City of Night

by John Rechy

  “At any rate,” Neil tries to go on, “it will be the only movement toward the justification—”

  “—of Mamma Nature,” Carl says, like an impudent student He giggles sillily.

  “Carl!” Neil says querulously, “dont interrupt me! Im talking seriously!”. . . In his imperial tone again: “There are the weak and there are the strong. Pain is the natural inclination: The inflicting of pain—. . .”

  “And yet you play the masochist?” Carl asks the question for me.

  Visibly cringing, Neil blurts: “Ive explained that to you before!. . . Seduction! I have to show The Way of Strength—so that The Movement will continue. Masochists—sadists—even people like you, Carl!—they’ll bring new converts to create that Glorious Army, of which I—” (He expanded his chest, the shirt protested, he exhaled.) “—of which / will be: The Leader! Then—and only then—can I assume my Natural Role!” He calmed down, mopping his perspiring brow with a black handkerchief. “In my experiments—naturally—I have to play many parts. I will not always be the—the—” he blustered, and then he came out with the wrong word, which he realized the moment he had uttered it: “—the low man,” he finished. His look mellowed. “Will you have some wine?” he asked me. “It’s very good.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Hummm”. . . He became suddenly aware that his costume had become quite hopelessly disarrayed. Urgently, he tried to arrange it, tucking it here, smoothing it out there. One thing would go in, another would pop out He gave up with a loud sigh of relief. “Still—” he struggled intrepidly once again to come back philosophically, “youll have to admit, Carl, that even the great writers—Dostoevsky, for instance—why, Dostoevsky even went so far as to condone murder—he—. . . why, in—. . .”

  “Re!-dem!-shun!” Carl shouted, still melodramatically mimicking Neil’s previous tones. “In Dostoevsky, theres always re-dem-shun at: The End!” He laughed uproariously.

  “Well,” said Neil, eyeing him meanly, “you may think so. . . . And, well, I can see that theres no use trying to carry on a Serious Discussion when youre drunk, Carl. And I dont really see why every time youve been drinking, you come over here. Everytime—. . .”

  “You dont see why?” Carl asked.

  “Well,” Neil said, the authoritativeness vanishing as he laughs very loud, shrugs his shoulders in a gesture that is now becoming for me typical of him (as he always does, I notice, when he feels trapped or ridiculous), “if you want to come over when youre drunk, well, whu-I NOT?”

  “But—” Carl came in obsessively “—this all started cause I was going to tell you—way—away, way, way back there—about Neil and what happened to his precious collection of guns.”

  Neil: “Youve said enough, Carl. Ive asked you to leave; and if you had any—. . .”

  “I dont have ‘any,’” Carl said. “And I wanna finish, Saint Neil.” He bows and spills the wine again. “Saint Neil of the Leather Jacket sometimes makes his contacts at the famous corner of Seventh and Market by the Greyhound bus station. (Did he meet you there?)” he asked me; not waiting for an answer, goes on: “And I guess—I guess the word has spread—not The Word, Neil—just the plain old ‘word’—has spread, far and wide, and some youngman usually is there, waiting for The Saint There was this one kid recently. How old was he, Neil? Eighteen? Nineteen? Anyway, Neil thinks hes made a real conquest: A young kid he can really convert: from scratch! . . . The kid let him dress him up, and Neil brags to everyone hes got a Real Convert—the kid looks up to him, respects him. So what happens? Oh, it’s too much to tell!”

  “Youre pitiful,” sneered Neil.

  “So are you, dear,” said Carl. . . . “Anyway, Neil is going through this wild scene; keeps yelling at the kid: ‘Harder! Harder!’ (Is this how it happened, honeybunch—or am I conjecturing too much from the past?) Anyway, heres where I come in—literally. I came over, the door is open (very unlike Neil), and I find Neil on the floor—knocked out cold! The kid was gone. So was Neil’s car. And so—more importantly—was his priceless collection of guns. . . . Youve started another collection, havent you, Mr Saint? . . . Well, they found the car, abandoned—but not The Guns.”

  “That boy,” said Neil indignantly, “did not just ‘steal’ the guns. He loved them so much he had to take them.”

