City of Night

by John Rechy

  He let out a howl.

  A dreadful sound hurled inhumanly like a bolt out of his throat—a plunging bolt which buried itself instantly within my mind. His face turned to one side as if he would bite the floor in pain. Tears came from his eyes in a sudden deluge which joined the perspiration and turned his face into a gleaming mask of pain. And he sobbed:

  “Why . . . hurt? . . . Why . . . do you. . .? I. . . did. . . for you—. . . did everything! . . . Wanted—. . . want—. . . Why?. . . hurt. . . why?. . . Wanted lo—. . .” Clenched teeth choked the word he had been about to utter.

  The scene exploded in my mind. I was seized by the greatest revulsion of my whole life—a roiling, then a quick flooding invading my whole being like electricity; a maelstrom of revulsion—for myself, for him, loathing for him, for what he wanted done—loathing for what I was doing.

  And hearing the racked baleful sobs which continue (“Why . . . hurt? . . .” And again the unfinished word: “Wanted—want lo—. . .”)—seeing that writhing pitiful body, the boot pinioning him to the floor (like a worm! like a helpless worm! like a helpless worm tortured by children!)—seeing that face gleaming with tears and sweat—and feeling, myself, as if the world will now burst in a bright crashing light which will consume us both in judgment—I bent down over him, extending my hand to him—my foot removed from his scorched groin: extending my hand to him, to help him up—to help him!—as if he were the whole howling painracked ugly crushed mutilated, sad sad crying world, and I could now, at last, in that moment, by merely extending my hand to him in pity, help him—and It. Compassion flooded me as turbulently as, only seconds before, the seducing savagery had rocked me to my violated soul.,

  And as the man sobbing on the floor in the disheveled wet costume saw my hand extended to him in pity, the howling stopped instantly as if a switch had been turned off within him, and his look changed to one of ferocious anger.

  And he shouted fiercely:

  “No, no! Youre not supposed to care!”

  4

  “I knew youd come back,” he said victoriously.

  I had walked out on him that day, and I had stayed away for several days.

  “I understand,” he said. “In the first stages it can be difficult—for some. And those are the ones that turn out to be the best. This time you can use this whip.” He brandished a coiled leather snake. “And if youre ready, I’ll show you my ‘studio’ in the basement.”

  He had misunderstood my purpose in coming back—which was to show him (and to show myself?) that he could never seduce me in that way again. I knew it irrevocably when I saw a black costume lying across the leather-spread bed. He was bent over it folding it to replace it in the closet.

  It was the costume, complete with swastika, of a storm trooper.

  “Were you wearing that?” I asked him.

  “Yes,” he answered proudly. “I wear it only on Special occasions.” But a note of nervousness entered his voice as he said: “Today I went to an Execution.”

  I blinked incredulously.

  “Yes,” he repeated with bravado—but he appears even more nervous now. “You heard right: An Execution! If you had been here, you could have witnessed it. My cat—remember the furry one?—he was becoming too weak—constantly simpering, whining. I hate weakness. I despise it. I loathe it. . . So I executed him.”

  “You put on that Nazi costume and you—?” I started.

  “Yes! And I Exterminated him—as all weakness must be Exterminated!. . . I put that cat out of his absurd sniveling misery!” He went on deliberately: “I put him in a bag. I drowned him in the bathtub!” As soon as hes verbalized what hes done, he appears visibly shaken, as if an emotional rubberband had been stretched to the point of snapping.

  I felt violently sick. . . . The black uniform now being hung adoringly in the closet. . . the flushed face. . . the pitiful lumpy body covered with the absurd clothes. . . the terrifying words. . . . The dummies gazing blankly. . . .

  Noticing that I was staring at him with undisguised contempt; surprised to see it so coldly aimed at him; realizing all at once that he had misinterpreted my returning here—and looking tense as if my look of disgust had thrown him unexpectedly off-balance—he blurted:

  “There is no excuse for weakness! . . . Once you allow yourself to be touched by it, youre lost! . . . And you may think—like that insidious Carl!—that it’s weakness to do—to do the things I do. But remember the importance of Seduction! The Leader of every cause has to set an example, whatever form that takes! He has to show The Way!”

