by John Rechy
She looks furiously now about the park, remembering her stolen drag again. “That Buddy! . . . Now you know I aint opposed to clipping no one, especially scores that wanna pay you a couple of bucks for all kindsa kicks and tricks,” she adds—and Im remembering the man whose pants she clipped and left him in the head. “But! When a thief! clips a thief!—well! That Is Too Much! The line has gotta be drawn somewhere—or we’ll all be: Lost! And, for me, This Is The End. . . . And, babies, it’s no secret: I got a weakness for Buddy—although—” she adds flirtatiously, pursing her lips as if in a kiss “—I love you two too. Still and all, I do got a weakness for Buddy. He may not have the world’s biggest piece of meat—but never mind: I aint one to go around flipping over size. Still, he is just as cute as can be—and that sonuvabitch, he knows I am hung up on him. So He Does This—takes advantage of my gentle nature! . . . Anyway, cute or not, this is definitely The End!” She glanced about the park. “Oh, oh, here comes Miss Sergeant Morgan. I’d better split!” With a wave of her hand, she left us, weaving her way along the walk, peering into the park to see if she can spot Buddy.
And indeed! Sergeant Morgan is making his rounds of the park—flanked by two cops as usual. As he passes us, his giant ass swings like the stick he carries.
“You really think he went to that drag party like Darlin Dolly said?” Chuck asks me.
I imagined the fat body in drag as Darling Dolly Dane had described it, and I laughed. “Sure. Why not?”
And Chuck says: “Man, you gotta admire those dam queens like Darlin Dolly an them. . . . They sure have got guts. They live the way they gotta live. . . .”
2
The sun is shifting, shadows stretching. And the Pershing Square panorama, in preparation for the night, is exhibiting itself in all its flashy afternoon shreds. The dismal old tramps sit in wrecked heaps. New preachers have invaded the park. New bustlers. New scores. Jenny Lu is at it again. And the angelsisters are hymning in the distance about how much Jesus loves them. A man in black preaching charity is saying: “Give!—instead of selling! Giving! is an act: of Right-eousness!”
Chuck said: “You notice lately in the park how many guys want you to go with them for free?”
The preacher shouts:
“Idleness!”
Chuck: “Man, I am gettin tired jes sittin here.”
“Ignorance!”
Chuck: “You know, I never could stay in school without cutting. Man, I used to look out that window an then jes run out—an that old teacher, man, she even throwed a rock at me once.”
“Selfishness!”
Chuck: “Yeah, a lot of guys you think are scores—they wanna get you for free.” He shook his head.
Now, in the increasing warmth, he rolled up his shirt sleeves, scratched his arm—lovingly—where the tattoo is, proclaiming, amid leaves and rosebuds: DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR. . . . “My old lady,” he explained, “she akchoolly went with me when I had this here Tattoo put on me. Ma, she says: It’s kinda sweet, having somethin like “Mom” on your arm’—but I guess, she figures—well—” . . . He smiled brightly, remembering the longago scene with apparent fondness. “Did I ever tell you that story?”
I shook my head. During the months I had been in Los Angeles, I had been with Chuck many times, sitting often on this very corner with him—but, before, he had never been this talkative. Something about the afternoon is making communication easier. And for me, in the midst of the turmoil of my own life, he seems like a kind of symbolic anchor. . . . Yet I constantly expected a contradiction to the easiness. But there had been none.
“See, when I got this Tattoo,” he was saying, “it was back in Georgia where I was born. . . .”
“Georgia? I thought you were from Texas.”
He smiled embarrassedly. “Well, see, I always tell people I am from Texas—cause I was hung up on being a Cowboy—an I akchoolly lived there, too. . . . See, when I was a kid, I used to go to these movies—Westerns—. . . Oh, no, man, it was not Texas. It was Georgia all right—. . .”