  “Did he also love’ your cufflinks which he also helped himself to—and the car?” Carl laughed. “Would you believe it?” he asked me. “Neil wouldnt even tell the cops about the stolen guns—wouldnt even check the hockshops. He kept insisting that his own love of costumes—and all the frills—was what had made that kid steal the guns—that the kid wouldnt ever sell them or hock them—never part with them, he loved them so!”

  “That dirty little bastard!” Neil blurted uncontrollably, sinking into another of his contradictions at the memory of the stolen guns. “I brought the little tramp home—hanging around the Greyhound station—”

  “Tramp’?—your ‘convert’?—who respected you?” Carl asks sarcastically. “I tell you, Neil, theyve heard about you.”

  Neil: “—and I brought him home for tea!”

  “Tea!” Carl echoes, amused, reaching for the decanter. He turned to me: “Have you found out why he tries to tank you up on tea?”

  “And food!” Neil interrupted. “And I let him stay here. Then he stole my guns. But it wasnt a common, ordinary, everyday robbery, as you seem to think, Carl: He loved those guns.” The constant seesawing rationalization. . . .

  “Everyone in the world has the same loves you have, huh, lovebushel?” Carl asked.

  “Well, you do!—and Dont You Forget It!” Neil hurled at him.

  Carl closed his eyes, sipped the wineglass empty, refilled it “Their souls—our souls,” he sighed.

  Neil: “What are you babbling about?”

  Carl giggled. “You. Im babbling about you. And Souls!”

  “Besides,” Neil said absently as if to himself, “he wasnt even any good. He just wanted to lay there—naked!”

  “You told me he loved costumes,” said Carl in mock surprise. “And your guns, remember?—he loved those too. You mean, Neil, he just knocked you out—just like that—you werent even going through one of your fantasies?”

  “Naked!” said Neil contemptuously.

  Carl: “Why do you hate the body so much, Neil?”

  The phone rang.

  “Hello?” Neil answered. . . . Nothing.

  “Your new disciple?” Carl asked when Neil returned.

  “One day hell speak,” said Neil pensively.

  “Maybe theres lots and lots—and lots of em, Neil—all women!” He spat the last word at Neil. “Maybe theres a counter-conspiracy afoot! To drive you may-ad!”

  “Shut up, Carl,” Neil said.

  “You really are a Saint,” Carl said.

  “You may say it sarcastically—youre so drunk you dont even know what: youre saying. But I do bring people out”

  “Hes really right about that,” Carl says to me. “Have you taken him around yet?” he asks Neil. To me: “He will—if you stick around. (But dont, baby, dont!) Hell take you to the bars—hell dress you up—hell show you around. Hes already taken pictures of you! . . . And he’ll introduce you to the motorcycle leather-crowd—show you their ‘initiations.’ The first time I went, they tied one guy up to a post, took turns—. . . The blood was coming, but he was screaming for more!” And still addressing me, he went on: “And then one day, Neil will show you his collection in his studio in the basement” He shuddered. “Did you know, Neil, that once, when I told you there was a guy who hung out in Union Square in leather and you went and sat there three straight nights in a row waiting for him—did you know that I made it up, hoping one of the park regulars would pick you up and really—and seriously—beat the hell out of you?” He says that in a jocular tone, but his eyes are fixed on Neil with unequivocal hatred. “And later,” Carl sighs, “when I heard of someone new, I was waiting for him!”

  Neil laug
hs—but nervously. He comes in illogically, whether to change the subject or whether still obsessed by the kid who had clipped his guns: “Sometimes, you know, sometimes I can still get aroused by the—. . . naked . . . body.”

  Carl’s transformation has become complete: All the masculinity has been drained out of him as if by the liquor. His legs are curling one over the other. The once rigidly held shoulders have softened. The hand that had held the wineglass tightly, now balanced it delicately with two dainty fingers, the others sticking out gracefully curved. His look liddedly mellowed, and he began to thrust flirtatious glances in my direction. “Im Unhappy,” he drooled in wine-tones.

  “Strength!” Neil shouted, trying to square his shoulders. “Remember, Carl: Strength Is The Only Answer!”