  I want to tell him what I see so clearly. I want to say: “Youve rationalized your masochism—masking your own very real weakness.” But I merely stare at the posed obdurate face, chin thrust out like the caricature of a repugnant dictator—but a very uncertain dictator somehow.

  “You killed that cat,” I said finally—still not really believing it; rather, not wanting to.

  He sighed wearily. The enormity of what hes done seems slowly to be dawning on him. But he fights back, shaking his head: “Once you let weakness touch you—. . .” he starts; and his whole body begins to tremble instantly, as if his jangled nerves were out of control, rebelling against him. He shook his head as if he were very, very, very tired.

  And then he erupted:

  “I’ll give you an example of what weakness can do!” he shouts as if to blot out his own guilty thoughts. “The Example! My own father!. . . He was weak!. . . But my—. . . mother!” He flung the word out with infinite revulsion. “—that—woman!—that loathsome despicable woman with her hatred of the body—. . . I couldnt go barefoot! I even had to take a bath in the dark! . . . That woman!—she knew. She was strong—and she used that strength, and she used my father’s weakness—” He twisted his hands as if wringing out a piece of cloth. “—and she twisted and drained and twisted. And then he—my father—that weak man—would take it out on me—hit me’ He flayed himself with the thick belt he had removed from the dark pants. “But I showed him / was a Man! I wouldnt run away from him! . . . And he hit me and hit me and hit me with his belt—until Fd pass out.” Whack!—again the belt against his thigh. He didn’t flinch.

  “And then I wouldnt even faint any more,” he said. “I’d just—. . . let him. . . . And yet,” he whispered as if in a trance, “and yet—do you know?—that weak, dreadful man—my father—he—. . . He wore boots! Boots!—a symbol of the strength he’d given away so easily, without a fight! That pitiful man—dominated by my mother—had the guts to wear Boots! . . . And then I found the Answer—Strength! . . . And when I found that out, I—. . . You want to know what my first gesture of—of Freedom!—from him and that woman—was?” He threw back his head and roared with pained laughter. He continued as if hypnotized by the remembrance of that ugly past: “I had gone to the movies—secretly because I wasnt even allowed to do that! It was a period picture. . . . And the hero—a strong, handsome, masculine man (everything my father wasnt!)—he was wearing Boots too. But on him they were Right: No woman would have dominated him! . . . I sat through that movie several times especially for a scene in which that magnificent man was sitting in bed, putting on his Boots! He looped his fingers about the inside straps—and he slipped the boots on! I held my breath. . . . That night, when my father was asleep, I went into his bedroom. I stood looking at him: Even asleep he looked weak and dominated. . . . And staring at my—. . . father!—asleep—I hated him more than ever. I found his boots under the bed. I took them to my room. I got my mother’s scissors. And I snipped the straps off the insides of his boots!”

  He formed two fingers into a V and closed them with finality.

  He looked worn out The studded costume he wore seemed like a ponderous burden on him. His face dropped toward his hands. Dispassionately, lifelessly, he echoed: “I snipped those straps from the insides of his boots. I cut them off, I stamped on them, I spit on them, I—I—. . .” And then he shouted:

  “I pissed on them!”

 
; His voice quavered, broke, halted. He turned his face away from me. His shoulders trembled as if in a sudden cold wind.

  “So you see: power and strength—” he began weakly without finishing.

  I sat next to him, where he had sunk onto the bed.

  But is there anything you can say now to Neil?

  It’s too late. It’s too late.

  Through the open door of the bathroom I see a water-soaked bag on the floor.

  CITY OF NIGHT

  CHICAGO!

  (San Francisco . . . the fog . . . the mourning wind . . . the discovered violence, hatred. . . . I fled California. San Francisco, which had lured me spuriously with its promise of renewed life, had withdraw that promise.)

