City of Night

by John Rechy

  Lance closes the door with the intended slam! of Dean—perhaps with that gesture trying to push the ghost away: Not yet! . . . And with the false courage of someone who has just dodged one bullet in a rain of bullets, he stares now challengingly at the chorus in a desperate effort to squelch their triumph—and in this crucial moment: mercifully, mysteriously, Lance looks Radiant—as if he, who has always relied on miracles, still expects some miraculous salvation.

  And it comes.

  Before the whispers of false sympathy can conclude his reign, the door opens behind Lance, and a meek Dean appears, the few clothes dangling pitifully from his arms. He walks slowly to Lance—waits—whispers (but we can all hear him in that dreadfully quiet house):

  “Lance—Im—sorry. . . . Lance? . . . I dont really want to go. . . . I—I just get kind of afraid sometimes. . . . I thought youd kick me out first. . . . Lance? Can I come back?”

  Lance faces Dean—gratefully and with a look that could be only compassion, flickering, but unmistakably there.

  “Tonight,” Lance said, “you can stay tonight—if you havent got a place—but—for your sake—itll be better—tomorrow—if you do leave.”

  Now Lance turns to the startled faces before him, as Dean disappears into the bedroom.

  “Whats the matter?” Lance said smiling—disappointing—oh, deeply, deeply—the waiting chorus, forced to retreat “Whats everyone so somber about?” He leaned against the fireplace, like an actor aware of his enthralled audience.

  “Our life,” he sighed, “is meant to be a series of love affairs—nothing more. And you all know that. And who knows whos just around the corner? . . . Come on,” he said, passing gracefully from one awed person to another, “drink up!”

  And the buzzing has not come, the chorus is bewildered—as Lance O’Hara says, his back solidly to the Ghost tapping at the door to be let in (or—is it possible?—will it retreat now in peace? . . .):

  “Lets have a gay time!”

  CITY OF NIGHT

  IT WAS SUMMER NOW.

  Summer, which in Southern California does not come Magically as it does in the East. Warm days merely fuse with warmer days—and your resistance to life dulls. And like mangoes rotting imperceptibly in the white sun, bodies turn brown along the wide-stretching California beaches. To La Jolla, to Malibu, to Long Beach, to Venice West, Laguna—from the canyon beyond Malibu as the morning fog is swept away into the ocean; from the hot Los Angeles streets where the heat gathers in steaming pools; from across now-vacationing America, they come.

  The Southern California beaches are a way of life.

  Strips of sand fleeing from the mainland are cuddled by the distant outlining palmtrees. Like a restless, futile enemy of this sunny stagnation, the ocean invades the passive sand. As it grows late in the day and the bodies cluster away from the water lapping slowly inland, night comes like a blackout. The water, dark, capped by creamy froths, will lash turbulently at the beach, and youll hear that mysterious, disturbing murmuring of the wind and the water like a personal judgment.

  Those summer afternoons on the beaches, time drifts unreally. Days are measured by the deepening color of your skin.

  La Jolla. . . . Semicircling the water, cupped in a handful of sun. And only a short distance beyond it and the navy base: San Diego, a familiar row of tattoo parlors, loan shops, stores—typical of all the lonely servicemen towns in America: sailors roaming the nightstreets—whiteclouds of drifting uniforms.

  Long Beach. . . . The amusement park near the beach, the hectic-whirling scene—the rollercoaster plunging ineluctably like a bullet along the murderous rails. The park . . . the hot public heads . . . a bar where on Sunday afternoons a mad queen did a dragshow with balloons and feathers.

  Laguna Beach. . . . Bordered by squat jagged cliffs. . . . Homosexuals ritualistically Protectively assembled in one close area—like flotsam on the beach—as if symbolically defying the world that shut them out—a world with so little compassion.

  And Santa Monica.

  From a slim green flowered park (a statue of Saint Monica serenely eyeing the long lines of cars turning from Wilshire Boulevard toward the beaches), the sand gleams expansively white—and Pacific Ocean Park gathers itself like a small facsimile pleasure-island: rides, a simulated sea, Neptune holding court over rainbowed fish, make-believe jungles. Between it and the row of fresh-fish restaurants—beyond muscle beach, where the men with balloons for muscles posed for each other with set faces—is “Crystal Beach.”