  “Strength?” Carl asked dazedly. “You know—know wotlwan, Neil? Wanna know why Im Unhappy, baby?” he said to me. “Because Ive sunk too far into a world where sex aint even sex no more. . . . They talk about sex without love. What about sex with hatred? . . . Oh, it’s perfackly—perfuckly—per-fect-ly All Right—per-fect-ly—. . . Start again: It’s perfectly okay to be homosexual—. . . Oh, sure. But your world, Neil—your world! Whew!” He stopped; he stared very long at Neil. The drunk hatred melts into an abject smile. “Your world, Neil, where sex and love—. . . Well—love—. . . Forgot what I was gonna say,” he said. “Oh, yes—but you know why Im Unhappy?” he repeated. “Because—” he said, enunciating slowly, “because—I—wanna—wanna—lover. Yes! A Lover! And all this—this motorcycle drag—it doesnt mean shit to me. I’d wear a woman’s silk nightie if it got me a Lover,” he said.

  Neil winced at the blasphemy, as if Carl’s remarks had physically wounded him. “Be careful, Carl! Youre talking to Me!” he said.

  “I know. The Saint.” Carl went on: “Yes, I wanna Lover,” he said, downing another glass of wine. “If he wants me to be a woman, I’ll be the greatest lady since Du Barry. I’ll be all things to One man! . . . I—am—lonely.” He turned drooping eyes toward me and sighed lonesomely: “Will you join me in a toast?” He lifted the glass of wine; and holding it toward Neil, he said:

  “To Saint Neil—from one of his—most—de—de—. . . Devoted—. . . Converts!”

  The glass smashed on the floor.

  He was still passed out on the couch when I left.

  3

  When the inevitable happened (which had lurked in my mind, and which at the same time—I am now sure, looking back on it—I had thought to thwart through that very contact with Neil: although I was becoming aware of perhaps the most elaborate of seductions—or, rather, I would become aware of it in retrospect: a seduction, through ego and vanity, of the very soul), when that inevitable happened, it happened swiftly like this:

  I found Neil at home one late afternoon watching television: a western; the box set completely out of place in that bedroom suffused with the atmosphere of some dim past I could tell that watching that program was such a ritual with him that I sat alone in the other room. Through the door, I could see him. He was dressed in full cowboy costume, replete with holster, gun. . . . As the sharp bang-bang! of the television villain’s gun burst from the screen, Neil drew his own and made a motion of firing back.

  When the program was over, we sat in the bedroom (he pushed the television set out of sight), drinking tea. . . . The manikins stared menacingly. Today, one was a military policeman; the other, whose costume I couldn’t make out, was somberly dressed in black.

  “We have a fine relationship, dont we?” Neil said.

  The statement surprised me. The several times I had been with him since that afternoon with Carl—only briefly for lunch or dinner—I had felt an even greater tension and self-consciousness than before—especially since lately he had begun to talk to me in almost fatherly tones.

  “Except,” he went on, “that you hold back. Why? I know youre intrigued by Violence. I could sense your excitement when I presented you to the mirror. You saw yourself, Then, as you should be—as you would like to be!—as you could be! Out of my clothes, you know, youre very ordinary—like hundreds and hundreds of others. (Youre really not my cup of tea),” he added cuttingly. “But I can transform you—if you Let Yourself Go!” he exhorted me forcefully. “Let me!—and I’ll open the door—Wide!—for you. Youll exist in My Eyes! I’ll be a mirror! . . . Why should we fight our natures, which are meant to be violent?” he went on in the strangely gentle tones. “The past—with its grandeur, its nobility—yes, its purifying Violence—that was the time! It wasnt the ‘compassionate’ hypocrisy of our feeble day!” he sneered. He rose to add a thicker belt to the dummy in black. (Almost every inch of the dummies is covered, except for the faces.)

  He goes on, now speaking about the weak and the strong, how the former are to be used by the latter, extolling violence, drawing pictures of what his world would be like. “Power,” he was saying. “Contempt!” he shouted. “Contempt for the weakness of compassion,” he derides. . . .

  Tense, cold in the warm afternoon, I found myself—although I didnt realize it until he said what he did next—automatically twisting the ring on my finger.

  “Who gave you that ring?” he asked abruptly.

  I hesitated to answer. Finally I said: “My father—a long time ago.” Even to mention my father—to recall the memories of that ring—in the presence of this man suddenly seemed blasphemous.

  Neil made a face of supreme disgust, and I felt anger mushrooming inside of me. “Things like that—which people cling to as memories,” he said, “it’s those things that keep men from realizing their True Nature. My movement will be an upheaval: Nothing is sacred, except Violence and Power. Sentimentality—false memories of tenderness—. . . Fathers, mothers!” he said contemptuously. “That ring you wear as a symbol of—whatever!” he spat.

