Numbers

by John Rechy

  Driving down the road, he sees the man with the red X’s cruising by in his white convertible. As if hoping Johnny will have changed his mind, he pauses, looking back; but Johnny continues ahead. Johnny’s also seen others he’s made it with before—though some he’s not absolutely sure about: Did they actually come on with him, or did they just cruise him? . . .

  Again, he tries to remember all the numbers so far. Beginning again: Number one—the one in the movie balcony, the one I stood before, who—. . . Number two . . . number three . . . number four . . . number five . . . number six . . . number seven. . . . But now the numbers are hopelessly scattered. Remembering some he’d forgotten and sure he’s forgotten others he remembered in his original inventory of yesterday—and feeling almost unfaithful to be able to recall some so vividly while others fade away—he gives up.

  Breathing deeply of the rain-purified air, he’s struck powerfully by the beauty of the Park. And on his last day here it’s a dazzling spectrum of green shades.

  But the hunt goes on frantically. Cars jam the main sections. Seven cars parked near the small area of the Beehive. A dozen by the Arena—perhaps even more since they extend up the road toward the Forest, where there are at least as many more.

  And other cars plunge up and down the road like an army against an invisible enemy.

  Acutely aware of them at this moment, Johnny thinks: The season of sex and death is about to end.

  Death?

  Why did he think death?

  The superstitious part of him is chilled by that odd slip in his thoughts. He tries to find a “reason” for it. . . . The crushed bugs on the windshield, the birds smashed on the highway: the specter of death that marked his entrance to the city of lost angels. . . . And perhaps he meant another death, too—the death of that part of him that could have surrendered to anarchy after the spurious years’-long isolation of Laredo. Yes, certainly that death.

  Completely sure that nothing can thwart his victory over the Park, seductively beautiful as—almost perversely—it appears now (but only physically so), Johnny feels “outside” of it already. Or almost so: like one who has wakened from a trance but remains—momentarily—among those it still claims.

  And yet—. . .

  Yet he can’t help feeling it’s all going too easily—as if the Park is only waiting to spring its trap.

  Laughing, he catches himself before his imagination carries him too dangerously far.

  Fulfilling the ritual of the Park—a ritual which will soon end: He’s at the Observatory now. Looking into the Mirror.

  The face there is the one he wants to see.

  The leering one, and the sad one—they’re gone. Forever, Johnny assures himself.

  Even in the euphoric mood his image has put him in, anger swells when he sees the familiar red convertible parked obliquely parallel to his car outside the restroom. Because of the dark sunglasses the driver always wears, Johnny can never tell definitely whether he’s actually looking at him. It’s mostly a strong feeling that he is. He decides to ignore him. But as Johnny gets into his own car, he can’t keep from looking at the man; and he sees him much better this time than ever before:

  Deeply tanned, he’s slim—and well-dressed in the casual style of southern California—a blue sports jacket, a striped shirt unbuttoned at the collar. What makes his age difficult to determine is that his hair could as easily be white as very, very light blond; the wide sunglasses, concealing what is usually an age-revealing part of the face, augment the difficulty. He’s handsomer than Johnny thought.

  Oh, no!

  Suddenly, uncontrollably, Johnny remembered the car that intruded that night at Lafayette Park—its lights glaringly fixed on him. Could it be? Of course not! That other car was dark. But it could have been red, dark in the night. No—the other car was a hardtop. Was it? It could have been a convertible—with the top up! No!

  That’s really crazy, mano, Johnny tells himself, driving away quickly. Now that really is crazy—it would have to be a near-impossible coincidence. . . . Unless he followed me to the motel that night—out of Lafayette and then MacArthur, and then here! he persists. And it was a new car, the one that night; it gleamed like one even in the dark. . . . Oh, hell, mano, he chides himself. Get it out of your mind!

  And he almost does.

  Like this:

  Two to go.

  And the radio floods his senses as the Yardbirds wail a hopped-up dirge gone mad, lamenting the relentless continuation of all things.

