City of Night

by John Rechy

  And Miss Destiny continues typically as if nothing had interrupted her story:

  “And then, before I knew it, Duke was dead. . . . He was a truckdriver, and sometimes we were so poor we couldnt even make it: I had to hustle in drag in order to keep us going—of course, he didnt know this—” And then remembering The Wealth and the country estate: “Well, you see his family disinherited him, they couldnt stand me.” And then remembering the way his family Idolized her: “Well, you see they loved me at first, until they Found Out—”

  (Now Duke the Aristocrat is Duke the Truckdriver, disinherited but oh so in love with Miss Destiny, and on a cold murky damp foggy day his truck turns over on the highway, the brakes screech shrilly, the wheels are turning round, round, round. . . . The sirens wail: Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-uh. And When They Came To Tell Miss Destiny, she senses it before they say anything and says: I Want To Be Alone . . . and there is no one to turn to. . . .)

  “You see I was an orphan,” and then remembering her father who threw her out: “I had lived with my aunt and uncle and called them my father and mother—and it was my uncle who threw me out, the same uncle who Raped me when I was eight years old and I screamed it hurt so and my aunt said forget it, it would go away (she was a degenerate). . . . And each time I close my eyes, I see those goddam wheels going round, round, round—and I hear that tune they were playing when I met him. (’Put your little foot’),” she hummed. ... “And it won’t stop until I hear the crash! . . . Oh!”

  (So Miss Destiny lones it to Washington D.C. where she makes it with men who think shes Real. And when they reach That Point in the cramped car she must insist on, she will say no honey not that, I have got the rag on—she will of course be welltaped. “But thats no reason why we cant have a swinging time anyway.” And if not she will say shes underage and threaten to scream rape. (And dont ask how, Or If, she always got away with it.) But a jealous bartender, who Knows, tells three sailors who want to make it with her that shes not a fish, shes a fruit, and the sailorboys wait outside for her, mean, and start to tear off her beautiful dress and say, If youre a girl wow the world is yours honey, but if youre a goddam queer start praying. . . . And oh Miss Destiny runs as you will begin to think she is always doing, and they grab her roughly as you will begin to think they are always doing, and she rushes into the street and into a taxi passing by luckily and the driver says have you been clipped or raped lady?—and: I will take you to the heat station. She says oh no please forget it . . . and goes back to Philadelphia to place a Wreath on Duke’s grave, and comes to Los Angeles with a Southern Accent. . . .)

  “And I became what you see now: a wild restless woman with countless of exhusbands,” Miss Destiny said. “But do you know, baby, that I have never been Really Married? I mean in White, coming down a Winding Staircase. . . . And I will! I will fall in love again soon—I can feel it—and when I do, I will have my Fabulous Wedding, in a pearlwhite gown—” and she went on delightedly until she caught sight of Pauline’s reflection in the panel of mirrors behind the bar, and something about the way Pauline was looking in our direction clearly threatened she would come right over and introduce herself and bug Miss Destiny.

  “Goddam queer,” Miss Destiny murmured, and she was fiercely depressed.

  3

  I left the 1-2-3 and went to Ji-Ji’s bar—another malehustling and queen bar: but tougher. You walk under a small tattered awning into a dark cavelike room. Beyond the dark, through a tunnel-like opening, the bar leads into a small narrow lunch-counter, where malehustlers and queens sit eating. And Ji-Ji, the old, haggard queen who owns this bar, reigns over it adoringly as if it were a wayward mission—a hidden underground sheltering those rebels from the life that spat her out. . . . Dad-o, the Negro pusher, is here now, huddled at one end of the bar, almost eaten up by the darkness, except where the light from under the bar gleams in shiny eery highlights on his sweaty skin; hes talking to a skinny boy next to him—obviously a pusher.

  It is much more quiet here than at the 1-2-3—the superficial gayety is absent, there is a brooding silence: an undisguised purposefulness to make it. Even the scores who haunt Ji-Ji’s are colder. They stand appraising the young malehustlers as if they were up for auction.