  Now it will be Chicago—that savage city like a black fortress erected against the blue of the sky, the blue of the lake.

  And what have I come here to search for?

  Something not yet clearly defined which has to do with the antithesis of Neil’s world.

  And I’ll search again through the labyrinthine world I had found on Times Square, in downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, Market Street . . .

  I stayed in an apartment house on Dearborn next to the YMCA. . . . And nearby was the beach. And nearby is the hustling park.

  On the beach (which is not so much a beach as a loop of sanded concrete along the lake—to get to which you walk through a subway tunnel—lights slanted on one side of the wall flashing like interrogation lights in your eyes—and you emerge, somehow guiltily, and see, through cracks in the cement, weeds and patches of grass struggling to emerge for one last breath of the expiring-summer air), I will meet a series of new faces which will be added to the hundreds that have already paraded through my life.

  Near-autumn afternoons spent there waiting to be picked up. (Behind me, the outline of the wealthy Gold Coast? luxurious apartments glistening goldenly in the sun—resembling, for all their plush elegance, clean hospital wards: rows of giant apartment buildings like monsters ready to march snobbishly into the lake, their backs haughtily to the rest of the city as they huddle—healthy and muscular but still somehow afraid—close to each other as if for protection.)

  Sometimes, at night, I’ll return there. Ghostly waves will seek out life, dashing against the shore (while teenagers swim bravely in the cold water, men fish, couples make love, tramps sleep along the expanse of cement ground). . . . And I wandered along the beach, idly, until someone spoke to me.

  But, mostly—at night in that city—I will search the park between Dearborn and Clark: Chicago’s Pershing Square, without the almost-healthy indolence of Los Angeles.

  This park where in the afternoons the city’s old and young vagrants serve their novitiate before the derelict jungles of the city. . . . They gather drearily here in bunches, frantic in the awareness that soon the weather will turn cold.

  I watch and listen and join in.

  A couple—“just in from L.A.”—drink wine to celebrate “two years on the wagon.” They offered me a drink from the bottle, and I celebrated with them. Behind us, a lame squirrel looked on quizzically, hobbled among the pigeons on the grass. A shabby, fat middle-aged woman said to her crony: “What good is A Beautiful Body?—it aint got me nothin,” as she shifted the hills of her spent flesh. A tramp tells me: “You don gotta worry, boy—youre still Young, still got good hustlin in you—it’s when you get my age—. . .” I stop listening, concentrate on a romance sprouting in tatters nearby. (An old man has called to an old woman: “Hey, hon, cummon over—I got somethin forya.” She is sitting with him now, as he produces a bottle of cheap wine—and they invade Heaven together, momentarily before the harsh hangover. . . .) As I move away, one harpy in an overcoat grits her teeth and says to no one: “Moody woulda killed him if he’dda kep screwing with me—I mean to tell you, he woulduv.” A youngman lies on a bench, asleep, the sun directly in his eyes.

  Vagrants bunched like birds over a worm: young vagrants playing “rummy”—which means dice or poker. Their eyes trained to remain on the dice while still watching out for the cops. Trying to defeat Time. . . . As the dice tumble to the walk, a woman, huddled over in a wined-up terror, whines from the wasteland of her memories: “My daddee was—. . . My daddee was—. . .” Seeing me stare at her, she sighs: “You believe me, dont you?” I nod yes.

  I begin to feel a hint of what, in expiation, I must find in this city.

  Through the night-sheltered park (as, in the breezy night, shadows grapple with each other on the gray walks), a queen completely painted like a woman, wearing a woman’s blouse and slacks, parades languidly but still unsurely—past the park-socialist shouting feverishly: “Jesus Christ—not Karl Marx—was the first socialist!”—and the tourist bus, full of middle-aged middle-classed ladies, roars away from the blasphemy as wellfed faces look back through the windows at the park in horrified Disbelief.