  Along an area of perhaps two blocks, one block of sand wide from the parking lot to the ocean, the initiates of the world I lived in gathered from the early morning (a face sometimes emerging eerily out of the fog in the first sudden blaze of oceansun) into the late sun-clinging afternoon. All the representatives of that world are here: the queens in extravagant bathing suits, often candy-striped, molded to the thin bodies—tongued sandals somehow worn like slippers; the masculine-acting, looking homosexuals with tapered bodies and brown skins exhibiting themselves lying on the sand, trunks rolled down as far as possible—or going near the ocean as if undecided whether to dive in, posing there bikini-ed, flexing their bodies, walking the long stretch of beach, aware of the eyes which may be focused on them; the older men who sit usually self-consciously covered as much as the beach-weather allows, hoping perhaps for that evasive union, more difficult to find now—ironically now, when the hunger is more powerful, the shrieking loneliness more demanding; the male-hustlers, usually not in trunks, usually shirtless, barefooted, levis-ed, the rest of their clothes wrapped beside them, awaiting whatever Opportunity may come at any moment, clothes, therefore easily accessible for moving quickly for whatever reason.

  Periodically, throughout the day, the representatives of that world, now centered on the beaches, will move to the small sandwich shop across the parking lot, looking back to see if anyone has followed them there. But, mostly, they will move into the bar a block away: and this is Sally’s bar.

  As the magic-tanning sun diminishes, Sally’s bar on weekends is crammed with oiled malebodies rubbing sensually against each other, hands openly exploring.

  Forced laughter drowns the vomiting of the jukebox.

  I had seen in Lance’s look—in that look as, perhaps, he tried to expiate his guilt and calm the haunting vengeance of a sad old man—I had seen that faint glimmer of compassion, for Dean—and therefore, now, the barest hint of a capacity to attempt to love—someone! . . . That look had frightened me. And I fled from it.

  And during those summer-beach days, I drove myself furiously: sometimes making it and quickly returning to the beach, leaving again with someone else: faces confused with others, the hurried intimacy remembered perhaps days or weeks later.

  Those summerdays spent mostly in Santa Monica, I would hear often of a youngman named Glen—a smallish blond youngman I would see every day on the beach. A few summers ago, he had been one of the most desirable hustlers on the beach: “Simply everyone,” a score told me, “wanted Glen—then—but, now—well, everyone’s used to him: There are so many new faces each summer. If Glen were smart, he’d move somewhere else, where they dont know how old he is. At first, Glen was strictly trade. Now—well—. . . He’ll do everything!”

  “After a while,” another man told me, “Glen will be out of the hustling ranks. Hell quit going around with the teenage girls he still tries to impress us with—and he’ll have a steady young boyfriend. Watch and see.”

  “After all,” another man added, “pretending that you never, never, never do this or that is fine—or if you dont now, that you never will. But really never, never, never doing this or that—well, it’s slightly insane. It’s a perversion in itself.”

  And so, that summer, it was an insistent refrain: the premium on Youth. Often, it was brought up bitchily by scores after the sexscene—but other times it was said from an acute awareness of the life they—we!—lived. . . . Mr. King had brought it up, but that had been at the beginning of the
journey, and its meaning had been remote then. It wasnt how I would live that terrified me. It was, instead, the horror that the youthful cravings would extend into a time when what made them possible of gratification might no longer be.

  And one of that summer-wave of people who would emphasize that refrain was an evil old auntie—whom I will remember as an impeccably clean dirty old man—whose name is Hubert, but who says self-affectionately: “Call me Hughie, dear—everyone does”—a rabbity-looking, mincing, effeminate, beady-eyed little old man of about 60.