  Despite the many cars parked there, Johnny decides to try the Arena. Although there are too many men here to divide into strict camps, he quickly notices that the floating attention is focused mainly on himself and a very muscular youngman (in Levi’s and formfitting T-shirt), who quickly establishes his desire for Johnny with an unambiguous look. Inviting him with a backward glance, Johnny moves into the Grotto, which has just been vacated by two youngmen evidently through.

  As if to show off his chest (Johnny’s, of course, being still bare), the muscular youngman removes his T-shirt as he approaches Johnny: a slight annoyance to Johnny: a hint they’re still competing. But that doesn’t mean he won’t come on with me one-way, he reminds himself from past experience.

  Hungry, others circle the two; but Johnny and the other together look so formidably “tough” (they’re trying hard enough to—flexing for each other) that others are kept from approaching them here—or were—because without their having noticed him a man has descended from the upper level of the broken path, and he’s offering to suck them both off.

  “Shag ass, man!” the muscular youngman tells him gruffly.

  Alone in the Grotto again, they face each other.

  Putting his hands on the loops of his own Levi’s, Johnny pushes them very low on his hips, almost half-way to the triangle of hair. The heavily muscled youngman does the same. Johnny rubs his own cock, hardening it—so does the other to his own. And now they’re playing a familiar game of follow-the-sexual-leader, determining who’ll be the one to break it. Soon both have their pricks out, stiff. But there is this difference: Whereas Johnny is looking away from the muscular youngman, the other is looking straight at him, which, however, makes this possible: Soon after the muscular youngman took Johnny’s erect cock in his hand, he put his own aroused prick under Johnny’s, Johnny’s cock now lying on his; and clasping both firmly with one hand, the muscular youngman is jerking them off simultaneously.

  For a few moments, Johnny doesn’t react (it happened so fast I was thrown off balance, man, he’d explain), and the other continues working both cocks—pressed tightly together—back and forth. Then Johnny withdraws from the compromising contact. Now the youngman bends down and sucks him and jerks himself at the same time. Obviously about to come, he stops pulling himself off, wanting Johnny to come first in his mouth. Johnny does, and the other releases himself too, into his own hand.

  As they leave the Grotto, the two actually smiled at each other. Almost shyly.

  Only one to go.

  To the Mirror again, to prepare for his triumph.

  Perhaps because his face is exulting in the imminent liberation, it seems to glow in its reflection. Victorious. Elated.

  Realizing he hasn’t yet eaten, Johnny left the Park; and he ate with much appetite, flirting outrageously with the same waitress of the previous afternoon. As he re-entered the Park, two girls, young and cute, gave him come-on smiles as they waited to cross the street; and Johnny dazzled them with his.

  Returning to the area of the hunt, he slows down at each familiar place: he’s searching for the person he’ll choose to be the last of the numbers, yes—but also he pauses along the road in a premature farewell to the Park.

  So much buried here. In this city. In this Park. To be left behind. Soon. No, never left behind entirely. Always with him in his mind: remembered. Along with: Tom and the crushed memories of an earlier time. And Tina and her sad child. And, strangely, Danny, too—and the desolate, wrecked, hau
nted, sad beach. And, yes, the youngman with the sailor cap. Of course. . . . And Guy. No: Guy’s voice. The moment of shared dark fears. . . . And all the numbers. . . . Unexpectedly, all his life—he knows it—they’ll enter his mind, singly or together, demanding not to be forgotten.

  Memories of that season of sex and death. A season almost over.

  In the afternoon light, the Park is even more radiant. The colors are so vibrant they seem to flee the shadows.

  In the Forest.

  One more and the game ends.

  Now.

  Leaving behind the many he’s discouraged, he’s drifted far into the trees, lured by the Park’s newly noticed beauty; and he moves along the elevated rim of a ravine, looking down at the intricate tangle of sandy outlines created by yesterday’s flow of rain.

  Someone is behind him—he can tell by the crunching twigs.

  Because he hasn’t seen anyone here he wanted to encourage, he turns prepared to reject him too. He starts. For a wild instant he thought it was the cocky curly-haired youngman who fled from him yesterday after the earlier day’s crushing interlude in the Nest.

