Numbers

by John Rechy

  The gray greenness is like mist.

  Another pocket of sun. The sudden pouncing warmth is a relief on Johnny’s flesh.

  Another man, young, dark, and wearing tan trunks, is also pretending to sunbathe here. Johnny notices immediately—always weighing possible competition—that the dark youngman is very handsome. Johnny suspects he’s looking for a mutually interested partner. So Johnny doesn’t even invite: never until someone expresses clear, unequivocal desire on his one-way terms.

  As Johnny moves through the green dusk along a gradually descending path which appears to lead to a kind of grotto formed by overhanging branches, the dark youngman in tan trunks gets up. Johnny notices an older man looking at them from a higher level of the path. Johnny has seen four people here so far, and there were six cars parked. Others are still about, unseen.

  Indeed, there could be many more and you wouldn’t necessarily encounter them all, because this area extends inward off the road for a depth of perhaps a short block—then cascades down a hill. Looping erratically, the paths, made by feet that have walked them over and over—the dirt a grainy dust—might equal, unwound, several blocks, though the area itself is not nearly that wide.

  Johnny feels as if he’s walking—awake—through a dream.

  The curving path he’s on leads to the “grotto” created on the side of an incline by entwined twigs, vines, branches of trees, all dried and ashen on the underside from lack of exposure to the sun. There are “entrances” from two sides—like tunnels formed by overlapping branches.

  Johnny spots the dark head of the youngman moving along this same path. Turning to the other side, which ascends to another grading, Johnny sees the blond youngman in the bikini (snapped on now) leaning with one hand on a tree, looking down at Johnny. The dark youngman, as if aware that the blond one may be preparing to advance toward Johnny, quickens his pace toward the enclosed section, into which Johnny has moved slightly back into the hollow. Waiting.

  An opening of branches before the grottolike hollow reveals the awesome spectacle of the rest of the park as it yawns in lazy sunny stretches for miles.

  Two other men are moving along the upper paths. Again the slow soundless movements of a dream; again the pervasive mood of silent trance where sexhunters gather for a specific purpose. Perhaps this gray mood is the opposite of that of gay bars, where laughter soars toward euphoria; or perhaps it’s a further manifestation of it, just one degree higher: from laughter to euphoria to a hypnotized daze.

  Johnny wonders which of the two youngmen would be more of a conquest. Both are goodlooking—the blond one very slim and boyishly flat; the dark one more masculine, his body solid. And then this shattering thought occurs: What if they’re cruising each other—and not me! But no: The indications otherwise have been too clear.

  Whoever gets to me first, Johnny decides.

  But this happens—which causes Johnny Rio to turn in near desperation to the dark one:

  The blond youngman, who is moving along the path, has fixed his cock so that its head protrudes over the bikini, and he’s stroking it. Fiercely, Johnny turns away, resenting him deeply—hating him for apparently thinking that gesture would attract him. Frantically he faces the dark one, who, finally encouraged, moves swiftly into the grotto, touches Johnny between the legs—ignoring the blond youngman approaching. Johnny leans against the shell formed by the intertwined branches and vines.

  The blond youngman moves swiftly to the entrance of the enclosure, to see better. This would excite Johnny if it weren’t for that earlier gesture. Instead, he’s apprehensive; but he doesn’t move away because he’s longing again for that sexual contact the dark youngman is preparing to make. He’s unbuttoned Johnny’s pants, which, being loose, slide down. Already shirtless, Johnny Rio is almost completely naked.

  Leaning over, but sideways, the dark youngman is blowing Johnny—awkwardly in that position, his teeth chafing Johnny’s prick. Johnny places his hand on the other’s head, shifting it to the front. Squatting, holding Johnny’s thighs, the dark youngman sucks him easily now.

  The first one today! Johnny thinks. I’m alive!

  But his sense of fulfillment is rendered imperfect by the fact that the blond youngman in the bikini has entered the grotto.

  If he tries to rub against me or acts like he thinks I’ll touch him, I’ll bust him in his motherfucking face! Johnny decides, fists clenching.