  As he tried to flash brilliantly before me, confusing T. E. with D. H. Lawrence, I couldnt help—and what the hell?—coming on intellectually, and I corrected him. “Oh, dear me,” he said, “how frightful—an Intellectual! You should have kept your mouth closed, youngman. My oh my—oh!—the mind of an old man and the body of a young boy. Dear, dear me!” And I struck back at him: “Better than the mind of a young boy and the body of an old man!” “Ouch!” he winced, “dear me, dear dear me,” as with rabbity gestures, he cuddled himself on a chair. . . .

  Although I had dinner with him several times after that, he indicated no sexual interest in me then.

  And it was with him, soon after, that I went to the mansion of that famous director whom Skipper had known. Derisively, the old auntie announced to the director: “This youngman is an Intellectual—watch out,” and the director had immediately sneered: “The last time I even talked to one—a writer,” he said, “I ended up in Confidential magazine.” “Oh, dear, oh, my—listen to that, will you?” the little auntie fluttered: “Oh, the wages of Fame—tsk-tsk!” The director commanded the youngman living with him at that time: “Go tell Mattie we’ll have lunch outside”—with a coldness and an undisguised contempt—a paid owningness—that made me cringe. The youngman moved away obediently—after having fixed our drinks.

  That whole evening turned into progressively less veiled hostility between myself and the director, as—throughout his brutal imitation of a star then involved in a frontpage sex scandal—the face of Skipper—somewhere drunk in downtown Los Angeles—scorched my thoughts.

  Later, in his own house, when Hughie tried to come on with me for the first time—nibbling, appropriately rabbit-like, at my chest—I pushed him away, despising him strangely.

  “Youre too old for me anyway,” he said. “I prefer them very young and very, very dumb, dear,” he went on cuttingly. “In their 20s, theyve already been had too often—and in too many ways. I like the little boys who can still get aroused by dirty pictures. I like to watch the naughtiness awaken. . . . Theres a family near me—three boys, the oldest seventeen, the youngest twelve,” he bragged, “and Ive had the first two, now Im working on The Young One. They read comicbooks—not D. H. Lawrence!” He smacked his lips lecherously; and noticing my reaction of disgust, he said laughingly but still seriously: “Blame the aunts, dear.”

  “The aunts?”

  “Yes—I was raised by two maiden aunts—they taught me to play with paperdolls. Each time I seduce a very young boy (oh, anywhere around fifteen years—anyone over that is, well, just extra),” he aimed at me, “each time, you know, well, I Offer him Up to The Aunts!” . . .

  And so all those reminders of the premium placed on Youth mesmerized me, made me focus on that particular summer, as, later, I would try to focus on whatever particular season it was. I canceled out the future—or tried to—as if only the Present existed and would go on forever. I was crazily convinced that somehow if I concentrated only on Today, the specter of that shattering tomorrow would disappear. . . . But in a life that can date you when you begin to look over 25, I felt myself clawing to hold on to the present. . . .

  At the Ranch Market on Vine Street, a cockeyed clock winds its hands swiftly backwards. Longingly I stand before it.

  It was that summer that I met Dave.

  On the beach one morning I had met a malenurse who was going on a splurging scene with several credit cards (which may or may not have been stolen), and I got in on it: Wellington boots, khaki levis, shirts. Because he was staying at the home of the man he was nursing, we went that night to the apartment of a friend of his—a giddy short Italian.

  Lying on a couch was a darkly handsome, masculine youngman who looked immediately to me like a hustler. We acknowledged each other with a nod. When I came out of the room with the malenurse and the giddy Italian, the dark youngman I had seen on the couch was gone.

  A few days later, in an all-night coffeehouse on Sunset, he sat next to me.

  His name was Dave, and I had been wrong about his scene: He was not a hustler. He worked in an airplane factory, he told me, and he went to school at night. He quickly explained that he merely shared that apartment with the giddy Italian; that there was nothing between them.

  For a long while we spoke about many things—but not about the homosexual scene. I was beginning to think he was straight, despite his roommate. Then he said: “That malenurse you were with that night, he just likes hustlers.” He wa obviously trying to find out about me. I said nothing. “I cant see just going to bed with a lot of people—different ones every night,” he said. “I mean, a person, whether hes queer or not, hes got to find someone. . . . Nothing like a lonely fairy,” he said smiling. I liked him right away.

