City of Night

by John Rechy

  Now it was beginning to get cooler. In Los Angeles, night comes like a blessing, even after the warmest afternoons. Soon, long shadows will protect the exiles, shelter them soothingly before the concealing night. And as it becomes later and the loneliness and the determination become hungrier, the frenziedness will increase. And even now, it’s beginning. Ollie, Holy Moses, preaching, shouting. . . . Shrieks of pain, muted pleas to God, going up unheeded or unheard. . . . The Negro woman has returned: Shes “Comin, Lawd!” again, as if He really gave a damn. . . . Jenny Lu strums her guitar to emphasize her scarlet past: “Sin!” (Plunk!) “The flesh!” (Plunk!) “Fornication!” (Plunk! Plunk!!) . . . Two obvious scores stare at the youngmen. They are of that calculating breed who look at you like merchandise: “How big is it? . . . How long can I have it? . . . Youre asking too much—I’ll give you—. . .” Youngmen along the ledges. . . . Lonesomeness is alive. . . . The fixed eyes. . . . The youngman in the army shirt is still here, still waiting. . . . An old harpy mutters to no one remembered fragments from the jungle of her spent mind. . . . And the ghostpale woman is whispering to a ratty-looking teenage boy who smiles incredulously at what shes saying. . . . A couple of queens, in anticipation of the night, have now bravely stationed themselves along the walk. Catching sight of a cop coming around the corner, they shift their stances quickly to those as masculine as they can muster—but still a parody. But the cop stops short of them, talks gruffly to the youngman in the army shirt . . .

  Chuck has been staring steadily into the park which is seething with all the live lonesomeness. . . . “An here I am,” he echoes himself.

  “And afterwards?”

  I realized, startled, that I had spoken—that the question which had finally formed—the question which had been bothering me about Chuck throughout all the time I had known him, which had made his enviable easygoingness incomplete—had sprung involuntarily from my mouth. And having spoken that question, I look at him, and I feel suddenly sad. . . .

  Chuck as an old man! . . .

  With the others, even when they spoke about the Bigtime, you could sense their stifling awareness of what their lives were stretching toward: the bandaged streets, the nightly dingy jails, the missions . . . the forgetfulness-inducing wine. . . . Life had dealt out their destinies unfairly, and they knew it even while they bragged. But with each frantic step, each futile gesture of revolt, they prepared themselves. . . .

  But Chuck?

  Chuck, sitting on this railing, always smiling—easygoing, easily the most likable. . . . Chuck. What of him? When he became an old man, would he look as coolly at the world then, still as if it were that wide-stretching uncomplicated plain?—when it lengthened into mutilated scenes of Missions and handouts? . . . He belongs on the range, I thought—on the frontier which disappeared long ago—existing now, ironically, only on those movie screens that had lured him as a child. . . . “And afterwards?” I had asked him.

  He was still staring into the park. “Huh?” he said. “Man—” he starts. “Well, man—” And then, as he turned toward me briefly, the hat pushed back to get whatever still lingered of the smoggy sun, I saw the familiar smile gracing his face radiantly. . . . Had he even understood my question? I wondered, as, following his gaze, I realized why he is staring intently into the park. . . .

  Alone, about 17 or 18 years old—buttocks firm and saucy sculptured by a tight black skirt—her face heavily painted but still that of a very young girl—coy, a flirt, aware of her attractiveness—a cute young girl is walking in our direction, through the park. . . . And as she passes us now, she smiles. She walks to the water faucet, bends over to drink, staying there very long, casting surreptitious glances in our direction—exhibiting her little butt, stuck out toward us. Now, shaking her hair, which is vibrantly red and long to her shoulders, she stands by the faucet, waiting in posed bewilderment as if wondering where she will go next.

  “Hoddawg?” Chuck said, jumping off the railing in a sudden burst of energy. “Dig the smart little butt on that chick, man!” And pushing his widehat rakishly to one side of his head, he began to walk toward her, where she is now making her way slowly through the less-thick part of the park.

  And afterwards—?

  Suddenly the question I had asked made no difference.

  A short distance away, Chuck turned back to look at me, pushed the hat momentarily back on his head, and his mouth formed the word again:

  “Hoddawg!”

  He winked broadly—and then in a genuine cowboy gait, he swaggered toward the girl, who, aware now that he was coming after her, wiggled her butt cutely.

  CITY OF NIGHT

  AMONG THE BANDS OF MALEHUSTLERS that hang out in downtown Los Angeles, there are often a few stray girls: They are quite young, usually prematurely hardened, toughlooking even when theyre pretty. They know all about the youngmen they make it with and sometimes live with: that those youngmen hustle and clip other males. And aware of this, they dont seem to care. Occasionally, one of those girls will go into the park with a malehustler, sitting there until he will maybe spot a score; and then, as if by tacit agreement, theyll split: the youngman going off with the score, the girl back to Hooper’s coffee-and-donuts, where, in the afternoons at that time, they usually hung out.

  One among them intrigued me especially. She was the prettiest—about 19, with long ashblonde hair and hypnotic eyes. She always looked at you with a half-smile that was somehow wistful, as if for her the world, though sad, still amused her. I knew from Buddy, who had been with her and who dug her (“But shes kinda strange,” he said, “like she aint always there”), that she lived with three malehustlers in a small downtown apartment—one of them the squarefaced youngman I had been interrogated with that afternoon in Pershing Square. . . . She was very hip—she talked like all the rest, and very tough. But with her, somehow, it all seemed wrong, incongruous in a way I couldnt really understand. It wasnt only that she was so pretty; some of the others were too. It was something else, something altogether different about her from the others. . . . A kind of toughmasked lonesomeness.

  One afternoon, at Hooper’s, I sat near her at the counter. Outside, the cops had stopped a madeup queen. The girl next to me smiles and says: “Oh, oh, another queen busted—for “jay-walking.’” I moved next to her, and for the next few minutes we spoke easily. Then I caught her looking at me very strangely. She says unexpectedly: “You know, man, theres something that bugs me about you. Ive seen you in the park and around here, and you look like all the others—but theres something else.” I was surprised to hear her say about me precisely what I thought about her. At the same time, I panicked: I don’t like people to know me too well. . . . “I mean,” she went on, “like you never really hang around too much with the others—and you dont talk to anyone too much.” . . .

  We left Hooper’s and went into the park, sitting there briefly, listening to the afternoon preachers. It felt good to be sitting here with this girl, to be seen with her by some of the men I had scored from.

  Abruptly, as if suddenly bugged by the park, she asked me to come up to her place. “I live with three guys,” she said, “but they’re always out here in the afternoon.”

  The door to the apartment is open. “It’s always unlocked,” she said. “If you ever need a pad, come up—we got lots of room.”

  The cramped apartment is completely disheveled—unwashed dishes piled in the sink, frozen-food trays and beer cans discarded on the floor—her clothes and those of the others strewn all over the rooms. There were two beds in the one bedroom, a couch, and a mattress on the floor.

  Again I catch her looking at me in that strange way—and she said—just like this—just as abruptly and unexpectedly at this: “I bet you dig Bartok.”

  I told her yes.

  “Me, too, man,” she said. “See, I knew it. . . . Thats what I meant when I said something about you bugged me. I mean, you look like you belong but—. . . Why do you hang around this scene?” she asked me.
/>   “I dont know,” I answered her.

  “I dont really know why I hang around either,” she said.

  From under one bed, she pulls out a cheap record-player, and there was a record already on the turntable. “It’s the only one Ive got,” she said. It begins to play: Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. Scratchily on the cheap machine—but still beautifully—it plays the haunting, haunted music.

  I lay beside her on the rumpled bed, and I hold her hand—which is very cold—while the music played; and she pressed herself suddenly against me with a huge lost franticness.

  “Man,” she said, “I know the scene: Youve got to pretend you dont give a damn and swing along with those that really dont—or you go under. . . .”

  Startlingly, as I rolled over on her, she gets up suddenly. Suddenly she looks mean. “Why dont you get out of that scene?” she snaps. “All of you keep telling yourselves youre straight—and you make it with chicks to prove it—and when you make it with other guys, you say it’s only for the bread—and besides, with them, you dont do anything back in bed—if you dont! . . . Sure, maybe it’s true—Now!” She turns the record off. “Why dont you split the scene, man—if you really want to!” she said. Then in a tone that was as much bitter as mean, she challenged: “I bet youve never even clipped a wallet from those guys you go with.”

  I remember the almost-time. . . . “No.”

  “Get out of it—now!” she said. “Get a job!”

  “I’ve worked more than you think,” I said, strangely defensive.

  “But you always come back,” she thrust at me quickly.

  “Yes.”

  “Then why?”

  “I dont know,” I said again.

  She returns to the bed. And now she begins to remove her clothes. . . . As we clung to each other in a kind of franticness, she said:

  “My name is Barbara.”

  I would meet her at Hooper’s after that, and later we’d go to her apartment. Always, she plays that one record. I would hold her while the music played. And yet, always, the meanness would recur. “Cool it,” she said once, when I was coming on with her. She went into the bathroom, returned with a rubber. “You never know what the hell you guys have had your pricks in,” she said brutally.

  “What about you?” I came back at her just as brutally. “Every hustler in the park’s had you—several times.” I regretted it instantly.

  “I know,” she sighs almost sadly. . . .

  Afterwards, for those times I was with her, she would lie like a lost child, huddled and small and warm now. And somehow terrified. . . .

  Then for several days she didnt show at Hooper’s. Buddy told me she’d asked the three malehustlers she had been living with to move out. “You getting hung up on that chick, or something?” he asked me. I told him no. But the next day, when she didnt turn up, I went to the apartment.

  For the first time, the door is locked. I knocked very long before anyone answered. Now the door opens. She stood there in her slip—and she looks strangely prettier than I had ever seen her: those strange eyes staring at me, into me.

  “Im sorry,” she said hurriedly, breathlessly, “I cant see you now.” She was about to close the door.

  “Now or later,” another voice said—a woman’s voice. I looked beyond the door, and a tall, slender girl I had never seen before is standing there, dressed in black slacks. She looked at me with almost-hatred. “Shag, man,” she said roughly, “I mean, split—Barbara dont need you guys any more. . . . Shes got me.”

  And she put her arm intimately about the other’s bare shoulders.

  Now, seized by a feeling of loss which had to do with Barbara—but also with something unrecognized which extended beyond her—I went to clean-aired San Francisco (where I would return—later—and stay much longer)—but soon I was back in Los Angeles.

  The park, then, was hot with cops. Days earlier, a young vagrant had murdered a girl who had just arrived in town—and during the time that followed—vengefully—vengefully for not having spotted the psyched-up stud before the papers implicated them—the bulls stormed the park. And all the young drifters stayed away.

  And Main Street, though also f uzzhot, is even more crowded now.

  When the bars close on Main Street, their world spills into the streets. Malehustlers, queens, scores—all those who havent made it yet in one way or another—or have made it and are trying again—disperse into the night, squeezing every inch of nightlife from the streets.

  They stand pretending to be looking into store windows-continue their searches into the all-night moviehouses—the burlesque-movie theaters, where along the dark rows, in the early jammed hours of the morning on weekends, men sit, fly open, pulling off. . . . Or the scattered army goes to Hooper’s on Main Street—where periodically the cops come in, walk up and down the counter sullenly, picking you out at random—and youre suddenly intensely studying the cup of coffee before you.

  Life is lived on the brink of panic on the streets, intensifying the immediate experience—the realness of Today, of This Moment—Now!—and panic is generated by the threat of the vice-squad (plainclothesmen sitting in the known heads licking their lips; sometimes roaming the streets, even offering you money before they bust you) ; by the copear driving along the streets—a slowly moving hearse. Like a gang looking for a rumble from a rival gang, cops haunt this area, personally vindictive. . . .

  And for the homeless drifters there is also the panic that one day youll wake up to the fact that youre through on the streets, in the bars—that everyone has had you, that those who havent have lost Interest—that youve been replaced by the fresher faces that come daily into the city in that shifting wave of vagrants—younger than you now (and Youth is at a premium), and now the interest you once felt is focused on someone else. One day someone will say about you: “I had him when he was young and pretty.”

  And as a reminder of this, beyond Los Angeles Street, in the same area of the world of Main Street but not really a part of it, is Skid Row—and you see prematurely old defeated men, flying on-Thunderbird or Gallo wine, lost in this sunny rosy haven—hanging shaggily like zombies waiting for the Mission to open; folded over in a pool of their own urine where theyve passed out along the alleys. . . .

  If youre young, you avoid that street, you concentrate on Today.

  Tomorrow, like Death, is inevitable but not thought of. . . .

  At night, the fat Negro woman sprawled like chocolate pudding between Harry’s Bar and Wally’s mumblingly coaxes you to take a copy from the slender stack of religious magazines falling from her lap to her fat tired feet. The magazine shouts: AWAKE!

  And along that strip, the gray hotels welcome the scores and malehustlers: No Questions Asked. For a few minutes—unless you havent got another place and stay all night—you occupy the fleetingly rented room, where inevitably a neonlight outside will wink off and on feebly like exhausted but persistent lightning. . . . Throughout the night there are sounds of rapid footsteps running down the stairs.

  In the morning, if you stay, you walk out into the harsh daylight The sun bursts cruelly in your eyes. For one blinding instant you see yourself clearly.

  The day begins again. . . . The same.

  Today!

  SKIPPER: A Very Beautiful Boy

  1

  ALONG THE PANEL OF AMBER MIRRORS at Harry’s bar, a panorama of searching eyes emerges out of the orangy twilight of cigarette smoke and dimlights: a stew of faces floating murkily in the smoky darkness.

  In the mirror I see the fat man on the stool beside me as he extends money across the bar to buy my drink. I turn away from the image of myself sitting next to him. I face him directly.