by John Rechy
It’s not quite noon.
And again Johnny Rio is passing cars anxiously on the freeway, zigzagging frenetically from fast to faster lane. Rushing.
After throwing up into the whirling dark of the canyon last night (or was it already morning?), Johnny actually drove—crazily—to the corner of 7th and Broadway. Of course: The Negro woman wasn’t there—nor had he rationally expected her to be—not then, not in the deep, deep quiet of the night. It was just that he couldn’t resist the strong compulsion.
In his car he paused in the trafficless street. Briefly and sorrowfully. As if at somebody’s grave.
He reached the motel just as the sun began to stare bleakly at the world from behind the Cloud.
Not even a sleeping pill could tame the wild thoughts. Giving up on sleep, he got up and checked to see that everything was packed, ready for his leaving this city of doomed angels before noon.
Very suddenly the sleeping pill seized him, pulling him into a dark pool of sleep—from which he emerged only a few hours later feeling powerfully exhilarated: as if the benzedrine—momentarily vanquished by the sleeping pill and the liquor and the events of the frantic night—was in complete control: woke so exhilarated that he exercised in that febrile state: repetition after repetition, set after set.
Impatiently now he passes another car as he speeds along the curving freeway, and the car ahead moves to the right, sensing the urgency with which Johnny Rio is driving.
The exit at last!
His heart races faster than his car.
Had he really expected to find it razed—like the Biblical cities?
Whether he did—insanely—or not: There it is:
Impassive. Apathetic.
Griffith Park.
And so on Monday, almost at noon, Johnny Rio returned to the Park after all.
He stands before the Arena. The sky is rubbed over as if with chalky ashes.
And what of his adamant resolve never to return? What of his victory over the Park?
Only minutes ago—ready to load his suitcase into the car—he stared at himself in the full-length mirror of the motel room. Having just exercised—his muscles taut with blood—he looked glorious to himself, and he remembered the Mirror at the Observatory.
It began then.
Like this:
A coldness in his heart. As if it had ripped and the warmth was flowing out. Then a tightening of his throat. Followed by a breathlessness which rendered each gasp like a swallowed piece of ice. And panic invading his body. His heart paused uncertainly at the top of each beat.
All the symptoms of fear. Yes. And of terror.
Except that: In Johnny they became a craving to be desired. All those manifestations flowed into a starved longing which burrowed insistently into his groin: a fire there: a harsh demand for sex: a self-contradictory cold excitement.
He set his suitcase aside. He got into his car, and it was suddenly as if a force beyond himself was pulling him physically to the Park.
And he felt:
That coldness. And:
A sadness. A heavy weariness. A breathtaking pain. A terrible resignation. A bottomless emptiness.
And then, as he entered the Arena:
A terrified excitement, screaming.
And because he has no reason for being here—no, especially not after his staunch resolve never to return; not after his stunning “victory” over the Park; not after achieving the symbolic 30 which was to set his life in order and make him free: because he doesn’t have that necessarily powerful reason—and that announces a dangerous crisis—he feels an amorphous need like immediately before he consciously set the goal of 30; and his mind flails anxiously awaiting that “reason” to rescue him from the edge of chaos and surrender—as it has miraculously over and over and over. Again, he’s aware of all this only as a nebulous disorientation; aware of something askew, unbalanced.
No “reason.”
And so Johnny reacts: He removes his shirt and walks along the Labyrinth past several men, rejecting them, past others already involved; finally choosing a lithe goodlooking youngman who is following him.
To the Cave. Taken. But not for long: The man who was in it—alone—came out. Johnny went in; the lithe youngman followed quickly, groping him immediately. Johnny pushes the youngman’s head impatiently downward.
“No—fuck me!” the youngman whispers, his voice shattered by desire.
Johnny begins to leave the Cave.
But he doesn’t. Suddenly he wants to penetrate this youngman—as if to end something begun last night.
“Get me hard first!” he commands the youngman.
Understanding, the youngman sucks him.