  It isn’t him—but he resembles him a lot, mostly in the way the sandy unruly hair curls over his collar. A very goodlooking youngman wearing Levi’s and a shirt open to his navel—sleeves rolled very high—he must have come from deep within the Forest.

  Him, Johnny thinks immediately, choosing.

  He moves into a secluded cove of trees. He waits there. The other approaches.

  They smile at each other.

  Silence.

  “Hi.”

  “Hiyuh,” Johnny answers.

  They smile again.

  More silence.

  But they’ve moved closer to each other. And now, standing side by side leaning magnetically toward each other—as on that other afternoon Johnny and the curly-haired youngman with the sailor cap did—they let their knuckles touch. But this time Johnny doesn’t break the contact immediately. Instead, he allows it to continue as the youngman, turning slightly, touches Johnny’s chest with the fingers of his other hand. Lightly and tenderly.

  “You too!” the youngman whispers.

  And Johnny touches the other’s chest. Lightly too. And tenderly.

  Now Johnny would say that the reason he did so is that there was an imploring note in this youngman’s voice—a need implied—similar to that he heard, and rejected so harshly, in the voice of the curly-haired youngman. Perhaps. Also, perhaps Johnny sensed this youngman needed the barest token of reciprocation before he could proceed on Johnny’s terms. And perhaps, too, remembering the look of hideous rejection on the face of the cocky curly-haired youngman, and his own subsequent deep remorse, Johnny wanted to prevent a recurrence. And—maybe—this way, he wanted to stamp the last number, 30, indelibly in his mind.

  Whatever the true reason, Johnny Rio does reach out to touch the other’s chest, letting his hand slide down the smooth flesh on which tiny hairs shine gold; allowing the movement to continue to just below the other’s navel, which is where the other stopped too on Johnny’s body. And then Johnny withdraws his own hand.

  The youngman leans slowly toward him, unequivocally to kiss him on the lips.

  Johnny doesn’t move—until the crucial moment when their mouths would have touched, then he turned his head away quickly, and the other kissed him on the neck.

  And from his neck, the youngman’s mouth moves down gently, kissing Johnny’s stomach softly, tongue brushing the edge of his pubic hairs: as if, indeed, he required that bare token of reciprocation to goad him. Having lowered his own and Johnny’s pants, he runs his hands caressingly down Johnny’s slim hips.

  Johnny was hard long before the other’s lips enclosed his cock. And he came that way. But he remained standing there until the other, head leaning on Johnny’s bare chest, came into his own hand. Very slowly, Johnny eased his body away.

  Thirty.

  The game is over. Johnny won.

  He drives out of the Park and he doesn’t look back.

  FOURTEEN

  “I’M SO GLAD you camel I wasn’t sure you’d remember my invitation—we were all a bit high that night,” said Paul Blake, admitting Johnny into a handsome house nestling against a heavily treed escarpment just blocks away from Sebastian’s. “Guy . . . here’s John Rio.”

  Guy Young emerges from within the house—extending his hand to Johnny. “Hi!”

  Johnny had forgotten Guy’s face so completely that if they had met somewhere else he would not have recognized him.

  Paul shot a look at Guy that warned as much as it implored—or so it seemed to Johnny.

  “Hiyuh!” Johnny said. Withdrawing their hands immediately after the initial contact, Johnny and Guy hardly touched.

  Paul leads Johnny into a large living room whose walls are almost covered with portraits and drawings—some by Tony. Guy follows with a drink already in his hand.

  They sit in a triangle about a rectangular table, Johnny next to an unlit fireplace; and he faces a portrait of a woman clutching her throat as if to stifle a scream or drown out laughter.

  Paul is saying that Sebastian and Tony will be over soon, and: “Emory is heartbroken that he might not be able to come. His mother descended unexpectedly on him from Oklahoma this morning, and he’s absolutely disconsolate.”

  Now Johnny isn’t sure what he feels on seeing Guy again. Or Paul. His reaction seems to be waiting for the embarrassment to pass before becoming definite.

  And why is he at Paul Blake’s this Sunday evening?—having resolved not to come here.

  It happened like this:

  As he drove out of the Park this afternoon, a wonderful peace descended on him immediately.