I smile now at the thought of his Texas and the Texas I had known: the city, not the plains of which he had dreamily conceived in Georgia, longing for Cowboy Country. The cactusstrewn desert . . . not the cactus which for me had grown in a feeble cluster outside that window, in that vacant lot . . . The Texas I knew. . . . Memories of the wind. . . the dirt . . . tumbleweeds . . . my dead dog. . . . That wind blowing not freely across the plains but threateningly sweeping the paved streets into that injured house . . . El Paso . . . Texas . . . for me, not the great-stretching, wide-plained land of the movies—but the crushing city where I had been raised in stifling love and hatred.
Chuck said: “I was gonna tell you about Ma an this Tattoo.” He fixes his grayish eyes straight ahead, on nothing immediate: on the past, maybe, remembering the scene. “See, I was, oh, just a kid—an one day, Christ, when I was 15, that little town in Georgia, well, I jes got tired of it . . . I mean, it wasnt bugging me or nothing—I jes knew it was time to split. Like something calling you. My old man, he died long ago. There was five of us—all brothers—an Ma. She took care of us, on a kind of farm like, outside that town, see? So I tole her one day, I am gonna split that town—go somewhere else. Man, she was cool, my Ma. She did not say: ‘Dont go,’ ‘Wait’—or nothin. She jes looks at me an nods, understanding like. Then she asks me when am I leaving. Tomorrow, I tells her. An, man, she says—dig this—she says’ ‘Well, we are gonna go into town, you an me.’”
(I see my own mother standing before the glasscase with the angel figurines: arms outstretched, waiting to reclaim me. . . .)
“We had this old Ford,” Chuck said. “I remember it real good—an I remember her drivin it into that ole town like she was on a hotrod! Yippee! . . .” He adjusted his hat firmly on his head as if the wind, even remembered, were powerful enough to blow it off.
“So we go to this bar,” he went on, “an she orders beer. ‘Beer,’ she says to the bartender, ‘for a boy that is gonna be a man!’ Hell, man, I wasnt even old enough to be in that place. But everyone knowed Ma, an they did not care. She says we are gonna have one good Drunk, because, she figures, if my Old Man was aroun, he’dda taken me out, but he ain, so it’s up to her. . . . Shoot, I had juice before. Me an my brothers, we used to really get juiced up.” He sits up on the railing now, enthusiastically remembering—looking far beyond the park. “Once, man, we got so fuckin drunk—man —me an my older brother—we jes started throwin rocks at the sky! Throwin rocks at the sky, man! Crazy! Not mad or nothing—you know—but jes like, you know, to make sure it’s there. . . . Throwin rocks at the sky,” he echoes himself slowly, shaking his head, as if somehow, in some way he has not discovered and maybe never will and knows it, this is greatly important to him. “But those rocks, man, they jes kep comin right back at us. Didnt reach the Sky. . . . I guess—” he laughed, the barest trace of a mood disappearing instantly, “I guess we wasnt throwin them hard enough.”
(And I remember my own longing to watch Heaven, punctured, spilling down to earth. . . .)
Now Chuck catches sight of a man standing before us, looking in our direction. “That is a cool score, man—I know him. You wanna score off im (I am feelin too tired myself)—or you wanna hear the rest of the story?”
“The story,” I said, feeling, suddenly, a great closeness to him—and at the same time a huge, undefined sadness.
And he seemed childishly pleased by the decision, as he continues: “An we’re in that bar jes drinkin up that beer, an Ma keeps sayin, This is what your Pa wouldda done—an dammit to hell I aim to do it for him an do it right!’ . . . We split that bar, an the sun was going down—all red an crazy an everything—like it gets in the South.” He squinted at the hazy feeble Los Angeles sun—and again he seemed to be looking beyond it: to the memory perhaps of another—brighter—sun. “An then—get this—then Ma points to this house, an she says: ‘Cat-house.’ Thats what she said, an she says: Thats where you are gonna go next, youngman.
’ Hell, man, I’d been there before with my brother. In fack—but Ma didn know this—there was this real cute whoor there—she wasnt no young chick, exactly, but she looked real nice in bed—an man, she throwed a mean screw. She said she would not charge me nothin—cause I was bettern a truck-driver. An thats what she said, man—an that is the truth. She said, Them others, they are work; you are dayoff” He said this not with the vanity, the bragging of the male exhibiting his masculinity, but with the pride of a child who has gotten an A in school and can prove it with his report card. “So, when I come outta that house, Ma’s waitin on me. She says: “Okay? I said: ‘Fine, Ma, fine.’ . . .” He looks down at the Tattoo. “Oh, yeah, The Tattoo,” he remembers. “So we go get more juice. ‘Im gonna teach you right,’ she keeps tellin me. We’re wobblin aroun the town like a couple of drunk buddies—but Ma, like I say, she knowed everyone, an everyone figures we’re jes cuttin up some.” He chuckled. “Ma fall in a ditch, starts cussin up a mammy-screwin storm!—” and now he throws back his head laughing “—an she says shes gonna sue the city, she sprained her ankle or somethin—says shes gotta rest till the pain goes. . . . But I knowed she is jes high, that is all.”
The score in front of us moves away, toward a youngman in an army shirt who has just strayed into the park. The youngman, recognizing the man as a score, let his hand dangle suggestively between his legs to attract the score more quickly.
Chuck said: “So Ma spots this tattoo place, an she says lets go there an rest, plops down on a chair. Man, I can almost see her now—she is almost passed out: ‘Whew!’ she keeps sayin. An she keeps sayin how she is gonna sue the city! An all them tattoos starin her right in the bloodshot eye! . . . Well, for a while she falls asleep—dozes—an when she woke up, all them angels and flowers is starin her in the face, an she says: ‘Hallelujah it’s like Heaven! Thats what she akchoolly said—God’s Truth! . . . I said: ‘Ma, Im gonna get me a tattoo an remember you with when Im gone.’ An I have spotted this one of this chick with great big boobs, you know, nekkid—an Im lookin at that one. An Ma notice what I am lookin at—an she says: ‘Youngman, you better not remember me when you look at that!’ . . . Well, the man there says he can put ‘Mom’ right on my arm, an thatll do it. But Ma—dig this—she says: ‘Sure, that will be real nice an everything, but I want something Prettier on my son’s arm—something pretty to remember his Ma by—something like flowers an leaves—the works!—an it’s gotta say something sweet, so it says it for me all the time when he is away.’ She sees this real mean picture there of a tattoo—an it says DEATH BE-FORE DIS-HONOR.” He reads it off his arm, exhibiting the tattoo proudly as if showing a medal. “This here one. . . .”
And he goes on: “So Ma choose this one—an that is how I got it Ma said it is gonna keep me outta trouble. An it has. I ain never been busted—. . . Well—” he confesses almost sheepishly “—well, once—but jes once—for stealing a horse—get that, man!—stealing a horse!—but I been to the glasshouse lots, I wouldnt shuck you about that. . . . Even Sergeant Morgan, you know what he said to me, man, after the first time he took me downstairs when I landed in this here park —when he took me to that toolhut downstairs—you know—. . . . Well, he says: ‘Youre too lazy to do any bad in the park.’ An he don bug me since. . . . Hey! Did I tell you about this queen from somewhere like Chicago?” he asks me, shifting abruptly to something he just remembered. “Man, you know what she does? She spots some stud she digs, an she says she’ll lay some bread on im if he’ll make it with her. Well, man, when she has gone down on the stud, she says nothin doin, she ain payin cause the stud wasnt no dam good. So, then, see? the stud, he gets real bugged like, an he starts beatin on her ass—an, dig, that is what she really digs: she digs getting beat on, an she is getting her real kicks free! . .. She sure didnt get there with me, though,” he says, shaking his head. “Hell, beating on her, thats too much sweat I jes split Then I find out about her scene. Isnt that a kick in the pants—I mean, like ain it? . . . Some people sure like to do it funny. . . . An that reminds me of something else—a real funny story. . . . When I was in Frisco once, this guy gave me a ride. You wouldnt believe it unless you saw it, man. Man, that guy, he was dressed up in boots with silver chains wrapped aroun them an a hat with these silver studs, an black gloves—an, dig, he even carried a gunbelt with all kindsa things danglin from it. An all those silver studpins all over everything. Dig this: At his pad he gives me tea! An I don mean pod, either; I mean real tea! Then he shows me this collection hes got—all kindsa weird costumes. An boots!—boots an costumes up the ass. You know what that guy done then? He dresses me up in chaps, boots, everything, an then he goes down on my boots, jes squirmin up a storm on the floor, lickin them cowboy boots an leather chaps, rubbin his face on em. Man, I . . . Hey! theres Buddy.”