  And for that reason—resisting the temptation to say no (I had known immediately that he was not a score—and I sensed, although I dismissed it, that sexually he would be attracted only to someone who would be equally attracted to him, and I sensed, too, that he would look in that person for more than a night-long partner)—I went to his apartment with him when be asked me if I felt like talking some more.

  In the apartment, when he touched me, I told him quickly I had to leave.

  He looked at me steadily. Then he smiled. “Sure,” he said. “Maybe youll want to go to Arrowhead with me tomorrow.” Surprisingly, he was not annoyed that I had put him off. “It’s Sunday. I’ll pick you up if you want to.”

  I said yes, suddenly anxious to leave. As he drove me to the hotel on Hope Street, I felt certain I wouldnt be there when he came by.

  But I was.

  And after that, I saw him more and more often. When he wasnt working or going to school, we would drive out of the city. . . . And I began to discover in him an honesty that constantly amazed me, an integrity and decency rare in the world of the bars and streets: It pleased me strangely that soon after I met him, he moved into another apartment, this time alone. Although he openly acknowledged his interest in other youngmen, when it was a mutual interest—and he was a very desirable member of that group—I could tell that his was not the furious hunger that it very often is with others. Since that first night, he hadnt attempted to come on with me, and we rarely ever spoke about that scene.

  He told me about himself: about the stone-cold woman who was his mother; the ranting father, consumed in flames one nightmare night: a cigarette dropped drunkenly on the bed. He told me this without selfpity, merely as the recitation of his life.

  And I found that I was revealing myself to him, letting slide off more than ever before the mask I had protectively cultivated for the streets and bars. At times, I felt he knew even more about me than I told him, which alternately pleased and disturbed me.

  “Why do you hustle?” he asked me once. It was the first overt reference he had made to that, and it was the kind of statement that, from almost anyone else, I would quickly have put down.

  I was tempted to point out that I hadnt asked him for anything. Instead, I merely said. “I have to.”

  “Thats not true,” he challenged. “Youve told me youve worked.”

  Annoyed far beyond his question, I said: “Okay, then, I prefer to.”

  More and more, I was now in the bars or on the hustling streets only when I had to score. I avoided Main Street altogether. The craving for the sexual anarchy began to diminish for the first time since I had begun that journey through nightlives. I felt a great friendship for Dave (and an amount of pity for
the paradoxical fact of him in a world of furtive contacts; he should be married, the father of adored children). . . . But all this, I told myself, was merely a welcome friendship in a period of ennui with the turbulence of the chosen world.

  Still, there were those times when a different kind of fear began to seize me.

  Im sitting with Dave in the outside arena of Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica, watching the animal circus. It’s a bright breezeless afternoon, when, miraculously, the usually hazy Los Angeles sky is purely clear, like a childhood-remembered Texas sky.

  “Miss Pinky! The Graceful Elephant!”

  The announcer, who has just introduced the next animal performer—“Miss Pinky”—leads a small elephant into the arena. Painted a garish purplish pink, the elephant wears a small, multicolored, flowered hat perched absurdly on the giant head, slightly bowed as if in shame. The liveried trainer puts the pink elephant through a series of dance routines, accompanied by music. The elephant with the ridiculously flowered hat goes doggedly through the motions of a hula, a mambo, a waltz. The trunk sways clumsily, enormous legs execute the steps ponderously. The flowered hat fell over one eye, and the trainer coaxed the elephant to push the hat back on with its trunk.

  The audience rocked with laughter.

  As the elephant lurched from side to side, the great ears as if rejecting the hat, the announcer says: “Miss Pinky isnt really a dainty young girl, Folks! She is really a boy-elephant But he has such A Special Appeal—such Graceful Talents—as Im sure youll agree—” (Applause!—and the elephant is persuaded by the trainer to bow his great head in thanks.) “—that we think it would be a shame to waste them. And so, Folks, a Great Big Hand for Miss Pinky—the graceful boy-elephant!” . . .

  I see Dave stare solemnly at the elephant being led off the small arena, the flowered hat perched crookedly over one ear. . . .