  Instead, the blond youngman reaches out—tentatively—to touch Johnny’s chest, lightly. His fingers brush lower, to the edge of his pubic hair, brush his balls, touching Johnny’s cock, holding it while the other sucks it.

  Then the blond head bends toward Johnny—and Johnny, thinking the youngman wants to kiss him on the lips, draws back quickly, a knife of fear wrenched into him. But he’s wrong again. What the blond youngman wants to do is this—and Johnny lets him: At the same time that he continues the light movements with the fingers of one hand and holds Johnny’s prick with the other for the dark youngman to suck, he laps at Johnny’s nipples with his tongue.

  His attention drawn by a noise, Johnny turns and sees that the man who stood by the tree near the blond one earlier is surreptitiously nearing them. Afraid his discovered presence will stop what he obviously wants to watch, the man retreats for now.

  After long moments during which he felt that, for whatever strange reason (perhaps the whirling thoughts), he wouldn’t be able to make it—Johnny knows he’ll come. His body stiffens. Alerted, the dark youngman plunges more rapidly with his mouth; the blond one cups Johnny’s balls in his hand, his tongue flits in moist circles about his nipples.

  In one sudden, jetting thrust, Johnny comes.

  Immediately, he breaks away.

  The two youngmen in trunks now turn to each other.

  Having taken a wrong path, moving deeper into the area, Johnny feels an instant of panic—a panic, illogical, of being lost in the park, of remaining here forever . . . wandering. The feeling is quickly assuaged, and forgotten, when, taking another turn, he sees the striped towel where the blond youngman had lain.

  As Johnny walks toward his car (at least eight more cars are in the cleared area now), another car—a long, shiny-new, brilliantly red convertible driving up—stops abruptly at the side of the road.

  Johnny waits to see if the driver will get out.

  But the man in the red convertible merely stares at him through dark, dark sunglasses.

  Johnny drives all the way up the road. A long distance. This time he keeps going beyond where there are fewer cars and men—drives up until the road splits, and then he continues to the left. A sign nearby informs him the park closes at sundown.

  Hands clinging to the steering wheel, he swerves to avoid running over a squirrel squashed on the road—a pulp of blood and fur. Cringing, Johnny’s whole body responds in terror to the horrible spectacle. To draw his thoughts away from it, he raises the volume of the radio: Bob Dylan is singing in shanty defiance about the inevitable stoning the heart takes.

  Discovering that this road leads back to the Observatory (the split in the road is the boundary of the sexhunt, then), Johnny drives there again, parks to get a drink of water at the fountain. Again, he goes to the restroom.

  Predictably, he stands before the Mirror. He looks beautifull—as if the sex experiences are actually feeding him. He glows.

  Suddenly he remembers the time, years ago, when he saw a vision of . . . corruption: that distorted face leering at him in the mirror—the face that sent him away . . . for three years.

  Desire screaming, Johnny returns along the same road.

  He drives past the hill before which he noticed several cars earlier (The Summit.)

  Past the sandy dunes. (The Outpost.)

  (His mind is giving names to the sexhunt sections of the park.)

  An area he hadn’t observed earlier: a flat spreading of scrubby land before which several unoccupied cars are parked. A crumbling iron tower, and, beyond, a veritable forest of tree
s. (He names it that: the Forest.) Across the road, an islet of sand, two more cars parked—each occupied by one man.

  I’ll explore that area later! Johnny thinks, anxious to reach what his mind has just named the Arena—within which is the Grotto, where the two youngmen came on with him earlier.

  But when he gets there, there are no parked cars. The hunt has shifted to another area—perhaps the one he just passed. Yet he knows instinctively that one parked car will alert others; and his own goodlooking, slick car, with just the right degree of vulgarity—and its Texas license plates—will be an easily recognized signal of his presence.

  And a car has already parked behind his.

  Johnny walks into the Arena. It’s even duskier now. He leans against a tree. Waits.

  The eerie crunch of footsteps. The man who just drove up. A big, burly, goodlooking man, he might be a vice cop. Johnny will cool it. Instead of going to the Grotto, he explores another path down a slope. Unexpectedly, there’s an opening into what appears to be a larger bower, large enough for several men—formed by arched branches, almost as if it had been carved. Johnny stands before it. The burly man is about ten feet up the path.

  A few seconds later the man walks down. Johnny moves noncommittally aside. The man enters what Johnny will know as the Cave. Johnny can see the lower part of the man’s body squatting on his haunches.

  Johnny moves into the Cave.

  Like the Grotto’s, the Cave’s wall, which forms the shell is dried twigs and vines, twisted. A thick low-hanging branch sags like a wounded arm. A darker grayness here.

  The burly man makes an unequivocal motion with his tongue. Johnny stretches his lithe body, runs his hand down his own bare chest.

  “God, you’ve got a beautiful body!” The man shatters the silence shockingly.

  “What?” Johnny asks. He heard, but he wants to hear it again.

  “Your body—it’s beautiful!” the burly man repeats; and getting up, he touches Johnny’s tanned body.

  Bending over as he begins to unbutton Johnny’s pants, he licks around Johnny’s shoulders, his arms, chest, stomach—down, avoiding his prick for now, licking about his upper thighs, even his knees, now his balls. And now he sucks Johnny’s cock, which is stiff and very hard.

  One more! Johnny’s mind says automatically.

  He comes again, this time without difficulty.

  “That was great, kid!” the burly man says enthusiastically. The sound of his voice—of any voice—in that near soundless duskiness comes again as a shock. “I could suck your dick all day!”

  Johnny Rio smiles, dazzling the man further.

  “You’re a greatlooking kid,” the man goes on, following Johnny out of the Cave. “You even smell sweet—taste sweet! I’d sure like to see you again—maybe take you to dinner. How about getting together tonight?”

  With a shade of sadness—knowing that much has changed irrevocably from the days with Tom—Johnny says, “Oh, sure, man, I’ll see you—around—some time; you know, like if we run into each other.”

  The man understands this means no. “So long, kid,” he says, and adds: “And thanks a lot, hear?”

  “Yeah, sure,” says Johnny; he waits at the cleared portion of this area, letting the burly man go ahead—waits there until he hears him drive away.

  Johnny is deliberating whether to hang around longer. He’s come twice. But he’s not sure he wants to leave yet. He walks out of the Arena toward where his car is parked.

  The drivers of two cars passing on opposite lanes turn to stare at him. They’ll come back, Johnny knows.

  Suddenly he notices the long, shiny-red convertible he saw earlier. It’s parked once again across the road, several feet away. The man in it turns toward Johnny. Johnny can almost feel the black sunglassed stare. That’s all he’s really been able to notice about the man at this distance.

  Johnny waits by the road, again expecting that the man will get out, come to him. But he still doesn’t—remains there, staring darkly at him.

  Annoyed, Johnny drives down the road and out of the park.

  EIGHT

  JOHNNY RIO is wearing a faded-denim Western-style shirt unbuttoned all the way to his navel, sleeves rolled way up showing off his arms still pumped from exercising earlier, worn Levi’s slung low. He checks his watch carefully as he walks into the green twilight of the Arena the next day: 2:26 P.M.

  Back too—“sunbathing”—is the blond youngman in the snap bikini—one snap again unbuckled to create a pouch. This time, however, he’s wearing something more: Wellington boots—either because he thinks they make him look more desirable or because they protect his feet from stickers.

  Perhaps he’s on vacation, or else he’s one of the vast wave of the perennially, or semiperennially, idle of Los Angeles.

  “Hul-low!” The youngman’s greeting clearly indicates he’s still interested.

  Johnny merely mutters, “Hi”—although of course he’s glad the blond youngman desires him again. But Johnny doesn’t want to make it with him twice. He doesn’t know why. He just knows it’s so.