  My anger became hatred for him.

  And did he sense this? And had he been counting on this? I didnt have time to consider that, because the scenes that follow will come suddenly like a movie in fast motion.

  Suddenly Neil is crouching before me where I am sitting on the bed. He is sliding a pair of thick-soled, high-length studded boots onto my feet. I stare motionless at him as he winds a thick belt about my waist (I remember that other man in San Francisco: “You will eventually . . . if not with me, with some one else.”) This time, sensing my immediate mood—the mood he has cunningly put me into and will use—he will not even take the time to “dress me up” completely.

  Swiftly he has flung himself on the floor, his head rubbing over the surface of the boots—the tongue licking them. He rolls on his back. His face looks up pleadingly at me.

  Automatically responding (the anger, the hatred like a live gnawing thing inside me)—feeling myself suddenly exploding with that all-enveloping hatred for him (has he counted on this? does he always?) and also for what I know I will do at last (senses magnetized on pinpoint), and, too, feeling a tidal-sweeping excitement at the reflections from the mirror which he has carefully moved before the bed so that it records from various angles the multiplied adoration of his face (an adoration augmented shrewdly by the remembered hint, the challenge, of its possible withdrawal: “Out of my costumes you’re very ordinary . . .”)—his eyes as if about to burst into flame, his tongue like an animal desperate to escape its bondage—I stand over him as he reaches up grasping, urgently opening the fly of my pants.

  “Please—. . . On me—. . . Please do it!” he pleaded.

  And as the meaning of the tea looms in my mind, I realize suddenly what he wants me to do. But I cant execute the humiliation he now craves. He rushed into the bathroom, turned the water faucets on fullblast “Do it,” he pleads. . . .

  The sound of the water, splashing. . . .

  The scene reels in all the incomprehensible, impossible images that follow.

  A gurgling in his throat—and he rises on his knees, face pressed against the wide belt, which he unbuckled urgently with his teeth. Like a dog retrieving a stick and br
inging it back to its master, with his teeth clutching the buckle, he slid the belt out of the pants straps—and he crouched on all fours brandishing the belt before me, dangling it from his mouth extended beggingly toward me. “Use it, use it!” he insisted.

  Something inside me had been set aflame, a fire impossible to quench until it has consumed all that it can burn: something aflame with the anger he had counted on. I acted inevitably and as he had wanted all along: I pulled on the belt, which he clung to with his teeth, so that, released, it snapped in a lashing sound against his cheek, leaving its burning imprint. . . . He knelt there, eyes closed, expectantly. . . .

  I dropped the belt, which fell coiled beside him, the gleaming studs like staring blind eyes on the floor. . . . He gnaws ravenously on the straps inside the tops of the boots, falls back in one swift movement lying again on the floor as he reaches for my legs with his hands, looping his fingers into the inside straps, bringing one studded boot pushed into his groin. He makes a sound of excruciating pain. Even then, his hands will not release my foot, crushing it into his groin with more pressure. “Harder!” he begs. “Please! Do It Harder!!!”

  Rocked by currents inside me which sealed off this experience from anything that had ever happened previously to me—aware all the time that it was / who was being seduced by him—seduced into violence: that using the sensed narcissism in me—and purposely germinating that hatred toward him—he had played with all my hungry needs (magnified by the hint of the withdrawing of attention), had twisted them in order to use them for his purposes, by unfettering the submerged cravings, carried to that inevitable extreme—and disassociating myself from all feelings of pity and compassion, to which—despite the compulsive determination to stamp out all innocence within me and thereby to meet the world in its own savage terms; to leave behind that lulling, esoteric, life-shuttering childhood, that once-cherished place by the window—to which, despite all those things, I had, I know, still clung: to compassion, to pity—and knowing only that this was the moment when I could crush symbolically (as in a dream once in which I had stamped out all the hatred in the world) whatever of innocence still remained in me (crush that and something else—something else surely lurking—but what?—what!!)—that at this moment I could prove irrevocably to the hatefully initiating world that I could join its rot, its cruelty—I saw my foot rise over him, then grind violently down as if of its own kinetic volition into that now pleading, most vulnerable part of that man’s body. . . .