Thirty-one! Johnny counts automatically. (Thirty-two? . . . Guy. . . . No. That was in a further country.)
It’s obvious the lithe youngman doesn’t like to blow, is doing it only to harden and lubricate Johnny’s prick. That accomplished, the youngman pulls his own pants and shorts down. His back to Johnny, he leans over the heavy diagonal branch that splits the Cave.
Fiercely, Johnny pushes his cock into the other in one savage thrust. The youngman utters a gasp which softens into a long sigh. Pumping angrily in and out of the other’s tight opening, Johnny comes immediately.
Leaving the youngman bent over the branch whimpering, Johnny rushes out, feeling a flaming rage without conscious object as he drives to the Observatory.
Before he looks in the Mirror, he washes his prick obsessively with soap, over and over (though there was no trace of the act), so obsessively that he hadn’t noticed until now that there’s another man here—looking curiously at him as Johnny washes his own cock.
Alone in the restroom now, and having moved a few feet away from the Mirror into a clearer light, Johnny faces his image. He’s as goodlooking, as exciting as ever.
But—. . .
Something is different. Vaguely. A look. The eyes. No. The mouth. No—it is the eyes.
He drives down the road, fleeing.
Familiar cars. But new ones always.
Just one more number, and I’ll leave! he tells himself.
By the Trail. Two cars drove in simultaneously, each man rushing out to reach him before the other. Johnny walks down the Trail to the water tank. One of the men tumbles down the incline off the path, sliding, determined to get to Johnny before the other, who’s ahead. The other intercepts the first and shoves him roughly away.
Exploding in Johnny’s already troubled mind with overtones of loss of control, the scene drives him away quickly, leaving the two behind.
A reason!
None.
To the Forest. So involved they didn’t see or hear him approach—and he was so deep in his own clashing thoughts he didn’t notice them until he was almost in the Nest—three men seem to have been frozen in deadly combat: One is standing while another penetrates or tries to penetrate him from behind. Another sucks the one in the middle. Like animals feeding on each other!
But the disgust he suddenly feels isn’t enough to send Johnny away. A fever flares inside him—and a battle between ponderous weariness and kinetic excitement.
Just one more!
In the Forest a man approaches him. But he turns Johnny off. Another one. No. The two he rejected move away together.
Again, insistently, his mind demands a reason; like this: Johnny is acutely aware of drifting in the twilight green of this area: more, of drifting in that peculiar mood of frantic trance which the Park creates: actions automatic, reactions beyond control—all speeded up to rapid motion: a mood rapidly enveloping Johnny Rio.
Unless! . . .
A reason! Or:
Get out of the Park now! Drive away! Leave! Go back to the motel, check out quickly! So what if you came back to the Park today? You won Sunday! It’s only if you stay that you need a reason! There are many—oh, many, many—for leaving!
But—. . .
There’s a youngman staring at him.
And now a man crui
sing which one? Johnny.
In a hollow bowl created by the drooping branches of trees, the man goes down on Johnny.
Thirty-two! Johnny counts, waiting anxiously for the youngman also to touch his cock so he can count 33 in rapid succession.
But the man sucking Johnny reaches at the same time to take out the prick of the other youngman, fondling it with his hand while he blows Johnny. Now the man draws the other’s stiff cock very close to his own face as if impossibly to put both pricks in his mouth at the same time. Resenting the intimacy that attempt would result in—the two cocks touching—Johnny breaks away abruptly, fleeing the Forest.
Moments later in the Cave: A man squats there, Johnny goes to him, pulls out his own dick, the man opens his mouth, Johnny sticks his prick into it, the man sucks it, Johnny comes, the man swallows the cum, Johnny moves away.
Thirty-three!
As Johnny left the Cave, another youngman entered, advancing with his pants already open toward the stillsquatting man.
And this thought lacerates Johnny: Am I a number to him, too? Do those who suck me turn their mouths immediately to others just as I turn my cock? Are they collecting numbers too?
A reason—quick! his mind insists: by making Johnny feel as if he’s sinking into the Park.
And because his mind can’t find the sought reason, he thinks in terror and excitement: This is what I’d like to do all my life! Until—. . .
Until!
Leave the Park!
Just one more number.
But first, back to the Observatory.
The Mirror.
Now he knows that still another face has emerged: A composite of the three others, it bears the lean sensuality of the one he knows so well; the deep knowledge of corruption, without the ugliness, of the one that sent him away from Los Angeles three years ago; and the crystalsouled sadness of the one discovered in the Park. Strangely, the new face is the most exciting of them all.
Driving down the road. Men drifting everywhere. Caught in the trance that is inundating Johnny.
And—incongruously—all around, the Park’s green peace.
At the Outpost. Standing. These thoughts race beyond his control: In ten days, more than 30; in 30, more than 90; in 12 months, more than 1000! And in—. . . No!
The largely sleepless night . . . the liquor, the wine . . . the opposing pills at war with each other. . . . Johnny’s vision blurs off and on. His heart pounds audibly.
Suddenly he notices a peculiar shadow lurking on the highest hill of the Park.
God the Heavenly Sniper!
And so whose number is up?
Will He aim at the man in that car passing by?
(Whooosh! Pingggg!! Cuhrrrash!!!)
Or at the man walking with another down the path across the road?
(Pinggggg! . . . Oh, my God, He shot him dead!)
Or at the one climbing up the Summit?
(Ping! Eeeeeeee-ugh! . . . Dowwwwwwwwn!)
Whose number is up!
Johnny drives swiftly to a secluded part. He parks, gets out, lies down on a patch of grass, looking up at the ashen sky.
Heavily, his eyes close. Numbers race madly through his mind, tumbling over each other. One-hundred-and-12, 113, 114 . . . 5117, 6118, 7119. . . . Numbers, numbers, numbers, numb—. . .
He must have lost consciousness for a few moments because when he sat up startled, a man was standing looking down at Johnny’s bare chest.
Johnny thinks: What if I’d been dead and lying here and he thought I was resting and he’d be standing there wanting to suck my dick? What if he’d even—. . .?
The morbid thoughts turn him off. So does the man. Johnny drives away.
A reason! Something to explain why he’s here—after his victory. A reason for his not being on his way to Laredo.
A reason for there being no peace.
A man enters the Cave, where Johnny is waiting. To rush the scene, Johnny rashly takes his own cock out. The man slides down eagerly.
Thirty-four!
But Johnny’s prick is so numb it feels soft between the other’s lips. He looks down, assuring himself visually of the contact.
A youngman enters. Neither Johnny nor the other man start. The youngman looks familiar. But the numbers are losing even their few vestiges of identity. Maybe I made it with him before, Johnny thinks. If so, I can’t count him twice. . . . All of a sudden, he decides to change the rules: He’ll count contacts—not people!
The youngman tried to hold Johnny’s cock for the other to suck, and Johnny was ready to count 35; but the first one pushed the youngman away harshly before the contact was made. Moving behind Johnny, the youngman licks his shoulders, tongue sliding downward so that Johnny expects the youngman is going to rim him. Instead—straightening up without warning—the youngman presses himself intimately against Johnny’s body.
Furious—outraged—Johnny turns swiftly, knocking him down with a fist. “Cut that out, motherfucker!” Johnny blurts angrily.
The youngman was sent crashing against the dried twigs.
Johnny stands menacingly over him, fists clenched ready to strike him again.
“Let me suck you!” the youngman begs.
In a fury, wanting to choke him with it, Johnny bends down and pushes his cock into the youngman’s mouth, which was open, waiting.
Thirty-five!
The first man has crawled on hands and knees back to Johnny, and groveling in the dirt, he shoves the youngman away and takes Johnny’s cock again in his mouth. The youngman remains sprawled, looking on hungrily, arousing himself.
Johnny pulls himself away—not coming—feeling a rage that goes far beyond the youngman’s unwelcome movements—a seething rage as he staggers dizzily out of the Cave.
Coming out into the feeble sunlight, he feels as if he’s emerged from a subterranean depth of the Park.