  Last night, after returning to the motel, bathing, eating, Johnny lay on a lounging chair for hours by the pool (lighted fluorescent blue) until the Cloud deepened into evening. A man, also sitting by the pool, kept inching his chair closer and closer and gobbling him up with his eyes—obviously trying to make him; he finally moved right next to him and told him how much he admired a well-made body. But although Johnny was, of course, pleased by the attention, his cravings seemed to be—. . . What? Suspended! Even earlier in the evening he hadn’t been tempted to go back to that movie theater, telling himself that scene is too unpredictable. To Main Street? Yes: a part of his life, always. But he didn’t go there—and he cooled the man cruising him by the pool—all because: It’s as if Griffith Park has become the arena of some unnamed game, with rules not yet clearly defined.

  Now as a scared child (and he was a very scared kid though he put up a tough front), Johnny would often go to bed saying a rosary (secretly, embarrassed that anyone should know) in order to drive away the unfocused black fears. Sometimes he wouldn’t even actually pray the rosary, he’d just count the beads over and over until he fell asleep.

  In bed last night he remembered those childnights because once again he went to sleep counting—but, now, it went like this:

  Three people came on with me in the park this afternoon, though, sure, it’s the same number as on the first night in that movie theater, but in much less time, don’t forget, so that makes seven since Saturday night, and it could’ve been eight if it hadn’t been for that shitass car in Lafayette Park last night.

  Seven?

  Or six?

  He counted: the thin youngman in the balcony, one; the guy in the men’s room, two; the weird fucker in MacArthur Park, three; the two in trunks this afternoon, four and five; the man who licked me all over, six. Six. I must’ve forgotten one; I’m sure it’s seven. Let’s see: one, two, three, four, five, six, and—. . . Just six. No, seven! Yeah!—I forgot the man in the movies!—the first one who sat next to me. He didn’t really suck me, just tried to through my pants—but he did grope me earlier and took out my cock. I forgot to count him.

  “Count”?

  The word, looming large in his consciousness, startled Johnny. Oh, it’s not that I’m “counting” for chrissakes; it’s just that soon I’ll have enough (“have”?) and then I can stay away from the parks and everything (“enough”?). It’s not that I’m counting!

  A vague game, emerging, vaguely.

  Just in case the blond youngman is still tempted to follow him, despite Johnny’s curt dismissal, Johnny heads for the Grotto but turns in another direction at a split in this path, where it curls around trees (providing many secluded areas along the way), winding like a labyrinth.

  The Labyrinth leads to an elevation abruptly sheer on one side like a cliff—high enough above the road to be invisible to passing cars. The elevation affords a long-range view o
f the Labyrinth and part of the clearing near the entrance to the Arena.

  Johnny stands on the Cliff, waiting with cocky assurance for one of the several men he encountered along the way to approach him. He’s begun to notice that although, of course, there are all types of men here, the park seems predominantly to attract the goodlooking and vigorous, the young and desirable.

  Floating toward him like sailboats along the gray-green sea are three men—an adverse situation if each merely tries to outlast the other—the stalemate eating severely into his time. Though he certainly doesn’t mind more than one person coming on with him at once—and others watching—several, gathering before any sex overture has been made, can thwart the whole scene.

  Almost equally spaced out, the three form a triangle: a small, mousy man who immediately turns Johnny off; and the other two—young—one wearing a suit, the other Bermuda shorts. At another time—hustling—Johnny would have probably encouraged the small mousy man—spotting him as an easy mark. Now he wants to dissuade him and then decide between the other two. Unfortunately, the little man is the most aggressive; he’s advancing more quickly.

  It’s 2:32.

  Exasperated, Johnny moves away from the Cliff, along the Labyrinth—deliberately taking the path farthest from the little man and almost exactly halfway between the other two so they’ll be encouraged to follow him. Along the way out of the Labyrinth, he encounters two other men cruising aimlessly (the mood of a trance, recurring . . .). Farther on, the blond youngman in the bikini and boots is posing while sitting on a low branch before an interested man. Approaching the Grotto, Johnny sees a man there rubbing his own cock. That doesn’t necessarily mean that he wants to have someone come on with him—as Johnny learned yesterday when the blond youngman made the gesture that turned him off so bad and then came on with him on his one-way terms; but Johnny darts swiftly away anyhow—to the entrance of the Cave.