  As I walked in, a tall newyorkdressed man leans toward me and murmurs: “Lets get out of here and go to my place, boy—I got a bar there myself.” His assurance bugs me strangely. The guilt seizes me powerfully. I feel an overwhelming shame suddenly for looking so easily available. “Youre taking a lot for granted,” I said. He shrugs his shoulders. “It’s Ji-Ji’s, isnt it?” he says—but—not so sure of himself any more—he walks away hurriedly. . . . I leave the bar immediately, the sudden inexplicable shame scorching me inside. The youngman who had been with Dad-o is now outside. The night is brighter than the bar. . . . The youngman asks me furtively if I want to turn on. He opens his hand, tiny joints of marijuana squirm in his palm. He looks strangely like a biblical prophet—with a beard, infinitely sorrowful eyes. I say no.

  When I came back to the 1-2-3, Chuck was back too. He asked me to go outside with him. “I got some sticks,” he says, “you wanna blast?” (I remember the prophet-faced youngman only moments earlier.) . . . I walk with Chuck along Spring Street, left, across Broadway, then Hill, beyond the tunnel, around the area with all the trees. Chuck says: “I don really dig this stuff, man—too much of a hassle to hold any, an I don dig hasslin it noway—but somebody turned me on free—so might jes as well. . . .” We squatted there among the shadows, shut in by the trees, smoking like Indians—or maybe, like children forbiddenly in a garage.

  We went to Main Street, and Im feeling an intensified sense of perception—as if suddenly I can see clearly. Now Main Street is writhing with the frantic nothing-activity in the late hours. We walked into Wally’s, exploding with smoke. Then to Harry’s bar and more smoke, more streaky mirrors, more hungry eyes and stares—and later, before the burlesque house with the winking lights and the pictures of nude women, we saw three girls, and Chuck went casually and talked to them and they said yes. They belonged obviously to that breed of young girls with whom the hustlers periodically prove their masculinity. Like the malehustlers, they live the best they can from day to day. . . . We went back to the 1-2-3 to look for Skipper or Buddy to come along with us. Miss Destiny was standing outside with Lola, and when she saw the girls with us, she stomped angrily inside the bar. We found Skipper, and we got into Buddy’s car and Skipper made it run, and since no one had a place to go, we drove to Echo Park.

  And the night was miraculously clear as it rarely is in Los Angeles, and the moon hung sadly in the sky as unconcerned as the world, as we sexhuddled in the car with the three lost girls. . . .

  We left the girls at Silverlake and came back to the 1-2-3, where Miss Destiny, skyhigh, rushed at us shrieking, “You know whats the crazy matter with you, all of you? youre so dam gone on your own damselves you have to hang around queens to prove youre such fine dam studs, and the first dam cunt that shows, you go lapping after her like hot dam dawgs!” Then she cooled off right away and said drive her to Bixel Street, where someone (shes playing it mysterious like someone is turning her on free because shes such a gone queen) is laying all kinds of stuff on her. When we got to Bixel, it turns out Trudi’s daddy has paid for the stuff, including a tin of maryjane and rolls of bees, and hes asked Miss Destiny to take it to her place and Bring Everybody and theyll be up later and we’ll have a party. We rode back, and on Broadway the cop-patrol is driving meanly. Skipper put on his dark shades, Chuck lowered his widehat, I sank into the seat (the junk: the roust), and goddamned Miss Destiny waves at the cops—“Yoohoo, girls”—shes flying out of her gay head. Luckily they didnt hear her and they already had someone in back, so they went by with everyone-hating faces. Just as Skipper parked, Trudi’s daddy drives up in his tough station-wagon with Trudi behind him wrapped in—I swear—a fur stole—“Like Mae West,” she cooed.

  And we all went up to Miss Des
tiny’s.

  4

  Destiny’s place is two ugly tight rooms with naileddown windowshades and a head. You climb two narrow stairways and then make your way through a maze of cramped halls lighted just enough by greasy lightbulbs to reveal the cobwebs and the dirt—long narrow corridors like in the movie-serial when we were kids: And the Dragon Lady put Terry and the Pirates in a narrow hallway and she punched a button and the walls kept coming closer . . . threatening to crrrrrrushl everyone to . . . death!!