Then:
An eerie moment. No one else in the Arena. The two men are still in the Cave. Johnny stands alone in the Grotto, and he looks through the trees of the Park—beyond the falling hills and toward the ghostly city, which is impassive and unconcerned; another world: locked, like the sky, by the heavy mist. And he no longer notices the Cloud: It’s become his sky.
A silence shrieks at him: Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
Running, he stumbles on a broken pipe. Water trickles out through a small hole. He bends down, trying to get enough of the leaking water in his cupped hands to throw on his heated face.
A blackness outlines his vision, threatening to seal it.
Recovering, he sees the familiar red convertible parked across the road facing in his direction.
It was the same car that night in Lafayette Park! His raging brain has convinced itself at last.
Outside the Arena, he crosses the road hurriedly; and impulsively he approaches the man in the red convertible. “Say, man!” His voice is thick. It could have come from someone else.
“Yes?” the man wearing the dark sunglasses says.
“I—. . . I wanna ask you . . . something . . . man.” A sudden disorientation beyond the general feeling of imbalance makes him forget momentarily what he wants to ask.
“Of course, youngman,” the man in the red convertible says eagerly, apparently not at all surprised by Johnny’s having come over to talk to him. “Anything! What is it?” Even handsomer than Johnny had thought, the man has a soft, cultured voice; he speaks each word euphonically. Quite definitely he’s in his middle—no, upper—20’s. No, his 30’s. No—. . .
“Why? have? you? been? following? me?” Johnny is so weary he forms each word carefully to make sure he’s speaking it.
The man laughs. “But isn’t that just too extraordinary!” I’ve had the distinct impression that you’ve been following me!” He focuses the sunglasses on Johnny. They’re not black; they’re mirrored. Johnny sees himself clearly reflected. Two faces, trapped, very small, one in each pool of the
glass.
“I don’t—. . . don’t follow—. . . nobody!” Johnny says toughly. “And if you—. . .” He tries to verbalize a threat. But speaking is too difficult at this moment—the battle between sleep and alertness for control of his body is too ferocious.
Angrily, Johnny turns away, crosses the road; and he gets into his car, thinking:
Weird motherfucker—that is his scene—following people!—and he’s following me cause I’m making out like crazy, and that’s how he gets his kicks.
But Johnny Rio is convinced the man is hunting some strange, ineffable, truly unnatural perversion.
To drive him out of his mind, Johnny thinks:
Just one more number!
It’s one of those recurrent moments in the Arena when the wave of hunters has flowed from one area to another. Returning after driving away from the man in the red convertible, Johnny is here alone.
Was.
A toughlooking youngman with tattoos on bulging biceps has driven up on a growling motorcycle. A cap cocked crookedly, long sideburns, no shirt, wearing a laced-up vinyl vest, engineer boots, he spots Johnny immediately and descends after him into the Cave.
Inside the Cave, he throws himself suddenly at Johnny’s feet, licking Johnny’s boots. Although this has never been Johnny’s scene, it excites him powerfully now; and he remains standing, though unsteadily, over the other. Having pulled Johnny’s Levi’s and his own down, the toughlooking youngman throws himself back on the dried twigs and dirt. Yearningly, adoringly, he stares up at Johnny; and the other’s radiating desire inflames Johnny, even as he struggles to retain his physical balance.
“On me!—here!” the toughlooking youngman with the tattoos pleads desperately. “On me—piss—on me—here!” He indicates his own aroused cock.
Although a perverse excitement at the other’s exhortation sweeps Johnny, still a part of him—the same part repeatedly demanding a reason—clings to control and causes him to move back, shaking his head in protest.
“Cummon—piss—on me!” the toughlooking youngman begs, his body writhing with excitement on the dirt. “Cummon, cummon! Please!”
Fighting the part of him that resists—as he feels an unfocused anger rushing to find any object—Johnny suddenly tries to force the liquid out as he straddles the toughlooking youngman. At first it won’t come, then it barely trickles, finally it flows.