  But soon the feeling was followed by another.

  A powerful pain.

  A pain which was the sum total of all the numbers. And the pain lingered.

  When he reached the motel, however, he felt triumphant again—and free!

  Triumphant and free as he went downtown to complete the ritual. (And, deliberately, he didn’t shower—in order to leave the “stamp” of the last three numbers on his body for a longer time.)

  The Negro woman wasn’t at her corner.

  Johnny’s thoughts flowed defensively to drown the weird feeling of disorientation which ensued. Sure she’s bound to miss a day!—everyone gets a cold!—a headache! Besides, it’s still early. And she wasn’t here last Sunday, either, remember? So she just doesn’t preach on Sundays; that’s like her day off. That’s all. It. Doesn’t. Mean. Anything. . . . Yet he couldn’t help recalling that, the night before, she looked tired, sad, shriveled, the raisin face even more wrinkled.

  To avoid going back and forth obsessively—as he did once before and as he knew he would again if he stayed around—he drove impulsively to Santa Monica. And he did that for two other “reasons”: He “just knew” he had to let Paul know he had nothing to feel guilty about concerning the other night—though he’s not sure how much Paul knows. And—more important—suddenly: He needed urgently to announce his victory over the Park—to announce it in the canyon, where he first verbalized his “goal” in answer to Guy’s heated questioning.

  And so; here he is in Santa Monica facing Guy Young and Paul Blake.

  And silence has descended on them like an iron lid.

  In an attempt to lift it Johnny asks Paul if the copies of his new book have arrived. Paul says not yet—what a bore.

  The heavy lid of silence closes in even more oppressively.

  Finally—after even more uncomfortable moments—Paul decides to bring up the source of their obvious embarassment. He said, “Oh, let’s do stop being so somber, shall we? . . . John, I know all about what happened, or almost happened, the other night. I was somewhat aware of it even before Guy told me that—. . . that he’d made a proposition to you and that you’d indicated . . . it might be possible to . . . get together.” Still haltingly, he goes on: “But—. . . that night . . . for whatever reason
—or reasons . . . it didn’t happen. . . . Now why don’t we forget it? It’s over. Finished!” he said staunchly.

  Admiring Paul, Johnny can’t help wondering: Is he pretending not to be hurt? Does Paul . . . “like” . . . Guy so much he can easily overlook what happened, flagrant as it was? Just like that? . . . (The way Tom overlooked my going with others. But that was different, he quickly tells himself.)

  As if to indicate his firm belief that that’s that and nothing will—can!—recur, Paul excuses himself, to check on dinner.

  Guy is fixing fresh martinis. During the first silent moments, the tinkling of ice in the pitcher is like the gong of a bell.

  Left alone, both sit trying to avoid the slightest overtone of the earlier scene—Guy talking very rapidly about a party he’d been to earlier at the home of an actress he might be playing opposite in a movie.

  Though Johnny isn’t really following the words, he is listening closely to the voice. And the broken note of despair to which he responded that other night—it isn’t there now. Not at all. And so, he assures himself, what had drawn him to agree that they might get together that other night—the implied knowledge of mutual fears—doesn’t exist now. Having convinced himself of that, Johnny feels the tension dissolving.

  He stops listening even to the sound of Guy’s voice, his mind drawn insistently to the Negro woman. Is she there now? He keeps reminding himself she didn’t turn up last Sunday either. And: What difference does it make now, mano? he asks himself. Today, I won in the Park!—think of that instead. . . . But it does have to do exactly with that: as if, had she been there, she would have mirrored his victory.

  “. . .—not as if it could happen again, or we’d even want it to. Besides, nothing did happen—so I told Paul about it.”

  “What?” Johnny asked, coming in on Guy’s last few words.

  “Paul. I told Paul about what happened, because—well—. . . I mean, what happened—well—I was awfully drunk. . . . Sober, it wouldn’t’ve—of course.”

  “Right, man,” Johnny agrees emphatically.

  They hear Paul greeting Sebastian and Tony at the door. Johnny wonders how much these two know about what happened the other night. He can’t tell by their greeting of him or of Guy.