Buddy is standing by the water faucet, looking cautiously into the park. Next to him is a skinny, ugly, tough young girl, and I notice a screamingly shiny bracelet on her wrist
“Hes lookin out for ole Darlin Dolly,” said Chuck.
“You seen Dai ling Dolly?” said Buddy, coming over. The girl stayed by the faucet
“Shes looking for you,” I said, perversely amused at how this put Buddy on.
He shakes his head regretfully. “I hocked her dam drag-clothes again. Hell, I had to, I was busted real low. . . .” And he adds, echoing Skipper—Im sure—trying to sound Tough: “Im tired of these small fucking scores, Im gonna knock me over a big one. A liquor store—or a bank!” It sounds almost ludicrous; he looks like a little boy. . . . And yet others like him would shoot into the frontpage unexpectedly: and one day a picture of a familiar face—the lost-boy look coming through the rehearsed tough-mug look—would greet you from the stacks of newspapers at the corner.
“Not me,” says Chuck. “Too much hassle.”
“I sure would hate ole Darling Dolly making a scene right here,” said Buddy, “and she told me she would. She means it, too. She said she’d start screaming at me wherever she saw me. And that sure would embarrass me. . . . Hell, I aint gonna hang around queens any more. . . . The only reason Im here is: Im looking for this score that digs watching me make out with a chick.” He indicates the girl still standing by the faucet “Oh, oh,” he said, moving away. “I think I see Darling Dolly over there.” With the girl, he dodged hurriedly through the crowds.
“That chick hes with,” said Chuck, “man, I got the crabs jes standing next to her once.”
3
A woman in her late 30s walks past us. I had seen her many times before, usually about the men’s head. She had a pale white ghostface, her eyes outlined starkly in black. She never smiled. She would stand before some youngman—the rattiest looking and the youngest—then she’d whisper to him. . . . She was the only female score I knew of in the park.
“She sure looks tired,” Chuck said as she passed by.
Carried by the wave of the woman’s apparent lonesomeness, I asked Chuck abruptly: “Dont you ever get tired of this scene?”
“Me? Uh—well—. . . Hell, yeah, man,” he said, “I am always tired.” He had misunderstood me. “Thats huccome I jes sit aroun. . . . But you wanna know somethin—? I sure wouldda dug being a cowboy. . . . An I was—once.”
“In Georgia?” I couldn’t help saying.
“Oh, no, man—thats where I was born . . . . But I always used to see those Western flix—an, man, those cowboys, they seemed to be having a ball all the time. Thats for me, I thought. Cause, see, I didnt wanna hassle it—I jes wanted to let whatever’s gonna come, come easy an jes the way it should. I figure a ranch is the best place to let it happen. I would imagine sitting there on a fence—an ridin on a horse, looking out at the miles of sand an sky, an nothin is gonna fuck it up. You jes wait—an that way nothin happens. Easy an slow. An then I figure: I’ll get me a horse, when I wanna cut up, an jes ride away, man, like that—you know. . . . Like—yeah—like you got Heaven roped by the neck.”
I wonder at his vision of Heaven. Not c
louds. Not angels. No. . . . But the wide, wide plains, great hills, and uncomplicated plain cupped in the warm embrace of the golden sun. . . . An endless stretching beyond the great soft hills . . .
“See, I hitchhiked West the day after Ma an me went into town,” Chuck is saying. “This guy who gives me a ride, he says: ‘Where to, sonny?’ I says, ‘West!’ . . . An thats where I went!” Again, his eyes search the park, as if wondering where the West of his imagination twisted into the West of Los Angeles. “This cat,” he goes on, “he says hes gonna go to Houston or Dallas—some place like that, I forget. . . . An we jes drive along. An then there it is, jes like in the movies: Man, jes miles an miles of plains an sky an more sky. Then I see these horses out the window. I tell the man, ‘Heres where I am goin.’ He says, ‘It’s the middle of nowhere, sonny.’ ‘Nowhere,’ I tole him, ‘thats where I wanna go.’ . . . An I got outta that car, an I jes started running like I was crazy, hooting and howling. . . . An this one horse, hes left the others an hes comin straight at me. Straight at me! An I climbed that fence, an there he is, that horse, jes starin me in the eye, an me starin back at him. An, man, I tell you; that horse, he smiled at me—crooked, you know—but smiling. An I figure he jes started roaming, like me—an somehow I knowed he was lookin for me. See, we’re in the same spot—both beginning. An I smiled back. . . . An, man, that horse understood! He nods his head, saying yes. Yes! So I jumped on him, an I rode away. . . . Along them beautiful plains, those crazy clouds—ooo-ee!—man, I couldda been going to Heaven an I wouldnuh been any Happier. . . . But then these three mean studs ride up to me on horses—an they say Im stealing this here guy’s horse. Stealing it, man! If anything, we stole each other. . . . So I figure, hell, they are gonna lynch me, like I seen in the flix. . . . But I was jes a kid an that man they took me to, the owner, he was kinda nice. He understands, an he offers me a gig. . . . But it was not like I figgered. I jes worked aroun the place, doing, you know, odd things. It was not that I minded it or nothin. It was jes this: I never got to be near that horse no more—except when I got drunk,” he smiled. “Then I would go an find him—an he would be waiting there for me, his neck up straight, waiting. An we’d take off again. It happen over an over. I jes couldnt keep away from that Horse. . . . Then, one time, the owner, he says he hates to do it but hes gonna get me busted to teach me a lesson if I do it again. Well, it happen again. I got high, an I rode that horse into them hills—and this time I got busted, jes like the man said. The cop said I was a menace. . . . So I left that place. . . . An what bugs me: I never said goodbye to my Horse. . . . And when I left, I think: Well, hell, it ain like in the movies”. . . . It was the only note—perhaps not even there—of bitterness I remember ever having detected in his voice. But now he laughed: “I figure then my saddle days is over—thumbing days beginning. Yahoo! . . . An this guy gives me a ride—an that was the first guy ever put the make on me. See—you wone believe it, but it is the truth—when we got to this motel, he says we will stay there overnight. An I was deadass tired, so I say sure. . . . In the morning, that man, hes comin on hes sorry—sorry for what happened, says it’s the first time an everything—an hes sorry. I didnt know what he was talking about. But he keeps going on until I knowed what was buggin him: he’d swung on my joint—an, man, he didn know I been asleep all the time. . . . So he lays some bread on me—an I come on to L.A. an land in this here park. . . . Sergeant Morgan, hes the one that tole me what goes on. He took me downstairs, warns me about all the hustling goin on an everything. An while hes talking an Im saying to him: ‘Nope, not for me’—Im figurin: Hell, I don know how to do nothin—an I ain never gonna have that Horse—so, hell, I’ll stick aroun. . . . An here I am,” he said. He stretches his legs—owning the railing: his home, this park. . . .