  Miss Destiny opened the door and turned on the light. The light screamed in our pupiled eyes, transforming the cobwebs on the ceiling into long nooselike shadows. Darling Dolly Dane was curled up on a couch, and Lola and a seedy-looking soldier were carrying on on another—this is the kitchen but it has two bed-couches. Lola hollers in her ugly man’s voice turn the fucking lights off. “Put out thy own dam lights, as the stunning Desdemona said,” Miss Destiny answered. Both the soldier and Lola started adjusting their clothes, and Miss Destiny says arent they Too Much?—everyone here has seen boys and girls, and besides, all the world is a swinging stagel

  Now Lola goes into the other room, and in a few minutes, lo and beholdl here she is back, in Japanese drag! posing at the door: kimono with beautiful colored butterflies—sandals—slanted eyes! and she is saying something like teeny-vosey which she says means kiss in Chinese—but the soldier (he playing the stud with her when we walked in) isnt paying her any more attention, and its obvious, the way hes looking, that hes a godown fruit serviceman—a not very attractive butch fruit whom Lola thought was a stud (and queens are fooled more often than they admit). Pissed off, Lola grabs the soldier’s cap, pushes it over his head, and very much like a rough man shoves him through the door: “You gotta make reveille, dear!”

  And while we’re turning on juice and joints and pills—Trudi’s fat daddy saying, “Come on boys, come on turn on”—palming all of us excitedly—the queens are changing into high drag in the other room—much more successfully than Lola. Now Trudi minces out in blacklace negligee, panties and brassiere (her chest taped to give her real-appearing cleavage under the falsies)—looking I have to say disturbingly real like one of those girls in the back pages of the scandal magazines that advertise those slinky gowns and underclothes with crazy names like tigerlily nightie and heaven-in-the boudoir panties and French-frivolity brassiere—and Darling Dolly Dane is all pink ruffles and queen-cuteness, and Miss Destiny (being more modest and more the regal type anyway) makes her entrance, last of course, in green satin eveningdress and fluffed out rair with golden sequins. . . .

  Right after that, Buddy came in with a score. Miss Destiny says shes sorry but theyll have to use the head. The score is obviously disappointed. A few minutes later and we hear the score coughing spitting. Lola says acidly she despises amateurs and queers. Now they come out, and the score is not only disappointed but nervous, afraid of the scene. As he started toward the door, Trudi calls out, “Dont be nervous, dear—blame the beads!”—and Skipper is going to Talk to him—but Buddy said no he got all the bread himself—and: “Did you hear the square spitting, man? did you?—” indignantly “—Christ, and I only pretended to shoot!” Darling Dolly is doing an imitation strip, proud of her smooth girlskin and figure, and everytime she bumps (like the queen at the 1-2-3 earlier), she says, “Sssssssssssufferrrrrrrrr. . . .” Trudi’s daddy is giggling almost hysterically now, opening drinks, passing pills, joints.

  Suddenly theres a racket outside the window, like someone throwing a bottle, and Miss Destiny says, “It’s that psycho bitch!” and pulls the shades from the nails and theres the sex-hungry nympho in the next building hanging out the window in her half slip and brassiere (and she isnt badlooking) saying whats going on we’re disturbing the peace. Her piece, giggles Trudi, smothering herself cozily in her stole. And Miss Destiny coos, “Come on over, dear, come on over,” to placate her, and the sexhungry woman almost jumps through the window—“I’ll be right over, hear?” “Hoddawg!” said Chuck, and this puts Miss Destiny on. In just a few minutes heres the nympho and says it’s so warm she’ll take off her blouse if you dont mind, and I mean she wasted no time. Appalled at such uncouth effrontery, Darling Dolly Dane, smoking elegantly, inhaled accidentally and almost choked.

  To top it all off for Miss Destiny, who was becoming Most Depressed, heres another queen at the door: Miss Bobbi, with a drunk who tries to sober up immediately, rejects the scene, turns to leave—but Skipper gets a chance to Talk to him. “Cool it, cholly,” is all Skipper said, and the man reached for his wallet nervously, hands the money to Skipper, and stumbles out hurriedly.

  Miss Bobbi says icily hand over the bread which rightly belongs to her. Skipper gave her a nofooling? look. Miss Bobbi says she brought the score here, after all! Skipper says who got it? Miss Bobbi says she was going to until Skipper came on so bigassedly. Skipper says the score would have clipped her, and you saw it, jack, the score gave the bread to him. Miss Bobbie swished out in a huff.

