting of the Rushes is transuding through the shared membrane of walls. Here, the redness has been further bled to dark.
Like mangled traceries of unframed pornography, men bunched against the walls masturbate each other and themselves, suck, kiss, rim, fuck. Within the clasped shadows, sudden fissions occur in the carnified masses, a body separates along the reddened lubricity to find another mass of flesh. Smaller rooms open into deeper darkness.
Silent processions of men, some leathered or uniformed, others in iron-, chain-, or leather-decorated nudity wander about, pause to stare at, or coagulate in carnal rites.
Garbage has been allowed to accumulate—or imported, in homage to rot, a welcome extended to the effluvia from the piers: crumpled mired papers, oxidized smashed cans, shreds of spoiled underwear. Melding, separating, reshaping, men often spit on the floor in rehearsed contempt.
Whack! The sound of a belt or a whip flailing, comes muffled but assertive from a bottom room.
A gash in the floor connects to a wooden ladder leading to two other large rooms in the lower depths. As they descend, figures swallowed by the throttled light appear to burn in dying flames.
Face smeared with contempt, a
man teases with the tip of his cowboy boot the writhing ass of another man on the floor. On an army cot, its flattened mattress redolent of nights of sex and sweat, a naked man is pinioned by two cop-uniformed men, one at the head of the emaciated cot, another at its feet. A third man holds his boot over the face of the supine man, his tongue laps the sole. Another boot grinds into his groin. Releasing one hand, the pinioned man forces the boot down harder onto his own genitals.
Whack! The demanding lash summons.
Several cubicles contain toilets, exhumed props in the decay of fantasy. Men sit crouching, blowing whoever stands before them, a clot of bodies pushes in to share the anxious arcking mouth.
In a tenebrous corner, a man in split handcuffs leans against a wall. A tiny ring punctures his right nipple, a small chain dangles from it. His face is ecstatic as men take turns twisting his nipples like screws.
A man in leather mounts a harnessed man. a silver bit between his teeth. Each time his head jerks like that of a bolting horse, the black-gloved man on him thrashes at the bared flesh. Then he lunges into it with his cock and pulls back on the bit.
Whack! The flailing commands steady attention.
Not a word is spoken here. The sounds are of mouths on flesh, flesh on flesh, of crunching feet on the imported debris, of assaults on flesh—sighs, moans, groans, gasps—and the harsh punctuation of a belt cracking beneath these rooms.
Whack!
As intent as students over an operating table, men gather to watch a naked man, bound at the wrists and feet to a leather distortion of a childhood swing; it is attached by heavy chains to the low ceiling. Between the legs of those watching, other men crawl—one wrapped in chains—sucking, licking, rimming, groping. The feet of the bound man are cupped by metal stirrups at two ends of the hanging incurvated hide. His bent legs are spread so wide that his ass opens in a round hollow.
Random cocks take turns penetrating his hole. Probing fingers open it wider. A grotesque dildo is crammed into it. Now a shirtless man wearing leather chaps and boots and a black cowboy hat begins pushing his fist into the begging ass. His tattooed forearm—a menacing panther running the length of it—strains to shove farther. The strapped man is covered with sweat like red dye. His face is delirious. But his cock is soft.