  Hunting eyes outline the ledges of the park. Malehustlers assume that necessary tough veneer of hoods. After two in the morning, cars still go around the block to choose a paid partner from the stagline.

  New in town (and in the waning summerdays, other faces have become familiar and stridently desperate), I splashed on the scene, going from morning to morning—in and out of the different cars that stopped after circling the block. . . . In and out of the different bars (Tommy’s where the bartender will pimp for you after hes made it with you; The Cavern, into a pit of malebodies crushed dancing). . . . Back and forth on the streets (Dearborn, Rush)—back to the park, the beach. . . .

  And these are some of the faces with which I’ll try to blot out the guilt-ridden memory of Neil:

  The pale face of a youngman who hands me a written note that says: “I’ll pay you $10.” I turn to answer him. He shakes his head, indicating hes a deafmute. . . . And about 20 minutes later Im back in the park again. . . . The bony face of the man driving a car around the block, stopping before me. Wordlessly I get in. Wordlessly we make it. . . . The face of the man who took me to his house in Evanston (and it was here that I had stopped on my way to New York, here that I had felt the restless compulsive anarchy those afternoons walking by the lake with my friend, now gone), and afterwards I explored that lake by the University: The waves thrust themselves against the darkened beach. Pinpoints of cigarette lights reveal the standing forms. I make it there. . . . The face with swallowing eyes of the man who follows me out of the Cavern. “You dont have to do anything—just stand,” he says. . . .

  The faces of two youngmen I think at first are also hustling the park. One is a dancer. I score from both, separately, and the dancer gives me several telephone numbers. But I dont call them: The city—its streets, park, beach—invites me luringly. . . . The face of an oldish man in sandals—and he warns me against clipping him: “Thats so cheap!—so I must ask you: Please—dont—clip—me!”., .

  The perspiring face of the man who takes me to an Italian fair, where we’re surrounded by dark faces. And he mops his brow and says: “Well, it’s all right to read about teeming humanity—but to be surrounded by it!”—as he pushes his way anxiously out of the fair. . . .

  The calculating face of the man I think I’ll score from easily; who says: “Youre asking too much. I always smile at you guys, when youre new in town and it’s still summer. I just wait for winter—then I can get anyone for hardly anything! . . .”

  And the sad face of the score who thanks me afterwards and sighs: “I guess I’ll never see you again. The nice ones just disappear—so quickly. It’s the mean ones (oh. I get so mad!) that keep coming back like we owe them a living!”

  The faces drinking beer at the place of a queen whos picked me up—faces there of three youngmen picked up by the queen’s roommate. And released by the beer, the scene turns into a melée of bodies. . . .

  And the others not now remembered.

  And that search to find some immediate redemptive something to expunge what was discovered in San Francisco took me to the mangled sights of Chicago’s hobo jungles.


  Madison Street.

  The enormous Kemper Insurance Building—a huge gray ugly building a block square along the river. Looming darkly. More than 40 stories high. A great bulwark, a fortress. A large square area windowless—Blind. Almost symbolically it turns its back arrogantly to the west side of Madison.

  Cross the bridge.

  And West Madison stretches in shabby tatters for blocks of leprous buildings. Networks of fire escapes cling to the crumbling walls like tenacious steel spiderwebs. Intertwined among the transient hotels and the harsh yellow-lighted bars are the missions. Each presents its scrubbed face to the stained desperate faces of the doomed tramps, waiting for the sermon and whatever else theyll get.

  I pursued those streets as if hunting ghosts.

  In one mission, a deacon-type athletic man, radiating health, shouts: “I got a friend in Jesus!”—while an old tramp, doubled over in a wrecked heap, experiences a religious (drunken-hungry) fit, howling: “Lord, Lord, Lord!”

  Men outside pace the fetid street funereally, sleep under parked cars, trucks. I see a man roll onto the street, groaning, while the parade of wined-up zombies passes, ignoring him. Others stand like displaced sentinels; dismal mask-faces hanging lifeless outside of doorways.