  In absolute depression, Miss Destiny flung herself on the couch crying oh no, “Miss Thing, what are we doing here?”—clinging to a Poor Pitiful Pearl doll on the couch—a sadeyed orphan doll—but everyone was talking and moving and no one paid her any attention. So she freshened up her makeup peering into a tiny stonestudded compact saying shes a mess, and please, to me, sit beside her, please! Then she imagined she saw Darling Dolly in the mirror making sex-eyes at me, and Miss Destiny says Well That Is The Limit! “Darling Dolly Dane is a common whore!” Miss Destiny almost-shouted at me and no one hears her but me, the radio turned on to one of those California night-stations with the smothered rock-n-roll sexmoans, “and all of you! especially you! are just bums! nogood lowlife hobos! who will end up! on Thunderbird! or worse than hobos: hypes! hopelessly hung up and cant get it!” and shes going on very unlike the gay Miss swinging Destiny. “And II dont! know! what! Iamdoing! here! amongst all this: tuh-rashl I! Went!! To College!!! And Read Shakespeare!!!!”

  I whispered dont tell anyone, but me too.

  “Next youll be the Prince of Wales,” she says bitchily, glowering at Chuck and Buddy making up to the nympho, who was fanning herself with her slip now.

  And Miss Destiny goes on haughtily—sure of her ground: Then—tell—me: if you read Shakespeare, Who Is Des-demona?” doubting it superiorly, giving me The Supreme Test: Shakespeare and his queenly he-roines who were first, remember, played by men.

  I answered (and remember the pills, the liquor, the mary-jane): “Desdemona was a swinging queen in the French Quarter who married a spadestud who dug her until a jealous pusher turned him on that his queen was making it with a studsailor, and the spade smothered the queen Desdemona and the heat came for him and he killed himself. . . .”

  Miss Destiny stared at me a long while—not speaking. And as she was staring at me like that, Lola—who had gone to the head outside, Destiny’s being occupied—returned howling theres a man in the head outside and he aint got no pants! Miss Destiny sprang up, rushed at Darling Dolly Dane:

  “You dizzy silly cunt! you brought him here didnt you?”

  “Where else, Miss Destiny?” Darling Dolly Dane pleads helplessly, covering her face dramatically.

  “Go give him his pants!”

  “How can I, Destiny? I dont know where I left them!”

  “Miss Destiny!” Miss Destiny screamed.

  “Miss Destiny dammit!” Darling Dolly Dane shrieked back.

  “Here!” Miss Destiny rushes into the other room, comes back with a pair of pants (which turn out later to be Buddy’s, who is with the nympho in the other room), empties the pockets on the floor, tosses the pants at Darling Dolly Dane, shouting: “Throw them through the transom!”

  Darling Dolly rushes out whimpering.

  “Silly bitch,” says Miss Destiny, glaring at her when she returns giggling now the man must have thought the pants came from Heaven.

  Now Miss Destiny sat on the floor next to me. “You do know who Desdemona is!”
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  Then again there was a long silence between us.

  Suddenly!

  Suddenly, and strangely—strangely then but not so now: now, inevitably and very clearly like this: Something was released inside Miss Destiny and something established between us in that moment by the simple fact of the mutual knowledge of Desdemona: that something released and that something established which she had yearned for with others from person to person in this locked world—and trying always futilely before, had given up. And of course too it was the liquor, and rejection earlier smashing at her stomach like a huge powerful fist—and the pills pushing-pulling in opposite directions, jarring her—the memory too of the Real girls with whom three of us had gone earlier—and this importantly: the loneliness churning beneath that gay façade desperately every awake moment shouting to be spoken, to be therefore shared: released by something as small as this, the common knowledge of the sad sad tale of Desdemona—or maybe more accurately than released: say, erupting out of the depths of her consciousness, aroused by the earlier rejection, resulting in that rare fleeting contact made rarely somehow like a match struck in the dark for a breathless sputtering instant. . . . And so now, because of Desdemona and all this meant to Miss Destiny, and all the things set off from the knowledge, Miss Destiny blurted suddenly frantically: